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KEVIN COOPER ALERT:
Appeals court denies Kevin Cooper request
Will Bigham, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/11/2009 06:57:04 PM PDT
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12346857
Download: Request denial publication at:
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12346857
(See article in full, no. 11, below)
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
(If you would like to be added to the BAUAW list-serve and receive this newsletter via email, send your name (opitional) and email address to: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com -- it's free. Please put "Add me to the list" in the subject line.)
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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TONIGHT!
SAY NO TO RESTORING JROTC IN OUR SCHOOLS!
COME TO THE SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOL BOARD MEETING AND LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!
JROTC MUST GO!
The San Francisco School Board will VOTE on restoring JROTC tonight!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 6:00 pm
555 Franklin Street at McAllister, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/241-6427 or (415) 241-6493
(To get on the speaker's list call the Monday before the meeting from 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM or Tuesday, the day of the meeting from 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM. You will get at most, two minutes and most probably only one minute to speak.)
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TONIGHT!
Protest Bank Robbery!
Fed-up? Make Your Voice Heard-Speak Out!
TUESDAY, May 13, 5-6:30pm
Bank of America & Sen. Feinstein's Office
Market and Montgomery Sts., S.F.
Volunteers Needed! Call 415-821-6545 to get involved. Outreach Session - Mon. May 4, 5-8pm, meet at 2489 Mission St. #24, SF. Help flyer, poster and make alert phone calls about the May 6 action.
The government has handed over hundreds of billions of dollars of our money to the biggest banks in the country-Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and others-with NO STRINGS ATTACHED!
The big banks and investors set off the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s by their wild betting spree on sub-prime mortgages, hedge funds and other risky investments. Millions of people have lost their jobs, homes, health care, pensions and more because of the crisis caused by Wall Street. But it is the super-rich who are being rescued with ten trillion dollars-$10,000,000,000,000-while working people are left to fend for ourselves.
Congress and the White House didn't even require the banks to reveal what they used the money for. When asked, bankers have simply replied, "We choose not to disclose that information." AMAZING! Anyone else who gets the smallest grant from the government is required to report what they did with the money, otherwise they have to give it back. But not the giant banks who have just been given the biggest gift in history.
Neither Congress, nor the White House have put any conditions on the giveaway that would protect the people! So, no sooner did the banks get the bailout money-our money-than they doubled and tripled interest rates on credit cards, cut credit limits and closed many accounts. It didn't matter if you were making payments or not.
Now the bailed-out banks are stepping up foreclosures and evictions that have already put millions of people out of their homes. In March 2009, the foreclosure rate on homes went up 24%, the biggest increase on record.
What's going on is a double rip-off. The banks are receiving trillions of dollars of our money on the one hand, while increasing their profits by extracting every dollar they can from people who are suffering as a result of the crisis the banks themselves have caused.
WE SAY: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
We demand government action at the federal, state and local level to:
- Stop all foreclosures and evictions. There are now 18.9 million vacant housing units in the U.S.-everyone should have the right to a home.
- Rollback and cap credit card rates at no more than 5% interest.
- Bailout the people, not the banks-fund people's needs, not war and the super-rich. The money is there!
For more info: 415-821-6144, justicefirstsf@gmail.com
Justice First is a newly formed national organization that is dedicated to fighting for the people's economic, social and political rights. Justice First believes that everyone has the right to a job or living income, food, housing, health care, education and more. As the bailout has proved, the money is there. Join us in building a movement to put the people's needs first!
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End the Siege of Gaza! Rally in San Francisco on June 6
Solidarity Day on the 42nd Anniversary of Israel's seizure of Gaza
Support the Palestinian Right of Return! Stop U.S. Aid to Israel!
Saturday, June 6
12:00 noon
UN Plaza (7th and Market Sts.)
Saturday, June 6 marks the 42nd anniversary of the Israeli seizure of Gaza. Organizations and individuals in solidarity with the people of Palestine will be taking to the streets once again to demand: End the Siege of Gaza!
The world looked on in horror this past winter as Israel mercilessly starved and bombed the people of Gaza, killing around 1,200 Palestinians (at least a third of whom were children). The Arab world now refers to the dark days from the end of December to mid-January "The Gaza Massacre." Although the mainstream media no longer focuses on Gaza, the suffering continues there nonetheless. Using the pretext of combating terrorism, Israel has refused to allow in even one truckload of cement into Gaza. In other words, the city that was reduced to rubble still lies in rubble today. All these months later, people are still living in tents and are scarcely able to secure the necessities of life.
People of conscience around the world continue to raise their voices in outrage at this crime against humanity, and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza. We will also stand for all Palestinian people's inalienable right to return to their homes from which they were evicted. Let your voice be heard -- join us Saturday, June 6, at 12 noon at UN Plaza in San Francisco (7th and Market Sts.). There will be a joint action in Washington DC on June 6.
Sponsoring organizations include ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom, National Council of Arab Americans (NCA), Free Palestine Alliance (FPA), Al-Awda - Palestine Right of Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and more!
Contact us at 415-821-6545 or answer@answersf.org to endorse or volunteer!
The June 6 demonstration is a major undertaking and we can't do it without the support of the large number of people who are standing with Palestine. Please click this link right now to make a generous donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr010=5e0ldsoh91.app6a
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ATTEND THE JULY 10 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CONFERENCE IN PITTSBURGH!
REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE and DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE BROCHURE (8.5 X 14) at:
https://natassembly.org/Home_Page.html
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
On behalf of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, we are writing to invite you and members of your organization to attend a national antiwar conference to be held July 10-12, 2009 at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting.
We believe that such a conference will be welcomed by the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iran, who are the victims of these policies. It will also be welcomed by victims of the depression-type conditions in this country, with tens of millions losing jobs, homes, health care coverage and pensions, while trillions of dollars are spent bailing out Wall Street and the banks, waging expansionist wars and occupations, and funding the Pentagon's insatiable appetite.
This will be the National Assembly's second conference. The first was held in Cleveland last June and it was attended by over 400 people, including top leaders of the antiwar movement and activists from many states. After discussion and debate, attendees voted - on the basis of one person, one vote - to urge the movement to join together for united spring actions. The National Assembly endorsed and helped build the March actions in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the April actions in New York City.
We are all aware of the developments since our last conference - the election of a new administration in the U.S., the ongoing occupation of Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the extreme peril of an additional war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. Given all this, it is crystal clear that a strong, united, independent antiwar movement is needed now more than ever. We urge you to help build such a movement by attending the July conference and sharing your ideas and proposals with other attendees regarding where the antiwar movement goes from here.
For more information, please visit the National Assembly's website at natassembly.org, email us at natassembly@aol.com, or call 216-736-4704. We will be glad to send you upon request brochures announcing the July conference (a copy is attached) and you can also register for the conference online. [Please be aware that La Roche College is making available private rooms with baths at a very reasonable rate, but will only guarantee them if reserved by June 25.]
Yours for peace, justice and unity,
National Assembly Administrative Body
Zaineb Alani, Author of The Words of an Iraqi War Survivor & More; Colia Clark, Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee, Grandmothers for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC) and Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Alan Dale, Iraq Peace Action Coalition (MN); Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Jerry Gordon, Former National Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-Era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) and Member, U.S. Labor Against the War Steering Committee; Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer, Author of Anti-War Soldier; Co-Founder of Appeal for Redress; Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace, Middle East Crisis Coalition; Jeff Mackler, Founder, San Francisco Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice; Fred Mason, President, Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Progressive Democrats of America/Ohio Branch; Lynne Stewart, Lynne Stewart Organization/Long Time Attorney and Defender of Constitutional Rights [Bay Area United Against War also was represented at the founding conference and will be there again this year. Carole Seligman and I initiated the motion to include adding opposition to the War in Afghanistan to the demands and title of the National Assembly.
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Zombie Bank
http://www.songlyricsatoz.com/video_nmKWJMENMxE.html
I got my money in a zombie bank, a zombie bank, a zombie bank.
I got my money in a zombie bank.
They're dead but they just don't know it.
I check my balance and there's money there.
And yet Paul Krugman says the cupboard's bare.
And all the tellers have a zombie stare.
They're dead but they just don't know it.
My money's in a bank that doesn't lend, doesn't spend.
It's all pretend.
They flunked the stress test. They've reached the end.
They're dead by they just don't know it.
They're too big to fail.
They're too big for jail.
They're sucking money on a breathtaking scale.
Do the math. Do the monster math.
Zombie bank, zombie bank.
I've got my money in a zombie bank.
They're dead but they just don't know it.
- Tom Chapin
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Alert: This could be it for Troy Davis
Global Day of Action for Troy Davis
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/troy-davis-finality-over-fairness/sign-up-for-the-day-of-action-for-troy-davis/page.do?id=1011672&ICID=A0904A4&tr=y&auid=4803928
While news channels across the country are consumed with counting up to President Obama's first 100 days in office, Troy Davis has been counting down his last 30 days before a new execution date could be set. Help make these extra days count.
On May 19th help save Troy Davis by putting together any activity, event or creative action that calls attention to his case.
The 30-day stay issued by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals expires on May 15th.
So now is the time for us to organize to save the life of Troy Anthony Davis. We're asking everybody to come out strong on May 19th - a day marked in human rights calendars across the world as the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis.
Whether you're holding a "Text TROY to 90999" sign on a busy street or organizing your local Amnesty chapter to hold a public demonstration or vigil, we need everybody to contribute their time on May 19th to make sure that the state of Georgia does not kill a man who may well be innocent. Register your Global Day of Action for Troy Davis activity or event now.
We know that time is short for organizing public events, but an execution date could be set as early as late May, so it is essential that action be taken soon. It's also really important that we get an accurate count of how many events and activities are taking place on May 19th, so we can share this information with officials in Georgia. Our emails and phone calls have gone a long way in buying Troy some much-needed time, but now we've got to take our action to the streets.
We appreciate the tens of thousands of you who have stood in Troy's corner while heart-stopping scenes have unfolded. On three separate occasions, Troy has been scheduled for execution. And on three separate occasions, his life was saved within a short period of time, even minutes, of his scheduled execution date.
Each time, those last minute stays came after people like you turned out by the thousands to rally in his defense. It was no coincidence. Troy's sister and long-time Amnesty activist, Martina Correia, has acknowledged Amnesty's powerful role in saving her brother's life each of those times.
Now here we are again with the clock winding down. While we can see little opportunity for legal recourse or second chances, we know that your advocacy has a strong record of making amazing things happen.
When we first introduced you to Troy Davis in early 2007, few people outside of Georgia knew about the injustice taking place. In the past two years, countless people have come to see Troy's case as a prime example of why the death penalty must be abolished - the risk of executing someone for a crime they did not commit is just too high.
We are serious when we say that we need everyone to support Troy Davis on May 19th by organizing their own event or awareness-raising activity.
After all, if you had 30 days left to fight for your life, wouldn't you want to know that you had thousands standing in your corner?
In Solidarity,
Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn
Director, Death Penalty Abolition Campaign
Amnesty International USA
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Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/healthwellness/138768/jon_stewart_slams_media_swine_flu_fear_mongering_/
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Free Ehren Watada!
For more backfround on Lt. Ehren Watada, go to:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/702/1/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe
By Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
May 08, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3858
2) Far From Over
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/opinion/09herbert.html
3) After the Stress Tests
Editorial
May 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/opinion/10sun1.html
4) The Safety Net
For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid
By JASON DePARLE
May 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/us/10safetynet.html?hp
5) American Album
Drafted at 19, Opposing Military Recruiters at 61
By TAMAR LEWIN
May 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/education/10veteran.html?ref=us
6) Provision to Ease Unionization Likely to Drop Out of Bill
By KRIS MAHER
Wall Street Journal
5/7/09
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165589943894201.html
7) Leaving the Trailers
Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing
[This story exposes the bare bones of the stone-cold heartlessness of this rotten system of profits over people...bw]
By SHAILA DEWAN
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08trailer.html?ref=us
8) Harry, Louise and Barack
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/opinion/11krugman.html
9) U.S. Soldier Shoots 5 of His Comrades to Death in Iraq
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
May 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?hp
10) U.S. Adviser Holds Firm on Airstrikes in Afghanistan
By BRIAN KNOWLTON and JUDY DEMPSEY
May 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11karzai.html?ref=world
11) Appeals court denies Kevin Cooper request
Will Bigham, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/11/2009 06:57:04 PM PDT
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12346857
Download: Request denial publication at:
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12346857
12) Plugging Holes in the Science of Forensics
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
May 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/12fore.html?ref=us
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1) Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe
By Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
May 08, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3858
During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.
Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.
On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President's office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:
"We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities."
I stated, "By nailing this petition to the door of the President's office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges."
After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice's responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal Iraq War: (Video here)
As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration's campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.
A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice's image on campus.
In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees' office which demanded that Stanford "halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia."
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law" and co-author of "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent." Read her articles at www.marjoriecohn.com.
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3858
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2) Far From Over
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/opinion/09herbert.html
It's a measure of just how terrible the economy has become that a loss of more than a half-million jobs in just one month can be widely seen as a good sign. The house is still burning down, but not quite as fast.
I can understand why people are relieved that we no longer seem to be hurtling toward a depression, but beyond that I see very little to be happy about.
The economy is in shambles. Nearly 540,000 jobs were lost in April, a horrifying number. The unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent. Even the most optimistic observers expect the job losses to continue, although, hopefully, at a slower pace. The unemployment rate is expected to keep on climbing, like some monster from the movies, toward double digits.
We are stuck in what is - or will soon be - the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Newspapers and the U.S. auto industry are on life support. The employment picture for even the most well-educated Americans - men and women with four-year college degrees or higher - is the worst on record.
If there is something about this economy to be cheerful about - something real - I wish someone would let me know.
Poverty and homelessness are increasing and, as Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said during an interview this week, "There are a whole lot of people who are going to be economically desperate for many years."
Joblessness is like a cancer in the society. The last thing in the world that you want is for it to metastasize. And that's what's happening now. Don't tell me about the stock market. Don't tell me about the banks and their perpetual flimflammery. Tell me whether poor and middle-income families can find work. If they can't, the country's in trouble.
One reason the employment losses slowed somewhat in April was that the government added 72,000 jobs, most of them temporary hires as part of the preparation for the 2010 Census. The private sector dumped 611,000 jobs. Moreover, the Labor Department revised the job losses for March upward, from 663,000 to 699,000, and for February, from 651,000 to 681,000. Some 5.7 million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession in December 2007.
Mr. Mishel has been trying to call attention to the human toll caused by job losses on this vast scale. The institute estimates that the poverty rate for children is in danger of increasing from 18 percent, which is where it was in 2007, the last year for which complete statistics are available, to a scary 27.3 percent in 2010.
For black children, you don't want to know. But I'll tell you anyway. The poverty rate for black kids was 34.5 percent in 2007. If the national unemployment rate rises, as expected, to the vicinity of 10 percent next year, the poverty rate for black children would rise to 50 percent or higher, analysts at the institute believe.
That would be a profound tragedy.
We already know that children are being harmed in families hammered by job losses, home foreclosures and the myriad stresses that grip families trying to cope with economic reversals. Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children's Health Fund and a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, has referred to these youngsters as the "recession generation," and has described what is happening to them as "a quiet disaster."
Much of the impact of the Obama administration's economic stimulus efforts is still to come, but those efforts were never narrowly focused on the need for job creation and are not nearly large enough to cope with the mammoth job losses that are occurring. The official unemployment rate for men is already at 9.4 percent, and for black workers 15 percent.
To get a sense of the task ahead, consider that 7.8 million jobs would have to be created just to bring us back to where we were when the recession began. That's because the working-age population has continued to grow since then. The economy has to create about 127,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. That comes to more than 2 million jobs since the start of the recession, which you then add to the 5.7 million that have been lost.
There is no light yet at the end of this tunnel.
It may not be popular, and it certainly won't sit well with the so-called deficit hawks in Congress, but there is a real need for additional government spending to further stimulate the economy and create jobs. (Think infrastructure, among other things.) The kind of employment distress we're confronting is not sustainable. Help will be needed for people whose unemployment benefits run out, who are ill but not covered by medical insurance, who are homeless or otherwise in desperate economic straits.
This crisis is far from over.
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3) After the Stress Tests
Editorial
May 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/opinion/10sun1.html
The long-awaited results of the bank stress tests are in. Now comes the real-world test, both of the health of the banks and, equally important, the Obama administration's strategy and resolve to confront the banking debacle. Unlike the stress tests, in which it was foreordained that no bank would be allowed to fail, the outcome of the real-world test is cloudy.
To recap, the purpose of the tests was to assess how much each of the nation's 19 largest banks would lose if the recession deepened and how much additional capital, if any, they would need to raise to survive such losses. Total potential losses for this year and next year were set at $600 billion, and 10 of the big 19 banks were ordered to raise a total of $75 billion in additional capital, which some of them began doing right away on Friday. The rest were given a clean bill of health.
The test conclusions are not wildly differently from other more-or-less consensus estimates. Still, whether $75 billion in capital will be enough to prevent more bailouts and to get the banks lending again depends primarily on how the economy performs. The regulators assumed that it would begin to recover modestly next year, but projections of what may happen, and when, vary widely.
That brings us to one of the biggest problems with the stress tests. They were supposed to supply clarity, a foundation for renewed confidence in the banks to function normally. Instead, investors, consumers and taxpayers alike must wait and see.
Will a modest economic bounce (that may or may not occur) and a mixture of new capital, fiscal stimulus and other government interventions revive the banks? That is a matter of great debate. What is known is that buying time, rather than forcefully intervening to restructure weak banks, can be a dicey gambit. Prolonged bank weakness could reinforce economic weakness, as happened in Japan's lost decade in the 1990s.
That is not the only problem with the stress tests. While the results have focused mainly on the 10 banks that need to raise capital, some of the banks deemed well capitalized have seized on the results to suggest that they should be freed from the extra government control that came with the bailouts. They seem to believe that if they repay the original bailout money from last year, they should be allowed to resume business as usual.
They must be disabused of that notion. Linking a payback with cessation of oversight would be premature. Government aid for the banks has gone far beyond the initial cash infusions, including government guarantees for hundreds of billions of dollars of bank debt, tens of billions funneled to them via the bailout of American International Group, and increased backing from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Treasury is also gearing up to offer up to $1 trillion in financing for investors to buy up banks' bad assets. All the props must be removed - and there must be a full accounting for all of the support and subsidies - before Washington considers giving the banks freer rein.
And even then, regulation must be greater than it was before the crisis. The banks, of course, resist that, and it is unclear whether the administration intends to be aggressive in pursuing new laws and regulations. But the portents are not good.
Recently, when the banking industry worked to defeat a measure to let homeowners have mortgages modified in bankruptcy court, the administration did not fight back, even though President Obama had long professed support for the measure. And the administration's main regulatory proposal for a single regulator to monitor systemwide risk is overbroad, putting more faith in a new regulator than in new rules.
In the end, the fallout from the stress tests may say more about the Obama administration's willingness to reform the banks than about the banks themselves. We're listening.
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4) The Safety Net
For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid
By JASON DePARLE
May 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/us/10safetynet.html?hp
WASHINGTON - As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.
Health care, housing, food stamps and cash - each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.
The result is a hit-or-miss system of relief, never designed to grapple with the pain of a recession so sudden and deep. Aid seekers often find the rules opaque and arbitrary. And officials often struggle to make policy through a system so complex and Balkanized.
Across the country, hard luck is colliding with fine print.
Workers who banked $2,000 in severance pay can get food stamps in South Carolina; their counterparts in North Carolina cannot. Oklahomans who earned $10,000 in six months can collect unemployment if they started work on the 15th of February, May, August or November - but not if they started two weeks later.
When Beverly Johnson of Kosciusko, Miss., lost her job at a Bible college, she took solace in the prospect of jobless benefits. Then Ms. Johnson discovered that as an employee of a religious school she was ineligible for aid. "That was a shock," she said.
When the recession cost Erika Nieves of Bridgeport, Conn., her job with a wrestling promoter, she did get unemployment benefits. But that caused her to lose a welfare-to-work grant and her child care subsidy. Now Ms. Nieves is months behind on her rent and is job hunting with a 2-year-old. "They took away my aid when I need it the most," she said.
As a measure of the safety net, The New York Times examined state-by-state enrollment in six federal programs and found large variations in the share of needy helped.
Just 50 percent of people eligible for food stamps receive them in California, compared with 98 percent in Missouri. Nineteen percent of the unemployed get jobless benefits in South Dakota, compared with 67 percent in Idaho.
Fifteen states rank among the top 10 in providing one form of aid and the bottom 10 in another. California ranks second in distributing cash welfare but last in food stamps. South Dakota, last in jobless benefits, is first in subsidized housing.
Aid in states most hit by recession is also scattershot. Michigan's programs reach a comparatively high share of the needy, while South Carolina's rank in the middle and Nevada's reach relatively few. All have double-digit unemployment rates.
"The system for helping Americans in need is very fragmented, and it confuses everyone," said Theda Skocpol, a political scientist at Harvard. "Some people are covered and some people are not, even though they look like they're in very similar circumstances."
This complexity is a challenge for President Obama as he reacts to the economic crisis. The February stimulus act contains more than $100 billion in safety net provisions, but much of the aid consists of financial incentives the states are free to reject. Several governors quickly spurned grants to expand unemployment insurance, for example, saying the move would raise business taxes and kill jobs.
Aid programs spend hundreds of billions of dollars and reach tens of millions of people; the food stamp program alone covers more than one in 10 Americans. Yet the safety net leaves few camps satisfied. Liberals say programs are weak compared with other rich countries and are overly deferential to states. Conservatives fault costs and complexity and warn that aid can do harm.
With generous programs "you could be discouraging people from seeking better jobs," said Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation.
Both sides, those who want more spending and those who want less, would unite under Mr. Butler's description of the status quo. "You've got this kind of jigsaw puzzle that doesn't really fit together, " he said.
Compared with its peers, the United States has always made social policy in ad hoc ways, with voters quicker to call themselves self-reliant and central government more structurally constrained. Even the New Deal was a hodgepodge affair, with Social Security initially omitting about 40 percent of the work force.
Now decades after the Great Society brought a new burst of policymaking, aid programs flow through multiple - and sometimes rivalrous - departmental chains of command. Welfare and Medicaid reside at the Department of Health and Human Services; food stamps at Agriculture; rent subsidies at Housing and Urban Development; unemployment insurance at Labor; and tax credits at Treasury.
Families receive aid, or do not, in contrasting ways. Sheila Zedlewski of the Urban Institute examined use of food stamps, health insurance and child care among a representative group of low-income families. About a third got no help, a third enrolled in one program, and just 5 percent enrolled in all three.
"We have people at both ends of the spectrum," Ms. Zedlewski said in an interview. "But we have far more people who get nothing than who get the whole package. A significant group remains outside the safety net."
Nationwide, about two-thirds of people eligible for food stamps receive them. But just 21 percent of poor children get cash welfare; 30 percent of eligible households get subsidized housing; and 44 percent of the unemployed get jobless benefits.
While calls for government transparency are common, within the safety net, confusion often reigns. Ms. Nieves, of Bridgeport, received five food stamp notices in five weeks, telling her how much to expect: $241, $256, $429, $492 and $460.
Sometimes rules that make sense in one program collide with another. That is what happened to Ms. Nieves when she lost her job shipping wrestling souvenirs for $8 an hour. She was on welfare when she found the work, and to ease the transition the state continued her welfare payments and paid for child care. Then sales slumped, and Ms. Nieves was laid off.
Unemployment benefits replaced just half her earnings, but the state withdrew her welfare grant and child care subsidy.
"Basically, when I lost my job, I just lost everything," she said.
Sometimes rules in a single program collide with themselves. Such was the case with Jewell French-Allen, who got tangled in an obscure provision of Massachusetts unemployment law. With a high-risk pregnancy at age 35, Ms. French-Allen left a $40,000 a year job and applied for jobless benefits. But the state denied the request, ruling that she had quit by choice. She then took a sales job at much lower pay, and was laid off.
Had she never held the first job, Ms. French-Allen could have gotten unemployment benefits. But because her earlier request had been denied, the state added a test - and disqualified her because the weekly pay from the second job was less than the benefits she would have gotten from the first.
Two days after she was rejected again, she went into labor and delivered a boy who weighed less than two pounds.
"I am bitter - if I had gotten unemployment, he wouldn't have been born prematurely," she said. "When you can't support yourself financially, it puts incredible stress on your body."
Unemployment coverage tends to be high where jobs pay well and unions are strong. (Leaders include New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.) Subsidized housing is more plentiful in places that had comparatively large populations decades ago, when money to underwrite new apartments peaked. (It is sparse in Arizona and Florida.)
Since states bear the costs of welfare expansions, most poor states trim the rolls. (Louisiana covers about one of every 20 poor families with children.) But the federal government pays for food stamps, and poor states often grab the aid. (Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana have higher enrollment rates than New York.)
Many states defy easy depiction. While Nevada keeps most programs small, unemployment insurance is an exception, perhaps reflecting union influence in Las Vegas. Despite its modest safety net, Mississippi ranks second in subsidized housing, partly a legacy of the Jim Crow age when Southern states used it to preserve segregation.
Along with differences in program enrollment, the size of benefits differs greatly, too - adding another level of variation. Mississippi pays a weekly average of $190 in unemployment benefits, while Hawaii pays $416.
While some programs are limited on purpose, some take shape by accident. Colorado invested $200 million in a computer system and got a case study in high-tech failure. Within months of the system's start in 2004, the backlog of food stamp and Medicaid cases tripled to 18,000. The state spent three years under court order to reduce delays, but significant backlogs remain.
A bureaucratic bungle compounded the woes of Ms. Johnson, who lost her job as a librarian at Magnolia Bible College in Kosciusko, Miss. Religious schools are exempt from unemployment taxes, so Ms. Johnson, 60, faced the recession without jobless benefits.
She applied for food stamps and was denied because she had more than $3,000 in an Individual Retirement Account, though officials said she would qualify if the savings were in a 401(k).
Finding the distinction illogical, Ms. Johnson searched the Internet and learned that Congress had just changed the law. As of October 2008, savings in either kind of retirement account are no barrier to food stamps.
But state and county officials held firm, and a federal official sent an e-mail message supporting their outdated view. With the help of an advocacy group, the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, she finally traced the problem to an errant Web page at the Department of Agriculture.
"To get maybe $320 of food stamps took an entire month of work," she said.
Occasionally, people have the opposite fortune: getting benefits they should be denied. That is what happened to Tracey Walker, 43, who was laid off last fall after seven years on the night shift at a Baltimore cosmetics factory and lost her health insurance.
With high blood pressure and headaches, Ms. Walker tried to get Medicaid, but was told her jobless benefits were too high. "I just sat there and cried," she said.
She was ineligible for food stamps, too, but the caseworker prayed, bent the rules and authorized $180 a month - freeing up just enough cash for blood pressure pills. "It made me cry even more," Ms. Walker said.
There are few growth industries in Baltimore, but Ms. Walker found one: a nonprofit group that helps the needy apply for Medicaid. She started work there last month as an enrollment specialist. Among the benefits she prizes is coverage under the group's health insurance plan.
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5) American Album
Drafted at 19, Opposing Military Recruiters at 61
By TAMAR LEWIN
May 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/education/10veteran.html?ref=us
MIAMI - Every morning before school starts, Miles Woolley, a drafting teacher at Southwest Miami High School, gets a reminder of military life when the Junior R.O.T.C. honor guard marches by his classroom.
"Their marching and parading around in uniforms stirs bad memories in me," he said.
Mr. Woolley, 61, is a Vietnam veteran whose service left him with a bullet in his head, a mostly useless left hand and a dragging left foot. He was drafted at age 19, not much older than his students are now, and transformed from a small-town newlywed into a fast-shooting reconnaissance soldier.
The prospect that his students might follow that path haunts him.
Southwest Miami High is a sprawling but orderly place that offers a wide range of classes, including cosmetology, auto shop and Advanced Placement calculus, to 2,800 students, most of whom are Hispanic and from low-income families.
Like many such high schools, it is also a focus for military recruiting. Hundreds of students take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or Asvab, test each year. More than 100 are enrolled in the Army J.R.O.T.C., drilling, marching and using dummy guns. And every Tuesday and Wednesday, recruiters from the Army, Navy and Marines set up tables in the lobby outside the cafeteria, handing out water bottles, key chains and stickers and talking up the benefits of a military career.
"There's a lot of student interest," said Sgt. Juan Montoya, an Army recruiter who visits the school and calls students' homes. "The big obstacle is the parents, who think we're going to send their kids off into combat."
Mr. Woolley avoids the lobby.
"I don't go there if I can help it," Mr. Woolley said. "I don't want to see it."
In his three decades of teaching in Miami, Mr. Woolley's way of handling his wartime memories has evolved.
At first, he said, he rarely talked about the war. "When I got back from Vietnam, I couldn't imagine myself being civilized ever again," he said.
In the 1980s, when Americans were held hostage in Iran, he was hospitalized with post-traumatic stress disorder. "The hostages, the yellow ribbons, that all hit me hard," he said.
In the 1990s, he wrote about his Vietnam experiences, sending copies of his memoir to family and friends. "It was cathartic," he said.
Mr. Woolley later became an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, posting thoughts on a libertarian Web site, LewRockwell .com, and, closer to home, trying to get the military out of his school.
"I love my school and my students, and in a way they've become my children, so the intensity of recruitment struck me as wrong," Mr. Woolley said. "I recognize the need for a national defense, but high school students are too young and unformed to really question what they're being told, and it feels to me like exploitation."
In his classroom, where students independently worked on their long-term drafting assignment, Mr. Woolley, a tall man with a white beard and a warm manner, was a gentle presence, patiently offering guidance when a student ran into trouble adjusting a tracking machine or centering a line.
Mr. Woolley does not discuss the military, unless students ask.
"I can't tell them what to do," he said. "I can tell them what happened to me. And answer questions. Honestly."
Even that has been a struggle for him.
"Sometimes students ask about what happened to me, and I tell them as much as I think they can stand to hear," he said. "Some come talk to me after they've already been recruited and signed their papers. I don't want them to think that this is a mass murderer who's been in the classroom with them. But I do want them to know that we weren't peacemakers, we weren't freeing anybody. Those bombs and guns do one thing. They kill."
Mr. Woolley did his share of killing, he said, as part of a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol unit that went into enemy territory to gather intelligence. He has vivid memories of a firefight in which he and his unit shot not only enemy soldiers, but three women, two children and a boy about 6 months old - the same age as his own son back home.
Mr. Woolley estimates that he was shot at about 100 times without being hit. But on Aug. 13, 1969, he was ambushed on a nighttime operation, took a bullet in the head and was airlifted out, paralyzed on the left side of his body. In months of rehabilitation, he regained the ability to walk and some use of his left hand. After trying the construction business and earning a degree in civil engineering, Mr. Woolley moved to Florida and began teaching. His marriage broke up after his third child was born. Remarried now, he and his wife are raising two of their seven grandchildren.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, passed two years before the war in Iraq began, military recruiters are given access to high school students on the same basis as college recruiters. In many parts of the country, with varying success, opponents of the war organized a counter-recruitment movement to try to limit both recruiters' access to students and the use of the Asvab. The test is widespread in Texas and Florida, like J.R.O.T.C.
When the Iraq war started, Mr. Woolley began researching the law on how the school was required to help the military, and discovered that schools have a good deal of wiggle room. He worked with a journalism student at his school on a lengthy analysis of those requirements - only to be bitterly disappointed when the article in the school newspaper last spring was cut short.
Mr. Woolley talked with the principal, James Haj, about how Southwest could, lawfully, limit the military presence. He told the principal that, for example, recruiters could be kept to rare visits and confined to an out-of-the-way room. And if the school wanted to keep offering the Asvab for career counseling, it could block recruiters from accessing the results, a change Southwest adopted last year.
The young principal and the older veteran express great mutual respect, but where Mr. Woolley wants the military presence erased, Mr. Haj is striving for a middle ground.
"It's a delicate issue," Mr. Haj said. "I think all voices should be heard."
So he lets recruiters come every week but keeps them in the lobby. "Some schools let recruiters wander the halls, but I want to be able to keep my eyes on them," Mr. Haj said. "I know Mr. Woolley doesn't like J.R.O.T.C., but I've never had a single parent complaint."
Mr. Woolley, who grew up in a small town near Buffalo, said he was content with his life and happy to be a good husband and grandfather, but was still troubled by his military actions.
"I did a very good job for the military, but it's torn me up for my whole life," he said. "I was a good guy when I was drafted, a good guy from a good family. I wonder a lot, how did that good guy turn into something else?"
With J.R.O.T.C. and the drafting classroom both housed in the same wing of the school, Mr. Woolley often sees the cadets in their uniforms.
"I am repulsed by what the uniforms represent," he said. "At the same time, if a kid walks past me with his or her shirt not tucked in, or the belt not properly buckled, I stop them and tell them, 'If you want to play this game, you have to play it by the rules. In the military, the uniform isn't worn like this, and you know it.' I want them to know it is not a joke."
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6) Provision to Ease Unionization Likely to Drop Out of Bill
By KRIS MAHER
Wall Street Journal
5/7/09
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165589943894201.html
Senators are working on a compromise version of a labor-organizing bill that will likely drop a contentious card-signing provision in favor of a speedier union election process, according to people familiar with the talks.
The proposed compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act also seeks greater use of mediation and would restrict the authority of arbitrators to impose contracts. The bill in its original form would make it easier for unions to organize workers by getting them to sign cards and would force companies to enter contracts.
Efforts to reach agreement on the bill are gaining momentum now that Democrats are on the verge of having 60 Senate votes. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who supports overhauling labor law, switched parties last week. In March, Mr. Specter said he wouldn't support the Employee Free Choice Act, but laid out a number of principles for revising labor laws "to expand labor's clout in collective bargaining."
Compromise talks are being led by Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), the bill's lead sponsor in the Senate. Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for Mr. Harkin, declined to comment on details of the compromise being discussed. But she said the senator "remains confident that we can address these issues without compromising the core provisions of the bill."
Among the changes being discussed are dropping the card-signing provision and setting a 21-day deadline for an election to be held -- about the half the median of 40 days that union elections currently take, according to people familiar with the talks. An aide for Mr. Specter said the senator is "generally supportive" of the idea that an election must be held within 21 days if the employer wants a secret ballot.
Another compromise relates to contract negotiations. The bill currently calls for arbitrators to set contracts if an employer and a new union fail to agree within 120 days. Under a compromise, mediators -- rather than arbitrators -- would play a bigger role in helping the sides negotiate a contract. Arbitrators could still be used to rule on certain contract provisions after both sides failed to agree.
"The issue of government arbitrators telling an employer how to run their business is not something the employer community is going to accept," said Michael Eastman, executive director of labor policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Bill Samuel, director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO, says the labor federation wants any final bill to include some form of arbitration to ensure that new unions eventually get a contract. "Without arbitration being triggered at some point, this bill won't work to address the endless delays in bargaining that employers use to avoid reaching a settlement," he said.
-Melanie Trottman contributed to this article.
Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com
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7) Leaving the Trailers
Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing
[This story exposes the bare bones of the stone-cold heartlessness of this rotten system of profits over people...bw]
By SHAILA DEWAN
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08trailer.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS - Earnest Hammond, a retired truck driver, did not get any of the money that went to aid property owners after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
He failed to qualify for one federal program and was told he missed the deadline on another. But he did get a trailer to live in while he carries out his own recovery plan: collecting cans in a pushcart to pay for the renovations to his storm-damaged apartment, storing them by the roomful in the gutted building he owns.
It is a slow yet steady process. Before the price of aluminum fell to 30 cents a pound, from 85 cents, he had accumulated more than $10,000, he said, almost enough to pay the electrician. But despite such progress, last Friday a worker from the Federal Emergency Management Agency delivered a letter informing him that it would soon repossess the trailer that is, for now, his only home.
"I need the trailer," said Mr. Hammond, 70. "I ain't got nowhere to go if they take the trailer."
Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May. The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another.
Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned "Katrina cottages" has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings.
Nonetheless, FEMA wants its trailers back, even though it plans to scrap or sell them for a fraction of what it paid for them.
"All I can say is that this is a temporary program, it was always intended as a temporary program, and at a certain point all temporary programs must end," said Brent Colburn, the agency's director of external affairs. He said there would be no extensions.
As of last week, there were two groups still in the agency's temporary housing program: more than 3,000 in trailers and nearly 80 who have been in hotels paid for by FEMA since last May, when it shut down group trailer sites. Most are elderly, disabled or both, including double amputees, diabetes patients, the mentally ill, people prone to seizures and others dependent on oxygen tanks.
Of those in trailers, more than 2,000 are homeowners who fear that the progress they are making in rebuilding will come to a halt if their trailers are taken.
"They had helped me out up until this point, and I couldn't believe that they suddenly decided, no, we're not going to let you finish the house, we're just going to take the trailer, and you can sit here on an empty lot," said Philipp Seelig, 70, a retired handyman. He said he was about two months from being able to move back into his duplex in the Broadmoor neighborhood. A grant to elevate his house to the required height did not come until December.
Progress on renovations has been slow for many reasons: contractors who did shoddy work or simply absconded with money, baffling red tape and rule changes, and inadequate grants. The opening of new rental units began to accelerate this year, but many projects have been stymied by the recession.
FEMA says it has done everything it can to help those in temporary housing. But, as is so often the case when it comes to Katrina issues, the agency's clients give a different account. Agency officials insist, for example, that they have been working "extensively" to help families in trailers and hotels find permanent solutions.
"A lot of people are involved in the process of making sure that no one falls through the cracks," said Manuel Broussard, an agency spokesman in Louisiana. "Everyone's been offered housing up to this point several times. And for various reasons, they have not accepted it."
But the dozen temporary housing occupants interviewed for this story said they had received little if any attention from FEMA workers and were lucky to get a list of landlords, much less an offer of permanent housing.
In Baton Rouge, Troy Porter, 47, had been staying in virtual isolation at a $100-a-night Courtyard Inn by Marriott since last June. There, his normally manageable depression deepened until, he said, he would go for weeks without leaving his room.
"The only time I've seen FEMA workers was in the last couple of weeks, where they come and give you the paper saying this month is your last month," Mr. Porter said. "They handed you the paper, and they turned around and walked off."
Mr. Porter perked up last week when he was visited by Sister Judith Brun, who has been working with Katrina evacuees. In her view, the type of case management endorsed by FEMA - which primarily involves handing someone a list of phone numbers for other overtaxed agencies and, according to numerous Katrina victims, declining to return phone calls - lacks the type of personal engagement that someone like Mr. Porter needs to become self-sufficient.
"Because nobody comes in at a personal level to help him recover," Sister Judith said, "it costs us tons of money."
Last year, the Louisiana Recovery Authority was supposed to unveil a more intensive caseworker system for people in temporary housing, but it never materialized. The authority has now asked homeless service organizations like Unity of Greater New Orleans and the Capital Area Alliance for the Homeless in Baton Rouge to help find stable housing for the hotel occupants.
FEMA officials also say that residents can buy their trailers, sometimes for as little as $300. But virtually all of the residents interviewed said they had offered to do so and been told they could not.
Residents said FEMA workers had started visiting them in the past two months, advising them not to move out and saying extensions would be available to those who showed hardship or progress in rebuilding. But agency officials said that was not the case.
Jane Batty, Mr. Seelig's longtime tenant, who has her own trailer next to his, was not surprised. "There is only one way to categorize this kind of behavior: it's crazy making," she said. "They've always had a different answer or had a different ploy to get us out of trailers that we had already agreed to buy."
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8) Harry, Louise and Barack
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/opinion/11krugman.html
Is this the end for Harry and Louise?
Harry and Louise were the fictional couple who appeared in advertisements run by the insurance industry in 1993, fretting about what would happen if "government bureaucrats" started making health care decisions. The ads helped kill the Clinton health care plan, and have stood, ever since, as a symbol of the ability of powerful special interests to block health care reform.
But on Saturday, excited administration officials called me to say that this time the medical-industrial complex (their term, not mine) is offering to be helpful.
Six major industry players - including America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a descendant of the lobbying group that spawned Harry and Louise - have sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs. What's more, the letter implicitly endorses much of what administration officials have been saying about health economics.
Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet - and I'll get to that in a bit. But first things first: on the face of it, this is tremendously good news.
The signatories of the letter say that they're developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it's actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.
How are costs to be contained? There are few details, but the industry has clearly been reading Peter Orszag, the budget director.
In his previous job, as the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Orszag argued that America spends far too much on some types of health care with little or no medical benefit, even as it spends too little on other types of care, like prevention and treatment of chronic conditions. Putting these together, he concluded that "substantial opportunities exist to reduce costs without harming health over all."
Sure enough, the health industry letter talks of "reducing over-use and under-use of health care by aligning quality and efficiency incentives." It also picks up a related favorite Orszag theme, calling for "adherence to evidence-based best practices and therapies." All in all, it's just what the doctor, er, budget director ordered.
Before we start celebrating, however, we have to ask the obvious question. Is this gift a Trojan horse? After all, several of the organizations that sent that letter have in the past been major villains when it comes to health care policy.
I've already mentioned AHIP. There's also the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the lobbying group that helped push through the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 - a bill that both prevented Medicare from bargaining over drug prices and locked in huge overpayments to private insurers. Indeed, one of the new letter's signatories is former Representative Billy Tauzin, who shepherded that bill through Congress then immediately left public office to become PhRMA's lavishly paid president.
The point is that there's every reason to be cynical about these players' motives. Remember that what the rest of us call health care costs, they call income.
What's presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)
I would strongly urge the Obama administration to hang tough in the bargaining ahead. In particular, AHIP will surely try to use the good will created by its stance on cost control to kill an important part of health reform: giving Americans the choice of buying into a public insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers. The administration should not give in on this point.
But let me not be too negative. The fact that the medical-industrial complex is trying to shape health care reform rather than block it is a tremendously good omen. It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens.
And serious cost control would change everything, not just for health care, but for America's fiscal future. As Mr. Orszag has emphasized, rising health care costs are the main reason long-run budget projections look so grim. Slow the rate at which those costs rise, and the future will look far brighter.
I still won't count my health care chickens until they're hatched. But this is some of the best policy news I've heard in a long time.
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9) U.S. Soldier Shoots 5 of His Comrades to Death in Iraq
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
May 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD - The United States military said Monday that five American soldiers had been shot to death by a fellow soldier who opened fire on them at one of the biggest American bases in Baghdad, and that the suspected shooter was in custody.
The killings appeared to be the worst case of soldier-on-soldier violence among the American forces based in Iraq since the invasion more than six years ago.
The shooting occurred at around 2 p.m. local time at Camp Liberty, part of the sprawling Camp Victory complex near Baghdad, according to a military statement. The names of the dead soldiers were being withheld pending family notification, the statement said.
"Anytime we lose one of our own, it affects us all," Col. John Robinson, a spokesman for the American military in Iraq, said in the statement.
The attack took place at a clinic for soldiers who are seeking help for stress. CNN, citing identified officials, said that at least three others were wounded in the attack.
President Obama "was shocked by the news of this incident," the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Monday.
"He's saddened to hear the news from Camp Victory," Mr. Gibbs told reporters at the White House. "His heart goes out to all the families."
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called the shooting "a great and urgent concern" at a news conference on Monday afternoon.
The killing of American troops by their fellow soldiers is infrequent, but not unheard of. The latest incident in Iraq occurred in September, when an American soldier was arrested following the shooting deaths of two American soldiers at their patrol base near Iskandariya.
All three soldiers were assigned to the Third Battalion, Seventh Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga.
In November 2006, Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez, serving with the New York National Guard, was arraigned in a military court on charges of murdering two officers in an explosion at one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces in Tikrit in June 2005.
And in April 2005, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, of the 101st Airborne Division, was sentenced to death for a grenade attack on his comrades in March 2003 in Kuwait, at the beginning of the war.
Sergeant Akbar was convicted of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder after he threw grenades into tents and then fired on soldiers, killing two officers and wounding 14 at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait.
About one in six soldiers returning from the war in Iraq shows signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or other emotional difficulties, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2004.
The death toll from the Monday shooting was the highest for American personnel in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck driver killed five American soldiers with a blast near a police headquarters in Mosul, news agencies reported.
Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq, but a rash of major bombings by insurgents has raised questions about security less than two months before American forces are due to withdraw combat troops from urban bases.
This month, two American soldiers were killed by a man wearing an Iraqi Army uniform at an Iraqi military training center south of Mosul.
In April, 18 American military personnel members were killed in Iraq - double the number in March and the highest since September 2008, when 25 were killed.
Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker from Washington, and Sharon Otterman from New York.
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10) U.S. Adviser Holds Firm on Airstrikes in Afghanistan
By BRIAN KNOWLTON and JUDY DEMPSEY
May 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11karzai.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - President Obama's top national security adviser said on Sunday that the United States would likely continue conducting airstrikes against extremists in Afghanistan despite a sharp warning from President Hamid Karzai that civilian casualties were fast turning ordinary Afghans against the United States.
In a pre-taped interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Mr. Karzai suggested that the United States risked losing a "moral" fight against the Taliban if too many civilians died in American attacks. But Mr. Karzai has also come under pressure from the United States for what advisers call inadequate efforts to fight corruption, and received a similar warning on Sunday by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
The security adviser, General James L. Jones, spoke six days after Afghans blamed United States airstrikes in western Afghanistan for the deaths of scores of civilians. American officials apologized for the deaths and said that they are investigating the incident. Still they say that reports of a death toll exceeding 100 were exaggerated and that Taliban militants who were being targeted might have forced civilians to serve as "human shields."
"We're going to take a look at trying to make sure we correct those things we can correct, but certainly to tie the hands of our commanders and say we're not going to conduct airstrikes would be imprudent," General Jones said on ABC's "This Week."
"We can't fight with one hand tied behind our back," he said, without flatly ruling out the possibility of a change in approach.
Last week, Mr. Karzai and the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, held a three-way meeting with Mr. Obama at the White House while the Pakistani military launched an intense offensive against surging Taliban extremists in the northwest part of that country.
General David H. Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command, said on Sunday that the United States had real concerns about Pakistan's survival. But he also said he believed there was "adequate" security around Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"Certainly the next few weeks will be very important in this effort to roll back, if you will, this existential threat, a true threat to Pakistan's very existence," he said.
The general welcomed the latest Pakistani offensive as qualitatively different from previous efforts to contain militants. The Taliban's push toward Islamabad, he told "Fox News Sunday," "seems to have galvanized all of Pakistan, not just the president and prime minister."
General Petraeus said he was also heartened that Pakistan had shifted some forces from the east, where they face India, to the northwest, as United States officials had urged.
He also said he had named a brigadier general to study the use of airstrikes in Afghanistan.
In a lengthy meeting in Berlin, Mrs. Merkel warned Mr. Karzai to crack down on corruption and improve security in northern Afghanistan, where more than 3,800 German soldiers are based.
"The Karzai government needed to act more decisively against corruption," said Eckhart von Klaeden, foreign policy spokesman for Mrs. Merkel's conservative bloc.
The Merkel government fears that the Taliban might increasingly target German soldiers, as German federal elections in September near, to pressure Berlin to withdraw all its troops. Polls show most Germans would support a withdrawal, though they also support Mr. Obama, who is increasing the United States effort in Afghanistan.
In 2002, the Social Democrat chancellor Gerhard Schroder was narrowly re-elected after running a strong anti-war and anti-U.S. campaign. That led to a serious rift with the United States that took years to heal.
Despite her concerns, Mrs. Merkel told reporters that Germany would continue its military engagement in Afghanistan and would put more effort into training Afghan police.
In his pretaped interview, Mr. Karzai said: "Our villages are not where the terrorists are. And that's what we kept telling the U.S. administration.
"Civilian casualties are undermining support in the Afghan people for the war on terrorism and for the relations with America. How can you expect a people who keep losing their children to remain friendly?"
"The people are still with us," Mr. Karzai added. "But there is a limit."
General Jones suggested, however, that the Afghan president knew that airstrikes were unlikely to end.
"I think he understands we have to have a full complement of our offensive military power when we need it," the general said.
Brian Knowlton reported from Washington and Judy Dempsey from Berlin.
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11) Appeals court denies Kevin Cooper request
Will Bigham, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/11/2009 06:57:04 PM PDT
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12346857
Download: Request denial publication at:
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12346857
Kevin Cooper was dealt a setback Monday in his decades-long effort to appeal his conviction and death sentence for a brutal attack in 1983 that killed four people in Chino Hills.
A federal appeals court on Monday denied Cooper's request for a full panel of judges to reconsider an appellate issue in his case.
Cooper now has 90 days to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Ronald Matthias, senior assistant attorney general.
Cooper has been on death row since 1985, when a jury recommended that he be put to death for the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and 11-year-old house guest Christopher Hughes.
They were attacked at night inside the Ryens' home in Chino Hills. Cooper had escaped two days earlier from the California Institution for Men in Chino.
The 9th Circuit Court stayed Cooper's execution in 2004 on the day it was set to be carried out, and ordered a lower court to review evidence in his case. Following the lower court's review, a federal judge upheld the death sentence for Cooper.
Cooper appealed the judge's ruling, and his appeal was rejected in 2007 by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit court.
Cooper subsequently asked the court to reconsider its ruling with an 11-judge panel. It's that petition that was denied Monday by the court.
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12) Plugging Holes in the Science of Forensics
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
May 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/12fore.html?ref=us
It was time, the panel of experts said, to put more science in forensic science.
A report in February by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences found “serious problems” with much of the work performed by crime laboratories in the United States. Recent incidents of faulty evidence analysis — including the case of an Oregon lawyer who was arrested by the F.B.I. after the 2004 Madrid terrorist bombings based on fingerprint identification that turned out to be wrong — were just high-profile examples of wider deficiencies, the committee said. Crime labs were overworked, there were few certification programs for investigators and technicians, and the entire field suffered from a lack of oversight.
But perhaps the most damning conclusion was that many forensic disciplines — including analysis of fingerprints, bite marks and the striations and indentations left by a pry bar or a gun’s firing mechanism — were not grounded in the kind of rigorous, peer-reviewed research that is the hallmark of classic science. DNA analysis was an exception, the report noted, in that it had been studied extensively. But many other investigative tests, the report said, “have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny.”
While some forensic experts took issue with that conclusion, many welcomed it. And some scientists are working on just the kind of research necessary to improve the field. They are refining software and studying human decision-making to improve an important aspect of much forensic science — the ability to recognize and compare patterns.
The report was “basically saying what many of us have been saying for a long time,” said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the department of sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “There are a lot of areas in forensics that need improvement.”
Barry Fisher, a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a former director of the crime laboratory at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said he and others had been pushing for this kind of independent assessment for years. “There needs to be a demonstration that this stuff is reliable,” he said.
It’s not that there hasn’t been any research in forensic science. But over the years much of it has been done in crime labs themselves. “It hasn’t gotten to the level where they can state findings in a rigorous scientific way,” said Constantine Gatsonis, director of the Center for Statistical Sciences at Brown University and co-chairman of the National Academy of Sciences committee. And rather than being teased out in academic papers and debated at scientific conferences, “a lot of this forensic stuff is being argued in the courtroom,” Mr. Fisher said. “That’s not the place to validate any kind of scientific information.”
Much forensic research has been geared to improving technologies and techniques. These studies can result in the kinds of gee-whiz advances that may show up in the next episode of the “C.S.I.” series — a technique to obtain fingerprints from a grocery bag or other unlikely source, for example, or equipment that enables analyses of the tiniest bits of evidence.
This kind of work is useful, Dr. Kobilinsky said, “but it doesn’t solve the basic problem.”
DNA analysis came out of the biological sciences, and much money and time has been spent developing the field, resulting in a large body of peer-reviewed research. So when a DNA expert testifies in court that there is a certain probability that a sample comes from a suspect, that claim is grounded in science.
As evidence to be analyzed, DNA has certain advantages. “DNA has a particular structure, and can be digitized,” Dr. Gatsonis said. So scientists can agree, for example, on how many loci on a DNA strand to use in their analyses, and computers can do the necessary computations of probability.
“Fingerprints are a lot more complicated,” Dr. Gatsonis said. “There are a lot of different ways you can select features and make comparisons.” A smudged print may have only a few ridge endings or other points for comparison, while a clear print may have many more. And other factors can affect prints, including the material they were found on and the pressure of the fingers in making them.
Sargur N. Srihari, an expert in pattern recognition at the University at Buffalo, part of the New York state university system, is trying to quantify the uncertainty. His group did much of the research that led to postal systems that can recognize handwritten addresses on envelopes, and he works with databases of fingerprints to derive probabilities of random correspondence between two prints.
Most features on a print are usually represented by X and Y coordinates and by an angle that represents the orientation of the particular ridge where the feature is located. A single print can have 40 or more comparable features.
Dr. Srihari uses relatively small databases, including an extreme one that contains fingerprints from dozens of identical twins (so the probability of matches is high), and employs the results to further refine mathematical tools for comparison that would work with larger populations.
“These numbers are not easy to come by at this point,” he said. The goal is not individualization — matching two prints with absolute certainty — but coming up with firm probabilities that would be very useful in legal proceedings.
Other researchers are compiling databases of their own. Nicholas D. K. Petraco, an assistant professor at John Jay College, is studying microscopic tool marks of the kind made by a screwdriver when a burglar jimmies a window. It has been hypothesized that no two screwdrivers leave exactly the same pattern of marks, although that has never been proved. So Dr. Petraco is systematically making marks in jeweler’s wax and other materials, creating images of them under a stereo microscope and quantifying the details, assembling a database that can eventually be mined to determine probabilities that a mark matches a certain tool.
Dr. Petraco, a chemist with a strong background in computer science, looks to industry for ideas about pattern recognition — the tools that a company like Netflix uses, for example, to classify people by the kinds of movies they like. “A lot of computational machinery goes into making those kinds of decisions,” he said.
He figures that if something works for industry, it will work for forensic science. “You don’t want to invent anything new,” he said, because that raises legal issues of admissibility of evidence.
The work takes time, but the good news is that the data stays around forever. So as software improves, the probabilities should get more accurate. “Algorithms and data comparison evolve over time,” Dr. Petraco said.
But it may not be possible to develop useful databases in some disciplines — bite mark analysis, for example. “Using a screwdriver, that’s very straightforward and simple,” said Ira Titunik, a forensic odontologist and adjunct professor at John Jay College. But bites involve numerous teeth, and there are other factors, including condition of the skin, that may make it difficult to quantify them for purposes of determining probabilities.
A few researchers are looking at how errors creep into forensic analysis. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently established a working group on fingerprints, with statisticians, psychologists and others, “to try to understand the circumstances that lead to human error,” said Mark Stolorow, director of the Office of Law Enforcement Standards at the institute.
In Britain, Itiel Dror, a psychologist who studies decision-making processes, is already looking at human factors. “I like to say the mind is not a camera, objectively and passively recording information,” said Dr. Dror, who has a consulting firm and is affiliated with University College London. “The brain is an active and dynamic device.”
He has conducted studies that show that when working on an identification, fingerprint examiners can be influenced by what else they know about a case. In one experiment, he found that the same examiner can come to different conclusions about the same fingerprint, if the context is changed over time.
The same kinds of contextual biases arise with other decision-makers, said Dr. Dror, who works with the military and with financial and medical professionals. He thinks one reason forensic examiners often do not acknowledge that they make errors is that in these other fields, the mistakes are obvious. “In forensics, they don’t really see it,” he said. “People go to jail.”
Forensics experts say the need for research like Dr. Dror’s and Dr. Srihari’s does not mean that disciplines like fingerprint analysis will turn out to be invalid. “I have no doubt that fingerprint evidence and firearms evidence, once looked into by the appropriate research entities, are going to be shown to be very reliable and good,” said Mr. Fisher, the former American Academy of Forensic Sciences president.
Dr. Kobilinsky said people should not jump to the conclusion that forensic science is bad science. “There’s a lot of experience and knowledge that goes into somebody’s expertise,” he said.
“It’s not junk science. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be improved.”
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