Undernews For December 20, 2009

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WORD

iSteve Blog - The current President of the United States, like the previous President, is a lightweight who got elected only because of who his daddy was.

MEDICARE A COVERT TARGET IN HEALTH BILL

Sam Smith - Less than 24 hours ago, your editor reluctantly expressed the view that bad as the healthcare bill was, it would help enough people to justify its passage. I had forgotten something I had written earlier: "There are few things worse for politicians than for it to be discovered that they voted for some bad policy they didn't even know they were approving. In 2010 and 2012, the healthcare bill could easily be as risky as a highway around Baghdad."

I have just hit one of those landmines. A reader sent along a Kaus Files report on an undebated provision of the measure that is dangerous and dishonest enough to cause me to think now that the whole measure should be put on hold. Buried in the legislation is a way that the establishment, as it has long wanted, can do severe damage to Medicare with Congress having little power to resist. If Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership are willing to be so corrupt and covert about this part of healthcare, what do they have in mind for the rest?

Basically, Obama will have achieved some of what Clinton did with social welfare, although at least Clinton was more open about it. In both cases the victim is a major legacy of the Democratic Party from a time when it still had a soul.

Further, this is just the beginning; the same crowd has its eye on Social Security.

This provision is despicable as are those who slipped it in and it should either be removed or the measure killed.

Kaus Files - David Leonhardt, complaining that the House health care bill doesn't do enough to control costs, touts a particular model for imposing parsimonious changes on the nation's health care delivery system:

"Twice a year, an outside advisory board sends Congress a list of suggestions for Medicare payment rates, based on the available evidence. Congress generally ignores them, in deference to the various industry groups that oppose any cuts to their payments.

"We already have a wonderful model for how to avoid such interference. It’s called the Federal Reserve. The Fed is charged with setting interest rates based on economic conditions, not politics. The Senate bill would create such a commission for Medicare."

But does the Senate bill really have a cost-cutting commission that's like the Fed? The Fed is a highly independent agency whose actions take effect without approval from Congress. Maybe Congress could overturn a Fed action, but it would require a new piece of legislation, passed by both houses and signed by the president. In contrast, the current cost-cutting "MedPAC" panel submits proposals that then have to be passed as new laws by Congress or else they don't take effect (which, as Leonhardt notes, is usually what happens).

The logical middle ground would be to have an independent panel whose recommendations take effect unless they are somehow vetoed by Congress without presidential involvement, or whose recommendations must be affirmatively passed by Congress but get the benefit of a streamlined, limited-amendment up-or-down fast-track "base closing" type of legislative process.

I assumed that the second of these obvious middle ground alternatives--rather than a "Fed" approach--had been taken when I read this description of the Reid Senate bill on Ezra Klein's blog:

"The idea isn't simply that a panel of experts gets to dream up interesting reforms to try out in Medicare. It's that they are charged with making sure that Medicare hits certain growth targets, and their package of reforms has to achieve that goal. Those reforms are then sent to Congress, where Senate debate is limited to 30 hours, and amendments must be both budget neutral and 'germane.' This report, in other words, is exempt from the filibuster. So far as anything is ever easy to pass, this is easy to pass."

Then I read the bill. As far as I can see, it's actually a whole lot closer to Leonhardt's Fed model than I'd thought. In general, there is an independent panel (IMAB), and if Congress does nothing, its cost-cutting rules take effect. What's more, the "fast track" process described by Klein would not allow Congress to simply stop the board's rules, only to substitute its own plan to save the same amount of money. This would be a very powerful unelected board. . . .

What it seems to say, specifically, is:

--The new 15 member "IMAB" board makes cost-cutting recommendations if Medicare spending exceeds specific targets.

--Congress then 'considers' these changes in bill form. But like other legislation, the president can veto this bill (and his veto can be overridden).

--The "fast tracking" provisions Klein discusses apply to this bill. But they also sharply restrict what the 'fast track' bill can do. Congress can't, under the fast track, just block the IMAB board's decrees. It can change them, but if it changes them it has to meet the cost-reduction targets in some other way. It's not allowed to not save money, apparently (though the Senate is allowed to do some unspecified things by 2/3 vote that I don't quite understand). In other words, the 'fast track' isn't designed to enable Congress to swiftly pass the new IMAB board's rules. The IMAB board doesn't need Congress' OK. The fast track is designed to allow Congress to tinker with the IMAB board's rules as long as it reaches the same result. In this sense, the Reid fast track isn't like base closing, where Congress votes a package of cuts up or down in a special procedure. Voting down is not an option here.

--Key point: If Congress doesn't pass the fast-tracked 'tinkering' bill, the Secretary of HHS must implement the IMAB panel's recommendations.

--And Congress loses even its fast-track tinkering power after 2020, unless, by a 60% supermajority, during a specific window in the first half of 2017, while standing on one leg and humming Battle Hymn of the Republic, it passes a joint resolution discontinuing the whole process. Correction: The part about standing on one leg and humming doesn't seem to be in the final bill.

Labels: HEALTH INSURANCE

12/18/2009 | Comments

OBAMA'S FORECLOSURE MODIFICATION PROGRAM A BIG BUST

Kevin G, Hall - McClatchy Newspapers - Ten months after the Obama administration began pressing lenders to do more to prevent foreclosures, many struggling homeowners are holding up their end of the bargain but still find themselves rejected, and some are even having their homes sold out from under them without notice.

These borrowers, rich and poor, completed trial modifications of their distressed mortgage, and made all the payments, only to learn, often indirectly, that they won't get help after all.

How many is hard to tell. Lenders participating in the administration's Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, still don't provide the government with information about who's rejected and why.

To date, more than 759,000 trial loan modifications have been started, but just 31,382 have been converted to permanent new loans. That's averages out to 4 percent, far below the 75 percent conversion rate President Barack Obama has said he seeks.

In the fine print of the form homeowners fill out to apply for Obama's program, which lowers monthly payments for three months while the lender decides whether to provide permanent relief, borrowers must waive important notification rights.

This clause allows banks to reject borrowers without any written notification and move straight to auctioning off their homes without any warning.

Labels: HOUSING

12/20/2009 | Comments

RECOVERED HISTORY: WHITE'S FERRY & FORT STEVENS

Sam Smith - One of my long held unfulfilled ambitions was to become the captain of White's Ferry, which since 1828 has crossed the Potomac River near Leeburg, VA and Poolesville, MD. I was particularly attracted to the overstuffed armchair that sometimes served as the operations center for the barge, which was propelled by a small boat alongside and was one of America's few cable guided ferries. It seemed a great opportunity for reimbursed tranquility.

Unfortunately for my career plans, business proved too good for White's and today the barge is not only much larger, it actually has a place for the crew to avoid the rain and cold.

My excuse for bringing this up is a story the other day reporting that "Authorities say nearly 30 passengers were stranded on White's Ferry in the Potomac River for about three hours when the boat was snagged by a tree floating downstream.. . . Montgomery County fire department spokesman Asst. Chief Scott Graham says a large branch caught the boat about 15 yards from the Maryland side of the river. He says the ferry frequently encounters debris but rarely gets stuck for so long."

Wikipedia reports that "During the 1930's, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes took the ferry to Loudoun on a jaunt from Washington. He was to return that evening and casually asked, 'What would you do if I didn't have a dollar?'

"'If you don't have a dollar, mister, the owner replied, "you don't belong in Maryland.'"

In 2006 "the United States Coast Guard ordered White's Ferry to be shut down because the operator was unlicensed. The ferry continued to operate in spite of the order. The next day the Coast Guard allowed the ferry to resume operations after the owners assured the Coast Guard that there would be licensed individuals on the vessel. For operating without a licensed operator the ferry was fined $8000.

The name of the barge is the Gen. Jubal A, Early, who was indirectly responsible for what is probably the only battle in human history won in part thanks to government bureaucrats.

The July 11, 1864 Battle of Ft. Stevens, was the only time the Confederates directly threatened Washington. In the summer of 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early pushed his way towards Maryland with 20,000 men. General Wallace, a Union recruit trainer in Baltimore, found himself faced with an invasion but was uncertain whether the target was Washington or Baltimore. Wallace chose Frederick, MD, to make his stand, with the help of troops sent by train from Baltimore. With only 6,000 troops to defend six miles of river, he found himself overwhelmed. On the afternoon of July 9, the Union force left some 1,800 casualties and retreated to Baltimore. The confederates lost 1,300 men.

Though his own force was battered, Early knew the immense coup that capturing Washington would be. Further he probably knew that Washington had only about 9,000 regular troops to guard the whole city, Grant having removed some 14,000 soldiers to help him battle Lee around Richmond and Petersburg. Early sent out sorties on July 11 toward Ft. Stevens, located at the north end of Washington. They found a battlement protected only by home guards, government clerks, and recovering soldiers literally rousted from their hospital beds to help defend the city. a ragtag force of 2,300. This unlikely force initially held off the invaders.

By light of the next day, however, Early found the fort manned by regular troops, reinforcements who had arrived from Virginia and who repulsed Early's sorties. By the end of the day, Early was in full retreat. There had been 874 casualties. Among the spectators for the two days were Abraham Lincoln and his wife. One Ohio soldier would remember, "Lincoln got to the fort ahead of us. He was quiet and grave. He mounted the parapet so he could see better, and I saw him there in full view of the Johnnies, watching them and what went on inside. You can imagine what a target he made with tall form and stovepipe hat."

Lincoln became the only president ever to have come under direct fire and, according to legend, was told by a young soldier named Oliver Wendell Holmes to "get down, you damn fool." Another story has a colonel telling Lincoln, "Please come down to a safe place. If you do not, it will be my duty to call a file of men and make you." Lincoln replied, "And you would be quite right, my boy. You are in command of this fort. I should be the last man to set an example of disobedience." The Union force held and Early gave up his invasion of Maryland and DC and returned to the upper Potomac at a crossing known as White's Ford, which would later become the home-port of White's Ferry. Early admitted to his staff that "We didn't take Washington, but we scared Abe Lincoln like Hell."

12/20/2009 | Comments

HOW THE FISCAL CRISIS CAME ABOUT

Paul Krugman, NY Times - Let’s recall how we got into our current mess. America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers what they wanted.

The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan - and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings & loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.

But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape. . . .

And the bankers - liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation - responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.

Labels: ECONOMICS

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER ATTACKS ANOTHER COUNTRY

Jason Ditz, Anti-War - Just one day after a very public denial that American forces were in the process of attacking sites in Northern Yemen, President Barack Obama ordered multiple cruise missile attacks on sites across the tiny, coastal nation.

The air strikes were coordinated with the government of President Ali Abdallah Saleh and the attacks left 120 killed, many of them civilians according to witnesses. President Obama called Saleh after the attack to "congratulate" him on the killings.

The Yemeni government denied any US role in the attacks, despite American officials’ admissions. This is largely in keeping with the Saleh government’s policy, as they angrily denied reports of Saudi attacks in the north as a myth even as the Saudi government was giving a press conference detailing the attack.

One Yemeni official however claimed that a local al-Qaeda "deputy" named Mohammed Saleh Mohammed Ali Al-Kazemi was slain, and that "scores" of al-Qaeda members were killed in the assorted attacks.

The conflict with al-Qaeda is just one of many conflicts currently going on in Yemen, including an enduring separatist movement in the south and an increasingly violent insurrection in the Shi'ite north. Technically Wednesday’s State Department denials appear to have been accurate, as the missile strikes were in a completely unrelated conflict from the one they were accused of taking part in.

Labels: MID EAST, MILITARY

12/19/2009 | Comments

18 PERCENT OF YOUNG AMERICANS ARE LATINOS

Gosanangelo - Two-thirds of young Latinos are now U.S.-born, a shift from 14 years ago when nearly half were immigrants and a portent of an increasingly Latino U.S. society, a new study finds.

"If you want to understand what America will be like in the 21st century, you need to understand how young Latinos . . . will grow up," said Paul Taylor, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan research organization that released the report Monday.

Latinos now comprise 18 percent of all U.S. youths, which Pew defines as people aged 16 to 25.

No U.S. minority ethnic group has ever made up such a large share of the nation's young people, Taylor said. It reflects the influx of nearly 40 million immigrants between 1965 and 2008, half of them Latin American.

More than 15 percent of U.S. residents are now Latino, according to 2008 U.S. Census estimates.

Even though the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" are often used by the news media, politicians and Latino-advocacy organizations to lump together the tens of millions of people with Latin American ancestry, 52 percent of young Latinos use national-origin words like "Mexican" or "Salvadoran" as the first term to identify themselves, compared with 20 percent who use "Hispanic" or "Latino," and 24 percent who use "American."

Jennifer Najera, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside and an expert on Mexican-American culture, said most young Latinos' preference to use terms other than "American" to initially identify themselves reflects society's views of them. Popular culture often portrays Latinos as immigrants, even though most are not. Non-Hispanics often pigeonhole Latinos by their ethnicity and physical appearance in a way they do not for European immigrants and their descendants, she said.
. . By the second generation, 98 percent of young Latinos speak primarily English or use both English and Spanish. But 70 percent of all young Latinos say they sometimes speak "Spanglish," a mix of English and Spanish.

12/19/2009 | Comments

COPENHAGEN ENDS IN FAILURE

Guardian, UK - The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement last night in Copenhagen, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord "recognises" the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but did not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

American officials spun the deal as a "meaningful agreement", but even Obama said: "This progress is not enough."

"We have come a long way, but we have much further to go," he added.

The deal was brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, but late last night it was still unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session.

The agreement aims to provide $30bn in funding for poor countries to adapt to climate change from next year to 2012, and $100bn a year after 2020.

But it disappointed African and other vulnerable countries who had been holding out for far deeper emission cuts to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5C this century. As widely expected, all references to 1.5C in previous drafts were removed at the last minute, but more surprisingly, the earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% was also dropped.

The agreement also set up a forestry deal which is hoped would significantly reduce deforestation in return for cash. It lacked the kind of independent verification of emission reductions by developing countries that the US and others demanded...

Lumumba Di-Aping, chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries, was scathing: "This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states. It has the lowest level of ambition you can imagine. It's nothing short of climate change skepticism in action.

"It locks countries into a cycle of poverty for ever. Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush."

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. Ed Miliband [UK climate change secretary] is among the very few that come out of this summit with any credit. It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen."

Lydia Baker, Save the Children's policy adviser said: "By signing a sub-standard deal, world leaders have effectively signed a death warrant for many of the world's poorest children. Up to 250,000 children from poor communities could die before the next major meeting in Mexico at the end of next year."

12/19/2009 | Comments

CIA HELPING TORTURE PALESTINIANS

Guardian, UK - Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organization Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.

Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups.

The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved – Preventive Security Organisation and General Intelligence Service – is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians' work.

One senior western official said: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of the war on terror".

While the CIA and the Palestinian Authority deny the US agency controls its Palestinian counterparts, neither denies that they interact closely in the West Bank. Details of that co-operation are emerging as some human rights organisations are beginning to question whether US intelligence agencies may be turning a blind eye to abusive interrogations conducted by other countries' intelligence agencies with whom they are working. According to the Palestinian watchdog al-Haq, human rights in the West Bank and Gaza have "gravely deteriorated due to the spreading violations committed by Palestinian actors" this year.

Most of those held without trial and allegedly tortured in the West Bank have been supporters of Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in 2006 but is denounced as a terrorist organisation by the PA – which in turn is dominated by the rival Fatah political faction – and by the US and EU. In the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has been in control for more than two years, there have been reports of its forces detaining and torturing Fatah sympathisers in the same way.

Labels: TORTURE

12/18/2009 | Comments

HUMANITIES JOB OUTLOOK EVEN BLEAKER

NY Times -With colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature is bleaker than ever before.

According to the Modern Language Association’s forecast of job listings, faculty positions will decline 37 percent, the biggest drop since the group began tracking its job listings 35 years ago.

The projection, based on a comparison between the number of jobs listed in October 2008 and October 2009, follows a 26 percent drop the previous year.

"Students thinking of going to graduate school in English should understand that right now their chance of landing a job that provides them a livable wage is 50-60 percent," said Rosemary Feal, executive director of the M.L.A., the world’s largest association of scholars and professors of language and literature. "What I often hear from grad students is, ‘I had no clue it was this bad.’ They need to go into it with their eyes wide open."

While the association does not having listings for every academic position available, its list does track the overall faculty job market.

The association expects about 900 English language and literature positions to be filled over the next year, a 35 percent decline from the previous year; it projects about 750 foreign-language jobs, a 39 percent drop from the year before. Typically, 1,000 to 2,000 positions have been advertised each year in each category.

To make matters worse, the share of tenure-track jobs available has been shrinking. Tenure-track positions for assistant professors made up 53 percent of the English jobs advertised and 48.5 percent of those in foreign languages. From 1997 until recently, the group said, 55 percent to 65 percent of the advertised positions were tenure-track jobs. And since part-time adjunct positions are less likely than those for tenure-track jobs to be listed with the language association, the overall share of faculty members being hired for tenure-track jobs is probably smaller than the survey indicates.

Ms. Feal said the trend toward hiring adjunct faculty members rather than permanent tenure-track professors had been going for about three decades, but was more pronounced than ever, as a growing number of struggling colleges and universities hired by the course or by the semester — usually paying little, and providing no benefits.

Labels: COLLEGE

12/18/2009 | Comments

WHY CAN'T CONGRESS BE THIS MUCH FUN?

NEW ZEALAND PARLIAMENT

Labels: POLITICS

12/18/2009 | Comments

SWINE FLU CONT'D

Scientific Blogging - At this point, the CDC says there has been no seasonal flu - almost all flu cases have been H1N1.

CDC estimates that between 34 million and 67 million cases of 2009 H1N1 occurred between April and November 14. The mid-level in this range is about 47 million people infected with 2009 H1N1.

CDC estimates that between about 154,000 and 303,000 2009 H1N1-related hospitalizations occurred between April and November 14. The mid-level in this range is about 213,000 H1N1-related hospitalizations.

CDC estimates that between about 7,070 and 13,930 2009 H1N1-related deaths occurred between April and November 14, 2009. The mid-level in this range is about 9,820 2009 H1N1-related deaths. This is a death rate of about 2 per thousand.

The CDC offers some comparisons with seasonal flu:

- Seasonal flu causes an average of 200,000 hospitalizations per year, with 60% of those occurring in those 65 and older. With H1N1, only about 10% of the hospitalizations have been for patients over 65.

- Seasonal flu causes about 36,000 deaths per year on average, with 90% of those occurring in people over 65.

The upside of H1N1 primarily affecting those under 65 is that there are fewer deaths compared with seasonal flu: taking the H1N1 mid-level estimates, there have been 10,000 deaths for 213,000 hospitalizations, compared with an average of 36,000 deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations for seasonal flu.

Labels: FLU

12/16/2009 | Comments

DC PAYS OUT $8 MILLION FOR ABUSE OF PROTESTERS

D.C. AG Peter Nickles has reached a settlement in one of the two remaining Pershing Park cases. The deal, which came together last night, includes a District payout of approximately $8.25 million to the roughly 400 plaintiffs in the Barham class action lawsuit.

The deal mirrors the recent settlement in the historic Becker case in which demonstrators had alleged false arrest and mistreatment by D.C. Police. Like the Becker case, the plaintiffs in this Pershing Park case would receive about $18,000 each.

The plaintiffs in the Pershing Park case had alleged that on Sept. 27, 2002, they were rounded up in the park, falsely arrested as well as improperly and needless detained. You can read their original compliant [PDF].

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-founder and attorney with the Partnership for Civil Justice, who represented the plaintiffs in the case, believes the settlement is a clear statement against police misconduct. She tells City Desk: "This settlement sends an unmistakable message to law enforcement agencies throughout the country: think twice before shredding and subverting core constitutional rights."

The settlement includes much more than the $8.25 million District payout. It addresses the problems that have dogged this case long after the Sept. 27 mass arrests: the missing and or/destroyed evidence and the OAG and MPD General Counsel's embarrassing delays in handing over thousands of pages of relevant documents.

We will have more on this very soon.

The settlement stipulates that D.C. Police Department and the Office of the Attorney General must take steps to insure that similar discovery abuses do not happen in the future. The District has agreed to several such steps:

*The D.C. Police Department and the Office of the Attorney General centrally log and index all materials connected in future mass demonstration cases.

*The District must fund a document management computer system that would log evidence.

*The District must safeguard and index and maintain D.C. Police Department command center documents and other essential materials such as the running resume, radio dispatches, and video evidence.

*Every six months for three years, the District must issue reports on its progress in these areas to Partnership for Civil Justice attorneys.

*The District must expunge the records for the more 1,000 people arrested in the Pershing Park and Becker cases.

There still remains one Pershing Park case---the Chang case---on the federal docket. Nickles had promised to settle that case as well.

Still one issue question remains unanswered: What happened to the missing running resume, the minute-by-minute accounting by police of their actions on Sept. 27, and the gaps in the radio dispatches turned over to plaintiffs?

For the last few years, the substance of the plaintiffs' complaint was never much in dispute. OAG lawyers and the plaintiffs attorneys filed motion after motion arguing over the missing evidence. In July, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan compared the District's lawyers in the Pershing Park cases to the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case. Sullivan essentially shamed Nickles for the OAG's conduct.

Early this month, Ret. Judge Stanley Sporkin issued his report on the missing evidence. Sporkin suggested that the running resume may have been destroyed on purpose. He called for an outside expert to review the radio tapes.

Plaintiffs attorneys in Barham first exposed the missing evidence and went a long way towards documenting the OAG's bungling and the missteps in the MPD's general counsel office. They found and deposed critical witnesses and thoroughly embarrassed city attorneys. Their own evidence gathering went well beyond the D.C. Council's investigation and the Pershing Park related lawsuits. It is unclear what more they could have dug up. There are limits to civil litigation.

Councilmember Mary Cheh and Police Union Chief Kristopher Baumann have called for federal law enforcement to open up an investigation.

"I think it's going to be very important that the department and the attorney general's office and the general counsel's office not be allowed to buy their way out of whatever inappropriate non-ethical actions they've taken," Baumann tells City Desk today. "I still think that it's critical that the Department of Justice conduct a criminal investigation. I don't see how we can repair our reputation with the public or the courts without such an investigation. Clearly there are attorneys and high ranking officials that have violated the law---that should lose their jobs, lose their law licenses and possibly go to jail."

The plaintiffs lawyers in the Chang case have a filed motion asking for such federal involvement.

It is now up to Judge Sullivan to make the next move. The next hearing in the Chang case is this Thursday.

Read our interview with two plaintiffs about the settlement.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery. You might also like:

Labels: ACTIVISM, CIVIL LIBERTIES, POLICE

12/15/2009 | Comments

INTERNET SIGHTINGS

12/15/2009 | Comments

MORE SECULAR COUNTRIES PROSPER BETTER

Alternet - In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least.

Using existing data, Paul combined 25 indicators of societal and economic stability - things like crime, suicide, drug use, incarceration, unemployment, income, abortion and public corruption - to score each country using what he calls the "successful societies scale." He also scored countries on their degree of religiosity, as determined by such measures as church attendance, belief in a creator deity and acceptance of Bible literalism.

Comparing the two scores, he found, with little exception, that the least religious countries enjoyed the most prosperity. Of particular note, the U.S. holds the distinction of most religious and least prosperous among the 17 countries included in the study, ranking last in 14 of the 25 socioeconomic measures.

Paul is quick to point out that his study reveals correlation, not causation. Which came first - prosperity or secularity - is unclear, but Paul ventures a guess. While it's possible that good governance and socioeconomic health are byproducts of a secular society, more likely, he speculates, people are inclined to drop their attachment to religion once they feel distanced from the insecurities and burdens of life.

Labels: RELIGION

12/15/2009 | Comments

MAINE GOVERNOR MAY HAVE FOUND A WAY TO DECENTRALIZE EDUCATION WITHOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS

One of the curious things about the charter school movement - and one that hints of its anti-union subtext - has been the small number of public schools that have been turned into charters within the system. If the system works so well for private corporations that run charters, why not for public schools as well? Maine, which has resisted charter schools may be moving towards this under-used option as this story recounts

Kennebec Journal, ME - The Baldacci administration is drafting legislation to allow schools in Maine that have more autonomy over their budget, curriculum, staffing and scheduling than traditional public schools.

The move to allow so-called innovative schools would stop short of legalizing charter schools, while potentially boosting Maine's standing in a national competition for $4 billion in education innovation money.

Gov. John Baldacci will introduce a bill this winter that provides a way for school boards to open or transform existing schools into innovative schools, according to state education officials.

Administrators in these schools would have increased flexibility to hire the teachers they want and have others reassigned to different district schools. The administrators would also have increased control over budgets, more freedom to design curriculum and flexibility to stray from the traditional, six-hour school day and 175-day academic year.

In exchange, those schools would have to demonstrate to the school boards that authorize them that they are raising student achievement. . .

The innovative-schools push follows a 2009 legislative session in which senators defeated a bill that would have legalized charter schools in Maine -- one of 11 states that don't allow them. In November, Baldacci decided against introducing another charter-school bill. . .

The innovative schools allowed in Baldacci's legislation would differ from charter schools by keeping a union work force and retaining a state requirement that all teachers be certified. In addition, school boards would be the only bodies allowed to authorize innovative schools. . .

The Maine Education Association, the teachers union that staunchly opposed charter-school legislation, is more likely to support an innovative-schools bill, said Mark Gray, the association's executive director.

"There are a number of innovative programs that currently reside within Maine schools," he said. "Those are all evidence of the fact that this kind of innovation can take place within existing schools, with some collaboration with the existing parties."

Labels: EDUCATION

12/15/2009 | Comments

FORMER POLICE CHIEF ON WHY ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGALIZED

Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper - These days, it seems like everyone is talking in earnest about marijuana legalization, once dismissed as little more than a Cheech and Chong pipe dream. Indeed, a new poll reveals that 53 percent of Americans now support ending marijuana prohibition...

These are welcome developments to a retired police chief like me who oversaw the arrests of countless people for marijuana and other drugs, but saw no positive impact from all the blood, sweat and tears (and money) put into the effort. Soon, it seems, cops may no longer have to waste time and risk lives enforcing pot laws that don't actually prevent anyone from using marijuana.

Yet, I'm alarmed that the above-mentioned poll showing majority support for marijuana legalization also found that fewer than one in 10 people agree that it's time to end the prohibition of other drugs.

This no doubt makes sense to some readers at first glance, since more people are familiar with marijuana than other drugs like cocaine, heroin or meth. However, even a cursory study of our drug war policies will reveal that legalizing pot but not other drugs will leave huge social harms unresolved.

Legalizing marijuana only will not:

- Stop gangs from selling other drugs to our kids (since illegal drug dealers rarely check for ID);

- Stop drug dealers from brutally murdering rival traffickers for the purpose of controlling the remaining criminal market for other drugs;

- Stop drug dealers from firing on cops charged with fighting the senseless war on other illicit drugs;

- Stop drug dealers from killing kids caught in crossfire and drive-by shootings;

- Stop overdose deaths of drug users who refrain from calling 911 out of fear of legal repercussions;

- Reduce the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis, since marijuana users don’t inject their drug like heroin users (who sometimes share dirty needles and syringes because prohibition makes it hard to secure clean ones);

- Stop the bloody cartel battles in Mexico that are rapidly expanding over the border into the U.S;

- Stop the Taliban from raking in massive profits from illegal opium cultivation in Afghanistan.

Of course, none of this means that our rapidly growing marijuana legalization movement should slow down.

On the contrary, as the polls show, a majority of Americans understand that legalizing marijuana will produce many benefits. No longer will 800,000 people a year be arrested on pot charges, their lives damaged if not ruined; governments will be able to tax the popular commodity; regulation and revenues will help forge and finance effective programs of drug abuse prevention and treatment; and those vicious cartels will lose as much as half their illicit profits when they can no longer sell marijuana.

Further, once people get used to the idea of allowing legal sales of the previously banned drug we'll be able to point to successful regulation as a model for similar treatment of all other currently illicit substances.

Labels: DRUGS

12/16/2009 | Comments

BREVITAS

SHOP TALK

Thanks to Scott Langill, Chris Harris and John Gear for all the great links they feed us.

MIDEAST

Guardian, UK - Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods. The government's move falls short of a legal requirement but is bound to increase the prospects of a consumer boycott of products from those territories. Israeli officials and settler leaders were tonight highly critical of the decision. Until now, food has been simply labelled "Produce of the West Bank", but the new, voluntary guidance issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, says labels could give more precise information, like "Israeli settlement produce" or "Palestinian produce". Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which were conquered in the 1967 war. The British government and the EU have repeatedly said Israel's settlement project is an "obstacle to peace" in the Middle East.

SUSTAIN YOURSELF

BIKING & CYCLING FORUM

POLITICS

NY Times - The federal government must continue to provide grant money to the national community organizing group Acorn, a federal court ruled Friday, saying that the House violated the Constitution when it passed a resolution barring the group from receiving federal dollars. A judge at the United States District Court in Brooklyn issued a preliminary injunction that nullifies the resolution and requires the government to honor existing contracts with the group and review its applications for new grants unless the Obama administration appeals the decision.

JUSTICE & FREEDOM

We were told that hate crimes would decrease if we passed laws that unconstitutionally made a criminal's thoughts as well as the crime an offense. It doesn't seems to have worked like that. Reports the NY Times: Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said the department brought more federal hate crime cases this year than in any other year since 2001. Those haters just don't read the legislation.

POPULATION

Kate Kelland, Reuters - 200 million women across the world want contraceptives, but cannot get them. Addressing this need would slow population growth and reduce demographic pressure on the environment.
In most countries with good access to birth control, average family sizes shrink dramatically within a generation. . . But policymakers in rich donor nations are wary of talking about contraception for fear of being accused of advocating draconian ideas like sterilization or one-child policies.

Pete Murphy - The biggest obstacle we face in changing attitudes toward overpopulation is economists. Since the field of economics was branded "the dismal science" after Malthus' theory, economists have been adamant that they would never again consider the subject of overpopulation and continue to insist that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacle to further growth. Even worse, economists insist that population growth is vital to economic growth. This is why world leaders continue to ignore population growth in the face of mounting challenges like peak oil, global warming and a whole host of other environmental and resource issues. Because they are blind to population growth, there's one obstacle they haven't considered: the finiteness of space available on earth. The very act of using space more efficiently creates a problem for which there is no solution: it inevitably begins to drive down per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment, leading to rising unemployment and poverty.

CULTURE

SOCIAL POEMS, POLITICIAL POEMS

STATES

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - Counting both initial and mid-year shortfalls, 48 states have addressed or still face such shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2010, totaling $193 billion or 28 percent of state budgets - the largest gaps on record. Fiscal year 2011 gaps total $97 billion or 16 percent of budgets for the 39 states that have estimated the size of these gaps. These totals are likely to grow as revenues continue to deteriorate, and may well exceed $180 billion.

AFGHANISTAN

Jeremy Scahill, Counterpunch - At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

12/20/2009 | Comments

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