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Abolish the Federal Death Penalty: Support S.650
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11504
As momentum builds in states to abolish the death penalty, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold reintroduced legislation on March 19, 2009 to abolish the death penalty at the federal level. Feingold's Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2009 would put an immediate halt to federal executions and forbid the use of the death penalty as a sentence for violations of federal law. The use of the death penalty has been questioned by a range of prominent voices across the country, recently repealed in New Mexico and New Jersey. Feingold's bill would stop executions on the federal level, which are part of a death penalty system that has proven to be ineffective, wrought with racial disparities, and alarmingly costly.
"I oppose the death penalty because it is inconsistent with basic American principles of justice, liberty and equality," Feingold said. "Governor Bill Richardson and the New Mexico legislature's action to abolish the death penalty in that state adds to the growing momentum behind ending the death penalty in this country. It is truly unfortunate that we are in a shrinking minority of countries that continue to allow state-sponsored executions."
Feingold is not alone in his opposition to the death penalty. A range of prominent voices have questioned the system in recent years, including former FBI Director William Sessions, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, law enforcement officials and many others across the political spectrum. In 2007, only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan executed more people than the United States.
In 2007, Feingold chaired a Senate Judiciary Committee, Constitution Subcommittee hearing on oversight of the federal death penalty that highlighted the lack of transparency at the Department of Justice in the decision-making process about the death penalty and continuing problems of racial disparities in the federal system. Also in 2007, the American Bar Association called for a nationwide moratorium on capital punishment based on its detailed study of state death penalty systems, which found racial disparities, convictions based on bad evidence, grossly inadequate indigent defense systems, and a host of other problems with the implementation of capital punishment in this country.
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Subject: Board of Education Meeting Tuesday, March 24, 2009
From: Bonnie Weinstein
To: Richard Becker
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:22:11 AM
There was some confusion about the Board of Education meeting this evening. When I called to put names on the speaker's list, I was asked what issue I wanted to address. I said, JROTC.
The first two times I called on Monday, March 23, I called the number listed on the Board of Ed website, 415-241-6427, and got an answering machine. I left the message that Carole Seligman, Millie Phillips, Jon Previtali and Bonnie Weinstein would like to be on the speaker's list for that topic. I left two messages on Monday, March 23 and called another number, 415-241-6493 and spoke to a real person on Tuesday, March 24, the day of the meeting. I said I had left a message about getting on the speakers list to speak against JROTC. The woman asked our names and what topic we wished to speak on again, and I told her, JROTC. She said she, indeed, did get our message, and that we were on the speakers list.
However when we got to the meeting we realized--after about three hours--that we would only have a total of five minutes for speakers in favor and five minutes against the reinstatement of JROTC in our schools. We conferred (actually we were told by Riva) that the time should go to the students and Marko; and we thought that was the best thing and agreed. We did not get up to speak even though we had, of course, prepared our one-minute statements against reinstating JROTC in the San Francisco public schools.
So, the pro-JROTC forces had the first five minutes. Then the anti-war, anti-JROTC forces had their five minutes. All five of those minutes were taken up by the students that Marko brought to the meeting and they were great!!!
Jon Previtali had important information about the JROTC summer camps and their claim to be a great recruiting tool for the military and he had prepared copies of the articles and documentation that he wanted to distribute to the board members.
He soon found out the procedure for this is to make copies for each Board member (which he had already done) and present them when you are at the microphone. So Jon stood in line behind Marko and the students to present the documents to the Board members. He had already tried to submit the material under every topic presented to the Board. So he tried again.
First, we should have been notified by the Board that there would be no open discussion on this matter because it was a "first reading" of the motion to reinstate JROTC. We should have been informed that there would only be a TOTAL of five minutes for each side of the debate BUT WE WERE NOT TOLD THIS AHEAD OF TIME BY ANYONE!!!!
Even the pro-JROTC forces were outraged by this; and the head of the NAACP in SF, speaking FOR JROTC, berated the Board of Education for not allowing BOTH sides the respect of hearing them out after waiting three hours to speak. He was outraged that these kids had to wait that long and then be prevented from speaking; and he made a point of saying that the opposition to JROTC should have been given the same respect from the Board of Education, which was principled, anyway.
We should be united in the demand that all voices be heard on this urgent issue!
There should be a Town Hall Meeting about this highly controversial issue and the members of the San Francisco Board of Education should be obligated to attend and listen intently until we are all finished speaking. We have certainly listened enough to them!!!!!
We need solidarity! Unity! Brotherhood! And, above all, kindness toward one another. We only have this one planet to share!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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Celebrate the release of the new book by Mumia Abu-Jamal:
"Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the USA"
Friday, April 24th (Mumia's birthday!), 6:30 P.M.
Humanist Hall
411 - 28th Street, Oakland
$25.00 donation or what you can afford.
Featuring:
Angely Y. Davis
Mistah F.A.B.
Lynne Stewart
Tory Serra
Avotcja
Kiilu Nyasha
JR Minister of Information POCC
Ed Mead
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
Molotov Mouths
Prison Radio, 415-648-4505
www.prisonradio.org
www.mumia.org
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Donate to Courage to Resist
A message from Army Spc. Agustín Aguayo,
Iraq War veteran and war resister
Since the day I surrendered to military custody after refusing to return to Iraq, Courage to Resist has been there for me and my family as a constant fountain of support. This support has come in many forms, from a friendly call, to organizing a campaign to cover my legal expenses and basic needs. I believe only an organization with altruistic motives that truly cares would have done this. As someone who has felt the enormous relief of having a strong support group behind me, it is a privilege now as a member of Courage to Resist to help others as I have been helped.
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/26/
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STOP THE EVICTIONS
For your information, I just got this via email. This is a heart-breaking documentary of evictions being carried out against families. What kind of an insane society dumps families out into the street and leaves homes vacant to rot?:
Watch the video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28303876#28303876
UPDATE:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28303876#29684262
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Workers Protest Across France
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and DAVID JOLLY
March 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/europe/20france.html?ref=world
2) The Great Shame
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/opinion/21herbert.html
3) Young and Old Are Facing Off for Jobs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21age.html?ref=business
4) A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force
By JULIA PRESTON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22immig.html?hp
5) Worries Voiced Over Global Economy
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/world/europe/22global.html?ref=world
6) A Religious War in Israel's Army
By ETHAN BRONNER
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?ref=world
7) Some Rich Districts Get Richer as Aid Is Rushed to Schools
By SAM DILLON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/education/22schools.html?ref=us
8) A Combative Trial in Colorado as a Controversial Ex-Professor Seeks to Win Back His Job
By DAN FROSCH
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22trial.html?ref=us
9) OUR TROOPS AND IRAQIS ARE STILL DYING
An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
http://ivaw.org/node/5003
http://ivaw.org/
10) 7,500 G.M. Workers Accept Latest Buyout
“But G.M. needs many longtime workers to leave, so it can replace them with new hires earning half as much.”
By NICK BUNKLEY
March 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27auto.html?hp
11) Britain Orders Police to Investigate Torture Claims
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/26/world/AP-EU-Britain-Torture.html?ref=world
12) Striking French Workers Release 3M Manager
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:36 a.m. ET
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/26/business/AP-EU-France-Labor-Unrest.html?ref=world
13) Pakistan: Missile Strikes Kill 11
[All they have to do is say those that were killed were "militants" and that makes it OK?????,,,bw]
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
World Briefing | Asia
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/asia/26briefs-Pstan.html?ref=world
14) Cities Deal With a Surge in Shantytowns
By JESSE McKINLEY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html
15) Florida: Agency Faulted in Detention of Mother
By YOLANNE ALMANZAR
March 26, 2009
National Briefing | South
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26brfs-AGENCYFAULTE_BRF.html?ref=us
16) Teaching Economics and Pizza Equations
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26idaho.html?ref=education
17) Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
By ADAM LIPTAK
March 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html?ref=education
18) City Unemployment Rate Reaches 8.1%
By Patrick McGeehan
March 26, 2009, 2:00 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/city-unemployment-rate-reaches-81/
19) Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal ’70s Drug Laws
By JEREMY W. PETERS
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html?ref=nyregion
20) Study Reports More Deaths of Children Linked to Child-Welfare System
By JULIE BOSMAN
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26acs.html?ref=nyregion
21) I.R.S. to Offer Deal to Tax Evaders
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
March 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27tax.html?ref=business
22) There’s Safety in Military Contracts
By KATE MURPHY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/business/smallbusiness/26sbiz.html?ref=business
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1) Workers Protest Across France
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and DAVID JOLLY
March 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/europe/20france.html?ref=world
PARIS - France's airports, trains and utilities were hit by work stoppages on Thursday, as unions mobilized against President Nicolas Sarkozy's economic policies and his government's response to the global recession.
Protesters marched in the streets of France's biggest cities - Paris, Marseille and Lyon - in fine spring weather, in the second major strike in two months.
An estimated 2.6 million people joined 213 demonstrations across France, according to the Confédération Générale du Travail, one of the nation's largest unions. The national police, however, put the number of protesters at 1.2 million.
The largest unions said in a statement that Mr. Sarkozy's response to the financial crisis had been inadequate, and they called on the government to do more to safeguard jobs and to improve workers' purchasing power.
"Salaried workers won't any longer accept being the victims of this crisis, which they had nothing to do with," said Bernard Thibault, secretary of the workers' confederation, BFM Radio reported.
Mr. Sarkozy, who was in Brussels at a European Union meeting, did not comment on the demonstrations.
Although France has a long tradition of strikes and demonstrations by public unions, the protesters who marched on Thursday and during similar protests on Jan. 29 came from both the public and private sectors, union officials said. Some union leaders called the protests in late January, in which they said an estimated 2.5 million people had participated, the largest nationwide demonstrations in 20 years.
But some political analysts played down the potential effect of the strike. "I don't think it's going to have a concrete political impact," said Zaki Laïdi, a professor of political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris.
France faces mounting dissatisfaction amid rising unemployment. French companies shed the most jobs in 40 years during the fourth quarter of last year.
Faced with expectations that the economy will sharply contract this year, Mr. Sarkozy announced a $35 billion economic stimulus plan in December. But he has held back from proposing additional broad measures, apart from support for the auto industry and banks.
According to the Education Ministry, about 30 percent of France's teachers were on strike Thursday. Utilities, ports and refineries were also disrupted. Air France said most of its flights were operating normally from Charles de Gaulle Airport, while about one-third of its flights from Orly Airport had been canceled.
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2) The Great Shame
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/opinion/21herbert.html
I had a conversation several weeks ago with a former Army officer, a woman, who had been attacked in her bed a few years ago by a superior officer, a man, who was intent on raping her.
The woman fought the man off with a fury. When she tried to press charges against him, she was told that she should let the matter drop because she hadn't been hurt. When she persisted, battalion officials threatened to bring charges against her.
"They were talking about charging me with assault," she said, her voice still tinged with anger and a sense of disbelief. "I'm no longer in the Army," she added dryly.
Tia Christopher, a 27-year-old woman who lives in California and works with victims of sexual assault in the military, told me about the time that she was raped when she was in the Navy. She was attacked by another sailor who had come into her room in the barracks.
"He was very rough," she said. "The girls next door heard my head hitting the wall, and he made quite a mess. When he left, he told me that he'd pray for me and that he still thought I was pretty."
Ms. Christopher left the Navy. As she put it: "My military career ended. My assailant's didn't."
Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing.
New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the last fiscal year - 2,923 - and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them.
The truly chilling fact is that, as the Pentagon readily admits, the overwhelming majority of rapes that occur in the military go unreported, perhaps as many as 80 percent. And most of the men accused of attacking women receive little or no punishment. The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious.
Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from upstate New York, said: "I know of women victims, women in the military, who said to me that the first response they would get if they tried to report a rape was, 'Oh, you don't want to ruin that young man's career, do you?' "
Ms. Slaughter has been trying for many years to get the military to really crack down on these crimes. "Very, very few cases result in court-martials," she said, "and there are not that many that are even adjudicated."
The Department of Defense has taken a peculiarly optimistic view of the increase in the number of reported sexual attacks. The most recent data is contained in the annual report that the department is required to submit to Congress. The report says that "the overall increase in reports of sexual assault in the military is encouraging," and goes on to explain:
"It should be noted that increased reports of sexual assault do not reflect a rise in annual incidents of sexual assault. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes in the United States. Estimates suggest that only a small percentage of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. The department suspects that the same is true for military society as well. An increase in the number of reported cases means that the department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases occurring each year."
How's that for viewing hideous statistics through rose-colored glasses? If the number of reported cases of rape goes sky-high over the next fiscal year, that will mean that the military is doing an even better job!
The military is one of the most highly controlled environments imaginable. When there are rules that the Pentagon absolutely wants followed, they are rigidly enforced by the chain of command. Violations are not tolerated. The military could bring about a radical reduction in the number of rapes and other forms of sexual assault if it wanted to, and it could radically improve the overall treatment of women in the armed forces.
There is no real desire in the military to modify this aspect of its culture. It is an ultra-macho environment in which the overwhelming tendency has been to see all women - civilian and military, young and old, American and foreign - solely as sexual objects.
Real change, drastic change, will have to be imposed from outside the military. It will not come from within.
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3) Young and Old Are Facing Off for Jobs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21age.html?ref=business
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - This city has become a front line in a generational battle for jobs, as older workers increasingly compete against applicants in their 20s for positions at supermarkets, McDonald's and dozens of other places. And older workers seem to be winning.
With unemployment at a 26-year high and many older workers chasing entry-level jobs like those they held a half-century ago, 70 has become the new 20, as one economist put it.
Millions of older Americans have delayed retirement because of plummeting 401(k)s, soaring health costs, a sense that Social Security benefits alone are too little to live on or all of the above. This delay, economists say, has made it harder for millions of young workers to climb onto the first rung or two of the career ladder, especially since many employers favor hiring applicants with a track record.
"The boomers are staying in the system longer, and that's clogging the system," said Mason Jackson, president of Workforce One, a federally funded agency that helps Broward County's unemployed. "Many want to retire, but they can't."
He characterized the dominant attitude among employers now as: "In with the old and out with the new."
Along the ocean beaches and the Intracoastal Waterway here, retirees in condominiums have long coexisted with a much younger generation, but in the depressed job market, tensions have swelled as each group complains that employers improperly favor the other.
Since losing his job as a carpenter 13 months ago, Arnold Stone has applied, without success, for jobs as diverse as grocery bagger and construction worker. In his mobile home one recent morning, Mr. Stone, 69, tanned and vigorous, displayed hundreds of résumés.
"I'm sure age comes into play," he said. "The problem is with seniors, nobody wants to hire them."
That same week, Farah Titus, 25, crisscrossed Broward County in her 11-year-old Toyota on her daily job search. She pointed out a J. C. Penney store, a Macy's and a Wal-Mart where she has applied to no avail.
"It's hard to break in," said Ms. Titus, a part-time nursing student who said she hated asking her father for money. "If you have experience, they put you on the top of the pile."
The latest reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics buttress her view. The number of employed workers ages 16 to 24 has fallen by two million over the last two years, to 18.3 million, while the number of Americans 65 and over who are working has risen by 700,000, to 6 million.
"In a bad labor market, different groups perceive that they're being discriminated against when the real problem is they're being mistreated by the overall economy," said Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School of Social Research and author of "When I'm Sixty-Four."
The proportion of older Americans who hold jobs has also risen strongly - 16 percent of Americans 65 and over had jobs last month, up from 11 percent 10 years earlier. But for workers age 16 to 24 the percentage with jobs has fallen to 49 percent, from 59 percent a decade ago. As for Americans age 25 to 29, 74 percent now have jobs, down from 81 percent a decade ago.
"Younger people are taking an extreme pounding," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "It's worrisome because they're not developing the experience and the soft skills that they'll need and the nation's economy will need."
The greatest employment losses, he said, are for young males with little or no college. Many found jobs when the economy was robust, but they were often laid off first in the downturn, and they are having an especially hard time landing jobs now.
"I'm applying for low-wage jobs, and anyone should be O.K. for them, but I'm not getting to first base," Jose Nieves, 19, said of the restaurant jobs he has applied for.
But many older workers say they suffer age discrimination, too. Mr. Stone is convinced that employers favor the young because they want to make sure their investments in training pay off for years to come.
Mr. Stone said he wishes he could retire but his retirement savings have nearly disappeared. He invested heavily in Enron before it went bankrupt, and his wife has had sizable medical bills.
"I need a job because at the end of the month, I'm lucky if we have $450 left," said Mr. Stone, who worked 20 years as a carpenter and once even owned a construction company.
"People say there is no work to be had," he added. "But if you're over 50, you really have a problem, and if you're 70, it's especially hard."
Eva Coffey, 60, from Springfield, Va., said that when she applied for a job as a bookkeeper and receptionist for an auto dealer, her interviewer showed no interest. The next person to be interviewed, she said, was an attractive woman in her 20s, and the interviewer was keenly interested.
"I'm not some young thing," Ms. Coffey said. "When you go for an interview now, you're always trying to come across younger because they're concerned about your age. It's a hard obstacle to overcome."
Federico Barker, 76, a former real estate developer, has applied for so many jobs unsuccessfully that his friends urged him to lie about his age and change dates on his résumé. They are certain that employers favor younger workers.
Mahalia Joseph, 21, disagrees. She lost her job at a check-cashing company four months ago and has been rejected repeatedly for jobs in customer service and at hospitals.
"With the economy the way it is, they don't want to hire people they have to train," said Ms. Joseph, who plans to take courses to be trained as a hospital assistant. "They want people who are hands-on right away."
Every day, young and old job seekers swarm to Mr. Jackson's Workforce One offices, searching computer databases for jobs. Employers see strengths and weaknesses in each group, he said.
"Many businesses prefer older workers," Mr. Jackson said. "They know they're dependable, reliable. They show up, and somewhere along the line, developed customer service skills. Older workers take less sick days. Most sick days have nothing to do with being sick. Many nice days people call in sick to go to the beach."
One category where young people have an advantage is technology jobs, he said. "If it's a technology job, young people take to it as fish to water," he said.
One of his assistants, Kelly Allen, chimed in that young people were used to communicating electronically - she held up an imaginary Blackberry and maneuvered her thumbs wildly. "Employers like that older workers are used to dealing with people face to face," she said.
Maria Brous, communications director for Publix, one of Florida's largest supermarket chains, said older workers had important expertise, but younger workers had technical skills and were creative problem-solvers. Publix hires both young and old employees, she said, because they complement each other.
Wendy Smith, 23, says she has seen yet another type of discrimination in applying for administrative jobs. Potential employers tell her she needs three or four years of experience.
"They don't want you to be too young, and they don't want you to be too old," she said. "They want you to be just right."
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4) A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force
By JULIA PRESTON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22immig.html?hp
MORRISTOWN, Tenn. - The faithful stand and hold their hands high, raising a crescendo of prayer for abundance and grace. In the evangelical church where they are gathered, the folding chairs are filled with immigrants from Latin America.
Balbino López Hernández, who came here illegally from Mexico, closes his eyes to join the hallelujahs. But after the service Mr. López, 28, a factory worker who has been unemployed since June, shares his worries about jobs and immigration raids with other worshipers.
Like many places across the United States, this factory town in eastern Tennessee has been transformed in the last decade by the arrival of Hispanic immigrants, many of whom are in this country illegally. Thousands of workers like Mr. López settled in Morristown, taking the lowest-paying elbow-grease jobs, some hazardous, in chicken plants and furniture factories.
Now, with the economy spiraling downward and a crackdown continuing on illegal immigrants, many of them are learning how uncertain their foothold is in the work force in the United States.
The economic troubles are widening the gap between illegal immigrants and Americans as they navigate the job market. Many Americans who lost jobs are turning for help to the government's unemployment safety net, with job assistance and unemployment insurance. But immigrants without legal status, by law, do not have access to it. Instead, as the recession deepens, illegal immigrants who have settled into American towns are receding from community life. They are clinging to low-wage jobs, often working more hours for less money, and taking whatever work they can find, no matter the conditions.
Despite the mounting pressures, many of the illegal immigrants are resisting leaving the country. After years of working here, they say, they have homes and education for their children, while many no longer have a stake to return to in their home countries.
"Most of the things I got are right here," Mr. López said in English, which he taught himself to speak. "I got my family, my wife, my kids. Everything is here."
Americans who are struggling for jobs move in a different world. Here, it revolves around the federally financed, fluorescent-lighted career center on Andrew Johnson Highway, a one-stop market for unemployment insurance and job retraining.
One worker who frequents the center is Joe D. Goodson Jr., 46, who was laid off more than a year ago from his job at a nearby auto parts plant. Born and raised in Morristown, Mr. Goodson said his savings had run low but his spirits were holding up, so far.
Through the career center, Mr. Goodson enrolled in retraining at a technology college. He believes that the government aid system, though inefficient and overwhelmed, will give him just enough support to survive the economic storm.
"I just try to look on the positive side always," Mr. Goodson said. "Work hard. Things get bad? Work harder."
What help there is for illegal immigrants in Morristown comes mainly from churches, like Centro Cristiano Betel Internacional, where Mr. López connects with a word-of-mouth network to find odd jobs.
Nationwide, Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal, saw greater job loss in 2008 than did Hispanics born in the United States or black workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly half of foreign-born Hispanics are illegal immigrants, according to the center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.
Some illegal immigrants who lost jobs here, mostly workers with families back home, have left the country. Most are determined to stay. Employers, wary of immigration agents, now insist workers have valid Social Security numbers. Mr. López, who does not have one, said, "Without the number, you are nothing in this country."
Gaining a Foothold
In a paradox of globalization, immigrant workers moved from Mexico to Morristown just as many jobs were migrating from here to Mexico.
The influx here came as Hispanic immigrants were spreading across the United States, moving beyond traditional destinations in California and the Southwest to take jobs in the Northern Plains and deep into the South.
As recently as 2006 and 2007, more than 300,000 Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, were joining the United States labor force each year, drawn by jobs in meatpacking, construction and agriculture. They now make up nearly 8 percent of the work force.
In Morristown, a manufacturing city set among Appalachian farmland, the loss of jobs to Mexico and other countries with lower wages depressed local factory pay long before the immigrants appeared. But while the poorest American factory workers watched jobs leave, Americans with skills found new jobs in plants making auto parts, plastics and printing supplies.
The 1960 census did not record a single immigrant in Hamblen County, of which Morristown is the seat. By 2007, Hispanic immigrants and their families made up almost 10 percent of the county population of 61,829, having nearly doubled their numbers since 2000, census data show.
The immigrants started in tomato fields nearby, but by the late 1990s labor contractors were bringing migrant crews into town, to fill jobs in construction and at factories like two poultry plants belonging to Koch Foods, a company based in Illinois.
The result was a two-tier blue-collar work force. Hispanic immigrants - many hired through temporary staffing agencies that offered no vacation pay or health coverage - were on the bottom, in jobs where they faced little competition from Americans.
Prof. Chris Baker, a sociologist at Walters State Community College in Morristown, said many factories in the region had been able to hang on because of the immigrant workers. "The employers hire Latinos, and after that, they leave," he said. "It goes from white to black to Latino to - gone."
Some residents did not take kindly to the immigrants, especially the illegal ones. But their ire was not about jobs; it was mainly directed at the school board, for devoting tax money to an international center to help Spanish-speaking students learn English.
In the summer of 2006, one member of the Hamblen County Commission, Thomas E. Lowe, organized a demonstration against illegal immigrants in front of City Hall. It fizzled after the police, fearing disorder, turned out in a show of force.
Then the friction abated. The United Food and Commercial Workers won an organizing drive at Koch Foods by gaining the support of immigrants.
Mr. Lowe did not win re-election. The city chose a mayor, Barbara C. Barile, who describes herself as "an inclusive kind of person." She created a diversity task force and proposed an annual immigrant fiesta. In December, she sent police officers to accompany a midnight procession through downtown honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Mexican patroness.
But an immigration crackdown by state and federal authorities stirred the waters again.
A few years ago, even illegal immigrants in Tennessee could obtain driver's licenses, buy cars, open bank accounts and take out mortgages. In 2006, the state canceled a program that authorized immigrants who were not legal residents to drive.
Cooperation increased between state and local police and federal immigration agents. For illegal immigrants, minor traffic stops could escalate and end in deportation. After immigration raids in the region, employers and temporary agencies started to give closer scrutiny to identity documents.
An Immigrant's Life
One immigrant whose Morristown welcome ended abruptly was Balbino López Hernández.
After sneaking across the Arizona border at 17, he joined a brother who lived in Morristown. In 2004 he landed a job at Berkline, a furniture company known for reclining chairs whose headquarters are in town.
Mr. López earned a minimum of $8.85 an hour assembling heavy metal frames for chairs and sofas. But, like other immigrants here, he measured the job against pushing a plow in Mexico. By that standard, he said, it was a "blessing."
At Berkline, seasoned American employees tended to avoid the physically demanding position in which Mr. López was placed, at the head of an assembly line. Mr. López loved the job, and before long he was one of the more productive workers on the floor. The high productivity of new immigrant workers was one reason employers like those in Morristown were glad to hire them, economists said.
Mr. López's task was to swing metal bars into place, then use a noisy drill, over and over, to secure dozens of screws, nuts and washers. The bars had sharp edges, and his arms are covered with scars. Still, he was content because he set his own pace.
"Always," he said, "I go to work and do my job and come home, to make myself happy and make them happy too."
Though he is not a legal resident, Mr. López allowed his name and photograph to be published because his status is known to immigration authorities.
The assembly floor operated on an incentive system: the more frames Mr. López made, the more he earned. But his energy put pressure on others on the line, including some Americans who were not interested in doing more work without a raise.
Mr. López, shy and soft-spoken, did well at work but poorly in love. One girlfriend, an American, three weeks after giving birth to his son, Jacob, left Mr. López to raise the boy alone. Another took to drugs and was frequently in trouble with the police.
His luck changed when he met Brittany Martin, 18, a tall blonde with a level head. Last January, he decided to spruce up his cottage in preparation for marriage, so he picked up his speed at Berkline.
"I would get my sandwich and just eat there, eat and work," Mr. López said. "I never stopped for nothing." Soon he was producing three times his weekly quota of chair frames, sometimes making more than $1,000 a week, pay stubs show. Some Americans started to taunt him, calling him "money man."
"Why does that Mexican make so much money?" Mr. López said one worker asked within earshot.
Not long after, on June 11, a senior manager summoned Mr. López, saying Berkline had been alerted that he might be an illegal immigrant. He confessed and was fired.
Mr. López believes that someone, perhaps a co-worker, turned him in. Two days later, the Morristown police, citing the false Social Security number he had presented at Berkline, arrested him on charges of criminal impersonation. Although those charges were soon dismissed for lack of evidence, the police reported Mr. López to federal immigration agents.
Dennis Carper, senior vice president for human resources at Berkline, confirmed that Mr. López had been terminated because of his invalid Social Security number. He said Berkline did not report Mr. López to the police.
Mr. López is now fighting deportation. He and Ms. Martin married in July and are expecting a child in May. He was released from detention to care for his wife and son, but since he was ordered deported before the wedding, it is not certain he will be able to stay.
While his immigration case proceeds, he remains unauthorized to apply for a job. He is scrounging for bits of work, fixing cars and patching roofs, and praying at Centro Betel. It is bad, he said, but Mexico would be worse. "In my country," he said, "I'm just going to feed my family salt and tortillas."
The Shadows
In some ways, since Mr. López no longer has to hide, he has advantages over many immigrants in Morristown.
Enrique C., 48, and his wife, Rita, 38, both illegal immigrants from Mexico, learned how vulnerable their livelihood here was when both of them lost their jobs in recent months. The couple, neither of whom speaks English, asked that their full names and photographs not be published because they feared detection by immigration authorities.
During the long nights of winter, after their sons, 12 and 13, finished their homework, they turned off all the lights in the cottage they own except one bulb and gathered around a space heater. On some nights cockroaches emerged, seeking the heat.
Rita had held night-shift jobs in sweltering factories and on the chilly deboning line in a Koch chicken plant. Since she worked mainly through temporary agencies, when the crunch came she was one of the first to go.
Her husband worked from 2001 until last August at Hardwoods of Morristown, a wood-floor maker, earning $8.75 an hour splitting planks with a whirring saw. For years Enrique liked his job, and his bosses praised him, he said, for doing the work of two men.
But over time he had run-ins with supervisors, starting when they disagreed over the treatment of a wrist injury.
He complained that splinters tore his gloves. Bathrooms were filthy, he said, and the plant posted a rule limiting when workers could use them. He took photographs of clogged toilets and collected bagfuls of ragged gloves.
After seven years, Enrique, who admits he can be ornery, lost his temper one day and insulted the plant manager. The official separation notice states that he was fired for insubordination. Tim Elliott, a top executive at Hardwoods, wrote in an e-mail message that a worker who "refuses to do a task assigned to him" would disrupt the teamwork the company requires.
"They fired me because I started to make demands," Enrique said.
Once defiant, Enrique now lives looking over his shoulder and avoiding confrontation. Although his driver's license has expired, he drives a carpool with three other workers for an hour twice a day to a job he found through a temporary agency in a furniture factory for $7 an hour.
It is a job he cannot lose. He has a mortgage to pay, and he is determined to see his sons go to college. "We're going to go along very quietly," Enrique said. "We don't want to be deported."
The Americans
At the Five Rivers Regional Career Center, the cubicles of computers with free Internet are filled every day with anxious job seekers. For several weeks in January, phones the state set up to receive applications for unemployment insurance were inundated, often giving callers only busy signals. Career center staff members did their best to help, but more than one of them said they had taken a "cussing " from a desperate worker.
For Joe Goodson, however, the recession is old news. He was laid off in December 2007, along with 67 other workers, after 17 years at the Morristown plant of the Lear Corporation, which makes auto seats.
One day at the career center, Mr. Goodson, a welder and United Automobile Workers member, spoke with pride of his skills. He started out as a manual welder, but through retraining he learned how to operate the metal stamping press he was running, for $17.80 an hour, when the layoffs came.
Mr. Goodson said he watched the Lear work force shrink over the years, as the company installed robots and sent manual welding work to a plant in Mexico. These days, he said, managers are only "thinking about self."
"It's gone away from the team thing," he said.
Four months after being laid off, he took an offer for retraining at the Tennessee Technology Center in Morristown, where he is studying coils and coolants to become an air-conditioning technician.
Through the career center, he collects unemployment insurance and a gas allowance, and his tuition is paid by federal Trade Adjustment Assistance funds, which support workers laid off when jobs move overseas. He squeaks by on odd jobs he does for his parents, both retired.
"I've never seen a car that didn't have a seat," said Mr. Goodson, who still believes that Lear will one day call him back. If not, he is ready to put his new skills to use in another career.
Because of the government support and retraining, Mr. Goodson is not considering the low-paying manufacturing jobs that Morristown's immigrants hold.
"I'm not too good to do any job that another man would do," Mr. Goodson said. "But I've got many other skills."
Other Americans in tougher spots who visited the career center said those jobs were their last resort. Donnie Parker, 45, was laid off in September from his $14-an-hour job as a skilled machine mechanic at a Koch poultry plant.
Because of a bureaucratic snag, Mr. Parker has not been able to collect unemployment insurance. After paying a mortgage for 13 years, he missed three payments and lost his house in December. He and his teenage son moved in with his 72-year-old mother. He borrowed from his sister to buy gas to make the trip to the career center. He traded his new truck for an older one, then the old truck's transmission gave out.
His only defense against the calamity is a wry laugh.
Like Mr. Goodson, Mr. Parker sees a narrow path opening before him through the unemployment system: he recently received a retraining grant. With food stamps and his income tax refund, he might just make it.
While he is waiting for school to begin, Mr. Parker is adopting a new strategy. He decided last week to apply for a few minimum-wage factory jobs that were advertised at the center, after having avoided them until now.
"I didn't know it would get this bad and last this long," Mr. Parker said. "Seven dollars is better than no dollars."
Even in the recession, he said, it would not make financial sense for him to stay for long in that kind of job. "With my kid, I can't live on a minimum-wage job," Mr. Parker said. "There is no goal to reach. You're pretty much stuck."
Although Koch has hired more Americans this year for its poultry production lines, Mr. Parker is not thinking of going back there in a low-end job. "It's nasty and cold," he said.
Hanging On
As the recession worsens here - unemployment in this region was 11.2 percent in January, compared with 8.5 percent nationwide - Americans and immigrants are struggling, separately, to hold on to their gains. To date, tensions over jobs have not surfaced.
Melissa B. Reynolds, the coordinator for the career center, said Americans worried about receiving their benefits and getting help finding new jobs, not about competition from immigrants.
"We don't have anyone that has any beefs with the Latino population that I've seen come and go through here," Ms. Reynolds said.
If the slump is long, unemployment benefits run out and the safety net wears thin, that could change. Across the country, in an industry like construction with large numbers of Hispanic immigrants where job losses have been especially steep, the fight for jobs could produce conflict.
Demetrios G. Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research center, said that if Americans were forced to take jobs below their expectations for too long, competition - and animus - could increase.
"American people who are hurting economically for a long while may start to identify immigrants as the cause of that pain," Mr. Papademetriou said.
Mr. Parker, though he is hurting, said he did not look to place blame. "It's not Hispanics I'm competing with," he said. "It's everybody. I'm not angry at no one who's trying to find a job and work. They're doing the same thing I'm doing."
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5) Worries Voiced Over Global Economy
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/world/europe/22global.html?ref=world
The global economy is on pace to shrink by 1 percent to 2 percent this year, the head of the World Bank said Saturday.
Speaking at the Brussels Forum on geopolitical problems, the bank's president, Robert B. Zoellick, said that 2009 would be a "dangerous year" as the global economy wrestles with its first recession in more than 60 years.
"We haven't seen a figure like that globally since World War II, which really means since the Great Depression," he said.
Global trade is set to slide the most in 80 years as demand dries up, with East Asia being the hardest-hit region. The World Bank has forecast a 2.1 percent decline in global exports this year, which would be the first such drop since 1982.
Mr. Zoellick's remarks came less than two weeks before heads of state from the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies are to gather in London to discuss a coordinated response to the economic slump. Mr. Zoellick urged G-20 leaders to use the meeting on April 2 to create a review process to determine whether further stimulus measures are needed.
"There is a legitimate debate about how the stimulus will be used," he said at the forum.
The European Union economy will shrink 3.2 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday, cutting a January forecast of a 2 percent contraction. Japan's economy is forecast to shrink by 5.8 percent, according to the fund, while the United States is seen contracting 2.6 percent.
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6) A Religious War in Israel's Army
By ETHAN BRONNER
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war. But it also exposes something else: the clash between secular liberals and religious nationalists for control over the army and society.
Several of the testimonies, published by an institute that runs a premilitary course and is affiliated with the left-leaning secular kibbutz movement, showed a distinct impatience with religious soldiers, portraying them as self-appointed holy warriors.
A soldier, identified by the pseudonym Ram, is quoted as saying that in Gaza, "the rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war."
Dany Zamir, the director of the one-year premilitary course who solicited the testimonies and then leaked them, leading to a promise by the military to investigate, is quoted in the transcripts as expressing anguish over the growing religious nationalist elements of the military.
"If clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum of the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population, what can we expect?" he said. "To whom do we complain?"
For the first four decades of Israel's existence, the army - like many of the country's institutions - was dominated by kibbutz members who saw themselves as secular, Western and educated. In the past decade or two, religious nationalists, including many from the settler movement in the West Bank, have moved into more and more positions of military responsibility. (In Israeli society, they are a growing force, distinct from, and more modern than, the black-garbed ultra-Orthodox, who are excused from military service.)
In many cases, the religious nationalists have ascended to command positions from precisely the kind of premilitary college course that Mr. Zamir runs - but theirs are run by the religious movements rather than his secular one, meaning that the competition between him and them is both ideological and careerist.
"The officer corps of the elite Golani Brigade is now heavily populated by religious right-wing graduates of the preparatory academies," noted Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor who co-wrote the military code of ethics and who is himself religiously observant but politically liberal. "The religious right is trying to have an impact on Israeli society through the army."
For Mr. Halbertal, like for the vast majority of Israelis, the army is an especially sensitive institution because it has always functioned as a social cauldron, throwing together people from all walks of life and scores of ethnic and national backgrounds, and helping form them into a cohesive society with social networks that carry on throughout their lives.
Those who oppose the religious right have been especially concerned about the influence of the military's chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, who is himself a West Bank settler and who was very active during the war, spending most of it in the company of the troops in the field.
He took a quotation from a classical Hebrew text and turned it into a slogan during the war: "He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful."
A controversy then arose when a booklet handed out to soldiers was found to contain a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy mercy. The Defense Ministry reprimanded the rabbi.
At the time, in January, Avshalom Vilan, then a leftist member of Parliament, accused the rabbi of having "turned the Israeli military's activity from fighting out of necessity into a holy war."
Immediately after Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 and then from several West Bank settlements, there was a call to disband certain religious programs in the army because some soldiers in them said they would refuse to obey future orders to disband settlements. After the rise of Hamas in Gaza and the increase in rocket attacks on Israel, that discussion died down.
But Yaron Ezrahi, a leftist political scientist at Hebrew University who has been lecturing to military commanders, said that the call to close those programs should now be revived because what was evident in Gaza was that the humanistic tradition from which a code of ethics is derived was not being sufficiently observed there.
The dispute over control of the army is not only ideological. It is also personal, as all politics is in this small, intimate country. Those who disagree with the chief rabbi have vilified him. Those who are unhappy with what Mr. Zamir did by leaking the transcript of the Gaza soldiers' testimonies last week have spread word that he is a leftist ideologue out to harm Israel.
In 1990, Mr. Zamir, then a parachute company commander in the reserves, was sentenced to prison for refusing to guard a ceremony involving religious Jews visiting the West Bank city of Nablus. For some, that refusal is a badge of honor; for others it is an act of insubordination and treason. A quiet campaign began on Thursday regarding Mr. Zamir's leftist sympathies, to discredit the transcript he publicized.
At the same time, Rabbi Rontzki's numerous sayings and writings have been making the rounds among leftist intellectuals. He has written, for example, that what others call "humanistic values" are simply subjective feelings that should be subordinate to following the law of the Torah.
He has also said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath, when work is prohibited but treating the sick and injured is expected, is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred.
Mr. Halbertal, the Jewish philosopher who opposes the attitude of Rabbi Rontzki, said the divide that is growing in Israel is not only between religious and secular Jews but among the religious themselves. The debate is over three issues - the sanctity of land versus life; the relationship between messianism and Zionism; and the place of non-Jews in a sovereign Jewish state.
The religious left argues that the right has made a fetish of the land of Israel instead of letting life take precedence, he said. The religious left also rejects the messianic nature of the right's Zionist discourse, and it argues that Jewish tradition values all life, not primarily Jewish life.
"The right tends to make an equation between authenticity and brutality, as if the idea of humanism were a Western and alien implant to Judaism," he said. "They seem not to know that nationalism and fascism are also Western ideas and that hypernationalism is not Jewish at all."
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7) Some Rich Districts Get Richer as Aid Is Rushed to Schools
By SAM DILLON
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/education/22schools.html?ref=us
RANDOLPH, Utah - Dale Lamborn, the superintendent of a somewhat threadbare rural school district, feels the pain of Utah's economic crisis every day as he tinkers with his shrinking budget, struggling to avoid laying off teachers or cutting classes like welding or calculus.
Just across the border in Wyoming, a state awash in oil and gas money, James Bailey runs a wealthier district. It has a new elementary school and gives every child an Apple laptop.
But under the Obama administration's education stimulus package, Mr. Lamborn, who needs every penny he can get, will receive hundreds of dollars less per student than will Dr. Bailey, who says he does not need the extra money.
"For us, this is just a windfall," Dr. Bailey said.
In pouring rivers of cash into states and school districts, Washington is using a tangle of well-worn federal formulas, some of which benefit states that spend more per pupil, while others help states with large concentrations of poor students or simply channel money based on population. Combined, the formulas seem to take little account of who needs the money most.
As a result, some districts that are well off will find themselves swimming in cash, while some that are struggling may get too little to avoid cutbacks.
Still, educators are accepting the disparities without challenge. Utah, which stands to get about $400 less per student than Wyoming, says it is grateful for the money and has no complaint. There is widespread recognition that the federal money is helping to avert what could have been an educational disaster in some places.
Democrats in Congress decided to use the formulas to save time, knowing that devising new ones tailored to current conditions could require months of negotiations.
"These formulas were the best vehicle for getting these emergency economic recovery funds out to school districts as quickly as possible, to help them immediately stave off layoffs," said Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor.
The education secretary, Arne Duncan, said that he, too, was aware of the disparities but that no formula was perfect. "In this case, people are just extraordinarily thankful for these unprecedented resources," Mr. Duncan said in an interview. "So I'm aware of these disparities, but we've received zero complaints."
Still, the occasional mismatch between educational needs and emergency financing can be striking.
Utah, where a $1.3 billion budget deficit has threatened deep school cuts, will get about $655 million in education stimulus money, or about $1,250 per student, according to the federal Department of Education. Wyoming, which has no deficit and has not cut school budgets in many years, will get about $1,684 per student.
North Dakota, which also has no budget problems, will receive $1,734 per student. California, which recently closed a $42 billion budget gap through July 2010 partly through deep spending cuts, will get $1,336 per student.
New York is a huge winner. With the nation's second-largest budget deficit, the state benefits from a formula that sends extra money to concentrations of poor students, as well as one that rewards states for their own school spending. New York will receive about $1,724 per student, the most of any large state and roughly $400 more per pupil that than Connecticut and New Jersey.
The money in question is part of $97 billion to be administered by the Education Department under the stimulus law.
Within weeks, states will begin receiving a large part of the roughly $80 billion to be distributed over two years. Most of the rest of the $97 billion will go toward college grants to low-income students.
About $50 billion, which Congress labeled a fiscal stabilization fund, will flow to states based on a formula that takes into account population, as well as the number of 5- to 24-year-olds. The states have some discretion, but part of the money must go toward avoiding or reversing cuts.
About $25 billion will be sent to the nation's 14,000 school districts for spending on poor and disabled students according to long-standing formulas. And Mr. Duncan will use $5 billion to reward states for exemplary systems.
Last month Mr. Duncan released state-by-state allocations of the education stimulus money. They were divided by Department of Education enrollment numbers to calculate the money on a per-student basis.
Washington, which is treated as a state under the stimulus, will get the highest allocation, $2,112 per student. Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor there, said spending could be tricky.
"We don't want to be in a position of bringing in this huge amount of money and then having to lay people off in two years after the money runs out," Ms. Rhee said.
In Maryland, Prince George's County, which borders Washington, appears likely to receive less than $1,500 per student. "I can tell you we're not complaining," said John White, a spokesman for the county schools. His district had been planning to cut 1,000 of its 17,000 employees and to furlough others to save money, he said, but the federal money will reduce the layoffs and make the furlough unnecessary.
Things are also working out better for Mr. Lamborn, whose district is in Rich County in northeastern Utah, where 450 children of coal miners and ranchers attend four austere rural schools. The Utah Legislature, facing a deficit of more than $1 billion, was preparing to cut school spending statewide by 17 percent. Last week, it reduced that cut to 5 percent.
Mr. Lamborn said a 17 percent cut in his district, where the starting pay for a teacher is $32,000, would have been devastating. "I didn't even want to think about it," he said.
Even a cut of 5 percent may result in the elimination of a teacher or two, Mr. Lamborn said. He snorted last week when he read a federal guidance letter that said, "Spend funds quickly to create and save jobs."
"We won't be creating any," he said. "We hope to save some."
Across the state line in Evanston, Wyo., where Dr. Bailey is superintendent, the Uinta County District 1 has enjoyed years of growing budgets. Students attend new or updated schools with plenty of computers; high-tech smart boards have replaced blackboards. The starting pay for a teacher is $41,500. Achievement is improving, especially in math, and a teacher training program is enriched by outside consultants.
In a meeting last week, some educators questioned whether the district could spend the $1.5 million in new federal money wisely, without losing focus on its goals, which include improving adolescent literacy skills.
"Out of the blue this money has dropped in, and it's kind of a distraction," Dr. Bailey said.
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8) A Combative Trial in Colorado as a Controversial Ex-Professor Seeks to Win Back His Job
By DAN FROSCH
March 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22trial.html?ref=us
DENVER - A wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former professor against the University of Colorado has been unfolding in exciting fashion in a courtroom here.
The professor, Ward L. Churchill, was dismissed by the university in July 2007 on grounds that he plagiarized and falsified parts of his research on Native Americans. But Mr. Churchill contends that he was fired in retaliation for an essay in which he described office workers killed in the World Trade Center attacks as "little Eichmanns."
Mr. Churchill, seeking to be reinstated to his tenured position, is expected to testify on Monday.
The civil trial, which has finished its second week in district court, has been as combative and colorful as Mr. Churchill.
His lawyer, David Lane, has sought to portray him as the victim of a "howling mob" of university administrators, conservative media and politicians who were "falling over themselves" to have him fired.
But Patrick O'Rourke, a lawyer for the university, said in his opening statement, "Ward Churchill was fired for one reason and one reason only: he engaged in the worst kind of academic fraud that you can."
Much of the testimony has focused on Mr. Churchill's extensive scholarship, including his theory that Capt. John Smith purposefully introduced smallpox among the Wampanoag Indians in the 17th century.
It was after the outrage over Mr. Churchill's "Eichmann" essay that other scholars came forward with claims of plagiarism. In May 2006, a faculty committee found that his academic work was seriously flawed. The committee further concluded that he had no factual basis for his smallpox theory.
Marianne Wesson, a University of Colorado law professor who led the committee, testified last week that Mr. Churchill had, in some of his work, cited writings of other scholars that he had actually ghostwritten, creating the illusion that there was a body of work supporting his theories.
Mr. Lane accused Ms. Wesson of bias, pointing to e-mail messages she wrote comparing backers of Mr. Churchill to the public support for O. J. Simpson, Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson.
"I really don't doubt that Professor Churchill was, to many students, a very inspiring teacher," Ms. Wesson testified. "I think he is a tragic figure, and it makes me sad that so much talent, so much promise has been wasted."
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9) OUR TROOPS AND IRAQIS ARE STILL DYING
An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
http://ivaw.org/node/5003
http://ivaw.org/
After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.
President Obama has announced a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq. Many in the peace/anti-war movements are breathing a sigh of relief, and suggesting that it is time for us to scale back our efforts to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for our troops on the ground, their families and the Iraqi people, the nightmare continues. They need all of us to stay in the struggle. IVAW, MFSO and VFP have been long united in our call for an immediate and complete end to the occupation of Iraq and will not shift our stance under any circumstances.
President Obama's plan will result in more casualties and suffering for U.S. troops, their families and Iraqis. To the American public facing hard times here at home, two and a half more years of occupation may not sound like that long -- but for our troops and their families it means two and a half more years of fear, pain, and separation in a war and occupation based on lies. Hundreds of the troops deployed in the next two and a half years will not come home alive. Many more will return forever scarred by deep wounds to their bodies, minds, and spirits. Well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of this war -- many more will be killed as the occupation continues.
We cannot afford the cost of empire. Today we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Yet our government continues to allow the occupation to drain $10 billion a month from our nation's coffers. Meanwhile, veterans and military families struggle to put food on the table and get decent housing and adequate medical care. Women and men who risked their lives for this country are often forced to fight tooth and nail to get health care from an underfunded and overburdened Veterans Administration. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are homeless.
The occupation of Iraq is the source of the violence not the solution. Living under occupation the people of Iraq are held back from taking control of their own lives to determine their destiny. The continued U.S. military presence there is a cause of the violence they face, not its solution. U.S. continued interference contradicts the principles of democracy and self-determination our country was founded on.
IVAW, MFSO and VFP will continue to keep pressure on Congress and the President to bring all our troops home from Iraq NOW, ensure that veterans receive the care they need and deserve, and that the U.S. provides resources to rebuild a country we destroyed. But we cannot do that alone. We need your help to reach out to the vast majority of the American people who are completely isolated from the realities of this war. Please don't abandon this struggle or shift your position before the occupation is over and our veterans and the Iraqi people are on the path to healing.
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent. From its inception, IVAW has called for: Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq; reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and dull benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women. IVAW's membership includes recent veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all branches of military service, National Guard members, and reservists who have served in the United States military since September 11, 2001.
Military Families Speak Out is an organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones who are currently in the military or who have served in the military since the buildup to the Iraq war in the fall of 2002. Formed by two families in November of 2002, MFSO now has over 4,000 member families. MFSO's national chapter, Gold Star Families Speak Out includes families whose loved ones have died as a result of the war in Iraq.
Founded in 1985, Veterans for Peace is a national organization of men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations spanning the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts cold or hot. It has chapters in nearly every state in the union and is headquartered in St. Louis, MO. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary. Veterans For Peace is an official Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the U.N.
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10) 7,500 G.M. Workers Accept Latest Buyout
“But G.M. needs many longtime workers to leave, so it can replace them with new hires earning half as much.”
By NICK BUNKLEY
March 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27auto.html?hp
DETROIT — More than 14,000 retirement-eligible hourly workers have elected to stay at the financially troubled automaker General Motors rather than leave with a buyout package worth up to $45,000.
G.M. said in a statement on Thursday that more than 7,500 members of the United Automobile Workers union who work in its factories accepted the offers by this week’s deadline. Most of the workers will leave by April 1. The number is more than double the projection of one analyst but illustrates the difficulty G.M. faces in trying to persuade workers to give up their jobs during a recession, even at a company perilously close to bankruptcy and after the U.A.W. agreed to reduced job-security provisions.
But G.M. needs many longtime workers to leave, so it can replace them with new hires earning half as much. The company has borrowed $13.4 billion from the federal government since December and is asking for $16.6 billion more. It must show President Obama’s auto industry task force by next Tuesday that it is making progress on cutting labor costs and other aspects of its restructuring plan.
“It’s a choice between the uncertainty of staying and the uncertainty of leaving,” said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “At this point, the people who are accepting buyouts have turned them down before, so something has shaken them loose. These are really the saddest decisions of all because they know they could have taken a buyout before on better terms.”
Gary L. Cowger, group vice president for global manufacturing and labor relations, said the buyouts, along with other cost-cuts would “help ensure the long-term viability and future success of General Motors.”
Across town, Chrysler, which has borrowed $4 billion and requested another $5 billion, is also encouraging thousands of its hourly workers to quit or retire with similar but more lucrative packages. Chrysler workers have until Friday to make a decision.
Mr. Chaison said he expected a higher percentage of Chrysler workers to take buyouts because its chances of going into bankruptcy are perceived to be greater and because the offers are worth more than G.M.’s.
A buyout window opens April 1 for workers at the Ford Motor Company, which is not taking federal aid but nonetheless has been seeking labor concessions and cost savings after losing $14.6 billion last year, a company record.
The Detroit automakers have eliminated more than 100,000 jobs since 2006 through buyout and early retirement offers worth as much as $140,000. G.M., at least, had indicated that it was not planning more such programs after the one that ended Tuesday.
Brian Johnson, an automotive analyst with Barclays Capital, this month estimated that 5 percent of workers at G.M. and Ford would take buyouts. The G.M. figure represents about 10 percent of its 62,000 U.A.W. workers. About 22,000 of those workers are eligible to retire with full benefits, meaning they have been with the company for at least 30 years or are at least age 65.
According to Mr. Johnson’s projections, the departure of more than 6,000 workers would save G.M. at least $784 million a year.
Five percent of Ford’s 42,000 U.A.W. workers would be 2,100.
The U.A.W. has already ratified cost-saving modifications to its contract with Ford and remains in talks with G.M. and Chrysler. The primary issue still being discussed is the companies’ required contribution to a retiree health care fund that takes effect in January. G.M. wants to substitute stock for up to half of its payments, as the U.A.W. has agreed to let Ford do with up to $6.5 billion of its payments.
G.M. is also eliminating 10,000 salaried positions worldwide, including 3,400 in the United States. It began that process this week by laying off 160 mechanical engineers at its technical center in Warren, Mich.
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11) Britain Orders Police to Investigate Torture Claims
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/26/world/AP-EU-Britain-Torture.html?ref=world
LONDON (AP) -- Britain ordered its police on Thursday to investigate allegations by an ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee that U.K. intelligence officers were complicit in his torture overseas.
Attorney General Patricia Scotland told lawmakers in a written statement that police would begin an inquiry into Binyam Mohamed's claims that an officer from Britain's domestic security agency MI5 was aware he had been tortured.
Mohamed, an Ethiopian who moved to Britain as a teenager, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 as a suspected terrorist. He says he was tortured in Pakistan and in Morocco, before he was transferred to Guantanamo in 2004.
Scotland, who began an inquiry into the case in October, said she has asked London police commissioner Paul Stephenson to investigate whether there is evidence that anyone should face criminal charges.
Mohamed, who is recovering at an undisclosed British location being released from Guantanamo Bay in February, said he was pleased with Thursday's decision, but urged police to examine the conduct of senior intelligence officers.
He alleges he told an MI5 officer -- known in court hearings on the issue as Witness B -- that he'd been tortured during an interview in Pakistan in 2002. Mohamed also claims British intelligence supplied questions to his interrogators overseas.
''I'm very pleased that an inquiry is taking place, (but) I feel very strongly that we shouldn't scapegoat the little people or blame Witness B -- he was only following orders,'' Mohamed said in a statement issued by his lawyers.
Police said Stephenson had received a letter from the attorney general and confirmed police will begin an investigation into Mohamed's claims.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered Scotland -- the country's chief legal adviser -- to examine the allegations and has repeatedly said that Britain does not condone the use of torture, or request that others use it on behalf of the U.K.
Brown also said that soldiers or spies found to have broken laws on the treatment of detainees could face prosecution.
''Any decision on whether any person should be charged with a criminal offense can only be taken following the police investigation,'' Scotland said in her statement.
Brown said last week that Britain will revise rules governing the treatment of overseas detainees by British officials, and publish them for the first time. The move is an attempt to bolster public faith following claims of the U.K.'s alleged collusion in torture.
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12) Striking French Workers Release 3M Manager
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:36 a.m. ET
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/26/business/AP-EU-France-Labor-Unrest.html?ref=world
PARIS (AP) -- French workers released a manager of U.S. manufacturer 3M held hostage for two days in a labor dispute over layoffs, the company said Thursday, amid rising French unemployment and public outrage at employers.
A new poll indicated that French worker frustration remains high, with a majority of respondents predicting more violent incidents in response to the economic crisis. The hostage-taking was one of many recent efforts by French workers to protest the downturn.
Workers at a 3M factory in Pithiviers locked manager Luc Rousselet in an office Tuesday, demanding better severance packages for those laid off and better conditions for those who keep their jobs.
After discussions Wednesday that ran into the night, Rousselet was released overnight, company spokeswoman Catherine Hamon said. Rousselet, unharmed, then left the factory grounds.
Negotiations between workers and management over details of the layoff plan were to resume Thursday at regional administrative offices, according to regional official Christian Piccolo.
The manufacturer, based in Maplewood, Minnesota, has announced thousands of layoffs worldwide amid the economic downturn, including 110 of the 235 jobs at the Pithiviers factory.
Anger has been growing markedly on both sides of the Atlantic over job cuts and high bonuses for executives whose companies were kept afloat with billions of euros (dollars) in taxpayers' money.
In France, that anger has led to kidnappings, marches and strikes in a country with a long tradition of labor unrest.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening new laws to curb excesses in bonuses and executive severance packages. Sarkozy is also trying to deflect anger against his government's failure to ward off the job losses and economic hardship.
The French government announced Tuesday that 80,000 people had been added to unemployment rolls in February.
A poll published Wednesday showed that 64 percent of respondents predicted that the French would ''revolt'' against the crisis with more violent incidents. Some 58 percent blamed banks for the crisis, followed by political leaders.
The poll by TNS-Sofres questioned 970 people by telephone March 17-18. No margin of error was given, though it would be about plus or minus 3 percentage points for a poll of this size.
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13) Pakistan: Missile Strikes Kill 11
[All they have to do is say those that were killed were "militants" and that makes it OK?????,,,bw]
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
World Briefing | Asia
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/asia/26briefs-Pstan.html?ref=world
Two missiles believed to have been fired from an American drone killed seven foreign militants in Makeen, a town in south Waziristan, Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday. The attack, around 6:30 p.m., was directed at two vehicles of the type used by Taliban in the area. Makeen is the stronghold of the Mehsud tribe, led by Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. Early Thursday, a similar missile strike killed at least four militants in the nearby Essokhel area, Agence France-Presse reported, quoting local officials.
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14) Cities Deal With a Surge in Shantytowns
By JESSE McKINLEY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html
FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.
“They just popped up about 18 months ago,” Mr. Stack said. “One day it was empty. The next day, there were people living there.”
Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”
While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, these new tent cities have taken root — or grown from smaller enclaves of the homeless as more people lose jobs and housing — in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.
In Seattle, homeless residents in the city’s 100-person encampment call it Nickelsville, an unflattering reference to the mayor, Greg Nickels. A tent city in Sacramento prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce a plan Wednesday to shift the entire 125-person encampment to a nearby fairground. That came after a recent visit by “The Oprah Winfrey Show” set off such a news media stampede that some fed-up homeless people complained of overexposure and said they just wanted to be left alone.
The problem in Fresno is different in that it is both chronic and largely outside the national limelight. Homelessness here has long been fed by the ups and downs in seasonal and subsistence jobs in agriculture, but now the recession has cast a wider net and drawn in hundreds of the newly homeless — from hitchhikers to truck drivers to electricians.
“These are able-bodied folks that did day labor, at minimum wage or better, who were previously able to house themselves based on their income,” said Michael Stoops, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group based in Washington.
The surging number of homeless people in Fresno, a city of 500,000 people, has been a surprise. City officials say they have three major encampments near downtown and smaller settlements along two highways. All told, as many 2,000 people are homeless here, according to Gregory Barfield, the city’s homeless prevention and policy manager, who said that drug use, prostitution and violence were all too common in the encampments.
“That’s all part of that underground economy,” Mr. Barfield said. “It’s what happens when a person is trying to survive.”
He said the city planned to begin “triage” on the encampments in the next several weeks, to determine how many people needed services and permanent housing. “We’re treating it like any other disaster area,” Mr. Barfield said.
Mr. Barfield took over his newly created position in January, after the county and city adopted a 10-year plan to address homelessness. A class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of homeless people against the city and the California Department of Transportation led to a $2.35 million settlement in 2008, making money available to about 350 residents who had had their belongings discarded in sweeps by the city.
The growing encampments led the city to place portable toilets and security guards near one area known as New Jack City, named after a dark and drug-filled 1991 movie. But that just attracted more homeless people.
“It was just kind of an invitation to move in,” said Mr. Stack, the outreach center manager.
On a recent afternoon, nobody seemed thrilled to be living in New Jack City, a filthy collection of rain- and wind-battered tents in a garbage-strewn lot. Several weary-looking residents sat on decaying sofas as a pair of pit bulls chained to a fence howled.
Northwest of New Jack City sits a somewhat less grim encampment. It is sometimes called Taco Flats or Little Tijuana because of the large number of Latino residents, many of whom were drawn to Fresno on the promise of agricultural jobs, which have dried up in the face of the poor economy and a three-year drought.
Guillermo Flores, 32, said he had looked for work in the fields and in fast food, but had found nothing. For the last eight months, he has collected cans, recycling them for $5 to $10 a day, and lived in a hand-built, three-room shack, a home that he takes pride in, with a door, clean sheets on his bed and a bowl full of fresh apples in his propane-powered kitchen area.
“I just built it because I need it,” said Mr. Flores, as he cooked a dinner of chili peppers, eggs and onions over a fire. “The only problem I have is the spiders.”
Dozens of homeless men and women here have found more organized shelter at the Village of Hope, a collection of 8-by-10-foot storage sheds built by the nonprofit group Poverello House and overseen by Mr. Stack. Planted in a former junkyard behind a chain-link fence, each unit contains two cots, sleeping bags and a solar-powered light.
Doug Brown, a freelance electrical engineer, said he had discovered the Village of Hope while unemployed a few years back and had returned after losing his job in October. Mr. Stoops, of the homeless coalition, predicted that the population at such new Hoovervilles could grow as those without places to live slowly burned through their options and joined the ranks of the chronically homeless, many of whom are indigent as a result of illiteracy, alcoholism, mental illness and drug abuse.
That mix is already evident in a walk around Taco Flats, where Sean Langer, 42, who lost a trucking job in December and could pass for a soccer dad, lives in his car in front of a sturdy shanty that is home to Barbara Smith, 41, a crack addict with a wild cackle for a laugh.
“This is a one-bedroom house,” said Ms. Smith, proudly taking a visitor through her home built with scrap wood and scavenged two-by-fours. “We got a roof, and it does not leak.”
During the day, the camp can seem peaceful. American flags fly over some shanties, and neighbors greet one another. Some feed pets, while others build fires and chat.
Daniel Kent, a clean-shaven 27-year-old from Oregon, has been living in Taco Flats for three months after running out of money on a planned hitchhiking trip to Florida. He did manage to earn $35 a day holding up a going-out-of-business sign for Mervyn’s until the department store actually went of out business.
Mr. Kent planned to attend a job fair soon, but said he did not completely mind living outdoors.
“We got veterans out here; we got people with heart, proud to be who they are,” Mr. Kent said. “Regardless of living situations, it doesn’t change the heart. There’s some good people out here, really good people.”
But the danger after dark is real. Ms. Smith, who lost an eye after being shot in the face years ago, said she had seen two people killed in New Jack City, prompting her to move to Taco Flats and try to quit drugs. Her companion, Willie Mac, 53, a self-described youth minister, said he was “waiting on her to get herself right with the Lord.”
Ms. Smith said her dream was simple: “To get out of here, get off the street, have our own home.”
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15) Florida: Agency Faulted in Detention of Mother
By YOLANNE ALMANZAR
March 26, 2009
National Briefing | South
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26brfs-AGENCYFAULTE_BRF.html?ref=us
Advocates for immigrants accused a private foster care agency of turning a Mexican mother of two toddlers, and her own parents, over to the local authorities to be deported. Lawyers working with the family said a private child welfare group providing services to the Florida Department of Children and Families reported the woman, Karen Arriaga, 19, to the local police, who have the authority to enforce immigration laws under a program known as 287(g) that the White House has promised to review, and arranged to have her detained during a supervised visit with her two young sons. Ms. Arriaga’s parents were detained during another visit with the boys. A spokeswoman at the state agency said the police were contacted because of accusations of neglect, not in an effort to have the family deported.
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16) Teaching Economics and Pizza Equations
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26idaho.html?ref=education
The students Jeb Harrison teaches in his economics classes at Pocatello High School in Idaho have learned one thing for sure about these hard times: for $5 you can get a 14-inch pizza with one topping at Molto Caldo Pizzeria, just down the street.
Earlier this month, after residents of Pocatello rejected a school levy intended to help address a depleted budget and rising costs, Mr. Harrison decided to find a way to help. He approached Dan McIsaac, the pizzeria owner, and brokered a deal.
If Mr. McIsaac paid about $315 for 10,000 sheets of paper for Mr. Harrison’s classes, more than a year’s supply, the pizzeria could run an advertisement across the bottom of every sheet handed out in class.
“Wow,” said Mr. Harrison, echoing the response of some of his students to the $5 pizza offer, “that is a pretty good deal.”
In the weeks since, Mr. McIsaac said, his lunch traffic has been fairly flat but his dinner business has increased 3 percent to 5 percent. The new patrons are mostly students’ parents.
So far, no one has accused him or Mr. Harrison of exploiting students.
Mr. Harrison said that he had no financial or other interest in the restaurant, and that the idea had helped him teach how advertising works.
“I taught my kids a good lesson,” Mr. Harrison said. “I saved my school some money, and I helped out a local business.”
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17) Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
By ADAM LIPTAK
March 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html?ref=education
SAFFORD, Ariz. — Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.
In Ms. Redding’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”
“More than that,” Judge Wardlaw added, “it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways “a close call,” given the “humiliation and degradation” involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, “I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students.”
Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.
“Do we really want to encourage cases,” Professor Arum asked, “where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”
The Supreme Court’s last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion — as opposed to systematic drug testing programs — was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student’s purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.
In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding’s case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was “carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal.”
The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.
Sitting in her aunt’s house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. “There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types,” she said. “I was in between nerdy and preppy.”
One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. “She started acting weird and wearing black,” Ms. Redding said. “She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy.”
When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court papers.
Kerry Wilson, the assistant principal, ordered the two school employees to search both students. The searches turned up no more pills.
Mr. Wilson declined a request for an interview and referred a reporter to the superintendent of schools, Mark R. Tregaskes. Mr. Tregaskes did not respond to a message left with his assistant.
Lawyers for the school district said in a brief that it was “on the front lines of a decades-long struggle against drug abuse among students.” Abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medications is on the rise among 12- and 13-year-olds, the brief said, citing data from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Given that, the school district said, the search was “not excessively intrusive in light of Redding’s age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.”
Adam B. Wolf, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Ms. Redding, said her experience was “the worst nightmare for any parent.”
“When you send your child off to school every day, you expect them to be in math class or in the choir,” Mr. Wolf said. “You never imagine their being forced to strip naked and expose their genitalia and breasts to their school officials.”
In a sworn statement submitted in the case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, No. 08-479, Mr. Wilson said he had good reason to suspect Ms. Redding. She and other students had been unusually rowdy at a school dance a couple of months before, and members of the school staff thought they had smelled alcohol. A student also accused Ms. Redding of having served alcohol at a party before the dance, Mr. Wilson said.
Ms. Redding said she had served only soda at the party, adding that her accuser was not there. At the dance, she said, school administrators had confused adolescent rambunctiousness with inebriation. “We’re kids,” she said. “We’re goofy.”
The search was conducted by Peggy Schwallier, the school nurse, and Helen Romero, a secretary. Ms. Redding “never appeared apprehensive or embarrassed,” Ms. Schwallier said in a sworn statement. Ms. Redding said she had kept her head down so the women could not see that she was about to cry.
Ms. Redding said she was never asked if she had pills with her before she was searched. Mr. Wolf, her lawyer, said that was unsurprising.
“They strip-search first and ask questions later,” Mr. Wolf said of school officials here.
Ms. Redding did not return to school for months after the search, studying at home. “I never wanted to see the secretary or the nurse ever again,” she said.
In the end, she transferred to another school. The experience left her wary, nervous and distrustful, she said, and she developed stomach ulcers. She is now studying psychology at Eastern Arizona College and hopes to become a counselor.
Ms. Redding said school officials should have taken her background into account before searching her.
“They didn’t even look at my records,” she said. “They didn’t even know I was a good kid.”
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.
“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”
Ms. Redding grew emotional as she reflected on what she would have done if she had been told as an adult to strip-search a student. Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she said she would have refused.
“Why would I want to do that to a little girl and ruin her life like that?” Ms. Redding asked.
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18) City Unemployment Rate Reaches 8.1%
By Patrick McGeehan
March 26, 2009, 2:00 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/city-unemployment-rate-reaches-81/
New York City’s unemployment rate leaped last month to 8.1 percent from 6.9 percent, the biggest jump in any month on record, New York State’s Department of Labor said on Thursday.
The rise ended a long period when the city’s job market was outperforming the nation’s. The city’s unemployment rate is now equal to the national rate.
The city lost 3,600 jobs in February, a month when hiring in tourism-related businesses usually leads to an increase in overall employment. In the previous 10 years, the city had added an average of 18,900 jobs in February.
“The city’s economy continues to weaken month-by-month with over-the-year losses widening dramatically,” said James Brown, an analyst with the Labor Department.
A year ago, the city’s unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. The city’s rate has been much higher in the past — it hit 11.7 percent in 1992 — but it has not risen so much in any month since record-keeping started in 1976. The current rate is the highest for the city since October 2003.
New York State’s unemployment rate also rose sharply in February, to 7.8 percent from 7 percent in January. That was the highest unemployment rate for the state since June 1993. For upstate New York, unemployment is at a 25-year high, said Peter A. Neenan, director of the department’s Division of Research and Statistics.
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19) Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal ’70s Drug Laws
By JEREMY W. PETERS
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html?ref=nyregion
ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state’s strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation.
The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison.
The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.
New York’s drug sentencing laws, imposed during a heroin epidemic that was devastating urban areas nearly four decades ago, helped spur a nationwide trend toward mandatory sentences in drug crimes. But as many other states moved to roll back the mandatory minimum sentences in recent years, New York kept its laws on the books, leaving prosecutors with the sole discretion of whether offenders could be sent to treatment.
“We’re putting judges in the position to determine sentences based on the facts of a case, and not on mandatory minimum sentences,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman from Queens who has led the effort for repeal.
“To me, that is the restoration of justice.”
The agreement, which requires approval in the Assembly and the Senate, would allow some drug offenders who are currently in prison to apply to have their sentences commuted. It was not clear on Wednesday how many current prisoners would be eligible to apply. Mr. Paterson has pushed to have fewer prisoners than legislative leaders would prefer.
While a few points, like a resentencing provision and the amount the state is willing to spend on the plan, were still being negotiated late Wednesday, lawmakers said they were on track to wipe out the central elements of laws that have been criticized for decades as overly punitive and disproportionately harmful to minorities.
The laws, passed in 1973, are commonly known as the Rockefeller drug laws because they were championed by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in what was considered a bold response to the sharp rise in heroin use and property crimes among young people.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Paterson, Marissa Shorenstein, said reaching the deal, which she stressed was still being forged, was a personal victory for the governor, who has made drug law reform a priority of his administration. When he was a state senator, Mr. Paterson was arrested in 2002 at a demonstration outside Gov. George E. Pataki’s Midtown Manhattan office protesting the drug laws.
The reforms, Ms. Shorenstein said, “reflect the governor’s core principle to focus on treatment rather than punishment to end the cycle of addiction.”
Under the plan, judges would have the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders in all but the most serious drug offenses — known as A-level drug felonies — to treatment. As a condition of being sent to treatment, offenders would have to plead guilty. If they did not successfully complete treatment, their case would go back before a judge, who would again have the option of imposing a prison sentence.
Currently, judges are bound by a sentencing structure that requires minimum sentences of one year for possessing small amounts of cocaine or heroin, for example. Under the agreement reached by the governor and lawmakers, a judge could order treatment for those offenders.
Judges would also have the option of sending some repeat drug offenders to treatment. Repeat offenders accused of more serious drug crimes, however, could only go to treatment if they were found to be drug-dependent in an evaluation.
District attorneys have resisted an overhaul of the state’s drug sentencing laws, arguing that the system in place has led to lower drug crime rates and allowed more drug criminals to enter treatment.
“The prison population is going down and public safety has improved, and I’d hate to do anything that would upset either of those trends,” said Michael C. Green, the district attorney of Monroe County, which includes Rochester. “No one knows for sure, but logic seems to dictate that is certainly one of the possibilities.”
In 2004, the state eliminated the life sentences some drug crimes carried as a maximum punishment and reduced the length of other drug sentences. But advocates said those changes did not go nearly far enough because they left judges bound to mandatory sentencing.
Since then, the Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats, has routinely passed legislation that repealed mandatory minimum sentences for many drug crimes. But the bills always failed to get past the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans until January.
Passing drug law revisions would give Senate Democrats a significant legislative victory at a time when Republicans are hammering them, saying they are disorganized and ineffective.
Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat who has led the effort in the Senate to overhaul the drug statutes, said he was confident he had support in the Senate to pass the plan.
“It’s no secret the Senate’s old majority was the primary barrier to reforming our drug laws,” he said. “But this is one of the reasons we fought so hard to take the majority. This is what our supporters have expected us to do.”
The deal comes as the state is facing a $16 billion budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. And finding the money needed to pay for drug addiction programs, which could reach near $80 million, will prove difficult, those involved in the negotiations said.
But in the long run, the changes are expected to save money because sending offenders to treatment is less expensive than spending $45,000 a year to keep them confined.
New York already has one of the most extensive drug-treatment networks in the country. Drug policy experts said that with the proposed changes in the law, the state could have the sentencing policy it needs to fully utilize those treatment programs.
“New York could actually become a national leader,” said Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that urges relaxation of certain drug sentencing laws. “We’re going in a public health direction here. We’re making that turn, and that’s what’s significant.”
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20) Study Reports More Deaths of Children Linked to Child-Welfare System
By JULIE BOSMAN
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26acs.html?ref=nyregion
A new report shows that more children in families said to be known to the New York City child-welfare system died in 2008 than in any of the previous 20 years. There were 49 fatalities, according to Child Welfare Watch, a policy journal, including 14 homicides; the other children died in accidents or of natural causes, and, in some cases, the cause was not determined.
A family is considered known to the system if any member is under the care of the Administration for Children’s Services — for example, children in foster care — or has been the subject of an abuse or neglect report to a state hot line in the previous decade.
Andrew White, director of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, which publishes Child Welfare Watch, said the increase goes hand in hand with the rise in reports placed to the state hot line. In 2005, the year before the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Brooklyn girl who was starved and beaten in a case that prompted an overhaul of the city’s child-welfare system, there were 47,640 reports of abuse or neglect, according to the Administration for Children’s Services. In 2008, there were 60,170. “It’s a transformation of our culture,” Mr. White said. “In the wake of Nixzmary Brown, we now report many more families for suspicion of abuse and neglect than we did in the past.”
In a statement responding to the report, John B. Mattingly, the commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, said, “While every single death is a tragedy we work to prevent whenever possible, the indicator we watch most closely is the number of confirmed homicides of children by their caregivers, and this number has remained in the same range — between 10 and 14 homicides for each of the past four years.”
Sharman Stein, an agency spokeswoman, added that 14 of the 49 deaths were attributed to “co-sleeping,” the practice of babies or children sleeping in the same bed as their parents, a significant increase over the past few years. She said such fatalities were being reported in higher numbers due to increasing public awareness of baby safety and recommendations against co-sleeping.
Child Welfare Watch also reported that the number of children admitted to foster care rose slightly, to 7,451 in 2008 from 7,132 in 2007.
That continues a trend, also attributed by many to the news reports about Nixzmary’s death.
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21) I.R.S. to Offer Deal to Tax Evaders
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
March 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27tax.html?ref=business
The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure to bring in money to the faltering economy, plans to give offshore tax evaders a big break.
The agency has drafted a plan that significantly lowers a penalty that applies to wealthy Americans who hide money overseas in secret accounts, a person briefed on the matter said Thursday. The plan is intended to lure out of hiding scores of wealthy people who must come forward and declare their accounts in order to take advantage of the lower penalty.
The plan was developed amid a widening investigation into wealthy American clients of UBS but will apply to clients of other banks as well.
Under the plan, according to the person briefed on the issue, the I.R.S. will reduce an onerous penalty for not filing a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account, known as an Fbar — something offshore tax evaders have not done.
The current penalty is 50 percent of the high balance of each account over the last three years — an amount that can wipe out an investor’s accounts in just two years — but the I.R.S. will reduce that penalty to 5 to 20 percent, depending in part on whether the wealth was inherited.
The I.R.S. will also require taxpayers to pay any taxes and interest owed over the last six years, as well as assess a standard, accuracy-related penalty of 20 percent. Taxpayers must also file amended returns for the last six years.
The proposal, which the I.R.S. is communicating to its field agents who audit returns, does not allow taxpayers to escape potential prosecution, but it makes that outcome less likely, in particular for those covered under the 5 percent Fbar penalty, this person said.
“They need to get money back into the system, so they needed to sweeten the deal,” the person said.
An I.R.S. spokesman declined to comment.
Last November, the I.R.S. scrapped at the last minute a proposal to create a global settlement for taxpayers with offshore accounts. Such settlements in the past have come under criticism for not attracting enough tax evaders.
The new plan may be more likely to draw in tax evaders because the I.R.S. and the Justice Department are exerting significant legal pressure on UBS, the world’s largest private bank, to disclose 52,000 client names. Unless those clients come forward before their names are potentially turned over, they may face a heightened risk of being prosecuted, as well as the steeper Fbar penalties.
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22) There’s Safety in Military Contracts
By KATE MURPHY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/business/smallbusiness/26sbiz.html?ref=business
Like so many small businesses in this weak economy, Kaos Worldwide, a sports apparel company just outside Houston, has been struggling. But it has managed to survive while its competitors have folded because it won a five-year, $1.5 million contract last year to supply sports bras to the United States military.
“Without the military contract, we might not still be here,” said Bert Emanuel, who founded the business with his wife, Terri, after a knee injury in 2001 forced him to retire from an 11-year career as a professional football player. Their company sells temperature-regulating and moisture-wicking base layers like T-shirts, shorts, leggings and bras.
While it may seem that only large corporations like Halliburton and Lockheed Martin would have a shot at lucrative military contracts, the Defense Department actually awards more than half, or $55 billion, to small businesses. And the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan promises to make even more money available.
“Small businesses play an important role in the economy and the military,” said Joseph E. Misanin, deputy director of small-business programs at the Defense Department. “They have an agility and flexibility that gives them an advantage over bigger companies.”
Although the regulatory hurdles to becoming a military vendor can be daunting and frustrating, small-business owners who persevere say it is tremendously profitable and even essential to their survival. With the United States currently in the midst of two wars and tending to a multitude of other security concerns, they say the military is a recession-proof customer that has insulated them from the current economic downturn.
Beth Harshfield, the owner of Exhibit Arts, an advertising and marketing company in Wichita, Kan., said she started bidding on military contracts six years ago because “I got tired of the local economy kicking the legs out from under us.” Now 80 percent of her business is with the military. Her company creates trade-show booths for Army recruiters and acts as a staffing agency for military bases.
“Once you’re established and you perform well, there is unlimited potential,” Ms. Harshfield said. “But getting set up to work for the government is a confusing and lengthy process.”
First, small businesses have to be certified to work for the government, which can be cumbersome. It means getting listed on the Central Contractor Registration database. This is required of all current and potential military contractors. Applications can be made online and require a company’s tax identification number.
Once in the database, small businesses get a Commercial and Government Entity code; a Marketing Partner Identification Number and Trading Partner Identification Number. These are all essential for finding, bidding on and getting paid for military contracts.
Helping small businesses make sense of the credentialing process are regional procurement technical assistance centers. There are 93 of these federally financed offices nationwide, run by former military procurement officers.
“The first meeting takes a few hours when we learn about the business to see if it even has a product that’s possible to sell to the military,” said Debbie Smith, procurement specialist at the assistance center in New London, Conn.
If the answer is yes, then the center guides the small-business owner through the registration process and enters him or her into a central database that patrols the federal system for bid solicitations that fit their profile. Small businesses can also look through the listings on www.fedbizopps.gov for opportunities.
But getting that first contract is difficult, said Ms. Harshfield of Exhibit Arts. “They want you to have experience working with the military,” she said. “They aren’t as interested in your commercial experience. So it’s really hard to break in.” It took two years, she said, for her company to get the military to accept a bid.
Mr. Emanuel said he was lucky that, through personal connections, a general in Iraq had learned of his product. The general ordered 10,000 bras for his female soldiers by credit card in 2005. So when Mr. Emanuel bid on the five-year contract that he eventually won last year, he was able to point to that experience.
Rather than bidding on contracts, some small businesses try to get their products listed on the General Services Administration schedule, which is essentially a giant e-mall where military procurement officers can buy items online with a standard credit card. If the company’s product is consumer-oriented, it is eligible for listing on the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, an online, tax-free store for active-duty military and their families.
Kathline Springer, director of business development at Rust Bullet in Reno, Nev., said it took two years of paperwork and lobbying various officials to get her company’s rust-retardant coating listed in 2005 on the General Services Administration schedule. Still, she said, “it was worth it” because the military is now Rust Bullet’s biggest customer. “I don’t have to worry if they are going to pay their bills.”
Another option is to get a so-called National Stock Number, which gets a product in the Defense Department’s database of items approved for military use. Mark Ewald, owner of Groove Tech in Waterbury, Vt., got a stock number in 2000 for his company’s industrial-strength bungee cord.
“I get most of my orders through word of mouth,” he said. “One military unit will get my product and tell another unit who wants to get it.” The unit’s procurement officer then uses the stock number to place an order. The military now accounts for more than half of Groove Tech’s business, he said.
To expand his sales, Mr. Ewald said he had begun making marketing calls to military bases and National Guard units. “Most of the work is finding out who the supply sergeant is and how to reach him,” he said. Adding to his frustration, he said, is that military personnel are mobile, so contacts change frequently.
Rick Horn, who is with the assistance center in Las Vegas, said: “It’s certainly more complicated than dealing with a commercial entity. But the way the economy is these days, the government still has money and the private sector doesn’t.”
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