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The Lost Children of Haiti
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html
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Homeless people need housing, not incarceration.
Jails are not homes.
Homelessness is not a crime.
Stop criminalizing homelessness and poverty!
avimecca@yahoo.com
Everyone
A very small group of neighbors in the Haight and a couple high-profile outsiders are trying to bring back a sit/lie law which would enable police to harass and arrest homeless folks and others in the city for sitting or lying on the sidewalk. The law was first enacted in 1968 and until it was repealed (because it was declaredunconstitutional by the courts) 11 years later, it was used against hippies in the Haight and gay men in the Castro.
It was a bad law then, it's still a very bad law.
These days, I have no doubt that it will be used against homeless youth in the Haight, young homeless queers in the Castro and day laborers in the Mission.
The Board of Supervisors' public safety committee will hold a public hearing on sit/lie on Monday, March 1 at 10am. We need folks opposed to this law to come out in force.
Please send this email to 10 or more people you know and ask them to send it to 10 more. Call or send an email to committeemember Bevan Dufty and ask him to oppose sit/lie! (bevan.dufty@sfgov.org/ 554-6968). The other committeemembers are Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu (ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org/ 554-7630; david.chiu@sfgov.org/554-7450).
And get your organization to oppose this measure.
If we all speak out against this now, maybe we can prevent it from ever being introduced at the Board.
Homeless people need housing, not incarceration.
Jails are not homes.
Homelessness is not a crime.
Stop criminalizing homelessness and poverty!
TALKING POINTS:
1) Assault, battery, robbery, and sidewalk-obstruction laws all already exist. What this is, is carte-blanche to harass homeless people.
2) This kind of change represents the will of a small minority of Haight residents and a couple of high-profile outsiders. Most Haight residents want a neighborhood where the Constitution and basic rights still apply.
3) Police are not the right people to engage homeless people in services: social workers are.
4) Most young homeless people are victims of a broken foster system or abusive households. Law enforcement targeting will only further alienate them, and is downright cruel. An arrest record will make it more difficult for them to get housing in the future.
thanks
Don't forget to send this email to 10 or more people you know!
Tommi Avicolli Mecca
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STOP SPENDING TRILLIONS ON THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
END US/UN MILITARY OCCUPATION OF HAITI! FOOD NOT GUNS IN HAITI!
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN!
FREE PALESTINE!
MONEY FOR HEALTHCARE, JOBS AND EDUCATION!
U.S. HANDS OFF LATIN AMERICA!
SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY
SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 11:00 A.M., CIVIC CENTER
GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT MARCH 20!
Volunteers Needed!
Postering and Flyering Work Sessions every Tues. 7pm and every Sat. 2pm
Volunteers are needed to help put up posters, hand out leaflets and make alert phone calls to fellow activists. Call 415-821-6545 for more info and for office hours. Come by the office to pick up posters and flyers in English, Spanish or Chinese. Participate in an Outreach Work Session held every Tues. 7pm and Sat. 2pm, meeting at the ANSWER Coalition Office: 2489 Mission St. #24 (at 21st St.), San Francisco, near 24th St. BART/#14, #49 MUNI.
Call 415-821-6545 for leafleting and posting schedule.
DONATIONS NEEDED:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr004=nou1lpg115.app202a
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Join Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SF to promote the March 20 Coalition antiwar demonstration.:
Sunday, 28 February 2010
12:15 pm
@ Unitarian Universalist Center
1187 Franklin Street (@ Geary), SF, 94109
We invite you to...
-- Lunch (vegetarian) and
-- Movie, Howard Zinn: You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train
A vegetarian lunch will start @ 12:15. We're asking "guests" for $1 - $5 contribution. (UU members, the usual $5). It includes a brief program on "Why I will be protesting the wars on March 20"
RSVP by 25 Feb so we know how much lunch to prepare: blee1931@yahoo.com (415.668.9572) or doloresmp@aol.com (415.387.2287)
The inspiring documentary on recently departed Howard Zinn will start about !:15 pm. Length approx 78 mins.
Donations will be solicited to benefit the March 20 Coalition to defray expenses of the anti-war march & rally on:
Saturday 20 March 2010
11 am
Civic Center Plaza, SF
This lunch and movie social is hosted by Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SF, a member of the March 20 Coalition, calling for an end to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan: to use our taxes for health care, jobs and education, not death and destruction!
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RALLY FOR CALIFORNIA'S FUTURE!
Rally at Civic Center in Defense
Of Public Education and All Public-Sector Services!
Thursday, March 4, 5:00 P.M.
The San Francisco Labor Council calls on all labor affiliates, community organizations, and student groups to mobilize their memberships to attend the 5 p.m. rally and demonstration at the San Francisco Civic Center on March 4.
This rally is being organized and sponsored by United Educators of San Francisco, AFT Local 2121, and the California Faculty Association as part of the statewide March 4 Strike/Day of Action in Defense of Public Education that was called by a statewide conference of students, faculty, and staff unions held in Berkeley on October 24, 2009.
Responding to layoffs, furloughs and widespread cutbacks, the October 24 conference summoned all sectors of education to struggle collectively to save public education in California. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and California Teachers Association (CTA) have endorsed the Day of Action. Massive demonstrations are being organized across the state on March 4.
The San Francisco Labor Council believes that those who work in the education sector should not be placed in competition with state workers, where each fights against the other for scarce funds.
That is why we are urging that California enact a program of progressive taxation. This could ensure that all our communities can thrive. We could create ample funds so that everyone has the opportunity, through quality, accessible education, to fully develop their potential and become productive members of society. And, at the same time, we could establish fully funded social services and job security for public workers.
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Note: UESF is calling on all teacher unionists and K-12 families to gather at 4 p.m. at the State Building on the corner of Van Ness & McAllister, before joining the mass rally at the Civic Center.
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NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
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Bay Area Latin American Solidarity Coalition presents:
The Future of Honduras
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia (between 15th and 16th Streets)
San Francisco
$5-25 donations
(No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.)
415-924-3227
www.mitfamericas.org, www.balasc.org
Come hear Andres Conteris tell the story of his 129 days inside the Brazillian Embassy under seige with President Mel Zelaya after the Honduran coup.
Andres was the last English speaking journalist inside the Embassy, staying until the day that Zelaya was allowed to leave.
Now returned to San Francisco, Andres will tell us about those months withi the Embassy, and inform us of the most recent developments from Honduras.
Andres Conteris is a Latin American Correspondent with Democracy Now! and Flaspoints; has lived in Honduras; and has been involved in human rights activism for many years.
Andres will also be leading a human rights delegation to Honduras later in March, organized through the Task Force on the Americas. Proceeds from the March 10th presentation will benefit the Honduras Delegation Scholarship Fund.
Endorsed by: Chiapas Support Committee; FMLN Northern California; Haiti Action Committee; Nicaragua Center for Community Action; SOA Watch West; Task Force on the Americas
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Angela Davis, Linda Evans, Susan Rosenberg & Laura Whitehorn
invite you to:
SPARKS FLY 2010 -
An evening in celebration of Marilyn Buck and Women Political Prisoners
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 7 PM
10 PM Dance Party with DJ Kuttin Kandi
Uptown Body and Fender Garage
401 26th St., Oakland (Telegraph Ave)
Art Auction, Speakers & Music including, Maisha Quint, devorah major, Phavia Kujichagulia, Kayla Marin, Yuri Kochiyama, Graciela Perez-Trevisan & Bomberas de la Bahia Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Plena
$10-50 (no one turned away)
Sparks Fly has honored women political prisoners for 20 years. Marilyn Buck is scheduled to get out of prison later this year after serving more than 25 years. Let's welcome her home! All money raised will go to the Release Fund for Marilyn Buck.
During this evening we also pay tribute to Safiya Bukhari on publication of her posthumous book, The War Before.
For book tour dates go to http://www.feministpress.org/books/safiya-bukhari/war.
Endorsed by: AK Press, All of Us or None, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, BACORR, California Coalition of Women Prisoners, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Code Pink, East Bay Prisoners Support, East Side Arts Alliance, Freedom Archives, Free the SF 8 Comm. Friends of Marilyn Buck, Haiti Action Committee, Kevin Cooper Defense Comm, KPFA Women's Magazine, LAGAI, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Long Haul, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, National Lawyers Guild/Bay Area, Out of Control, PM Press, Prison Activist Resource Center, Prison Radio Project, QUIT, Radical Women, SF Dyke March, SF Women In Black, Speak Out!, Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network
wheelchair accessible
for more information: sparksfly2010@gmail.com
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LABOR'S STAKE IN ENDING THE WARS
Why are we in Afghanistan?
San Francisco
Saturday, March 20, 10:00 A.M.-12:00 Noon*
Plumbers Hall
1621 Market Street (Near Franklin)
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and its consequences.
Program Includes:
--"Why Are We in Afghanistan" a short video.
--Stephen Zunes, USF Professor and Middle East specialist
--Afghanistan War Veteran
--Military Families Speak Out
--Labor Leaders
Speakers followed by Q&A and Audience Response
Followed by a Labor Contingent march to Civic Center to join antiwar rally and march in solidarity with Unite HERE Local 2 members at downtown hotels. (Bring union banners and colors)
*Coffee, bagels and music at 10:00 A.M., march to Civic Center at Noon. Park in lot next to building or exit Civic Center BART station, walk about 6 blocks west on Market to Franklin.
Sponsored by:
San Francisco Labor Council and Bay Area U.S. Labor Against the War
Endorsed by:
Alameda Labor Council; AFT Local 2121; Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice; ILWU Local 10; Oakland Education Association; OPEIU Local 3; Peralta Federation of Teachers; SEIU Local 1021; Unite HERE Local 2; United Educators of San Francisco.
This list is in formation. Additional endorsements are invited.
For more information: 510-263-5303
labor-for-peace-and-justice@igc.org
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U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
FREE PALESTINE!
San Francisco March and Rally
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
11am, Civic Center Plaza
National March on Washington
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
Fri., March 19 Day of Action & Outreach in D.C.
People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.
On Saturday, March 20, 2010, there will be a massive National March & Rally in D.C. A day of action and outreach in Washington, D.C., will take place on Friday, March 19, preceding the Saturday march.
There will be coinciding mass marches on March 20 in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The national actions are initiated by a large number of organizations and prominent individuals. see below)
Click here to become an endorser:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=5940&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&autologin=true&link=endorse-body-1
Click here to make a donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=2302&autologin=true&donate=body-1&JServSessionIdr002=2yzk5fh8x2.app13b
We will march together to say "No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!" We will march together to say "No War Against Iran!" We will march together to say "No War for Empire Anywhere!"
Instead of war, we will demand funds so that every person can have a job, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.
March 20 is the seventh anniversary of the criminal war of aggression launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. One million or more Iraqis have died. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives or been maimed, and continue to suffer a whole host of enduring problems from this terrible war.
This is the time for united action. The slogans on banners may differ, but all those who carry them should be marching shoulder to shoulder.
Killing and dying to avoid the perception of defeat
Bush is gone, but the war and occupation in Iraq still go on. The Pentagon is demanding a widening of the war in Afghanistan. They project an endless war with shifting battlefields. And a "single-payer" war budget that only grows larger and larger each year. We must act.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were predicated on the imperial fantasy that the U.S. could create stable, proxy colonial-type governments in both countries. They were to serve as an extension of "American" power in these strategic and resource-rich regions.
That fantasy has been destroyed. Now U.S. troops are being sent to kill or be killed so that the politicians in uniform "the generals and admirals") and those in three-piece suits "our elected officials") can avoid taking responsibility for a military setback in wars that should have never been started. Their military ambitions are now reduced to avoiding the appearance of defeat.
That is exactly what happened in Vietnam! Avoiding defeat, or the perception of defeat, was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves when they took office in 1969. For this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds of thousands.
All of us can make the difference - progress and change comes from the streets and from the grassroots.
The people went to the polls in 2008, and the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House.
But it should now be obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change - on any front - is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country. These corporate interests work around the clock to frustrate efforts for real change, and they are the guiding hand behind the recent street mobilizations of the ultra-right.
It is up to us to act. If people had waited for politicians to do the right thing, there would have never been a Civil Rights Act, or unions, women's rights, an end to the Vietnam war or any of the profound social achievements and basic rights that people cherish.
It is time to be back in the streets. Organizing centers are being set up in cities and towns throughout the country.
We must raise $50,000 immediately just to get started. Please make your contribution today. We need to reserve buses, which are expensive $1,800 from NYC, $5,000 from Chicago, etc.). We have to print 100,000 leaflets, posters and stickers. There will be other substantial expenses as March 20 draws closer.
Please become an endorser and active supporter of the March 20 National March on Washington.
Please make an urgently needed tax-deductible donation today. We can't do this without your active support.
The initiators of the March 20 National March on Washington preceded by the March 19 Day of Action and Outreach in D.C.) include: the ANSWER Coalition; Muslim American Society Freedom; National Council of Arab Americans; Cynthia McKinney; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective; Ramsey Clark; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK; Deborah Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild; Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the 4th of July"; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Col. Ann Wright ret.); March Forward!; Partnership for Civil Justice; Palestinian American Women Association; Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines; Alliance for Global Justice; Claudia de la Cruz, Pastor, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC; Phil Portluck, Social Justice Ministry, Covenant Baptist Church, D.C.; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas; Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras; Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico; Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos; Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles; Free Palestine Alliance; GABRIELA Network; Justice for Filipino American Veterans; KmB Pro-People Youth; Students Fight Back; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild - LA Chapter; LEF Foundation; National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; Community Futures Collective; Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival; Companeros del Barrio; Barrio Unido for Full and Unconditional Amnesty, Bay Area United Against War.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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Defend Holly Works!
Monday April 5th 2010, 8 AM,
Alameda County Courthouse,
12th & Oak St, Oakland
8 AM demonstrate! 9 AM, attend trial.
(from 12th Street BART Station, walk down 12th St toward Lake Merritt.
Demonstrate/enter court at 12th and Oak St)
Holly Works is the now the last remaining defendant of the Oakland 100. Her trial was to start Monday, March 1st. But a defense motion for a postponement was granted, since Holly's chief witness is out of the country at this time.
A local musician and activist, Holly was arrested before she even arrived at the protest! Walking down the street with a friend, she was detained and fraudulently charged with... assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer!
This took place at least an hour before the protest was even to have started! Originally charged with assaulting a cop with a knife, Holly had no knife, and so that had to be changed. Since she had a screw driver in her purse, the cops accused her of using this "deadly weapon" to assault an officer. Once again, a total fabrication, made up by the police to tie up protesters with time-consuming prosecutions.
DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST HOLLY WORKS!
Oscar Grant was a young black retail grocery worker and father of a young daughter. He was out with friends for New Years Eve when he was detained by BART police. He was shot in the back at point blank range by a BART cop as he lay face-down on the Fruitvale station platform early on New Years Day, 2009. Cell-phone videos taken of the incident by witnesses on the station platform were posted on the internet, and protests erupted in Oakland. Over a week later, the officer, Johannes Mehserle, was finally charged with murder. He was granted a change of venue, and is being tried in Los Angeles.
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • 510 763-2347
www.laboractionmumia.org
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The US Social Forum II
" June 22-26, 2010 "
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Another World Is Possible! Another US is Necessary!
http://www.ussf2010.org/
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Check out:
Hotter than a Motherfucker!
By: Warren E. Henderson
[Warren E. Henderson has been incarcerated for many years. He is mentioned in the book, "Jailhouse Lawyers," By Mumia Abu-Jamal of one of the most effective "jailhouse lawyers." He has written two books from prison. Only this one is still available...]
ISBN: 1-4257-8463-1 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4257-8463-8 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
Pages : 130
Book Format :Trade Book 6x9
Subject :
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / People of Color
HISTORY / United States / General
LITERARY CRITICISM & COLLECTIONS / American
Availability
Trade Paperback 6x9 ($17.84)
Please choose book availability
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=39510
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I AM SEAN BELL, black boys speak
by Stacey Muhammad plus
1 year ago 1 year ago: Thu, Jan 1, 2009 6:22pm EST (Eastern Standard Time)
http://vimeo.com/2691617
I AM SEAN BELL
black boys speak
A Short Form Documentary from Wildseed Films
Directed by Stacey Muhammad
Asst. Directed by Shomari Mason
Edited by: Stacey Muhammad & R.H. Bless
Principal Photography: May 17, 2008
Brooklyn, NY
Running Time 10:30
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A Carnival Artist Without a Carnival
A Haitian Artist Struggles to Show His Work
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html
War veterans and resisters say "All Out for March 20th-National March on Washington!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsLfG9JjF8
Bilin Reenacts Avatar Film 12-02-2010 By Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E
Watch the video: "Haiti and the Devil's Curse" at:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
or
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related
It's a powerful and accurate history of Haiti--including historical film footage of French, U.S., Canadian, and UN invasions, mass murder and torture, exploitation and occupation of Haiti--featuring Danny Glover.
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New York Times Video: For Haitian Children, a Crisis Escalates
Front page of the Times, February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/
This video shows the frustration of doctors that haven't the supplies or equipment to help severely wounded Haitian children. One child, the doctor explains, had her foot amputated by her family in order to free her from the rubble she was buried under. They finally got her to the hospital after two weeks. By then, of course, the wound was infected. But, not having enough antibiotics, her other foot got infected and that had to be amputated. She is still rotting away at the hospital that can't care for her properly--as hard as the doctors are trying--and they are trying hard.
As it stands now--they haven't got the antibiotics and surgical supplies and they can't get the children to a hospital in the U.S. Since the attempted kidnapping of children by the American missionaries, the children are not allowed out of the country without papers--even when accompanied by their parents. The thing is, nobody has papers in Haiti so the parents can't prove it's their child. Nobody has driver's licenses, birth cirtificates--not the parents nor the children--if such proof exists, it's buried under the rubble along with all their other belongings. So, again, the innocent suffer because of the inability/unwillingness of the wealthiest nation in the world to bring the stuff that is needed to the people who need it because they are experts at bringing bombs, daisy-cutters and white phosphorous, not humanitarian aid. ...bw
The article of the same title is:
Paperwork Hinders Airlifts of Ill Haitian Children
By IAN URBINA
February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/world/americas/09airlift.html?ref=world
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Gaza in Plain Language: a video by Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey
Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey have created an amazing video. The narrative is from an article published not long ago in Dissident Voice written by Mr. Mowrey. [See article with the same name. A warning, however. This video is very graphic and very brutal but this is a truth we must see!..bw] A video that narrates just what happened, without emotion... just the facts, ma'am! Share it with those you know! Now on PTT TV so Google and YouTube can't censor this information totally.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/video-gaza-in-plain-language/
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Glen Ford on Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
[A speech delivered to the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations conference. This is a great speech full of information.]
blackisbackcoalition.org
http://blip.tv/file/3169123
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Security in an Insecure Land
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/30/world/americas/1247466794033/security-in-an-insecure-land.html?hp
What the US/UN police and military are doing in Haiti -- really.
This video takes us to the poorest section of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil. It looks like a giant concentration camp in the middle of a desert. The UN Police caravan have nothing with them but cameras and guns! People--men, women, children, are standing alongside the road begging for help. They say they have had no help at all since the earthquake.
The UN police bring NO AID with them. No food, water--nothing! Then the police, guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons, and their camera stop among a large group of people. The UN cop, Alix Sainvil, a Haitian-American United Nations police officer who worked to secure Cité Soleil before the earthquake, is talking to the camera; he explains that since the jail collapsed and prisoners escaped after the earthquake, he worried about how the "gangs" are taking over again.
The camera pans the faces of ALL the men.
One "gang member" (synonym "male") overhears what Soleil is saying to the camera and speaks up and says, "Even if your not a looter, when you walk past a store police will just shoot you for no reason. That's the only thing you do!" That, of course, designates him a "gang member."
The cop, Soleil, says as they are driving away, "that young man is a 'troublemaker.'"
This video illustrates just what the UN has been doing in Haiti. They have been patrolling these slums with automatic weapons and targeting anyone who shows any signs of resistance to the deplorable state of poverty they live in. It is a heinous atrocity orchestrated by the U.S.!
Haiti is US/UN occupied territory now. AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN OUT ANY MEANINGFUL AMOUNTS OF AID! They typically pull up with one-tenth of the supplies needed so that most go hungry and get nothing but their fury ignited. And who the hell wouldn't be furious? This is Katrina in powers of ten!
In another article in the Times, "Food Distribution Retooled; Americans Arrested," by DAMIEN CAVE, (number 19, below) "After two weeks of often chaotic food distribution, the United Nations announced plans on Saturday for a coupon-based system that aims to give rice to 10,000 Haitians a day at each of 16 locations around Port-au-Prince." (The article points out that the rice will be given to women only.)
AFTER TWO WEEKS THEY WILL BEGIN THIS WEEK?!?!? I guess they're thinking it'll be cheaper in the long run if more people die first. And that's the bottom line for this government! By the way, the ten Americans were arrested by the Haitian government for trying to take 33 Haitian children across into the Dominican Republic for "adoption." The thing is, they had no proof the children were orphans. I wonder how much they were going to charge for them?
--Bonnie Weinstein
Also see:
Haitian Law Enforcement Returns
The Haitian police are back on patrol in Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
Haitians Scramble for Aid
France24 reports on desperate Haitians trying to get some aid food in the Cité Soleil district of Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
HOW MANY CRIMES CAN THE U.S. COMMIT IN A CENTURY? EVIDENTLY THEIR PENCHANT FOR MORE AND MORE EGREGIOUS CRIMES ARE LIMITLESS! IT'S UP TO US TO STOP THEM! U.S. OUT OF HAITI NOW! LEAVE THE FOOD AND SUPPLIES AND GET THE HELL OUT! AND TAKE YOUR MARINES, GUNS AND TANKS WITH YOU!
U.S. Marines prevent the distribution of food to starving people due to "lack of security." They bring a truck full of supplies then, because their chain of command says they haven't enough men with guns, they drive away with the truckload of food leaving the starving Haitians running after the truck empty-handed! This is shown in detail in the video in the New York Times titled, "Confusion in Haitian Countryside." The Marines-the strong, the brave--turn tail and run! INCAPABLE, EVEN, OF DISTRIBUTING FOOD TO UNARMED, STARVING, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN!
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/22/world/americas/1247466678828/confusion-in-the-haitian-countryside.html?ref=world
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Lost Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
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Alert! New Threat To Mumia's Life!
Supreme Court Set To Announce A Decision
On the State Appeal To Reinstate Mumia's Death Sentence
17 January 2010
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
Visit our newly-rebuilt and updated web site for background information on Mumia's innocence. See the "What You Can Do Now" page: www.laboractionmumia.org
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
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The Pay at the Top
The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.'s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology.
http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?ref=business
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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
Video: Gaza Lives On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Wi2jhnW0
ASSESSMENT - "LEFT IN THE COLD"- CROW CREEK - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmfue_pjwho&feature=PlayList&p=217F560F18109313&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
Buffy Sainte Marie - No No Keshagesh
[Keshagesh is the Cree word to describe a greedy puppy that wants to keep eating everything, a metaphor for corporate greed]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmAb1gNN74&feature=player_embedded#
Buffy Sainte-Marie - No No Keshagesh lyrics:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/?i=print_lyrics&id=705368
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The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Union Election Further Complicates a Tangled City Budget
By GERRY SHIH
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/us/26sflabor.html?ref=us
2) 8.8-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Chile
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
February 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/world/americas/28chile.html?hp
3) California Campus Sees Uneasy Race Relations
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
February 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/education/27sandiego.html?ref=us
4) Troubled Iraq vet charged with murder dies
Carmen Duarte
Arizona Daily Star
February 27, 2010
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/local/article_65251ae3-6949-5e7c-9ecc-c6eb65fcd620.html
5) 2 Million Displaced After Chile Quake
By MARC LACEY and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/world/americas/01chile.html?hp
6) Jails Hope Eye Scanners Can Provide Foolproof Identification System for Inmates
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28eyes.html?ref=us
7) Buffett's Bargain Shopping Spree
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/economy/28buffett.html?ref=us
8) Protests and Promises of Improvements at Schools
"If we stop this reform at flipping the adults and hiring a bunch of new teachers and leaders and that's the extent of the new support," Mr. Knowles said, "the likelihood is this will repeat failed experiments of the past."
By CRYSTAL YEDNAK
February 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28cncreform.html?ref=education
9) As U.S. Aid Grows, Oversight Is Urged for Charter Schools
By SAM DILLON
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/education/25educ.html?ref=education
10) Letters: The Task for Unions
Letters To the Editor
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/28backpage-THETASKFORUN_LETTERS.html?ref=business
11) For Buyout Kingpins, the TXU Utility Deal Gets Tricky
By JENNY ANDERSON and JULIE CRESWELL
"'When I started hearing certain legislative members - members who would naturally otherwise be allies to us - parrot the bullet points that were being made by the company, I knew we were in trouble,' recalls Tim Morstad, who represented AARP and who was an advocate for significant electricity rate cuts. The buyout group also sought friends in high places. It signed on several powerful Texas politicos as lobbyists, directors or advisers, including Ronald Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas who is now the Obama administration's trade representative; James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and Bush family confidant, who was given a million shares as part of the buyout; Donald L. Evans, the former secretary of commerce; and Lyndon L. Olson Jr., a former Texas state representative. 'They were hiring Democrats and Republicans alike," says Tom Smith, director of the Texas division of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. "They would have hired a socialist if we had any in Texas.'"
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/energy-environment/28txu.html?ref=business
12) Another Foreclosure Alternative
By BOB TEDESCHI
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/realestate/28mort.html?ref=business
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1) Union Election Further Complicates a Tangled City Budget
By GERRY SHIH
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/us/26sflabor.html?ref=us
When the ballot counters at Local 1021 of the Service Employees International Union announce the results of the union's bitter leadership election Saturday, the news will be felt keenly in two quarters.
One is the fractious world of labor: the former leaders pushed aside during a reorganization of regional unions three years ago are seeking to return to power by promising to hold back the recent tide of pay cuts and layoffs. The leadership installed three years ago is making similar promises to retain power.
The second is in San Francisco City Hall, which spends 52 percent of its $6.6 billion budget on personnel costs. Unless it can manage to trim what it pays those nurses, social workers and janitors, the city will not be able to make ends meet next year.
What this means in the near term is that the city's goal of winning labor's backing for the short- and long-term solutions to budget deficits is likely to be difficult to achieve.
The looming deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1, and the difficult decisions it brings, comes on the heels of cuts made by the city to close last year's $438 million gap. Last June, services like substance-abuse programs were sharply reduced and more than 500 public employees were laid off.
In the longer term, the results could loosen the knots that have bound unions with the dominant Democratic Party and its mayors and supervisors, which would be a striking change for a city where labor leaders like Harry Bridges once held sway.
Despite all the young professionals and affluent retirees who have arrived in the decades since, and notwithstanding all the other issues the left has rallied around along the way, like gay rights, steadfast support for labor has been the beating heart of this city's progressive politics.
It is a banner carried today by members of the Board of Supervisors like David Campos and Eric Mar. "I used to be a shop steward for the S.E.I.U. and organized in the workplace," Mr. Mar said. "This is a strongly labor town and as one of the elected officials, I'm doing my best to make sure they are represented."
But, he added, "we're in the worst economic crisis of our lifetime, and people's fears of the economy and their pocketbooks will drive their decision making."
Steve Ponder, a compensation analyst in the city's Department of Human Resources said that while San Francisco's unionized city workers were paid about the same as other public employees in the Bay Area, they did considerably better than private-sector peers.
A janitor working for the city can make as much as $50,000 in base salary, not including $27,800 in benefits. Mr. Ponder said a janitor in the private sector typically earned less than half that amount in total compensation.
Against that backdrop, the city is facing both short- and long-term bills accumulated during decades of mutual support between labor unions and City Hall.
The unified city and county government now spends about 13 percent of the budget, or $890 million, on pensions and benefits. By 2014, these alone will rise 57 percent, to $1.4 billion. Most of the expenditures will come from general fund dollars - now a pie of around $3 billion, or less than half the city's total budget. That portion of the budget represents most of what can be easily shifted around as the supervisors and the mayor wrangle over for economic and social priorities.
The trend lines laid out by city economists describe a government with a shrinking capacity to deliver vital services or underwrite new initiatives, particularly if pension obligations keep expanding. And then there is the immediate problem of the near-record $522 million deficit for the coming fiscal year.
"This is the toughest year that anyone has seen in recent history," said David Chiu, the president of the Board of Supervisors, "in large part because last year we cut to the bone, and this year, we're cutting bone."
Yet city management and labor leaders alike say that at this critical time, with so many jobs at stake, bargaining efforts have by been hindered by a labor movement dogged by infighting.
"Hopefully with the outcome of the elections in the next month we'll see some unity that will allow them to speak with one voice," said Mike Casey, the president of the city's labor council. "Right now, that kind of unity doesn't exist. It's not even close."
The mayor's office says the city is seeking $70 million from wage givebacks alone, excluding additional savings from layoffs or reconfigurations of the workweek. Mayor Gavin Newsom's spokesman, Tony Winnicker, said the city could lay off 10,000 of the 26,000 city workers -who now work a 40-hour week - and then rehire most of them to work for 37.5 hours. This would be an effective 6.5 percent pay cut and would save $50 million.
Damita Davis-Howard, the interim director of Local 1021 of the S.E.I.U., has told reporters that Mr. Newsom's plan was "not the right track; it's the next step in a downward spiral for the city and its citizens." Through a spokesman, she declined to be interviewed for this article.
The fight over pensions is just as barbed. Ben Rosenfield, city budget director, said in an interview, "Every dollar we are spending on benefits is a dollar not available to solve deficits or fund city services. The challenge at the moment is that our cost increases are expected to consume the vast majority, if not all, of our expected revenue growth. What that means is while we are dealing larger macroeconomic issues like declining revenues from the state, we really don't have the benefit of local tax revenues to help us."
Most city unions already contribute 7.5 percent of their wages toward pensions, except for the S.E.I.U., which argues that its members are paid less than any other union workers on the payroll. The city has picked up S.E.I.U. members' contributions for the past decade as part of an arrangement made years ago when the union gave up a 7.5 percent raise.
In December, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd introduced a well-received measure that would require all city employees to contribute 7.5 percent of their annual pension payments. The labor council made a counterproposal with relatively minor changes.
Mr. Elsbernd's bill originally calculated the pension payouts based on an average of worker's salary over the final three years. The council wanted to average the last two years.
But this month, Supervisors Mar and Campos, who represent two labor-heavy districts, introduced a further amendment to Mr. Elsbernd's bill that would negate the pension contributions with a pay raise for the S.E.I.U., a move that would in fact increase costs to the city, according to the city controller.
The internal battles within the service employees union have also created confusion in the negotiations.
"When I meet with the other unions," Mr. Elsbernd said, "they all send their president or attorney or two or three people. I have to sit down with 65 to 85 people from the S.E.I.U. bargaining team every time because they're simply unable to delegate the responsibility of conferring."
This chaotic approach is the result of lingering distrust between the factions vying for control of the union, city official and representatives of other unions said.
One source of bitterness revolved around accusations of skullduggery over the union's response last year to the city's effort to have S.E.I.U. members give up a 3.75 percent raise that had been promised for years.
Brenda Barros, a union activist who supports the existing leadership under Ms. Davis-Howard, accused allies of Sin Yee Poon, the head of the rival faction, of altering the agreement while key negotiators were on vacation. The revisions were later disavowed at a rowdy membership meeting. Union members said it was not clear whether Ms. Davis-Howard or Ms. Poon would prevail in the contest for control of the union. But Ms. Poon said the election had one clear result already: "It's moved us closer to directing our resources and focusing our energies to get what we need to stand up against the attacks on pensions and other unfair demands."
The negotiations between the unions and the city are expected to continue until June, the deadline for passing next year's budget.
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2) 8.8-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Chile
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
February 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/world/americas/28chile.html?hp
RIO DE JANEIRO - A powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, shaking the capital of Santiago for 90 seconds and sending tsunami warnings along much of the Pacific basin.
Chile's TVN cable news channel was reporting 122 deaths, with the toll expected to rise, as communications were still spotty around the center of quake, near the city of Concepción in the south. Chile President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe."
The Associated Press quoted Mrs. Bachelet as saying that a huge wave had swept into a populated area in the Robinson Crusoe Islands, 410 miles off the Chilean coast, but there were no immediate reports of major damage there. Those reports bore out early fears that a major tsunami was on its way across the Pacific.
A Department of Homeland Security official said early Saturday that FEMA was monitoring the situation and was in contact with state emergency personnel in Hawaii, which is under a tsunami warning. But the decision to evacuate coastal areas and handling this evacuation is the responsibility of state and local officials in Hawaii, the Homeland Security official said.
The quake downed buildings and houses in Santiago and knocked out a major bridge connecting the northern and southern sections of the country.
It struck at 3:34 a.m. local time and was centered about 200 miles southwest of Santiago, at a depth of 22 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The epicenter was some 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live.
Phone lines were down in Concepcion as of 7:30 a.m. and no reports were coming out of that area. The quake in Chile was more powerful than the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that caused widespread damage in Haiti on Jan 12, killing at least 230,000, earthquake experts reported on CNN International.
The U.S. Geological Survey and eyewitnesses reported more than two dozen aftershocks, including two measuring magnitude 6.2 and 6.9.
"We have had a huge earthquake," Mrs. Bachelet said from an emergency response center in an appeal for Chileans to remain calm. "We're doing everything we can with all the resources we have."
Mrs. Bachelet said that the government had dispatched three emergency response teams to coastal areas. "Without a doubt, with a quake of this kind, of this size, of this magnitude, we can't rule out that there are other deaths and probably injuries," Mrs. Bachelet told reporters.
Witnesses on Facebook and Twitter reported that the quake was felt from Japan to Argentina. The quake struck at the end of the Chilean summer vacation, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to be traveling back home this weekend.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Chile and Peru, and a less-urgent tsunami watch for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Antarctica. The White House said Saturday morning that it was closely monitoring the situation, "including the potential for a tsunami," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
"We are closely monitoring the situation, including the potential for a tsunami. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Chile, and we stand ready to help in this hour of need."
Evacuation alarms sounded at 6 a.m. Saturday in vulnerable coastal areas in Hawaii, as the region prepares for what federal officials say could be a dangerous, but most likely not catastrophic tsunami to hit the islands in the aftermath of the earthquake in Chile.
Statewide television news was reporting that the southeast areas of all the islands would likely be the most impacted, which include the heavy tourist zones of Waikiki, and Poipu on Kauai. News reports said that a corridor to the airport on Oahu was being established, and that visitors should go to at least the third floor of their hotels
Brian R. Shiro, a geophysicist at NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said that computer models show that the impact will be greatest in spots such as Hilo Bay on Hawaii Island and Kahului Harbor in Maui.
In those areas, the tsunami waves could reach as high as 6 to 10 feet, Mr. Shiro said. Elsewhere in Hawaii, the waves will likely be only about two to three feet.
Already, some boat owners were moving their boats away from the coast, to avoid damage when the waves arrive. Beaches will be closed and pre-determined evacuation zones in certain coastal areas will be cleared.
Tourists saying in modern, high-rise resort hotels will be safe, Mr. Shiro said, as long as they are above the third floor. Anyone in the coastal areas should listen to directions offered from local authorities.
"Get off the shore line. We are closing all the beaches and telling people to drive out of the area," John Cummings, Oahu Civil Defense spokesman, told Reuters. Buses will patrol beaches and take people to parks in a voluntary process expected to last five hours, Reuters reported, adding that more than an hour before sirens were due to sound lines of cars snaked for blocks from gas stations in Honolulu.
Overall, the event should pass in Hawaii without widespread, catastrophic damage or major loss of life, Mr. Shiro predicted.
"We are taking it very seriously," Mr. Shiro said. "But this is not a big one."
But particularly in certain vulnerable harbor areas, he warned that area residents should take the warning seriously.
The tsunami was expected to arrive in Hawaii at 11:20 a.m., or 4:20 p.m. Eastern time.
A tsunami is essentially a wave. But it will look like a rise in sea level, or more like a flood, he said, and takes place very quickly. An initial wave will come in and then follow up waves will arrive, most likely 20 or so minutes later, in a pattern that could continue for several hours.
"The waves are so big that to the observer it looks like a very big tide," he said.
The last time there was a Pacific wide tsunami warning-as has now taken place-was in 1964, Mr. Shiro said.
There have been past regional warnings in Hawaii, such as in 1964, that passed with no tsunami impact at all. But tsunamis historically have caused major damage and loss of life in Hawaii, most recently in 1975, when two people were killed in one event, Mr. Shiro said.
"So far, the models and based on the information we have, in Hawaii, most shores will experience two to three feet, which is not that big," he said. "But you should still avoid swimming or surfing."
Lying along the mountainous Andean coast, Chile is accustomed to earthquakes. The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area as Saturday's quake on May 22, 1960. That quake, which registered a magnitude 9.5, killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless. The tsunami that it caused killed people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines and caused damage to the West Coast of the United States.
Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington, and Charles Newbery from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Alexei Barrionuevo reported from Rio de Janeiro, and Liz Robbins from New York.
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3) California Campus Sees Uneasy Race Relations
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
February 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/education/27sandiego.html?ref=us
SAN DIEGO - It began, as so many racial flare-ups on campus do, with a prank that some called malicious, others insensitive.
Students at the University of California, San Diego, held an off-campus "Compton Cookout" Feb. 15 to mock Black History Month, with guests invited to don gold teeth in the style of rappers from the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, eat watermelon, and dress in baggy athletic wear.
Outrage ensued from the relatively small black student population here and their supporters, who grew more inflamed when a satirical campus television program broadcast a segment on the party and used a racial epithet to denounce black students.
On Thursday night, a third incident, a student's hanging a noose from a bookcase in the main library, spurred a large, multicultural mass of chanting and drumming students to occupy the chancellor's office for several hours on Friday and fed a simmering, some say much-needed, debate over race relations.
"The campus has been pretty silent about racism and nobody, until now, says anything," said Aaron Gurlly, 30, an African-American graduate student who was among those occupying the administration building. The fallout from the incidents has jolted this campus in an era when many students and faculty believed that the progress of African-Americans nationwide have made such discussions passé.
But more than a decade after a state ballot proposition barred the use of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, the University of California continues to struggle to diversify its campuses. Black and Latino undergraduate enrollment systemwide plummeted and, although gains have been made in the numbers of minority students since then, the proportion of white (30.5 percent) and Asian (39.8 percent) students enrolled last year far exceeded that of blacks (3.8 percent) and Latinos (20.4 percent).
Just a few years ago, the Los Angeles campus, one of the system's most prestigious, was shaken with the news that only 103 black freshmen had enrolled, 2.2 percent of the class in a county that is 9.4 percent black. (The numbers have since ticked up to about 4.5 percent of the class.)
"We are constantly examining admissions practices, and there are no easy answers here," said Nina Robinson, the university's director of policy.
The San Diego campus, set on a bluff along the Pacific Ocean, has long struggled with attracting what the university calls "underrepresented minorities." Black students make up fewer than 2 percent of undergraduates, among the lowest representation in the 10-campus, 220,000-student system.
The contours of the discussion were drawn starkly on social media sites, including rival Facebook pages. One declares "Solidarity Against Racism and Compton Cookout" (nearly 600 members) and another deplores what it considers political correctness with the title "U.C.S.D. Students Outraged That People Are Outraged About the Compton Cookout" (more than 440 members).
Some students believe what their peers perceive as an unwelcoming climate comes more from the campus's reputation for scientific research than socializing and the fact that only 38 percent of students live on campus.
Inez Feltscher, a white senior who attended a teach-in Wednesday on race relations at the school that prompted hundreds of students of various races and ethnicities to walk out in protest, called the racial incidents disgusting. "But it's not representative of the larger community at U.C.S.D.," she said, "and people are afraid of getting labeled with that."
The school's chancellor, Marye Anne Fox, lamented the episode and has responded with a Web site, outlining a number of steps to improve the campus atmosphere. "I think we would all like to believe that racism was a thing of the '60s, that it's now passed us," Ms. Fox said. "These incidents suggest it's not."
Students have accused her of responding slowly and maintaining a low profile - she sat taking notes at the teach-in. But on Friday she, uncharacteristically by all accounts, held a bullhorn and addressed protesters in a courtyard just outside her office before it was overtaken.
"We will not tolerate hate on our campus," she said, reading from a statement in a voice still soft despite the bullhorn.
Later, Ms. Fox met with protest leaders, promising more attention to their concerns.
The administration is still investigating the Compton Cookout, and whether students can or should be sanctioned. The student association has suspended financing to all campus media while it studies what to do about the program about the party. And the police have not identified the student who admitted to the noose incident nor said whether charges would be filed.
Richard Louis Kizzee, 21, an African-American junior hanging out on the chancellor's balcony at the office occupation, said he took heart at the protest's cross-cultural flavor. "I knew the minority population was low here, but I didn't think racism was so high or rampant," he said. "But now, in response to what happened, this is what we should see."
Rob Davis contributed reporting.
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4) Troubled Iraq vet charged with murder dies
Carmen Duarte
Arizona Daily Star
February 27, 2010
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/local/article_65251ae3-6949-5e7c-9ecc-c6eb65fcd620.html
The tragic story of a decorated soldier accused of a brutal murder came to an end in Sahuarita last week.
John Wylie Needham, 26, was free on $1 million bail in connection with the September 2008 beating death of his girlfriend, aspiring model Jacqwelyn Villagomez, in California.
He died at his mother's home in Sahuarita where he had been recovering from surgery for wounds received in battle.
"I have been through hell," his mother, Cynthia Northcross, said Friday. "I haven't even had a chance to grieve."
On Thursday, the family held a private ceremony for Needham in Tucson.
Northcross said her son had surgery at a Tucson hospital recently and a visiting nurse was providing care for him at her home.
The mother said she found her son unconscious on Feb. 19 and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but could not revive him.
A cause of death has not been determined.
Needham was a member of an infantry special-operations unit - nicknamed the Lethal Warriors - and was deployed to Iraq in 2006.
That unit was documented by journalists, including those for the Web site Salon.com and The Gazette of Colorado Springs, after soldiers returned to Fort Carson near Colorado Springs and some were charged with committing violent crimes. The Army at that time was accused of failing to treat their combat stress.
The crimes included robberies, stabbings, beatings, domestic violence, shootings, attempted murders and homicides, The Gazette reported.
The unit suffered heavy casualties in Iraq and soldiers' lives were filled with roadside bombs and carnage, according to the series.
Needham, who received a Purple Heart, was wounded by a grenade and suffered a brain injury, and shrapnel in his legs and back, says a Salon.com piece. The article also says Needham suffered mentally and tried to commit suicide. He was sent home and received treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and when he arrived at Fort Carson Needham was punished, rather than treated for his mental issues, news accounts say.
In July 2008, Needham received an honorable discharge and partial disability, but his benefits did not provide for full access to mental-health treatment, according to news reports.
He moved to California, and on Sept. 1, 2008, Orange County sheriff's deputies responded to his home after a 911 report of a fight.
When deputies arrived at the condominium they found Needham naked and combative, a news release from the Orange County District Attorney's Office said.
Deputies zapped Needham with a Taser and found Villagomez severely beaten and barely breathing. She was transported by paramedics to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to deputies.
A pretrial hearing was set for March 19 on the murder case in Orange County Superior Court, but now the case will be dismissed, said Susan Schroeder, public affairs counsel for the District Attorney's Office.
"My life has changed from all this tragedy," said Sarah Sevino, 23, Villagomez's foster sister who lives in Lake Forest, Calif. "We have to use this as an experience to change our lives, better our lives," she said, explaining that she and other family members are turning their anger into positive actions.
She and her younger sister both speak out against domestic violence and volunteer for a support group that works with abused women and children.
Villagomez was a high-school track star in hurdles, loved to act, sing and dance, and her goal was to become a model. After high school, she moved out to pursue her dreams, and she worked as a waitress and landed some modeling jobs, Sevino said.
She said her family lost close contact with Villagomez months before her death, but said Villagomez and Needham met at a party three months before she died.
"This horrible tragedy has made me such an angry person. This is not me. I need to let go of this anger," Sevino said. "His (Needham's) family also has lost a son. I don't know how I feel about his death.
"But my heart goes out to his family," she said. "We are all victims in this situation."
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5) 2 Million Displaced After Chile Quake
By MARC LACEY and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/world/americas/01chile.html?hp
LIMA, Peru - The ground underneath Chile continued shaking on Sunday as jittery residents took stock of the devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake that flattened homes, toppled bridges and took more than 300 lives over the weekend.
Among the dead were Lurde Margarita Arias Dias, 24, and her infant child, who were crushed as a wall toppled in their Santiago home. "I tried to save them," Adan Noe Saavedra Rios, Lurde's husband and a member of Chile's Peruvian community, told local reporters. He described his frantic wife rushing from the house with their daughter in her arms after the ground started moving. Before he knew it, they were covered in rubble.
More than 2 million people have been displaced by the quake, according to the National Office of Emergency. Sunday morning's aftershock was measured at a magnitude of 6.1, the strongest of about 60 to reverberate since the quake.
The death toll was expected to rise. In Concepción, Chile's second-largest metropolitan area, which appeared to be especially hard hit, the mayor said Sunday morning that 100 people were trapped under the rubble of a building that had collapsed, according to Reuters. Power and communications networks were still largely out of operation on Sunday, hampering search and rescue efforts.
Images from Chile of toppled buildings, upturned cars and bodies being hauled from rubble resembled those of Haiti just over a month ago. But because of better building standards and an epicenter farther from populated areas, the scale of the damage from Chile's significantly more powerful earthquake was nowhere near the devastation that Haiti suffered.
Televised images from Concepción on Sunday showed looters being detained by police as they sprinted out of a damaged supermarket carrying armloads of merchandise. But authorities said that calmness prevailed in most of the country.
The earthquake hit during Chile's summer vacation, and that left thousands of Chileans stranded overseas. There were frantic scenes at airports throughout the region as the closing of the damaged Santiago airport prompted airlines to cancel or reroute flights away from the Chilean capital.
In Concepción, which is roughly 70 miles from the quake's center, cars lay mangled and upended on streets littered with telephone wires and power cables. A new 14-story apartment building fell, while an older, biochemical lab at the University of Concepción caught fire.
In the nearby port of Talcahuano, a giant wave flooded the main square before receding and leaving behind a large fishing boat on the city streets.
"It was terrible, terrible," said Adela Galaz, a 59-year-old cosmetologist who said glasses and paintings fell to the floor of her 22nd-floor apartment in Santiago, 200 miles from the quake's center. "We are grateful to be alive."
President Michelle Bachelet, speaking at a news conference on Saturday night, called the quake "one of the worst tragedies in the last 50 years" and declared a "state of catastrophe."
While this earthquake was far stronger than the 7.0-magnitude one that ravaged Haiti six weeks ago, the damage and death toll in Chile are likely to be far less extensive, in part because of strict building codes put in place after devastating earthquakes.
The quake Saturday, tied for the fifth largest in the world since 1900, set off tsunami waves that swamped some nearby islands before moving across the Pacific. Hawaii began evacuations before dawn, but by early afternoon there - more than 15 hours after the earthquake first struck 6,500 miles away - the fears of a destructive wave had passed..
Chileans were only just beginning to grapple with the devastation before them, even as more than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country.
In Santiago, the capital, residents reported having been terrified as the city shook for about 90 seconds.
Some people ran screaming from their downtown apartments, while car alarms and sirens wailed during the middle of the night.
"We are in panic because it has been trembling all day," said Cecilia Vial, 65, an interior decorator in Santiago, who dashed out of her apartment only to return at night because she had nowhere else to go.
"We cannot go against nature," she said. "This is something that nature did."
Paul E. Simons, the United States ambassador to Chile, said in a telephone interview from Santiago that people he spoke with at the embassy said those 90 seconds "felt like five minutes." He added: "It was definitely an emotional experience."
Mr. Simons said that although the United States had offered aid, Chile's government had not yet requested assistance. All international relief groups were on standby, and the International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents said the Chilean Red Cross indicated that it did not need external assistance at this point.
Although there were long lines at supermarkets and gas stations, the capital city, according to residents there, was mostly calm by the late afternoon Saturday. But the scene was grimmer in Concepción and surrounding areas to the south.
In Talca, 167 miles south of Santiago, almost every home in the center of the city was severely damaged, and on Saturday night, people slept on the streets in the balmy night air near fires built with wood from destroyed homes. All but two of the local hospital's 13 wings were in ruins, said Claudio Martínez, a doctor at the hospital. "We're only keeping the people in danger of dying," he said.
Dr. Martínez said the hospital staff had tried to take some people to Santiago for treatment in the morning, but the roads were blocked at the time.
Eduardo Martínez, 57, a local resident, said many people on his street had died and that he and his five brothers all lost their homes.
In Chillán, 69 miles from Concepción, a crumbling wall allowed 300 prisoners to escape and incite a riot, according to La Tercera, the nation's largest newspaper. The police captured 60 inmates, but more than 200 were still at large, the newspaper reported on its Web site. With major highways and bridges destroyed, and slabs of concrete jabbing diagonally into the air, transportation slowed or was halted altogether.
Major seaports and airports, including the main airport in Santiago, were out of operation across the central region, Chilean officials said. TV Chile reported that part of the ceiling at the airport had collapsed, but that runways appeared intact. Cellphone and Internet service was sporadic throughout the country, considered one of the most wired in Latin America, complicating rescue efforts.
On Robinson Crusoe, one of the coastal islands hit by early waves, authorities said at least four people had been killed.
President Obama spoke briefly outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, expressing concern for the country and saying the United States would offer aid in rescue and recovery efforts.
"Early indications are that hundreds of lives have been lost in Chile and the damage has been severe," Mr. Obama said.
He told Mrs. Bachelet that the United States was ready to help if needed. "We will be there for her should the Chilean people need assistance," he said
State Department officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been planning a trip to South America beginning on Monday, was also contacting Mrs. Bachelet, with whom she has long had warm personal relations.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also offered his condolences, as well as longer-term aid should Chilean officials signal the need for it.
The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. in central Chile, centered roughly 200 miles southwest of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, the United States Geological Survey reported.
The Geological Survey said that another earthquake on Saturday, a 6.3-magnitude quake in northern Argentina, was unrelated. In Salta, Argentina, an 8-year-old boy was killed and two of his friends were injured when a wall collapsed, The Associated Press reported.
The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was also in Chile: a 9.5-magnitude quake struck in the spring of 1960 that struck near Concepción and set off a series of deadly tsunamis that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan.
But that earthquake, which killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than two million homeless at the time, prepared officials and residents in the region for future devastating effects.
Shortly after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Valparaíso in 1985, the country established strict building codes, according to Andre Filiatrault, the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at the University at Buffalo.
"There is a lot of reinforced concrete in Chile, which is normal in Latin America," Professor Filiatrault said. "The only issue in this, like any earthquakes, are the older buildings and residential construction that might not have been designed according to these codes."
This was in direct contrast to Haiti, which was unprepared for the Jan. 12 earthquake, Professor Filiatrault added.
"If you are considering this magnitude is 8.8, I would be very surprised if the death tolls come close," Professor Filiatrault said.
Marc Lacey reported from Lima, Peru, and Alexei Barrionuevo from Rio de Janeiro. Reporting was contributed by Eric Lipton and Ginger Thompson from Washington; Charles Newbery and Vinod Sreeharsha from Buenos Aires; Charles E. Roessler from Kauai, Hawaii; Tomás Munita from Santiago and Talca, Chile; Andres Schipani from La Paz, Bolivia; Maria Eugenia Diaz from Caracas, Venezuela; and Liz Robbins and Sarah Wheaton from New York.
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6) Jails Hope Eye Scanners Can Provide Foolproof Identification System for Inmates
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28eyes.html?ref=us
DES MOINES (AP) - A Baltimore inmate who bluffed his way out of prison last week probably would not have been able to trick guards if they had eye scanners like the ones being installed at dozens of jails nationwide.
The federal government is paying for the scanners as part of an effort to build a nearly foolproof identification system to put a stop to such escapes.
"After this occurrence, we will be studying whatever we can do to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again," said Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland corrections department, which oversees the facility that mistakenly released the Baltimore inmate, Raymond Taylor.
Mr. Taylor was serving three life sentences for shooting his former girlfriend and her two teenage daughters. He impersonated his cellmate on Thursday and was released. He was arrested the following day in West Virginia.
The eye-scanning program is intended to put an end to such deception. The Justice Department has given a $500,000 grant to the National Sheriff's Association, which is doling out the money in $10,000 grants to about 45 agencies across the country. That will create a national database that better identifies, registers and tracks inmates, said Fred Wilson, who is leading the association's effort.
Eye scanners have been used for years by a few jails, the military, some European airports and private companies, but they remain rare, primarily because of the cost.
"While this technology has been around generally for 10 to 15 years, it just hasn't gotten into the mainstream yet," Mr. Wilson said. "You have to remember that the average law enforcement agency is very small, and they can't afford this stuff."
Most of the $10,000 grants paid for the equipment, and a small part went toward training.
The sheriff's association teamed with Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies, a scanner company based in Plymouth, Mass., and selected agencies nationwide from more than 400 that had expressed interest. In choosing jails, officials looked to spread machines across the country and put them in spots with the technological experience to use them.
The chosen agencies ranged from big operations like the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to small departments in Story County, Iowa, and Rutland County, Vt.
Officers at the Story County Jail will start using their scanner soon. "If we can get every state involved in this," Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald said, "that would be tremendous, just like the fingerprint databases." For law enforcement, speed is the biggest advantage that eye scanning has over fingerprints.
The F.B.I. has the fingerprints and criminal history of about 65 million people in its database. Sheriffs complain that fingerprint search results can take hours or even days, but results with an iris scan are nearly instant.
"Within 15 seconds you can get an identification back on who this is," Sheriff Fitzgerald said.
Scanning inmates is quick, too. A person simply looks into a camera, which uses infrared light to illuminate and map the iris. Each iris is unique and contains about six times more features than a fingerprint.
Despite its advantages, creating an iris database could raise privacy concerns, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group in Washington.
Mr. Rotenberg said prisons were often testing grounds for new technologies later used in the general public. What might make sense behind barbed wire could be seen as intrusive in the free world, and it is hard to foresee what those problems could be, he said.
Fingerprints, though, will remain an important tool for agencies because scans have limitations. One is that only the living can use the system because irises immediately break down when people die, and fingerprints will remain essential for investigators as evidence at crime scenes, said Patricia Lawton, senior development officer at Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies.
One person sold on the technology is Vincent Guarini, the warden at the Lancaster County Prison in Pennsylvania.
In 1996, the prison became the first in the nation to install an iris scanner after, like in Maryland, an inmate claimed to be his cellmate and was released. He, too, was later caught.
"From then on, I said we would never, ever do this again," Mr. Guarini said. "And I want some kind of mechanism, technology, device, whatever and take the human element out of it."
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7) Buffett's Bargain Shopping Spree
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/economy/28buffett.html?ref=us
America's most famous investor, Warren E. Buffett, struck a confident note in his annual letter to the shareholders of his holding company on Saturday, as he described in characteristically colorful terms how his businesses had largely ridden out the calamity of the financial crisis.
The tone of the letter contrasted sharply with Mr. Buffett's report last year, in which he took himself to task for the company's decline in book value, only the second such decline since he took control in 1965. This time he described how he had used the last 18 months to scoop up a string of assets - a buying spree that culminated at the end of last year with the agreement to buy the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, his biggest bet yet.
Mr. Buffett wrote that his company, Berkshire Hathaway, had net income of $8.1 billion last year, or about $5,200 a share, 61 percent higher than in 2008. The company also reported a 19.8 percent rise in book value.
The crisis of 2007-8 led to the company's first operating loss in the first quarter of last year, raising questions about Mr. Buffett's exposure to consumer spending and the housing market. The company recovered strongly later in the year, however, helped by the rebound in the stock market, which strengthened his derivatives holdings.
In his letter, which accompanied the company's annual report, Mr. Buffett laid out in detail how many of his holdings still depended on the vagaries of housing demand and consumer spending. But shares of the company, which peaked late in 2007 around $148,220 and fell to lows of around $73,195, have since rallied to close at $119,800 on Friday.
"We've put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years," he wrote. "It's been an ideal period for investors: A climate of fear is their best friend."
Mr. Buffett used his letter to crack jokes and issue more of his trademark aphorisms. The so-called Sage of Omaha, he is America's most listened-to investor, and his annual letter is watched closely by investors for his assessment of his businesses and of the economy.
It has, however, taken on somewhat less importance in recent years as Mr. Buffett, 79, has raised his profile with more public speaking and interviews.
In characteristically blunt terms, he had harsh words for unnamed chief executives and directors who oversaw disasters at their companies during the crisis but "still live in a grand style."
He said, "They should pay a heavy price," and that there must be a reform of the way executives are rewarded for their performance. "C.E.O.'s, and in many cases, directors, have long benefited from oversized financial carrots; some meaningful sticks now need to be part of their employment picture as well."
He also admitted mistakes of his own, saying he had closed a troubled credit card business, which had been his idea, and had given too much time to turn around the NetJets business, long a burden.
But he dwelt also on the lucrative positions he took in a string of companies over the last year and a half, pouring $15.5 billion into shares of companies like Goldman Sachs, General Electric and Wm. Wrigley Jr. Wishing he had taken greater advantage of the opportunities offered, he said, "When it's raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble."
Burlington Northern Santa Fe was Mr. Buffett's biggest purchase to date. Addressing that company's 65,000 shareholders, he offered them a primer in his investment rules. But he warned all shareholders that the bigger size of Berkshire Hathaway would probably mean slower growth in the future.
"Huge sums forge their own anchor and our future advantage, if any, will be a small fraction of our historical edge," he said.
Justin Fuller, the author of a blog about Mr. Buffett and a principal at Midway Capital Research in Chicago, said this company size was an important theme of the letter: "There was a lot of talk about size and maintaining a business and how size and bureaucracy can really hurt a business over time."
Mr. Fuller said Mr. Buffett had also given insights into his investing strategy - many of his businesses are now in monopoly or near-monopoly industries like railroads and utilities.
Mr. Buffett told a long story about the wisdom of using a company's own shares to buy another company - which was a veiled criticism of Kraft's takeover of Cadbury, Mr. Fuller said, but also a justification of Mr. Buffett's decision to issue shares to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Mr. Buffett is a major investor in Kraft but has opposed its pending acquisition of Cadbury.
Mr. Buffett's letter is watched closely for hints about when he may retire, but this year's offered none. Talking of a time when he would be long gone, he said he was still tap-dancing to work at the end of his eighth decade.
He said he had sold shares in ConocoPhillips, Moody's, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, mainly to finance his railroad purchase. The shares of these companies were still likely to trade higher, he said.
Closing the letter, Mr. Buffett, ever the cheeky salesman, invited shareholders to his company's annual meeting on May 1 in Omaha - promising to play table tennis for spectators and urging them to buy goods and services from his companies, and ending, "P.S. Come by rail."
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8) Protests and Promises of Improvements at Schools
"If we stop this reform at flipping the adults and hiring a bunch of new teachers and leaders and that's the extent of the new support," Mr. Knowles said, "the likelihood is this will repeat failed experiments of the past."
By CRYSTAL YEDNAK
February 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28cncreform.html?ref=education
Photo of audience members holding signs with the word NO in big black letters in response to proposed school closings: Members of the audience opposed the closing of more schools Wednesday at a meeting of the Chicago Board of Education.
Josephine Norwood, a Bronzeville mother of three Chicago public school students, has rebounded from two rounds of school closings that displaced her children from their schools. As she watched the Board of Education approve another set of schools for closing or turnaround last week, Mrs. Norwood had a simple question: Can Chicago Public Schools officials promise that the new schools will be better?
"If this process could guarantee the child the best and they would benefit from the school closing, then maybe it is a positive thing," Mrs. Norwood said. But she spoke out last week, along with many others, about the need for more transparency and proof that the disruptions are warranted.
As the public schools system entered its annual process of selecting schools for closing or turnarounds, parents, teachers and community groups leveled criticism at school officials for the lack of communication with the communities involved and questioned data from the central office that does not match the reality in the schools. Some also pleaded for the district to delay any action until the corrective measures taken at the lowest-performing schools - the wholesale turnover of administrators and teachers - could be better evaluated and a comprehensive plan for school facilities could be developed by a new task force.
In the end, few seemed satisfied. Parents, reform organizations and others expressed concerns that the school district has embarked on yet another failed reform effort. But school officials remained committed to the district's turnaround strategy.
Ron Huberman, the public schools chief executive, acknowledged that the process was imperfect, but remained committed to it. He said the alternative - tolerating schools that clearly have failed both the system and the children in it - was not acceptable either.
"Turnaround is not for average performing schools or for poor performing schools; turnaround is really about failing schools," Mr. Huberman told the Chicago News Cooperative in an interview Thursday. In a turnaround, the students stay in place, but the teachers and the principal are replaced to radically alter the school's culture of teaching and learning.
Mr. Huberman added that some schools recommended for turnaround had just 2 percent to 3 percent of their students meeting state standards. Ten of the district's 12 turnaround schools show gains that are "much more promising results than I believe we could have achieved through any other methodology," he said.
The debate is drawing attention because a national program to restructure the worst-performing schools encourages states to use the same strategies that Arne Duncan, the federal education secretary, introduced as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools.
"Duncan is using Chicago as an example of how this can be done successfully, and people are looking to Chicago to see whether, in fact, it is successful," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington.
This was the first round of closings and turnover proposals that Mr. Duncan's successor, Mr. Huberman, owned from beginning to end. He was appointed after the process began last year.
Mr. Huberman made a change to require that every child displaced in a closing be assigned to a higher performing school - something that did not always happen in the past.
The action came in response to an October study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research showing that most students affected by closings were transferred into schools that also were academically weak. Mr. Huberman promised that a transferred student's new school would rank 20 percent higher than the old one on a list of performance criteria, and promised extra resources to help the students' transition.
The district works with the nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership to manage some turnarounds. (Martin Koldyke, founder of the academy, also serves on an advisory board of the Chicago News Cooperative.)
The involvement of an outside agency has been criticized by union teachers and some parents and aldermen, who say the district is outsourcing education.
Mr. Huberman said Thursday that he wanted to bring in more outside organizations to manage turnarounds. "We want the turnaround space to be a competitive landscape," he said.
People began lining up at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday to get on a list to speak at the daylong school board meeting, which concluded with a decision to use the turnaround approach at Curtis, Bradwell and Deneen Elementary Schools and at Phillips and Marshall High Schools because of low academic performance. The Academy for Urban School Leadership will manage the turnaround for the first four schools, while the public schools administration will lead it at Marshall.
The board decided to close Las Casas Occupational High School, consolidate McCorkle Elementary and phase out Schneider Elementary because of substandard facilities or low enrollment.
Before the meeting opened, Mr. Huberman announced reprieves from closing or consolidation at six schools, saying community members had convinced him they were warranted.
In addition to protests at the meeting of the school board - whose members are appointed - parents, teachers and community groups vented their frustration at elected officials.
Though it has no direct authority in the matter, the City Council's Education Committee held a hearing last week on the school system's reform process and on a proposed resolution for a one-year moratorium on any further action by the Chicago Public Schools administration. Aldermen scolded officials for the lack of community involvement, but did not vote on the resolution.
The Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force, established last spring by the state legislature, will meet next week to scrutinize the system's policies.
"School closing is not a state issue, but because no one is responding to these parents, they came to me," said State Representative Cynthia Soto, Democrat of Chicago, a sponsor of the bill establishing the task force.
In response to the outcry over community involvement, Mr. Huberman promised last week to hold hearings on the process of closings and turnarounds, and to give parents earlier notification and to help them understand how a particular school is failing to educate their children.
"Very often, we've not done the legwork on the front end to inform parents," he said.
Timothy Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, said the research on the turnaround approach was mixed so far. The Consortium on Chicago School Research is working on a turnaround study to be released later this year. Work done by the Academy for Urban School Leadership shows promise, but it is still early, Mr. Knowles said.
For substantial progress to be made, he said, the strategy must involve bringing in high-quality teachers and leaders, improving the school culture - including investments in academic and social supports for students - and engaging parents.
"If we stop this reform at flipping the adults and hiring a bunch of new teachers and leaders and that's the extent of the new support," Mr. Knowles said, "the likelihood is this will repeat failed experiments of the past."
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9) As U.S. Aid Grows, Oversight Is Urged for Charter Schools
By SAM DILLON
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/education/25educ.html?ref=education
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to significantly expand the flow of federal aid to charter schools, money that has driven a 15-year expansion of their numbers, from just a few dozen in the early 1990s to some 5,000 today.
But in the first Congressional hearing on rewriting the No Child Left Behind law, lawmakers on Wednesday heard experts, all of them charter school advocates, testify that Washington should also make sure charter schools are properly monitored for their admissions procedures, academic standards and financial stewardship.
The president of one influential charter group told the House Education and Labor Committee that the federal government had spent $2 billion since the mid-1990s to finance new charter schools but less than $2 million, about one-tenth of 1 percent, to ensure that they were held to high standards.
"It's as if the federal government had spent billions for new highway construction, but nothing to put up guardrails along the sides of those highways," said Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
Charter schools operate mainly with state financing, and with less regulation than traditional public schools. A provision of the No Child law offers federal startup grants, usually in the range of $150,000 per school, to charter organizers to help them plan and staff a new school until they can begin classes and obtain state per-pupil financing.
The federal money has provided crucial early support to many successful charter schools, but has also attracted many people with little education experience who have opened chaotic schools that have floundered.
The administration's proposal for rewriting the law would increase federal financing for charter schools to $490 million in 2011 from about $256 million in 2010. It would also, for the first time, allow the funds to be used to finance additional schools opened by a charter operator, if the original school has been successful.
Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who is the committee chairman and helped write the No Child law, said in opening the hearing that the law's requirements for annual testing had placed a spotlight on students across the nation who were falling behind.
"But we also know the law didn't get everything right," he said, "and we cannot afford to wait to fix it."
Much debate on Wednesday focused on whether charter schools educate disabled children in the same proportion as regular public schools.
Thomas Hehir, a Harvard education professor, said that national research on that question had been inadequate, but that his work in the San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston and other school systems had shown that "charters generally serve fewer children with disabilities than traditional public schools."
Furthermore, Mr. Hehir said, charters in some cities educate only a minuscule proportion of students with severe disabilities like mental retardation, in comparison with regular public schools. That, he said, undercuts the assertions by some that charters are outperforming regular schools.
Eileen Ahearn, a project director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, said that charter schools faced unique challenges in educating disabled students but that many nonetheless do so successfully.
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10) Letters: The Task for Unions
Letters To the Editor
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/28backpage-THETASKFORUN_LETTERS.html?ref=business
To the Editor:
Re "A Long Slide in Union Membership" (The Count, Feb. 14), which said that union members accounted for 12 percent of wage and salary workers in 2009, down from 20 percent in 1983:
But the decline's severity becomes even clearer when we consider the downward spiral of private-sector union membership, to about 7 percent from 17 percent. This is largely the result of unions' failure to organize new members sufficiently to offset losses as unionized plants closed and employers opposed new union inroads.
Research shows that unions would have to organize at least one million new members a year just to increase the proportion by a single percentage point. The question that the unions must face is whether they have the will and the way to accomplish this task and reverse the decline.
Gary Chaison
Worcester, Mass., Feb. 14
The writer is a professor of industrial relations at the Graduate School of Management at Clark University.
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11) For Buyout Kingpins, the TXU Utility Deal Gets Tricky
By JENNY ANDERSON and JULIE CRESWELL
"'When I started hearing certain legislative members - members who would naturally otherwise be allies to us - parrot the bullet points that were being made by the company, I knew we were in trouble,' recalls Tim Morstad, who represented AARP and who was an advocate for significant electricity rate cuts. The buyout group also sought friends in high places. It signed on several powerful Texas politicos as lobbyists, directors or advisers, including Ronald Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas who is now the Obama administration's trade representative; James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and Bush family confidant, who was given a million shares as part of the buyout; Donald L. Evans, the former secretary of commerce; and Lyndon L. Olson Jr., a former Texas state representative. 'They were hiring Democrats and Republicans alike," says Tom Smith, director of the Texas division of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. "They would have hired a socialist if we had any in Texas.'"
February 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/energy-environment/28txu.html?ref=business
IN the fall of 2007, nerves were fraying on Wall Street. Billions of dollars promised to private equity firms to finance an epic acquisition spree were threatened, and banks wanted dealmakers to share the pain. Renegotiate the loans, the banks said. The private equity firms disagreed: a deal, they argued, is a deal.
As such disputes heated up, senior deal makers at Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, the powerful buyout shop, complained that Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, was fanning the flames by openly criticizing the private equity industry.
Trying to smooth things over, Henry Kravis, one of the firm's founders, met with Mr. Dimon and others for dinner. Things quickly turned tense. Mr. Dimon, whose bank was a major lender to K.K.R. and potentially on the hook for losses, explained that their relationship needed to work for both parties.
"This relationship feels a bit one-way to me," he told Mr. Kravis, according to someone briefed on the dinner who requested anonymity because it was private.
One thing that caused strain was the 2007 buyout of TXU, an energy giant based in Dallas. The TXU deal was Texas-sized in every way: valued at $48 billion, it was the largest private equity deal in history, and it involved the country's fifth-largest energy concern - one that served about two million customers.
A group of high-powered buyout barons, including K.K.R., the Texas Pacific Group and the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs, orchestrated the deal. To push it through, the deal makers pulled out all the stops. They courted environmental groups, heavily lobbied the Texas Legislature and tempted banks with the prospect of hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.
Today, the TXU deal is unwieldy and unpredictable. The buyout was, in effect, a gargantuan bet that natural gas prices would keep climbing; instead, plunging prices coupled with a hobbled national economy have cut into the cash the company generates.
Investors who bought $40 billion of TXU's bonds and loans - including legendary wise men like Warren E. Buffett - have seen huge losses as most of the bonds trade between 70 and 80 cents on the dollar. The other $8 billion used to finance the buyout came from the private equity investors themselves, along with banks like JPMorgan and Citigroup and large institutional investors like the Canadian Pension Plan. Several analysts and energy bankers say that this latter stake currently has little value.
TXU, rechristened as Energy Future Holdings when the deal closed in October 2007, is hardly the only private equity bet suffering these days. Many other deals from the height of the buyout boom are mired in problems, as companies buffeted by the weak economy or overwhelmed by once-plentiful and oh-so-cheap debt are struggling to stay upright.
"There is no doubt that these are good companies with bad balance sheets," says Colin C. Blaydon, a professor at Dartmouth's business school who specializes in private equity. But some of the companies, he says, are so deeply buried that an economic rebound might not be enough to let them pay their debt.
"The cash flows are not going to be strong enough to let them fully recover and dig their way out," he says.
Among all the private equity deals, the TXU experiment stands out for its startling scale. Could a big utility - especially one so larded with debt - offer the sort of outsize returns that private equity investors typically seek? More to the point, could private equity firms take over an important, sprawling electric utility and run it in a way that would benefit the company and consumers as well as themselves and their investors?
In an e-mailed statement, K.K.R. and T.P.G. said that "we believe strongly in the fundamentals of this business" and noted that they have promised to remain the company's owners for at least five years. The firms acknowledged that the economic environment is challenging, but noted that their company has provided affordable power and new jobs and that it continues to make significant investments in Texas.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
To a large degree, the prospects of Energy Future Holdings hinge on something it and its owners can't control: the price of natural gas. While it has insulated itself somewhat, through financial hedges that protect it from price swings, it still needs the prices to rise sharply to have any hope of paying off its staggering debt load.
Indeed, while the company met its roughly $3.6 billion in interest payments on its debt last year, it still faces a $20 billion balloon payment coming due in 2014. To leap that hurdle, the private equity owners have a handful of options: persuade bondholders to swap their debt at a discount for debt that matures later; sell a stake of the company in an I.P.O.; or sell assets.
There is, of course, another option. K.K.R., T.P.G. and Goldman could put up more of their own money to shore up a company that, according to public filings, has already funneled at least $370 million in fees to the buyout team and their investors. (Investors in the buyout firms' funds, which own Energy Future Holdings, also pay the private equity firms separate management fees.)
A rival buyout firm, the Blackstone Group, recently chose such an option by injecting $800 million to reduce debt of one of its acquisitions, Hilton Hotels. While Paul Keglevic, chief financial officer of Energy Future Holdings, says such a move might occur at his company, it's not first on his list. "Right now," he says, "we're considering other alternatives."
TEXAS may be famous for big personalities, but C. John Wilder tested even those standards.
In 2006, Mr. Wilder, then the chief executive of TXU, was one of the most controversial men in the state. First, he angered consumers and legislators when he refused to lower electricity prices after hurricanes led to a price spike. In the same year - just days before Earth Day - he announced plans for TXU to build 11 coal-fueled power plants, which set off a wave of protests statewide.
Coal plants are notorious for coughing out pollutants into the air and water, and the announcement caused a powerful and unlikely alliance of environmentalists, mayors, chief executives, consumer advocates and state legislators to battle the company's plans.
At the same time, Mr. Wilder was also in talks with various private equity firms, including K.K.R. and T.P.G., about a possible investment in the business. But by November 2006, at the zenith of the buyout binge, K.K.R. and T.P.G. had decided they wanted to buy the entire company. (Mr. Wilder, who stepped down as C.E.O. when TXU was sold, did not return calls requesting an interview.)
After all, in 2004 a group of four buyout firms, including T.P.G. and K.K.R., had bought an electricity company, Texas Genco, and flipped it about a year later for a tidy profit of $4.9 billion.
For its part, TXU was hardly a company that needed rescuing by the brightest minds on Wall Street. It was minting money in the partially deregulated Texas energy market, and in 2006 alone it generated about $2 billion in cash, after it paid interest on its debt and other bills, according to Moody's.
That a buyout was even a possibility was a sign of the times. Just a few years earlier, a large private equity fund might have had $5 billion to invest. Now, firms were amassing funds of $15 billion or even $20 billion to play with.
In 2005, the $11.3 billion acquisition of a technology company, SunGard, ranked as one of the biggest buyouts ever. That deal required the participation of seven firms. In late 2006, just two private equity firms banded together for the $28 billion takeover of Harrah's Entertainment.
But in the TXU quest, K.K.R. (run by Mr. Kravis), T.P.G. (run by another storied dealmaker, David Bonderman) and Goldman needed more than just cheap and easy bank loans. Because it was an influential utility, TXU was a political hot potato. Snaring it would require an elaborate charm offensive.
To that end, the K.K.R. group spent at least $17 million on lobbying (including 2,400 breakfast tacos on the Legislature's opening day and San Antonio Spurs tickets for certain state representatives), according to Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group. According to the group and others, the lobbying money was used to win over opponents in the Texas Legislature and fend off legislation that would have given regulators power to veto the deal.
"When I started hearing certain legislative members - members who would naturally otherwise be allies to us - parrot the bullet points that were being made by the company, I knew we were in trouble," recalls Tim Morstad, who represented AARP and who was an advocate for significant electricity rate cuts.
The buyout group also sought friends in high places. It signed on several powerful Texas politicos as lobbyists, directors or advisers, including Ronald Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas who is now the Obama administration's trade representative; James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and Bush family confidant, who was given a million shares as part of the buyout; Donald L. Evans, the former secretary of commerce; and Lyndon L. Olson Jr., a former Texas state representative.
"They were hiring Democrats and Republicans alike," says Tom Smith, director of the Texas division of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. "They would have hired a socialist if we had any in Texas."
Other advisers for the buyout team approached environmentalists, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and James D. Marston and Fred Krupp, two leaders of the Environmental Defense Fund, to support the deal. The buyout team offered to cut the number of proposed coal-fueled plants to 3 from 11.
When the deal was announced on Feb. 26, 2007, Mr. Krupp heralded it as "one of the most significant developments in America's fight against global warming" and commended K.K.R. and T.P.G. for dropping 8 of the 11 proposed coal plants, along with other commitments.
But TXU had already faced challenges to its permits, and many people say they believed that it was never going to build all 11 plants anyway.
"We knew we could do three," says Kerney Laday, a former TXU director. "We thought that was absolutely possible."
For consumer advocates, "the critical question was with the amount of debt required to do this deal, whether or not that would find its way into the cost of electricity," recalls Sylvester Turner, a Democratic state representative from Houston. "Would consumers and small businesses end up having to pay much more?"
Ultimately, the buyout group agreed to hold a majority stake in the company for at least five years and to reduce consumer electricity rates, which have remained low to this date.
When Mr. Turner hauled Mr. Marston into his office to voice his displeasure over the Environmental Defense Fund's support of the buyout, Mr. Marston stood his ground.
"Look, TXU has a much lower carbon footprint because of the deal," says Mr. Marston, noting that the group has a partnership with K.K.R. to "green" other companies the buyout firm controls.
Despite fears that consumers would pay for the deal, the opposite has occurred. Consumer electricity prices have fallen in Texas as competition has heated up and demand has slipped in the weak economy. But falling prices have created enormous headwinds for a company as debt-choked as Energy Future Holdings.
IN the buyout boom, Wall Street banks, eager to outdeal one another, bowed to increasing demands from their lucrative private equity clients: more loans, looser terms, more skin in the game. Some of the Wall Street banks that were arranging the $40 billion in debt for the TXU deal also put in as much as $500 million of the their own cash for an equity stake in the company.
In the fall of 2007, as the deal was closing, a group of bankers met at K.K.R.'s New York headquarters, worried that their billions were at risk. Led by Steve Black, JPMorgan's co-head of investment banking, and Chad Leat, co-head of global credit at Citigroup, the bankers asked the private equity firms to share the pain by ponying up more fees or sweetening the loan terms.
Mr. Kravis said the buyout group wasn't interested in renegotiating the deal. In fact, he said he was "morally outraged" by the request, according to five participants in the meeting.
"A contract is a contract," Mr. Kravis said repeatedly, according to several individuals present, who asked that their names not be used because they still work with the buyout firms. After offering the banks an additional $100 million in fees, Mr. Kravis abruptly left the meeting. When he returned a few minutes later, the banks turned down his offer and the meeting disbanded without an agreement.
Behind the scenes, K.K.R. and T.P.G. pressured the banks, suggesting that their banking relationships (and future fees) would be threatened if they kept fighting, according to bankers involved in the deal.
Goldman Sachs had representatives sitting on both sides of the table: the firm was one of the large private equity investors but had also acted as investment banker and lender and would, ultimately, nab a big piece of TXU's huge commodity hedging business. The bank's representatives sat quietly during the talks, according to participants.
Goldman was on so many sides of the TXU deal that its representatives made other lenders nervous, according to participants, because it was hard to ascertain whose interests the bank was serving.
Concerned that the Street would back out on its commitment to finance the deal, the private equity firms ultimately agreed to more generous terms on the loans, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. The move spared the lenders hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Such high-stakes battles, which occurred in a number of private equity deals, strained relationships among several banks involved in the transactions - as evidenced by Mr. Dimon's contentious dinner with Mr. Kravis.
In the wake of these fights, K.K.R. conducted a survey to assess its reputation on Wall Street, according to multiple bankers.
Despite such internecine brawls, the TXU deal was lucrative for many behind it. The utility's former chief executive, Mr. Wilder, walked away with a payday of $226 million, according to the research firm Equilar. The Wall Street banks divvied up fees totaling nearly $1.1 billion. And the private equity firms paid themselves $300 million in fees for arranging their own deal. (The buyout group receives an extra $35 million each year in management fees.)
ONE morning early last year, Jim Hempstead's phone started ringing off the hook. Mr. Hempstead, a Moody's analyst who had spent years watching the utility sector and had been wary of the debt since the buyout, had just told investors that he might downgrade the ratings for Energy Future Holdings' bonds and loans.
Questioning the ability of Energy Future Holdings to remain solvent over the next few years, Mr. Hempstead predicted that the company might ask bondholders to trade in their debt at a steep discount and under new terms.
Suddenly, bondholders were frantically calling Mr. Hempstead. Were the sponsors planning a debt exchange? Was TXU, the biggest buyout of private equity's "golden era," going bust?
In 2008, Energy Future Holdings was able to make interest payments - which totaled nearly $10 million a day - and cough up $3 billion to expand and maintain its infrastructure. But its A.T.M.-like ability to spit out cash, which had attracted the buyout barons, was sputtering because of collapsing natural gas prices and a weak economy that had cut electricity demand.
In the deregulated Texas market, electricity prices are strongly related to those of natural gas. Companies like Energy Future Holdings that can generate electricity through cheaper fuels like coal can pocket the difference.
Last fall, Mr. Hempstead's prediction came true. Energy Future Holdings asked debtholders, whose debt was trading at a steep discount, to consider swapping some of their loans and bonds for new ones. The offer required bondholders to take a major hit - 25 to 50 percent - without K.K.R., T.P.G. and Goldman sharing the pain. The private equity firms, of course, are still hurting from the loss in value of their own investment in the company.
"It's a coercive exchange if ever we've seen one," wrote Tim Doherty, a bond analyst at KDP Asset Management. Predictably, few investors accepted the offer.
Last month, Energy Future Holdings raised even more debt in a deal that was very attractive to buyers. The company has the ability to raise an additional $3.5 billion. One possibility for the company is to raise new debt to pay down old debt.
For now, the company can get by until the big bills come due. Hedges are in place that will protect it somewhat from further declines in natural gas prices. It has plenty of cash, and new plants will add future capacity. The big tower of debt doesn't come due until 2014, and natural gas prices could always rise.
But judging from how futures are trading on natural gas markets, prices may not climb high enough for K.K.R., T.P.G. and Goldman to make anything close to the returns they had once hoped for on the TXU deal.
The company hopes that power prices will rise to meet the projections the private equity buyers had in 2007. Mr. Keglevic, the C.F.O., said the owners' "original thesis" had power prices in the mid-$60s per megawatt hour. In January 2010, the price in North Texas was $42.96. "The difference is the economic dislocation pushed the mid-60s into 2016 rather than 2014," he said. But Energy Future Holdings has more than $20 billion in debt due in 2014, not 2016.
What's clear is that a showdown will come as private equity investors try to salvage some sort of return for their trouble and debtholders try to protect what they can still hang on to.
But recent history suggests that when it comes to troubled megadeals of the golden age of private equity, debt investors often come up short. TXU is not likely to be an exception.
In these deals, says Mr. Blaydon of Dartmouth, "the debtholders are going to get hosed."
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12) Another Foreclosure Alternative
By BOB TEDESCHI
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/realestate/28mort.html?ref=business
HOMEOWNERS on the verge of foreclosure will often seek a short sale as a graceful exit from an otherwise calamitous financial situation. Their homes are sold for less than the mortgage amount, and the remaining loan balance is usually forgiven by the lender.
But with short sales beyond the reach of some homeowners - they typically won't qualify if they have a second mortgage on the home - another foreclosure alternative is emerging: "deeds in lieu of foreclosure."
In this transaction, a homeowner simply relinquishes the property, turning over the deed to the bank, in exchange for the lender's promise not to foreclose. In a straight foreclosure, a lender takes legal control of the property and evicts the occupants; in deeds-in-lieu transactions, the homeowner is typically allowed to remain in the home for a short period of time after the agreement.
More borrowers will at least have the chance to consider this strategy in the coming months, as CitiMortgage, one of the nation's biggest mortgage lenders, tests a new program in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.
Citi recently agreed to give qualified borrowers six months in their homes before it takes them over. It will offer these homeowners $1,000 or more in relocation assistance, provided the property is in good condition. Previously, the bank had no formal process for serving borrowers who failed to qualify for Citi's other foreclosure-avoidance programs like loan modification.
Citi's new policy is similar to one announced last fall by Fannie Mae, the government-controlled mortgage company. Fannie is allowing homeowners to return the deed to their properties, then rent them back at market rates.
To qualify for the new program, Citi's borrowers must be at least 90 days late on their mortgages and must not have a second lien on the home.
That policy may be a significant obstacle for borrowers, since many of the people facing foreclosure originally financed their homes with second mortgages - called "piggyback loans" - or borrowed against the homes' equity after buying them.
Partly for that reason, Elizabeth Fogarty, a spokeswoman for Citi, said that the bank had only modest expectations for the test. Roughly 20,000 Citi mortgage customers in the pilot states will be eligible for a deed-in-lieu agreement, she said, and of those, about 1,000 will most likely complete the process.
As is often the case with deed-in-lieu settlements, Citi will release the borrower from all legal obligations to repay the loan.
In some states, like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, banks can legally retain the right to pursue borrowers for the balance of the loan after a foreclosure, a short sale or a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. That is one reason why housing advocates say borrowers should carefully weigh these transactions with the help of a lawyer or nonprofit housing counselor before proceeding.
Ms. Fogarty said Citi had no specific timetable for rolling out the program nationally.
Among the other major lenders, there is no formalized program for deeds-in-lieu. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, for instance, generally require borrowers to try a short sale before considering a deed-in-lieu transaction.
A deed-in-lieu is better for banks than a foreclosure because it reduces the company's legal costs, and it is better for the homeowners because it is less damaging to their credit score.
Banks may also end up with homes in better condition.
J. K. Huey, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo, says her bank usually offers relocation assistance - often $1,000 to $2,500 - as long as the borrower leaves the property in move-in condition after a deed-in-lieu transaction.
"The idea is to help them transition in a way where they can keep their family intact while looking for another place to live," Ms. Huey said. "This way, they only have to move once, as opposed to getting evicted."
A previous version of this column misstated the gender of a senior vice president at Wells Fargo. J.K. Huey is a woman.
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