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For those who did not get a chance to purchase a copy of Khalil Bendib's great cartoon book, here is information on how to order a copy. It makes a great gift.
Use this link to get to the page where this promo lives.
http://www.bendib.com/book/
Khalil is one of the best cartoonists around. I highly recommend this book. I can't wait to get my copy.
Peace,
Bonnie Weinstein, bauaw.org
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The bloody Israeli sojourn in Gaza (Interview with Norman Finkelstein)
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=FIr4lEIqTkM
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Fourth Al-Awda West Coast Regional Conference
Sunday February 8, 2009 at The University of California in San Diego (UCSD)
hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine
Save the Date! Mark Your Calendars! Plan to Attend!
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition's Al-Awda chapters in Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego thank all who took part in the Mass Rally and March in Los Angeles yesterday January 10 as part of the Let Gaza Live National Emergency Day of Mass Action and Protest that took place around the country. Thousands took to the streets demanding an immediate end to the carnage that is being carried out by the 'Israeli' military against our people in the Gaza Strip, and to demand an end to the political, economic and military support it has received from the US administration.
As announced at the protests, please take note that the Fourth Al-Awda West Coast Regional Conference, LET GAZA LIVE!, will take place Sunday February 8, 2009 at The University of California in San Diego (UCSD). This conference will be hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine. All members and supporters of the Right to Return movement on the West Coast are urged to participate in this important and timely one day conference.
Save the Date, Mark Your Calendars, and Plan to Attend.
Further details will be posted over the next few days and as soon as they become available.
Until Return,
Al-Awda Chapters in Southern California
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-918-9441
Fax: 760-918-9442
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW: http://al-awda.org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is the largest network of grassroots activists and students dedicated to Palestinian human rights. We are a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.
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You're invited to join Bay Area CODEPINK in February for exciting actions and informative events. This month we'd like to highlight an event CODEPINKer Tamara has organized with Iraqi author Nadje Al-Ali who will speak on her new book, "What Kind of Liberation: Women and the Occupation of Iraq". Nadje was with CODEPINK on the national Iraqi women's speaking tour around International Women's Day in 2006 and returns to the US from London to share this excellent new book. Join us at The First Unitarian Universalist Society of SF (The Murdock Room, 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, SF) on Thursday, February 12 for this special event.
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Celebrate Black History Month
Come To the ILWU Rally!
Racism, Repression
and Rebellion:
The Lessons of Labor Defense
12 Noon,
Saturday, 14 February 2009
ILWU Local 10 Hall, 400 North Point (at Mason)
near Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco
SPEAKERS:
ANGELA DAVIS UC Santa Cruz Professor,
former Black Panther, witch-hunted by FBI
MARTINA CORREIA Sister of Troy Davis on Georgia's death row
Rev Cecil Williams Glide Memorial Church
Robert R Bryan lead attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal,
on Pennsylvania death row
Gerald Smith former Black Panther,
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Pierre LaBossiere founding member, Haiti Action Committee
JR Prisoners of Conscience Committee, Minister of Information
Richard Brown former Black Panther, San Francisco 8
Cultural presentations:
Jack Hirschman, SF Poet Laureate;
Tayo Aluko, Nigerian actor portraying Paul Robeson: and
Upsurge! Jazz/Poetry Music
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) was born out of the militant 1934 strike in which police killed two strikers in San Francisco, shooting them in the back. Still today police are banned from membership in Local 10. The union has a legacy of defending those under attack by the government, in particular reds and blacks, from Harry Bridges and Paul Robeson, to Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Troy Davis. For Black History Month, Local 10 is organizing this rally to teach the lessons of the need for unity of action to defend against government repression and racist profiling. These lessons are never more necessary than today, as evidenced by the brutal murder by BART police of Oscar Grant, who was lying face-down when shot.
Racism, Repression
and Rebellion:
The Lessons of Labor Defense
12 Noon, Saturday, 14 February 2009
ILWU Local 10 Hall, 400 North Point (at Mason)
near Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco
MORE INFO: (510) 501-7080
- from Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610 LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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MARCH 21 "MARCH ON THE PENTAGON" PLANNING MEETING FOR SAN FRANCISCO PROTEST HAS LAUNCHED THE MARCH 21 COALITION!
MASS COMMUNITY OUTREACH TO BUILD MARCH 21
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 11:00 A.M.
NEXT PLANNING MEETING, SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2:00 P.M.
AT:
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO (UPSTAIRS)
474 VALENCIA STREET (NEAR 16TH STREET)
SAN FRANCISCO
Check out the new MARCH 21 Coalition Website:
http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=M21_homepage
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Jews in Solidarity with Palestine
Sign the Statement, view list of Signers, donate at:
http://www.iacenter.org/palestine/jewsinsolidarity/#signon
Jews in Solidarity with Palestine
Stop the U.S.-backed genocidal Israeli war on Gaza
-More than 1300 women, men and children killed by U.S.-made Israeli bombs
-More than 5400 wounded
-1.5 million under siege for the past 18 months, without food, water, medicine, fuel
-Collective punishment for resisting occupation; emergency aid blocked
-Massive violations of international law
-Apartheid wall
-Racist oppression
-Homes and land stolen
-Forced into refugee camps
-60 years of occupation, from the river to the sea
We Say Enough!
We Are
Jews in Solidarity with Palestine
No to Israel! Yes To Self-Determination, Democracy & Freedom!
Stop U.S. Funding of the War on Palestine!
The whole world is horrified by the murderous Israeli assault against the suffering people of Gaza. From Seoul to Caracas, from Johannesburg to Amman to London, millions of people have poured into the streets to demand an end to this genocidal campaign, which is funded by the United States and carried out with U.S.-supplied weaponry.
There have also been protests in U.S. cities. While most of those marching are Arab-Americans, many African Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and whites have joined in. Many Jewish people, outraged at Israel's war crimes and anguished that they are carried out in their name, are speaking out.
It's good that Jewish people of conscience are disassociating themselves from the Gaza aggression. But it's not enough. This atrocity is only the latest, and it's no aberration. It reflects the program of the Israeli settler state -- which is based on the theft of Palestine, the ouster and suppression of the Palestinian people, and the racist ideology of Zionism -- and of its primary sponsor, the Pentagon and U.S. business establishment.
It's not enough to oppose the bombing. It's not enough to demand an end to the 41-year occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. We stand in complete and unconditional support for the self-determination of the Palestinian people. This includes the right to return to Palestine, from the river to the sea, and the right to democratically determine the form and the future of the Palestinian state.
Nothing less will undo the historic crime of al Nakba -- the 1948 catastrophe of the establishment of the state of Israel based on the ouster of the Palestinian people from their homeland, oppression and inequality.
That crime betrayed the whole history of the Jewish people. From helping topple the czar in Russia and build the unions in New York, to resisting pogroms and fighting to the last breath in the Warsaw Ghetto, opposition to persecution, oppression and racism was central to the Jewish heritage.
We call on Jewish people around the world, including those inside Israel, to join us in reclaiming that heritage. Reject racism and genocide. Reject the Zionist state, the very concept of which is racist to the core. Take the hand of our Palestinian sisters and brothers. Defend their righteous struggle to restore their stolen land and build a democratic Palestine.
This is not an impossible quest. Remember how mighty the settler state in South Africa seemed, only a little over two decades ago? The racist regime there was buttressed by U.S. -- and Israeli -- support. But it was battered by the unstoppable political and military struggle against apartheid, which gained worldwide support. Apartheid fell, replaced by a new state based on legal equality.
A future of equality for all is possible in Palestine too. Until this future is won, the Palestinian struggle will go on. We stand with that struggle.
We Are
Jews in Solidarity with Palestine
No to Israel! Yes To Self-Determination, Democracy & Freedom!
Stop U.S. Funding of the War on Palestine!
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Labor Boycott Of Israel Backed By Bay Area Trade Unionists
To Stop Invasion/Occupation Of Gaza/Palestine
On Junuary 10, 2009 thousands of people in the bay area protested the US supported attack by Israel on the people of Gaza at a rally and march in San Francisco. Trade unionists including leaders of the Oakland Education Association and ILWU Local 10 and a leader of the California Peace and Freedom party condemned the attack and supported a labor boycott of Israel by the world trade union movement. Labor Video Project P.O. Box 720027 San Francisco, CA 94172 (415)282-1908 www.laborvideo.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEB2aY0ByQM&feature=
Labor Video Project
P.O. Box 720027
San Francisco, CA 94172
(415)282-1908
www.laborvideo.org
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Israelis Soldiers refuse to serve in Gaza
January 13, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/2978
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Open Letter to Israeli Soldiers
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
Friends,
As you may know, American Jews for a Just Peace has written an Open Letter to Israeli soldiers calling on them to refuse to take part in war crimes and atrocities in Gaza. We are gathering signatures from Jews all over the world, and hope to raise enough money to publish the Open Letter as an ad in Ha'aretz in the coming days. The views of "World Jewry" still carry some weight in Israel, and we owe it to both the people of Gaza and to the Israeli soldiers to try to raise our voices in opposition to the horror we are watching unfold day by day.
If you haven't already done so, I invite you to read and sign the Open Letter. If you can contribute even a small amount, it will help us toward the total advertisement cost. Organizational signers are invited to email info@ajjp.org to authorize organizational participation.
A link to the Open Letter is on the front page of AJJP's website:
www.ajjp.org
In these dark days, it is good to be able to do something -- anything. I hope you will join this effort.
Hannah Schwarzschild
for the Coordinating Committee
AMERICAN JEWS FOR A JUST PEACE
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U.S. resisters' solidarity with Israeli "shministim" refusers
Courage to Resist
Statement signed by over two dozen U.S. military war resisters. Reprinted by AlterNet, Democracy Now, The Progressive, Common Dreams, Indymedia, and Daily Kos.
We are U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who have refused or are currently refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We stand in solidarity with the Israeli Shministim (Hebrew for "12th graders") who are also resisting military service. About 100 Israeli high school students have signed an open letter declaring their refusal to serve in the Israeli army and their opposition to "Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories and the territories of Israel." In Israel, military service is mandatory for all graduating high school seniors, and resisters face the possibility of years in prison.
Read more at:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Cuba leads way in children rights
Cuba is the top-ranking developing country when it comes to protecting children’s rights, according to a new Child Development Index (CDI).
By: Tim Anderson
http://www.juventudrebelde.cip.cu/cuba/2009-01-29/cuba-leads-way-in-children-rights/
2) Bailouts for Bunglers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/opinion/02krugman.html
3) Sins of Omission: Help for the Beleaguered Homeowner
Editorial
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/opinion/02mon1.html
4) Obama and Key Democrat Voice Support for Daschle
By DAVID STOUT
February 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/us/politics/03daschle.html?hp
5) Greek Farmers Clash With Riot Police
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA
February 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/europe/03greece.html?ref=world
6) Welfare Aid Isn’t Growing as Economy Drops Off
By JASON DEPARLE
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02welfare.html?ref=us
7) Border Agents Say They Had Arrest Quotas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02border.html?ref=us
8) To Close a School: A Decision Rooted in Data, but Colored by Nuance
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/education/02closed.html?ref=education
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1) Cuba leads way in children rights
Cuba is the top-ranking developing country when it comes to protecting children’s rights, according to a new Child Development Index (CDI).
By: Tim Anderson
http://www.juventudrebelde.cip.cu/cuba/2009-01-29/cuba-leads-way-in-children-rights/
This ranking reflects Cuba’s progress since the 1990s in child health, nutrition and education, despite considerable difficulties,
Save the Children UK, an independent children’s rights organisation, says it is “outraged that millions of children are still denied proper healthcare, food, education and protection”.
It has developed the CDI as part of its strategy to “hold governments to account for children’s wellbeing”.
The index is constructed from three indicators: health (a scaled probability of death under the age of five), nutrition (the percentage of under fives who are moderately or severely underweight) and education (the percentage of primary-school aged children who are not enrolled in school).
A low score indicates low child deprivation. Cuba’s progress in recent years raised it from second place in Latin America (after Argentina) in the 1990s to first place in the period 2000-06.
Latin America was also the region with greatest improvement in recent years, mostly from reductions in child mortality and increased school enrolments. East Asia was the second most improved region.
Costa Rica and Argentina were second and third in both the Latin American and the developing country lists.
While wealthy OECD countries topped the list, the US, by contrast, went backwards. It now ranks 23rd in the world on children’s rights — after Cuba, Costa Rica and Argentina.
The poor US performance was largely due to deterioration in primary school enrolments.
Save the Children UK observes that, worldwide, more than 9 million children under five die every year, one quarter of all children are underweight and 75 million primary school-aged children are not enrolled in school.
The group says that the basic rights of children all around the world “continue to be violated and denied’ and proposes “dramatic action” to reverse the slowdown in progress on child malnutrition, efforts to convert economic growth into benefits for children and “a significant effort” to promote girls’ education.
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2) Bailouts for Bunglers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/opinion/02krugman.html
Question: what happens if you lose vast amounts of other people’s money? Answer: you get a big gift from the federal government — but the president says some very harsh things about you before forking over the cash.
Am I being unfair? I hope so. But right now that’s what seems to be happening.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the Obama administration’s plan to support jobs and output with a large, temporary rise in federal spending, which is very much the right thing to do. I’m talking, instead, about the administration’s plans for a banking system rescue — plans that are shaping up as a classic exercise in “lemon socialism”: taxpayers bear the cost if things go wrong, but stockholders and executives get the benefits if things go right.
When I read recent remarks on financial policy by top Obama administration officials, I feel as if I’ve entered a time warp — as if it’s still 2005, Alan Greenspan is still the Maestro, and bankers are still heroes of capitalism.
“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” says Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — as he prepares to put taxpayers on the hook for that system’s immense losses.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post report based on administration sources says that Mr. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, “think governments make poor bank managers” — as opposed, presumably, to the private-sector geniuses who managed to lose more than a trillion dollars in the space of a few years.
And this prejudice in favor of private control, even when the government is putting up all the money, seems to be warping the administration’s response to the financial crisis.
Now, something must be done to shore up the financial system. The chaos after Lehman Brothers failed showed that letting major financial institutions collapse can be very bad for the economy’s health. And a number of major institutions are dangerously close to the edge.
So banks need more capital. In normal times, banks raise capital by selling stock to private investors, who receive a share in the bank’s ownership in return. You might think, then, that if banks currently can’t or won’t raise enough capital from private investors, the government should do what a private investor would: provide capital in return for partial ownership.
But bank stocks are worth so little these days — Citigroup and Bank of America have a combined market value of only $52 billion — that the ownership wouldn’t be partial: pumping in enough taxpayer money to make the banks sound would, in effect, turn them into publicly owned enterprises.
My response to this prospect is: so? If taxpayers are footing the bill for rescuing the banks, why shouldn’t they get ownership, at least until private buyers can be found? But the Obama administration appears to be tying itself in knots to avoid this outcome.
If news reports are right, the bank rescue plan will contain two main elements: government purchases of some troubled bank assets and guarantees against losses on other assets. The guarantees would represent a big gift to bank stockholders; the purchases might not, if the price was fair — but prices would, The Financial Times reports, probably be based on “valuation models” rather than market prices, suggesting that the government would be making a big gift here, too.
And in return for what is likely to be a huge subsidy to stockholders, taxpayers will get, well, nothing.
Will there at least be limits on executive compensation, to prevent more of the rip-offs that have enraged the public? President Obama denounced Wall Street bonuses in his latest weekly address — but according to The Washington Post, “the administration is likely to refrain from imposing tougher restrictions on executive compensation at most firms receiving government aid” because “harsh limits could discourage some firms from asking for aid.” This suggests that Mr. Obama’s tough talk is just for show.
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s culture of excess seems to have been barely dented by the crisis. “Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that,” one banker told The New York Times. And if you’re a banker and you destroyed $30 billion? Uncle Sam to the rescue!
There’s more at stake here than fairness, although that matters too. Saving the economy is going to be very expensive: that $800 billion stimulus plan is probably just a down payment, and rescuing the financial system, even if it’s done right, is going to cost hundreds of billions more. We can’t afford to squander money giving huge windfalls to banks and their executives, merely to preserve the illusion of private ownership.
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3) Sins of Omission: Help for the Beleaguered Homeowner
Editorial
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/opinion/02mon1.html
The Senate will debate its version of the mammoth stimulus and recovery package this week. As with last week’s version, passed by the House, there will be considerable argument between Democrats and Republicans over what belongs in the bill.
One serious disagreement has already taken place — between Senate leaders and the Obama administration — and it has been decided in a way that can only weaken the overall package. The senators had planned to make foreclosure relief part of the bill, by including a measure to let bankrupt homeowners have their mortgages modified under court protection.
But administration officials — who say they support the bankruptcy fix — rejected the idea of putting it in the bill out of fear that it would cause Republicans to delay or reject the package. So barring a free-for-all rewrite of the bill on the Senate floor, the fix is out and the relief will be postponed at least until the spring, when the measure could be attached to other legislation.
The delay is a shame. President Obama made concessions to Republicans in the House — and not one voted for urgent economic stimulus and recovery programs.
This economic crisis started with bad mortgage loans, and the resulting defaults and foreclosures have only worsened as house prices have plunged. The bankruptcy fix is the linchpin of effective foreclosure relief. Unless foreclosures are stanched, the economy will deteriorate further and faster than any stimulus can hope to overcome. That is because foreclosures are flooding the already glutted market with homes for sale at rock bottom prices, driving prices down virtually everywhere. The more prices fall, the more defaults rise, because homeowners with little or no equity have no cushion to fall back on if — for any reason — they have trouble making their payments.
Falling prices and rising defaults, in turn, perpetuate the credit crunch, because as long as loans are souring, banks will continue to suffer losses and constrain lending. Falling prices also contribute to the continuing collapse in consumer spending, which deepens the recession, because homeowners increasingly find themselves not only cash-short but house-poor as well. As a result, they are unable or disinclined to spend.
The upshot is that house-price declines and foreclosures are less a normal market correction and more the catalyst in a vicious downward spiral.
Voluntary efforts by lenders to modify troubled loans have failed to yield the types or numbers of modifications capable of slowing the pace of foreclosures. Bankruptcy protection, if it were applied to mortgage loans, could succeed where voluntary efforts have failed.
In cases where a homeowner is able and willing to pay more on a loan than could be recouped by foreclosing, a judge could impose a settlement. Opening the courthouse door to troubled homeowners would also spur more and better voluntary loan modifications. Lenders would know that a voluntary solution would stave off a court-imposed one.
The Obama administration has said that it plans to use a chunk of the bank bailout money, up to $100 billion, to provide foreclosure relief. That would be welcome, but it is not a substitute for bankruptcy reform. It is unfair to ask taxpayers to pay for foreclosure relief without enacting a bankruptcy fix, which costs them nothing. Besides, any relief effort — and the Obama team has not yet indicated what it has in mind — will attract more participation if lenders know that the alternative is to lose control of the process to a bankruptcy judge.
Bankruptcy reform is the stick to whatever carrots the taxpayer will be asked to pay for.
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4) Obama and Key Democrat Voice Support for Daschle
By DAVID STOUT
February 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/us/politics/03daschle.html?hp
WASHINGTON — President Obama and a key Democratic senator voiced unqualified support on Monday for Tom Daschle to become the head of the Health and Human Services Department, giving the contrite nominee a big boost toward confirmation.
When asked in a brief session with reporters at the White House whether he stood by Mr. Daschle in view of the nominee’s tax-related problems, the president replied, “Absolutely.”
Later, Mr. Obama’s chief spokeswoman, Robert Gibbs, expressed confidence that the Senate would weigh Mr. Daschle’s years of public service against the lapse on tax matters and would confirm the nominee. President Obama continues to believe Mr. Daschle is “the right person for the very important job” of revamping the health-care system, Mr. Gibbs said.
And Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, issued a statement backing Mr. Daschle’s confirmation without reservation.
“The ability to advance meaningful health reform is my top priority in confirming a secretary of health and human services, and I remain convinced that Senator Daschle would be an invaluable and expert partner in this effort,” Mr. Baucus said.
Mr. Baucus said his faith in Mr. Daschle’s “dedication and qualifications” had been bolstered by his conversations with the nominee in recent weeks. “I am eager to move forward together,” Mr. Baucus said.
Moreover, other Democratic members of the panel have reportedly sent signals that they are prepared to stand by Mr. Daschle, who was an early supporter of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Baucus released his statement in advance of a late-afternoon meeting of his panel, which will hear from Mr. Daschle in a private session. In advance, Mr. Daschle wrote a letter to Mr. Baucus and Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, in which he said he was “deeply embarrassed and disappointed” in himself over his failure to pay some $140,000 in back taxes and interest.
Senator Baucus’s statement on Monday morning in support of the nominee was significant because he and Mr. Daschle have sometimes had a rocky relationship. Mr. Baucus has at times seemed more comfortable negotiating with Republican senators on important issues — President Bush’s tax-cut proposals, for instance — than with his Democratic colleagues. In those cases, Mr. Baucus would sometimes put Mr. Daschle, then the Democratic leader in the Senate, in an awkward position. Mr. Daschle was unseated in 2004 by John R. Thune, who had been a popular Republican Congressman in South Dakota.
In his letter Mr. Daschle said his recently disclosed tax problems, related to income for consulting work and the use of a car made available to him by a close friend who is also a generous donor to Democratic causes, were unintentional.
“I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them,” Mr. Daschle wrote.
He is also likely to be asked about the more than $200,000 he has made in fees over the past two years for speaking to members of the health care industry that President Obama has vowed to change. Mr. Daschle’s spokeswoman, Jenny Backus, said those earnings do not pose a conflict of interest.
“He welcomed every opportunity to make his case to the American public at large and the health care industry in particular that America can’t afford to ignore the health care crisis any longer,” Ms. Backus told The Associated Press.
The speaking fees are but a portion of the millions Mr. Daschle has earned on consulting work since he left the Senate, following a well-worn path in Washington. His wife, Linda, is an influential lobbyist.
Tradition and simple math bode well for Mr. Daschle’s chances at confirmation. Much more often than not, a new president is given the team he wants when his Cabinet nominees are voted upon in the Senate, which now has 58 Democrats.
Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
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5) Greek Farmers Clash With Riot Police
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA
February 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/europe/03greece.html?ref=world
ATHENS — Two people were injured Monday when Greek riot police clashed with hundreds of farmers from the southern island of Crete who sailed to the Greek mainland and tried to drive tractors and farm vehicles to the capital to push demands for financial aid.
The clashes come at a time of growing social unrest in Greece, as the center-right government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis struggles to restore its credibility after student riots in December. Protests have spread across Europe — most recently in France and Britain — as the global economic crisis bites into jobs and incomes.
In the clashes on Monday, the farmers, who sailed into the port of Piraeus, made a convoy of some 300 tractors, trucks and other farming vehicles. Some of the vehicles tried to ram a police van that was blocking the port gates.
Live television broadcasts showed at least two people injured in the scuffle, including a female lawmaker who was knocked down by one of the tractors. Two protesters were arrested for pelting police officers with rocks, potatoes and tomatoes.
Heavy farming vehicles are barred from the capital’s motorways, and the authorities in Athens said they had advised the protesters to proceed on foot.
“All we wanted was to drive our tractors to the Agriculture Ministry in a peaceful, symbolic protest,” one farmer mounted on a red tractor festooned with two black flags told a private television broadcaster. He said the farmers would stay put until the authorities came to them.
Thousands of farmers have been protesting across Greece since Jan. 20, blockading the country’s main roads and starving the capital of food and medicine as they demand government aid and tax breaks following a harsh winter and a drop in commodity prices.
Most of the blockades eased last week after the government promised a $645 million aid package and Bulgaria’s truckers association vowed to take legal action against the Greek authorities for hampering trade.
But the farmers from Crete rejected the package, saying it offers too little for their region. Other agricultural groups are keeping a crucial border crossing with Bulgaria closed, complaining that the government assistance plan provides no long-term solution to their declining income.
Greek farmers’ income has shrunk by almost 24 percent in the last decade, according to their national labor union.
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6) Welfare Aid Isn’t Growing as Economy Drops Off
By JASON DEPARLE
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02welfare.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — Despite soaring unemployment and the worst economic crisis in decades, 18 states cut their welfare rolls last year, and nationally the number of people receiving cash assistance remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years.
The trends, based on an analysis of new state data collected by The New York Times, raise questions about how well a revamped welfare system with great state discretion is responding to growing hardships.
Michigan cut its welfare rolls 13 percent, though it was one of two states whose October unemployment rate topped 9 percent. Rhode Island, the other, had the nation’s largest welfare decline, 17 percent.
Of the 12 states where joblessness grew most rapidly, eight reduced or kept constant the number of people receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the main cash welfare program for families with children. Nationally, for the 12 months ending October 2008, the rolls inched up a fraction of 1 percent.
The deepening recession offers a fresh challenge to the program, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 amid bitter protest and became one of the most closely watched social experiments in modern memory.
The program, which mostly serves single mothers, ended a 60-year-old entitlement to cash aid, replacing it with time limits and work requirements, and giving states latitude to discourage people from joining the welfare rolls. While it was widely praised in the boom years that followed, skeptics warned it would fail the needy when times turned tough.
Supporters of the program say the flat caseloads may reflect a lag between the loss of a job and the decision to seek help. They also say the recession may have initially spared the low-skilled jobs that many poor people take.
But critics argue that years of pressure to cut the welfare rolls has left an obstacle-ridden program that chases off the poor, even when times are difficult.
Even some of the program’s staunchest defenders are alarmed.
“There is ample reason to be concerned here,” said Ron Haskins, a former Republican Congressional aide who helped write the 1996 law overhauling the welfare system. “The overall structure is not working the way it was designed to work. We would expect, just on the face it, that when a deep recession happens, people could go back on welfare.”
“When we started this, Democratic and Republican governors alike said, ‘We know what’s best for our state; we’re not going to let people starve,’ ” said Mr. Haskins, who is now a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “And now that the chips are down, and unemployment is going up, most states are not doing enough to help families get back on the rolls.”
The program’s structure — fixed federal financing, despite caseload size — may discourage states from helping more people because the states bear all of the increased costs. By contrast, the federal government pays virtually all food-stamp costs, and last year every state expanded its food-stamp rolls; nationally, the food program grew 12 percent.
The clashing trends in some states — more food stamps, but less cash aid — suggest a safety net at odds with itself. Georgia shrank the cash welfare rolls by nearly 11 percent and expanded food stamps by 17 percent. After years of pushing reductions, Congress is now considering a rare plan that would subsidize expansions of the cash welfare rolls. The economic stimulus bills pending in Congress would provide matching grants — estimated at $2.5 billion over two years — to states with caseload expansions.
Born from Mr. Clinton’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it,” the new program brought furious protests from people who predicted the poor would suffer. Then millions of people quickly left the rolls, employment rates rose and child poverty plunged.
But the economy of the late 1990s was unusually strong, and even then critics warned that officials placed too much stress on caseload reduction. With benefits harder to get, a small but growing share of families was left with neither welfare nor work and fell deeper into destitution.
“TANF is not an especially attractive option for most people,” said Linda Blanchette, a top welfare official in Pennsylvania, which cut its rolls last year by 6 percent. “People really do view it as a last resort.”
The data collected by The Times is the most recent available for every state and includes some similar programs financed solely by states, to give the broadest picture of cash aid. In a year when 1.1 million jobs disappeared, 18 states cut the rolls, 20 states expanded them, and caseloads in 12 states remained essentially flat, fluctuating less than 3 percent. (In addition, caseloads in the District of Columbia rose by nearly 5 percent.)
The rolls rose 7 percent in the West, stayed flat in the South, and fell in the Northeast by 4 percent and Midwest by 5 percent.
Seven states increased their rolls by double digits. Five states, including Texas and Michigan, made double-digit reductions. Of the 10 states with the highest child poverty rates, eight kept caseloads level or further reduced the rolls.
“This is evidence of a strikingly unresponsive system,” said Mark H. Greenberg, co-director of a poverty institute at the Georgetown University law school. Some administrators disagree.
“We’re still putting people to work,” said Larry Temple, who runs the job placement program for welfare recipients in Texas, where the rolls dropped 15 percent. “A lot of the occupations that historically we’ve been able to put the welfare people in are still hiring. Home health is a big one.”
Though some welfare recipients continue to find jobs, nationally their prospects have worsened. Joblessness among women ages 20 to 24 without a high school degree rose to 23.9 percent last year, from 17.9 percent the year before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some analysts offer a different reason for the Texas caseload declines: a policy that quickly halts all cash aid to recipients who fail to attend work programs.
“We’re really just pushing families off the program,” said Celia Hagert of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a research and advocacy group in Austin, Tex.
Some officials predict the rolls will yet rise. “There’s typically a one- to two-year lag between an economic downturn and an uptick in the welfare rolls,” said David Hansell, who oversees the program in New York State, where the rolls fell 4 percent.
Indeed, as the recession has worsened in recent months, some states’ rolls have just started to grow. Georgia’s caseload fell until July 2008, but has since risen 5 percent. Still, as of October the national caseloads remained down 70 percent from their peak in the early 1990s under the predecessor program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Nationally, caseloads fell every year from 1994 to 2007, to about 4.1 million people, a level last seen in 1964. The federal total for 2008 has not been published, but the Times analysis of state data suggests they remained essentially flat.
Some recent caseload reduction has been driven by a 2006 law that required states to place more recipients in work programs, which can be costly and difficult to run. It threatened states with stiff fines but eased the targets for states that simply cut the rolls.
“Some states decided they had to get tougher,” said Sharon Parrott of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research and advocacy group.
Rhode Island was among them. Previously, the state had reduced but not eliminated grants to families in which an adult had hit a 60-month limit. Last year, it closed those cases, removing 2,200 children from the rolls.
Under the new federal accounting rules, that made it easier to meet statistical goals and protected the state from fines.
Michigan also imposed new restrictions, forcing applicants to spend a month in a job-search program before collecting benefits. Critics say the up-front requirement poses obstacles to the neediest applicants, like those with physical or mental illnesses.
“I think that’s a legitimate complaint,” said Ismael Ahmed, director of the Michigan Department of Human Services, though he blamed the federal rules. The program “was drawn for an economy that is not the economy most states are in.”
While food stamps usually grow faster than cash aid during recessions, the current contrast is stark. Many officials see cash aid in a negative light, as a form of dependency, while encouraging the use of food stamps and calling them nutritional support.
“Food assistance is not considered welfare,” said Donalda Carlson, a Rhode Island welfare administrator.
Nationally, the temporary assistance program gives states $16.8 billion a year — the same amount they received in the early 1990s, when caseloads were more than three times as high as they are now. Mr. Haskins, the program’s architect, said that obliged them to ensure the needy could return to the rolls. “States have plenty of money,” he said.
But most states have shifted the money into other programs — including child care and child welfare — and say they cannot shift it back without causing other problems.
Oregon expanded its cash caseload 19 percent last year, so far without major backlash. “That’s the purpose of the program — to be there for that need,” said Vic Todd, a senior state official. But California officials expressed ambivalence about a 6 percent rise in the cash welfare rolls in that state when it is facing a $40 billion deficit. “There’s some fine tuning of the program that needs to occur, to incentivize work,” said John Wagner, the state director of social services.
Among those sanguine about current caseload trends is Robert Rector, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington who is influential with conservative policy makers. He said the program had “reduced poverty beyond anyone’s expectations” and efforts to dilute its rigor would only harm the poor.
“We need to continue with the principle that you give assistance willingly, but you require the individual to prepare for self-sufficiency,” he said.
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7) Border Agents Say They Had Arrest Quotas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02border.html?ref=us
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Border Patrol agents working about 100 miles north of the Mexican border say they have been given arrest quotas at odds with agency practices and threatened with punishment if they failed to meet the number.
Agents stationed in Riverside reported being ordered to make at least 150 arrests of suspected illegal immigrants in January, two of which must lead to prosecutions, said Lombardo Amaya, president of Local 2554 of the National Border Patrol Council.
“They were told if you don’t produce this, we will have to change your weekends off,” Mr. Amaya said, adding that he would discuss the matter Monday with the sector chief. “Sometimes, like in politics, this agency is about looking good.”
An agency spokesman in Washington, Lloyd Easterling, said quotas ran counter to agency practice, which does not set a minimum number of arrests.
“If we had quotas to fill and met those quotas,” Mr. Easterling said, “then would that mean we would be able to stop doing our job? No. Our job is to secure the border and detect, deter and apprehend anyone who is involved in illegal activity between the ports of entry.”
Jeffrey Calhoon, chief patrol agent for the El Centro sector, which covers Imperial and Riverside Counties, said he was not aware of any quotas.
“We would never structure our work environment to create quotas,” Mr. Calhoon said. “We have a union we have to negotiate with.”
The agents’ accusations came weeks after one of their colleagues at the Riverside station was fired over a dispute with local management.
The union has appealed the termination of the colleague, Tony Platell, who said he was dismissed for disobeying an order to remain at a desert freeway checkpoint where six suspected illegal immigrants were picked up. Mr. Platell said he wanted to take them to the station quickly because they looked dehydrated.
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8) To Close a School: A Decision Rooted in Data, but Colored by Nuance
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
February 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/education/02closed.html?ref=education
On a recent December morning, a trio of education higher-ups arrived unannounced in the principal’s office at Public School 90 in the Bronx. The school would be gradually shut down, they told the principal, Patricia West. Incredulous, Ms. West, who has been at P.S. 90’s helm for six years, asked them to repeat themselves.
“I knew we had to improve, but I was shocked,” she said. “It’s like being told you are arrested and you go to jail. Everybody says, ‘But I didn’t do it!’ ”
Parents and community members immediately questioned the decision. While P.S. 90 got an F this year on its report card from the city, 11 other schools had worse scores overall, and many of them were staying open.
Teachers and parents at the 13 other city schools marked for closing so far this year were similarly puzzled that their schools were chosen. A handful of the schools had earned B’s on the city’s inaugural report cards last school year and thought they were making progress. Some had even been praised by educators as models of successful reform.
But under New York City’s unbending accountability system, the schools were considered portraits of chronically failing institutions, decrepit programs that had failed to lift the most struggling students.
Since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s takeover of the school system in 2002, the city’s Education Department has ordered 95 low-performing schools shuttered to make way for reinvented programs. The break-you-down, build-you-up strategy is meant to rattle the system — to warn struggling schools to change or be changed — and open the door for new school leaders and staffs to rehabilitate some of the lowest-performing student populations in the city.
But the decision to close a school is inevitably subjective, based on a mishmash of factors like performance on standardized tests, situations of violence, student demand for the school and whether the school seems capable of turning around. As such, the city inevitably earns the fury of educators, parents and students asking, “Why our school?”
The city’s investigation into schools like P.S. 90 that fail to push up student scores on English and math tests from year to year can stretch months or even more than a year before a decision is made. A team sorts through years of test data and also looks at reports of routine classroom visits made by Education Department experts. Administrators who oversee groups of neighborhood schools also weigh in on school culture.
Garth Harries, who oversees the Department of Education office that decides which schools to close, said the symptoms of failure are not always reflected in a single report card grade.
“Different data points can have different significance in a different context,” he said, adding that the city’s process allows for more nuance than other districts. “It is a mark of respect to the school organizations to spend the time to look at this very deeply.”
In addition, the city must consider practical aspects of closing a school, such as whether nearby schools can handle any overflow of students (newer high schools, for instance, tend to be small and not accept as many incoming ninth graders as the schools they replace). Enrollment is also a factor: in general, the current administration is wary of large, failing schools’ ability to overcome the obstacles of an impersonal environment. [What? What? What? So they close schools with the most children then punish those very kids that had to endure them?????]
Once the decision to close a school is final, the city dispatches a team to each building to deliver the news and act as unofficial trauma counselors — fielding questions from jittery teachers and principals.
At the same time, the city embarks on a months-long process to decide how best to remake the school and determine which new programs to gradually phase in at the old building. In other words, schools are not so much closed as remade from the inside out. Principals and teachers are counseled as to how best handle the closing process and continue serving students as the old program is phased out, and the city gives extra funds to new schools as they launch their programs.
“This is not about shuttering buildings,” Mr. Harries said. “This is about recreating culture, recreating ambitions, recreating educational systems, and recreating a sense of hope in these buildings.”
But critics of the process say the city does not do enough to get an on-the-ground sense of school quality, and that it frequently closes schools despite credible signs of improvement.
They also say the city should listen more to community input before a final decision is made. When the city brought up the possibility late last year of replacing the old programs at Public School 194 in Harlem and Public School 150 in Brooklyn with charter schools, for example, the response from some parents was negative. (No final decisions on new schools will be made until later this month, and city officials said they factor community input into the design of any new school.)
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said that as schools prepare for what could potentially be devastating budget cuts this year, the city should not spend money on closing and reopening schools. She also said, more broadly, that struggling schools should be given more of a chance to improve before they are closed, pointing to places like Middle School 399 in the Bronx, which showed increases in test scores with its lowest-performing students and was recently removed from the state’s list of persistently dangerous schools. Nonetheless, it was given a closing notice last month.
“Those kinds of things make one wonder about arbitrariness and capriciousness,” she said, adding that there should be an appeals process. “Here you have a track record that shows real promise, yet the Department of Education is still closing these schools.”
Ms. Weingarten noted that some schools marked for closing have shown significant improvement in their dying days. For example, at five schools that were marked to be phased out — a process that typically happens over several years to limit disruption for their students — students’ performance was so much improved that staff members were given cash bonuses this year; city officials explained that closed schools are often able to foster better relationships with students as enrollment dwindles.
Eric A. Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who studies school accountability systems, said the inherent danger in closing schools is its potential negative effect on the most vulnerable students. Inevitably, he said, new schools will spend a few years tinkering with their programs.
“Closing schools has good publicity value,” he said, “but to me the first priority is trying to take care of the kids who are in a school that has been declared to be bankrupt.” He suggested providing students at schools being reinvented with vouchers for private schools or preference for enrollment at more successful public schools.
Since the federal No Child Left Behind law was passed in 2001, districts across the country have made restructuring — and in some cases, closing — failing schools a centerpiece of reform efforts. Many districts, however, do not go as far as New York, taking a piecemeal approach to reinvention by replacing ineffective school leaders or teachers.
Ms. West, principal of P.S. 90, on Sheridan Avenue in Morrisania, said she has accepted the city’s decision. Like a student with poor grades waiting to be chewed out by her parents, she knew her bosses would take some action after the school got an F on its report card in the fall. The school has failed to boost the scores of its large population of students struggling with English, who make up about a third of its 1,153 students from kindergarten through fourth grade.
Two new schools will open at P.S. 90 in September, initially serving kindergarten through second grade, and expanding to fourth grade by September 2011.
But Ms. West, who began as a substitute teacher in 1979 and is retiring this spring, believes education officials should have made more frequent visits to the school, where 97 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, to get a better sense of its promise.
Now, in the school’s final months, she said is focused on rallying her staff and students. “If this is our last hurrah,” she said, “we have to go out high.”
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