Wonderful news! STANDING DEER IS A FREE MAN!! The long-time Native American political prisoner (and ETS! reader) was apparently released on parole Tuesday, Sep. 4, and is now breathing the sweet fresh air of Houston (no sarcastic comments, please--when you've been a ward of the state of Texas for decades, anything is a big improvement). Congratulations to him, and to all the people who worked tirelessly to support him and agitate for his health and his release for these many years. --G.P.

By the year 2050, if current trends hold, India will surpass the People's Republic of China as the world's most populous country. But the Indian government is doing something about it. Health Minister C.P. Thakur told the Times of India last month that New Delhi has decided to make televisions more affordable for Indian peasants so they'll stop having sex at bedtime. Um... television is supposed to keep peoples' minds off sex? Has the good minister seen American sitcoms lately? (They certainly make the rounds of all Third World countries.) You know, the ones where precocious 11-year-old babely sex bombs trade endless provocative, sexually explicit barbs appropos of nothing? Here's a better solution: give 'em the sets, and then, when they're showing all those bawdy, disgusting Hollywood tit-illation "products," make sure to instruct the peasantry to get up real close to watch. Real, real, real close. And irradiate them. (Side benefit: peasants will learn to hate television and government.) (Double bonus: maybe they'll blame the commercials!) --G.P.

CBS is choosing not to rerun a particular episode of its courtroom drama show "Family Law." CBS is denying that this decision is due to primary advertiser Procter & Gamble's decision to not run advertising on the "controversial" gun control-related episode. Of course, P&G is claiming that they didn't pressure CBS into this decision, and CBS is saying that they didn't cave in to advertising pressure. Both were just making rational economic choices to maximize private profit (via the public airwaves). The best description of this controversy came from CNN "Moneyline" host Lou Dobbs: "An advertiser has a right to decide what they're going to advertise on, and the network has a right to decide whether or not they're going to run a program...Sounds like America to me, people making choices." The powerful making economic decisions with no interest in what the public thinks? As American as apple pie. --Jake Sexton

Hey, would anyone be willing to make Eat the State! a banner that we could display at public events? Just wondering. And wishing...

There's a rather irritating complication arising from Seattle's shameful local electoral system--which essentially ensures that any incumbent, failing scandal or breathtaking incompetence (and sometimes not even then, right, Paul?), will get re-elected as many times as s/he wants. That's bad enough, but the complication of it was particularly bad in this year's primary: the practice of people paying their filing fees and allegedly "running for office" solely for the purpose of getting attention for their pet cause, without any actual interest in the office they're supposedly trying to gain.

Even if the cause is worthy--youth services, district elections, whatever--it takes away air time, votes, and attention from people who might be able to legitimately challenge incumbents. It also tends to turn the whole process into a circus, when the truly loony candidates also weigh in on, say, the great vaccination conspiracy, but not much can be done about that. What can be addressed is the phenomenon of perfectly respectable community activists--I'm thinking of folks like James Egan and Jay Sauceda, for example, in the Richard Conlin race--in essence helping the incumbent by muddying the race. Incumbents in this city don't need any more help. By and large, they need new jobs, and we need to be able to identify, as early in the process as possible, who the people are that are serious about ousting them. --G.P.

It should not have surprised anybody that the Seattle Police Department sought to impress the public, make politicians look good, and get their own yayas out by taking a hard line against protesters at last month's Reclaim the Streets protest. There's countless documentation of inexcusable (and unconstitutional, let alone illegal) cop behavior, but the reason media outlets and city council members are yawning is that they wanted it and expected it. SPD Chief Gil Kerlikowske estimated, before last year's similar N30 showdown, that the SPD peacefully watched about 400 unpermitted marches and demonstrations a year in the years between the Gulf War and the WTO. A Peltier march just after RTS was given a similar hands-off treatment by the cops. The difference is that RTS was organized by anarchists, that is, people who aren't as inclined to back down when the state tries to push them around, no matter how peaceful their original intent was. And, so, we can expect more of these silly--yet dangerous--confrontations. Organizers for events like the solidarity demos for upcoming meetings in D.C., Naples, and Qatar--not to mention N30 2001--had better figure out ways to make sure that the public understands that its rights--not just the rights of some low-life, scruffy, dumpster-diving anarchist hooligans--are threatened when SPD pulls this sort of shit. Otherwise, who knows...SPD might start feeling like it can get away with shooting white people, too. --G.P.

A New York outfit calling itself the Masquerade Project (being organized by some pretty reputable folks I know) is calling for "an aesthetic intervention on the front lines of the movement for global justice." They're raising money "to buy and fabulously decorate hundreds of gas masks for free distribution at [this month's] IMF/World Bank protests in Washington," with "bright paints, rhinestones, sequins, glitter, and trim to transform the masks we'll be giving away into splendid and sassy creations." Every five bucks donated will help protect one person's eyes, lungs, and skin in D.C. Help out at: www.masqueradeproject.org, or send a check made out to The Masquerade Project to P.O. Box 648, New York, NY 10009. --G.P.

I sometimes feel perverse for enjoying woeful economic news. On the one hand, it's proof that our stratified economic system is fundamentally flawed; on the other hand, all of those bad numbers mean a lot of people are feeling pain. Happily, one of those people is George W. Bush. Each time a new economic report comes out with its bad news about unemployment, corporate profits, etc., economists try to paint a cheerful picture by pointing to Bush's tax rebate checks. "Consumer spending will save us," they say, claiming that consumer purchases (i.e., increased demand) are what really drive the economy.

It's mid-September and most folks have already received their rebate checks, but consumer spending is still in the doldrums. August and September are the second biggest time of the year for retailers (nearly as big as the holiday season), because parents are buying back-to-school items for their kids. This year, only two retailers have seen a significant increase in sales: WalMart and JC Penney. All of the others failed to meet their own forecasts, including: The Gap, Saks, Nordstrom, Dillard's, Federated Stores (The Bon Marche), Limited Inc., Talbots, and Kohl's. Other discount stores, including Target, Office Depot, and Kmart, barely met Wall Street's projections. It seems that taxpayers are using their rebate checks for three things: to pay down credit card debt, to make donations to charities, or to boost their emergency cash savings (it's obviously not going into the stock market). Notably, this is exactly what most liberal economists warned when Bush first proposed his tax-cut plan. In an economic slowdown, people don't spend money; they either save it or pay down their debts.--Maria Tomchick

There are two other numbers that economists cite when they want you to think that the economy will be recovering soon: low manufacturers' inventories and a high number of manufacturers' new orders. The theory is simple: when manufacturers' inventories fall and new orders rise, then companies have to hire more employees to fill those new orders. More people employed means more money for people to spend on stuff, which means more new orders, etc. But the problem with this picture is that corporate profits are still falling and companies are laying off workers, instead of hiring more. Companies are trying to increase profits by maximizing "worker productivity"--in other words, getting rid of some employees and making the remaining few work harder for the same pay. Obviously, this won't stimulate consumer spending or lift us out of a recession. If anything, it means people will be too tired to shop.--M.T.