IPS Blog

A weekly featured poem of provocation and witness. You can find more poetry and arts news from Blog This Rock.

Final Exam Administration

I enter to find all the students in uniform
occupying a small room.

I hand out pencils and registration forms.
Some begin without orders.

I remind them to remain anonymous
no names, just ID numbers should appear

on the waiting pages, white and clean
as unwritten letters or discharges.

Just a number   the private
in BCGs and fatigues mumbles

from the back   that’s all
we are.  A number

and a gun.   His comrades laugh,
erasing what might have been.

Do your best   I say,
and they settle, salute.

-Remica L. Bingham
Used by permission.

Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal (full disclosure: also an IPS board member) on the proposed DC budget cuts: "Sure, raising taxes for this reason is in my self-interest. I'm a business owner in this city, and I want more customers to have money to spend at my restaurants. Having a city with a widening gulf of haves and have-nots simply doesn't bode well for my long-term business plans."  

Are fines in the millions enough to deter reckless and damaging behavior from oil giants like BP? (Hint: Probably not.)  

Activists in London stage some creative protests against Tate Modern, which has ties to BP.  

The DISCLOSE Act, which would "ensuring that new disclosure reports detailing electioneering and independent expenditures will be electronically filed and disclosed on the FEC’s website within 24 hours," passed out of committee a few days ago. Would be a great win for transparency if it went any farther.  

ProPublica has new details on the Times Square bomber investigation.  

And while we're on the topic of investigations, CPI's latest blog post has an entry on some of the other investigations going on around the world – particularly the Balkans, Mexico, and U.S. for-profit colleges.  

Where's taxpayer money in the defense budget going? Not to health care for vets, under our current system.  But Alan Grayson's "War Makes You Poor" Act, just introduced, would "make the DoD work within its means, and the money would instead be used for an across-the-board tax cut that would make the first $35,000 each American earns tax-free."