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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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Help end the war by supporting the troops who have refused to fight it.
Please sign the appeal online
"DEAR CANADA: LET U.S. WAR RESISTERS STAY!"
"I am writing from the United States to ask you to make a provision for
sanctuary for the scores of U.S. military servicemembers currently in
Canada, most of whom have traveled to your country in order to resist
fighting in the Iraq War. Please let them stay in Canada..."
To sign the appeal or for more information:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/canada
Courage to Resist volunteers will send this letter on your behalf to three
key Canadian officials--Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley, and Stéphane Dion, Liberal
Party--via international first class mail.
In collaboration with War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada), this effort
comes at a critical juncture in the international campaign for asylum for
U.S. war resisters in Canada.
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OCT. 27 COALITION EVALUATION MEETING WILL TAKE PLACE:
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1 P.M. AT CENTRO DEL PUEBLO.
474 Valencia Street, SF (Near 16th Street)
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GET JROTC OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS—AGAIN!
Remember when SF made history a year ago when the Board of Education voted to phase out JROTC from our public schools? Well it seems like the military forces have succeeded in delaying, if not stopping, the phase out. Even previously anti-JROTC school board members are wavering.
In 2004, 63 percent of San Franciscans voted to withdraw all troops from Iraq. In 2005, 59 percent of San Franciscans voted to end military recruiting in our public schools. In 2006 the school board, the first in the country, voted to phase out JROTC. San Franciscans clearly do not support the military taking our children. We MUST muster enough support to hold the school board to its courageous vote last year.
Attend a meeting:
Monday, November 26
7:00 P.M.
474 Valencia Street
(Near 16th Street, San Francisco)
For more info, call: 415-824-8730
In solidarity,
Eric Blanc
Riva Enteen
Bob Forsberg
Vickie Leidner
Cristina Gutierrez
Tommi Avicoli Mecca
Millie Phillips
Carole Seligman
Bonnie Weinstein
Please sign this letter and pass it along to all those opposed to JROTC in our schools.
San Francisco schools expected to grant JROTC a year's reprieve
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/06/BAP3SJ72P.DTL&hw=board+of+education+jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
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Louisiana: Motion on ‘Jena Six’ Charges Is Dismissed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A judge rejected a motion to dismiss juvenile charges against a teenager at the center of a civil rights controversy. Lawyers for the teenager, Mychal Bell, left, one of six black teenagers accused of beating a white schoolmate, said that trying him again amounted to double jeopardy. “We contend that he can’t be tried for the same case twice, and he’s already been tried in adult court,” said one of the lawyers, Carol Powell Lexing. The judge, J. P. Mauffrey Jr. of District Court, rejected that motion. Ms. Lexing said they would appeal. Mr. Bell, 17, is the only one of the so-called Jena Six to stand trial. In June, he was convicted in adult court of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. The convictions were later overturned, and the case was sent to juvenile court. Mr. Bell was ordered to jail last month for a probation violation in an unrelated juvenile-court case.
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09brfs-JENA.html?ref=us
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Petition in defense of Morton students:
To: Morton West School District
In Defense of the Morton West Antiwar Students
We are writing in defense of the students who now face excessive disciplinary actions at the hands of various Morton West school administrators. Our sympathies lie with the courageous and moral struggle that the students have taken up, and with their parents who still support them. The struggle for a peaceful and just society absent of war should not be met with punishment, but should be supported by the community as a whole, especially from within the educational setting. Furthermore, It is our firm belief that an injury to freedom for students anywhere is an injury to freedom for students everywhere. This is why we urge all Morton West administrators to drop all disciplinary action against the said students, and to remove any indications of said events from their permanent records. We urge you to respect these students right to free expression now and in the future.
(Written by Columbia College Chicago Students for a Democratic Society)
Sincerely,
Sign your name at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mortonw/
See Articles:
Suspended Morton students demand return to class
BY KATE N. GROSSMAN Education Reporter
November 6, 2007
http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/637168,morton110607.article#
Students Call Protest Punishment Too Harsh
By CRYSTAL YEDNAK
“Who’s the next group to go off to war?” said Adam Szwarek, whose 16-year-old son, Adam, faces expulsion. “These kids. The kids do a peaceful sit-in and they’re threatened with expulsion, yet the military’s running around the school trying to recruit.”
November 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/us/07protest.html?ref=us
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MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Opposition violence at Venezuelan university - What really happened at the UCV
By Rodrigo Trompiz and Jorge Martin (with eyewitness information from Caracas)
Thursday, 08 November 2007
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/violence_venezuela_university.htm
2) House Approves Broad Protections for Gay Workers
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
November 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/washington/08employ.html?ref=us
3) Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans
By ERIK ECKHOLM
November 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/us/08vets.html
4) Health insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders
By Lisa Girion
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 9, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure9nov09,0,4409342.story?coll=la-home-center
5) Health Care Excuses
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1194629520-Lw9NztG4s9JDHYWEEt0Htw
6) The Real Life of Bees
By SUSAN BRACKNEY
Op-Ed Contributor
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/opinion/09brackney.html
7) Oil Spill Fouls Shores in San Francisco Area
By FELICITY BARRINGER
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09spill.html
8) Judge Deals Transit Union a Blow on Collecting Dues
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/nyregion/09dues.html?ref=nyregion
9) Fed Chief Warns of Worse Times in the Economy
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/09fed.html?ref=business
10) Stores See Shoppers in Retreat
By MICHAEL BARBARO
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/09shop.html?ref=business
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1) Opposition violence at Venezuelan university - What really happened at the UCV
By Rodrigo Trompiz and Jorge Martin (with eyewitness information from Caracas)
Thursday, 08 November 2007
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/violence_venezuela_university.htm
According to eyewitness reports from Hands Off Venezuela members, violence broke out yesterday in Caracas when opposition students arrived back from a peaceful demonstration against the proposed constitutional reforms. Apparently frustrated by the lack of violence, a group of about 250 of the opposition students (many from other universities) went straight to the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) to the School of Social Work which is a stronghold of revolutionary students inside UCV.
There, a group of revolutionary students was campaigning for a yes vote in the referendum. They had an assembly for students/teachers/non-teaching staff in the morning and were putting up posters and giving out leaflets.
They were then attacked by the opposition students who surrounded the School. Molotov cocktails and stones were thrown, the toilets were destroyed, the door of the Students Centre (Bolivarian dominated) was burned down, and around 150 people (students, teachers and non-teaching staff) were trapped inside the building for several hours, with the violent opposition students trying to force their way into the building to lynch them.
Some of the students inside the Faculty are nationally known Bolivarian student leaders (including Andreina Taranzon who spoke in the debate with opposition students at the National Assembly earlier this year at the time of the RCTV protests). They managed to call the state TV and reported live on what was happening.
The police are not allowed to enter University premises owing to a law on University autonomy. The Mayor of Caracas offered the possibility of the Metropolitan Police going in to contain violence and allow people in the School to come out, but the rector of the University, a member of the opposition, refused the offer. The University authorities are responsible for security on their own premises and did nothing to prevent violence from escalating.
Meanwhile, opposition TV stations were full of reports that masked Chavista supporters had fired on opposition students and that one person had been killed (this was then proven to be false, nine students were injured, most of them from inhaling fumes from the fires started by opposition students).
Finally, the head of emergency and fire-fighting services was allowed by the rector to go into the university and negotiate the safe exit of the people who were trapped inside the School of Social Work by a violent mob of opposition students.
The international media has been "reporting" about these clashes as if "armed Chavista gunmen" had fired on peaceful opposition students. A member of Hands Off Venezuela was present at the University when the violence broke out. He reports that the gunmen who originally opened fire stopped him on his way through the UCV to the Bolivarian University nearby. He reports that the two gunmen on the motorbike did not look like students, but were more likely thugs hired for the occasion and that they were shouting anti-Chavez slogans and boasting of having shot at Chavistas.
Even news agencies now are reporting that Bolivarian armed men arrived at the UCV after the opposition students had sieged 150 people inside the building of the School of Social Work to help those sieged gain safe passage out:
Later, armed men riding motorcycles arrived, scaring off students and standing at the doorway - one of them firing a handgun in the air - as people fled the building. (The Guardian )
What Hands Off Venezuela eyewitness report is that, faced with the inaction of the University authorities, hundreds of students, University workers and people from nearby neighbourhoods finally went into the University to help the people at the School of Social Work escape from the violent mob of opposition students. Some of them were carrying guns, which was only normal considering the extremely violent nature of the situation.
Bolivarian students, teachers and non-teaching staff have now held a joint meeting at the UCV and called for a demonstration against fascist aggressions to take place in the UCV on November 15.
Videos of the violent attack by opposition students can be seen here:
http://www.radiomundial.com.ve/yvke/noticia.php?988
http://www.radiomundial.com.ve /yvke/noticia.php?990
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2) House Approves Broad Protections for Gay Workers
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
November 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/washington/08employ.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — The House on Wednesday approved a bill granting broad protections against discrimination in the workplace for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, a measure that supporters praised as the most important civil rights legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 but that opponents said would result in unnecessary lawsuits.
The bill, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, is the latest version of legislation that Democrats have pursued since 1974. Representatives Edward I. Koch and Bella Abzug of New York then sought to protect gay men and lesbians with a measure they introduced on the fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the brawl between gay men and police officers at a bar in Greenwich Village that is widely viewed as the start of the American gay rights movement.
“On this proud day of the 110th Congress, we will chart a new direction for civil rights,” said Representative Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat and a gay rights advocate, in a speech before the vote. “On this proud day, the Congress will act to ensure that all Americans are granted equal rights in the work place.”
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and a longtime supporter of gay rights legislation, said he would move swiftly to introduce a similar measure in the Senate. Some Senate Republicans said that, if worded carefully, it would have a good chance of passing, perhaps early next year.
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, has said that she would be the lead co-sponsor of the Senate bill. Ms. Collins, in a statement, said that the House vote “provides important momentum” and that “there is growing support in the Senate for strengthening federal laws to protect American workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
President Bush threatened to veto an earlier version of the bill, but a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said the administration would need to review recent changes before making a final decision. Few Democrats expect Mr. Bush to change his mind.
The House bill would make it illegal for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation.”
While 19 states and Washington, D.C., have laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, and many cities offer similar protections, federal law offers no such shield, though it does bar discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, sex, age, disability and pregnancy.
In the House on Wednesday, 35 Republicans joined 200 Democrats voting for the bill, which was approved 235 to 184, perhaps reflecting polls showing that a plurality of Americans believe homosexuality should be accepted as an alternative lifestyle, though a majority still oppose same-sex marriage. Voting against the bill were 25 Democrats and 159 Republicans.
Among the Democrats opposed, many said the bill should have also outlawed discrimination based on gender identity.
And while the Democrats fell far short of the 280 votes that would be needed to override a presidential veto, many of them, including the majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, spoke about the vote in exuberant tones, calling it “historic” and “momentous.”
For more than 30 years, outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation has been a cause of liberal Democrats, who have fought many partisan battles with Republicans but have always come up short. In 1996, the Senate came within one vote of passing a bill; the House did not vote on the bill that year.
The twist this year is that the measure has emerged as an example of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pragmatism in trying to make headway on leading issues by granting concessions, even at the risk of angering her party’s base.
To ensure passage of the bill, Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats, including Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who is openly gay, removed language granting protections to transsexual and transgender individuals by barring discrimination based on sexual identity, a move that infuriated gay rights groups.
The Democrats also carved out a blanket exemption for religious groups, drawing the ire of civil liberties advocates who argued that church-run hospitals, for instance, should not be permitted to discriminate against gay employees. The civil liberties groups wanted a narrow exemption for religious employers.
On the House floor, Ms. Pelosi acknowledged challenges. “History teaches us that progress on civil rights is never easy,” she said. “It is often marked by small and difficult steps.”
Ms. Pelosi did maintain the support of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights group in the country, even though it was disappointed that gender identity protections were not included in the bill.
“Today’s vote in the House sends a powerful message about equality to the country, and it’s a significant step forward for our community,” said Joe Solmonese, the group’s president.
Others were not so upbeat. “What should have been one of the most triumphant days in our movement’s history is not,” said Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It’s one of very mixed reactions.”
But many longtime supporters of the legislation cheered its passage. “It’s wonderful,” said Mr. Koch, a former mayor of New York City. “Even though it is a vote that was delayed too long.”
Much of the debate Wednesday was taken up by Republicans complaining, somewhat oddly, that they could not hold a vote on a Democratic amendment to restore gender identity language.
Democrats suggested that these Republicans were not hoping to protect transsexuals from discrimination but to restore provisions to the bill that would have made it easier to rally opposition.
Representative Doc Hastings of Washington, who led the Republican effort to get a vote on the amendment, said he opposed the overall bill in part because many states already had similar laws and because he viewed it as intrusive. “I do not think it is the place of the federal government to legislate how each and every place of business operates,” Mr. Hastings said.
Other opponents said the law would result in spurious lawsuits.
“It would be impossible for employers to operate a business without having to worry about being accused of discriminating against someone based on their ‘perceived’ sexual orientation,” said Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, Republican of Florida, who raised two fingers on each hand to flash quotation marks over her head as she said “perceived.”
Mr. Kennedy, who is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a statement praising the House vote. He could introduce a measure identical to the House bill or a new version, which might restore language about gender identity.
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3) Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans
By ERIK ECKHOLM
November 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/us/08vets.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead.
Experts who work with veterans say it often takes several years after leaving military service for veterans’ accumulating problems to push them into the streets. But some aid workers say the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appear to be turning up sooner than the Vietnam veterans did.
“We’re beginning to see, across the country, the first trickle of this generation of warriors in homeless shelters,” said Phil Landis, chairman of Veterans Village of San Diego, a residence and counseling center. “But we anticipate that it’s going to be a tsunami.”
With more women serving in combat zones, the current wars are already resulting in a higher share of homeless women as well. They have an added risk factor: roughly 40 percent of the hundreds of homeless female veterans of recent wars have said they were sexually assaulted by American soldiers while in the military, officials said.
“Sexual abuse is a risk factor for homelessness,” Pete Dougherty, the V.A.’s director of homeless programs, said.
Special traits of the current wars may contribute to homelessness, including high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and traumatic brain injury, which can cause unstable behavior and substance abuse, and the long and repeated tours of duty, which can make the reintegration into families and work all the harder.
Frederick Johnson, 37, an Army reservist, slept in abandoned houses shortly after returning to Chester, Pa., from a year in Iraq, where he experienced daily mortar attacks and saw mangled bodies of soldiers and children. He started using crack cocaine and drinking, burning through $6,000 in savings.
“I cut myself off from my family and went from being a pleasant guy to wanting to rip your head off if you looked at me wrong,” Mr. Johnson said.
On the street for a year, he finally checked in at a V.A. clinic in Maryland and has struggled with PTSD, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse. The V.A. has provided temporary housing as he starts a new job.
Tracy Jones of the Compass Center, a Seattle agency that has seen a handful of new homeless each month, said she was surprised by “the quickness in which Iraqi Freedom veterans are becoming homeless” compared with the Vietnam era. The availability of meth and crack could lead addicts into rapid downhill spirals, Ms. Jones said.
Poverty and high housing costs also contribute. The National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington will release a report on Thursday saying that among one million veterans who served after the Sept. 11 attacks, 72,000 are paying more than half their incomes for rent, leaving them highly vulnerable.
Mr. Dougherty of the V.A. said outreach officers, who visit shelters, soup kitchens and parks, had located about 1,500 returnees from Iraq or Afghanistan who seemed at high risk, though many had jobs. More than 400 have entered agency-supported residential programs around the country. No one knows how many others have not made contact with aid agencies.
More than 11 percent of the newly homeless veterans are women, Mr. Dougherty said, compared with 4 percent enrolled in such programs over all.
Veterans have long accounted for a high share of the nation’s homeless. Although they make up 11 percent of the adult population, they make up 26 percent of the homeless on any given day, the National Alliance report calculated.
According to the V.A., some 196,000 veterans of all ages were homeless on any given night in 2006. That represents a decline from about 250,000 a decade back, Mr. Dougherty said, as housing and medical programs grew and older veterans died.
The most troubling face of homelessness has been the chronic cases, those who live in the streets or shelters for more than year. Some 44,000 to 64,000 veterans fit that category, according to the National Alliance study.
On Wednesday, the Bush administration announced what it described as “remarkable progress” for the chronic homeless. Alphonso R. Jackson, the secretary of housing and urban development, said a new policy of bringing the long-term homeless directly into housing, backed by supporting services, had put more than 20,000, or about 12 percent, into permanent or transitional homes.
Veterans have been among the beneficiaries, but Mary Cunningham, director of the research institute of the National Alliance and chief author of their report, said the share of supported housing marked for veterans was low.
A collaborative program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the V.A. has developed 1,780 such units. The National Alliance said the number needed to grow by 25,000.
Mr. Dougherty described the large and growing efforts the V.A. was making to prevent homelessness including offering two years of free medical care and identifying psychological and substance abuse problems early.
One obstacle is that many veterans wait too long to seek help. “I had that pride thing going on, ‘I’m a soldier, I should be better than this,’” Mr. Johnson said.
Kent Richardson, 49, who was in the Army from 1976 to 1992 and has flashbacks from the gulf war, said, “when you get out you feel disconnected and alone.”
Mr. Richardson said it took him two years to find a job after leaving the Army. Then he became an alcoholic. He now stays at the Southeast Veteran’s Service Center in Washington, awaiting permanent subsidized housing.
Joe Williams, 53, spent 16 years in the Army and the Navy, including a deeply upsetting assignment in the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the dead from the gulf war were taken for autopsies.
For the past three years Mr. Williams has lived in a bunk bed in a Washington shelter. He was laid off, his car and house were repossessed, and his wife left him. He moved to Georgia, where he lost another job.
Broke and depressed, he walked from Georgia to a V.A. hospital in the Washington area, where schizophrenia was diagnosed. Now, after three years of medication and therapy, he feels ready to start looking for work.
“I have a mission I’ve got to accomplish,” Mr. Williams said.
Sean D. Hamill contributed reporting from Pittsburgh, Michael Parrish from Los Angeles and J. Michael Kennedy from Seattle.
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4) Health insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders
By Lisa Girion
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 9, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure9nov09,0,4409342.story?coll=la-home-center
One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses
based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how
much money was saved.
Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in
medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and
2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of
cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting
or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed
Thursday showed.
The revelation that the health plan had cancellation goals and bonuses
comes amid a storm of controversy over the industry-wide but long-hidden
practice of rescinding coverage after expensive medical treatments have
been authorized.
These cancellations have been the recent focus of intense scrutiny by
lawmakers, state regulators and consumer advocates. Although these
"rescissions" are only a small portion of the companies' overall
business, they typically leave sick patients with crushing medical bills
and no way to obtain needed treatment.
Most of the state's major insurers have cancellation departments or
individuals assigned to review coverage applications. They typically
pull a policyholder's records after major medical claims are made to
ensure that the client qualified for coverage at the outset.
The companies' internal procedures for reviewing and canceling coverage
have not been publicly disclosed. Health Net's disclosures Thursday
provided an unprecedented peek at a company's internal operations and
marked the first time an insurer had revealed how it linked
cancellations to employee performance goals and to its bottom line.
The bonuses were disclosed at an arbitration hearing in a lawsuit
brought by Patsy Bates, a Gardena hairdresser whose coverage was
rescinded by Health Net in the middle of chemotherapy treatments for
breast cancer. She is seeking $6 million in compensation, plus damages.
Insurers maintain that cancellations are necessary to root out fraud and
keep premiums affordable. Individual coverage is issued to only the
healthiest applicants, who must disclose preexisting conditions.
Other suits have been settled out of court or through arbitration, out
of public view. Until now, none had gone to a public trial.
Health Net had sought to keep the documents secret even after it was
forced to produce them for the hearing, arguing that they contained
proprietary information and could embarrass the company. But the
arbitrator in the case, former Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge
Sam Cianchetti, granted a motion by lawyers for The Times, opening the
hearing to reporters and making public all documents produced for it.
At a hearing on the motion, the judge said, "This clearly involves very
significant public interest, and my view is the arbitration proceedings
should not be confidential."
The documents show that in 2002, the company's goal for Barbara Fowler,
Health Net's senior analyst in charge of rescission reviews, was 15
cancellations a month. She exceeded that, rescinding 275 policies that
year -- a monthly average of 22.9.
More recently, her goals were expressed in financial terms. Her
supervisor described 2003 as a "banner year" for Fowler because the
company avoided about "$6 million in unnecessary health care expenses"
through her rescission of 301 policies -- one more than her performance
goal.
In 2005, her goal was to save Health Net at least $6.5 million. Through
nearly 300 rescissions, Fowler ended up saving an estimated $7 million,
prompting her supervisor to write: "Barbara's successful execution of
her job responsibilities have been vital to the profitability" of
individual and family policies.
State law forbids insurance companies from tying any compensation for
claims reviewers to their claims decisions.
But Health Net's lawyer, William Helvestine, told the arbitrator in his
opening argument Thursday that the law did not apply to the insurer in
the case because Fowler was an underwriter -- not a claims reviewer.
Helvestine acknowledged that the company tied some of Fowler's
compensation to policy cancellations, including Bates'. But he
maintained that the bonuses were based on the overall performance of
Fowler and the company. He also said that meeting the cancellation
target was only a small factor.
The documents showed that Fowler's annual bonuses ranged from $1,654 to
$6,310. But Helvestine said that no more than $276 in any year was
connected to cancellations.
He said Fowler's supervisor, Mark Ludwig, set goals that were reasonable
based on the prior year's experience.
"I think it is insulting to those individuals to make this the focal
point of this case," Helvestine said.
Bates' lawyer, William Shernoff, said Health Net's behavior was
"reprehensible."
He said the cancellation goals and financial rewards showed that the
company canceled policies in bad faith and just to save money. After
all, he told the arbitrator, canceling policies was Fowler's primary job.
"For management to set goals in advance to achieve a certain number of
rescissions and target savings in the millions of dollars at the expense
of seriously ill patients is cruel and reprehensible by any standards of
law or decency," Shernoff said.
The company declined requests to make Fowler available to discuss the
reviews.
Cianchetti, the arbitrator, earlier ruled the rescission invalid because
Health Net had mishandled the way it sent Bates the policy when it
issued coverage. At the end of the hearing, it will be up to Cianchetti
to determine whether Health Net acted in bad faith and owes Bates any
damages.
The disclosures surprised regulators. A spokesman said state Insurance
Commissioner Steve Poizner was troubled by the allegations.
"Commissioner Poizner has made it clear he will not tolerate illegal
rescissions," spokesman Byron Tucker said. "We are going to take a hard
and close look at this case."
In recent months, the state's health and insurance regulators have
teamed to develop rules aimed at curbing rescissions and to more closely
monitor the industry's cancellation policies.
Other insurers that have rescission operations, including Blue Cross of
California and Blue Shield of California, said they had no similar
policies linking employee performance reviews to rescission levels. Blue
Cross said it conducted audits to ensure that claims reviewers were not
given any "carrots" for canceling coverage.
Bates, who filed the suit against Health Net, owns a hair salon in a
Gardena mini-mall between a liquor store and a doughnut shop. She said
she was left with nearly $200,000 in medical bills and stranded in the
midst of chemotherapy when Health Net canceled her coverage in January 2004.
Bates, 51, said the first notice she had that something was awry with
her coverage came while she was in the hospital preparing for
lump-removal surgery.
She said an administrator came to her room and told her the surgery,
scheduled for early the next day, had been canceled because the hospital
learned she had insurance problems. Health Net allowed the surgery to go
forward only after Bates' daughter authorized the insurance company to
charge three months of premiums in advance to her debit card, Bates
alleged. Her coverage was canceled after she began post-surgical
chemotherapy threatments.
"I've got cancer, and I could die," she said in a recent interview.
Health Net "walked away from the agreement. They don't care."
Health Net contended that Bates failed to disclose a heart problem and
shaved about 35 pounds off her weight on her application. Had it known
her true weight or that she had been screened for a heart condition
related to her use of the diet drug combination known as fen-phen, it
would not have covered her in the first place, the company said.
"The case was rescinded based on inaccurate information on the
individual's application," Health Net spokesman Brad Kieffer said.
Bates said she already had insurance when a broker came by her shop in
the summer of 2003, and said she now regretted letting him in the door.
She agreed to apply to Health Net when the broker told her he could save
her money, Bates said.
She added that she never intended to mislead the company. Bates said the
broker filled out the application, asking questions about her medical
history as she styled a client's hair in her busy shop and he talked to
another client waiting for an appointment at the counter. She maintained
that she answered his questions as best she could and did not know
whether he asked every question on the application.
Bates' chemotherapy was delayed for four months until it was funded
through a program for charity cases. Three years later, she can't afford
the tests she needs to determine whether the cancer is gone.
So she is left to worry. She is also left with a catheter embedded in
her chest where the chemotherapy drugs were injected into her
bloodstream. Bates said she found a physician willing to remove it
without charge, but he won't do it without a clear prognosis. That
remains uncertain.
Shernoff, Bates' lawyer, claimed that the performance goals for Fowler
showed that Health Net was bent on finding any excuse to cancel the
coverage of people like Bates to save money.
"I haven't seen this kind of thing for years," Shernoff said. "It
doesn't get much worse."
lisa.girion@latimes.com
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5) Health Care Excuses
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1194629520-Lw9NztG4s9JDHYWEEt0Htw
The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.
You might think that these facts would make the case for major reform of America’s health care system — reform that would involve, among other things, learning from other countries’ experience — irrefutable. Instead, however, apologists for the status quo offer a barrage of excuses for our system’s miserable performance.
So I thought it would be useful to offer a catalog of the most commonly heard apologies for American health care, and the reasons they won’t wash.
Excuse No. 1: No insurance, no problem.
“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said President Bush a few months ago. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” He was widely mocked for his cluelessness, yet many apologists for the health care system in the United States seem almost equally clueless.
We’re told, for example, that there really aren’t that many uninsured American citizens, because some of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, while some of the rest are actually entitled to Medicaid. This misses the point that the 47 million people in this country without insurance are an ever-changing group, so that the experience of being without insurance extends to a much broader group — in fact, more than one in every three people in America under the age of 65 was uninsured at some point in 2006 or 2007.
Oh, and finding out that you’re covered by Medicaid when you show up at an emergency room isn’t at all the same thing as receiving regular medical care.
Beyond that, a large fraction of the population — about one in four nonelderly Americans, according to a Consumer Reports survey — is underinsured, with “coverage so meager they often postponed medical care because of costs.”
So, yes, lack of insurance is a very big problem, a problem that reaches deep into the middle class.
Excuse No. 2: It’s the cheeseburgers.
Americans don’t have a bad health system, say the apologists, they just have bad habits. Overeating and teenage sex, not the huge overhead of America’s private health insurance companies — the United States spends almost six times as much on health care administration as other advanced countries — are the source of our problems.
There’s a grain of truth to this claim: Bad habits may partially explain America’s low life expectancy. But the big question isn’t why we have lower life expectancy than Britain, Canada or France, it’s why we spend far more on health care without getting better results. And lifestyle isn’t the explanation: the most definitive estimates, such as those of the McKinsey Global Institute, say that diseases that are associated with obesity and other lifestyle-related problems play, at most, a minor role in high U.S. health care costs.
Excuse No. 3: 2007 is better than 1950.
This is an argument that baffles me, but you hear it all the time. When you point out that America spends far more on health care than other countries, but gets worse results, the apologists reply: “Sure, we spend a lot of money on health care, but medical care is a lot better than it was in 1950, so it’s money well spent.” Huh?
It’s as if you went to a store to buy a DVD player, and the salesman told you not to worry about the fact that his prices are twice those of his competitors — after all, the machines on offer at his store are a lot better than they were five years ago. It is, in other words, an argument that makes no sense at all, yet respectable economists make it with a straight face.
Excuse No. 4: Socialized medicine! Socialized medicine!
Rudy Giuliani’s fake numbers on prostate cancer — which, by the way, he still refuses to admit were wrong — were the latest entry in a long, dishonorable tradition of peddling scare stories about the evils of “government run” health care.
The reality is that the best foreign health care systems, especially those of France and Germany, do as well or better than the U.S. system on every dimension, while costing far less money.
But the best way to counter scare talk about socialized medicine, aside from swatting down falsehoods — would journalists please stop saying that Rudy’s claims, which are just wrong, are “in dispute”? — may be to point out that every American 65 and older is covered by a government health insurance program called Medicare. And Americans like that program very much, thank you.
So, now you know how to answer the false claims you’ll hear about health care. And believe me, you’re going to hear them again, and again, and again.
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6) The Real Life of Bees
By SUSAN BRACKNEY
Op-Ed Contributor
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/opinion/09brackney.html
THE walking, talking, sneaker-wearing honeybees in Jerry Seinfeld’s animated film certainly are cute. But if a beekeeper like me had been in the director’s chair, “Bee Movie” would have looked quite a bit different.
In Hollywood’s version, there are more than three times the number of male roles than female ones, but a cartoon of my own hive would have thousands of leading ladies and only a handful of male extras.
The nurses that tend the young and the workers that forage for pollen; the guards that keep predators like skunks away and the undertaker bees that unceremoniously haul out the dead: they’re all female. And whereas the movie’s protagonist is repeatedly told he must choose just one job and stick with it, my honeybees rotate through all of the available duties.
“Bee Movie” makes only passing mention of the queen. But she’s the life of the hive, too busy producing perhaps a million eggs during her two-to-three-year existence even to feed herself (she has attendants for that). Were my Russian queen drawn for the big screen (think Natasha from “Rocky & Bullwinkle”), she would make quick work of the macho pollen jocks in “Bee Movie.”
That’s because non-animated drones don’t collect pollen, or make beeswax, or even have stingers. If Mr. Seinfeld wanted realism (and an R rating), his male bees would be sex workers who do little more than mate with the queen — after which their genitals snap off. Worse: when winter comes, worker bees shove the freeloading males out into the cold. If drones are required in the spring, the queen will simply make more of them.
Apiarists haven’t had much reason to laugh this year, because bees have been ravaged by colony collapse disorder, a mysterious malady that’s caused some beekeepers to lose 90 percent of their hives.
But one of every three or four bites of food we eat is thanks to bees; we truck bees many miles to pollinate about 90 different crops, from apples and oranges to almonds and blueberries, a punishing circuit that overtaxes the few colonies left. Of course, in “Bee Movie,” pollen jocks merely buzz past and barren landscapes bloom instantaneously into Technicolor glory.
But all these apiarian inaccuracies will be easy to forgive if wise-cracking animated honeybees finally get people to care about the rapidly disappearing real thing.
Susan Brackney is the author of “The Insatiable Gardener’s Guide.”
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7) Oil Spill Fouls Shores in San Francisco Area
By FELICITY BARRINGER
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09spill.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 — A South Korean container ship hit one of the stanchions of the Bay Bridge in a dense fog on Wednesday, spilling 58,000 gallons of bunker oil.
Strong tides have since swept the slick through the mouth of San Francisco Bay, fouling beaches up to 20 miles north of the city and girdling Alcatraz Island with a belt of goo.
While every change of tide sent the oil to a different shore, the largest concentrations were “one-and-a-half to two miles offshore, west of the Golden Gate bridge,” said Lt. Rob Roberts of the California Department of Fish and Game. Several beaches were closed by the spill.
Lieutenant Roberts said that of the 26 oil-covered shorebirds that had been found, six were dead.
The spill, though just one two-hundredth the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into Prince William Sound in Alaska, still hit a nerve in a region whose self-image and international reputation is closely tied to its bridges, cold blue waters, beaches and rocky bluffs — many of them now touched by the oil.
The Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Game extended yellow booms to keep the bunker fuel, one of the crudest and least-distilled petroleum products, from various shorelines, including the entrances to wildlife-rich estuaries north of San Francisco.
Wil Bruhns, a division chief with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said that the outward bound ebb tide carried the slick “up the coast, where we’re getting reports of oil sheens and bad smell and oiled birds.”
The ship, the Cosco Busan, owned by the Hanjin Shipping company of South Korea, struck a pier on the bridge’s western side. The glancing blow sheared off most of the protective fender of woodlike plastic, which was nearly 3 feet thick and 10 feet wide, said Bart Ney, a spokesman for the state transportation department.
Jessica Castelli, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit environmental group Save the Bay, said worried residents had flooded her group with offers to clean injured birds and oiled beaches.
Mr. Bruhns said that while he could not prejudge the investigation being conducted by the Coast Guard, earlier accidents had led to prosecutions.
“Lots of ships go around the bay,” he said, “and it’s really rare the bridges get hit, even in fog. There is radar.”
Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting.
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8) Judge Deals Transit Union a Blow on Collecting Dues
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/nyregion/09dues.html?ref=nyregion
In scolding language, a state judge refused yesterday to allow the Transport Workers Union to begin automatically collecting dues again from its members, saying he did not find believable the union leaders’ assertions that it would not strike again.
The ruling by Justice Bruce M. Balter of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn was a blow to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had urged that the ban on automatic dues collection — imposed after a 2005 strike — be lifted for the sake of labor harmony.
It was also a victory for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has continued to denounce the union for the 60-hour strike in December 2005, which disrupted the city and forced millions of people to walk, bike or find other ways to get to work. The city’s chief lawyer had asked the judge this month to keep the penalty in place.
“I think that you have a union here that was unwilling to make a commitment that they wouldn’t strike,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “You cannot have somebody breaking the law, that puts the people of this city in physical danger and destroys, and has the potential of really hurting the entire economy. So I was very pleased at the judge’s ruling, but I wasn’t surprised.”
The ability to deduct dues directly from members’ paychecks is highly important to the union, which has said its collections have declined more than $1 million because of the inability to make the deductions.
The court imposed the dues penalty last year after ruling that the strike violated the state’s Taylor Law, which bars public-sector unions from striking. The dues checkoff, as the automatic payment is known, was taken away in June.
The court said the union could seek to have the dues checkoff reinstated if it no longer claimed the right to strike against the authority.
In late September, Roger Toussaint, president of the union’s Local 100, submitted an affidavit in which he acknowledged that the Taylor Law barred strikes by government employees. And using language taken from the statute, he said that “the union does not assert the right to strike.”
But that was not enough for Justice Balter, who said that Mr. Toussaint’s affidavit “merely parrots the statutory language.” He called it “patently insufficient” and said it “lacks credibility.”
The judge said he recognized the importance of peace between labor and management, but he said it was outweighed by the potential damage of another strike.
The union has struck three times since 1966 and threatened strikes on two other occasions. “The court requires assurances that defendants will not engage in a future strike that will impede in the functioning of the City of New York,” the judge wrote.
He agreed with the city that an affidavit from Mr. Toussaint alone would not be enough. He said that to regain the dues checkoff, Mr. Toussaint and every other member of the local’s executive board must submit affidavits “which state in unequivocal terms that Local 100 lacks the right to strike” against a government agency.
The union said it would appeal.
“Today’s decision by Judge Balter is wrong,” Mr. Toussaint said in a written statement. “Unfortunately, this matter has become a political football.”
There are 48 people on the local’s executive board, including Mr. Toussaint. Since the dues checkoff was halted in June, the union has asked members to pay dues voluntarily. But the results have been only partly successful, and dues collections from June through August resulted in a $1.1 million shortfall.
The authority said in a statement that it remained committed to building a productive relationship with the union.
But Joshua B. Freeman, a professor of labor history at the graduate center of the City University of New York, said Justice Balter’s ruling could undermine that goal.
“I think it’s extremely unusual for a judge to essentially block the agreed effort by both management and workers to resolve a labor dispute and put it behind them,” Mr. Freeman said.
Diane Cardwell contributed reporting.
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9) Fed Chief Warns of Worse Times in the Economy
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/09fed.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 — Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress on Thursday that the economy was going to get worse before it got better, a message that received a chilly reception from both Wall Street and politicians.
On a day when stock prices swung wildly, the dollar hit another new low against the euro and further signs emerged from retailers that consumers are growing more cautious about spending, Mr. Bernanke warned that the economy was about to “slow noticeably” as the housing market continues to spiral downward and financial institutions tighten up on lending.
But in a disappointment to investors, Mr. Bernanke offered no signal that the central bank might soften the blow by lowering interest rates for a third time this year at its next policy meeting on Dec. 11.
Share prices, which plunged on Wednesday, went on a roller coaster after Mr. Bernanke testified. The Dow Jones industrial average first fell 205 points by midafternoon, but then clawed back most of the way and ended the day at 13,266.29, down just 34 points.
Testifying before the Joint Economic Committee, the Fed chairman said that the two rate cuts in September and October should be enough to keep the economy from slipping into a recession. Without being specific, he reinforced statements by other Fed policy makers that the economy would have to show signs of stalling out entirely before they would reduce rates again.
Asked if he saw any risks of a recession, Mr. Bernanke demurred. “We have not calculated the probability of a recession,” he responded. “Our assessment is for slower growth, but positive.”
The Fed chairman’s stance was similar to that of Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary. In a meeting Thursday with editors and reporters of The New York Times, Mr. Paulson predicted that the crisis in mortgage and credit markets would hurt growth but not lead to a recession.
“I believe we will continue to grow,” Mr. Paulson said. “We have a diversified economy.”
Mr. Bernanke’s message did not sit well with Wall Street analysts, who quickly criticized him for ignoring the real risk of a serious downturn. And at least one Republican, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, begged him at length to cut rates as soon as possible.
But Fed officials are far from persuaded of the need, even though some now expect economic growth to slow to an annual pace of 1.5 percent or less in the final months of this year — a drastic downshift from the rapid pace of almost 4 percent this summer.
Mr. Bernanke offered a rocky outlook for the months ahead. He said the battered housing market had yet to hit bottom, that delinquencies and foreclosures were likely to rise and that the depression in home-building was “likely to intensify.” He predicted that personal spending would advance more slowly, because consumers were less confident and because of tighter credit conditions.
On top of all that, he said, “further sharp increases in crude oil prices have put renewed upward pressure on inflation and may impose further restraint on economic activity.” Oil traded just above $95 a barrel on Thursday, down slightly from the day before but still near its recent record highs.
Despite all these worrying signs, Mr. Bernanke noted that the economic data since the Fed reduced interest rates last week “continued to suggest that the overall economy remained resilient in recent months.”
“The cumulative easing of policy over the past two months should help forestall some of the adverse effects on the broader economy,” he said.
Wall Street analysts and anxious investors took little comfort in the chairman’s remarks.
“Mr. Bernanke gave no ground to the market’s desire for further easing,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y.
But Mr. Shepherdson and a number of other analysts predicted that the economy would slow much more than Mr. Bernanke expects and force the Fed’s hand.
Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics in London, predicted that the economy would be “stagnant at best” in the final quarter of this year.
“The only question is whether there is enough evidence of this slowdown available by mid-December — or whether we will have to wait until January for the next cut,” Mr. Ashworth wrote in a research note.
David Rosenberg, Merrill Lynch’s chief economist for the United States, predicted that the housing market would not hit bottom by the end of next year. Noting that the Fed chairman said he would “act as needed,” Mr. Rosenberg said Mr. Bernanke had left the door open to more rate cuts.
At the hearing, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, urged Mr. Bernanke to act more aggressively to stimulate the economy. “I’m very concerned that there may be a bigger storm on the horizon,” he said.
But Mr. Bernanke refused to budge. Indeed, he referred first to the Fed’s attention to “price stability” and second to its interest in “sustainable growth.”
That did little to cheer lawmakers. In an early sign of the political pressure that the Fed is likely to face if the economy falters next year, Senator Brownback, who recently abandoned his Republican campaign for president, pleaded with Mr. Bernanke to cut rates in time for the Christmas shopping season.
“It seems to me that now is the time,” Mr. Brownback said. “When those gas prices get up to $3 a gallon, it seems to hit some sort of psychological point in consumer’s mind that ‘I have less to spend,’ and that’s a reality for them.”
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10) Stores See Shoppers in Retreat
By MICHAEL BARBARO
November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/09shop.html?ref=business
Consumers have rendered a verdict on the coming holiday season: grim.
From discounters like Wal-Mart to luxury emporiums like Nordstrom, the nation’s biggest chains reported the weakest October in 12 years yesterday.
The stores cited two main forces for the troubles: deepening economic jitters and unseasonably warm weather across the country, which left few consumers in the mood to buy.
The performance has set the stage for deep discounts in November and December as stores scramble to clear out unsold racks of clothing and electronics.
Sales at stores open at least a year, a crucial yardstick in retailing, rose just 1.6 percent last month, the slowest growth since October 1995, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. The poor results — on the heels of a dismal September — have made this one of the worst fall shopping seasons in decades.
“Retailers are running from this fall like it was the plague,” said John D. Morris, a senior retail analyst at Wachovia Securities.
Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer and a bellwether for the industry, said sales rose a meager 0.7 percent last month, even after the company lowered prices on toys and electronics to drum up business.
Anticipating a consumer spending slowdown, the company has now introduced steep doorbuster discounts — like a $400 laptop — every weekend until Thanksgiving.
Even so, Wal-Mart predicted sales growth could be flat for November.
Midprice department stores did not fare much better last month. Sales fell 1.8 percent at J. C. Penney and 3.8 percent at Kohl’s, two chains that have produced strong performances all year.
In a sign of things to come, both Kohl’s and Penney’s held storewide sales last weekend, with discounts of up to 50 percent.
Even higher-end stores struggled in October. Sales fell 1.5 percent at Macy’s and 2.4 percent at Nordstrom and 7 percent at Dillard’s.
“There is big-time trading down going on,” said Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank Securities, referring to the phenomenon of consumers’ turning to lower-priced stores because of financial insecurity.
“Nordstrom customers are trading down to Macy’s, and the Macy’s customer is trading down to Target,” he said.
That may account for strong sales at stores known for cheap chic — fashionable clothing and home décor at steep discounts. For example, sales rose 4.1 percent at Target and 3 percent at TJX, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s.
Luxury chains remained largely immune to the slowdown, with sales at Saks rising 10.6 percent.
The warm weather throughout October appears to have tamped down demand for clothing at the mall. Sales fell 3 percent at American Eagle Outfitters, 6 percent at Limited, 8 percent at Gap and 10.6 percent at Chico’s FAS, the adult women’s clothing chain.
Mr. Morris, who covers mall-based clothing chains, said several had begun cutting back on orders for the holidays, lest they become stuck with racks of unsold sweaters and coats.
The chains said that as the weather grew cooler, business was likely to improve, perhaps sharply this month. But an industry trade group, the National Retail Federation, is still predicting holiday season sales will rise 4 percent, the slowest in five years.
With oil prices soaring, the housing market slumping and the stock market in flux, there is little optimism that this will be a stellar season.
“Our customers are clearly facing headwinds that are impacting both sentiment and discretionary spending levels,” said the chief executive of J. C. Penney, Myron E. Ullman III.
And he does not expect the conditions to improve anytime soon. “We expect the challenging retail environment to continue for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Ullman said.
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Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
November 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/media/02cnd-hollywood.html?ref=us
Raids Traumatized Children, Report Says
By JULIA PRESTON
Hundreds of young American children suffered hardship and psychological trauma after immigration raids in the last year in which their parents were detained or deported, according to a report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute. Of 500 children directly affected in three factory raids examined in the report in which 900 adult immigrants were arrested, a large majority were United States citizens younger than 10. With one or both parents deported, the children had reduced economic support, and many remained in the care of relatives who feared contact with the authorities, the study said. Although the children were citizens, few families sought public assistance for them, the study found.
November 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/us/01brfs-raids.html?ref=us
Newark: Recalled Meat Found in Store
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Jersey consumer safety officials said yesterday that state inspectors bought recalled frozen hamburgers at a store weeks after the meat was recalled because of fears of E. coli contamination. The 19 boxes were bought in Union City on Wednesday, nearly four weeks after the manufacturer, the Topps Meat Company, issued a nationwide recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen patties. Officials would not name the store yesterday because of the investigation, and investigators have not determined when the store received the meat, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
New Jersey
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26mbrfs-meat.html?ref=nyregion
Florida: Sentence for Lionel Tate Is Upheld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in an American prison. The ruling Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sets the stage for Mr. Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term. Mr. Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes. Mr. Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. An appeals court overturned his murder conviction in 2004, and he was released but was on probation. In May 2005, the police said, Mr. Tate robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-lionel.html?ref=us
Submarine’s Commanding Officer Is Relieved of His Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer. [Aren't you glad they are out there making the world safe for democracy?...bw]
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-sub.html?ref=us
Britain: New Claim for Sovereignty in Antarctica
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Europe
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by 386,000 square miles, the Foreign Office said. Argentina wants some of it, and its foreign minister said his country was working on its own presentation. May 13, 2009, is the deadline for countries to stake their claims in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history.
October 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/europe/18briefs-claim.html?ref=world
California: Veto of 3 Criminal Justice Bills
By SOLOMON MOORE
Bucking a national trend toward stronger safeguards against wrongful convictions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have explored new eyewitness identification guidelines, required electronic recordings of police interrogations and mandated corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. Mr. Schwarzenegger cited his concern that the three bills would hamper local law enforcement authorities, a contention shared by several state police and prosecutor associations. The proposals had been recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan body of police officials, prosecutors and defense lawyers charged by the State Senate to address the most common causes of wrongful convictions and recommend changes in criminal justice procedures.
October 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16brfs-VETOOF3CRIMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: Chicagoans May Have to Dig Deeper
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicagoans would have to spend 10 cents more on a bottle of water, pay higher property taxes and spend more for liquor under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proposed budget for next year. Also financing Mr. Daley’s $5.4 billion budget are higher water and sewer fees and more expensive vehicle stickers for people driving large vehicles, $120 a vehicle sticker, up from $90. Mr. Daley announced his budget to aldermen, calling it a last resort to ask taxpayers for more money. His budget closes a $196 million deficit and avoids service cuts and layoffs. Budget hearings will be held, and a city spending plan will require a vote by aldermen.
Midwest
October 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/11brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
Wisconsin Iraq vet returns medals to Rumsfeld
By David Solnit, Courage to Resist / Army of None Project.
"I swore an oath to protect the constitution ... not to become a pawn in your New American Century."
September 26, 2007
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"
CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.
"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."
"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "
Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.
The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.
Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.
Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
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