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Sign the Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal Online Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/supreme/petition.html
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A Judge's Victims
Voices of those who went through the courtroom of Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. in Luzerne County, Pa. Judge Ciavarella has pleaded guilty in connection to a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers for kickbacks.
March 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/28/us/20090328_JUDGES.html?ref=us
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Abolish the Federal Death Penalty: Support S.650
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11504
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Rally for Tristan Anderson
Rally for Justice
Rally for Palestine
12:00 noon, Federal Building, Oakland
Thursday, April 2, 1301 Clay St., 12th St. BART
On March 13, 2009, Tristan Anderson of Oakland, California was shot in the head by Israeli forces in the Palestinian village of Ni'lin. After participating with the villagers in a nonviolent demonstration against the confiscation of their land, Tristan was taking pictures of Israeli soldiers and police attacking the demonstrators. A high velocity long-range tear gas canister was illegally used at short range, crushing his forehead. Israeli forces twice delayed his ambulance to a hospital where he is fighting for his life.
Demand Justice for Tristan and Palestine!
Other actions you can do:
Call Representative Barbara Lee (202-225-2661) and Senators Dianne Feinstein (202-224-3841) and Barbara Boxer (202-224-3553). Demand that Israel be held accountable for its attacks against US citizens like Tristan, Rachel Corrie, James Miller and Brian Avery, and for killing thousands of Palestinian civilians with US weapons. Demand an end to billions of US taxpayer dollars to Israel every year.
More info: 510-236-4250, www.norcalism. org, www.palsolidarity. org
Tax exempt donations (please instruct "for Tristan"):
Checks to: ISM, 405 Vista Heights Rd., El Cerrito, CA 94530
On line: www.norcalism.org/tristan.html
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Celebrate the release of the new book by Mumia Abu-Jamal:
"Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the USA"
Friday, April 24th (Mumia's birthday!), 6:30 P.M.
Humanist Hall
411 - 28th Street, Oakland
$25.00 donation or what you can afford.
Featuring:
Angely Y. Davis
Mistah F.A.B.
Lynne Stewart
Tory Serra
Avotcja
Kiilu Nyasha
JR Minister of Information POCC
Ed Mead
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
Molotov Mouths
Prison Radio, 415-648-4505
www.prisonradio.org
www.mumia.org
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal '70s Drug Laws
By JEREMY W. PETERS
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html?ref=nyregion
2) Study Reports More Deaths of Children Linked to Child-Welfare System
By JULIE BOSMAN
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26acs.html?ref=nyregion
3) I.R.S. to Offer Deal to Tax Evaders
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
March 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27tax.html?ref=business
4) There's Safety in Military Contracts
By KATE MURPHY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/business/smallbusiness/26sbiz.html?ref=business
5) Parents of autistic boy who was Tasered question police actions
The child's mother and father say Hawthorne officers removed the disabled boy from school days after the incident last year and questioned him without a lawyer present.
By Richard Winton and Jack Leonard
March 3, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taser3-2009mar03,0,2061401.story
6) Anonymous Video Saves Man In Brutal NYPD Beating
Michael Cephus Claimed He Didn't Do Anything To Warrant The Attack ... And It Turns Out He Was Right
Victim Doesn't Know Who Made Video, But Wants To Say Thanks
Officer Faces Investigation, Put On Modified Duty
Feb 25, 2009 9:36 am US/Eastern
http://wcbstv.com/local/anonymous.video.nypd.2.942981.html
7) Police Brutality in San Francisco Takes Over Anti-War Rally: March 21, 2009
By Feature Writer, Umayyah Cable
[There are extensive and clear and powerful photos of the Police assault on antiwar demonstrators at this site...BW]
March 22, 2009 - 1:32 pm
http://globalcomment.com/2009/police-brutality-in-san-francisco-takes-over-anti-war-rally-march-21-2009/
8) America the Tarnished
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/opinion/30krugman.html?_r=1
9) Reviewing Criminal Justice
Editorial
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/opinion/30mon1.html
10) U.S. Soldier Guilty in Killing of 4 Iraqis in 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:22 a.m. ET
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/30/world/AP-EU-Germany-US-Iraq-Deaths.html?ref=world
11) Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures
By SUSAN SAULNY
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/us/30walkaway.html?ref=us
12) Well-Regarded New Jersey High School to Use Drug-Sniffing Dogs
By TINA KELLEY
March 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/education/28sniff.html?ref=education
13) Obama Issues Ultimatum to Carmakers
"Mr. Obama said his administration has been working closely with the Canadian government, which was to announce its own "specific commitments" later Monday. Both G.M. and Chrysler have extensive operations north of the border."
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and BILL VLASIC
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31auto.html?ref=business
14) Setbacks in Bay Area Add to Pain for The Chronicle
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30chronicle.html?ref=business
15) A World of Hurt
For Injured Workers, a Costly Legal Swamp
By N. R. KLEINFIELD and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/nyregion/31comp.html?hp
16) Record Drop in January Index of Home Prices
By DAVID STREITFELD
April 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/economy/01econ.html?hp
17) Haiti's Woes Are Top Test for Aid Effort
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/world/americas/31haiti.html
18) French Workers Hold Bosses at Caterpillar Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:08 a.m. ET
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/31/business/AP-EU-France-Caterpilla.html?ref=world
19) $296 Billion in Overruns in U.S. Weapons Programs
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31defense.html?ref=us
20) Settlement for Man Wrongly Convicted in Palladium Killing
By BENJAMIN WEISER
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/nyregion/31palladium.html?ref=nyregion
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1) Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal '70s Drug Laws
By JEREMY W. PETERS
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html?ref=nyregion
ALBANY - Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state's strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation.
The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison.
The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.
New York's drug sentencing laws, imposed during a heroin epidemic that was devastating urban areas nearly four decades ago, helped spur a nationwide trend toward mandatory sentences in drug crimes. But as many other states moved to roll back the mandatory minimum sentences in recent years, New York kept its laws on the books, leaving prosecutors with the sole discretion of whether offenders could be sent to treatment.
"We're putting judges in the position to determine sentences based on the facts of a case, and not on mandatory minimum sentences," said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman from Queens who has led the effort for repeal.
"To me, that is the restoration of justice."
The agreement, which requires approval in the Assembly and the Senate, would allow some drug offenders who are currently in prison to apply to have their sentences commuted. It was not clear on Wednesday how many current prisoners would be eligible to apply. Mr. Paterson has pushed to have fewer prisoners than legislative leaders would prefer.
While a few points, like a resentencing provision and the amount the state is willing to spend on the plan, were still being negotiated late Wednesday, lawmakers said they were on track to wipe out the central elements of laws that have been criticized for decades as overly punitive and disproportionately harmful to minorities.
The laws, passed in 1973, are commonly known as the Rockefeller drug laws because they were championed by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in what was considered a bold response to the sharp rise in heroin use and property crimes among young people.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Paterson, Marissa Shorenstein, said reaching the deal, which she stressed was still being forged, was a personal victory for the governor, who has made drug law reform a priority of his administration. When he was a state senator, Mr. Paterson was arrested in 2002 at a demonstration outside Gov. George E. Pataki's Midtown Manhattan office protesting the drug laws.
The reforms, Ms. Shorenstein said, "reflect the governor's core principle to focus on treatment rather than punishment to end the cycle of addiction."
Under the plan, judges would have the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders in all but the most serious drug offenses - known as A-level drug felonies - to treatment. As a condition of being sent to treatment, offenders would have to plead guilty. If they did not successfully complete treatment, their case would go back before a judge, who would again have the option of imposing a prison sentence.
Currently, judges are bound by a sentencing structure that requires minimum sentences of one year for possessing small amounts of cocaine or heroin, for example. Under the agreement reached by the governor and lawmakers, a judge could order treatment for those offenders.
Judges would also have the option of sending some repeat drug offenders to treatment. Repeat offenders accused of more serious drug crimes, however, could only go to treatment if they were found to be drug-dependent in an evaluation.
District attorneys have resisted an overhaul of the state's drug sentencing laws, arguing that the system in place has led to lower drug crime rates and allowed more drug criminals to enter treatment.
"The prison population is going down and public safety has improved, and I'd hate to do anything that would upset either of those trends," said Michael C. Green, the district attorney of Monroe County, which includes Rochester. "No one knows for sure, but logic seems to dictate that is certainly one of the possibilities."
In 2004, the state eliminated the life sentences some drug crimes carried as a maximum punishment and reduced the length of other drug sentences. But advocates said those changes did not go nearly far enough because they left judges bound to mandatory sentencing.
Since then, the Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats, has routinely passed legislation that repealed mandatory minimum sentences for many drug crimes. But the bills always failed to get past the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans until January.
Passing drug law revisions would give Senate Democrats a significant legislative victory at a time when Republicans are hammering them, saying they are disorganized and ineffective.
Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat who has led the effort in the Senate to overhaul the drug statutes, said he was confident he had support in the Senate to pass the plan.
"It's no secret the Senate's old majority was the primary barrier to reforming our drug laws," he said. "But this is one of the reasons we fought so hard to take the majority. This is what our supporters have expected us to do."
The deal comes as the state is facing a $16 billion budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. And finding the money needed to pay for drug addiction programs, which could reach near $80 million, will prove difficult, those involved in the negotiations said.
But in the long run, the changes are expected to save money because sending offenders to treatment is less expensive than spending $45,000 a year to keep them confined.
New York already has one of the most extensive drug-treatment networks in the country. Drug policy experts said that with the proposed changes in the law, the state could have the sentencing policy it needs to fully utilize those treatment programs.
"New York could actually become a national leader," said Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that urges relaxation of certain drug sentencing laws. "We're going in a public health direction here. We're making that turn, and that's what's significant."
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2) Study Reports More Deaths of Children Linked to Child-Welfare System
By JULIE BOSMAN
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26acs.html?ref=nyregion
A new report shows that more children in families said to be known to the New York City child-welfare system died in 2008 than in any of the previous 20 years. There were 49 fatalities, according to Child Welfare Watch, a policy journal, including 14 homicides; the other children died in accidents or of natural causes, and, in some cases, the cause was not determined.
A family is considered known to the system if any member is under the care of the Administration for Children's Services - for example, children in foster care - or has been the subject of an abuse or neglect report to a state hot line in the previous decade.
Andrew White, director of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, which publishes Child Welfare Watch, said the increase goes hand in hand with the rise in reports placed to the state hot line. In 2005, the year before the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Brooklyn girl who was starved and beaten in a case that prompted an overhaul of the city's child-welfare system, there were 47,640 reports of abuse or neglect, according to the Administration for Children's Services. In 2008, there were 60,170. "It's a transformation of our culture," Mr. White said. "In the wake of Nixzmary Brown, we now report many more families for suspicion of abuse and neglect than we did in the past."
In a statement responding to the report, John B. Mattingly, the commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services, said, "While every single death is a tragedy we work to prevent whenever possible, the indicator we watch most closely is the number of confirmed homicides of children by their caregivers, and this number has remained in the same range - between 10 and 14 homicides for each of the past four years."
Sharman Stein, an agency spokeswoman, added that 14 of the 49 deaths were attributed to "co-sleeping," the practice of babies or children sleeping in the same bed as their parents, a significant increase over the past few years. She said such fatalities were being reported in higher numbers due to increasing public awareness of baby safety and recommendations against co-sleeping.
Child Welfare Watch also reported that the number of children admitted to foster care rose slightly, to 7,451 in 2008 from 7,132 in 2007.
That continues a trend, also attributed by many to the news reports about Nixzmary's death.
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3) I.R.S. to Offer Deal to Tax Evaders
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
March 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27tax.html?ref=business
The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure to bring in money to the faltering economy, plans to give offshore tax evaders a big break.
The agency has drafted a plan that significantly lowers a penalty that applies to wealthy Americans who hide money overseas in secret accounts, a person briefed on the matter said Thursday. The plan is intended to lure out of hiding scores of wealthy people who must come forward and declare their accounts in order to take advantage of the lower penalty.
The plan was developed amid a widening investigation into wealthy American clients of UBS but will apply to clients of other banks as well.
Under the plan, according to the person briefed on the issue, the I.R.S. will reduce an onerous penalty for not filing a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account, known as an Fbar - something offshore tax evaders have not done.
The current penalty is 50 percent of the high balance of each account over the last three years - an amount that can wipe out an investor's accounts in just two years - but the I.R.S. will reduce that penalty to 5 to 20 percent, depending in part on whether the wealth was inherited.
The I.R.S. will also require taxpayers to pay any taxes and interest owed over the last six years, as well as assess a standard, accuracy-related penalty of 20 percent. Taxpayers must also file amended returns for the last six years.
The proposal, which the I.R.S. is communicating to its field agents who audit returns, does not allow taxpayers to escape potential prosecution, but it makes that outcome less likely, in particular for those covered under the 5 percent Fbar penalty, this person said.
"They need to get money back into the system, so they needed to sweeten the deal," the person said.
An I.R.S. spokesman declined to comment.
Last November, the I.R.S. scrapped at the last minute a proposal to create a global settlement for taxpayers with offshore accounts. Such settlements in the past have come under criticism for not attracting enough tax evaders.
The new plan may be more likely to draw in tax evaders because the I.R.S. and the Justice Department are exerting significant legal pressure on UBS, the world's largest private bank, to disclose 52,000 client names. Unless those clients come forward before their names are potentially turned over, they may face a heightened risk of being prosecuted, as well as the steeper Fbar penalties.
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4) There's Safety in Military Contracts
By KATE MURPHY
March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/business/smallbusiness/26sbiz.html?ref=business
Like so many small businesses in this weak economy, Kaos Worldwide, a sports apparel company just outside Houston, has been struggling. But it has managed to survive while its competitors have folded because it won a five-year, $1.5 million contract last year to supply sports bras to the United States military.
"Without the military contract, we might not still be here," said Bert Emanuel, who founded the business with his wife, Terri, after a knee injury in 2001 forced him to retire from an 11-year career as a professional football player. Their company sells temperature-regulating and moisture-wicking base layers like T-shirts, shorts, leggings and bras.
While it may seem that only large corporations like Halliburton and Lockheed Martin would have a shot at lucrative military contracts, the Defense Department actually awards more than half, or $55 billion, to small businesses. And the Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus plan promises to make even more money available.
"Small businesses play an important role in the economy and the military," said Joseph E. Misanin, deputy director of small-business programs at the Defense Department. "They have an agility and flexibility that gives them an advantage over bigger companies."
Although the regulatory hurdles to becoming a military vendor can be daunting and frustrating, small-business owners who persevere say it is tremendously profitable and even essential to their survival. With the United States currently in the midst of two wars and tending to a multitude of other security concerns, they say the military is a recession-proof customer that has insulated them from the current economic downturn.
Beth Harshfield, the owner of Exhibit Arts, an advertising and marketing company in Wichita, Kan., said she started bidding on military contracts six years ago because "I got tired of the local economy kicking the legs out from under us." Now 80 percent of her business is with the military. Her company creates trade-show booths for Army recruiters and acts as a staffing agency for military bases.
"Once you're established and you perform well, there is unlimited potential," Ms. Harshfield said. "But getting set up to work for the government is a confusing and lengthy process."
First, small businesses have to be certified to work for the government, which can be cumbersome. It means getting listed on the Central Contractor Registration database. This is required of all current and potential military contractors. Applications can be made online and require a company's tax identification number.
Once in the database, small businesses get a Commercial and Government Entity code; a Marketing Partner Identification Number and Trading Partner Identification Number. These are all essential for finding, bidding on and getting paid for military contracts.
Helping small businesses make sense of the credentialing process are regional procurement technical assistance centers. There are 93 of these federally financed offices nationwide, run by former military procurement officers.
"The first meeting takes a few hours when we learn about the business to see if it even has a product that's possible to sell to the military," said Debbie Smith, procurement specialist at the assistance center in New London, Conn.
If the answer is yes, then the center guides the small-business owner through the registration process and enters him or her into a central database that patrols the federal system for bid solicitations that fit their profile. Small businesses can also look through the listings on www.fedbizopps.gov for opportunities.
But getting that first contract is difficult, said Ms. Harshfield of Exhibit Arts. "They want you to have experience working with the military," she said. "They aren't as interested in your commercial experience. So it's really hard to break in." It took two years, she said, for her company to get the military to accept a bid.
Mr. Emanuel said he was lucky that, through personal connections, a general in Iraq had learned of his product. The general ordered 10,000 bras for his female soldiers by credit card in 2005. So when Mr. Emanuel bid on the five-year contract that he eventually won last year, he was able to point to that experience.
Rather than bidding on contracts, some small businesses try to get their products listed on the General Services Administration schedule, which is essentially a giant e-mall where military procurement officers can buy items online with a standard credit card. If the company's product is consumer-oriented, it is eligible for listing on the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, an online, tax-free store for active-duty military and their families.
Kathline Springer, director of business development at Rust Bullet in Reno, Nev., said it took two years of paperwork and lobbying various officials to get her company's rust-retardant coating listed in 2005 on the General Services Administration schedule. Still, she said, "it was worth it" because the military is now Rust Bullet's biggest customer. "I don't have to worry if they are going to pay their bills."
Another option is to get a so-called National Stock Number, which gets a product in the Defense Department's database of items approved for military use. Mark Ewald, owner of Groove Tech in Waterbury, Vt., got a stock number in 2000 for his company's industrial-strength bungee cord.
"I get most of my orders through word of mouth," he said. "One military unit will get my product and tell another unit who wants to get it." The unit's procurement officer then uses the stock number to place an order. The military now accounts for more than half of Groove Tech's business, he said.
To expand his sales, Mr. Ewald said he had begun making marketing calls to military bases and National Guard units. "Most of the work is finding out who the supply sergeant is and how to reach him," he said. Adding to his frustration, he said, is that military personnel are mobile, so contacts change frequently.
Rick Horn, who is with the assistance center in Las Vegas, said: "It's certainly more complicated than dealing with a commercial entity. But the way the economy is these days, the government still has money and the private sector doesn't."
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5) Parents of autistic boy who was Tasered question police actions
The child's mother and father say Hawthorne officers removed the disabled boy from school days after the incident last year and questioned him without a lawyer present.
By Richard Winton and Jack Leonard
March 3, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taser3-2009mar03,0,2061401.story
The family of a 12-year-old autistic boy who was shot last year with a police stun gun at a Hawthorne middle school accused police officials on Monday of removing their son from school in handcuffs days after the incident and subjecting him to an interrogation in retaliation for a misconduct complaint the family had filed.
The family's attorneys contacted The Times after reading the Hawthorne Police Department's version of the Sept. 23 incident in the newspaper this week. The department had declined to name the boy.
Despite knowing the youngster was developmentally disabled, investigators had him agree to waive his Miranda rights to remain silent or have an attorney present at the interview, which occurred at department headquarters, the boy's parents said. They said police also threatened to take the boy to Juvenile Hall.
"I really believed that someone was going to call and explain why a 12-year-old was shot in the back with a Taser," said Larry Mathews, the boy's father, who filed a complaint the day after the incident. "And I still haven't heard."
The boy's mother, Almarietha Mathews, said the police overreacted and failed to take into account their son's disorder.
"They arrested him for acting out his mental disability," she said.
The Times is withholding the boy's name because he is a minor.
Hawthorne Police Lt. Michael Ishii said the boy assaulted a security guard and kicked a police officer in the groin before he was shot with the 50,000-volt Taser as he ran toward a campus exit. Police have launched an internal investigation into the use of force.
He said investigators followed procedures in reading the child his Miranda rights before interviewing him to determine whether he knew the difference between right and wrong -- a critical element in deciding whether criminal charges should be filed. Detectives spoke to him for no more than 20 minutes, Ishii said.
"After we spoke to the minor, our investigator had a lengthy discussion with the parents so that they would understand the policies and procedures we were going through," Ishii said.
The issue of using Tasers on children has become controversial in recent years. Several cases in Florida and other parts of the country have prompted calls for a ban on the shocking of minors.
Some police departments discourage the use of electroshock weapons on juveniles, and a National Institute of Justice report last year found that more research is needed to determine the health effects of shocking small children.
Ishii said Officer Vincent Arias made the decision to use the weapon after the boy's adult sister had been called to the school and had been unable to calm him down.
But the boy's family disputed the police account.
They said he began feeling agitated when he was asked to line up for his photograph during a "photo day" at the school and started running around the campus.
They said the school's security guard tried to rush the boy and detain him, making their son feel more agitated. The school called the family for help, the couple said, but when the boy's sister, Lauren Mathews, arrived she was held back and prevented from intervening.
Lauren Mathews, a senior at Stanford University, said she arrived before the police officer, and had calmed her brother down. She said Arias ran at full speed toward her brother, agitating him once again. She said she never saw her brother kick Arias and accused the officer of escalating the problem.
The boy was shot with the Taser in the back. Arias deployed the electric charge twice.
"To watch my brother shaking on the ground, it was very traumatic," the sister said. "He wasn't the same for days afterward."
The family said the boy urinated on himself and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance to have the stun gun's two electrode darts removed from his back.
The family filed a legal claim against the city late last week alleging a variety of civil rights violations, including discrimination because of the boy's disability and race. The child is African American. Arias is Latino.
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said prosecutors allowed the boy to enroll in a counseling program.
If he successfully completes the program, she said, a criminal case will not be filed against him.
richard.winton@latimes.com
jack.leonard@latimes.com
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6) Anonymous Video Saves Man In Brutal NYPD Beating
Michael Cephus Claimed He Didn't Do Anything To Warrant The Attack ... And It Turns Out He Was Right
Victim Doesn't Know Who Made Video, But Wants To Say Thanks
Officer Faces Investigation, Put On Modified Duty
Feb 25, 2009 9:36 am US/Eastern
http://wcbstv.com/local/anonymous.video.nypd.2.942981.html
New York (CBS)-- It can be a difficult scene to watch. A man is brutally beaten by cops and then accused of assaulting police.
All the charges have been dropped against a now disabled truck driver whose severe
beating on the lower east side was caught on tape!
But to this day, no one knows by whom.
Michael Cephus has just had a weight lifted off him. He was looking at more than a dozen years behind bars on a charge of assaulting a police officer, but the case was dismissed because of a videotape.
It was the 4th of July, in the park by the river on the Lower East Side. Cephus said he and NYPD officer Maurice Harrington exchanged words when Cephus tried to go back into the park. Cephus claims officer Harrington hit him with a collapsible baton for no reason. But once Cephus fell to the ground, what happened next was caught on videotape.
"They say one thing, you say another," Cephus said of his confrontation with the cop. "Right away, it's their word. You don't have nothing. That's it. But with the videotape, it shows I had done nothing, man."
Cephus' lawyer, Steve Orlow, said without the tape his client would be in a world of trouble.
"If not for this video, he'd be facing 15 years right now," Orlow said.
The people who made the video were arrested, and police looked for the video, Orlow said. But they slipped it to a friend of the man who was beaten. Officer Harrington is now on what police call "modified duty," that is, he's been taken off the street and the officer is now looking at an investigation that could lead to charges.
Cephus and his lawyer do not know who made the video, but they would like to find out and say thanks.
And, yes, they will be suing the city.
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7) Police Brutality in San Francisco Takes Over Anti-War Rally: March 21, 2009
By Feature Writer, Umayyah Cable
[There are extensive and clear and powerful photos of the Police assault on antiwar demonstrators at this site...BW]
March 22, 2009 - 1:32 pm
http://globalcomment.com/2009/police-brutality-in-san-francisco-takes-over-anti-war-rally-march-21-2009/
Holding an unarmed protester. Photo _ Umayyah Cable.
There are no words to describe the feeling of adrenaline spiking through my system right now. There are no words to describe the feeling of being pushed by a police officer, someone who is paid with your tax dollars to serve and protect you.
Yesterday, in San Francisco, on the 6th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, what started out as a peaceful demonstration against war and oppression rapidly escalated into a violent clash between aggressive riot police and the substantially outnumbered and unarmed civilian demonstrators. The demonstration, sponsored by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), was peaceful and calm. It was not unlike many other anti-war demonstrations that have taken place there on many occasions. Sadly, yesterday was different.
Child being detained. Photo _ Umayyah Cable
The chaos broke out after a boy who was probably between 8 and 10 years old was detained under suspicion of carrying rocks in his backpack. I never saw a rock in anyone's hand, for that matter. We are in San Francisco after all, not Palestine.
I didn't actually see what happened that caused the police to single the boy out, but I watched as he stood crying between two police officers and several ANSWER organizers who were arguing about whether or not he was going to be arrested. Then, suddenly and without cause, the police began charging the crowd with their batons.
The police were yelling "Get back! Get on the sidewalk! NOW!"- All while pushing people with their batons. Because there was an old subway entrance on the edge of the sidewalk, there was no place for people to go, even if they could have stepped back. The police proceeded to knock people over and violently shove them with their batons up against the metal fence of the old subway entrance.
There were several demonstrators and ANSWER organizers on the ground, the police were pushing against the demonstrators, and the demonstrators were desperately trying to retreat but had nowhere to retreat to. People were screaming, cops were swinging their batons, and all the while a line of baton toting officers was forming around this small area, thus sealing us off from the rest of the rally. It was then that I noticed that the majority of people quarantined in this police pit were Arab American youth.
The police in action. Photo _ Umayyah Cable
Anyone watching the chaos unfold at yesterday's march could see that the group of Arab American youth who were being corralled were no match for the throngs of well trained, baton-wielding cops. Furthermore, I believe the tactic of trapping us with a flanking line was a method of provocation and thus the cause of further altercations.
Anyone with any common sense would know that physically barricading a group of frightened and angered young people will only serve to escalate a situation. I myself was inside this police barricade and when I politely attempted to exit, I was yelled at and told to find a different exit. This was impossible given the fact that this small area was completely surrounded.
Coincidentally, this place was directly across the street from the Zionist counter-protest. Given the outrageously large number of police officers stationed in front of the counter-protest, I cannot help but wonder if this violent attack by the police was instigated by a local Zionist lobby.
What's more is that earlier during the event, when several Arab American youths made their way over to the counter protest, the police pushed and shoved them back to the other side of the street. But when a counter-protester made his way into the ANSWER rally and began taunting people, the police stood by and did nothing. The blatantly hypocritical stance of the police was despicable. This, coupled with the outright police brutality against Arab American youths, is evidence of systematic bigotry within the San Francisco Police Department.
I have been attending protests for my entire life. Until yesterday, I had never been pushed, shoved, charged, or otherwise aggressively touched by a police officer. It saddens me that on the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war, instead of successfully raising awareness about ending the war and freeing the Middle East, we must struggle to survive something as simple as our right to freedom of assembly.
How are we supposed to feel safe when the people who are responsible for our safety are intimidating and hurting us? How are we supposed to exercise our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly when there is a government police force standing by to punish us for it? Who are these people who make up the San Francisco Police Department, and every police department for that matter, who see demonstrators as a menace that need to be physically squashed for the good of society? Where is the justice?
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8) America the Tarnished
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/opinion/30krugman.html?_r=1
Ten years ago the cover of Time magazine featured Robert Rubin, then Treasury secretary, Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Lawrence Summers, then deputy Treasury secretary. Time dubbed the three "the committee to save the world," crediting them with leading the global financial system through a crisis that seemed terrifying at the time, although it was a small blip compared with what we're going through now.
All the men on that cover were Americans, but nobody considered that odd. After all, in 1999 the United States was the unquestioned leader of the global crisis response. That leadership role was only partly based on American wealth; it also, to an important degree, reflected America's stature as a role model. The United States, everyone thought, was the country that knew how to do finance right.
How times have changed.
Never mind the fact that two members of the committee have since succumbed to the magazine cover curse, the plunge in reputation that so often follows lionization in the media. (Mr. Summers, now the head of the National Economic Council, is still going strong.) Far more important is the extent to which our claims of financial soundness - claims often invoked as we lectured other countries on the need to change their ways - have proved hollow.
Indeed, these days America is looking like the Bernie Madoff of economies: for many years it was held in respect, even awe, but it turns out to have been a fraud all along.
It's painful now to read a lecture that Mr. Summers gave in early 2000, as the economic crisis of the 1990s was winding down. Discussing the causes of that crisis, Mr. Summers pointed to things that the crisis countries lacked - and that, by implication, the United States had. These things included "well-capitalized and supervised banks" and reliable, transparent corporate accounting. Oh well.
One of the analysts Mr. Summers cited in that lecture, by the way, was the economist Simon Johnson. In an article in the current issue of The Atlantic, Mr. Johnson, who served as the chief economist at the I.M.F. and is now a professor at M.I.T., declares that America's current difficulties are "shockingly reminiscent" of crises in places like Russia and Argentina - including the key role played by crony capitalists.
In America as in the third world, he writes, "elite business interests - financiers, in the case of the U.S. - played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive."
It's no wonder, then, that an article in yesterday's Times about the response President Obama will receive in Europe was titled "English-Speaking Capitalism on Trial."
Now, in fairness we have to say that the United States was far from being the only nation in which banks ran wild. Many European leaders are still in denial about the continent's economic and financial troubles, which arguably run as deep as our own - although their nations' much stronger social safety nets mean that we're likely to experience far more human suffering. Still, it's a fact that the crisis has cost America much of its credibility, and with it much of its ability to lead.
And that's a very bad thing.
Like many other economists, I've been revisiting the Great Depression, looking for lessons that might help us avoid a repeat performance. And one thing that stands out from the history of the early 1930s is the extent to which the world's response to crisis was crippled by the inability of the world's major economies to cooperate.
The details of our current crisis are very different, but the need for cooperation is no less. President Obama got it exactly right last week when he declared: "All of us are going to have to take steps in order to lift the economy. We don't want a situation in which some countries are making extraordinary efforts and other countries aren't."
Yet that is exactly the situation we're in. I don't believe that even America's economic efforts are adequate, but they're far more than most other wealthy countries have been willing to undertake. And by rights this week's G-20 summit ought to be an occasion for Mr. Obama to chide and chivy European leaders, in particular, into pulling their weight.
But these days foreign leaders are in no mood to be lectured by American officials, even when - as in this case - the Americans are right.
The financial crisis has had many costs. And one of those costs is the damage to America's reputation, an asset we've lost just when we, and the world, need it most.
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9) Reviewing Criminal Justice
Editorial
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/opinion/30mon1.html
America's criminal justice system needs repair. Prisons are overcrowded, sentencing policies are uneven and often unfair, ex-convicts are poorly integrated into society, and the growing problem of gang violence has not received the attention it deserves. For these and other reasons, a bill introduced last week by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, should be given high priority on the Congressional calendar.
The bill, which has strong bipartisan support, would establish a national commission to review the system from top to bottom. It is long overdue, and should be up and running as soon as possible.
The United States has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world. More than 1 in 100 adults are now behind bars, for the first time in history. The incarceration rate has been rising faster than the crime rate, driven by harsh sentencing policies like "three strikes and you're out," which impose long sentences that are often out of proportion to the seriousness of the offense.
Keeping people in prison who do not need to be there is not only unjust but also enormously expensive, which makes the problem a priority right now. Hard-pressed states and localities that reduce prison costs will have more money to help the unemployed, avert layoffs of teachers and police officers, and keep hospitals operating. In the last two decades, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report, state corrections spending soared 127 percent, while spending on higher education increased only 21 percent.
Meanwhile, as governments waste money putting the wrong people behind bars, gang activity has been escalating, accounting for as much as 80 percent of the crime in some parts of the country.
The commission would be made up of recognized criminal justice experts, and charged with examining a range of policies that have emerged haphazardly across the country and recommending reforms. In addition to obvious problems like sentencing, the commission would bring much-needed scrutiny to issues like the special obstacles faced by the mentally ill in the system, as well as the shameful problem of prison violence.
Prison management and inmate treatment need special attention now that the Prison Litigation Reform Act has drastically scaled back prisoners' ability to vindicate their rights in court. Indeed, the commission should consider recommending that the law be modified or repealed.
Mr. Webb has enlisted the support of not only the Senate's top-ranking Democrats, including the majority leader, Harry Reid, but also influential Republicans like Arlen Specter, the ranking minority member on the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham, the ranking member of the crime and drugs subcommittee.
There is no companion bill in the House, and one needs to be written. Judging by the bipartisan support in the Senate, a national consensus has emerged that the criminal justice system is broken.
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10) U.S. Soldier Guilty in Killing of 4 Iraqis in 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:22 a.m. ET
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/30/world/AP-EU-Germany-US-Iraq-Deaths.html?ref=world
VILSECK, Germany (AP) -- A second U.S. soldier was convicted Monday of murder in the execution-style slayings of four bound and blindfolded Iraqi detainees in 2007 and sentenced to 35 years in prison after he pleaded guilty at his court-martial.
Wearing his dress uniform and speaking crispy and confidently, Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Mayo of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to charges of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder at the proceeding at the U.S. Army's Rose Barracks in southern Germany.
He pleaded not guilty to a charge of obstruction of justice in the incident, which occurred while he was deployed to Iraq. Military prosecutors dropped that charge.
The 27-year-old was sentenced to 35 years in prison and will be incarcerated at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He will also be dishonorably discharged. His lawyer, Michael Waddington, said Mayo would be eligible for parole in about 10 years.
Col. Jeffrey Nance, the judge overseeing the proceedings, told Mayo that he ''entered into an agreement to commit premeditated murder'' that saw the four Iraqi men shot in the head by the side of a canal in Baghdad between March and April 2007.
In February a military court convicted Sgt. Michael Leahy, 28, of Lockport, Ill., to life in prison with the possibility of parole after he admitted to the execution-style killing of one of the detainees and shooting another. He was acquitted of murder over a separate incident in Baghdad in January 2007.
According to testimony at previous courts-martial, at least four Iraqis were taken into custody in spring 2007 after a shootout with a patrol.
The Iraqis were taken to the U.S. unit's operating base in Baghdad for questioning and processing, although there was not enough evidence to hold them for attacking the unit. Later that night patrol members took the Iraqis to a remote area and shot them in retribution for the attacks on the unit, according to testimony.
Mayo, Leahy and Master Sgt. John Hatley, 40, are accused of pulling the trigger.
''Hatley stated that if we took (the) individuals to detention they'd be released in a matter of days,'' Mayo told the court. ''He said we should take care of them. I agreed.''
Mayo has been in the Army for nearly a decade.
All were with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. The unit is now part of the Germany-based 172nd Infantry Brigade.
Hatley's court-martial on charges of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and obstruction of justice is scheduled for April.
Waddington said that under a deal reached with prosecutors, Mayo will testify at Hatley's court-martial next month.
The Army has also not released a hometown for Hatley. Hatley also faces murder charges from the separate incident in Baghdad.
Two soldiers -- Spc. Steven Ribordy, 26, of Salina, Kansas, and Spc. Belmor Ramos, 24, of Clearfield, Utah -- pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and were sentenced to prison last year.
Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, 29, of Bakersfield, California, and Sgt. Charles Quigley, 28, of Providence, Rhode Island, had charges of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder dropped this year. It is unclear whether they will testify in the upcoming courts-martial.
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11) Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures
By SUSAN SAULNY
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/us/30walkaway.html?ref=us
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff's sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.
Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.
So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff's sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title - and a world of trouble - in her name.
"I thought, 'What kind of game is this?' " Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it - another bill for which she will be liable.
City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal - from legal fees to maintenance - exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.
The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a property thought to be in foreclosure.
In Ms. James's case, the company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it.
"It is what some of us think is the next wave of the crisis," said Kermit Lind, a clinical professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and an expert on foreclosure law.
For older industrial cities like South Bend, hard times in the mortgage market began before the recent national downturn, as did the problem of bank walkaways. In the case of Ms. James, a home health care administrator, the foreclosure proceedings began in the summer of 2007, when she could not keep up with the adjustable rate on her mortgage.
In Buffalo, where officials said the problem had reached "epidemic" proportions in recent months, the city sued 37 banks last year, claiming they were responsible for the deterioration of at least 57 abandoned homes; the city chose a sampling of houses to include in the lawsuit, even though the banks had walked away from many more foreclosures. So far, five banks have settled.
In Kansas City, Rachel Foley, a lawyer who handles housing cases, said bank walkaways were "a rare occurrence two to three years ago."
"We're seeing them dumped more and more at the moment," she said.
Experts suggest the bank walkaways are most visible in states where foreclosures are processed through the courts and therefore tend to be more transparent. Other states, like Indiana and New York, have court-mandated foreclosures, but roughly half of the states allow foreclosures to proceed without court intervention, making it difficult to accurately count the number of bank walkaways in recent months.
The soft housing market and the vandalism that often occurs when a house sits empty are the two main factors influencing the mortgage holders' decisions to walk away, said Larry Rothenberg, a lawyer for Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, one of the larger creditors' rights firms in the country.
"Oftentimes when the foreclosure starts out, it's a viable property," Mr. Rothenberg said, "but by the time it gets to a sheriff's sale, it might not have enough value to justify further expense. We've always had cases where property was vandalized or lost value, but they were rare compared to these times."
The problem seems most acute at the bottom of the market - houses that were inexpensive to begin with - and with investment properties, where investors and banks want speedy closure by writing off bad loans as losses. Banks and investors typically lose 40 percent to 50 percent of their investment on every foreclosure.
Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter, said some properties had become such liabilities for investors that it was not even worth holding on to them to strip valuable fixtures, like kitchen appliances, toilets and hardware.
"The whole purpose of foreclosure is to take title of the property, sell it and recoup what money you can," Mr. Cecala said. "It's just a sign of the times that things are so bad no one wants to take possession of the property."
In South Bend, boarded-up houses for whom no one has stepped forward are dotting the landscape, adding a fresh layer of blight to communities that were already scarred from the area's industrial decline.
The city is hoping to create a new type of legal mediation process that would bring together the homeowners and the mortgage holders to settle their disputes while allowing the owners to remain in the home - considered crucial to any stabilization effort.
"I'd say in the last three or four months, we've seen dozens of these cases," said Chuck Leone, the South Bend city attorney. "We see it one of two ways. One is that the bank will simply dismiss the foreclosure complaint. The other is that the mortgage holder will follow through and take a judgment of foreclosure, but then not schedule the property for sheriff's sale."
In Ms. James's case, it has been impossible to determine who canceled the sheriff's sale, since her last mortgage holder went out of business. Even the city clerk's records did not provide an answer.
"Nobody has any idea who owns what or who's responsible," said Judy Fox, Ms. James's lawyer at the Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic. "It's a very common story."
Mayor Stephen J. Luecke of South Bend added: "It's just a crime the way it puts people in limbo. They first off have gone through the grief of losing their house, then they move out and find out that they still own it and have responsibility for it."
In Jacksonville, Fla., Sylvester Kimbrough Jr. found himself caught in the limbo between foreclosure and ownership last year, 10 years into his 30-year mortgage on a $42,000 two-bedroom house.
Mr. Kimbrough, 56, a former driver for a car dealership who is now unemployed, had already moved out when he learned that the foreclosure had been stopped.
"That move really almost destroyed us," Mr. Kimbrough said. "It was all for nothing."
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12) Well-Regarded New Jersey High School to Use Drug-Sniffing Dogs
By TINA KELLEY
March 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/education/28sniff.html?ref=education
MILLBURN, N.J. - The high school here, which was named the state's best by a respected magazine last year, plans to begin using dogs to search for drugs on campus this spring.
"We seek to discourage illegal substances from being brought into school and to show unequivocal support for those students who do 'just say no,' " the principal of Millburn High, William S. Miron, and the district superintendent, Richard Brodow, wrote in an e-mail message to parents and students Friday afternoon. "I willingly risk student trust if it saves a single life."
In stepping up searches for drugs, Millburn will join scores of schools across New Jersey and the country. About 1,000 districts have introduced random tests for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines and an assortment of other narcotics since the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that schools could test students participating in extracurricular activities. A growing number also test for alcohol. Locally, West Essex Regional High School in North Caldwell, N.J., about 10 miles from Millburn, had two visits by canine patrols this year, neither netting any drugs.
The New York Civil Liberties Union has called police dog searches "incompatible with nurturing environments that are supposed to be conducive to adolescent education," and argued that school districts must create a careful balance between school safety and student rights.
And next month, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of an Arizona honors student who was strip-searched after administrators suspected her of bringing prescription-strength ibuprofen to school.
At Millburn High, where this week students reported an increased police presence, administrators have previously shied away from using dogs to address any problems with alcohol or drug use, and on Friday they would not say what changed their minds.
"We have a very relaxed atmosphere here," the principal, Mr. Miron, said in an interview. "But we feel like this is the final step that we can do to say that we're doing our part."
Calls to two Millburn police captains were not returned on Friday.
A sampling of the police blotter from this month showed two 15-year-olds charged with drinking at a party on March 14, and on March 7, three Millburn students, ages 13 to 15, were charged with possessing alcohol.
On Jan. 9 a local minister, the Rev. Darryl L. George, 58, of Short Hills, was arrested at the school along with two of his sons, accused of attacking a Millburn High student in a school parking lot. Some witnesses said the victim, an 18-year-old senior who received minor injuries, was hit with a baseball bat. That encounter resulted in assault charges against the minister and his older son, and the suspension of his 15-year-old son, a student at the school.
Such events are uncommon at the high school, which was ranked first in the state by New Jersey Monthly magazine last year and in 2007 was 97th in U.S. News and World Report's survey of the nation's 100 best high schools.
"The whole community in general is motivated academically," Mr. Miron said. "But when you have 1,400 students in a school, to think that teenagers aren't going to make mistakes, or that we're somehow immune from problems every suburban and urban school is faced with, is just unrealistic."
Mr. Miron said either the Essex County Sheriff's Office or a private security group would provide the dogs, who would start searching the school "certainly within the next couple months."
The plan received mixed reviews Friday afternoon at the train station, where Rosemarie Dawes, whose children recently graduated from Millburn High, was picking up two commuters. "I don't think it's the right idea," she said. "I just think it's too much for high school kids to deal with that." Still, she said "there should be something more being done," noting that when her students were in school, the campus had problems with marijuana.
Anne Pollock, the mother of a recent graduate of the school as well as of a Millburn Middle School student, welcomed the dogs, without concerns about invading student privacy.
"When I was in school, they got to go through your purse," she noted. "You don't want any of it in the town, you want to try to keep it out."
Two 16-year-old girls who declined to give their names said they felt the new procedure was "a little unnecessary" because most of the incidents involving drug or alcohol happened outside of school.
"There were cops strolling around all week," one said. "It was kind of distracting, sitting in class with cops walking by."
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13) Obama Issues Ultimatum to Carmakers
"Mr. Obama said his administration has been working closely with the Canadian government, which was to announce its own "specific commitments" later Monday. Both G.M. and Chrysler have extensive operations north of the border."
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and BILL VLASIC
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31auto.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON - President Obama announced what amounts to a do-or-die ultimatum for the struggling automobile industry on Monday, laying out strict standards that the carmakers must meet to get more government aid and declaring that the industry must survive because it is "like no other, an emblem of the American spirit."
A failure of leadership "from Washington to Detroit" over the years has led the industry to the brink of collapse, the president said, and in more recent days both General Motors and Chrysler have failed to come up with plans adequate to justify the billions more in government help that they are requesting.
"And so today, I am announcing that my administration will offer G.M. and Chrysler a limited period of time to work with creditors, unions and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional tax dollars; a period during which they must produce plans that would give the American people confidence in their long-term prospects for success," the president said at the White House.
Speaking a day after the White House pushed out the chairman of G.M., Mr. Obama said Chrysler has been instructed to form a partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat within 30 days as conditions for receiving another much-needed round of government aid.
The president said he was designating Edward Montgomery, a former deputy labor secretary, to oversee the auto-recovery effort. His mission will be far-reaching, to cut through government red tape and identify initiatives to support those communities hit hard by the industry's troubles.
Other salient features of the latest plan to pull Detroit out of its decadeslong skid include a tax break, being started by the Internal Revenue Service at once, for auto purchases made between Feb. 16 and the end of 2009; incentives for people to turn in older, less fuel-efficient vehicles and buy more energy-efficient cars and government-backed warrants to assure customers that they have nothing to fear by buying a car from G.M. or Chrysler.
While the president's announcement embodies firm government control of the car industry, at least for the time being, he said, "These companies - and this industry - must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state."
Mr. Obama said his administration has been working closely with the Canadian government, which was to announce its own "specific commitments" later Monday. Both G.M. and Chrysler have extensive operations north of the border.
The concept of encouraging people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, which has been tried with considerable success in Europe, will require the cooperation of Congress. Mr. Obama said he would work with lawmakers to identify portions of the recently enacted multibillion-dollar stimulus package that could be trimmed to finance the purchase-incentive idea - and make it effective at once.
General Motors, in a statement released after the president's comments, said that over the next 60 days, the company would try to "address the tough issues to improve the long-term viability of the company, including the restructuring of the financial obligations to the bond holders, unions and other stakeholders."
"Our strong preference is to complete this restructuring out of court," G.M. said. "However, G.M. will take whatever steps are necessary to successfully restructure the company, which could include a court-supervised process."
The president tried to project optimism as he summoned images of Detroit's mighty past, even as he spoke of decades of complacency and problems left for another day "even as foreign competitors outpaced us."
"Well, we have reached the end of that road," he said. "And we, as a nation, cannot afford to shirk responsibility any longer."
The president did not mention Ford, the other company in Detroit's Big Three. While it has had problems, Ford has not yet found it necessary to seek government assistance.
The president envisioned an auto industry much different, almost surely smaller, and more nimble. Yet in doing so, and voicing confidence that the industry can travel that road, he recalled an earlier Detroit that "built an arsenal of democracy that propelled America to victory in the Second World War, and that powered our economic prowess in the first American century."
The decision to ask G.M.'s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, to resign caught Detroit and Washington by surprise, and it underscored the Obama administration's determination to keep a tight rein on the companies it is bailing out - a level of government involvement in business perhaps not seen since the Great Depression.
"This is not meant as a condemnation of Mr. Wagoner, who has devoted his life to this company; rather, it's a recognition that it will take a new vision and new direction to create the G.M. of the future," Mr. Obama said.
The president made clear that some form of bankruptcy, or something close to it - a quick, court-supervised restructuring, as officials described it in advance - could still be an option for G.M. or Chrysler or both. "What I am not talking about is a process where a company is broken up, sold off, and no longer exists," the president said.
Mr. Obama's auto industry task force, in a report released Sunday night assessing the viability of both companies and detailing the administration's new plans for them, concluded that Chrysler could not survive as a stand-alone company.
The report said the company would get no more help from the government unless it can finalize a proposed alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat by April 30. It must also reduce its debt and health care obligations.
If a deal is reached between Chrysler and Fiat, the administration says it would consider another loan of $6 billion to Chrysler.
G.M., on the other hand, has made considerable progress in developing new energy-efficient cars and could survive if it can cut costs sharply, the task force reported. The administration is giving G.M. 60 days to present a cost-cutting plan and will provide taxpayer assistance to keep it afloat during that time.
Although some observers of the auto industry have attributed Detroit's troubles in part to generous wages and health benefits for assembly line workers, the president made no mention of those factors. "The pain being felt in places that rely on our auto industry is not the fault of our workers, who labor tirelessly and desperately want to see their companies succeed," he said. "And it is not the fault of all the families and communities that supported manufacturing plants throughout the generations."
Rather, he said, there has been a failure of leadership.
Along with Mr. Wagoner's ouster, the task force said most of the company's board would be replaced over the next few months. In a statement Monday, Mr. Wagoner said he had been urged to "step aside" by administration officials, "and so I have."
His resignation is the latest example of the government taking a hands-on role in making major decisions at companies it is bailing out. The government has already pushed banks to make management changes and sharply reduce or eliminate their dividends, and it also is directing many of the decisions at the troubled insurance giant, American International Group, which is nearly 80 percent owned by the government after its rescue.
In deciding to urge Mr. Wagoner to step down, the Obama administration seemed mindful of the public's growing outrage over bailouts of private companies, as well as the bonuses paid to employees of A.I.G.
Mr. Obama is well aware that he cannot afford to give the appearance of using tax dollars to reward executives who have done a poor job, and he began signaling as early as last week that he would take a tough stance with the automakers.
The plan Mr. Obama announced on Monday will also include government backing of warranties for G.M. and Chrysler cars and trucks, to give consumers enough confidence to buy them, even if one or both are forced into bankruptcy.
Mr. Wagoner has presided over a steep drop in G.M.'s domestic market share, which has led to tens of billions of dollars in losses. His critics have said that management's failure to move aggressively to address the company's problems contributed to its dire financial situation.
G.M. and Chrysler have almost exhausted the combined $17.4 billion in federal aid they have received since December. G.M. has asked for up to $16.6 billion more, and Chrysler has requested another $5 billion.
Bondholders are under pressure to convert two-thirds of the $27 billion owed them into G.M. stock, while the United Auto Workers union is being asked to substitute stock for 50 percent of their health care benefits for retirees. Both groups have resisted those changes.
Administration officials say they have enough money to offer the assistance they envision under plans already approved by Congress. Even so, Mr. Obama may face skepticism on Capitol Hill and from the public.
As part of the companies' original agreement for the loans, both were required to submit restructuring plans. Mr. Wagoner's removal underscores how much more G.M. needs to cut than was proposed in the plan the company submitted.
Administration officials stressed that the company needed a fresh approach and leadership changes; they said Steven Rattner, the former investment banker who co-chairs the auto task force, delivered the news to Mr. Wagoner.
Frederick A. Henderson, G.M.'s president, will succeed Mr. Wagoner on an interim basis as chief executive; Kent Kresa, a board member, will assume the chairmanship. Members of the auto panel spoke with Mr. Henderson recently and came away with a favorable impression of him, people familiar with the panel's discussions said.
G.M. collapsed last fall when new-vehicle sales in the United States plummeted to their lowest level in 25 years. G.M. lost more than $30 billion in 2008, and has been subsisting on government loans since the beginning of the year.
The administration briefed lawmakers on the plan Sunday night. Afterward, Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter, Republican of Michigan, whose district is just outside Detroit, expressed frustration over the ousting of Mr. Wagoner and with administration officials for not being clearer about the potential job losses that lie ahead.
"Why would you ask Rick Wagoner to resign when you are giving G.M. 60 days to meet a new target, but you aren't saying what the new goal is yet," Mr. McCotter said in an interview.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington and Bill Vlasic from Detroit. Micheline Maynard and Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit and David M. Herszenhorn from Washington.
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14) Setbacks in Bay Area Add to Pain for The Chronicle
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30chronicle.html?ref=business
San Francisco offers a cast of offbeat stars - rockers, politicos, Internet moguls - playing for an audience with more than its share of affluent, literate people, on a stage rich in history, eccentricity and natural beauty. It sounds like a journalist's dream, a great market for a news organization.
Yet extinction threatens The San Francisco Chronicle, the leading local news source. The Hearst Corporation says the newspaper lost about $1 million a week last year, and it must either sell the paper, close it or lay off a large part of its already diminished staff.
A plunge in advertising revenue has battered American newspapers, but red ink flowed from The Chronicle even in years when profit margins above 20 percent were the industry norm. Media analysts and current and former Hearst executives lay some blame on moves by the company and the previous owners, the de Young family - particularly a damaging 35-year partnership with a smaller paper, The Examiner, whose effects are still felt years after it was dissolved.
But fault also lies with the geography, demographics, competition and technology that all make the Bay Area perhaps the toughest newspaper market in the country. What is certain is that The Chronicle no longer has anything like the grip it once had on this region. From 2003 to 2008, the paper lost a third of its circulation, among the steepest declines in the industry.
Often dismissed as parochial, The Chronicle has not been a magnet for major awards - it was too idiosyncratic for that - but it has always paid serious attention to subjects that arouse local passions, like gay rights, the environment and arts. It is one of a handful of papers with an architecture critic, John King, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist whose predecessor, the late Alan Temko, won a Pulitzer in 1990.
Like the city itself, The Chronicle cherishes whimsical touches, like a sports section that was printed on green paper - and occasionally still is - and front-page feature articles like a recent one about a local fish with strange eyeballs. The paper is best known for columnists with devoted followings, like Leah Garchik and Jon Carroll, whose work is often quirky, personal and resolutely local. The columnist Herb Caen, who died in 1997, was often called the voice of the city.
"The Chronicle reflected the unique culture of the place, which can be like a small town, mostly through its beloved columnists," said Robert Rosenthal, managing editor from 2002 to 2007. "But I think it's been in backpedal mode for so long, the constant downsizing, that it has lost some of that." On any sunny weekend, the long brunch lines outside Dottie's True Blue Cafe in the Tenderloin district illustrate the printed paper's shrinking place in city life. People who, a few years ago, would have leafed through The Chronicle while waiting for tables are instead tapping on iPhones and laptops.
"People eat through their whole meals texting, e-mailing, where they used to read papers," said Kurt Abney, owner of Dottie's. "At the end of the day, we used to have a huge pile of newspapers by the front door that people left behind, but now it's only a few."
Though most American newspapers are still profitable, the Internet has eroded circulation and advertising, and it cut first and deepest in the Bay Area, a leader in Internet use and home to sites like Craigslist.
The Chronicle's Web site, SFGate.com, draws an unusually large audience for a paper its size, three million to four million people monthly, according to Nielsen Online, but generates a fraction of the paper's revenue.
But some challenges posed by the region long predate the Internet.
The Bay Area has no real center of gravity, and San Francisco, at the tip of a peninsula, has no inner ring of suburbs. The city has only 760,000 of the region's more than four million residents. Nearby counties have far bigger populations, with their own economic bases and urban cores in places like San Jose and Oakland, and their own major newspapers.
"The Bay Area has this extraordinary fragmentation," said Anthea Stratigos, chief executive of Outsell, a media research firm. "It's a region of microclimates, and the person in Contra Costa County might not care about San Francisco City Hall."
The Chronicle (weekday circulation 339,000 last year) dominates in San Francisco, but beyond the city it trucks papers long distances to compete with The San Jose Mercury News (224,000) to the south, The Contra Costa Times (181,000) and The Oakland Tribune (92,000) to the east.
"Even in the best years, The Chronicle and The Examiner had one-third of the print revenue in the metropolitan market, unlike other major papers that, in their heyday, had 70 percent," said Steven B. Falk, who headed the San Francisco papers' joint operating agency in the late 1990s, and later was president and publisher of The Chronicle.
A large part of the region's population migrated from elsewhere. In fact about 30 percent are foreign-born.
Alan Mutter became The Chronicle's managing editor in 1984, arriving from Chicago where, he said, "millions of people are rooted to the area, and even in the suburbs their orientation is to the city." In the Bay Area, "I was struck that it's not that way at all."
The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times have combined circulation in the Bay Area of 183,000, almost as high as in the much larger Los Angeles area. "Maybe they're looking for something better than the local papers, or just something that's not local," said Mr. Mutter, who left newspapers two decades ago and writes a blog on news media, Reflections of a Newsosaur.
In past decades, the rival Examiner was sometimes seen as a more serious paper. But The Chronicle more closely mirrored the city's irreverent, politically liberal outlook.
"Back in the '50s, when we were tried for obscenity for publishing Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl,' The Chronicle did a very honest, sympathetic job of covering that," said Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet and co-founder of City Lights bookstore, a local landmark.
In the 1970s, The Chronicle published Armistead Maupin's serial fiction that would become the "Tales of the City" novels, complete with gay characters, sex and profanity - work that most newspapers would not have touched.
Mr. Maupin said, "It was Herb Caen who taught me that hookers and hippies could be interesting characters, even heroic figures."
For 120 years, the Hearsts owned The Examiner, competing with The Chronicle. In 1965, when the papers had similar circulation, they struck a fateful joint operating agreement, sharing expenses and income. By the late 1990s, The Examiner's circulation was a quarter of The Chronicle's.
In 2000, Hearst bought The Chronicle for $660 million, ending the joint operation. Under heavy pressure not to close The Examiner, Hearst turned it over to local owners, along with $66 million in subsidies. The Examiner faded, was sold again, and became a free paper.
The Chronicle purchase coincided with the dot-com crash, followed by recession, so its revenue quickly sank. Hearst says The Chronicle has lost money every year since 2000.
The Chronicle's newsroom, which had well over 500 people after the merger, could have fewer than 200 soon, after proposed layoffs. But executives concede that even with the cuts, it is not clear the paper can make a profit. "I read it every day - I'd hate to go without it," said Mr. Maupin, who left The Chronicle staff years ago. "But by way of confession, I should add that I read online. I'm part of the problem."
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15) A World of Hurt
For Injured Workers, a Costly Legal Swamp
By N. R. KLEINFIELD and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/nyregion/31comp.html?hp
The hurt workers wait on benches at the Queens office of the New York State Workers' Compensation Board.
People like Hopeton Watkis, 64, a laborer, who lost two teeth when he fell and hit a wheelbarrow.
Or Rajcoomar Jagan, 50, a construction worker, who injured a leg falling off a scaffold.
Or Vicki Marquez, 32, a retail sales associate, who hurt her elbow hauling clothes.
They come to the board seeking authorization for medical treatment and replacement wages - in short, a quick and fair resolution from a system set up to replace fractious court fights between employers and employees.
What they find instead is a subbasement of the legal world, a $5.5 billion-a-year state-run bureaucracy that, an examination by The New York Times found, struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the workplace.
These struggles are particularly evident each day in Queens, the state's busiest hearing office, where The Times spent 18 months attending hearings, reviewing cases and interviewing participants, virtually none of whom defended the system as efficient.
At some hearings, as judges looked on, lawyers chatted on cellphones, cracked bawdy jokes or read newspapers during testimony. Expert witnesses seemed biased to the point of caricature. Claims dragged on, but hearings seldom exceeded a few blurred minutes, rarely proved conclusive and were conducted in baffling shorthand.
Mr. Watkis waited two years to get his front teeth fixed. Ms. Marquez had to postpone elbow surgery for a year until the board allowed it. Mr. Jagan exhausted three years trying to get compensated, only to be denied all benefits, a decision that stunned even some insurance company lawyers.
"Comparing Supreme Court, say, to this is like comparing a hospital to a MASH unit," said Anthony Pizza, a lawyer for insurance companies. "A lot of it is meatball justice."
Workers' compensation systems across the country are troubled, and reform efforts are under way here. But New York, a pioneer of the concept and home to the nation's second-largest system, has some signature claims to dysfunction and is widely recognized as the most adversarial.
Though its commissioners largely function as a legal tribunal, most are not lawyers but relatives or allies of politicians, appointed usually without regard to experience in the field.
Though many cases turn on medical evaluations, the board has not had its own medical director for nearly a decade. Decisions are often driven by the opinions of doctors certified by the state as so-called independent medical examiners. Yet claimant lawyers and treating doctors say these examiners often understate workers' ailments to win business from the insurers who pay them.
Fines for infractions are usually small, and some insurers ignore paying them for years without consequence. A few months ago, New York City agreed to produce $1.1 million in penalties, some years overdue.
Workers are known to fabricate claims, while employers can be equally uninhibited about pressuring injured workers against filing for compensation, or punishing them if they do.
And everywhere the system tolerates delays that can make the injured wait months or years for money and care. Statewide, in about one in six cases, insurers dispute that injuries are real or were suffered on the job. Until recently, these cases had averaged nearly nine months to resolve. And many of them remain unresolved years later.
Even unchallenged cases plod on. A.I.G., the insurance company, said a review of its 2007 New York cases found that those involving missed work took on average 802 days to reach a final stage, 30 percent longer than in the rest of the country.
A recent task force study found that when insurers reject a medical procedure, say, an operation, it takes more than three or four months for the board to settle the dispute. The delay can mean that injuries heal slowly or improperly, and in 75 percent of those cases, the worker's need for the procedure is upheld.
Zachary S. Weiss, the chairman of the compensation board since late 2007, said that given the scope of what needs to be done, change must be incremental.
"There are millions of things I would like to correct and I'd like to correct them all immediately, and I can't," Mr. Weiss said.
State officials do say that as imperfect as it is now, the system used to be much worse. Before he resigned, Gov. Eliot Spitzer managed to pass a law that sliced costs and gave workers more money. Until then, New York's system had achieved the neat trick of being both among the most expensive for business and the stingiest to workers.
The board has recently found an interim medical director. But the intended overhaul has yet to deliver on many of its other goals and does not address some of the most stubborn flaws.
"There are still many issues that need to be dealt with," said Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and a labor advocate. "How it will play out will not be known for a number of years."
One target for improvement is basic record keeping. No one has ever documented, for example, the extent of worker fraud, though accounts of bogus claims have dominated news accounts of workers' compensation for years.
Actually, while the system has a lengthy history of being cheated by employees who exaggerate injuries, experts say they believe more substantial fraud and misbehavior are woven through the process in less obvious ways that hurt workers.
"This is a terrible thing to say," said Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the occupational and environmental division at Mount Sinai Medical Center, "but if I had a health problem at work, I'm not sure I'd file a workers' comp claim. It's the Wild West of health insurance."
Mary Jeffords, the head of Injured Workers of New York, an advocacy group, says she knows of numerous disabled workers so ground down by the process that they begin to unravel.
"I've talked to workers that held a gun to their head as we talked," she said.
Waiting for Help
George Vasilescu's reaction was immediate. He tossed his head back, thumped his feet.
"No more," Mr. Vasilescu, who is deaf and mute, signed. "I beg you. No more."
Mr. Vasilescu, 64, a hotel steward who hurt his back, neck and wrist, had just been told by his lawyer that the judge wanted him back for another medical exam, another hearing, another delay, after four years churning through the system.
It is a good day at the Queens hearing office when there is only one such outburst.
Few people think about workers' compensation until they wrench their back or lose a thumb and become one of the roughly 140,000 new cases filed statewide each year. Those with minor injuries often sail through the process.
But so many workers have been so frustrated or mistreated that they don't even submit claims when they are injured. Instead, they improperly use regular medical coverage. Or they apply only for Social Security disability or welfare. Costs rightly borne by employers are then billed to the general public.
All that is flawed with the system can be witnessed daily inside the stubby building at 168-46 91st Avenue in Jamaica, one of three dozen redoubts statewide where cases get heard. It doesn't take long there to grasp how proceedings have devolved into something out of Kafka, who was himself once a compensation claims examiner.
Cases are delayed for any of myriad reasons, or no reason. When the Workers' Compensation Research Institute recently studied speed of payment among 15 states, it found New York the slowest to pay workers their first check.
"These people are not chattel," said Neil Abramson, a claimant lawyer. "They're human beings."
In Queens, it often takes four to six months from the time of injury to get before a judge, a period during which a worker may not receive care or wages. Typically cases are decided piecemeal - months can pass before both sides even agree on how much a worker earned - and so that first encounter may begin a procession of hearings that become stretched-out wars. Any appeal had once meant another six to nine months for a ruling, though since the board made recent changes many have been coming much quicker.
Three-quarters of the appeals are by insurers.
An insurer appealed, for example, when Ms. Marquez sought surgery for her injured elbow in 2007. The appeal, which the board found particularly weak, meant the surgery did not get approved until a year later.
To accelerate cases, the board has increasingly allowed some involving lesser injuries to be decided by a claims examiner, instead of a judge. The examiners are not required to have legal or medical training, or even a high school diploma, and lawyers and judges say their decisions often contain errors. Judges must review the rulings, but some admit it often gets done hastily.
Largely because of delays and litigiousness, only about a third of the state's 66,000 active licensed doctors take compensation cases. One of those who does, Dr. Miron Fayngersh of Brooklyn, said he had 41 outstanding bills for a single case, one a year old.
"The percentage of denials is worse in workers' comp than in any other area in my experience," said Dr. Robert Goldberg, former head of the Medical Society of the State of New York.
One case that seems to exemplify the broad faults is that of Richard Frank, a forklift driver for New York City Transit. After he had a work accident in 1991, the agency prolonged his case for years, ignoring judges' orders, according to court rulings.
After a September 1995 hearing was adjourned because his employer had furnished illegible evidence, Mr. Frank told his lawyer "the Transit Authority is going to kill me." That night he died of a heart attack. He was 50.
For a decade, the agency then contested whether his widow was due death benefits, until an appeals court ruled in 2005 that his death had been caused in part by the agency's "unlawful coercion" and "disgraceful conduct" in resisting his claim.
Claimants who typically wait months to talk to a judge are surprised by the lightning speed of hearings. Eight minutes is typical. A trial can run a half-hour to an hour. Some matters finish in a minute or two. Often workers don't even get to speak. Sometimes they wait outside while their lawyers perform.
Vera Rutherford, a substance abuse counselor whose carpal tunnel case had plodded along for two years, asked, "Is it normal for a person to go in there and say nothing and have people decide their life for them?"
One day, Fernando Tenorio, a school safety officer hindered by a knee injury, emerged from his hearing, dazed by its velocity: four minutes flat.
For months, Mr. Tenorio had received no money. Now, his lawyer, Mark Allen, explained to him, the case was adjourned for another few weeks for an investigation, though he would be paid something while waiting.
As Mr. Allen put it, "Six weeks is like tomorrow around here."
But Mr. Tenorio blurted out, "There're some other things I want to tell you." He had lost his apartment and was cooped up in his brother's basement; his bank account was empty.
Mr. Allen halted him: "Forget about personal. They don't think of you as a person. They think of you as a file with a dollar sign on it. They don't care if you can't put food on the table or put braces on your daughter. You're thinking of this logically. I stopped thinking that way a long time ago. This is comp."
Ambitious Assurances
New York's workers' compensation system was born in 1914, an idea of great promise that grew in part from great tragedy, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed 146 garment workers in 1911.
The state, one of the first to adopt such a program, founded the system on a simple bargain. Hurt workers, who previously had to prove their employer's negligence in court to get compensated, now would get medical care and wage benefits automatically. In turn, they would be barred from filing suit.
At its most basic, that no-fault insurance system is the same today. Essentially, companies buy compensation insurance and their premiums underwrite the cost of running the system and all claims. Virtually all employers must carry coverage.
Hearing rooms across the state are filled, not with office workers, but with people who make biscuits or work construction or strip beds: physical laborers who often live just above society's safety nets.
These workers confront a law that is maddeningly complex. In its barest form, it requires workers to report an injury to their employer within 30 days, then file a claim with the compensation board. If the insurer doesn't object, it is generally required to begin medical and wage benefits within a few weeks.
But if information is missing, as is common, the clock doesn't start until it is submitted, so payments often start much later. Disputed cases are frequent, require judicial intervention and can take months or years to resolve.
There are no cost-of-living adjustments, so payments can lag behind wages. A plumber who has New York's longest-running claim, from a back injury in 1937, gets all of $6 a week.
Given its tortuous nature, it's no wonder the system has figured in some of New York's noir moments. For 16 years in the 1940s and 1950s, George Metesky, the so-called Mad Bomber, concealed bombs around New York in a rage precipitated by the rejection of his claim.
Changes introduced in 2007 mean that for the first time since 1992 the maximum weekly benefit will rise, in stages, from a flat $400 to what will next year and thereafter be indexed to two-thirds of the state's average wage, a cap of about $760. But the reform also ended payouts that could last a lifetime for workers with permanent partial injuries, like an impaired back. Now these awards generally expire within 10 years.
Those adjustments were designed to correct a longstanding paradox of the New York system: how it could be one of the most expensive for employers yet have one of the lowest payouts to workers. Experts say that although the wage benefit was low, insurance rates were steep because the state, unlike many others, had no time limit on payments for permanent partial disabilities.
New York not only had a high level of these injuries, it also had one of the more litigious processes, which further drove up costs.
Today, even with the payout increases, New York lags behind many states. Injured workers in Iowa can get about double New York's limit.
John F. Burton Jr., professor emeritus at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and an expert on workers' compensation, feels that systems nationwide have become less fair to workers, in part because the political balance has tilted toward management.
"In general, it's not economics that is driving this," he said. "It's that employers have gotten the upper hand."
In New York, average premiums have fallen over the last dozen years (though they vary enormously among employers), as have claims. But the perception reigns, driven in part by insurers, law enforcement and the news media, that the system is expensive because it is bloated with embroidered claims.
Fraud does occur, not only when workers feign injuries, but also when they stay out five weeks when four would suffice. In 2007, the authorities arrested a bus driver, receiving compensation for a hurt shoulder, who Brooklyn prosecutors said had been touring Europe as a drummer in a rock band.
But experts believe far more money is siphoned by employers that illegally underpay premiums by underreporting the size of their work force or by doctors who fabricate bills.
Some defects are addressed by the latest changes. For example, "rocket docket" rules are being applied to speed up initially disputed cases, and while not everyone has embraced them, some progress has been made.
"We want our comp system to do so much," Mr. Weiss said. "And it should do so much. And it does so little."
As head of the compensation board, Mr. Weiss, who earns $120,800, directs the system, which employs 1,500 people. The other commissioners earn $90,800 and primarily rule on appeals that bubble up from local offices.
Commissioners often work from home, reviewing opinions generated for them by board lawyers. Just five of the current 11 commissioners are lawyers.
Last year, after a dozen years as a commissioner, Michael T. Berns wrote a book titled "Behind the Closed Doors," which he describes as a kind of apology for a system where, he said, workers suffer in part because some commissioners know too little about the relevant law, work just a few hours a week and do not read many of the decisions they sign.
"The whole push is a numbers production," he said. "Quality is irrelevant."
The board members are appointed by the governor in a process long regarded as dominated by politics.
Commissioner Candace K. Finnegan is a former personnel director for a state psychiatric facility, and also a close friend of Libby Pataki, the wife of former Gov. George E. Pataki. Ellen O. Paprocki had been assistant director of the New York State Fair, and is also the daughter of John O'Mara, who was an adviser to Mr. Pataki.
Frances M. Libous, a former nurse, is married to Thomas W. Libous, a ranking Republican state senator. Mark D. Higgins, recently appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson, is a longtime union official and brother of Representative Brian Higgins, an upstate Democrat.
"It is political employment for the politically connected," said Richard A. Bell, a commissioner. He once served as the board's executive director, and his wife worked as an executive assistant to Mr. Pataki.
While politics is a factor in appointments, several members said those selected are nonetheless qualified.
For years, judges and lawyers say, politics also played a role in who got hired as district administrators to run the system's 11 district offices. The posts, created a decade ago by state lawmakers, paid $104,080 a year. But critics said the administrators' duties were light and little different from those of the district managers they were brought in to supervise.
This month, the board simply did away with district administrators, leaving two regional administrators in their stead, millions of dollars having been spent to no clear end.
Injured and Indigent
Carlos Pabon, a parks department manager and an Army veteran, hurt his back and neck when someone opened a door into him in a Bronx storeroom in 1997 and knocked him down a flight of stairs. Tossed into the cumbersome workers' compensation system, he has never left.
Initially, the system took care of his injuries and Mr. Pabon, now 50, stayed on the job, earning up to $60,000 a year. But his pain worsened over time, he said, and he began to miss days. In the summer of 2006, his doctors advised him to stop working.
New York City arranged for him to get an independent medical exam. That doctor felt that Mr. Pabon's doctors were wrong. He had no disability. He could do his job without restriction.
In January 2007, the wage benefits he had been receiving stopped because of the independent doctor's report.
Michael Serres, Mr. Pabon's lawyer, sought to challenge the doctor by having him testify. But nearly a year would go by before he did.
In the meantime, Mr. Pabon, who said he wrestled with grinding pain, could not live on a tiny military pension and the slim disability income of his fiancée, Grace James. The bank seized his car. He reached the limit on his credit cards and pawned his jewelry. He went on welfare.
In November 2007, the city's doctor finally testified. He stood by his report. Another hearing in Queens was scheduled.
The matter was still unresolved last year when a city marshal arrived at Mr. Pabon's apartment with an eviction notice. It was Valentine's Day. Mr. Pabon was eight months behind on the rent.
In a bone-chilling wind, they left: Mr. Pabon, Ms. James, their child and another from Ms. James's previous relationship. A third child was at school. They juggled what they could carry, including their bird. After depositing the children with a relative, Mr. Pabon and Ms. James rode the A train all night. The next evening, they slept in the boiler room of an apartment house.
Soon, they landed in an echoing homeless shelter where they washed their clothes in the tub. Occasionally, Mr. Pabon stole food. "I took cookies, hard salami, half a pint of milk, cakes, doughnuts, small stuff," he said. "I stole a deodorant stick from Rite-Aid."
"I worked in the parks taking care of kids, making sure they didn't get hurt, being a role model," he said. "Here I am stealing things."
They moved from one shelter to another. Mr. Pabon began to have nightmares and imagined himself blowing up people. He and Ms. James bickered.
"Look at where we are," she told him one day. "What kind of man are you?"
The next hearing for Mr. Pabon, his 13th in a case in its 11th year, was set for April 1, 2008.
Mr. Pabon arrived by bus from the shelter. He was penniless.
"I feel so down. I mean, down on the ground," he told his fiancée.
"This could put someone in a mental hospital," she replied. "I can see myself sitting in a room in a straitjacket, rocking."
As the hearing approached, as often happens, the lawyers fashioned a deal. Mr. Pabon was offered $265 a week. By the system's metrics, he was deemed about 33 percent disabled.
The calibrations of disability can be arbitrary. Few doctors are trained to gauge how injuries restrict a person's particular work capability. Some workers with frightful injuries are judged 75 percent disabled. But a professor, or an accountant, can often continue a career. Laborers judged 25 or 50 percent disabled often are stuck. Who hires a laborer who can manage half a job?
Mr. Pabon had expected $400 a week, the limit for a case of this vintage. Yet he accepted.
"I need money now," he said.
After the lawyer's fee, Mr. Pabon would get a back-payment check of $11,921. Once he satisfied his most pressing creditors and bought clothes for his family, he expected to have maybe $7,000 left.
He still would be unable to work and without a home.
John Vos, the lawyer for the insurer, saw the deal as an effort "to meet in the middle." He said he had no idea how injured Mr. Pabon was - "I'm not a doctor" - and that the cyclical hearings were simply the norm.
Compensation cases are like serials without endings. Over the next eight months, Mr. Pabon was sent to two more insurance exams, had two more hearings, got his rate raised to $350 because of continuing depression and had a kidney removed.
He continues to live in a shelter.
Joking and Settling
The compensation lawyers in Queens are a clubby bunch. Often they go to greasy spoons for burgers and pizza, claimant and insurer alike, piling into the van of Ed Hilfer, a claimant lawyer.
Few students in law school imagine a career as a workers' comp lawyer or judge. For most, it is an accidental destination. Many say they chose it because of the hours. Hearings go from 9 to 4, and judges and lawyers often fly out the door minutes after their last case.
Fees for claimant lawyers are set by judges and come out of awards to workers. Insurer lawyers get paid whatever they negotiate. Rewards for claimant lawyers in Queens typically arrive in dribs and drabs of $50 and $100 fees, augmented by sweeter windfalls from settlements.
For both sides, it is a volume business: the more hearings, the more fees, thus the incentive to keep cases alive.
For workers, a lawyer can be an essential brace. In Queens, though, a claimant is commonly represented by a firm that specializes in workers' compensation law, not an individual. So if there are six hearings, a different lawyer might handle each one. Sometimes a freelancer steps in when the assigned lawyer is overloaded.
As a result, some hearing lawyers have never spoken to the client, and have barely studied the file. The same hasty preparation is often true for the insurance lawyer and the judge. Even preparation for trial testimony might get done in a few stuttering moments in the waiting area.
During one hearing, a claimant's lawyer asked his client a question in Spanish. That went poorly, since the man was Armenian.
"There was a judge I was talking to and he said there are only two ways in my court that your fees would be cut: if you're not friendly or if you're not willing to compromise," said Mr. Pizza, the insurance company lawyer. "I said, 'What if you're not prepared?' He said that doesn't matter."
Between hearings, the lawyers' room has the feel of a college social club. Lawyers play pinochle. Watch hockey fights on YouTube. Joke about judges, like the "Cruise Director," whom they mock for roaming the halls. Or they check the "meat chart," which lists awards for lost body parts, based on a grisly schedule that codifies missing limbs with weeks of wages.
The rate for an arm is 312 weeks of wages. A leg gets 288, a big toe 38, the index finger 46. Rates fluctuate by state, for no apparent reason. Lose an index finger in Idaho, it's 70 weeks.
Despite the esprit de corps, the opposing lawyers have clashing worldviews about the system.
A few years ago, Mark Allen represented a delivery driver who had injured his back lifting packages. The next day, the man told his manager the pain was so bad it hurt when he pulled on his socks. The insurer said: not a work injury; he must have hurt himself putting on his socks.
"If you fell out of a tree when you were 5 and you have a knee injury when you're 55, they'll say it was the tree," Mr. Allen said.
On the insurer side, Nicholas Rupwani typifies the many lawyers who view the system as a worker fraud trough. One day he recounted the case of a pet store clerk bitten by a rat who said her injuries had been serious and the experience traumatizing. Yet, Mr. Rupwani noted, her MySpace page showed her throwing darts in a bar and indicated she might start a pornographic Web site.
Mr. Rupwani said he felt bad for workers who suffer crushing injuries - but not too bad. "If you're a secretary with a torn meniscus who is losing her house, go back to work," he said. "It might hurt, but people work through the pain."
When workers moan during hearings about family strife and ruin, he said, "that's when I tune out." His theory is that the more people broadcast their situation, the more likely they are fakes.
"Sometimes the claimant is sitting next to you and doing this quiet sobbing," Mr. Rupwani said. "That's when I usually recommend that the insurer put them under surveillance."
He said he recommended surveillance about once a day.
Both sides talk about how inconsistent decisions are. "The law allows some leeway," said Mr. Pizza, "but there shouldn't be eight different ways of doing things. 'I won't allow depositions,' 'I will allow depositions,' 'I'll only allow 15 minutes a witness.' You shouldn't put justice on a time clock."
A popular option in the last decade is a cash settlement under which workers close their cases in exchange for a lump payment to cover living expenses and medical bills.
For some workers, a settlement might allow them to start a business or get a degree. For others, they are economic quicksand, one-time payouts that some people find hard to resist. A state task force found that those who accept them are typically lower-paid workers, with average wages of about $19,000.
Insurers relish settlements because they end their exposure. Claimant attorneys relish them, too. They typically extract a 10 to 15 percent cut.
But do workers know what they're choosing?
The lawyers routinely say clients are "adults." But the compensation system is so puzzling that even a Queens judge abandoned her own case years ago out of frustration. And there are lawyers in Queens, regulars at the hearing office say, who undersell settlements, pushing low-ball deals on workers just to pocket a quick payday.
No comprehensive studies have examined the impact of settlements, though limited academic studies tend to find them problematic.
"If it were my case, I wouldn't take one," said Thomas Gleason, a former executive director of the board who is now a deputy executive director of the State Insurance Fund, New York's biggest workers' compensation insurer. "Some guys get $50,000 or $60,000 and go out and buy a new car - or go to the casino."
Jorge Manzano, 31, a lumber company driver who hurt his back lifting a cement bag, was offered a settlement in 2007. His lawyer negotiated a $12,500 payment, but Mr. Manzano felt that was insufficient and hired a new lawyer.
At a hearing, his new lawyer asked, "What do you want?"
He said, "Like double."
The insurance lawyer agreed to $20,000. After a legal fee of $3,000, Mr. Manzano would get $17,000.
His lawyer, who knew almost nothing about the case, made a quick fee, the insurer concluded its exposure and the compensation board closed one more file.
And Mr. Manzano?
He said he plucked the $25,000 number out of the air. His friends warned him not to settle. What if he needed surgery? After all, he could barely hold his daughter. "I'm like an old man," he said.
But his motivation, as it so often is in the compensation universe, was simply to escape the stultifying system.
"I don't want to come here and feel like I'm begging," he said. "Frankly, I'll take just about anything, just so I don't have to see this place ever again."
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16) Record Drop in January Index of Home Prices
By DAVID STREITFELD
April 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/economy/01econ.html?hp
It may be spring on the calendar but housing prices are locked into perpetual winter.
Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index, a widely watched measure of 20 metropolitan areas, fell 19 percent in January from a year earlier. That was a record drop, slightly edging out the previous month.
The worst hit metropolitan areas have now fallen nearly in half. None of the cities showed month-to-month improvements. Thirteen showed record annual rates of decline.
"There's no daylight that I can see in this report," said David Blitzer, chairman of S.& P.'s index committee.
He cited the numbers for Phoenix, the quintessential boomtown, as "gruesome." Prices there fell 5.5 percent from December, and are now down 48.5 percent from its June 2006 peak.
Las Vegas, Miami, San Francisco and San Diego are not far behind. All have fallen more than 40 percent. The best performing city in the index is Dallas, down a mere 10.8 percent from its peak. Unlike the rest of the Sunbelt and the coasts, Dallas never had a boom, so it did not have as far to fall.
Here is what passes for good news in the Case-Shiller world: in a handful of cities, including Minneapolis, New York and Charlotte, N.C., the rate of decline in January slowed a little from the rate of decline in December.
The 20-city index is now at 146.40, its lowest point since September 2003. The peak was 206.52 in July 2006.
Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR Inc., said in a note to clients that "it is unlikely that we are anywhere near a bottom in nationwide home prices." He estimated the index was perhaps two-thirds of the way through its ultimate total decline.
That would bring big city prices back to where they were in late 2001 or early 2002 and would probably encourage another round of beleaguered owners to surrender their underwater homes.
The monthly Case-Shiller numbers examine only one segment of the real estate market, which happens to be the places where the boom was most frenzied. And even in those communities, agents argue that the report does not give a full picture of a market that can vary by neighborhood.
"Sales are up dramatically," said Jim Klinge, an agent in San Diego. "There's a group of buyers that need housing more than they need to pay attention to the doom and gloom headlines we see every single day."
Many of his buyers are young people who are backed financially by their parents. Mr. Klinge noted that all the sales were on the low end, which in San Diego means less than $500,000.
Still, he said, "We're back off the ledge."
The Case-Shiller report comes on the heels of a Census Bureau release that said sales of new one-family homes in February rose 4.7 percent above the revised January rate. The report was received in some quarters as a hopeful sign of a bottom in sales.
Housing prices traditionally lag sales, giving the market time to clear. Much of the activity in the Sunbelt is coming from foreclosure sales by banks, not traditional sales by homeowners. These markets will not truly recover until the foreclosures end.
Mr. Blitzer said that in any case he was not sure the market was improving. "If there were a real, absolute, no-questions-asked uptick in sales in January, we might not see clear price movement until August, September or later," he said.
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17) Haiti's Woes Are Top Test for Aid Effort
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/world/americas/31haiti.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Paul Collier, a leading poverty guru, spent a recent morning here waxing positive about how the world's economic freefall might prove the perfect moment for Haiti to sell more exports like T-shirts and mangoes to Americans.
His improbable enthusiasm coincided with appearances by a bevy of luminaries descending on Haiti this month, including Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and the entire Security Council. All of them came to stress that this destitute nation stands at a crossroads between salvation and "the darkness," as Mr. Ban put it.
The spotlight was calculated. A landscape of deepening woe is emerging among the world's most destitute. About 46 million more people are expected to tumble into poverty this year amid the largest decline in global trade in 80 years, according to the World Bank. The results ripple through every index. An additional 200,000 to 400,000 infants, for example, may die every year for the next six years because of the crisis, the bank said.
Amid the turmoil, the United Nations is reminding the world's wealthy nations, however embattled their finances, not to forget the poorest. A panel commissioned by the United Nations General Assembly suggested on Thursday that one percent of any nation's stimulus package be set aside for poor countries, while Mr. Ban has vowed that when he joins the leaders of the Group of 20 at their economic summit meeting in London on Thursday, he will voice the concerns of the uninvited.
"There are many countries who cannot even dream of formulating their own fiscal stimulus packages," Mr. Ban said. Last week, he sent a letter to the Group of 20 members arguing that, domestic problems aside, they should give $1 trillion over the next two years to the world's most vulnerable nations.
Mr. Ban is trying to turn Haiti into something of an Exhibit A on the need to keep foreign aid flowing despite tighter budgets. Haiti's upheavals last year proved particularly intense, with the nation staggering beneath the double whammy of food riots that toppled the government and a series of hurricanes that killed hundreds and battered the economy.
Now the United Nations worries that while the groundwork has been laid to get past those threats, the moment will fade because of the global crisis. The organization has spent some $5 billion on peacekeeping operations here since 2004, when the government of the still popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled - many say with a shove from the Bush administration.
The peacekeeping force declared war against the gangs that plague Haiti, with some success. Kidnappings dropped to 258 victims last year from 722 in 2006, according to United Nations figures.
With the issue of security improved, Mr. Ban commissioned Mr. Collier - an Oxford University don whose book on fixing failed states, "The Bottom Billion," turned him into a darling at United Nations headquarters - to whip up some solutions for rejuvenating Haiti.
Haiti needs jobs, a particular challenge in the current economic climate. Haitians often seek work in the United States, but that safety valve has been squeezed given the recession. With some 900,000 youths expected to come into the job market in the next five years, dismal prospects are the main threat to stability.
"There is nothing that is going to turn Haiti around until people have jobs," said the rap artist and native son Wyclef Jean, who came to the island with Mr. Ban and former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Jean's charity, Yéle Haiti, underwrites education for thousands of young Haitians.
In a downtown park, Idelson François, 24, said he finished high school four years ago and had failed to find a job or money to continue his education. "When you have no self-esteem, sometimes you can't resist the desire to do something violent," he said.
It required five months to seat a new government after the April 2008 food riots, and United Nations officials say development is stymied by a corrupt judicial system, weak land tenure laws and wildly inefficient ports. The roads are such moonscapes that some 40 percent of the mango crop gets too bruised to be sold abroad, said Jean M. Buteau, a leading exporter.
Some diplomats worry that the government does not have the capacity to carry out even Mr. Collier's limited prescriptions for improving manufacturing, infrastructure, agriculture and the environment.
"What is lacking is the determination to put these good ideas into a coherent policy," said Yukio Takasu, the Japanese ambassador to the United Nations, on the Security Council tour here. "I don't think there is a focus."
Constant upheaval has long scared off investors. To counter that, last year the United States Congress granted Haitian textiles duty-free access to the American market for a decade, giving rise to Mr. Collier's optimism. The policy has added just 12,000 jobs thus far, but it is viewed as a possible boon in an era of rising protectionism.
Senior United Nations officials and other diplomats worry, however, that the tempo of new factory jobs is too slow, so they think money should be pumped into emergency programs like creating jobs to fix the environmental disaster by planting the denuded hills with forests.
There is also some criticism that Mr. Collier's basic recommendation involves turning Haiti into a sweatshop for American consumers, with workers paid $5 per day or less. He and others defend the approach, with Mr. Clinton noting after a visit to a Hanes T-shirt factory here that its workers earned some two or three times Haiti's minimum wage of $1.75 a day.
Haiti is so close to the United States that its problems tend to reverberate as illegal immigration, and the Marines have stormed ashore repeatedly since the first American occupation started in 1915.
Not every problem can be addressed with the military, and ignoring development has proved deadly, said Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations. "Where we have neglected it, it comes back to bite us." Haiti could receive more than $245 million in American development aid this year.
Haitian officials hope the world gives generously, though there is a certain recognition of donor fatigue, especially in the economic storm.
But young Haitians grumble that their government has yet to paint a vision of the country's future - complaints echoed by United Nations officials who say it is difficult to get President Réne Préval or his ministers to commit to an action plan.
"Just providing rice and beans is not a long-term solution," said John Miller Beauvoir, 26, who founded a charity right out of college and wrote a book calling on other young Haitians to get involved in development. "If the captain does not know where you are going, no boat will take you in the right direction."
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18) French Workers Hold Bosses at Caterpillar Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:08 a.m. ET
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/31/business/AP-EU-France-Caterpilla.html?ref=world
PARIS (AP) -- Angry French workers facing layoffs at a Caterpillar factory detained four of their bosses Tuesday at the Peoria, Ill.-based manufacturer's plant in the Alps and refused to let them leave the premises, union representatives said.
It is the third time in several weeks that French workers have seized their bosses to protest job losses as a result of the global economic crisis.
Last week, workers at a 3M plant held the company boss for two days, and earlier this month workers at a Sony (NYSE:SNE) plant held a similar protest.
Unions representing the workers say they want new talks on Caterpillar's layoff plans at the site in Grenoble. The plant that produces building equipment is supposed to cut 733 jobs in two of its factories in France.
"There is no violence or sequestration, but simply pressure so they restart negotiations," said Pierre Piccarreta, a representative from the CGT union.
"At a time when the company is making a profit and distributing dividends to shareholders, we want to find a favorable outcome for all the workers and know as quickly as possible where we are going," Piccarreta said.
Caterpillar France says the layoffs are justified. In February, the company said it was facing a 55 percent loss of orders between 2008 and 2009.
In response to the worsening economic prospects, Caterpillar in January announced job cuts that will ultimately eliminate 20,000 positions worldwide.
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19) $296 Billion in Overruns in U.S. Weapons Programs
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31defense.html?ref=us
Nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon's 96 largest weapons programs were over budget last year, for a combined total of $296 billion more than the original estimates, a Congressional auditing agency reported Monday.
The findings, compiled by the Government Accountability Office, seemed likely to add to the pressure on officials to make sizable cuts in the most troubled programs as they work out the details of a proposed $664 billion defense budget for fiscal 2010.
President Obama has said that the "days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over." Pentagon officials have said they will finish putting together a list of proposed cuts in April.
In a letter to Congress, Gene L. Dodaro, the acting comptroller general for the G.A.O., an auditing agency, said that while there had been modest improvements in the last year, the Pentagon's management of the contracts remained poor, and cost overruns were "still staggering."
The accountability office reported that the programs were behind schedule by an average of 22 months, up from 21 months last year and 18 months in 2003.
The office had previously said that the cost of a similar portfolio of programs had risen by $295 billion through 2007, or $301 billion when adjusted for inflation.
In the report released on Monday, the G.A.O. said the Pentagon often had to reduce the number of planes and ships it could buy.
The report said, for instance, that the cost of 10 of the largest weapons systems was running 32 percent higher than projected, and the quantities that could be purchased had been cut.
Some programs, like the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet and the Army's Future Combat System, are among the systems that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he is scrutinizing.
According to the G.A.O., the F-22, which was designed in the 1980s, was originally expected to cost $88 billion in 2009 dollars for 648 planes. The program is now expected to cost $73.7 billion for the 184 planes.
Some military analysts say they believe that Mr. Gates will recommend canceling the plane, or buying fewer planes than the Air Force wants.
But the G.A.O. also said the Pentagon had done a better job of managing some newer programs.
In a response to the office, John J. Young Jr., the Pentagon's top acquisition official, said department officials had "instituted several major changes that are beginning to show results."
Mr. Young also noted that in some cases, the cost growth was not a result of overruns but of program expansions. And in others, delays were ordered by top Pentagon officials or Congress as part of budgeting trade-offs.
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20) Settlement for Man Wrongly Convicted in Palladium Killing
By BENJAMIN WEISER
March 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/nyregion/31palladium.html?ref=nyregion
New York City and State have agreed to pay $2.6 million to a man who served almost 14 years in prison before he was cleared in the 1990 Palladium nightclub shooting that left a bouncer dead, the man's lawyer said on Monday.
The city will pay $2 million to the man, Olmedo Hidalgo, to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the Manhattan district attorney's office, the Police Department and other defendants, said the lawyer, Irving Cohen.
He said that the state would pay an additional $625,000 to resolve a case filed in the Court of Claims.
Mr. Hidalgo, who was cleared by the district attorney's office in 2005, is one of two men who were convicted and sent to prison in the killing. The other, David Lemus, was retried in 2007 and acquitted; he has a lawsuit pending.
Mr. Hidalgo, 43, who now lives in the Dominican Republic, could not be reached for comment. Mr. Cohen said that while no amount of money could adequately compensate his client, "at least it gives him the opportunity to go forward with his life, and an added level of vindication."
"In the end, there was no doubt that he was innocent," Mr. Cohen added.
A senior lawyer in the city's Office of Corporation Counsel, Celeste Koeleveld, said through a spokeswoman, "We felt that settlement was in the best interest of all parties." There was no admission of wrongdoing in the agreement, the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Hidalgo and Mr. Lemus were convicted by a jury in 1992, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. But questions were repeatedly raised, by the police and federal prosecutors, defense lawyers and the press, about whether the wrong men were behind bars. Among the evidence pointing to their innocence was a confession by a former member of a Bronx drug gang that he and a friend had committed the crime.
The bouncer, Marcus Peterson, was shot and killed after a scuffle outside the nightclub, in the East Village.
By early 2003, the office of the district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, had opened a new investigation, led by a veteran homicide prosecutor, Daniel L. Bibb, who concluded after 21 months that neither Mr. Hidalgo nor Mr. Lemus were guilty of the murder. But when Mr. Bibb raised the matter with his superiors, they ordered him to defend the convictions in a court hearing, he said last year in an interview with The New York Times. "I was angry that I was being put in a position to defend convictions that I didn't believe in," he said at the time.
Mr. Bibb has said that in the 2005 hearing about whether the two men should be retried, he quietly assisted their lawyers. After the hearing ended, Mr. Morgenthau's office agreed to ask a judge to drop Mr. Hidalgo's conviction, but pressed ahead with a retrial of Mr. Lemus.
Mr. Bibb, who is now in private practice, declined to comment on any settlement in the Palladium shooting, but said: "I came to believe that Hidalgo wasn't there. And if he wasn't there, he certainly couldn't have done it."
Last year, in a letter to The Times, Mr. Morgenthau defended his office's actions in the case, saying the original convictions were based on "substantial evidence, including multiple eyewitness identifications and a confession" made by Mr. Lemus to a girlfriend. Mr. Morgenthau said that when new evidence surfaced, his office "willingly reopened the case."
He said that Mr. Bibb "was never asked to prosecute someone he believed to be innocent."
Mr. Hidalgo's lawsuit against the city, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, charged that despite "clear-cut proof" that both men were not guilty, the district attorney's office "continued to dig in its heels until it had no choice - in light of the overwhelming factual support of Mr. Hidalgo's innocence - but to consent to vacate his conviction and dismissal of his indictment."
The settlement documents are being submitted to the courts, Mr. Cohen said. Officials from the offices of the district attorney and the New York attorney general declined comment.
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