*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Justice for Oscar Grant! Justice for Anita Gay!
Mon. Feb. 16, 5pm-7pm
Martin Luther King Blvd & Ashby, near Ashby BART, Berkeley
WE WILL NOT FORGET!
On February 16, 2008, Anita Gay -grandmother and longtime Berkeley resident - was shot in the back and killed on her front porch by a lone Berkeley police officer. The bullets passed through her into her apartment, grazing her daughter’s face and narrowly missing her grandchild. The police claim the shooting was justified. The media demonized the family and blame the shooting on Anita.
Many neighbors saw what really happened.
The police report was a cover up and a lie. Anita called the police for help. She should have not been killed. The officer who killed her and the Berkeley Police Department must be held accountable. Her family, friends, and supporters have organized to demand justice. We need better jobs and housing, not more racist cops and excuses. We need your help.
WE MUST STAND UP!
Too many people have been killed by the police. We haven’t forgotten Gary King Jr., Jose Luis Buenrostro, Casper Banjo, Jody Woodfox, and so many others. One year after Anita Gay was shot in the back by a Berkeley cop, join family, friends and supporters of Anita Gay to celebrate her life, mourn her loss, and demand an end to racist police brutality and murder.
Call 510-435-0844 for more info or to volunteer!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
(An extensive endorsement list is posted here):
http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=M21_homepage
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
CALL FOR ENDORSEMENTS FOR MARCH 21:
Greetings:
The March on the Pentagon and the demonstrations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities scheduled for Saturday, March 21 – marking the beginning of the 7th year of war and occupation of Iraq – are now only weeks away. This is a time for peace activists across the country to go all-out in helping to publicize and build these actions. You can start by endorsing March 21, if you and your organization have not done so already.
A mass movement in the streets is needed now more than ever if we are to succeed in getting U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, ending U.S. support for Israel's occupation of Palestine, preventing further attacks on Pakistan, and stopping a war against Iran. The occupation of Iraq continues with every indication that the new administration intends to stay there indefinitely. Meanwhile, 30,000 additional U.S. troops are to be sent to Afghanistan. The whole world watched with horror as Israel massacred thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, using weapons of mass destruction provided by Washington. And only days after the inauguration, orders were given to bomb Pakistan, resulting in 21 deaths, most of them women and children.
March 21 provides concerned people throughout the country an opportunity to let the world know that opposition to these U.S. policies of war, occupation, intervention and expansionism exists and is determined to be heard. It lets the beleaguered people in those countries where the U.S. is an oppressor know that there is an American antiwar movement that does not forget their needs for peace and national sovereignty. That is a message we must also send to the new administration. The size of the turnout on the 21st will be critical if we are to help make a difference. So we count on you to do whatever you can to build highly visible mass actions and to ensure that they are as large, vocal and spirited as possible.
There are March 21 committees and coalitions already formed or being formed in many areas working to publicize the event and send people to one of the demonstration sites. We encourage you to join or organize such a grouping in your locale. The National Assembly, as one of many initiators of March 21, is going all out to make the actions as large as possible.
Please send endorsements to our website at www.natassembly.org, where an endorsement form is provided, or by writing natassembly@aol.com. While we would like to have these endorsements for our records so that we can keep everyone updated regarding National Assembly activities, we will also forward them to the March 21 National Coalition website at www.PentagonMarch.org, where the latest list of endorsers can be viewed.
In solidarity,
Jerry Gordon
Secretary, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
www.natassembly.org
216-736-4704 for more info
P.S. Check out the National Assembly website to see our statement on Gaza, get information on March 21st organizing, learn about our July 10-12 national antiwar conference in Pittsburgh, make a donation, and participate in our discussion blog.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Wall Street Executive Air
http://www.markfiore.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row - U.S. Supreme Court
Legal Update
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
February 8, 2009
RobertRBryan@aol.com
New case filing in Supreme Court On February 4, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court docketed and accepted for filing the Petition for Writ of Certiorari, with supporting Appendix, that I had submitted December 19, 2008 on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. (AbuJamal v. Beard, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08-8483.) A copy of the petition is attached. The central issue in this case is racism in jury selection. The prosecution systematically removed people from sitting on the trial jury purely because of the color of their skin, that is, being black. The bigotry that killed Martin Luther King, Jr., so many years ago, has been rampant in the case of my client and is a central part of the state's quest to murder him in the name of the law.
Prosecution's separate Supreme Court petition In an entirely separate case (Beard v. Abu-Jamal, Sup. Ct. No. 08-652), the prosecution is seeking to overturn the victory we achieved last year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. (Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008).) In that ruling the court ordered a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Our Brief In Opposition will be filed in the Supreme Court on February 13, 2009.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense The legal defense for Mumia needs help. The costs for our litigation in two case before the Supreme Court are substantial. To help, please make your checks payable to the “National Lawyers Guild Foundation” (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). The donations are tax deductible, and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion Mumia remains on Pennsylvania's death row. We are in an epic struggle in which his life hangs in the balance. What occurs now in the Supreme Court will determine whether Mumia will have a new jury trial, or die at the hands of the executioner.
As I have previously pointed out, Mumia is in greater danger than at any time since his 1981 arrest. Your support and activism is needed. This great journalist and author does not belong on death row or in prison. We must not rest until he is free.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Israel-Palestine: A Land in Fragments
A film by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)-- 2 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ewF7AXn3dg
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Resolution regarding an IVAW Position Statement on Afghanistan
http://ivaw.org/afghanistan/resolution
Whereas, Iraq Veterans Against the War is an organization that has opened its membership to veterans of the war in Afghanistan;
Whereas, the war in Afghanistan is continuing into its seventh year with rising casualties among the Afghan people, and with U.S. and Coalition forces facing their deadliest year since the invasion;
Whereas a primary motivation for the prolonged occupation of Afghanistan is competition between the U.S., Russia and China for control of oil and natural gas resources in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea;
Whereas, the military occupation is creating tension and resentment among the Afghan people, to include Afghan women, many of whom are calling for the removal of all foreign occupying troops;
Whereas, the Afghanistan war dehumanizes the Afghan people and denies them their right to self-determination;
Whereas, our military is being exhausted by involuntary extensions, and activations of the Reserve, National Guard and Individual Ready Reserve, and by repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan;
Whereas, service members are facing serious health consequences due to our government's negligence in Iraq and Afghanistan and mismanagement of the Department of Veterans Affairs;
Whereas, there is no battlefield solution to terrorism, and any escalation of the war in Afghanistan will only serve to exacerbate the plight of the Afghan people, destabilize the region, and further the breakdown of our military;
Therefore, be it resolved that Iraq Veterans Against the War calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces in Afghanistan and reparations for the Afghan people, and supports all troops and veterans working towards those ends.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
RESISTING INDIVIDUAL READY RESERVE (IRR) RECALL
Courage to Resist.
Dear Friends,
Courage to Resist has published an IRR overview that contains critical
information for anyone nearing the end of their military enlistment and the
hundreds of thousands of recently discharged veterans still eligible for
involuntary recall. I don't believe this information exists anywhere else,
so I'm hoping you might be able to help distribute, link and share this as
broadly as possible so that those who need it the most might find it.
Jeff Paterson
Courage to Resist Project Director
RESISTING INDIVIDUAL READY RESERVE (IRR) RECALL
Courage to Resist.
Online version:
http://couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/658/1/
PDF leaflet:
http://couragetoresist.org/x/images/stories/pdf2/irr-leaflet.pdf
Additional related IRR information from Courage to Resist:
http://couragetoresist.org/irr
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) This Could Be Another Jenna
February 6th, 2009
By James, Gabriel, Clarissa, William, Dani, and the rest of the team at:
ColorOfChange.org
2) Disappearing Jobs
Editorial
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/opinion/07sat1.html
3) U.S. Aided a Failed Plan to Rout Ugandan Rebels
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and ERIC SCHMITT
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/africa/07congo.html?ref=world
4) U.S. Military Violated Security Agreement Twice in 2 Weeks, Iraqi Leaders Say
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?ref=world
5) Israel Deports Activists From Intercepted Vessel
By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?ref=world
6) Florida’s Crossroads of Foreclosure and Despair
By DAMIEN CAVE
February 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/us/08lehigh.html?ref=us
7) Holbrooke Says Afghan War ‘Tougher than Iraq’
By NICHOLAS KULISH and HELENE COOPER
February 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/world/europe/09munich.html?hp
8) The Destructive Center
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
February 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1
9) No Welfare, No Work
Editorial
February 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09mon2.html
10) NATO Chief Presses Afghan Drug Fight
By JUDY DEMPSEY
February 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/asia/12nato.html?ref=world
11) The Prison Overcrowding Fix
By SOLOMON MOORE
February 11, 2009
News Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/us/11prisons.html?ref=us
12) Details of a Trimmer Stimulus Emerge
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE
February 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/politics/13stimulus-web.html?hp
13) Peanut Products Sent Out Before Tests
By GARDINER HARRIS
February 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/health/policy/12peanut.html?ref=us
14) Study Shows Big Drop in Households’ Net Worth
By REUTERS
February 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/economy/13fed.html?ref=business
15) Ex-G.M. Workers Try to Reboot Their Lives
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
February 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/13janesville.html?hp
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) This Could Be Another Jenna
February 6th, 2009
By James, Gabriel, Clarissa, William, Dani, and the rest of the team at:
ColorOfChange.org
On December 8th, 17-year-old Billey Joe Johnson died from a gunshot wound to the head. Police say he killed himself with a shotgun after being stopped for a simple traffic violation in Lucedale, Mississippi.1 Several things seem to cast doubt on the official story, including an independent investigation that concluded it would have been impossible for the shot that killed Johnson to have been self-inflicted.
Many on the ground smell a murder and a cover-up. We don't have all the answers, but it's clear that in the racially divided town of Lucedale, all the ingredients exist for a miscarriage of justice.
Your voice can help ensure that the District Attorney feels the presence of a national spotlight when he presents his findings to a grand jury on Monday. Let him know that anything short of a thorough investigation will result in massive attention and a call for outside intervention.
Can you lend your voice to demand justice for Billey Joe?
http://colorofchange.org/billeyjoe/?id=1968-349563
From the beginning, the District Attorney has treated the investigation of Billey Joe's death as a suicide or the result of an accidental self-inflicted injury. Based on his public statements and interactions with Billey Joe's family, it appears that the District Attorney hasn't looked into whether Billey Joe was killed by an officer or someone else. Again, we don't have all the answers, but here's what we do know:
Billey Joe was at his former girlfriend's house minutes before the killing.2 He never entered the house, but police were called to respond to an attempted burglary there.3 This fact was not a part of the original story given by the police.
Billey Joe's family says that his ex-girlfriend had been staying at her father's house because her mother threw her out for dating Billey Joe (she is White and Billey Joe was Black). They said Billey Joe knew to only go to the house when the girl's father was not present, that the two of them were on good terms even after they had broken up, and that the breakup was largely because of pressure from her father. The family also claims that there is a relationship between the officer present at the scene of Billey Joe's death and the girl's father.
A witness heard two shots, not one, at the scene where Billey Joe died, according to an independent investigation launched by the Mississippi NAACP. The pathologist in that investigation has indicated that it would be impossible for a bullet from a self-inflicted shot to enter in the manner that it did. He also said that given the length of Billey Joe's arms and the length of the shotgun, it would have been impossible for him to hold the weapon and fire it at himself.
Billey Joe was a star athlete with scholarship offers from more than half a dozen schools. No one--including family, friends, and coaches--could think of a reason that Billey Joe would want to end his life.4,5,6
A true investigation would sort out fact from rumor. But we can't be sure that Johnson's family will get the investigation it deserves. In the case of the Jena 6 we saw a District Attorney and a judge incapable of carrying out justice in a racially charged environment. In the recent case of the murder of Oscar Grant by police (and many like it), we see how unlikely it is for District Attorneys to do their job when the suspect is an officer of the law. But in both these cases, public pressure has made all the difference by shining a spotlight on local authorities.
In the case of Billey Joe Johnson, we're looking for the truth and for justice. A minute of your time can help ensure his family gets both:
http://colorofchange.org/billeyjoe/?id=1968-349563
Thanks and Peace,
-- James, Gabriel, Clarissa, William, Dani, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
February 6th, 2009
References:
1. "Mississippi family looks for answers in son's death," USA Today, 12-22-08
http://tinyurl.com/aul9hd
2. "Autopsy not completed in football star's death," The Sun Herald, 1-06-09
http://www.sunherald.com/local/story/1050689.html
3. Police report and radio logs detailing events leading up to Johnson's death, posted on WKRG-TV website
http://www.wkrg.com/news/flash_paper/12_19_08_billy_joe_johnson/
4. "CNN Newsroom: Mystery Death in Mississippi," CNN, 12-17-08
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/17/cnr.07.html
5. "Mississippi running back Billey Joe Johnson, Jr. ran for 1,559 yards and 24 touchdowns before his death in December," Collin Mickle-Press-Register, 1-11-09
http://tinyurl.com/cs7cjm
6. "Player's death report leaves many puzzled," The Sun Herald, 12-21-08
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_11280331
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Disappearing Jobs
Editorial
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/opinion/07sat1.html
It was impossible to argue with President Obama on Friday when he said that the dismal new jobs report — the largest loss in 13 consecutive months of decline — made it all the more urgent for Congress to pass the economic stimulus and recovery package.
Our only objection was that he didn’t go further: In fact, the jobs report underscored the need for an even bigger boost than is contemplated by the measure, now clocking in at roughly $800 billion.
One of Mr. Obama’s goals for the stimulus is to create three million to four million jobs. That is more or less in line with official job losses thus far in the recession: Employers shed 598,000 jobs in January, bringing the number of jobs axed since the recession began in December 2007 to 3.6 million. But as the Economic Policy Institute pointed out in a research note on Friday, the economy needed to have added about 1.7 million jobs over the past 13 months just to keep up with population growth. As a result, the economy already is coming up short by more than five million jobs.
Other data in January’s report are also worse than meets the eye. The unemployment rate rose from 7.2 percent in December to 7.6 percent, which works out to 11.6 million unemployed workers. The larger the ranks of the unemployed, the harder it becomes to find a job, leading to longer stretches of unemployment and a bigger hit to families’ finances.
Those are not the only manifestation of deepening job gloom. The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who need full-time jobs and jobless workers who have given up looking because their prospects are so dim, plunged deeper into double-digit territory in January, reaching 13.9 percent — or 21.7 million workers — up from 13.5 percent in December.
Rising unemployment and underemployment means that the need for unemployment benefits and income support — such as help in paying for health care — are rising faster than Congress can get its act together to provide relief.
Though both the House and Senate versions of the stimulus package currently include bolstered unemployment pay, the January numbers should compel lawmakers to do more when they write the final version of the bill. Currently, the bills boost unemployment benefits by $25 a week. That easily could be increased.
Similarly, aid to states, which preserves and creates jobs for government employees as well as private contractors — while meeting vital needs for health care and education — should be a prime area for more federal support, not less, as Senate Republicans were clamoring for this week.
Some of the more baldly partisan Republicans seemed to have decided to put the nation’s economic health in grave jeopardy so they can replay a fight they lost big in the 2008 elections. Dragging out the tired economic theories that destroyed Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and then sank Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, they were even calling for ending the whole discussion about a real stimulus package and just cutting taxes instead.
Fearful Democrats, instead of standing firm on their principles with Mr. Obama’s backing, spent the week cutting here and cutting there to make it look as if they were being more careful about the stimulus and recovery package.
This is the reality: Jobs are being cut and unemployment is rising in virtually all sectors of the economy and among virtually all demographic groups. At the same time, families’ housing values and retirement savings have been pummeled; fully 13.6 million Americans now owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, and retirement accounts have collectively lost more than $2 trillion in little more than a year. And by all indications, there is worse yet to come.
The real work will come next week when the House and Senate try to reconcile their different versions of the economic package. No lawmaker has constituents who are unaffected, if not in distress, perhaps severe distress. No lawmaker has an excuse to delay or diminish the help Americans need now.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) U.S. Aided a Failed Plan to Rout Ugandan Rebels
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and ERIC SCHMITT
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/africa/07congo.html?ref=world
DUNGU, Congo — The American military helped plan and pay for a recent attack on a notorious Ugandan rebel group, but the offensive went awry, scattering fighters who carried out a wave of massacres as they fled, killing as many as 900 civilians.
The operation was led by Uganda and aimed to crush the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal rebel group that had been hiding out in a Congolese national park, rebuffing efforts to sign a peace treaty. But the rebel leaders escaped, breaking their fighters into small groups that continue to ransack town after town in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting and clubbing to death anyone in their way.
The United States has been training Ugandan troops in counterterrorism for several years, but its role in the operation has not been widely known. It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, according to senior American military officials. They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.
No American forces ever got involved in the ground fighting in this isolated, rugged corner of Congo, but human rights advocates and villagers here complain that the Ugandans and the Congolese troops who carried out the operation did little or nothing to protect nearby villages, despite a history of rebel reprisals against civilians.
The troops did not seal off the rebels’ escape routes or deploy soldiers to many of the nearby towns where the rebels slaughtered people in churches and even tried to twist off toddlers’ heads.
“The operation was poorly planned and poorly executed,” said Julia Spiegel, a Uganda-based researcher for the Enough Project, which campaigns against genocide. The massacres were “the L.R.A.’s standard operating procedure,” she said. “And the regional governments knew this.”
American officials conceded that the operation did not go as well as intended, and that villagers had been left exposed.
“We provided insights and alternatives for them to consider, but their choices were their choices,” said one American military official who was briefed on the operation, referring to the African forces on the ground. “In the end, it was not our operation.”
Maj. Felix Kulayigye, a Ugandan military spokesman, declined to discuss the American involvement and simply said, “There was no way to prevent these massacres.”
The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls. Witnesses say the fighters have kidnapped hundreds of children and marched them off into the bush, the latest conscripts in their slave army.
In Dungu, a 10-year-old girl lay comatose on a metal hospital cot, her face glazed with sweat, her pulse hammering in her neck. She had been sexually assaulted in a nearby village and shot in both legs, bullet through bone.
“The people who did this,” said her nurse, Rosa Apamato, “are demons.”
This used to be a tranquil, bountiful spot where villagers grew corn, beans and peanuts, more or less untouched by the violence that has plagued Congo’s east. But thousands have recently fled, and the town is now crawling with soldiers, aid workers and United Nations personnel, the movable cast that marks the advent of a serious problem.
The villagers who remain are terrified and confused. The Lord’s Resistance Army is not a Congolese movement. It is from Uganda. But once again, it seems that foreign armies are settling their scores in Congo, and the Congolese are paying the price. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Congo became the battlefield for more than a dozen armies and rebel groups from neighboring African countries, and several million Congolese died.
Even now, Rwandan troops are battling militants hundreds of miles south of here. Congo invited the Rwandans in to go after a different rebel group and its commander, much in the same way it allowed Ugandan soldiers to cross the border and hunt down the Lord’s Resistance Army.
“Who are these L.R.A.?” asked Bertrand Bangbe, who had been axed in the head and left for dead. “Why are they here? Why are they killing us?”
There are few answers. The Lord’s Resistance Army may have had some legitimate grievances when it started more than 20 years ago as a cultish rebellion to overthrow the Ugandan government. The fighters hailed their leader, Joseph Kony, as a prophet and a savior for the historically oppressed Acholi people. The movement even proclaimed to be fighting for the Ten Commandants.
But it soon devolved into something more sinister. The Lord’s Resistance Army killed tens of thousands of people in northern Uganda, slicing off lips and terrorizing children, before the Ugandan Army drove it out about five years ago. Mr. Kony then marched his prepubescent death squads and dozens of teenage brides to Garamba National Park, a vast reserve of elephants and swamps near the border of Uganda and Sudan.
The Ugandan government has tried coaxing Mr. Kony out. But the International Criminal Court in The Hague has indicted him on charges of crimes against humanity, and he has long insisted the charges be dropped. In November, as he has many times before, Mr. Kony refused to sign a peace treaty.
After that, Major Kulayigye said, “the only option left open to us was the military option.”
The Ugandan government asked the American Embassy in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, for help, and the request was sent up the chain of command in November to President Bush, who personally authorized it, a former senior Bush administration official said.
The American advisers and Ugandan officers used satellite imagery and Ugandan field intelligence reports to triangulate where they believed Mr. Kony and his fighters were hiding. The plan was for the Ugandan military to bomb his camp and then cut off his 700 or so fighters with more than 6,000 Ugandan and Congolese ground troops. On Dec. 13, the day before the attack, several American advisers traveled to a staging site near the Uganda-Congo border for a final coordination meeting, a senior American military official said.
Thick fog delayed the attack by several hours, Ugandan officials said, and they lost the element of surprise. By the time Ugandan helicopters bombed Mr. Kony’s hut, it was empty. Ugandan foot soldiers, hiking many miles through the bush, arrived several days later and recovered a few satellite phones and some guns.
The Ugandans say they have destroyed the rebels’ control center and food supplies, rescued around 100 abducted children and killed several fighters, including some commanders. But the operation has been widely criticized by human rights groups as essentially swatting a hornet’s nest.
On Dec. 25, villagers in Faradje, a town near the national park, walked out of church as 50 to 70 armed men emerged from the bush. Most villagers had no idea who they were. Some Congolese towns had been attacked before the offensive, yet the raids were not so widespread that word would have trickled back to remote places like Faradje.
The armed men spoke a strange language, probably Acholi, but there was no misunderstanding them after the first machete was swung. Whoever could run, did. Christine Ataputo, who owns the one restaurant in town, watched from the forest floor as the rebels raped, burned and butchered. She was lying on her belly when she saw that her 18-year-old daughter, Chantal, had been captured.
“They took her away on a rope,” she said.
Chantal has not been seen since, and even more than a month later, Faradje still has the whiff of char. Around 150 people were killed Christmas Day. Several other villages, some more than 100 miles away, were simultaneously attacked. In one town, after the rebels killed 80 churchgoers, they ate the villagers’ Christmas feast and then dozed among the corpses, according to Human Rights Watch, which documented the massacre.
“These guys are just moving around, doing whatever they want, killing, raping, whatever,” said Charles Gaudry, a field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, which says more than 50 villages in the area where it works have been attacked. “There’s zero protection.”
The United Nations has more than 16,000 peacekeepers in Congo, including about 250 in Dungu. But United Nations officials said they were spread too thin in other war-racked parts of eastern Congo to take on the Lord’s Resistance Army. At the time of the nearby massacres, the peacekeepers in Dungu were guarding the airfield.
Villagers across the area are now banding together in local self-defense forces, arming themselves with ancient shotguns and rubber slingshots. In the past in Congo, home-grown militias have only complicated the dynamic and led to more abuses.
Even where there are Congolese troops, there is not necessarily protection. The family of the 10-year-old girl in the hospital said she might have been shot by a Congolese soldier who missed the rebel who was assaulting her.
The other night, by the light of a flashlight, a young doctor took one look at the girl and ordered her evacuation to Goma, a city along the Congo-Rwanda border. She may lose a leg, he said. But at least in Goma there is a special hospital to treat girls who have been raped. In eastern Congo, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of them.
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Dungu, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) U.S. Military Violated Security Agreement Twice in 2 Weeks, Iraqi Leaders Say
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders in Kirkuk Province have charged that twice in the last two weeks the American military violated the hard-won security agreement signed in November by attacking Iraqi criminal suspects without coordinating with Iraqi security forces.
The first episode occurred last month, when American soldiers fatally shot an Iraqi couple in their home near Kirkuk after the wife reached for a pistol hidden under a mattress, American and Iraqi officials said. The couple’s 8-year-old daughter was wounded. The shooting was reported at the time, but the charges of failure to coordinate emerged on Friday, hours after an American raid in which a 58-year-old man was shot and killed outside of Kirkuk.
The two episodes highlight the difficulties the Americans and Iraqis are encountering as they try to comply with the security agreement’s requirement that American troops have “full coordination with Iraqi authorities,” particularly in places where there are still active counterinsurgency operations.
In some places, Iraqi and American special forces are conducting many of the raids, but it appears that they do not necessarily contact units stationed in the field. Interviews with witnesses to the Friday raid, including the 58-year-old man’s son, suggested it did not involve the military units that regularly patrol in the area.
The son, Nihad Muhammad Hassan al-Bachary, 16, described a sudden, brutal invasion of the family home. “The American forces stormed into our house, and they handcuffed me, my two brothers and my uncle,” the son said. “When my father came out of his room, they opened fire on him point blank and then they stuffed his body in a large, black plastic bag.”
The soldiers who came in were directed by an American in a military uniform, the son said, but unlike most soldiers, he had a beard. The other armed men with him were wearing masks and Iraqi commando uniforms and speaking in “Kurdish and inaccurate Arabic,” the son said. He said that his father was an Agriculture Ministry employee, and that several other family members were detained elsewhere in the village at the same time.
The police chief of the nearby city of Hawija said that he had not been warned of the raid, and that when his officers tried to enter the village, they were stopped by American soldiers. “An American force told us that, ‘There is a special force in there,’ ” said the police chief, Ibrahim al-Juboori.
“The police department for Hawija District had no knowledge of the operation,” he said. “The people who were arrested and the one that was killed were not known as terrorists.”
Hawija was a onetime stronghold for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown insurgent group that American intelligence believes has foreign leadership. Hussein Ali Saleh al-Juboori, a powerful local politician and the founder of the Hawija Awakening Council, which chased Al Qaeda from the area, warned that such episodes ran the risk of inspiring insurgents. “Hawija will become a center for resistance, not terrorism as it was before,” the politician said. “I have spoken with the Americans in Bachary and Kirkuk and the Joint Coordination Center, and they have no knowledge of what happened.
“There have been repeated breaches after the signing of the strategic agreement,” he said, citing the January case “when a man and his wife were killed and his daughter was injured. We demand immediate investigation.”
Iraqi Army commanders underscored the coordination problem. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said that the men who were detained and the man who was killed were suspected of manufacturing explosives, and that they had resisted arrest. But they said such considerations did not exempt Americans from the requirement to coordinate.
Col. Jassim Saadon, head of the Hawija force in the Iraqi Army, said that he, too, knew nothing of the raid until afterward. “There is a lack of coordination between the forces that execute the orders and the local forces,” he said.
Angriest was a high-ranking Iraqi commander. He said that the Americans had apologized, but said, “Upsetting and violating the families will not help the process at all. And though the Americans came down here to apologize for the incident, we said that we did not want an apology but precoordination.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press on this subject.
In the future, he said, military forces undertaking raids outside the city of Kirkuk without coordinating with his division would be treated as “hostile forces.” The only exceptions, he said, were “situations where a terrorist is arrested wearing an explosive belt or planting a bomb.”
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kirkuk.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Israel Deports Activists From Intercepted Vessel
By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
February 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM — Israeli officials said on Friday that they had deported most of the activists on a Gaza-bound cargo ship with humanitarian aid intercepted a day earlier by the Israeli Navy. The officials said Israel had sent on to Gaza 1,000 units of donated blood found aboard.
A military official said that some 15 of the people on board the ship were either Lebanese or Syrian and had been driven to Israel’s border areas with those two countries on Thursday night and sent across. The handful of remaining activists, citizens of European countries, were to be deported soon, the official said.
Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the military’s civil affairs department, said that apart from 1,000 liters of blood that had already been sent to Gaza, there were toys, food and medicine that would be handed over to a charity group and sent to Gaza on Sunday or Monday.
The boat, called The Brotherhood Ship, remained docked in the Israeli port of Ashdod and was to be sent back to Lebanon. The navy had stopped the boat out of what it called security concerns. A search found no weapons aboard.
Meanwhile, two rockets were shot from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday morning. Both landed in open areas and caused no injuries or damage, the military reported.
Israel has maintained a strict blockade of Gaza since Hamas took power there in a brief civil war with its secular rival, Fatah, in June 2007. In late December, Israel mounted a three-week military assault in Gaza that left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, also died.
Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from the United Nations.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Florida’s Crossroads of Foreclosure and Despair
By DAMIEN CAVE
February 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/us/08lehigh.html?ref=us
LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. — Desperation has moved into this once-middle-class exurb of Fort Myers, where hammers used to pound.
Its straight-ahead stare was hidden amid the chatter of 221 families waiting for free bread at Faith Lutheran Church on a recent Friday morning; and it appeared a block away a few days earlier, as laid-off construction workers in flannel shirts scavenged through trash bags at a home foreclosure, grabbing wires, CDs, anything that could be sold.
“I knew it was coming,” said Gloria Chilson, 56, the former owner of the house, as she watched strangers pick through her belongings. “You take what you can; you try not to care.”
Welcome to the American dream in high reverse. Lehigh Acres is one of countless sprawling exurbs that the housing boom drastically reshaped, and now the bust is testing whether the experience of shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart.
The changes in these mostly unincorporated areas outside cities like Charlotte, N.C., Las Vegas and Sacramento have been swift and vivid. Their best economic times have been immediately followed by their worst, as they have generally been the last to crest and the first to crash.
In Lehigh Acres, homes are selling at 80 percent off their peak prices. Only two years after there were more jobs than people to work them, fast-food restaurants are laying people off or closing. Crime is up, school enrollment is down, and one in four residents received food stamps in December, nearly a fourfold increase since 2006.
President Obama is scheduled to visit Fort Myers on Tuesday to promote his economic stimulus plan. But residents here tend to view it as the equivalent of an herbal remedy — it can’t hurt but it probably won’t heal. Instead, in church groups and offices, people call for “industry” and repeat one telling question: “What do we want to be when we grow up?”
“That’s one of things we struggle with: What is our identity?” said Joseph Whalen, 37, president of the Lehigh Acres Chamber of Commerce. “We don’t want to be the bedroom community of southwest Florida; we don’t want to be the foreclosure capital.”
A Legacy of the ’50s
Lehigh Acres, like much of Florida and many suburbs nationwide, was born with speculation in its DNA.
The area got its start in the 1950s when a Chicago pest control baron, Lee Ratner, and several partners bought thousands of acres of farmland and plotted about 100,000 lots. With Fort Myers, 15 miles to the west, developers left little room for schools, parks or even businesses.
What they sold was sun and quiet living.
“They used to bring 20 busloads a day,” said Bob Elliott, a former salesman for Mr. Ratner’s company who struck out on his own in 1982. “We had 300 customers, seven days a week.”
By 2000, the lots had been sold, but most stayed empty. Only about 30,000 people were living in an area roughly four times the size of Manhattan. The builders really started to arrive in 2004, setting up model homes on Lee Boulevard next to Mr. Elliott’s office with the faded wooden sign that said “$50 lots.”
Bill Spikowski, a city planning consultant in Fort Myers, said that because Lehigh Acres had so many parcels and few restrictions on what could be built, smaller companies battled for customers. From 2004 to the end of 2006, developers completed 13,183 units in Lehigh Acres — nearly doubling the total stock of 15,216 that existed in 2000, according to Lee County figures.
Residents remember the boom for its noise, with dump trucks lining the streets and power tools heard in nearly every neighborhood. Housing prices doubled, then tripled, and jobs were plentiful, nearly all of them tied to real estate.
Signs of trouble were ignored. “Sometimes houses would sell three or four times in a few months, and no one would move in,” Mr. Elliott said.
Then in 2007, it all went quiet. Houses stopped selling. Foreclosures multiplied. The median home price in the Fort Myers area dropped to $215,200 in December 2007, from a peak of $322,300 in December 2005. It had fallen to $106,900 two months ago.
Work disappeared with the profits. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Lee County lost a higher percentage of jobs (8.8 percent) from June 2007 to June 2008 than any other county in the nation. Unemployment in the county rose to 9.8 percent in November, from 3.5 percent in March 2007.
Lehigh Acres was particularly hard hit because it relied on construction. This was where the carpenters and exterminators of southwest Florida lived because it was more affordable or close to work. And by last spring, life as they knew it had come to an end.
The Downward Spiral
Trinkets for $1 were an early sign of trouble. Early last year, garage sales and estate auctions became more common in Lehigh Acres as families sold what they could to survive. No one seemed interested in buying whole houses, and foreclosures soon gave way to empty homes that became magnets for crime.
Thieves stole air conditioner parts for scrap. And on distant roads with only a few new homes and faded blue street signs from the ’50s — on Narcissus Boulevard, on Prospect Avenue — drug dealers moved in.
In 2007 and 2008, the Lee County Sheriff’s Department shut down more than 100 houses in Lehigh Acres where marijuana was being grown. In 2008, the police confiscated nearly 3,000 plants valued at nearly $7 million.
Last winter, Charlotte Rae Nicely, executive director of Lehigh Community Services, noticed something else. More people were going hungry. Demand was increasing at the food pantry she runs at a nondescript office park, with dozens of new faces appearing week after week, even as the population was declining.
Wondering what other social service agencies were experiencing, she decided to form a group that would coordinate assistance. It was the first sign that Lehigh Acres was fighting the recession in an organized way, and the group’s mission appeared in its name: Team Rescue.
The monthly meetings now include about a half-dozen churches, nonprofit groups, business owners and representatives from county government, including the sheriff’s office.
Discussion at one recent gathering centered on the host of troubles that follow unemployment — issues that until recently had rarely been seen in new American suburbs. Hunger was chief among them.
The organizations offering food in Lehigh Acres have seen demand increase by as much as 75 percent in the last year. And the people being served are no longer just the chronic poor.
The line at Faith Lutheran included a mix of ages, races and former income levels.
Luis Oquendo, 38, said he had been showing up for his weekly bread allotment since last fall, after full-time construction work disappeared.
Fred Csifortos, 62, a retiree surviving on $650 a month in disability payments, said the free food left more money for his medications.
Megan Brown, standing in line with her well-dressed daughters, Kayley, 2, and Sydney, 4, had come because she feared the worst. Her husband still had his job, she said, “but things are getting more and more tight.”
Team Rescue, of which Faith Lutheran is a member, considers itself successful, not just because it has helped more families but also because organizers believe that the links they are forming will be the foundation of a tighter community.
Ms. Nicely said she was especially encouraged by the Sheriff’s Department’s new “weed and seed” program, intended to revive Lehigh’s most troubled neighborhoods by involving residents in community policing and cleanup.
And home sales in Lee County are picking up, running roughly even with foreclosures.
“Six months ago, you might get one out of 20 houses with a multiple offer,” said Kevin Williamson, a real estate agent who has lived in Lehigh Acres for 22 years. “A couple of weeks ago, I had one with 13 offers.”
But no one here would describe Lehigh Acres as out of the woods. Real estate agents said the homes that are selling here typically go for only about $45,000, a third of what they cost to build. They predict that foreclosures will continue to keep prices low for two more years.
Job growth is also still nonexistent. Randy Burns, 50, the gregarious owner of Lehigh Discount Furniture, says he now receives 15 to 20 calls a week from people asking him to buy their furniture or help them move out of town — and he said he planned to leave, too.
“Until there’s jobs and foreclosures stop,” he said, “nothing’s going to change.”
The Latest Battle
Creating a community in a deepening recession, many here now say, feels harder than dealing with a Category 5 hurricane. Panic is a powerful headwind.
Voters defeated a proposal last year to incorporate Lehigh Acres, partly because residents feared higher taxes. And Team Rescue, for all its strength as a unified front, is still trying to figure out how to curb the spread of desperation.
Most recently the group has been struggling with a growing wave of families that either visit multiple food pantries using aliases or return the food to supermarkets for money or other items.
Ms. Nicely, at Lehigh Community Services, said that in November she started using a magic marker to blacken UPC symbols on cans so grocery stores would not accept them as returns.
“We even had to do that on the toys for Christmas,” Ms. Nicely said. Without such limits, she said, the neediest families might not be served.
Still, she often feels torn, saying, “I can’t be sure I wouldn’t do the same thing if I was a single parent and my kids were hungry.”
“The needs are so strong now,” she added, noting that there were more canned peas than peanut butter on her shelves because of growing demand. “They’ve never been this big before.”
A similar struggle between cohesion and chaos was also evident at a recent evangelical men’s meeting, where 8 of the 15 members said they had been laid off in the last year. Even as the group had helped some of the men cope, others said their families had been broken up by the stress.
And then there is Ms. Chilson. She lost her house partly because of the boom (if not for easy credit, she might not have refinanced her mortgage a few years ago), the bust (which led to her husband being laid off from his pest control job) and overspending (which led to more than $20,000 in credit card debt).
She and her husband had lived in their simple green ranch house for 18 years, and the night they were kicked out, they stayed across the street with an elderly man whom Ms. Chilson had often helped with his medication.
Ms. Chilson put her couch in an old friend’s house, her frozen steaks in another. And as she scrambled to find work and a place to rent, she decided to thank those she could.
At one point, she tried to vacuum a neighbor’s house as an act of appreciation.
But the vacuum stayed quiet. Ms. Chilson discovered that the electricity had been turned off because the bill had not been paid. Any day now, she said, her neighbor will be leaving Lehigh Acres with all the others.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Holbrooke Says Afghan War ‘Tougher than Iraq’
By NICHOLAS KULISH and HELENE COOPER
February 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/world/europe/09munich.html?hp
MUNICH — The war in Afghanistan will be “much tougher than Iraq,” President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan told a security conference here on Sunday.
“There is no magic formula in Afghanistan,” the envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, warned an audience of European policy makers and military planners. “There is no Dayton agreement in Afghanistan,” he added, referring to the peace accord he negotiated to end the war in Bosnia. “It’s going to be a long, difficult struggle.”
Mr. Holbrooke was part of a high-level American delegation at the annual Munich Security Conference over the weekend. The group, led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and including Gen. James Jones, the national security adviser, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the United States Central Command, did not paint a rosy picture of the situation in Afghanistan.
The American view of Afghanistan’s problems differed from that of its president, Hamid Karzai, who also spoke Sunday.
While Mr. Karzai acknowledged the security problems, he said that great progress had been made, from roads to schools to health services. In an address that at times sounded defensive, he said Afghanistan was neither a “narco-state” nor a “failed state,” as critics have labeled it.
He called again for reconciliation with Taliban forces “who are not part of Al Qaeda, who are not part of terrorist networks, who want to return to their country.” He also criticized NATO over the number of civilian casualties it has incurred in the course of battling the insurgency.
American officials at the conference questioned the “reality gap” between Mr. Karzai’s presentation and what they see as the facts on the ground. The pervasive corruption in the country is viewed as a central reason that the Afghan leader has fallen out of favor with the Obama administration. Mr. Karzai faces an election in August.
General Petraeus’s comments, on the other hand, were greatly anticipated as the final day of the conference got under way. He is widely credited for the improved security situation in Iraq, where he was the senior commander during the troop increase known as the surge. Expectations are running high that he can repeat the success of that strategy in Afghanistan.
General Petraeus spoke of the need for outposts and patrol bases in the provinces. “You can’t commute to work” when conducting counterinsurgency operations, he said Sunday. “A nuanced appreciation of local situations is essential” to understanding “the tribal structures, the powerbrokers, the good guys and the bad guys, local cultures and history,” he said.
“There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan,” said General Petraeus, adding that he “would be remiss if I did not ask individual countries to examine very closely what forces and other contributions they can provide,” ahead of the elections in August. He said needs included not only ground forces but also an array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, military police, special operations, cargo and attack helicopters and more. President Obama is planning to send as much as 30,000 additional troops to try to turn the tide in the war against insurgents.
Some NATO allies have been slow to contribute additional forces.
In his comments, General Jones was critical of the effort to stabilize the country thus far. “The international coordination was spotty at best,” he said. “We tended to focus too much on the military reconstruction part, which was important but not the only thing that should have been done.”
The Americans were not alone in their calls for a more robust effort. Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister of Poland, called Afghanistan a test for NATO, and emphasized that the security situation had to improve immediately. “If this year we don’t turn the tide it’s going to be much harder later on,” he said.
Britain’s defense secretary, John Hutton, made what may have been the harshest comments directed at the alliance’s prosecution of the war, accusing it of an obsession with bureaucracy. “What I want from NATO is more of a war-time mentality,” he said.
In an interview on Saturday, Vice President Biden expressed sympathy for the challenges Mr. Karzai faces in governing Afghanistan. “Karzai has an incredibly difficult job,” he said.
“Do I think, me speaking, Joe Biden, think he could do more? Yes. Do I understand why from his perspective he might think he couldn’t do more? Yes. Does there ultimately over the next year have to be a change in appointing strong governors? Having a police force that is free of corruption? Cracking down more on the corruption within his own government? The answer is yes. Yes, all of the above has to occur.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) The Destructive Center
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
February 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1
What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.
One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.
The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.
On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the “flip your house to your brother” provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.
All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.
But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.
After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.
Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.
Mr. Obama’s postpartisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead, he let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said — that increasing spending is the whole point of the plan.
And Mr. Obama got nothing in return for his bipartisan outreach. Not one Republican voted for the House version of the stimulus plan, which was, by the way, better focused than the original administration proposal.
In the Senate, Republicans inveighed against “pork” — although the wasteful spending they claimed to have identified (much of it was fully justified) was a trivial share of the bill’s total. And they decried the bill’s cost — even as 36 out of 41 Republican senators voted to replace the Obama plan with $3 trillion, that’s right, $3 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years.
So Mr. Obama was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists. And the centrists, predictably, extracted a pound of flesh — not, as far as anyone can tell, based on any coherent economic argument, but simply to demonstrate their centrist mojo. They probably would have demanded that $100 billion or so be cut from anything Mr. Obama proposed; by coming in with such a low initial bid, the president guaranteed that the final deal would be much too small.
Such are the perils of negotiating with yourself.
Now, House and Senate negotiators have to reconcile their versions of the stimulus, and it’s possible that the final bill will undo the centrists’ worst. And Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round. But this was his best chance to get decisive action, and it fell short.
So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.
For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”
No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) No Welfare, No Work
Editorial
February 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09mon2.html
Unemployment has been increasing sharply, but so far state welfare programs do not seem to be rising to the challenge. Despite the desperate economic times, the number of people receiving cash assistance is at or near a four-decade low. Welfare is a popular political target, but it is also often the last thing standing between poor people — many of them children — and destitution. States and the federal government need to do more to ensure that Americans get the help they need.
The welfare reform of 1996 ended the idea of welfare as an entitlement. Federal funds were sent as block grants to the states, which were given more discretion over how to spend the money.
The new model included work requirements and limits on how many years people could receive benefits. With the economy strong, the reforms succeeded in moving many people off the rolls and employment rose. Today, there are few jobs available for people on the rolls to be moved into. Welfare programs should be expanding, but as Jason DeParle recently reported in The Times, they often have not been.
Michigan, whose unemployment rate last October was over 9 percent, cut its welfare rolls 13 percent last year. Of the 12 states where unemployment increased most, eight had welfare rolls that held steady or declined.
The states clamored for the increased discretion. Now, in the worst economic times since the reforms passed, they need to use that discretion appropriately. They should be removing overly onerous obstacles to receiving benefits, rolling back work requirements, and doing better outreach to people in need of assistance.
The federal government also has to do more. The stimulus plan pending in Congress may make much-needed matching grants available to states that expand their welfare programs. That would be a good start, but Congress should look for other ways to prod states to provide adequate benefits to their neediest residents.
It should also expand unemployment insurance so states can cover jobless part-time workers, another sizeable group of people falling through the cracks.
Ever since Ronald Reagan gleefully campaigned against “welfare queens,” welfare has been on the political defensive. The truth is, there will always be people who need to rely on welfare, especially when the economy takes a grim turn. Civilized societies make sure that when people are in desperate need of help, the money is there to take care of them.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) NATO Chief Presses Afghan Drug Fight
By JUDY DEMPSEY
February 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/asia/12nato.html?ref=world
BERLIN — NATO will remain within international law when it proceeds with new measures to kill drug traffickers in Afghanistan and bomb drug processing laboratories to deprive the Taliban of its main financing, the alliance’s secretary general said Wednesday.
The official, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said that “a number of buffers and filters” had been put in place to safeguard the legality of combatingwhat he termed the nexus between the insurgency and narcotics.
“It is according to international law,” he said. “And if nations at a certain stage think that they would rather not participate, they will not be forced to participate.”
Two weeks ago, the alliance was embroiled in controversy after Gen. John Craddock, the NATO commander who is also chief of American forces in Europe, said troops in Afghanistan would fire on individuals responsible for supplying heroin refining laboratories with opium without need for evidence.
In a letter to Gen. Egon Ramms, a German who heads the NATO command center responsible for Afghanistan, General Craddock said that “it was no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective.”
General Ramms questioned the legality of the proposal, warning that it would violate international law and rules governing armed conflict. General Ramms’s letter was leaked, provoking a debate within NATO about the conditions and circumstances under which troops could attack drug laboratories.
Mr. de Hoop Scheffer ordered an investigation into the leak. “Our enemies and opponents in Afghanistan are reading this leak,” he said. “They are not stupid.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) The Prison Overcrowding Fix
By SOLOMON MOORE
February 11, 2009
News Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/us/11prisons.html?ref=us
In San Francisco last week, a federal court was hearing final arguments in the prison overcrowding lawsuit that led Monday to an unprecedented decision to reduce the nation’s largest prison system by one-third. Just a few blocks away, a state appellate court was affirming a life sentence for Ali Foroutan, convicted of possession of 0.03 gram of methamphetamine.
Critics of California’s justice system say Mr. Foroutan’s sentence under the “three-strikes law,” which mandates 25 years to life in prison for three-time felons, is the kind of punishment that has made the state’s prisons the most overcrowded in the nation.
Federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that packed facilities were the chief impediment to adequate health care in prisons — a system so flawed it was tantamount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Monday’s ruling signaled the court’s intention to cap the number of prisoners at about 101,000, a reduction of 55,000. It came after more than a decade of federal court orders from exasperated judges who demanded that the state improve its facilities and personnel, after the appointment of the most powerful federal receivership since the days of forced racial integration in the South, and after the death of scores of prisoners who committed suicide or died of preventable illnesses.
The judges encouraged the state to negotiate with inmates’ lawyers to cut the prison population from 156,000, which is about double the system’s capacity, within three years. If the state refuses to negotiate such a plan, the judges could order specific actions, including shortened prison sentences, diversion of nonviolent felons to county programs, and parole reforms that would cut down recidivism.
Few releases of prisoners would be necessary to reduce the prison population if the state carried out sentencing and parole reforms, which could save $903 million a year, according to the federal judges. They also argued that such reforms could be achieved without jeopardizing public safety.
Attorney General Jerry Brown of California vowed to appeal the judges’ final order to the United States Supreme Court, a prospect that could delay the carrying out of the prison population cap or overturn it.
The case is significant because of the scale of the proposed prisoner reduction, and also because it shines a harsh light on the failures of state government to address the problem for years.
Decades of tough-on-crime laws coupled with a failure to finance prison programs have left prisoners stacked three bunks high in prison gymnasiums and hallways throughout the state. With few probation and parole programs available, about two-thirds of all ex-convicts return to prison within three years.
California’s 13-year-old three-strikes law, which doubles sentences for second-time felons, and reserves life sentences for even nonviolent third-felony offenders like Mr. Foroutan, has also increased the prison population by thousands. As of March 2008, there were 41,284 prisoners serving time under the three-strikes law. In 2005, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that the law cost the state $500 million annually.
California is the only state in the nation that paroles 98 percent of released inmates, even if they have completed their sentences. About 70,000 parolees return to prison every year. Nationally, states parole an average of 40 percent of their released inmates.
“That is a major reason for the overcrowding problem,” said Joan Petersilia, a parole expert at the RAND Corporation. “Everybody goes on parole in California,” she said. “Everybody serves at least one year” on parole. Many parolees go back to prison for violations, including failed drug tests.
But Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission, a state-financed watchdog organization, said sentencing reform was the key to reducing prison population.
The Legislature, Mr. Drown says, has added thousands of new penalties for new and old crimes. “We don’t track how judges are sentencing people on a statewide basis,” he said. “We don’t have a sentencing policy.”
In other states, sentencing commissions monitor penalties to help policy makers anticipate how many prisoners will be coming and for how long.
California has no such data, Mr. Drown said. Proposed sentencing commissions have been defeated in the Legislature at least 10 times, according to Ms. Petersilia.
This case began not as an overcrowding lawsuit but as an effort to address inadequate health care. After the state failed to improve its care, Judge Thelton E. Henderson appointed a federal receiver to take over the medical system, and the receiver has demanded billions of state dollars to build health care facilities.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has responded with a mix of conciliatory gestures — supporting an as-yet underfinanced initiative to build space for 53,000 prisoners — and defiance, as when he called for the dissolution of the receivership.
Eventually the receiver concluded that new prison facilities could not be added quickly enough to stem the deaths and injuries to prisoners or to outpace the rising prison population.
Lawyers for the state have argued that the federal courts lack the authority to order prison reforms costing billions of dollars, especially at a time when California is facing a $40 billion deficit.
Counties in California say they cannot afford to serve parolees’ rehabilitation needs without additional financing, as many other states do.
Kara P. Dansky, a lecturer at Stanford Law School, believes that the judges may have the authority to push through sweeping reforms, including more financing for counties, under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
The state disagrees that the court has such authority and plans to appeal to the Supreme Court, which could delay any outcome. Ms. Dansky said policy makers would be watching the case closely. “This is one of the areas that the law is unclear on because we’ve never seen a case like this,” she said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Details of a Trimmer Stimulus Emerge
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE
February 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/politics/13stimulus-web.html?hp
WASHINGTON — The new stimulus package seemed to defy Washington’s peculiar laws of physics, where numbers that go up don’t often come back down.
But by producing a compromise with a sticker price of about $789 billion — less than the amount approved in either the House or the Senate — Congress appears to have ensured quick passage. Indeed, the Senate may begin debate on the package Thursday and may even pass it before the House, which would endorse it by the end of the week.
The stimulus bill initially passed by the House had a projected cost of $820 billion, on the high end of the White House’s recommended range. The Senate then went even higher, to $838 billion. And yet Congressional leaders and the Obama administration have settled on a final deal that lopped nearly 4 percent off the House bill and nearly 6 percent from the Senate version.
Not that the compromise satisfied all Congressional leaders. “This bill was meant to be a stimulus that was timely, targeted and temporary,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, said Thursday on the Senate floor. “Unfortunately, it appears to be none of the above.”
Since winning the White House and control of Congress, Mr. McConnell went on, “Democrats have been making up for lost time with a government spending spree on the taxpayer credit card.”
The reductions in the two versions came after more than 24 hours of direct, rapid-fire negotiations between Congress and the administration, and after weeks of debate over the particulars in the legislation that helped officials quickly find the areas where they could pare back. All sides had to give, and some programs dropped like stones.
That included even President Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut proposal, which he initially promised would give individuals up to $500 and families up to $1,000. In the end, those numbers fell to $400 for individuals and $800 for couples, lopping about $30 billion from the cost of the original plan.
Social security and disability recipients will get a one-time payment of $250, down from an original proposal of $300.
One of the single biggest reductions was a cut of $25 billion from a state fiscal stabilization fund that will largely be used for education. The House had proposed $79 billion; the Senate reduced it to $39 billion. The final agreement fell in between, with an added adjustment demanded by House Democrats that will allow states to use some of that money for the renovation and repair of school buildings.
That agreement came only after senators who were crucial to the deal insisted on removing a separate line-item that would have provided $16 billion for school construction.
And while the cuts were designed to meet the demands of centrist senators, including three crucial Republicans who insisted on a smaller bill, it was far from clear if the reductions would ultimately be seen as either good politics or good economics.
Some economists have warned that the package may be too small, given the grave condition of the economy. And, as Mr. McConnell’s remarks underscored, the cut of nearly $50 billion from the Senate proposal was not enough to quiet conservative critics who have said the package is still bloated and will only burden future generations of taxpayers.
Other cuts could be found throughout the huge package of tax breaks and new government spending. The Senate had proposed a $15,000 tax incentive for all home-buyers, a generous morsel that had real estate brokers smiling. But the final deal falls back to a House proposal that would provide much less money and would limit the provision to first-time home-buyers within certain income limits.
Although details were still being worked out, officials said that eligible first-time homebuyers would be able to claim a credit of $8,000.
The House and Senate negotiators also agreed to scale back spending intended to help provide health insurance to the unemployed. The House originally proposed that the government subsidize 65 percent of private insurance, under a law known as Cobra, for one year after the loss of a job. The final deal calls for a 60 percent subsidy, and for only nine months. The House had also wanted to let states offer temporary Medicaid coverage to jobless individuals who did not qualify for Cobra coverage. That proposal was eliminated entirely.
The bill did, however, retain an extension of unemployment benefits, and a Senate provision exempted the first $2,400 of jobless benefits from federal taxes. It also retained a $70 billion provision to protect millions of middle-income taxpayers from having to pay the alternative minimum tax in 2009.
As the House and Senate prepared for final votes on the measure, hoping to get the bill on President Obama’s desk for his signature by Monday, a broad array of industries and interest groups were trying to calculate the winners and losers within the 700-odd pages of legislation.
The deal reflected a calculated gamble by Mr. Obama in the first weeks of his term. To win Republican votes, the final stimulus package is considerably leaner than what many economists say is now needed to jolt the economy, given its grave condition.
But it is unclear if Mr. Obama will be able to claim credit for bringing change to Washington by trying to win bipartisan support for his first major piece of legislation. Not a single House Republican voted for the bill when it came to the floor two weeks ago, and despite many compromises in the Senate, only three Republicans came on board.
House Democrats, who are angry over some cuts, particularly for school construction, initially balked at the deal, and delayed a final meeting on Wednesday between House and Senate negotiators.
Democratic officials said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi felt that Mr. Reid went too far by announcing a deal before it had been vetted by her office or discussed by House members in an emergency caucus meeting, setting off the last-minute flare-up.
Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference on Wednesday that the delay helped House Democrats win some final concessions, including the agreement to let states use some money in a fiscal stabilization fund for school renovations. “There is no question that one of our overriding priorities in the House was a very strong commitment to school construction,” she said. “That’s still in the bill.”
But they soon relented, and the meeting got under way in the packed Lyndon B. Johnson Room on the Senate side of the Capitol.
Despite the House Democrats’ show of pique, the stimulus bill is the most prominent display yet that their party now fully controls Washington. Their ability to push the package forward was a major change from the years of losing battles during President George W. Bush’s tenure. For Republicans, it underscored the limits of their party’s diminished ranks.
Even trimmed to $789 billion, the recovery measure will be the most expansive unleashing of the government’s fiscal firepower in the face of a recession since World War II.
And yet it seemed almost trifling, compared with the $2.5 trillion rescue plan for the financial system — a combination of loans to banks and incentives to bring private capital into the banking system — that was announced on Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Although the final legislative language of the stimulus bill was not immediately available, lawmakers said it contained more than $150 billion in public works projects for transportation, energy and technology, and $87 billion to help states meet rising Medicaid costs.
After huddling in Ms. Pelosi’s office on Tuesday until nearly midnight, top White House officials and Congressional leaders had all but ironed out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the stimulus by noon on Wednesday.
Even before the last touches were put to the bill, some angry Democrats said that Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders had been too quick to give up on Democratic priorities. “I am not happy with it,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “You are not looking at a happy camper. I mean they took a lot of stuff out of education. They took it out of health, school construction and they put it more into tax issues.”
Mr. Harkin said he was particularly frustrated by the money being spent on fixing the alternative minimum tax. “It’s about 9 percent of the whole bill,” he said, “Why is it in there? It has nothing to do with stimulus. It has nothing to do with recovery.”
But even as Congressional leaders and top White House officials went through the package with a carving knife, it was clear that the three Republicans who agreed to support the bill in the Senate wielded extraordinary power, and along with conservative Democrats, had put a firm stamp on the stimulus package.
For instance, negotiators opted to keep many of the Senate’s reduced spending provisions, but they were careful to maintain an additional $6.5 billion for medical research that was inserted at the insistence of Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is a cancer survivor. He was one of the three Republican supporters of the recovery package.
“I think it is an important component of putting America back on its feet,” Mr. Specter said, though he added that it was still a difficult vote “in view of the large deficit and national debt.”
The Senate bill came together only after a bipartisan group of centrist senators, led by Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, reached a deal to trim the cost of the package to $838 billion from more than $920 billion.
“These aren’t easy times, obviously for America,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who was also a member of that group. “Given the gravity of the circumstances economically, I thought it was important to be part of a process that could yield a consensus-based solution.”
But the majority of Republicans continued to criticize the stimulus measure on Wednesday as a bloated and ill-designed spending bonanza by Democrats on favored projects that would not help lift the economy out of recession but would permanently expand the federal government and plunge future generations of Americans deep into debt.
Indeed, the formal House-Senate conference meeting, usually an elaborate parliamentary ritual with reams of legislative paperwork strewn across cluttered conference tables, instead served mostly as a live, televised forum for some of the most powerful Democrats and Republicans in Congress to trade barbs.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, complained that despite Mr. Obama’s call for bipartisan cooperation, Republicans had largely been shut out. “We didn’t have a chance to negotiate,” Mr. Grassley said.
David Stout contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Peanut Products Sent Out Before Tests
By GARDINER HARRIS
February 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/health/policy/12peanut.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — The peanut processing company at the center of a salmonella outbreak did not await the results of contamination tests before shipping products to customers, Congressional investigators disclosed Wednesday.
When the plant’s manager was told that one such test had shown that the products were tainted with salmonella bacteria, he responded by saying, “Uh-oh,” according to documents released by the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee.
Michelle Pronto, an official at the laboratory that did the tests, told the investigators, “When I asked if he could get it back, he said it was on a truck heading to Utah.”
The plant, in Blakely, Ga., owned by the Peanut Corporation of America, shipped contaminated peanut products to distributors who sold them to schools and nursing homes, and the products were included in crackers and cookies made by some of the largest food makers in the world.
The disclosure came at a theatrical hearing of the investigations subcommittee that forced the company’s executives into the public eye. Subpoenaed to testify, Stewart Parnell, the president, and Sammy Lightsey, manager of the company’s Georgia plant, instead cited their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Shortly after the two settled into their seats, Representative Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon, brandished a large jar wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape and filled with contaminated cookies and crackers and asked the executives, “Would either of you be willing to take the lid off and eat any of these products?”
Clearly shaken, the men demurred and were dismissed a moment later. They swept out of the hearing room and were pursued by a group of photographers and reporters who shouted questions.
Eight deaths and more than 550 illnesses have been associated with the outbreak. It has also led to one of the largest food recalls in the nation’s history — including some items that remained in the House Republican cloakroom until Tuesday night, said Representative Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who is the subcommittee’s chairman.
On Monday, the Peanut Corporation closed its plant in Plainview, Tex., after tests found salmonella contamination there, too.
Federal investigators raided the Blakely plant on Monday as part of an investigation into whether the company had deliberately shipped contaminated products.
Documents made public on Wednesday by the investigations subcommittee show that the company stopped using a private laboratory because too many tests done there had showed contamination.
Mr. Parnell complained in an e-mail message to Mr. Lightsey that the positive salmonella tests were “costing us huge $$$$$ and causing obviously a huge lapse in time from the time we pick up peanuts until the time we can invoice.”
Ms. Pronto, the official at the laboratory that did the tests, J. Leek Associates, said the Peanut Corporation eventually stopped using the lab because it found too much contamination in its samples, according to documents provided by the committee.
“I called Mr. Lightsey to follow up on the recent discussion regarding the confirmed positive,” she told committee investigators, “and he confirmed that because of the high coliform results they were going to send samples to a different lab.”
Even after the company was identified as the source of the outbreak, Mr. Parnell sent an e-mail message to officials at the Food and Drug Administration pleading with them to allow the company to continue doing business. He wrote that they “desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money.”
He said the peanuts would be processed by its plant in Texas, which former employees described in interviews with The New York Times as “disgusting.”
Despite more than 12 tests in 2007 and 2008 that showed salmonella contamination in his company’s products, Mr. Parnell wrote an e-mail message to company employees on Jan. 12 saying, “We have never found any salmonella at all.”
As a result of the peanut contamination — one of dozens of similar outbreaks over the past decade — influential members of Congress have pledged major changes in the nation’s food protection system. In opening statements on Wednesday, members of the investigations subcommittee said changes would come quickly.
Peter Hurley, a police officer from Portland, Ore., came to the hearing with his wife and three young children, who squirmed throughout the long opening statements of committee members.
Mr. Hurley described how his 3-year-old, Jacob, came down with diarrhea and vomiting in early January. To get him to eat something, Jacob’s mother continued to feed him his favorite food, Austin Toasty Crackers With Peanut Butter, “the very food that we later found was the cause of his poisoning,” Mr. Hurley said.
Another witness, Jeff Almer, described how his mother, who had overcome cancer and other health problems, checked into a rehabilitation facility in Brainerd, Minn., to overcome a urinary tract infection. There she ate contaminated peanut butter and died.
“Cancer couldn’t claim her, but peanut butter did,” Mr. Almer said. “She was let down in the worst possible way by the very government whose responsibility it is to protect its citizens.”
Both Republican and Democratic members of the panel promised victims’ families that they would strengthen the nation’s food-safety net.
“I’ll just make this commitment to you: We’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this in your loved ones’ memories,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Study Shows Big Drop in Households’ Net Worth
By REUTERS
February 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/economy/13fed.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The collapse of United States housing and stock prices have likely pushed household net worth down by more than 20 percent in the past year, the Federal Reserve said on Thursday.
A Fed study of family finances estimates median family net worth fell by 17.8 percent while mean net worth declined by 22.7 percent.
The mean is the average, and the median is the middle value in a series of numbers.
Relative to 2004, median net worth slipped by 3.2 percent while mean net worth tumbled 12.7 percent.
The data was released as part of a Fed survey of household income and worth from 2004 to 2007.
But Fed economists said that as a result of the clear deterioration of the economy since 2007, they made additional estimates based on declines in the values of real estate, businesses and corporate equities through October 2008.
“A lot has happened since our survey ended around the end of 2007,” a Fed economist told reporters, citing the official beginning of the recession in December 2007.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Ex-G.M. Workers Try to Reboot Their Lives
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
February 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/13janesville.html?hp
JANESVILLE, Wis.— Kevin Corkhill grew up in a time and place where manufacturing was king. But ever since he was laid off from the gargantuan General Motors plant here, Mr. Corkhill seems bewildered by what the future holds.
He still has not decided whether to try to transfer to another G.M. plant, change occupations or return to school. Visiting the local United Automobile Workers hall recently, Mr. Corkhill stopped by a musty display case to show his 8-year-old son a black-and-white photograph inside — it was Mr. Corkhill’s grandfather carrying an artillery shell made at the plant during World War II.
“My grandfather worked here, and my father worked here,” he said. “The one thing my father told me is you work hard to make things better for the next generation, but now I worry we won’t be able to do that anymore.”
He turned his head to hide his tears from his son.
In this city, the loss of the 90-year-old G.M. plant and its 2,500 jobs has created a swirling mixture of anger, confusion, worry and hurt, underscoring how the recession is raising anxiety among workers nationwide. Combined with the shuttering of several nearby suppliers, the G.M. closing meant a loss of 4,000 jobs in this city of 64,000.
Their union contract has given these workers more relief than many.
With few local employers hiring, more than 1,000 of those laid off have returned to school, seeking to reboot their lives by studying welding, nursing, cooking and other fields, thanks, in part, to the contract’s tuition assistance.
The contract also provides a substantial financial cushion: 48 weeks of unemployment benefits at three-quarters pay, and health insurance. But when that runs out, it will be hard for them to find jobs paying close to the $28 an hour they averaged assembling Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans and GMC Yukons.
“We found that 76 percent of the laid-off people we’ve worked with made $20 or more an hour,” said Robert T. Borremans, executive director of the Southwest Wisconsin Workforce Development Board, which helps retrain and find jobs for laid-off workers. “There aren’t many $20-an-hour jobs in the area. If people need that much to maintain their lifestyle, they’ll need to look elsewhere.”
The hope is that things will be better a year from now. “What surprises me is how resilient and optimistic a lot of people have been,” said Mr. Borremans, whose agency nearly fills a shuttered Kmart. “They’re willing to work and rebuild.”
Many are moving on. Kimberly Pope, after 30 years at G.M., where she worked as an electrician, has applied to train as a radiology technician. Bill Truman, a laid-off truck driver for a G.M. supplier, is planning to study logistics and warehouse management. Diane Kudrna, one of 800 workers at the recently shuttered Lear factory here that made S.U.V. seats, has become a $12.50-an-hour veterinarian’s assistant.
And Robert Phelps, after 13 years at Lear, has plunged into a two-year culinary program at Blackhawk Technical College, eager to pursue his long-deferred dream of opening his own restaurant or catering service. Returning to school became financially possible, he said, only because his wife recently landed a job as a secretary for the school district.
“Things happen for a reason,” Mr. Phelps said. “I strongly feel there was some intervention here. The plant shutdown opened up a lot of doors for me.”
Blackhawk Tech’s enrollment has jumped by 1,800 over last year, a 23 percent increase.
“One-third to one-half of the people laid off will come our way,” said Eric Larson, the school’s president. “They’re looking for short-term education that will lead to high-wage jobs. My concern is, ‘Will the jobs be there once we get them retrained?’ ”
John Beckord’s job is to help make sure there are jobs. As the president of Forward Janesville, an economic development agency, he is optimistic, boasting that Janesville is centrally located between Milwaukee, Chicago and Minneapolis and has a hard-working, well-educated work force. Janesville just spent $72 million renovating its two high schools, and there are three state colleges within 10 miles.
“You have an eager local government that is willing to roll out the red carpet for companies, not the red tape,” Mr. Beckord said.
That may not be enough to attract business in a downturn. For that reason, many workers with 20 or more years at G.M. are trying to transfer to other G.M. plants and reach 30 years, which would entitle them to a full pension of $36,000 a year. Problem is, beleaguered G.M. is hiring few transfers.
Workers fear their generous safety net will prove inadequate if the recession is long and deep. What will happen to their families if they cannot find new jobs before their benefits run out?
Some pray that before their 48 weeks of unemployment benefits run out, G.M. will reopen the plant, enabling them to return to their jobs.
Others call that a pipe dream; Mr. Borremans termed it “reality avoidance.”
Mr. Corkhill, the grandson of the World War II veteran, had hoped to transfer to another plant, but has become pessimistic about his chances. To make ends meet, he has eliminated his telephone landline and cut back on premium cable television.
“I’m very angry about the whole economic picture,” he said.
The mood was far different last February when a candidate named Barack Obama campaigned at the plant, trumpeting a $150 billion jobs plan and saying that with some retooling and federal aid, “this plant will be here for another 100 years.”
But soon oil prices soared, the economy swooned and a 40 percent drop in S.U.V. sales sealed the plant’s fate.
Ms. Pope, the former G.M. electrician — proud that she sent her two children to Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin — worries now that “there won’t be opportunities for people like myself to make a middle-class income because the industrial base is so eroded. The jobs that pay $25, $30 an hour where you can afford to help your kids through college and not worry about money, those jobs are becoming more and more scarce. G.M. gave me a wonderful opportunity and my kids a wonderful opportunity, and I don’t see those opportunities around anymore.”
That is why Andy Richardson, president of the U.A.W. local here, and a 24-year G.M. man, hopes to transfer to another plant. He plans to move without his family — his wife has a good job at a credit union, his two daughters are star athletes, and he thinks selling their house would be impossible.
“I want to be able to come back on weekends or every other weekend,” he said. “I’ll miss my family.”
He hopes to transfer no more than five hours away, perhaps to Fort Wayne, Ind., or to Lansing, Mich. He, too, tried to hide his tears.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment