My cell phone, here on the West Coast, is mistakenly linked to Northeastern University‘s alert system. During the Boston Marathon, and again this morning, I received warning texts before I knew anything had happened. I have family in Cambridge, so when I saw this text, “Governor to ALL Boston: shelter in place, stay indoors,” this morning, my heart dropped.

Below are some helpful links:

ProPublica, April 19, 2013, 12:20 p.m.

Boston is on lockdown as the hunt for suspects in Monday’s Boston marathon bombing is ongoing.

Waking up to the news this morning was being thrown into a sea of breaking updates, emergency warnings, and more than one conspiracy theory. To help you catch up, we’ve pulled together some of the best reporting so far, and who to follow for breaking news:

Breaking Updates:

Full Coverage: 1 Marathon Bombing Suspect Dead, Other Suspect At Large, WBUR (Boston’s NPR affiliate)

Live blog: Bombings at the Boston Marathon, Boston Globe

Boston on lockdown as details pour in: Suspects told carjack victim they were marathon bombers, NBC News

Amid lots of misreporting from major media outlets, Williams and the NBC News team have been consistently reliable on separating fact from fiction.

Background on the brothers:

A Look at Brothers Suspected in the Boston Bombing, Wall Street Journal

The Journal has one of the more comprehensive profiles so far of the two brothers suspected to be behind the bombings.

What happened last night:

Search for marathon bombing suspect locks down Watertown, surrounding communities, The Boston Globe

A detailed rundown of everything that happened between the shooting of an MIT police officer, and the lockdown.

Boston Bomb Victim in Photo Helped Identify Suspects, Bloomberg News

“Minutes before the bombs blew up in Boston, Jeff Bauman looked into the eyes of the man who tried to kill him.” How one victim of Monday’s explosion pointed police toward the brothers police are now on the hunt for.

Updates on the Hunt for the Boston Bombing Suspects, The New York Times

The New York Times has mapped where last night’s events occurred.

Investigation into Boston Marathon Bombings, The Washington Post

Washington Post’s interactive maps the suspects’ likely path during the marathon, as well as the sites of last night’s events.

Eerie Photos Of Boston Looking Like A Ghost Town, Business Insider

Multiple news outlets (including NBC News and Buzzfeed) have aggregated Instagram images from Boston residents and reporters, painting a stark picture of the Boston’s full security lockdown.

For the latest:  

@WBUR

@bostonglobe

@Boston_police

Watertown: A public Twitter list of reporters on the scene to follow, as they cover the hunt in Watertown, outside Boston.

@Farahstockman: Farah Stockman, veteran foreign correspondent and now editorial writer for the Globe, lives a block away from one of brothers.

@davabel: David Abel, Boston Globe reporter

@paulsonne: Paul Sonne, Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He’s been tweeting about the Tsarnaev brothers’ roots in Russia.

Did we miss any key resources? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter.

Tell people you own a Kindle, then mention that all the great classics are available to read for free. As if correlation equals causation! I don’t usually mention that I can play Scrabble and read free romance novels, although that’s what I do. Well, I did read Ben Franklin’s autobiography, and Sherlock Holmes, but that’s too enjoyable to qualify as serious reading.

The ebook is available in Amazon’s Kindle store, here.

by Lois Beckett ProPublica, March 7, 2013.

Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you’re pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you have.

Regulators and some in Congress have been taking a closer look at these so-called data brokers u2014 and are beginning to push the companies to give consumers more information and control over what happens to their data.

But many people still don’t even know that data brokers exist.

Here’s a look at what we know about the consumer data industry.

How much do these companies know about individual people?

They start with the basics, like names, addresses and contact information, and add on demographics, like age, race, occupation and “education level,” according to consumer data firm Acxiom’s overview of its various categories.

But that’s just the beginning: The companies collect lists of people experiencing “life-event triggers” like getting married, buying a home, sending a kid to college u2014 or even getting divorced.

Credit reporting giant Experian has a separate marketing services division, which sells lists of “names of expectant parents and families with newborns” that are “updated weekly.”

The companies also collect data about your hobbies and many of the purchases you make. Want to buy a list of people who read romance novels? Epsilon can sell you that, as well as a list of people who donate to international aid charities.

A subsidiary of credit reporting company Equifax even collects detailed salary and paystub information for roughly 38 percent of employed Americans, as NBC news reported. As part of handling employee verification requests, the company gets the information directly from employers.

Equifax said in a statement that the information is only sold to customers “who have been verified through a detailed credentialing process.” It added that if a mortgage company or other lender wants to access information about your salary, they must obtain your permission to do so.

Of course, data companies typically don’t have all of this information on any one person. As Acxiom notes in its overview, “No individual record ever contains all the possible data.” And some of the data these companies sell is really just a guess about your background or preferences, based on the characteristics of your neighborhood, or other people in a similar age or demographic group.

Where are they getting all this info?

The stores where you shop sell it to them.

Datalogix, for instance, which collects information from store loyalty cards, says it has information on more than $1 trillion in consumer spending “across 1400 leading brands.” It doesn’t say which ones. (Datalogix did not respond to our requests for comment.)

Data companies usually refuse to say exactly what companies sell them information, citing competitive reasons. And retailers also don’t make it easy for you to find out whether they’re selling your information.

But thanks to California’s “Shine the Light” law, researchers at U.C. Berkeley were able to get a small glimpse of how companies sell or share your data. The study recruited volunteers to ask more than 80 companies how the volunteers’ information was being shared.

Only two companies actually responded with details about how volunteers’ information had been shared. Upscale furniture store Restoration Hardware said that it had sent “your name, address and what you purchased” to seven other companies, including a data “cooperative” that allows retailers to pool data about customer transactions, and another company that later became part of Datalogix. (Restoration Hardware hasn’t responded to our request for comment.)

Walt Disney also responded and described sharing even more information: not just a person’s name and address and what they purchased, but their age, occupation, and the number, age and gender of their children. It listed companies that received data, among them companies owned by Disney, like ABC and ESPN, as well as others, including Honda, HarperCollins Publishing, Almay cosmetics, and yogurt company Dannon.

But Disney spokeswoman Zenia Mucha said that Disney’s letter, sent in 2007, “wasn’t clear” about how the data was actually shared with different companies on the list. Outside companies like Honda only received personal information as part of a contest, sweepstakes, or other joint promotion that they had done with Disney, Mucha said. The data was shared “for the fulfillment of that contest prize, not for their own marketing purposes.”

Where else do data brokers get information about me?

Government records and other publicly available information, including some sources that may surprise you. Your state Department of Motor Vehicles, for instance, may sell personal information u2014 like your name, address, and the type of vehicles you own u2014 to data companies, although only for certain permitted purposes, including identify verification.

Public voting records, which include information about your party registration and how often you vote, can also be bought and sold for commercial purposes in some states.

Are there limits to the kinds of data these companies can buy and sell?

Yes, certain kinds of sensitive data are protected u2014 but much of your information can be bought and sold without any input from you.

Federal law protects the confidentiality of your medical records and your conversations with your doctor. There are also strict rules regarding the sale of information used to determine your credit-worthiness, or your eligibility for employment, insurance and housing. For instance, consumers have the right to view and correct their own credit reports, and potential employers have to ask for your consent before they buy a credit report about you.

Other than certain kinds of protected data u2014 including medical records and data used for credit reports u2014 consumers have no legal right to control or even monitor how information about them is bought and sold. As the FTC notes, “There are no current laws requiring data brokers to maintain the privacy of consumer data unless they use that data for credit, employment, insurance, housing, or other similar purposes.”

So they don’t sell information about my health?

Actually, they do.

Data companies can capture information about your “interests” in certain health conditions based on what you buy u2014 or what you search for online. Datalogix has lists of people classified as “allergy sufferers” and “dieters.” Acxiom sells data on whether an individual has an “online search propensity” for a certain “ailment or prescription.”

Consumer data is also beginning to be used to evaluate whether you’re making healthy choices.

One health insurance company recently bought data on more than three million people’s consumer purchases in order to flag health-related actions, like purchasing plus-sized clothing, the Wall Street Journal reported. (The company bought purchasing information for current plan members, not as part of screening people for potential coverage.)

Spokeswoman Michelle Douglas said that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina would use the data to target free programming offers to their customers.

Douglas suggested that it might be more valuable for companies to use consumer data “to determine ways to help me improve my health” rather than “to buy my data to send me pre-paid credit card applications or catalogs full of stuff they want me to buy.”

Do companies collect information about my social media profiles and what I do online?

Yes.

As we highlighted last year, some data companies record u2014 and then resell u2014 all kinds of information you post online, including your screen names, website addresses, interests, hometown and professional history, and how many friends or followers you have.

Acxiom said it collects information about which social media sites individual people use, and “whether they are a heavy or a light user,” but that they do not collect information about “individual postings” or your “lists of friends.”

More traditional consumer data can also be connected with information about what you do online. Datalogix, the company that collects loyalty card data, has partnered with Facebook to track whether Facebook users who see ads for certain products actually end up buying them at local stores, as the Financial Times reported last year.

Is there a way to find out exactly what these data companies know about me?

Not really.

You have the right to review and correct your credit report. But with marketing data, there’s often no way to know exactly what information is attached to your name u2014 or whether it’s accurate.

Most companies offer, at best, a partial picture.

While Acxiom lets consumers review some of the information the company sells about them, New York Times reporter Natasha Singer discovered this summer that only a sliver of information is shared, including whether you have a prison record or bankruptcy filings.

When Singer finally received her report, all it included was a record of her residential addresses.

Some companies do offer more access. A spokeswoman for Epsilon said it allows consumers to review “high level information” about their data u2014 like whether or not you’re listed as making a purchase in the “home furnishings” category. (Requests to review this information cost $5 and can only be made by postal mail.)

RapLeaf, a company that advertises that it has “real-time data” on 80 percent of U.S. email addresses, says that it gives customers “total control over the data we have on you,” and allows them to review and edit the categories (like “estimated household income” and “Likely Political Contributor to Republicans”) that RapLeaf has connected with their email addresses.

How do I know when someone has purchased data about me?

Most of the time, you don’t.

When you’re checking out at a store and a cashier asks you for your Zip code, the store isn’t just getting that single piece of information. Acxiom and other data companies offer services that allow stores to use your Zip code and the name on your credit card to pinpoint your home address u2014 without asking you for it directly.

Is there any way to stop the companies from collecting and sharing information about me?

Yes, but it would require a whole lot of work.

Many data brokers offer consumers the chance to “opt out” of being included in their databases, or at least from receiving advertising enabled by that company. Rapleaf, for instance, has a “Permanent opt-out” that “deletes information associated with your email address from the Rapleaf database.”

But to actually opt-out effectively, you need to know about all the different data brokers and where to find their opt-outs. Most consumers, of course, don’t have that information.

In their privacy report last year, the FTC suggested that data brokers should create a centralized website that would make it easier for consumers to learn about the existence of these companies and their rights regarding the data they collect.

How many people do these companies have information on?

Basically everyone in the U.S. and many beyond it. Acxiom, recently profiled by the New York Times, says it has information on 500 million people worldwide, including “nearly every U.S. consumer.”

After the 9/11 attacks, CNN reported, Acxiom was able to locate 11 of the 19 hijackers in its database.

How is all of this data actually used?

Mostly to sell you stuff. Companies want to buy lists of people who might be interested in what they’re selling u2014 and also want to learn more about their current customers.

They also sell their information for other purposes, including identity verification, fraud prevention and background checks.

If new privacy laws are passed, will they include the right to see what data these companies have collected about me?

Unlikely.

In a report on privacy last year, the Federal Trade Commission recommended that Congress pass legislation “that would provide consumers with access to information about them held by a data broker.” President Barack Obama has also proposed a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights that would give consumers the right to access and correct certain information about them.

But this probably won’t include access to marketing data, which the Federal Trade Commission considers less sensitive than data used for credit reports or identity verification.

In terms of marketing data, “we think at the very least consumers should have access to the general categories of data the companies have about consumers,” said Maneesha Mithal of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.

Data companies have also pushed back against the idea of opening up marketing profiles for individual consumers’ inspection.

Even if there were errors in your marketing data profile, “the worst thing that could happen is that you get an advertising offer that isn’t relevant to you,” said Rachel Thomas, the vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association.

“The fraud and security risks that you run by opening up those files is higher than any potential harm that could happen to the consumer,” Thomas said.

Mitt is lucky. In his debate performance he was held to some odd standard, seemingly universally agreed upon by pundits beforehand, that looking smooth and using forceful diction mattered most. This was the Likeability portion of the pageant, and Willy Bo Bo took the trophy.

But this was a debate. And if Mitt had showed up at a high school or college tournament, his score would have been zero. Here’s why:

In instances of evidence distortion and/or fabrication, the judge(s) shall automatically award the decision in the debate to the opposing team and give the offending speaker zero speaker points, noting the violation of the rules of evidence on the ballot as the reason for the judge’s decisions and points. In individual event, the judge(s) will treat evidence distortion and/or fabrication by giving the offending speaker zero points and by dropping that speaker from the speaker rankings to be assigned at the end of the round.

How is it that the media has declared Mitt Romney the winner of the first debate, when his performance was based on lies delivered as facts? In debate team competition, at the most rudimentary level, facts matter. Kids all across the country were assigned to watch the debate, and I’m sure that the thousands of young kids who could do better, and are held to a higher standard every day, found it as lame as I did.

A note to Obama’s coaches: be glad you’re only prepping the President of the United States, and not a college debate team, or this might have happened:

Forensics directors, coaches, assistants or judges found guilty of asking students to throw rounds of forensics competition will be subject to the penalties listed under section I of this Article.

A valedictorian who got there by cheating is stripped of the title. Lance Armstrong isn’t the winner of those yellow jerseys. When people lie or cheat to win, that win doesn’t count. We take away gold medals, college degrees, professional degrees, book awards. Lies

.In police work, they call it fruit from the poisoned tree, when evidence is collected illegally, all that proceeds from it is not admissible in court.

In school, they call it cheating. If you cheat on a test, or an entrance exam, you shouldn’t expect that your admission to university or your ‘A’ in home ec will be celebrated; it is not a real achievement.

I watched the debate with ids who ‘had to’ watch the debate for school. I think its unfortunate that the wrap-up for the debate mentioned the lies, and the facts that they replaced, but didn’t call Mitt Romney to account for it.

Character matters. It isn’t exciting, but it matters.

ProPublica, Sept. 12, 2012

Here’s the best reporting we’ve found not only on yesterday’s killings but also on post-war Libya. What are we missing? Please leave your favorite stories in comments.
THE ATTACK: ITS ORIGINS AND VICTIMS U.S. Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned, New York Times The connection between an anti-Islam film that reportedly sparked this week’s protests in the Mideast and the attack that killed the American ambassador is unclear. Unnamed U.S. officials have told the New York Times and CNN that militants behind the attack may have instigated a protest against the film as a diversion or taken advantage of it as an opportunity.

Stevens ‘was thrilled to watch the Libyan people stand up’, YouTube In a U.S. embassy video uploaded to YouTube in May, Ambassador Stevens introduced himselfto the Libyan people. He described his childhood in California and how he fell in love with North Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, and compared the challenges facing Libya to the American Civil War.

Stevens: ‘The whole atmosphere has changed for the better’, International Herald Tribune The International Herald Tribune published a tribute to Stevens from foreign correspondent Harvey Morris, which included passages from a “catch-up email”Stevens had written to family and friends in July.

The victims: Sean Smith messaged fellow gamers in hours before attack, Wired Sean Smith, a foreign service officer stationed in Libya who was also killed, was an avid gamer whose death was first reported by his online friends. Yesterday, he wrote a message to an online gaming friend saying he hoped “we don’t die tonight.” He added, “We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.”

 Violence at demonstrations in Benghazi is not unprecedented, BBC In 2006, during the height of the protests against the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, at least 10 people were killed in Benghazi during a large demonstration. The BBC reported at the time that the Italian consulate in Benghazi had been set on aflame and police had fired on demonstrators. Protesters were reportedly angry because an Italian minister had worn a t-shirt featuring the cartoons.

THE FILM The provenance of the movie connected to this week’s protests is murky. A trailer for The Innocence of Muslims was posted on YouTube in July on an account bearing the name “sam bacile.” Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches first raised questions about information “Bacile” — identified as a California real estate developer — gave to the AP and the Wall Street Journal in recent phone interviews. Christian activist Steve Klein, who has been described in the media as a consultant on the film, told the Atlantic that “Sam Bacile” was a pseudonym and he did not know the person’s true identity. The AP reported that “Bacile” is an Israeli Jew living in California and that he had raised $5 million for the film from 100 Jewish donors. But Klein told the Atlantic that “Bacile” is not Israeli.

LIBYA IN TRANSITION With Qaddafi gone, Libya is ‘boiling over’, New York Review of Books In June,

Nicolas Pelham offered an overview of the state of Libya with a focus on outbreaks of tribal violence in the south of the country. The piece also profiles Benghazi, reporting that militias “rule in and around” the city amid a collapse of central authority. Libya Captors Become the Captives, New York Times Magazine In May, the magazine profiled former prisoners of the Qaddafi regime who are now in positions of power in Libya. Reporter Robert Worth summed up the state of the government: “Libya has no army. It has no government. These things exist on paper, but in practice, Libya has yet to recover from the long maelstrom of Qaddafi’s rule.” State Dept. Warned Americans Away from Libya, Foreign Policy Just last month, the State Department issued a travel warning against U.S. citizens visiting Libya. “The incidence of violent crime, especially carjacking and robbery, has become a serious problem,” the statement read. “In addition, political violence in the form of assassinations and vehicle bombs has increased in both Benghazi and Tripoli.” Libya Democracy Clashes with Fervor for Jihad, New York Times A tale of two emergent political leaders in the new Libya – one, a former jihadi who has renounced violence and says he wants to promote Islamic values as a politician, and the other a militia leader who was held in Guantanamo for six years and has said he wants a Taliban-style Islamist state. Qaddafi: King of Kings, The New Yorker Last November, New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson chronicled the life of Libya’s deposed dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and how his 42-year reign devastated the country’s civil and political culture, ending in “a void, a sense that his mania had left room in the country for nothing else.” HISTORY OF U.S.-LIBYA RELATIONS U.S.-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya, Human Rights Watch A new Human Rights Watch report includes interviews with 14 Libyans who had fled the country in the 1980s, most of them members of an anti-Qaddafi Islamist group. The Libyans interviewed said they were detained by the U.S., interrogated as terror suspects, and then sent back to Qaddafi’s Libya “at a time when Libya’s record on torture made clear they would face a serious risk of abuse.”  One described being waterboarded by his American captors in Afghanistan. Files Note Close C.I.A. Ties to Qaddafi Spy Unit, New York Times Documents found in an abandoned office after Qaddafi’s fall documented what appeared to be regular communications between the CIA and Britain’s MI-6 and Libyan officials about terror suspects, and suggested that prisoners were rendered to Libya for questioning. As U.S. Rebuilt Ties with Libya, Human Rights Concerns Took Back Seat, ProPublica The U.S. began normalizing its relations with Libya in 2004, removing the country from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2006. Our explainer from last year covered how oil companies were among the proponents of more engagement with the regime. Evidence also continues to emerge that the U.S. and Qaddafi cooperated on some counterterror efforts, despite the Libyan government’s often inflammatory anti-Western public rhetoric. Obama’s defense of U.S. role in Libya, MarketWatch Last March, President Obama defended American involvement in the Libyan conflict, saying: “I firmly believe that when innocent people are being brutalized; when someone like Gadhafi threatens a bloodbath that could destabilize an entire region; and when the international community is prepared to come together to save many thousands of lives—then it’s in our national interest to act. And it’s our responsibility. This is one of those times.” Ongoing coverage: The Guardian | The New York Times Lede Blog | CNN | The Twitter feed of Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell

Slate has a straightforward wrap-up of the rumor here by Matthew Yglesias.

If he’s running for Boss, Mitt doesn’t need to answer to the little people he will guide: does the shepherd ask the sheep? But as a man seeking employment as a servant of the American public, then yeah, we get to perform a background check. Your dad understood that, Mitt.

Elections are the interview process for a job as a public servant. You can have limitless awe at your own reflection….just don’t forget that the polished silver you’re admiring yourself in, it belongs to US.

ProPublica, Aug. 15, 2012, 1:21 p.m.

Editor’s note: This post was first published Aug. 11, 2012. It was corrected Aug. 12 and updated with new material Aug. 15. 

We’ve had several days to get to know Rep. Paul Ryan on the campaign trail, which means we’ve also had more time to review Ryan’s voting record. We’ve compiled a few more stories below — please keep your suggestions coming in the comments or tag them on Twitter with #RyanReads.

Paul Ryan’s voting record: Big-spending conservatism, Politico, August 2012 Politico scrubs Ryan’s voting record to see how his votes line up with his budget-cutting ways and finds that while he generally takes the party line, he has backed big-ticket legislation including the $700 billion TARP bailout, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug package and Alaska’s notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” Ryan’s non-budget votes, Washington Post, August 2012 Most of the focus on Ryan has been on the congressman’s much-debated budget. But Washington Post’s Wonkblog tallies at least 71 bills or amendments that Ryan has sponsored in his Congressional career. An overview of legislation Ryan has sponsored on issues such as Social Security, health care, and presidential veto powers as well as Ryan’s complete voting record from Project Vote Smart. What is Paul Ryan worth?, Huffington Post, August 2012 Paul Ryan’s average net worth has grown since he was elected, from $382,865 in 1999 to $4.9 million in 2011, according to calculations by The Huffington Post’s Paul Blumenthal. But that growth had little to do with his political influence and more to do with his marriage to wealthy  Washington lobbyist Janna Little.

Background

Want help going beyond the horse race? We’re gathering the best stories out there on Congressman Paul Ryan, his positions, and his background. Have other stories to share?

Fussbudget, The New Yorker, August 2012 This sweeping profile is a great introduction to Paul Ryan and his politics. Starting in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, it lays out the evolution of Ryan’s economic beliefs, and his rise through the G.O.P – from his early affinity to Ayn Rand to failed attempts at privatizing Social Security, to his Path to Prosperity budget plan, which would make radical changes in Medicaid and other social programs. The article also looks at the ways that federal-funded projects have helped Ryan’s hometown–and notes that Ryan’s plan “would drastically reduce the parts of the budget” that are funding exactly these kinds of projects.

Ryan shines as GOP seeks vision, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 2009 A broad look at Ryan from his home-state paper at a time when Ryan’s national profile was on the rise. Ryan discusses, among other things, how having gay friends led him to break with his party on a gay rights bill in Congress and his “real passion” — bowhunting.

The Legendary Paul Ryan, New York Magazine, April 2012 A look at how the Republican party rallied around Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” putting the newcomer’s fiscal agenda at the center of the 2012 presidential campaign well before voters had even chosen Romney as their Republican nominee.

On the paradox of Paul Ryan, The American Conservative, April 2012 What does Mitt Romney gain from Paul Ryan? Romney may be betting on a boost from conservatives who view Ryan as a hero for his aggressive stance on entitlements and federal spending, but as W. James Antle III points out, that may not be enough to win over grassroots conservatives. Antle writes that despite his anti-entitlements campaign, Ryan’s voting record “more closely resembles that of the Republicans who have lost to Tea Party primary challengers than that of a ruthless government-cutter.”

Man with a Plan, Weekly Standard, July 2012 The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes wrote a favorable profileof Ryan in July in the midst of veep buzz. The piece traces his entire career with a particular focus on how, in recent years, Ryan became “the intellectual leader of the Republican party.”

How Important is Altas Shrugged author Ayn Rand to Paul’s political philosophy?  The Atlas Society, April  2012 In a 2005 speech to the Atlas Society, Paul said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand…you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism.” According to the excerpts and audio of his speech posted on the society’s website, he also said that Rand was “required reading” for his interns and staff.  But recently, Ryan has said while he had read Rand’s novels when he was young, his supposed obsession with her was “an urban legend.” “I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told Robert Costa at National Review in April. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview.”

Policy

A Closer Look at Ryan’s Budget Roadmaps, The New York Times, August 2012 As part of an in-depth look at Ryan’s polarizing House Republican budget plan, the New York Times highlights two studies of how the plan would affect Americans.  One, a long-term analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of some of Ryan’s suggested changes to Medicare and Medicaid, found that, “Under the proposal, most elderly people who would be entitled to premium support payments would pay more for their health carethan they would pay under the current Medicare system.” The other, a study by the Tax Policy Centerof the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, found that “the tax cuts in Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget plan would result in huge benefits for high-income peopleand very modest—or no— benefits for low income working households.”

What’s Paul Ryan’s foreign policy?  Foreign Policy, April 2012 While Ryan has a limited record on international affairs, he has spoken about everything from how to handle China (less hawkishly than Romney)  to getting cosier with rising powers India and Brazil. Foreign Policy’s helpful overview says the overall picture that emerges is “a bit of a Rorschach test.”  Ryan says the U.S. should stay deeply engaged– “America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen” — while he has also called for cutting funding for U.S. international aid.

Ryan’s personal finances and connections

Ryan is wealthy–but not by Romney standards. The congressman reported 2011 assets valued at between $2.4 and $9.3 million, according to an Associated Press report looking at his recently filed financial disclosure form. The money is spread in small chunks over various stock investments and in business interests in Wisconsin and his wife’s home state of Oklahoma. You can browse his assets here(.pdf). Ryan also filed an amendmentto his disclosure noting that his wife’s mother died in 2010 and the family gained interest in a trust worth between $1 and $5 million.

Paul Ryan’s Shrewd Budget Payday, Daily Beast, June 2011 The website takes a closer look at mining, mineral, and energy holdings owned by Ryan — primarily in his wife’s home state of Oklahoma — and how they would be positively affected by Ryan’s proposed tax policies. A Ryan spokesman told the Daily Beast: “These are properties that Congressman Ryan married into. It’s not something he has a lot of control over.” The piece also reports that relatives of Ryan have received federal farming subsidies.

Paul Ryan has got plenty of friends on K Street, Politico, August 2012 A brief look at the friends Ryan his wife Janna have made on K Street in their years in Washington, among them former Ohio congressman Mike Oxley (of Sarbanes-Oxley fame), who is now a lobbyist for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Janna Ryan, a tax attorney, herself worked as a lobbyist for PriceWaterhouseCooper, the article reports.

Ryan’s Unlikely Alliance with Organized Labor  Mother Jones, May 2011 Ryan’s family construction business relies on union labor. “I grew up in organized labor,” Ryan told the Milwaukee Magazine in 2005. “I have a lot of constituents who are in organized labor. I really do not have this ‘us against them’ mentality.” As a congressman, Paul has worked closely with local union leaders and fought to protect the wages of construction workers. While many of his policy plans are directly opposed to what unions want, some unions have continued to support him. Over the course of his career, the Carpenters & Joiners Union has given him $57,500—only slightly less than he has received from Koch Industries, according to The Center for Responsive Politics.

Correction: This post originally said that the Mother Jones article was published in November 2012. It was actually published in May 2011.

"Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar" By Cheryl Strayed. Vintage, $14.95

When writing is your passion, all else takes the shape of words, of the pattern of fingers on a keyboard. Like a pianist composing music, coaxing the right composition from the tapping of keys is a lifelong work. In a glut of storytellers with marginal writing skills, Cheryl Strayed stands out as a composer.

There’s no doubt she is, above all, a writer. And it’s suprising, the places that good writing can pop up. Her newest book, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar is a collection of advice columns Strayed wrote anonymously as “Dear Sugar” on www.therumpus.net, during 2010-2011.  An aggregate of online columns? Telling people what to do about their longings, grief, private desires and public humiliations? Booo-ring, right? Wrong.

Sometimes, a book is greater than the sum of its parts. In the hands of any successful, consistent advice columnnist, a book like this would be repetitive. Boring. Mundane. Strayed brings something else to the party. Her deep compassion for the human condition, her insistence on integrity, her willingness to share her own raw aches and naked hurts, in the hands of a writer, elevate this book into something special.

Strayed is no Dear Abby. She’s a wordy lady,  answering heartbreaking, raunchy and funny questions. I can picture her setting down a finished response,  blowing the smoke off her pen and saying, “Take that, zen bitches.” No koans, here. But who, in the midst of deep uncertainty, wants someone to smile enigmatically and say “Is that so?”

If I was wondering about my post-college future, I’d rather hear something like this:

“Just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits. Trust that all you learned during your college years was worth learning, no matter what answer you have or do not have about what use it is….When I say you don’t have to explain what you’re going to do with your life, I’m not suggesting you lounge around whining about how difficult it is. I’m suggesting you apply yourself in directions for which we have no accurate measurement. I’m talking about work. And love.”

And if my high school friend was involved in a dysfunctional dramatic love triangle, and the Dalai Lama himself said “Is that so?,” it wouldn’t be half as useful as this gem:

“I’ve been witness to those I care about cheating and being cheated on, lying and being lied to, emotionally abusing and being emotionally abused by their lovers….I’ve listened to long and tedious tales of spectacularly disastrous romantic woe that I predicted from the start because that same friend chose the same wrong person yet a-fucking-gain. But the sad news is that this is the way of the world, darling, and there isn’t a ding dang damn thing you can do about it……Do you know what boundaries are? The best, sanest people on the planet do, and since i have no doubt that you will become one of those sorts of people, you might as well learn about them sooner rather than later….”

As Strayed wrote in a column about unveiling her identity as Dear Sugar, which she did in 2011, she has a definite worldview that informs her advice:

Way up high on the list of the values and truths I most deeply hope to convey in this column is the fact that something is always at stake. Our integrity. Our internal sense of peace. Our relationships. Our communities. Our children. Our ability to bear the weight of the people we hope to be and forgive the people we are. Our obligation to justice, mercy, kindness, and doing the stuff in bed (or beneath the bathroom sink) that genuinely gets us off.

Strayed is in Chuck Palahniuk’s writing group. Her intense style reminds me of his, but she’s got this other thing. She seems fully integrated. Her bullshit and travails aren’t hidden in boxes labelled “The Past,” and “Present Day Stuff I Hope to God No One Finds Out About.” It’s all there in her columns: her grief, her troubles, her pain, and she walks that hazard line where she’s telling the world, and the questioner, about her pain & it comes across as empathy, not narcissism. She’s not just offering advice. She’s willing to tell the world how she came by her hard-earned wisdom.

Cheryl Strayed is having a good year. Reese Witherspoon  & Oprah have coopted her bestselling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which has won her national attention.

It, too, is a very good read. At the dinner table every night, at coffee with my friends, I couldn’t stop talking about this amazing book, a memoir of a young woman’s audacious solo hike along part of the Mexico-to-Canada wilderness trail.

I expected Jon Krakauer with boobs, all competence and technical gear and action. Instead, I got blindsided by Strayed’s unique and humble wisdom. She was 26 years old at the time of her hike, and not a hiker. In fact, she was a bit of a mess, divorced, dealing with the death of her mom and the splintering of her family. Lucky for us, she’s also a writer of the highest caliber, with a deep understanding of human nature in all its weird & painful & joyous manifestations. And she’s funny.

Oprah loves her, and I’d imagine hipsters would hate her. Strayed is a stylist, but her style and her cascade of words are a torrent of a sort of sweet philosophy about life. She swears a lot, she doesn’t blink a literary eye at adultery and abuse & pain, but she comes across as gentle and thoughtful, underneath the cool-cat stuff.

Strayed is also the author of Torch, a novel. Her website is here. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and children.

“I’ve just lately started an internet site, the information you offer on this web site has helped me tremendously. Thanks for your time & perform. ???The murals throughout restaurants are saved to par with the food throughout museums.??脿 through Peter De Vries.”

I’ve received a few that chided me for my poor spelling & offered to help (on posts with no spelling errors), and others that complimented my magnificence (also an inaccurate observation). And then there are the emails that want me to get an IRS refund, resubmit a job application, enlarge someone’s penis & create a bank account for foreign diplomats: bullshit, sure. Traps, cons… and yet, they read like trippy postmodern poetry, shabbily crafted.

photo author: istara