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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
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An Afghan Christmas A Visit From St. Barack
By Dave Lindorff
http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff12242009.html
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land
Not a creature was stirring in Afghanistan.
The bedrooms were bunkered with piles of hard stones
To protect from attacks by the Predator drones.
The children were huddled, afraid, in their beds
While visions of night raiders danced in their heads.
Mama doffed her hijab and I doffed my hat
And we both settled down for a rest and a chat
When out in the yard their arose such a clatter,
I sprang to the door to see what was the matter.
Away to the entrance I ran cross the floor,
Pulled on the handle and opened the door.
The moon hadn t risen but up in the air
A chopper was shining a light. Such a glare!
And what to my wondering eyes did appear
But a whole gang of men, armed and dressed in black gear.
With a tall skinny guy who was wearing a pistol,
I knew in a flash: it was General McChrystal.
More rapid than eagles his raiders they rushed
And they grabbed me and trussed me and kicked, hit and pushed.
_Frisk him! Blindfold him! Remove him! Get going!
And tear up his household! See what he s not showing!
They frightened my wife and my kids just for kicks,
And slaughtered my goats and a half dozen chicks.
Then away they transported me up in the air
To a far-off location and I still know not where.
They duct-taped my eyes and my arms and my feet,
And left me alone in a room with no heat.
That was a Christmas some four years ago,
And I ve been in this hellhole so long I don t know
What my hometown still looks like. I hear it s all rubble,
From air-raids and car bombs and other such trouble.
But yesterday morning I was told by a guard
That I m going home soon and should not take it hard.
It was all a mistake, they just had the wrong chap, and
Since my name is Achmed, well, _These things can happen.
Now I hear that the head of the American nation,
Obama, has ordered an Afghan escalation. He s sending another 34,000 men
To ramp up the effort to _help us ...again.
In the spirit of the season, he said, by the way,
That the first of these new troops will arrive Christmas Day!
This Nobel Peace Prize winner thinks it s just great
To unleash these new killers on that special date.
He and McChrystal both claim this invasion
Is to make us all safer and to build us a nation.
But how can that be when they re raiding our houses,
and bombing our weddings and scaring our spouses?
You attack us with drones that kill innocents daily
Send out death squads to hunt us, and lock us to jail
Leaving families to worry if we re even living,
While you torture us, starve us and then want forgiving
When it turns out, as with me, you got the wrong guy.
And meanwhile our families were left there to die
Because no one s around to earn money for bread.
And you wonder why people want Talibs instead?
You say you have brought us democracy? Right!
If a corrupt drug cartel counts, then maybe you might
Have a point. But I think that Karzai and his kin
Are much closer to gangsters than they are to Abe Lincoln.
Merry Christmas America! Happy New Year!
Enjoy your days off. We re in hell over here.
But I think you will find, as this old year is ending,
That your President s _good war is only beginning.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is _The Case for Impeachment St. Martin s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com
December 24, 2009
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Marc Hall jailed for angry 'Stop-Loss' Hip Hop song
By Courage to Resist. Updated December 16, 2009
Stop-lossed Army Specialist Marc Hall aka Hip Hop artist Marc Watercus) was placed in the Liberty County Jail Friday, December 11 for speaking out against the continuing policy that has barred him from exiting the military, including recording an angry and explicit song. He was shipped off to jail after talking to to his Ft Stewart, Georgia commander Captain Cross about not wanting to redeploy. Call the jail at 912-876-6411 to demand an end to this illegal confinement. Also send letters of protest to: CPT Cross, Commander, B 2-7 INF BN, Fort Stewart GA 31314. Marc is being represented by civilian Washington DC lawyer Jim Klimaski. As of 5:00 pm EST) Monday, December 14, Marc was still in the county jail.
Marc Hall is the self-professed "first Hip Hop President of the World", with the issue of ending the Army's "Stop Loss" program being at the top of his agenda. On a music website, he explains, "I am a political artist. I rap about real issues in life in hopes to recover a solution. Life is based on decisions we make. So we should make decisions that will make us better in the future and fully aware in the present."
Recently Marc recorded an angry song entitled "Stop Loss" in order to artistically express some of his frustrations about his situation.
"Stop Loss" by Marc Hall aka Marc Watercus)
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/800/1/
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Fw: Gaza Freedom March - San Francisco...join in!
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Nancy Mancias
To: Nancy Mancias
Please circulate!
Hey everyone,
Please come out on December 31st to the Golden Gate Bridge at 12noon to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the thousands of compassionate international activists who will travel to Cairo to march against siege in Gaza.
Organizers with the Bay Area Network for a Free Palestine, CODEPINK and others have been organizing a solidarity march across the Golden Gate Bridge. We hope you can join us!
You know the drill if you've participated in any of CODEPINK's Sunday bridge peace walks.
We are expecting company!
Israel backers set S.F. counterprotests
StandWithUs/S.F. Voice for Israel has planned three counterprotests in support of Israel in December. All three events are in San Francisco.
The first will take place Tuesday, Dec. 15, when the Israel supporters will stand in front of the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, site of an AIPAC membership dinner. Pro-Palestinian protesters often stand outside the annual dinner and in the past have harassed attendees entering the hotel, according to S.F. Voice for Israel.
Voice for Israel will demonstrate its support in front of the Union Square hotel from 4 to 6 p.m. The AIPAC event begins at 5 p.m.
The second counterdemonstration is scheduled for 5 p.m. Dec. 27 at Union Square to show support for Israel during a candlelight memorial service for the men, women and children killed in Gaza.
The third counterprotest will take place during a Dec. 31 "Walk for Gaza" across the Golden Gate Bridge. The walk, from 12 to 2 p.m., is connected to the Gaza Freedom March taking place the same day in Egypt, calling for Gaza residents' right to access food, medicine, rebuilding materials and clean water.
For more information, check http://www.standwithus.com/ or e-mail sfvoiceforisrael@yahoo.com.
Support the Gaza Freedom March
December 27th: Candlelight Memorial at Union Square, San Francisco
Gather from 4-6pm to commerate the beginning of Israel's brutal 22 day attack on Gaza a year ago. An Interfaith service will be held. People of all backgrounds and faiths are invited to join in remembering the thousands of men, women and children who were killed and permanently disabled during the assault on Gaza.
December 31st: March across the Golden Gate Bridge to support the Gaza Freedom March from Egypt into Gaza, scheduled for the same day. The Gaza Freedom March will have over 1000 people from 40+ countries hopefully) crossing into Gaza to lift the brutal siege, and to bring preasure on the US and other governments who continue to support Israel in depriving the citizens of Gaza adequate food, medicine, rebuilding materials, and clean water. Meet at 12pm, on the south end parking lot of the Golden Gate Bridge. No large signs, no flags = bridge rules.)
Nancy L. Mancias
CODEPINK Women for Peace
www.codepinkalert.org
PINKTank :: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/
Facebook :: http://www.facebook.com/nancymancias
Twitter :: nancymancias
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NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
The first meeting was held Wednesday, December 9 at 7:00 P.M. It was a broad, democratically run meeting with over 40 people in attendance from many different groups and organizations as well as individuals.
There was an atmosphere of renewed energy and resolve to build as large a demonstration as possible to mark the seventh year of "Shock and Awe" against the people of Iraq. It was especially poignant on the eve of Obama's Orwellian "war is for peace" Nobel speech.
We are encouraging all groups, organizations and individuals to join with us to demand an immediate end of these wars and to demand that the trillions spent on war be used for jobs, housing, healthcare, education for all!
Obama, in his Nobel remarks, points out his intentions to escalate his "wars for peace" wherever the U.S. empire desires to go.
As many pointed out at the first coalition meeting on Wednesday night, the financial, physical and emotional burden for these wars falls on working people across the globe in the broadest war plan ever devised by any empire!
The honeymoon is over! These are Obama's wars and we must organize massively against them.
Please plan on attending the next March 20, 2010 coalition meeting so we can organize broad outreach in our communities and make March 20, 2010 a powerful statement of opposition to the wars and for a world of equality, peace and justice for all.
For more information call: 415-821-6545
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, bauaw.org
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National Call for March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education
By Elly
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirmed#subscribe-blog
California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education -- but layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are attacks taking place throughout the country. A nationwide resistance movement is needed.
We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and communities across the country to massively mobilize for a Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education on March 4, 2010. Education cuts are attacks against all of us, particularly in working-class communities and communities of color.
The politicians and administrators say there is no money for education and social services. They say that "there is no alternative" to the cuts. But if there's money for wars, bank bailouts, and prisons, why is there no money for public education?
We can beat back the cuts if we unite students, workers, and teachers across all sectors of public education - Pre K-12, adult education, community colleges, and state-funded universities. We appeal to the leaders of the trade union movement to support and organize strikes and/or mass actions on March 4. The weight of workers and students united in strikes and mobilizations would shift the balance of forces entirely against the current agenda of cuts and make victory possible.
Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services and will be an inspiration to all those fighting against the wars, for immigrants rights, in defense of jobs, for single-payer health care, and other progressive causes.
Why March 4? On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education. After hours of open collective discussion, the participants voted democratically, as their main decision, to call for a Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. All schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics -- such as strikes, rallies, walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. -- as well as the duration of such actions.
Let's make March 4 an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and the re-segregation of public education.
- The California Coordinating Committee
To endorse this call and to receive more information contact:
march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com
and check out:
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com
Andy Griggs
andyca6@gmail.com
310-704-3217
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U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
FREE PALESTINE!
San Francisco March and Rally
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
11am, Civic Center Plaza
National March on Washington
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
Fri., March 19 Day of Action & Outreach in D.C.
People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.
On Saturday, March 20, 2010, there will be a massive National March & Rally in D.C. A day of action and outreach in Washington, D.C., will take place on Friday, March 19, preceding the Saturday march.
There will be coinciding mass marches on March 20 in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The national actions are initiated by a large number of organizations and prominent individuals. see below)
Click here to become an endorser:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=5940&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&autologin=true&link=endorse-body-1
Click here to make a donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=2302&autologin=true&donate=body-1&JServSessionIdr002=2yzk5fh8x2.app13b
We will march together to say "No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!" We will march together to say "No War Against Iran!" We will march together to say "No War for Empire Anywhere!"
Instead of war, we will demand funds so that every person can have a job, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.
March 20 is the seventh anniversary of the criminal war of aggression launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. One million or more Iraqis have died. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives or been maimed, and continue to suffer a whole host of enduring problems from this terrible war.
This is the time for united action. The slogans on banners may differ, but all those who carry them should be marching shoulder to shoulder.
Killing and dying to avoid the perception of defeat
Bush is gone, but the war and occupation in Iraq still go on. The Pentagon is demanding a widening of the war in Afghanistan. They project an endless war with shifting battlefields. And a "single-payer" war budget that only grows larger and larger each year. We must act.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were predicated on the imperial fantasy that the U.S. could create stable, proxy colonial-type governments in both countries. They were to serve as an extension of "American" power in these strategic and resource-rich regions.
That fantasy has been destroyed. Now U.S. troops are being sent to kill or be killed so that the politicians in uniform "the generals and admirals") and those in three-piece suits "our elected officials") can avoid taking responsibility for a military setback in wars that should have never been started. Their military ambitions are now reduced to avoiding the appearance of defeat.
That is exactly what happened in Vietnam! Avoiding defeat, or the perception of defeat, was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves when they took office in 1969. For this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds of thousands.
All of us can make the difference - progress and change comes from the streets and from the grassroots.
The people went to the polls in 2008, and the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House.
But it should now be obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change - on any front - is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country. These corporate interests work around the clock to frustrate efforts for real change, and they are the guiding hand behind the recent street mobilizations of the ultra-right.
It is up to us to act. If people had waited for politicians to do the right thing, there would have never been a Civil Rights Act, or unions, women's rights, an end to the Vietnam war or any of the profound social achievements and basic rights that people cherish.
It is time to be back in the streets. Organizing centers are being set up in cities and towns throughout the country.
We must raise $50,000 immediately just to get started. Please make your contribution today. We need to reserve buses, which are expensive $1,800 from NYC, $5,000 from Chicago, etc.). We have to print 100,000 leaflets, posters and stickers. There will be other substantial expenses as March 20 draws closer.
Please become an endorser and active supporter of the March 20 National March on Washington.
Please make an urgently needed tax-deductible donation today. We can't do this without your active support.
The initiators of the March 20 National March on Washington preceded by the March 19 Day of Action and Outreach in D.C.) include: the ANSWER Coalition; Muslim American Society Freedom; National Council of Arab Americans; Cynthia McKinney; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective; Ramsey Clark; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK; Deborah Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild; Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the 4th of July"; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Col. Ann Wright ret.); March Forward!; Partnership for Civil Justice; Palestinian American Women Association; Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines; Alliance for Global Justice; Claudia de la Cruz, Pastor, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC; Phil Portluck, Social Justice Ministry, Covenant Baptist Church, D.C.; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas; Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras; Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico; Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos; Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles; Free Palestine Alliance; GABRIELA Network; Justice for Filipino American Veterans; KmB Pro-People Youth; Students Fight Back; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild - LA Chapter; LEF Foundation; National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; Community Futures Collective; Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival; Companeros del Barrio; Barrio Unido for Full and Unconditional Amnesty, Bay Area United Against War.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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The US Social Forum II
" June 22-26, 2010 "
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Another World Is Possible! Another US is Necessary!
http://www.ussf2010.org/
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Christmas in the Holy Land - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9esPiCxLDZk
The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
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Dear all,
Dear all,
go the link below to endorse the BT petition against the death penalty in Iraq.
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Petitions/Petition.html?lists=10&codes=7&s=0abaa878c308c42949c62790df13498f&email=siui_iraqsolidarity@yahoo.co.uk
regards
Tahrir
Maliki's election platform: 900 Iraqi prisoners face summary execution
In the run-up to elections, Maliki proposes executions to bolster his chances
Democracy in the new Iraq equals death and repression
Maliki serves the US occupation: it is the occupation that kills Iraqis
The machine of repression and death in Iraq continues unabated. The Presidential Council of Iraq has reportedly ratified the death sentences of some 900 detainees who languish on death row. Some 17 of them are confirmed to be women.
None of the condemned had a fair trial. The Iraqi judicial system has been deemed corrupt, fundamentally dysfunctional and plagued with sectarianism by responsible international agencies and all major human rights organisations. Hundreds of lawyers have been assassinated since 2003. The Association of Iraqi Lawyers has publicly declared that it cannot reach the detainees.
In a bid to eliminate its political opponents, further terrorise the Iraqi people, ostensibly into submission, and to be casted the "tough leader" the US pretends it is currently seeking for Iraq, Nouri Al-Maliki has pledged to carry out these executions ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled in March of 2010.
Iraq already has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. On a single day in June, 19 people were hanged in Baghdad. Without global action, 900 people will be hanged imminently.
A culture of terror and detention
Terror through mass detention, torture and abuse is one of the trademarks of the US occupation and Maliki. In addition to mass killing, mass forced displacement, the contamination of Iraqi soil, the destruction of all public infrastructure and means of survival, tens of thousands of Iraqis are arbitrarily detained in both official and ghost facilities all over Iraq.
Exact figures of the number, age and gender of detainees are withheld by authorities. Those who want investigations on abuse are either threatened or killed. In June 2009, Harith Al-Obaidi, an MP and critic of human rights abuses, announced in parliament his plan to investigate allegations of corruption, torture and abuse in Iraqi prisons. He was assassinated the following day.
Depending on the source, the number of detainees varies from 44,014 to some 400,000. Tens of thousands of families don't know the fate of a loved one arbitrarily arrested. Even the number of detention facilities is unknown. The ICRC, responsible for monitoring prisoners in time of conflict, has repeatedly complained of being denied access to all "field operation detention facilities" and secret prisons. Amnesty International, the International Federation of Human Rights and even the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, mandated by the Security Council to provide human rights reporting, are denied access to official detention centres by US Command.
The Red Cross has reported that intelligence officers of the US occupation themselves estimate that 70-90 per cent of Iraqi detainees are arrested "by mistake". The majority is taken in sweeping and arbitrary mass arrest campaigns. They are held incommunicado, without charges, without visits from families or access to lawyers, for indefinite periods. The few who are formally accused are charged on the basis of confessions made under torture or the testimonies of dubious informants of the occupation. No tangible evidence is ever provided.
Since 2003, an estimated 2,400 children have been detained by the US, some as young as 10 years old. After denying it for years, the occupation has now acknowledged that a large but unspecified number of women are being held. Many were kidnapped to blackmail their husbands, accused of "terrorism," into surrendering. They often have their infants and children in prison with them. Several women inmates interviewed by UN researchers reported being raped and sexually abused while held in custody. The US bears primary and final responsibility for these conditions.
Maliki's new Iraq: repression
Everyday news outlets report more arrests and new killings by persons wearing official uniforms. The Maliki government praises itself for the recent waves of detention. Since its appointment, all it has succeeded in achieving is more repression of his opponents while the crimes against innocent people had never been investigated and punished.
Under occupation, Iraq has become the second most corrupted country in the world, the trade of prisoners one of the government militias' most lucrative businesses. The police kidnap, hold prisoners in ghost prisons, sell them and blackmail their families for ransom with impunity.
Year after year, alarming reports have been published by leading human rights organisations, inside and outside Iraq, pointing to random arrests, unlawful detentions, summary executions, abuses, rape and torture of prisoners in Iraq, both at the hands of occupation forces and their local armed gangs.
Under false accusations and deceitful propaganda, the absence of law or a functioning judicial system, and with the support of the US for its puppet government, humanity and the rights of the human being are insulted every day in Iraq. Millions of Iraqis are suffering.
An occupation that tries to impose its plans and interests by force and destruction on a people whose rights, interests and identity is to resist it can only result in the perpetuation of genocide - the intended destruction of Iraq and the Iraqi people as a state and nation.
Call for global action
We call on all to work to stop these executions, demand the release of all political prisoners, and impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Iraq.
Every Iraqi deserves protection and justice.
We call on the UN Human Rights Council to appoint a Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in Iraq.
We call on all organisations that defend the first human right - the right to life - to take up with urgency the cause of the 900 prisoners on death row in Iraq.
We call on all lawyers associations to protest the absence of law and due process in Iraq, and to declare the imminent execution of these 900 prisoners unlawful.
900 prisoners killed in Iraq would be 900 insults to the common conscience of humanity.
We call on all to do everything within their means to bring the cases of these 900 prisoners facing death to the public eye, and to demand action by relevant authorities.
The US occupation of Iraq must end. It is that occupation that is the ultimate rope around the neck of Iraq, and the ultimate prison for the Iraqi people.
Hana Al Bayaty, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Ian Douglas, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Dirk Adriaensens, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Please endorse, distribute and take action
For more information contact:
info@brusselstribunal.org
www.brusselstribunal.org
Endnotes
Zaineb Alani
http://www.thewordsthatcomeout.blogspot.com
http://www.tigresssmiles.blogspot.com
"Yesterday I lost a country. / I was in a hurry, / and didn't notice when it fell from me / like a broken branch from a forgetful tree. / Please, if anyone passes by / and stumbles across it, / perhaps in a suitcase / open to the sky, / or engraved on a rock / like a gaping wound, / ... / If anyone stumbles across it, / return it to me please. / Please return it, sir. / Please return it, madam. / It is my country . . . / I was in a hurry / when I lost it yesterday." -Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi poet
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----- Forwarded Message ----
From: MOOS-Bay
To: Counter Recruitment Events
Subject: [events] Youth Mini Grants, Online Petition, Discount CR Brochures
CR Brochures Available for Cut Rates!
Full Picture recently purchased a large quantity of the brochure, "What Every Girl Should Know About the U.S. Military," which was produced jointly by the War Resisters League and the Women of Color Resource Center. A copy of the brochure can be seen online at http://coloredgirls.live.radicaldesigns.org/downloads/What%20Every%20Girl%20Should%20Know.pdf.
Our network of counter-recruiting organizations and activists will probably not be able to distribute all of them in the near future. We'd like to see them get out to the youth who need them, and -- if necessary -- are willing to sell them at "a loss" to other counter-recruiters who'll be able to reach youth that we cannot. We paid 11.6 cents each, including shipping, which is significantly less than what you'd pay when buying small quantities. If you can make use of some, let us know how many and how much, if anything, you're able to pay. Please remember that we'll have to incur additional costs to ship them to you unless you're able to pick them up at the AFSC office in San Francisco, where we have them stored.
Kevin Casey, Full Picture Core Group, 510) 289-2621 kevinkevin-c-is@sbcglobal.net
Support Oakland Youth: Online Petition--Pass the Word!
The BAY-Peace Youth Manifesto is on it's home stretch to win stronger policies to protect Oakland high school students against aggressive military recruiting. Please help us reach our goal of 2000 signatures to deliver to the Oakland School Board. Sign the Youth Manifesto today and forward this link to your contacts to sign our online petition: http://www.baypeace.org
Mini-Grants for High School Counter Recruitment Projects
If you are part of a high school student group that would like to do a counter recruitment project, you can apply for a grant of up to $500 to help you get your message out about non-military alternatives for youth, aggressive military recruiting in our schools and resisting war.
Bay Area high school students are encouraged to apply. The deadline is the last day of each month, and the funds will be distributed quickly to qualified applicants, so don't wait to apply! For info contact: moos-bay@riseup.net
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Lynne Stewart Update and Letter from Lynne from behind bars
On Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 a status conference was held before Judge Koeltl to discuss the procedures concerning Lynne's re-sentencing.
The conference was held in a larger courtroom to accommodate all the people who came to support Lynne. Lynne was represented by Elizabeth Fink, Joshua Dratel and Jill Shellow. Although the "Mandate" formal Order) hasn't issued yet from the 2nd Circuit, the question raised by the Judge was whether the resentencing should be de novo which means that the Judge would throw out all the reasoning that went in to his previous sentence and start from scratch) or simply a clarification and update of the sentencing he already gave Lynne of 28 months.
The Judge outlined a schedule; the update of the Presentence Report by the U.S. Probation Dept. is due on February 5, 2010, any objections to that report are to be submitted by February 19, 2009 and the defense and government submission addressing the resentencing of Lynne by March 12th. Replies by March 29th. The formal sentencing is now set for April 22 at 4:30 p.m.
This is a time for the Lynne Stewart Defense committee to be alarmed and very concerned for Lynne. Lynne is a 70 year old woman and any additional significant time could mean that she could die in prison. No harm was caused to anyone by her actions. Lynne's life work as cited by the Judge in his previous sentencing stand as a testimony to her good intentions. Notwithstanding the verdict, Lynne Stewart had absolutely no terroristic intentions or political harmony with her client Sheik Rahman.
The judge said that if there are any letters regarding this new sentencing they will only be considered if they submitted by counsel. We know that people are anxious to do something for Lynne and this is one thing you can do and you have the time to write a thoughtful letter that we believe the Judge will read and take into consideration. For now you can send your letters to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee, 350 Broadway, Suite 700, New York, NY 10013. Address the letter to: Honorable John G. Koeltl, United States District Judge, Southern District of New York, 500 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10007 - BUT MAIL TO LSDC not directly to the Judge. We will accumulate the letters for the attorneys who will then submit them to the Judge.
The issue of Lynne's health has been on all our minds. This is the situation to date: She has been receiving her medication. Her blood pressure has been extremely high. Initially the medical department of MCC/NY had suggested cutting Lynne's prescription for high blood pressure medicine in half but since Lynne's blood pressures was so high it is being monitored very closely. The main issue for Lynne right now is that surgery for a bladder problem had already scheduled before the 2nd Circuit decision and her consequent incarceration. Now it appears that she will undergo surgery for this condition which is not life threatening but increasingly uncomfortable for Lynne in the near future at a metropolitan New York hospital.
In the near future we will be working with others to plan a public event, and working in cooperation with others to fight for Lynne Stewart's sentence to remain 28 months. I will be sending out further notices of events and updates on Lynne's situation as news becomes available. Meanwhile you can write to Lynne Stewart, Reg. # 53504-054, MCC/NY, 150 Park Row, New York, NY 10007. Do not send stamps, this mail will be treated as contraband and discarded by the prison. Do not send anything that needs to be signed for. Lynne has been given a subscription to the New York Times and the New Yorker. If you would like to subscribe Lynne to a publication please drop us a line first email info@lynnestewart.org ) just to make sure that you are not duplicating someone else's contribution.
Photos are okay, cards postcards and letters. All mail is opened and read. Commissary can be sent to Lynne via Western Union using the registration number and address either via the internet or at a Western Union location. Thank you for your support for Lynne it means the world to her.
Pat Levasseur, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
***
Letter from Lynne Stewart
Dear Sisters and Brothers, Friends and Supporters:
Well the moment we all hoped would never come is upon us. Good bye to a good cup of coffee in the morning, a soft chair, the hugs of grandchildren and the smaller pleasures in life. I must say I am being treated well and that is due to my lawyer team and your overwhelming support.
While I have received "celebrity" treatment here in MCC - high visibility - conditions for the other women are deplorable. Medical care, food, education, recreation are all at minimal levels. If it weren't for the unqualified bonds of sisterhood and the commissary it would be even more dismal.
My fellow prisoners have supplied me with books and crosswords, a warm it is cold in here most of the time) sweat shirt and pants, treats from the commissary, and of course, jailhouse humor. Most important many of them know of my work and have a deep reservoir of can I say it? Respect.
I continue to both answer the questions put to me by them, I also can't resist commenting on the T.V. news or what is happening on the floor - a little LS politics always! Smile) to open hearts and minds!
Liz Fink, my lawyer leader, believes I will be here at MCC-NY for a while - perhaps a year before being moved to prison. Being is jail is like suddenly inhabiting a parallel universe but at least I have the luxury of time to read! Tomorrow I will get my commissary order which may include an AM/FM Radio and be restored to WBAI and music classical and jazz).
We are campaigning to get the bladder operation scheduled before I came in to MCC) to happen here in New York City. Please be alert to the website I case I need some outside support.
I want to say that the show of support outside the Courthouse on Thursday as I was "transported" is so cherished by me. The broad organizational representation was breathtaking and the love and politics expressed the anger too) will keep me nourished through this.
Organize - Agitate, Agitate, Agitate! And write to me and others locked down by the Evil Empire.
Love Struggle, Lynne Stewart
FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
For further information contact: Jeff Mackler, Coordinator, West Coast Lynne Stewart Defense Committee 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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The trial of Johannes Mehserle, killer of unarmed Oscar Grant, has been moved to Los Angeles.
In the case of an innocent verdict, folks are encouraged to head to Oakland City Hall ASAP to express our outrage in a massive and peaceful way! Our power is in our numbers! Oscar Grant's family and friends need our support!
For more information:
Contact BAMN at 510-502-9072
letters@bamn.com
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With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
Jon Stewart: Obama Is Channeling Bush VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/03/jon-stewart-obama-is-chan_n_378283.html
US anti-war activists protest
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/12/200912283650408132.html
Buffy Sainte Marie - No No Keshagesh
[Keshagesh is the Cree word to describe a greedy puppy that wants to keep eating everything, a metaphor for corporate greed]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmAb1gNN74&feature=player_embedded#
Buffy Sainte-Marie - No No Keshagesh lyrics:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/?i=print_lyrics&id=705368
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The Tar Sands Blow
Hi -
I just signed the Tar Sands Blow petition -- and I hope you'll do the same.
The Canadian tar sands produce the dirtiest oil on earth -- including five times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil. World leaders meet next month in Copenhagen to deal with climate change. Sign the petition -- so that we all don't get a raw deal.
http://ien.thetarsandsblow.org/
The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
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Holiday gifts from Courage to Resist
www.couragetoresist.org/orders
Free and fast 2-3 day priority shipping!*
Please place your order this week to ensure holiday delivery.
Support mom still facing Afghanistan deployment, court martial
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist. November 16, 2009
"I currently don't have a family care plan, but they told me they did not
care and for me to get ready to go to Afghanistan," explained Oakland,
California native Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old soldier based at
Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Georgia.
As I spoke to Alexis on the phone, I believed if I found her a civilian
lawyer to work with the military, a reasonable resolution would be quickly
found. Unlike most service members Courage to Resist assists, Alexis was not
refusing to deploy. She was not looking to speak out against war. She was
simply asking for more time to find someone to care for her 11-month old son
Kamani. Within a few days, however, the Army had tossed Alexis in the
stockade and turned Kamani over to the Chatham County Georgia) foster care
system.
Read more...
http://couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/792/1/
Please make a tax-deductible donation to Alexis' legal and family support
fund.
http://couragetoresist.org/alexis
Details:
Courage to Resist Urgent Action Alert
Army sends infant to protective services, mom to Afghanistan this weekend
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/789/1/
Army has mom, Alexis Hutchinson, arrested and 11-month old son put into county foster care system. Alexis has now been ordered to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, November 15, where she will be court martialed.
Action Alert: Contact Congresswoman Barbara Lee to urge her to "Request that the Army not deploy Alexis Hutchinson to Afghanistan so that she can care for her son." From the 9th District Oakland-Berkeley, CA) phone: 510-763-0370 fax: 510-763-6538). Nationwide: 202- 225-2661 fax: 202-225-9817).
Donate to Alexis' legal and family support fund couragetoresist.org/alexis)
Alexis' attorney now available for media interviews.
By friends of Alexis and Courage to Resist. November 12, 2009
Also in the news:
Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
by Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service. November 13, 2009
Online version with possible updates
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/789/1/
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VIDEO INTERVIEW: Dan Berger on Political Prisoners in the United States
By Angola 3 News
Angola 3 News
37 years ago in Louisiana, 3 young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation called Angola. In 1972 and 1973 prison officials charged Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King with murders they did not commit and threw them into 6x9 ft. cells in solitary confinement, for over 36 years. Robert was freed in 2001, but Herman and Albert remain behind bars.
http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2009/09/video-dan-berger-on-political-prisoners.html
Taking Aim Radio Program with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
The Chimera of Capitalist Recovery, Parts 1 and 2
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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JROTC MUST GO!
The San Francisco Board of Education has re-installed the Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps in San Francisco schools -- including allowing it to count for Physical Education credits.
This is a complete reversal of the 2006 decision to end JROTC altogether in San Francisco public schools. Our children need a good physical education program, not a death education program!
With the economy in crisis; jobs and higher education for youth more unattainable; the lure, lies and false promises of military recruiters is driving more and more of our children into the military trap.
This is an economic draft and the San Francisco Board of Education is helping to snare our children to provide cannon fodder for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and for over 700 U.S. military bases around the world!
We can't depend upon "friendly politicians" who, while they are campaigning for office claim they are against the wars but when they get elected vote in favor of military recruitment--the economic draft--in our schools. We can't depend upon them. That has been proven beyond doubt!
It is up to all of us to come together to stop this NOW!
GET JROTC AND ALL MILITARY RECRUITERS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS NOW!
Write, call, pester and ORGANIZE against the re-institution of JROTC in our San Francisco public schools NOW!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
San Francisco Board of Education
555 Franklin Street, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/241-6427, 415) 241-6493
cascoe@sfusd.edu
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Troy Davis case raising novel legal issues
By Bill Rankin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
5:38 p.m. Friday, December 18, 2009
http://www.ajc.com/news/troy-davis-case-raising-246538.html
2) The Democrats' Health `Reform' Bill: Kill It Before It Comes to Life!
By Dave Lindorff
Wed, 12/16/2009 - 20:31
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/434
3) Happy Holidays from America's Banks
By Michael Winship Senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS
Posted: December 18, 2009 03:27 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-winship/happy-holidays-from-ameri_b_397486.html
4) Taming the Fat Cats
Editorial
December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20sun1.html?hp
5) Negotiating to 60 Votes, Compromise by Compromise
By ROBERT PEAR
December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/health/policy/20care.html?hp
6) Utility Bill Is One More Casualty of Recession
By ERIK ECKHOLM
December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/us/20utility.html?hp
7) Not All Drugs Are the Same After All
By LESLEY ALDERMAN
December 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/health/19patient.html?ref=health
8) Civilians Train in 'Afghan City' in the Midwest
By MARK LANDLER
December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/world/asia/21civilian.html?ref=world
9) U.S. to Make Stopping Nuclear Terror Key Aim
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCMITT
December 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/us/politics/19nuke.html
10) Labor Data Show Surge in Hiring of Temp Workers
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/business/economy/21temps.html?ref=us
11) Credit Derivatives That Distort Markets
By RICHARD BEALES and NEIL UNMACK
Reuters Breakingviews
December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/business/economy/21views.html?ref=business
12) The Fate of California's Forests
By Mark Scaramella
December 21, 2009
http://www.counterpunch.com/scaramella12212009.html
13) Military Doublespeak
by Laurence M. Vance
November 19, 2009
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance188.html
14) Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent
Ian Black, Middle East editor
The Guardian
21 December 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs
15) Productivity Rises as Workers do More with Less
"Employee output per hour rises 8.1% in the third quarter, the largest gain since 2003. But with people working harder in hopes of keeping their jobs, employers have less incentive to hire again."
By Alana Semuels
December 20, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fi-productivity20-2009dec20,0,2644678,full.story
16) US-backed raid killed 49 Yemeni civilians, officials said
Paul Woodward,
Online Correspondent
December 21. 2009 10:04AM UAE / December 21. 2009 6:04AM GMT
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091221/GLOBALBRIEFING/912219995/1009/FOREIGN?template=globalbriefing
17) US forces mounted secret Pakistan raids in hunt for al-Qaida
Former Nato officer reveals secret night operations in border region which America kept quiet
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 December 2009 21.18 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/us-forces-secret-pakistan-raids
18) Ohio Mom Calls Cops on Her Shoplifting 6-Year-Old
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/23/us/AP-US-Young-Shoplifter.html
19) Americans Without Work
Putting Jobs First
NYT Editorial
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/opinion/23wed1.ready.html?hp
20) General Backs Off Court-Martial Threat for Pregnant Soldiers
By JIM DAO
December 22, 2009, 5:24 pm
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/general-backs-off-court-martial-threat-for-pregnant-soldiers/
21) U.S. Put Jails in Lithuania, Premier Says
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/europe/23lithuania.html?ref=world
22) Whites Smoke Pot, but Blacks Are Arrested
By JIM DWYER
About New York
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/nyregion/23about.html?ref=nyregion
23) Heads of Fannie and Freddie Could Earn $6 Million
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/business/25fannie.html?ref=business
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1) Troy Davis case raising novel legal issues
By Bill Rankin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
5:38 p.m. Friday, December 18, 2009
http://www.ajc.com/news/troy-davis-case-raising-246538.html
Condemned inmate Troy Anthony Davis filed the legal equivalent of a Hail Mary when he petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a hearing on his innocence claims.
But in August, for the first time in nearly half a century, the nation's highest court took a case filed directly to its docket that had not come up from a lower court on appeal. Once again, Davis, who sits on death row for killing an off-duty Savannah police officer in 1989, was spared execution. And since the reprieve, Davis' lawyers say a new witness has come forward on his behalf.
"It was just stunning," said U.S. Supreme Court historian Lucas A. "Scot" Powe, a professor of law and government at the University of Texas at Austin. "But I understand why the court did it. It was Davis' last chance. He had exhausted all other possible appeals."
The high court ordered a judge in Savannah to hold a hearing, receive testimony and make findings as to whether new evidence clearly establishes Davis' innocence.
This assignment was given to U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr., who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Davis' legal team recently provided Moore with a new affidavit from a Savannah woman who said a key prosecution witness, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, told her he was the one who actually shot and killed Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
Davis' supporters, led by Amnesty International, have mounted a global campaign on his behalf. Former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI have said Davis should not be executed. Before the Supreme Court made its extraordinary decision, 27 former judges and prosecutors filed a motion on Davis' behalf and asked the high court to intervene.
In court filings, state Attorney General's Office lawyers reminded Moore that five separate courts and Georgia's parole board have rejected Davis' claims. They predicted that Davis will not be able to prove his innocence at the as-yet unscheduled hearing.
In an order he issued soon after getting the case, Moore noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has never found that the Constitution recognizes a "free-standing innocence claim" such as the one raised by Davis. For this reason, the judge requested the parties to suggest what burden of proof should guide his decision.
Jason Ewart, a member of Davis' legal team, said Davis is eager to finally present his recantation testimony in court for the first time. But the lawyer acknowledged they "are working on a blank slate. We're really now talking about what the law should be here."
Ewart said Davis' new evidence is powerful. "It essentially eviscerates the evidence presented at trial and presents evidence that wasn't available at that time," he said.
In court filings, Davis' lawyers continue to contend the actual killer was Coles. In a prior interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Coles denied being the triggerman.
Coles went to police shortly after MacPhail was shot dead in a Burger King parking lot. MacPhail, a 27-year-old former U.S. Army ranger, had rushed to the scene responding to the wails of Larry Young, who was being pistol-whipped.
Prosecutors said Davis was with Coles when Coles began harassing Young, demanding Young to give him a beer. Davis then began hitting Young with his pistol. After arriving at the scene, MacPhail was shot before he could unholster his firearm.
When Coles told police Davis was at the scene, Davis became the prime suspect.
At the 1991 trial, nine prosecution witnesses testified they saw Davis at the scene, saw him shoot MacPhail or were told by Davis he killed MacPhail. But since then, seven of these witnesses have recanted, saying police pressured them into falsely fingering Davis.
Coles is one of the two key witnesses who has not recanted his testimony. Since the trial, Coles has confessed to five separate friends and family members that he killed MacPhail, said a court filing by Davis' legal team.
The most recent person to come forward is Quiana Glover, a Savannah woman who said she was at a friend's house in June when Coles told her he killed MacPhail, according to her affidavit. Glover said she had known Coles since she was a young girl.
According to Glover's affidavit, a woman who was with Coles at the party told him he was drinking too much and to slow down. "This [expletive] is killing me," Coles replied.
When Glover said she asked what Coles was talking about, he said, "Man, looky here, I'm the one who killed that [expletive]. But if they want to hold Troy's [expletive] then let them hold him. Besides, I've got kids to raise."
Glover said that several days later she was at a sports bar when she saw a married couple, Hollis Mitchell and Alicia Blakely, wearing "I Am Troy Davis" T-shirts and asking people to sign a petition they were going to give to the local district attorney.
Glover said she signed the petition and then, after hesitating, told them what she said Coles had told her, her affidavit said. She gave them her cell phone number and was later contacted by an investigator for Davis' legal team, who took her sworn statement.
Glover did not return phone calls last week seeking comment.
In a telephone interview on Thursday, Blakely recounted meeting Glover at the sports bar.
"She came up to me and said she had something to tell me," Blakely said. "She said, 'I know who killed that police officer.'''
After Glover repeated what she said Coles had told her, Blakely said, "I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, my gosh, we've got to get that out there."
Timeline of the Troy Davis case
" Aug. 30, 1991 - A Chatham County jury sentences Troy Davis to death for the 1989 murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
" July 16, 2007 - With Davis' execution set for the next day, the state parole board issues a stay.
" March 17, 2008 - By a 4-3 vote, the Georgia Supreme Court upholds Davis' death sentence, rejecting his request for a hearing.
" Sept. 12, 2008 - The state parole board declines to grant clemency to Davis.
" Sept. 23, 2008 - Less than two hours before Davis' scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court grants him a stay.
" Oct. 14, 2008 - The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Davis' appeal.
" April 16, 2009 - The federal appeals court, after granting Davis yet another stay of execution, denies Davis' bid for a hearing in a 2-1 decision.
" Aug. 17, 2009 - The U.S. Supreme Court orders a federal judge to hear evidence in Davis' case.
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2) The Democrats' Health `Reform' Bill: Kill It Before It Comes to Life!
By Dave Lindorff
Wed, 12/16/2009 - 20:31
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/434
Give credit to Howard Dean. This still practicing physician, former governor of Vermont, former chair of the Democratic Party and former Democratic presidential candidate has called for progressive members of Congress in both houses to join their Republican colleagues in killing what he rightly says has become "an insurance company's dream."
Those namby-pamby, self-described "progressives" in the Democratic Party who claim that the health bill can still be saved with the inclusion of a fake, carefully circumscribed and thoroughly emasculated "public option" government insurance plan that at best would only be able to offer lousy coverage at high rates to a small number of self-employed poor people are wrong. This supposed attempt at reforming the US health care system--the costliest and least effective in the developed world--is simply past saving.
The only appropriate place for the bill at this point is a dumpster.
What could have been a transformational moment in American politics--an end to decades of corporate health care and the creation of a system in which all Americans were guaranteed affordable, quality care as a basic right of citizenship, the way people are in Canada, in all the countries of Europe, in Japan, in Taiwan, in Cuba and much of the rest of the world, has been squandered.
It has been squandered by President Obama, who was too gutless to take a leadership role, and left matters to Congress, and who then slithered up to the major players in the medical-industrial complex and cut secret deals with all of them--doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and the hospital industry--in return for their "support."
It has been squandered by many leading members of Congress in both houses, especially those who call themselves the Blue Dogs, but also by many who call themselves "liberals," who accepted the tainted coin of those industries and their lobbyists have been flooding Congress over the past year with contributions in unprecedented amounts), and who have transformed the legislation into a huge gift for those industries, producing a bill that will leave employers as the main agency for providing health coverage though not for paying for it--that will be the employees' responsibility), require those without coverage to buy it themselves, guaranteeing a vast new market of mostly health young people for the insurance industry, and that will do almost nothing to control costs.
Doctors will get richer under this "reform." Insurance companies will get vastly richer under this "reform". Pharmaceutical companies will get richer under this "reform". But there will still be millions of people left with no access to health care. There will still be tens of millions of people who will get substandard or even pathetically trashy health care. And the cost of medical care, both for individuals and for society as a whole, already the highest in the world, will continue to soar. To make matters worse, taxes will also go up dramatically, by at least $100 billion a year. For extra laughs, while these costs would start hitting the public right away, the "benefits" of the bill wouldn't go into effect until 2013, meaning that a likely resurgent Republican Party, ousting Obama from the White House, and the Democrats from the majority in Congress in 2012, would simply undo the whole thing anyhow.
Dr. Dean is right. This is indeed a bad bill. But it's not just a bad bill. It is a morally outrageous, politically disgusting and economically dangerous bill. It moves the country in exactly the wrong direction--not towards the socialism that the right has been decrying, but towards an increasingly costly corporatist system that will be even harder to reform down the road.
There is only one hope, and that is that enough liberal members of House and Senate will recognize that nothing is better than something in this case, and that for the sake of their constituents they will refuse to support this legislative monstrosity.
The Health Insurance Enrichment Act of 2009 must be killed in the congressional womb before it can emerge to become the monster it has become.
The only positive thing I can see in this debacle is that perhaps if President Obama is slapped down by his own most ardent backers on what he has claimed is his number one legislative goal, he and his too-clever-by-half advisers will realize that they need to do a U-turn and rethink how they are trying to govern.
More likely, however, this defeat will be the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, which has now been revealed as devoid of principle, incapable of leadership, and in thrall to the most cynical and greedy corporate interests.
-thiscantbehappening.net, December 16, 2009
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3) Happy Holidays from America's Banks
By Michael Winship Senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS
Posted: December 18, 2009 03:27 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-winship/happy-holidays-from-ameri_b_397486.html
Never mind Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. It's the audacity of the banks that takes your breath away. Mean old Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" seems like Father Christmas by comparison.
A recent report that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs may have received preferential treatment getting doses of the swine flu vaccine was enough to give Ebenezer Scrooge the yips. Then came news that in order for us to get back the taxpayer bailout money we loaned them, Citigroup is receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks from the IRS.
And there's a new study this week, "Rewarding Failure," from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEO's of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.
In 2007, that amounted to 575 times the median income of an American family. Now, thanks in part to the banks' monumental malfeasance that led to our economic swan dive, food stamps are now being used to feed one in eight Americans, and a quarter of all the kids in this country. A new poll from the New York Times and CBS News reports that more than half of our unemployed have borrowed money from friends and relatives and have cut back on medical treatment.
The Times wrote that, "Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work... causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities."
Yet according to the non-profit Americans for Financial Reform the reported $150 billion that Wall Street is paying itself in compensation and bonuses this year would be enough to solve the budget crisis of every one of the fifty states or create millions of jobs or prevent all foreclosures for four years.
All of this wretched excess is occurring as more and more people can't afford a roof over their heads. Foreclosures were up another five percent in the third quarter -- 23 percent more than a year ago. Fewer Americans are willing to buy foreclosed properties, and the Obama administration's foreclosure prevention plan has been a bust so far - way too timid, critics say, and many of the banks won't play ball, refusing to negotiate in good faith with homeowners desperate to hold on.
We got a first hand look at the crisis this week, when thousands lined up at the Jacob Javits Convention Center just a few blocks from our Manhattan offices to attend a mortgage assistance event sponsored by the non-profit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America NACA). So many showed up for this leg of the "Save the Dream Tour" that on many days, staff and volunteers stayed to help until one in the morning.
NACA has had success getting homeowners and banks together to work out a deal to prevent foreclosure. But the big banks' return to the government of the TARP bailout money with which we underwrote them over the last 14 months is a mixed blessing -- great to have the cash returned so quickly, terrible because any leverage Washington held over the banks because of the loans virtually vanishes with the payback. They're back in the saddle and not inclined to be of much assistance helping anyone else out, especially those in mortgage trouble.
As Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times wrote in the wake of President Obama's Monday meeting with Wall Street's top guns three of whom failed to show up because of airport delays), "Executive compensation, leverage limits and lending standards were all issues that Washington said it planned to change -- and when the taxpayers were the shareholders of these firms, it probably could have done so. But now the White House has been left in the position of extending invitations, rather than exercising its clout. And in the figurative and literal sense, it is getting stood up."
Afterwards, Obama said, "The problem is there's a big gap between what I'm hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they're a member up on Capitol Hill."
That's putting it mildly. This week, the American Bankers Association sent out an update and "call to action" memorandum crowing over its success watering down the bank reform bill that was approved by the House and urging its members to beat back similar legislation in the Senate. Self-righteously, it concludes, "As one of your New Year's resolutions, please vow to do everything in your power to show, and to have your colleagues in your bank show, your Senators the right path to true reform."
It helps when the right path is paved with silver and gold. As "Crossing Wall Street," a November report from the Center for Responsive Politics notes, "The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given $2.3 billion to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989, which eclipses every other sector...
"The financial sector has also been a voracious lobbying force, spending an unprecedented $3.8 billion since 1998, while sending an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to make its case. That's more money than any other sector has spent on influence peddling. Not even the health care sector, which spun up a lobbying frenzy this year over health reform, has spent more."
The banks are making a list and checking it twice. And lest we forget, during his run for the White House, the finance sector filled Barack Obama's stocking with $39.5 million dollars worth of campaign contributions, more than any other presidential candidate.
God bless us, every one!
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers. Research support provided by producer William Brangham and associate producer Katia Maguire.
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4) Taming the Fat Cats
Editorial
December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20sun1.html?hp
President Obama seems genuinely, if belatedly, upset about the way America's voracious bankers leveraged hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailouts to line their pockets with multibillion-dollar bonuses while American businesses starve for credit.
Before he gets over his anger, he might want to take a look at how the British found a way to realign the fat cats' boundless greed with the public interest: slapping a hefty windfall tax on their bonuses. He still has time to push Congress to enact a similar levy here.
Bankers have rushed to repay their bailout loans to the Treasury so they can avoid the constraints on compensation that came with the assistance. Unshackled, they are putting together bonus pools for 2009 that would rival the record-breaking packages of 2007 - the year before their foolhardy bets tipped the world into its worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
The administration can make a very good case that the Treasury is entitled to much of this money. After all, what profits the banks have made over the last year were funded by oodles of cheap financing provided by the Federal Reserve. This is a windfall that they should not be allowed to keep.
We can think of a lot of good ways to use the revenue from a windfall tax, starting with a more robust program to create jobs for out-of-work Americans.
The British government expects to make nearly $1 billion from a 50 percent tax on bonuses above about $40,000. While this is not much, the financial sector in the United States is much larger. Moreover, a tax just might persuade banks to cut their bonuses and use the money to bolster their capital, which would make them more financially secure.
Bankers are likely to scream - threatening to leave the country and arguing that such narrow taxation is unconstitutional. The best in the accounting business will undoubtedly be tasked with coming up with strategies to avoid taxation, by pushing bonuses back in time or with other ruses. No one should be intimidated.
Threats to move overseas are empty. London is out of the picture. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said he would follow the British lead. Germany and other countries could be persuaded to impose taxes of their own. And it would make little sense for bankers to move halfway around the world to Singapore to avoid a one-off tax that would not affect future bonuses.
Congress also has time to pass a tax on 2009 bonuses because most are expected to be paid in 2010. And the constitutional ban of bills aimed to punish a specific group - so-called bills of attainder - is unlikely to apply because a tax would not be aimed to punish named people but an economic class.
A windfall tax on bankers' bonuses would not be enough, but it would be a start. The government also needs to ensure that all banks reform their compensation practices to better align rewards with performance, good and bad. That is the best hope for curbing bankers' unbridled appetite for risk.
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5) Negotiating to 60 Votes, Compromise by Compromise
By ROBERT PEAR
December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/health/policy/20care.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Thirty million people without health insurance stand to gain coverage under a deal announced on Saturday by Senate Democrats.
To get the 60 votes needed to pass their bill, Democrats scrapped the idea of a government-run public insurance plan, cherished by liberals, and replaced it with a proposal for nationwide health plans, which would be offered by private insurers under contract with the government.
The legislation also includes a proposal that would limit insurance coverage of abortion. The provision, which was the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place, was negotiated by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, to win the support of Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, who is an opponent of abortion.
Under the agreement, states could choose to prohibit abortion coverage in the insurance markets, or exchanges, where most health plans would be sold.
But if a health plan did cover the procedure, subscribers would have to make two separate monthly premium payments: one for all insurance coverage except abortion and one for abortion coverage.
The compromise was denounced by advocates of abortion rights, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the National Organization for Women, Naral Pro-Choice America and the National Women's Law Center.
"We have no choice but to oppose the Senate bill," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee reached a similar conclusion for very different reasons.
"This bill should not be supported in its current form because it would allow federal money to go to health insurance plans that cover elective abortions," said Richard M. Doerflinger, a spokesman on abortion for the bishops' conference.
The final deal was packed with provisions calculated to appeal to various constituencies. The bill would provide extra Medicaid money to Nebraska, long-term-care insurance to people with severe disabilities, new services for pregnant teenagers and financial breaks to nonprofit insurance companies.
But there were also potential losers. To bring in more revenue, the bill proposes a range of new fees and taxes that would affect some high-income people, profitable health insurance companies and people who use tanning salons.
The proposals were drafted by Mr. Reid as part of an amendment to a sweeping health care bill, which embodies President Obama's top domestic priority.
Mr. Reid's amendment would expand eligibility for a small-business tax credit, increase penalties on certain uninsured people and increase the payroll tax on higher-income individuals and families beyond the increase that Mr. Reid proposed last month.
Mr. Nelson - whose home state of Nebraska received the additional Medicaid money - embraced the bill on Saturday.
"A number of states are treated differently from other states," Mr. Reid said. "That's what this legislation is all about, compromise."
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the bill was "a monstrosity full of special sweetheart deals for a few states," including Nebraska and Vermont.
Under Mr. Reid's amendment, the federal Office of Personnel Management, which provides health benefits to federal employees, would sign contracts with insurers to offer at least two national health plans to individuals, families and small businesses. At least one contract would have to be with a nonprofit entity.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies could offer a single national plan. The new national plans would be separate from the program for federal employees, and premiums would be calculated separately.
Under the bill, most Americans would be required to have insurance. The penalty for violating this requirement could be as high as 2 percent of a taxpayer's household income. Penalties would total $15 billion over 10 years, up from $8 billion under Mr. Reid's original proposal, the Congressional Budget Office said.
In the next 10 years, the government would also collect $28 billion in penalties from employers who did not offer health benefits to employees.
Mr. Reid dropped a proposed tax on cosmetic surgery and replaced it with a tax on "indoor tanning services." Senate Democrats said the 10 percent tax was justified because ultraviolet radiation from tanning devices could increase the risk of skin cancer.
The bill would significantly increase the Medicare payroll tax on people with high incomes. Workers now pay a tax equal to 1.45 percent of wages to help finance hospital care for Medicare beneficiaries.
Mr. Reid's proposal would impose an additional tax: 0.9 percent of income above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families. This is nearly twice the extra tax of 0.5 percent that he proposed last month.
To help finance coverage of the uninsured, the bill would levy annual fees on insurance companies and manufacturers of medical devices and prescription drugs. Under the proposal unveiled on Saturday, nonprofit insurance companies could be exempted if they spent a large share of their premiums on medical care rather than administrative costs.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, had sought such an exemption to spare companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, which he said provided a valuable service as the "insurer of last resort."
The biggest source of revenue under the bill is a new tax on employer-sponsored group health plans with high premiums. The bill provides a special dispensation to police officers, firefighters, miners and construction workers, who have high premiums because they work in high-risk occupations.
Mr. Reid would grant a similar dispensation to longshoremen.
In what they described as an effort to reduce the demand for abortion, Democrats would provide money to help pregnant teenagers and new mothers so that they could stay in high school and attend college.
The federal government would provide $25 million a year for a "pregnancy assistance fund." The money could be used for "maternity and baby clothing, baby food, baby furniture and similar items," the proposal says.
Children could benefit from Mr. Reid's proposal in two other ways. He would immediately prohibit insurers from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing medical conditions. And he would provide money to extend the Children's Health Insurance Program for two more years, through 2015, as proposed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia.
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6) Utility Bill Is One More Casualty of Recession
By ERIK ECKHOLM
December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/us/20utility.html?hp
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - For the Cardente family, the shutoff of their electricity and gas in September was a wrenching marker in a two-year downslide.
A run of mishaps, including illness and the husband's workplace injury, extensive structural damage from a burst water bed and the mother's layoff from a nursing job, had already upended their middle-class lives. Then the pile of utility bills emerged as a headache to rival the past-due mortgage.
"You always try to pay your mortgage or rent to keep a roof over your head," said Debra Cardente, the mother. "Then you ask, do you pay your electric or gas bill, pay your telephone or put food on the table?"
The recession has accentuated what was already a growing home-energy challenge for low-income and many middle-class households across the nation. Rising numbers have had their utilities shut off, causing desperate scrambles to pay arrears and penalties to get them restored.
In 2009, some 31,000 households in Rhode Island will have their utilities shut off, and the effort to juggle energy bills and mortgages is helping push some homeowners into foreclosure, said Henry Shelton, director of the George Wiley Center, a consumer advocacy group here. Here, as in many states, utilities may not disconnect the poor in the winter.)
Since 2000, the cost of heating a home with fuel oil has more than doubled and the cost of heating a home with electricity has risen by one third, outpacing many incomes. The recent surge in unemployment has thrown even more people into energy debt.
Last winter, applications for federal energy assistance soared and Congress nearly doubled money for the program, known as Liheap, to $5.1 billion. In 2009, a record 8.1 million households, up from 6.1 million in 2008, received one-time grants, averaging about $500, according to data released Friday by the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.
Congress kept the financing at $5.1 billion for the coming year. Energy prices have dipped slightly, but applications this fall are up an additional 20 percent, so grants will shrink or more people will be turned down, the association said.
"Households will do just about anything to stay connected," said John Howat, an analyst with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston. If they cannot pay, some people move and open a new account under a different name. Some run extension cords from a neighbor's house, others spend weeks getting heat from dangerous kerosene stoves and light from candles.
The Cardentes got their power turned back on by borrowing money from relatives and paying $3,500 toward arrears of more than $10,000. But they defaulted on a plan that called for them to pay $723 each month, and the utility demanded the balance of almost $5,000. They are applying for Liheap aid and plan to appeal to the utility for more time.
For some low-income families, the federal grants have been welcome but just too small. Suzette Orazi, 50, and her husband, Juan Lizardo, 45, live with a teenage son in a house in Providence that is heated inefficiently with electric room units. As energy prices climbed over the last several years, so did their utility bills, while Mr. Lizardo lost his job as a jewel polisher.
The $1,000 they got from Liheap last winter hardly made a dent in their growing arrears, now over $11,000. The power company recently threatened to cut them off but later said that in accord with state protections for low-income customers, it would not do so in winter. It is still pressing for an immediate $2,456, however.
"We just can't make that payment," said Ms. Orazi, who receives disability. The couple fears losing the house as well as the electricity needed to live in it.
California, like Rhode Island, requires lower electric rates for low-income consumers. Even so, as unemployment in California climbed past 12 percent, the number of shutoffs among such families rose by one-fifth in the year that ended in August, according to a report last month by the state's Division of Ratepayer Advocates.
In Connecticut, the number of shutoffs for all incomes rose from 86,074 in 2008 to 105,300 in just the first nine months of 2009, according to the state's Public Utilities Commission.
New Jersey is widely praised for its program for low-income residents: a family of four making less than $38,588 pays only about 6 percent of its income on utilities. Those one step up, with incomes up to $49,612 for a family of four, are eligible for Liheap grants.
But many families just above that level, with incomes between $50,000 and $66,000, have found themselves in energy trouble in a high-cost state where unemployment is 9.7 percent. New Jersey Shares, a nonprofit organization that provides up to $1,000 in energy assistance to that group, has already helped a record 19,000 families this fall and turned away an additional 18,000 for lack of money, said its director, James M. Jacob. Many seeking aid are facing imminent shutoffs, he said.
With energy costs becoming a chronic challenge, consumer advocates in Rhode Island and elsewhere are pushing for alternatives to one-time grants, citing the program in New Jersey and a similar one adopted this year in Illinois, setting bills as a share of income.
Such an approach would make a world of difference for the Cardente family, for example; in hard times, their bills would have been cut, and when Ms. Cardente and her husband find work, the bills would rise.
New Hampshire already has income-linked subsidies, but in mid-December, citing rising hardship, the governor and legislative leaders said they would rush through a bill for still more aid. Indiana, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among states that reduce utility bills according to income levels, said Mr. Howat, the consumer advocate.
The subsidies are usually paid for by raising rates for household, commercial and industrial customers, posing political risks. In Rhode Island, a bill to cap utility bills for the poor at 6 percent of income has been introduced by State Representative Arthur Handy, Democrat of Cranston. But in a statement last June, the state's Division of Public Utilities and Carriers expressed "reservations" about the proposal, and its prospects remain uncertain.
James E. Lanni, the state's associate administrator of utilities, said the plan would place an unreasonable burden on consumers, raising the average electric bill by 3.7 percent and the average gas bill by 5 percent to yield $15.2 million in subsidies. He said that the doubling of federal energy aid, along with other programs, had reduced need and that if fees were not linked to consumption, people would have no incentive to conserve energy.
In an interview, Mr. Handy countered that with his plan, utilities would save money on dealing with delinquent accounts and spend less money disconnecting and reconnecting homes.
The Rhode Island legislature is expected to consider the measure early next year.
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7) Not All Drugs Are the Same After All
By LESLEY ALDERMAN
December 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/health/19patient.html?ref=health
LET me start by saying I'm a fan of generic drugs. They save Americans billions of dollars each year and give us access to wonderful drugs at affordable prices. I've recommended generics in this column many times and use them myself when possible.
But there is a gnawing concern among some doctors and researchers that certain prescription generic drugs may not work as well as their brand-name counterparts. The problem is not pervasive, but it's something consumers should be aware of - especially now that more insurers insist that patients take generic medications when they are available.
Let me also prepare the groundwork for what I hope will be full and frank reader comments, by acknowledging that this issue is controversial.
Joe Graedon, who has been writing about pharmaceuticals for three decades and runs a consumer advocacy Web site, the People's Pharmacy peoplespharmacy.com), was 100 percent behind generics for many years.
"We were the country's leading generic enthusiasts," he told me recently. But over the last eight or nine years, Mr. Graedon began hearing about "misadventures" from people who read his syndicated newspaper column, also called The People's Pharmacy.
The stories were typically from patients who were switched from a brand name drug to a generic one and had side effects or found that their symptoms returned - or even became worse than before they were medicated. Most recently Mr. Graedon has been hearing complaints on his Web site about generic forms of the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL 300 known as Budeprion XL 300 in one generic form), the heart medicine Toprol XL metoprolol succinate) and the antiseizure medicine Keppra levetiracetam).
"Consumers are told generics are identical to brand name drugs, but that is clearly not always the case," Mr. Graedon said.
Some specialists, particularly cardiologists and neurologists, are concerned about generic formulations of drugs in which a slight variation could have a serious effect on a patient's health. The American Academy of Neurology has a position paper that says, in part, "The A.A.N. opposes generic substitution of anticonvulsant drugs for the treatment of epilepsy without the attending physician's approval."
But insurers tend to argue otherwise. On Thursday, ExpressScripts, which handles drug insurance for big employers, put out a news release announcing results of a study it sponsored that found no difference in hospitalizations or emergency-room visits for people on brand-name epilepsy drugs compared with those taking generics.
The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, says it stands behind generic medications and its methods for approving them.
"We have not seen any scientific studies that show generics do not hold up as well as brand name drugs," says Gary J. Buehler, director of the agency's office of generic drugs. "We believe the generic drugs we approve work in everyone."
The American Medical Association concurs. A spokeswoman for the group told me in an e-mail message, "the A.M.A. position is that as a whole generic drugs do work as well as name-brand drugs."
Yet, after hundreds of consumers posted messages about problems with the generic drug Budeprion XL 300 on the People's Pharmacy Web site, Mr. Graedon worked with an independent laboratory, ConsumerLab.com, to test the drug, which in other generic versions is typically known as bupropion.
The lab found that Budeprion XL 300 released the active drug at a different rate than the brand name Wellbutrin XL 300. Mr. Graedon and the lab conjecture that the different dissolution rates might be to blame for the reported side effects and lower effectiveness of Budeprion.
But Mr. Buehler at the F.D.A. explained to me that over the course of 24 hours a patient ends up with the same amount of the drug in the bloodstream, so there should be no reason for a variation in effectiveness. "We remain puzzled," he said.
The maker of Budeprion XL 300, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, recently announced that it would conduct a clinical trial comparing its product against the original, Wellbutrin XL.
A Teva spokeswoman said in an e-mail message that the company was working with the F.D.A. on a study "specifically designed to answer the questions raised following the recent anecdotal commentary on generic budeprion."
"We believe the study and the resulting data will provide further scientific support for the product's bioequivalence to the innovator drug," she said.
To parse that statement - or at least understand "bioequivalence" - it is worth taking a step back to consider what a generic drug is and how it gets approved.
When a name-brand drug's patent expires, other manufacturers are generally free to create their own version of that product. If a drug is popular, a dozen or more companies may rush in to create a copy of it.
According to F.D.A. rules, the new generic version must "have the same active ingredient, strength and dosage form" as the brand name or reference product.
A generic medication must also be bioequivalent to the brand name drug, meaning that it must "be shown to give blood levels that are very similar to" the brand name product, according to a fact sheet on the F.D.A.'s Web site. Generally, the only test that a maker of a generic medication must perform to receive F.D.A. approval is one that establishes the "bioequivalence" of the product. This test is done on healthy volunteers and compares the blood levels of the reference drug to the generic one.
According to Mr. Buehler of the F.D.A., to be considered bioequivalent, the generic drug must reach a blood serum level that is 80 to 125 percent of what the reference product achieves. But Mr. Buehler said that in reality the spread was not nearly that large. He noted that the F.D.A. conducted a large study and found that the average difference in absorption into the body between a generic and brand name drug was only 3.5 percent.
Some specialists, though, worry that the allowable range for bioequivalence is too wide, especially for patients who are taking medication to control problems like arrhythmias or seizures.
If a patient with the heart arrhythmia known as atrial fibrillation who also has risk markers for stroke gets a blood thinner for which the levels are too low, "there is risk for stroke, and if the levels are too high it could result in bleeding," says James A. Reiffel, a cardiologist and professor of clinical medicine at Columbia.
Neurologists who treat epilepsy have similar concerns. Two studies published last year in the journal Neurology found that patients who switched from a brand-name product to a generic one had more seizures or higher hospitalization rates.
"For many drugs, generics are just fine," said Kimford Meador, a professor of neurology at Emory University.
"But when you're taking a seizure medication, the therapeutic window is narrow," Dr. Meador said. "If the absorption of the drug is slightly different between brand and generic or between generics, then the patient could have a seizure, and that seizure could lead to serious injury or perhaps even death."
The problem is not just in changing from a name-brand drug to a generic, Dr. Meador said, but also switching from generic to generic. And the patient may not even know the change is happening.
When patients are on maintenance medication for which a generic is available, they might be given a different version of the generic drug when refilling their prescriptions. A pharmacy might stock one generic for a few months, and then switch to another a few months later, if the store is offered a better deal on it.
A pharmacist is not required to notify the patient of the change, although some choose to do so.
So for a few months you might receive a drug that was on the low side in the bioequivalence test, and then be switched to one on the high side of the test.
Stephanie Ford, 29, who spoke on condition that she not be otherwise identified, had been taking Lamictal to control her bipolar disorder. When a generic version came out two years ago, her insurer switched her to it.
Ms. Ford found that the generic drug, lamotrigine, worked just as well as the name brand and cost her just $10 a month instead of the $45 copayment she had been spending on the brand name. For a person without insurance, Lamictal can cost about $300 a month, depending on the dosage.)
But when her insurer then urged her to order her medication by mail, she received another generic version of Lamictal and her symptoms returned.
"After about a week," she wrote in an e-mail message, "I noticed a difference in my emotional state and nothing changed in my life) and by a week and a half, I had digressed to the state I had been before being on medication."
Ms. Ford has found a local pharmacy that carries the original generic. She now buys the medication directly from that store. Because her insurer charges her a $5 penalty for not using mail order, her copayment is now $15.
She says her condition has once again stabilized.
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8) Civilians Train in 'Afghan City' in the Midwest
By MARK LANDLER
December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/world/asia/21civilian.html?ref=world
BUTLERVILLE, Ind. - For American civilians serving in Afghanistan, the last stop before they ship out to Kabul or Kandahar is a dilapidated, vaguely foreboding institution that once served as a farm colony for "feeble-minded" boys, and later was a state mental hospital.
The Army and the Indiana National Guard have turned the windswept complex, known as Muscatatuck, into a simulacrum of a war-torn Afghan city, with a courthouse, a jail and a graffiti-smeared marketplace. While the table-flat farmland around here hardly evokes the Hindu Kush, this is where the government trains Americans who are part of the most ambitious civilian campaign the United States has mounted in a foreign country in generations - a "civilian surge" intended to improve the lives of Afghans.
In one mock encounter, a team of Americans visited a district judge in Kunar Province, played by an Afghan ÈmigrÈ who actually had been a judge back home. The Americans listened patiently as he explained why his court had a backlog of cases, leaving the nearby jail overcrowded.
Tea was sipped and heads nodded gravely, until a man playing the local police chief another Afghan who once held the job in real life) leapt to his feet and began berating the judge, saying that his corruption would send frustrated family members to the Taliban to get swifter justice. The head of the American delegation tried to placate the chief by promising to come up with a solution.
Nobody here calls this nation-building - the Obama administration's new strategy for Afghanistan studiously avoids that term - but it is certainly a crash course in helping to rebuild a damaged society. And it supports the ambitious civilian effort laid out in the president's approach.
After the American trainees, clad in bulletproof vests, were hustled into an armored convoy by troops with automatic weapons, their instructors told them they had goofed in the role-playing encounter with the judge. "They assumed the Afghans' problems," one of the instructors, James W. McKellar, said in an interview afterward. "We told them, 'You can't do that. You're not there to solve their problems. They have got to build up their capacity themselves.' "
But helping fix Afghanistan's degraded legal system is one of many things the United States has pledged to do as part of its strategy to root out Islamic insurgents. Stabilizing Afghanistan, officials say, will require cleaning up its government, weaning its farmers from poppy cultivation, making its people healthier, even teaching them to read.
Among the 51 recruits cycling through a recent weeklong course here were agricultural experts, small-business consultants and a bank examiner. There are nearly 1,000 American civilians in Afghanistan now; the goal is to have 1,200 to 1,300 in six months.
They will be deployed alongside 30,000 additional troops that President Obama is sending to Afghanistan - a civilian vanguard that, though small, is intended to have a disproportionate impact. Each civilian in the field will hire and train a team of 10 Afghans to help with projects ranging from upgrading irrigation systems to bolstering the responsiveness of local governments.
"We haven't had anything like this since Vietnam," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. His deputy, Paul W. Jones, said the civilians would have to resist the impulse to do too much. "We are not there to turn Afghanistan into something we would recognize as America," he said.
In training civilians this way, the State Department is pushing up against some long-held biases in the military. The Army, some officials say, takes a more traditional view of civilian-military relations, regarding civilians more as helpers and advisers than as true partners. While some members of the Army Reserve take part in assisting civilians at the Indiana facility, most of the military personnel comes from the National Guard, with a few from the Air Force and the Navy.
After a slow start, hindered in part by the long debate, the civilian effort is gearing up. Several hundred civilians will be deployed in the field, particularly to Afghanistan's south and east, where the military is concentrating its combat operations. More than 50 advisers are burrowing into Afghan ministries in Kabul.
There continue to be hiccups: The civilians, who sign on for one-year tours with the government, are not allowed to take their families, or even relocate them to cities close enough for weekend visits. Despite the very generous compensation, that has held down the number of young recruits with families, and especially women, who are needed to work with Afghan women.
At the training session in Muscatatuck, the recruits were largely male and many gray-haired. Many are alumni of the United States Agency for International Development or the Foreign Service; a few had worked in Afghanistan before.
Marshall S. Ferrin, who led the meeting with the judge, is typical. A soft-spoken 59-year-old, he managed trade development projects for Usaid and the Defense Department, and now teaches about how to start small businesses at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
"The No. 1 issue in Afghanistan is employment," said Mr. Ferrin, who will be deployed to the Panjshir Valley. "If you can create employment, the benefits will spill over into governance and the rule of law."
Among the enterprises he can envision are flour mills, livestock-breeding operations, factories that produce dried fruit, Internet cafes, even tourism businesses. Having worked in Afghanistan before, he said, he has "some knowledge of what I'm up against."
Still, the reality of war-torn Afghanistan is likely to be jolting. The Indiana National Guard, which runs the center from nearby Camp Atterbury, trains the civilians to cope with social unrest. It also simulates combat situations, like an ambush in the marketplace. "We're seven days in the life of someone in theater," said Brig. Gen. Omer C. Tooley of the National Guard.
In another mock encounter, Americans met a district chief, a mullah and other tribal elders to express regret for an aerial bombing of a village that accidentally killed a 19-year-old man. The Afghan leaders pounded the table angrily, asking how the Americans could claim they were there to help Afghanistan when they killed civilians.
Looking abashed, the Americans noted they had paid the man's family $6,000 in compensation, which prompted the district chief to ask why the money had not been funneled through him.
Not all the recruits are heading to a battleground. Thomas Nollner, who works for the Treasury Department, will go to Kabul to help the Afghan central bank crack down on money laundering. He said he was driven by "the naÔve desire to help the world."
Mr. Ferrin is leaving his wife and 16-year-old son behind in suburban Virginia. "My son doesn't know whether to laugh or cry," he said. "But I certainly have his attention."
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9) U.S. to Make Stopping Nuclear Terror Key Aim
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCMITT
December 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/us/politics/19nuke.html
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's classified review of nuclear weapons policy will for the first time make thwarting nuclear-armed terrorists a central aim of American strategic nuclear planning, according to senior Pentagon officials.
When completed next year, the Nuclear Posture Review will order the entire government to focus on countering nuclear terrorists - whether armed with rudimentary bombs, stolen warheads or devices surreptitiously supplied by a hostile state - as a task equal to the traditional mission of deterring a strike by major powers or emerging nuclear adversaries.
The nuclear review will affect how warheads are developed by the Department of Energy, deployed by the Department of Defense and limited through negotiations by the Department of State, as well as how the intelligence community and the military do their jobs and spend money. That could mean, for example, devoting less money to modernizing bombers, missiles and submarines, and more to surveillance satellites, reconnaissance planes and undercover agents.
To underscore the point that concrete consequences will follow its guiding philosophy, the Nuclear Posture Review is scheduled to be released along with the Obama administration's next budget in February.
Although the internal debate is not quite over, and the president has not approved a final version of the review, a senior Defense Department official said its priorities were taking shape.
"The first - and in many ways the most urgent for where we are today - is the threat posed by nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism," said the official, who was granted anonymity to describe the current draft of the review.
At the core of this threat, which officials say has been growing steadily since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is "the possible transfer of nuclear weapons or materials to a terrorist or substate actor," he said.
The problem has been that the classical model of deterrence - of threatening to respond with overwhelming nuclear force to a nuclear attack from another country - is of uncertain relevance in the context of transnational terrorism.
Although the government-wide review is led by the Defense Department, the primary tools for countering this new danger are not nuclear weapons, but efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, to identify and attack terrorist networks, and to strengthen security measures with allies and partners. This would include American and international efforts to "secure nuclear weapons and materials worldwide," the official said.
So the review is likely to recommend more vigorous intelligence aimed at tracking nuclear smugglers and anticipating terrorist attacks, and more robust actions within the nuclear laboratories to expand abilities to identify nuclear materials in other nations that might be passed surreptitiously to terrorists. All of these efforts could require additional money.
While similar goals have been expressed before, no previous formal review elevated the threat of nuclear terrorism to a central element of the government's strategic blueprint.
In comparison, the previous nuclear review, completed under President George W. Bush, called for new nuclear weapons to destroy underground bunkers, including those that might hold unconventional weapons, in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya.
The Obama administration's review, in addition to elevating the threat of nuclear terrorism, also calls for strengthening deterrence - and strengthening America's "extended deterrence" to protect allies - while reducing the roles and numbers of nuclear weapons over coming years.
And it cautions that as long as these weapons do exist, the United States must maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal.
There has been ample tension during the review, in particular inside the Pentagon, in dealing with President Obama's pledge to "reduce the role of nuclear weapons" and urge other countries to do the same. Mr. Obama's long-term goal is to eliminate nuclear arms altogether.
But Pentagon and military officials said this week that both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had endorsed the lower warhead levels that the review would propose, a number that already is shaping current nuclear negotiations with Russia and a projected follow-up series of arms talks.
In examining the nation's nuclear arsenal, the review considered an array of alternatives to the traditional mix of bombers, submarines and ground-based missiles. For at least the near term, though, warhead numbers are expected to remain sufficiently high to allow the continuation of all three legs of the nuclear triad.
Even as the review enters its final stages, two important issues remain unresolved, officials said.
One is the proper approach to maintaining and modernizing the stockpile of nuclear warheads, which would lead to a decision on whether current warheads should be reused and refurbished, or whether they should be replaced by a new generation of weapons.
"There is no urgent problem that we need to address in terms of our arsenal or stockpile or maintaining them that requires immediate decisions," said Stephen W. Young, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "They have time to get these answers right."
The other unresolved matter is whether the United States should declare that it would never be first to use nuclear weapons. Over the decades, the United States deliberately maintained ambiguity in public statements about its nuclear policy: when it would strike, what it would strike and in response to which actions by an adversary. This was deemed important to keep adversaries off balance and give American leaders options.
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10) Labor Data Show Surge in Hiring of Temp Workers
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/business/economy/21temps.html?ref=us
The hiring of temporary workers has surged, suggesting that the nation's employers might soon take the next step, bringing on permanent workers, if they can just convince themselves that the upturn in the economy will be sustained.
As demand rose after the last two recessions, in the early 1990s and in 2001, employers moved more quickly. They added temps for only two or three months before stepping up the hiring of permanent workers. Now temp hiring has risen for four months, the economy is growing, and still corporate managers have been reluctant to shift to hiring permanent workers, relying instead on temps and other casual labor easily shed if demand slows again.
"When a job comes open now, our members fill it with a temp, or they extend a part-timer's hours, or they bring in a freelancer - and then they wait to see what will happen next," said William J. Dennis Jr., director of research for the National Federation of Independent Business.
The rising employment of temp workers is not all bad. However uncertain their status, they do count in government statistics as wage-earning workers, adding to the employment rolls and helping to bring down the monthly job loss to just 11,000 in November. Indeed, the unemployment rate fell in 36 states in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week, partly because of the growing use of temps.
The bureau, which issues the monthly employment reports, does not distinguish between permanent and casual employment, with one exception: it has a special category for temp workers, the men and women supplied by Manpower, Kelly Services, Adecco and other agencies.
Last month 52,000 temps were added, greater than the number of new workers in any other category. Not even health care and government, stalwarts through the long recession, did better.
"Sometimes we're asked by a company to bring back ex-employees as temps," said Joanie Ruge, a senior vice president of Adecco. Some are even ex-employees who have been laid off. "That does happen," she said.
In the past, temps who do well have often been offered regular employment, with higher pay and benefits. Given the uncertainties about this recovery, companies are not doing that now, and temps, as a result, are less likely to spend as freely as regular employees or to qualify for credit, generating less demand than permanent employment would.
Adding to this undertow, corporate America is investing very little in expansion at a moment when current capacity - the machinery and floor space now available - is underused. And pressure is rising on the Obama administration and Congress to offset the shortfalls by authorizing more stimulus spending - enough to bring the national unemployment rate down from the present 10 percent.
"Depression has been forestalled only because major government borrowing and spending is filling the gap," Albert M. Wojnilower, a Wall Street economist and consultant at Craig Drill Capital, said in a newsletter last week.
Caution in hiring is certainly the watchword at Eggrock, which makes prefabricated bathrooms in Littleton, Mass. During the summer, Eggrock received its first new order since the recession began: 462 units for a hospital project in Canada.
The order caught the company with only 10 workers on the factory floor, down from 45 early last year. But rather than recall those who had been laid off, Eggrock arranged for 40 temps from Manpower: plumbers, electricians, assemblers and the like.
"The biggest factor in prompting us to shift from temps to permanent employees would be a solid order backlog," said Phillip Littlefield, a vice president at the company. So far a backlog has not materialized, or even a second order, although there is an "uptick in interest," as Mr. Littlefield put it. "We are optimistic," he said.
Halfway across the country, in Burlington, Iowa, the recession bypassed the Winegard Company. That is perhaps because Winegard makes television antennas and satellite receivers, and in hard times people watch more television, said Denise Baker, Winegard's director of human resources. Whatever the case, to keep up with new orders, the company has added 70 workers in the last two years - all of them temps.
"An actual employee with benefits costs more than a temp or a contract worker," Ms. Baker said, "and as long as I can still get highly skilled temps, I'll go that route. It gives me more room to reverse course if the economy weakens again and sales do finally sink."
Given the nature of the upturn, that could happen. After 18 months of contraction, the economy expanded from July through September at a 2.8 percent annual rate, and many economists expect the expansion to be even stronger in the fourth quarter, approaching 4 percent. The rebound is robust mainly because of a "turnaround in inventory policies from breakneck liquidation to slow accumulation," Mr. Wojnilower said.
If this restocking of shelves and warehouses were to stop or slow next year, a possibility that concerns Mr. Littlefield and Ms. Baker, then the temps, freelancers and contract workers they and many other employers now use would have a harder time moving from casual to regular employment.
The temp agencies often promote themselves as employment agencies - skilled at quickly finding qualified workers whom companies can convert to regular employment after using them initially as temps.
That mechanism works well in good times, but not these days, certainly not for Walter Latham of Coram, Long Island, who lost his job 14 months ago as a project manager at the Reserve, a money market fund based in New York.
His wife, Marjorie, works for Kelly Services as a temp at a health insurance company's call center, and Mr. Latham, 56, finally joined her two weeks ago after hunting for months for higher-paying, permanent work. The temp assignment pays him less than $25 an hour - "a long way down from the $135,000 a year I once made," Mr. Latham said.
The Lathams have gone through the more than $200,000 in savings that he accumulated during 20 years in the financial services industry. The call center assignment ends on March 31, and neither Mr. Latham nor his wife have gotten any hint that the insurance company would convert them to permanent employment with benefits like health insurance, which neither has today.
"My future is Latham Golf," he said, describing a Web site that he and some partners started 15 days ago to teach subscribers how to swing golf clubs. Until Latham Golf pays off, if it ever does, Mr. Latham says that he and his wife, who sells jewelry on the side, will continue to work as temps.
"I've never seen the job market this horrible," he said, "when you couldn't get a job or even an offer of a job at a decent pay level."
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11) Credit Derivatives That Distort Markets
By RICHARD BEALES and NEIL UNMACK
Reuters Breakingviews
December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/business/economy/21views.html?ref=business
Critics of credit-default swaps like the "empty creditor" hypothesis. The theory is that buyers of credit insurance can profit by allowing - or even encouraging - companies to file for bankruptcy. It's used as an argument for banning or severely restricting the $31 trillion market for credit-default swaps. In reality, the empty creditor hypothesis is probably half full.
Credit-default swaps allow traders to insure themselves against a company's default. Empty creditors are investors who have hedged with credit-default swaps and who stand to benefit if companies go bust, because the payout on the swap would make them whole on the value of their debt.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association set out to debunk the hypothesis in a research paper published on Dec. 17. The association is right to dismiss one element of the theory: the notion that traders of credit-default swaps can make quick profits from a company's final spiral into bankruptcy.
The big flaw in this part of the theory is that traders can't actually make much if any money doing that, because buying bankruptcy protection in the credit derivative markets gets very expensive as companies near failure. At the end of 2008, the cost of insuring against default on $10 million of General Motors bonds in the credit-default swap market was $8 million - payable upfront - plus $500,000 a year for up to five years. That was almost six months before G.M. finally filed for bankruptcy on June 1.
Upon bankruptcy, buyers of credit-default swaps receive the insured amount less the recovery rate on the bonds. In G.M.'s case, the recovery rate was set by auction at 12.5 cents on the dollar. That means someone who bought swaps half a year before the company filed would scarcely have broken even. In the immediate timeframe before G.M.'s bankruptcy, the trade would have been loss-making. Fingering credit-default swap traders for companies' short-term problems or final death throes is much like blaming short-sellers of stock: both are almost invariably the messengers, not the message.
But the International Swaps and Derivatives Association is mistaken in trying to knock down a central thrust of the empty creditor hypothesis. This argues that investors owning a company's debt as well as the related credit-default swaps can prevent or distort a restructuring outside bankruptcy if the company gets into trouble. After all, blocking alternatives so that a company eventually has to file for bankruptcy would lead to a fat payout on the swaps.
As far as the association is concerned, there is no evidence that the ratio of bankruptcies to out-of-court restructurings has picked up since the credit derivatives market boomed. Still, the fear is that this dynamic could force companies into an otherwise avoidable collapse - or at least interfere with a restructuring. It's fodder for those who want to ban credit-default swaps, or at least want creditors who hedge with them to have restricted voting rights.
And despite the group's conclusion, credit derivatives clearly do in practice sometimes gum things up when companies are trying to negotiate out-of-court restructurings. Some of these debt revampings, as well as outright bankruptcies, can lead to payouts on credit-default swap contracts.
Whether that happens can depend on the terms of the restructuring, an interaction that has caused uncertainties in several recent cases, including a debt exchange carried out by Cemex, the Mexican cement giant. Wind Hellas, the Greek telecommunications company that recently entered a pre-packaged bankruptcy, said attempts to restructure its debt would have been complicated by the presence of credit default swap holders.
Companies need to bear this issue in mind when they draft credit agreements. But instead of playing down the issue, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association could help, too. The industry group has already missed a trick or two in the face of widespread criticism of derivatives trading practices that go well beyond credit-default swap instruments. Rather than trying to defend everything about the industry, it should emphasize the useful features of derivatives markets while recognizing, and trying to address, their flaws.
This means making a concerted effort to find better ways to manage the difficulties posed by creditors who own credit-default swaps in restructurings. The extreme solution - draconian curbs on the voting rights of hedged investors - would not be workable. But a good first step could be full disclosure of which creditors are hedged with credit-default swaps before restructuring discussions begin. RICHARD BEALES and NEIL UNMACK
For more independent financial commentary and analysis, visit www.breakingviews.com.
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12) The Fate of California's Forests
By Mark Scaramella
December 21, 2009
http://www.counterpunch.com/scaramella12212009.html
In the beginning there was Union Lumber, which begat Georgia-Pacific and Boise-Cascade, which begat Louisiana-Pacific and Masonite and Jackson State Forest, and Georgia-Pacific begat Hawthorne Timber aka the Washington State Pension Fund), which begat Usal Forest and Salmon Creek and Big River and the Redwood Forest Foundation and the Conservation Fund and the Garcia Forest.
All these begattings were first begat when the old timber families who'd selectively managed California's huge Mendocino county forests with a view to perpetuity sold progressively cut-over timberlands to new groups of Wall Street investors who took what was left of the forests, cut up them up into new begattings with ever fewer trees and cashed in whatever was left.
There is now no logging to speak of and not a working general-purpose lumber mill in all of Mendocino County. A mighty industry has been destroyed.
Today's owners of the largest swathes of once-productive timberland are very rich individuals and entities, which can afford to sit on the land while they wait for the trees to grow back.
Forestry Advisor Greg Giusti summed up Mendocino County's forests for the December 1 Board of Supervisors meeting as full of "overstocked, young and undersized trees." In other words, lots of little trees years away from commercial value. Whether there will be an economy for a revived timber industry decades hence cannot, at this time, be assumed. If there is, it won't be anything like the economy that was, the economy that needed endless trees to build suburbs forever. That economy seems to be over.
Mendocino County's roughly quarter of a million acres of timberland isn't marketable these days because of changes, as disguised in Giusti's techno-speak, in "regulation, ownership, stand structure, global markets, and financial markets." Translation: the market for wood products is severely depressed because home building is at a near standstill and Mendo's remaining trees don't make very good lumber.
In 1989, Giusti said, there were about 12 billion board feet of marketable timber in Mendocino County, which was being over-logged at an average rate of nearly 600 million board feet per year. Now, although the standing timber volume has increased to about 20 billion board feet, the trees are mostly too small to harvest even if there was a market for them. In the last few years, timber harvests have been averaging only about 112 million board feet per year, and even less than that in the last two years.
Even if there were lots of big trees out there, most of Mendo's mills have been dismantled and sold for parts. Giusti said that if the timber market improves over the next few years-and he, for one, expects that it will-there will be major challenges to bringing lumber mills back. Not only has a lot of equipment left the County so have the skilled loggers and mill workers needed to make the industry go.
Of course, something like this state of affairs was predicted by the County's early forest practice critics like Ron Guenther, Helen Libeu, Chris and Stephanie Tebbutt, the late Hans Burkhardt, and many others. These critics were challenging corporate cut and run policies long before the self-mythologizing "activists" of Earth First! came along to serve as the perfect foils for corporate timber's final mop-up ops.
The early critics, the Guenther-ites we can call them, said that the timber harvest rate was essentially cutting local workers out of their jobs as corporate predators like L-P's Harry "We want it all-now" Merlo and Pacific Lumber's Charles "He who has the gold rules" Hurwitz, both of these gentlemen with solid ties to the Northcoast's and even the national political structure, converted Mendocino County's forests to quick but irreplaceable cash. Merlo's Louisiana-Pacific was joined at the hip to congressman Doug Bosco and assemblyperson Dan Hauser while Hurwitz did high finance deals with Senator Diane Feinstein's financier husband, Richard Blum.) Mendocino County's woods and millworkers, and the County's old gyppo families, soon found themselves caught between trust fund activists clustered around Earth First! who'd suddenly presented themselves as timber experts and a corporate apparatus with direct connections to the most powerful politicians in the country.
Local loggers never had a chance, and the early local critics of corporate timber practices, the Guenther-ites, who were honestly trying to save the industry from itself, were shoved aside by flamboyant characters like Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari.
But "I told you so" rings a little hollow in timber and environmental circles these days. As one enviro said a few years ago when L-P was in the "run" stage of "cut and run," "The trees are gone. What do you want me to do about it?"
Even long-time timber apologist and current Board of Supervisors Chairman Cowboy John Pinches admitted, "No doubt we were cutting too much timber in Mendacina County." Pinches also correctly pointed out that President Bill Clinton's NAFTA free trade agreement didn't help matters either because Canadian forests are producing timber at far less cost than can be done in the United States these days.
For the time being what forest work is being done is in the broad category of "restoration," said Giusti. "Most foresters and companies are relying on restoration work, fire prevention thinning, road improvements, etc. There's not much actual tree cutting going on."
"The timber industry will never be what it was," added Giusti, which will be good news to anyone interested in long-term jobs and working forests. "It has changed. Big private owners like Mendocino Redwoods will be the backbone of whatever comes back. Half of the timberland in Mendocino County is owned by non-industrial owners who have long-term plans, and are doing active forest management. We will not see the aggressive cutting of the past. We will still have a dynamic timber economy, but it will be based on different principles."
This dynamism, however, is years away if not mythical.
The County's dormant Forest Council a subcommittee of the Board of Supervisors) hasn't met for years because the biggest timberland owners are operating under what Giusti called "Option A" forest plans, a sub-variant of Sustained Yield Plans which allow the companies to keep their inventory and harvest data proprietary. There hasn't been much for the Forest Council to discuss. Supervisor Pinches, having conceded the corporate overcut, couldn't resist taking one last shot at the hippies, er, environmentalists, as if they were sitting at Harry Merlo's elbow while L-P destroyed Mendocino County's timber economy.
"The people who were here 15 years ago saying how we don't want to cut a tree, where are they today? Where are they helping us with... well, if the timber industry... if we don't cut a tree, it goes away, we'll replace it with other things in this county. We haven't. You know, we've replaced it with the drug business! That's what we've replaced it with. I hope everybody's happy!"
No John. Everybody's not happy. If the supervisors had had the political courage to crack down on the timber corporations when they should have cracked down like the wine industry needs to be regulated now before it exhausts local rivers and streams, collapses of its own weight and disappears) it still wouldn't have stopped Harry Merlo from bringing Pavarotti to Portland to sing for L-P's board of untrustworthy trustees, spectacles directly funded by the cashed-in forests of Mendocino County. The timber industry disappeared into the same place as the rest of the economy-wretched, ruinous excess.
Everyone knew that timber companies were overcutting and would leave the woods badly damaged and depleted. The drug cartels only moved into the forests because marijuana has become the most valuable commodity the forests currently produce because dope prices are kept artificially but lucratively high by the lost War On Drugs. The hippies, finally, were only bit players in a much larger drama.
Mark Scaramella is the Managing Editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser in Mendocino County, California.
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13) Military Doublespeak
by Laurence M. Vance
November 19, 2009
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance188.html
In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government had three slogans emblazoned on The Ministry of Truth building: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. True, the dystopian society depicted by Orwell existed only in his mind. Yet, the doublespeak that existed in that made-up society has increasingly been adopted by governments - our government.
It is a tragic thing that the U.S. government employs doublespeak to deceive the American people; it is even more tragic that most Americans accept government doublespeak as the gospel truth.
There is no greater instance of government doublespeak than when it comes to the military. Here are some examples:
* Serving in the military: getting money for college from the taxpayers.
* Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan: occupying a sovereign country.
* The global war on terrorism: a cash machine for privileged government contractors.
* Conscription: slavery.
* Stop-loss policy: backdoor draft.
* Dress blues: government-issued costume.
* Troop surge: escalation of a war we are losing.
* Flying sorties: bombing civilians and their property.
* Stationed overseas: helping to maintain the U.S. global empire of troops and bases.
* Enhanced interrogation techniques: torture by the United States.
* Extraordinary rendition: U.S. sanctioned torture by other countries.
* Fighting terrorism: making terrorists.
* Fighting our enemies: making more enemies.
* Defending our freedoms: destroying our freedoms.
* Insurgents: foreigners who resent having their country invaded or occupied.
* Sanctions: killing children without bombs and bullets.
* Military chaplain: trying to serve two masters.
* Military appreciation service: idolatry.
* Praying "God bless our troops": blasphemy.
* Supporting the troops: supporting foreign invasions and occupations.
* Precision bombing: civilian killer.
* Cluster bomb: child civilian killer.
* Land mine: American IED.
* Terrorist: someone who plants a bomb that doesn't wear an Air Force uniform.
* Enemies of the United States: countries that oppose U.S. hegemony.
* Enemy combatant: someone turned over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan by someone eager to collect a bounty.
* Axis of evil: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government doesn't like.
* Allies: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government likes.
* Anti-Semite: someone who opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
* Military recruiter: pimp for duped young men who want to sell their services to the government.
* Bomber pilot: long-distance killer.
* Persistent conflict: perpetual warfare.
* U.S. interests: an excuse to police the world.
* U.S. foreign policy: imperialism.
* National security: national police state.
* Collateral damage: the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American bullets and bombs.
* Die for our freedoms: die for a lie.
* War hawk: warmonger.
* Regime change: meddling in the affairs of other countries.
* Congressional supporters of large military budgets: pimps to hook up government and defense contractors.
* Military spokesman: military propagandist.
* Commander in chief: the chief war criminal.
I'm sure there are other words and terms that have been or will be devised or brought to bear to justify the actions of the U.S. military. Reject them, and denounce them for what they are: military doublespeak.
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14) Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent
Ian Black, Middle East editor
The Guardian
21 December 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs
Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families - a practice it said ended in the 1990s - it emerged at the weekend.
The admission, by the former head of the country's forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs - a charge that Israel denied and called "antisemitic".
The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran's state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.
Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP, said the report incriminated the Israeli army.
The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic who released it because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet.
Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.
The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."
Hiss said: "We started to harvest corneas ... whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."
However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs. The interview with Hiss was released by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who had conducted a study of Abu Kabir.
She was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected, she felt the interview must be made public, because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, [is] something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."
Israel demanded that Sweden condemn the Aftonbladet article, calling it an antisemitic "blood libel". Stockholm refused, saying that to so would violate freedom of speech in the country. The foreign minister then cancelled a visit to Israel, just as Sweden was taking over the EU's rotating presidency.
Hiss was removed from his post in 2004, when some details about organ harvesting were first reported, but he still works at the forensic institute.
Israel's health ministry said all harvesting was now done with permission. "The guidelines at that time were not clear," it said in a statement to Channel 2. "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."
" This article was amended on 21 December 2009. The headline was changed as it did not reflect accurately the contents of the story. Nancy Scheper-Hughes's name was misspelled as Nancy Sheppard-Hughes in the original text.
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15) Productivity Rises as Workers do More with Less
"Employee output per hour rises 8.1% in the third quarter, the largest gain since 2003. But with people working harder in hopes of keeping their jobs, employers have less incentive to hire again."
By Alana Semuels
December 20, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fi-productivity20-2009dec20,0,2644678,full.story
When her Irvine office began laying off workers in a lousy economy, Deborah Haas did what every employee fearful of being the next one booted is doing these days: She got busy.
An executive assistant to the head of a furniture company, she became the receptionist, event planner, marketing assistant and office manager. When the catering budget got whacked, she threw on an apron and started whipping up chile lime crab cocktails and carne asada skewers for sales events.
Workers like her are fueling a surge of productivity in the U.S. economy. Employee output per hour jumped 8.1% in the third quarter this year, the largest gain since the third quarter of 2003.
But these bustling laborers are also a big reason why companies won't be rushing to hire new staffers any time soon. The brutal downturn has forced firms across the economy to do more with fewer hands; many have found they can manage just fine for the time being.
As for their workers?
"I've taken on more than I would have, and it makes me tired and stressed," said Haas, 40, of Long Beach.
The nation's unemployed aren't the only ones struggling in a sluggish economy. For those still on the job, life is no picnic either.
Many U.S. workers are being pushed to toil harder and shoulder the load once carried by colleagues who've since been laid off. That can mean long days without overtime pay or raises, less family time, and more mental and physical fatigue.
Don't like it? Walk out the door and you'll join 15 million unemployed Americans, the largest segment of whom have been idle for more than three months. Your former boss will have plenty of replacements to choose from. There are about six job seekers for every opening.
The workload for many survivors is likely to mount in coming months. As business cycles accelerate, companies get busier, but employers are typically reluctant to add staff until they're convinced the good times will last.
"In a recession, the employees that are left find there are demands placed upon them to work more efficiently, work harder and work more hours," said Ross DeVol, director of regional economics at the Milken Institute.
Haas said she's exhausted when she gets home at night and has less energy for her son, Morgan, 2. Still, her skill set has blossomed over the last year, making her even more valuable to her employer -- she hopes. She can't shake the feeling that no position is ever guaranteed.
"Even though I work for a great company, it might not be there one day," she said. "You can never be 100% sure."
Her situation is a case study of what happens to the workforce during a recession, said Nelson Lichtenstein, an economist and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara.
"There's the phenomenon of people literally working harder, because they're fearful of losing their jobs," he said. "Rumors of layoffs are flying, so everyone works really hard."
That can have lasting effects, he said, especially among the ranks of nonunion professionals. As they begin to work longer hours for the same pay, informal norms are created, Lichtenstein said, and they become accustomed to working 10- or 12-hour days in place of eight-hour shifts.
Such workers would seem likely to welcome approaches from unions to gain bargaining power with their employers. In fact, he said, it's just the opposite. Wage and benefit rollbacks are common during recessions. This year General Motors and Chrysler, for example, were able to renegotiate many of their union obligations after they toppled into bankruptcy.
"It makes it more difficult for unions to organize because people are grateful to have any job," Lichtenstein said.
Employers said that tough times call for tough measures to ensure that enterprises survive to hire another day. Wayne Lee, the chief financial officer for Carson sporting goods company National Ventures, laid off two employees last year -- 10% of the firm's 22-member staff.
The company spread their tasks among remaining employees, some of whom learned to use software to speed order processing. All warehouse laborers were trained to use a forklift so that National Ventures could ship goods faster.
Lee admits that all his workers are hustling like never before -- he said he's squeezing as much as 20% more work out of some of them. But he said that their willingness to step up in a crisis mitigated the need for deeper job cuts. And when the economy picks up and profits rebound, he said, those that are doing more will probably get a raise.
"They're not too stressed about losing their jobs, they're just more stressed at the pace they have to accomplish their tasks," he said.
The jump in U.S. productivity is stronger than in many past recoveries, said Thomas A. Kochan, a professor of management at MIT's Sloan School of Management. That's good news for the U.S. economy, one of the most industrious in the world, since productivity is key to rising living standards.
But he said these gains are troubling too, since so far they haven't been accompanied by wage increases. Profits are still depressed in many industries, while expenses such as healthcare continue to soar. That's limiting the ability of employers to boost worker pay. Only about 12% of the U.S. labor force is unionized, according to the most recent figures, giving workers little clout. The threat of outsourcing has also made employees more reluctant to press for higher wages, he said, when they know that if they push too hard, their jobs could disappear.
Anxiety is rippling across the workplace. A survey by CareerBuilder released last month indicated that a quarter of employers rated their employees' morale as low. Nearly half of employees said their workload had increased in the last six months, and 40% said their stress level at work was high. About one in five workers surveyed were dissatisfied with their work-life balance.
"People are being asked to work more, and that stress is pretty amazing," said Julie Cohen, a Los Angeles therapist. "Even though they have their jobs, they're worried every minute that they're going to lose them."
Workplace stress can cause irritability, depression, heart palpitations and family problems, Cohen said. About half of the employed patients coming into her practice complain of bigger workloads and deteriorating personal lives.
Some economists expect that extra burdens at work will subside once companies, sure that a recovery is underway, start hiring again. Firms competing for the best talent will have to raise wages, sweeten benefits and allow workers more time to spend with their families.
Other say maybe not. U.S. employers will be looking to maintain the efficiencies and productivity they created during the recession, said Ken Moore, a professor of strategic management at the School of Business at the State University of New York-Albany. Leaner, meaner and faster could be the new normal.
"As companies try to remain in business by at least breaking even, they have to change a lot," he said. "Some of that has to come with the people themselves."
Workers such as Katje Lehrman could be bearing heavier workloads for years to come. Thanks in large part to state budget cuts, the Los Angeles Unified kindergarten teacher has 25 students in her classroom this year, up from 20 last year. That means more hours of grading, scoring report cards, meeting with parents and preparing materials.
When she leaves work at 5 p.m., the school's parking lot is filled with the cars of teachers still hard at it, she said. Though they're paid to work six hours a day, teachers often end up working many more without compensation, Lehrman said.
"We're finding that we're all stressed out," she said.
Already, Lehrman gets home from work, feeds her dogs and collapses on the couch, many times falling asleep within the hour. But budget cuts may exacerbate the situation: The district is asking teachers to take a pay cut next year.
alana.semuels@latimes.com
Copyright c) 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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16) US-backed raid killed 49 Yemeni civilians, officials said
Paul Woodward,
Online Correspondent
December 21. 2009 10:04AM UAE / December 21. 2009 6:04AM GMT
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091221/GLOBALBRIEFING/912219995/1009/FOREIGN?template=globalbriefing
Following a military operation in Yemen targeting suspected al Qa'eda militants, a local official said on Sunday that 49 civilians, among them 23 children and 17 women, were killed in air strikes which he said were carried out "indiscriminately," Agence France Presse reported.__Earlier it had been reported by ABC News that on orders from the US President Barack Obama, the US military had launched cruise missiles in the attacks.__The National said that thousands of people took to the streets of southern Yemen on Saturday to denounce the military action and ensuing deaths of innocent civilians._"
According to local sources, about 3,000 people in Dhal'e province and hundreds in Lahj and Abyan provinces condemned the military operation. Angry protesters shouted anti-government slogans and demanded an investigation into the attack."__
The New York Times said: "The Yemeni government has long struggled to exert authority in remote and mountainous areas like Abyan, a known refuge for militants and one of several provinces where al Qa'eda is believed to operate with relative impunity. Although Yemen has built effective elite counterterrorism squads in recent years with American assistance, the country is desperately poor, with shrinking oil reserves. Powerful tribes also limit the state's control._"
Yemen is also facing other security threats, including an armed rebellion in the north, where fighting has flared up in recent months and Saudi forces have become involved. A secessionist movement in the south has grown worse in the past year, and some of its leaders are based in Abyan, not far from where the airstrikes took place Thursday.
There is no indication that the various insurgents targeting Yemen's government are cooperating, but the concurrent crises have weakened the state's ability to react.__"In recent months, American officials have shown increasing concern about al Qa'eda's growing presence in Yemen. A number of Saudi militants - including former Guantanamo Bay detainees - have joined the group's Yemeni branch after fleeing Saudi Arabia, which has cracked down hard on Islamist radicals. American officials have said they believe that other militants may be fleeing Pakistan and Afghanistan to the relative safety of Yemen, with its weak central government and mountainous geography."__
AFP said: "The local official from the Al-Mahfed region, which includes the village of Al-Maajala where the strike took place, on Sunday confirmed civilian deaths.__" 'The raid was carried out indiscriminately and killed 49 civilians, including 23 children and 17 women,' said the official, who did not wish to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.__"A tribal leader from the Al-Kazam tribe too confirmed civilian deaths.__" 'In total, 49 civilians were killed,' he told AFP. "Al Qa'eda has chosen to build its training centre on land where bedouin nomads pitch their tents, and the government forces believe the nomads harbour al Qa'eda forces,' said the leader, also speaking on condition of anonymity."__
US officials speaking to The New York Times confirmed that the United States provided firepower, intelligence and other support to the government of Yemen as it carried out raids.__"Reluctance among administration officials to comment on whether American forces had launched missiles into Yemen appeared to reflect a desire to make clear that the Yemeni government was in the lead in counterterrorism operations within its borders.
There is a great reluctance among leaders of many Muslim nations to have any cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations made known. American officials said some of the strikes against suspected terrorist camps in Yemen earlier in the week were carried out solely by local forces._"
American officials said this past summer that they were seeing the first evidence that dozens of fighters with al Qa'eda, and a small handful of the terrorist group's leaders, were moving to Somalia and Yemen from Pakistan. In communications that were being monitored at the Pentagon, the White House and the CIA, the terrorist groups in all three locations had begun communicating more frequently, and apparently trying to coordinate their actions, the officials said."__
Reporting for The Christian Science Monitor from Sanaa, Laura Kasinof said: "Yemen's central government has been severely tested in the past year by multiple domestic crises, as well as an acute economic downturn. There's a war raging in the north that has recently spilled into Saudi Arabia, a secessionist movement in the south with alleged ties to the local branch of al Qa'eda, and 35 per cent of Yemen's population is living on less than $1 a day.
The central government has little control beyond the outskirts of Yemen's major cities - areas where tribal sheikhs traditionally wield the most power. Foreign Policy magazine recently ranked Yemen 18th of 177 countries in its 2009 Failed States Index, commenting dryly that 'refugees and extremists were perhaps Yemen's most noteworthy imports in 2008.'__"However, one US-educated Yemeni government official has created a 10-step plan that aims to reverse the trajectory of this Arab nation over the next two years. Commended by President Obama but characterised as superficial by some Yemenis, it focuses on increasing the the government's legitimacy by weeding out corruption and enhancing competence within government ranks.__" 'The cause of the majority of the problems facing Yemen today is the low level of services provided by the Yemeni government,' says Jalal Yaqoub, deputy minister of finance and the plan's author, during an interview. 'If you think the government is weak then you will take advantage of it, but if you see that the government is strong then you will think twice.'"__
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported: "The government of Yemen on Saturday took custody of six detainees formerly held for years without trial at the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a senior Obama administration official and others involved in the process.__"The transfers, which followed the repatriation of another Yemeni detainee in September, represent a test run for a policy that the administration hopes could eventually make possible a sharp reduction in the population at the prison, which President Obama is trying to close.__"About 91 Yemenis remain at the facility, making up the largest bloc of the population of about 200 detainees. Though 14 Yemenis were repatriated from Guantanamo during the Bush administration, concerns about the Yemeni government's ability and commitment in fighting al Qa'eda, which has long found a haven in that nation, has made officials reluctant to repatriate Yemenis in large numbers."
pwoodward@thenational.ae
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17) US forces mounted secret Pakistan raids in hunt for al-Qaida
Former Nato officer reveals secret night operations in border region which America kept quiet
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 December 2009 21.18 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/us-forces-secret-pakistan-raids
American special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan's tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region where Washington is pressing to expand its drone assassination programme.
A former Nato officer said the incursions, only one of which has been previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008, involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers stealing across the border at night, and were never declared to the Pakistani government.
"The Pakistanis were kept entirely in the dark about it. It was one of those things we wouldn't confirm officially with them," said the source, who had detailed knowledge of the operations.
Such operations are a matter of sensitivity in Pakistan. While public opinion has grudgingly tolerated CIA-led drone strikes in the tribal areas, any hint of American "boots on the ground" is greeted with virulent condemnation.
After the only publicly acknowledged special forces raid in September 2008, Pakistan's foreign office condemned it as "a grave provocation" while the military threatened retaliatory action.
The military source said that was the fourth raid of previous years. Two of the others targeted Taliban and al-Qaida "high-value targets" near the border, while the third was to rescue a crashed Predator drone. He said that one of the capture raids succeeded, the other failed and the US sent elite soldiers to the downed Predator because they did not trust Pakistani forces. "People were afraid they would take the parts and reverse- engineer its components," he said.
The secretive nature of the raids underscores the suspicious nature of the relationship between the two allies as they argue about Washington's latest demands.
Disrupting the Taliban safe haven inside Pakistan is the unspoken part of Barack Obama's "surge" announced this month. Although 30,000 troops will be deployed toAfghanistan by next summer, the Taliban and al-Qaida leadership is believed to be sheltering on the Pakistani side of the 1,600-mile border.
In recent weeks Washington has sent a stream of senior officials to Islamabad seeking Pakistani action on at least two fronts: attacks on Sirajuddin Haqqani, a warlord with strong al-Qaida ties based in North Waziristan, and an expansion of the CIA-led drone strikes into the western province of Balochistan.
"This is crunch time," said a senior Pakistani official. "The tone of the Obama administration is growing more ominous. The message is 'you do it, or we will'."
In a recent New York Times article titled Take the war to Pakistan, Seth Jones, a senior civilian adviser to America's special forces commander in Afghanistan, said the Afghan war was "run and organised out of Balochistan" by the Quetta shura, a 15-man war council led by the Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "Virtually all significant meetings of the Taliban take place in that province, and many of the group's senior leaders and military commanders are based there," he said.
The US demands have drawn an angry reaction from Pakistan's military. A senior official with the ISI, Pakistan's premier spy agency, said it was hunting the Taliban in Balochistan, citing 60 joint operations between the CIA and ISI in the province over the past year. "They are going in for kills, they are apprehending people. CIA and ISI operatives depend on each other for their lives in these operations," he said. The official, who spoke anonymously but with official sanction, said Pakistan's military were overstretched. "We can't fight everywhere at once," he said. Since October the army has been at war in South Waziristan, stronghold of the "Pakistani Taliban" whose suicide bombers have killed more than 500 people in cities over the past two months.
US generals say the army is playing a "double game", turning a blind eye to "Afghan Taliban" sheltering in Balochistan because it considers them strategic assets as part of a wider gambit to check Indian influence in Afghanistan.
The ISI official denied such links and accused the US of "scapegoating" Pakistan for its own failures. "During the past year there has been zilch actionable intelligence about the Quetta shura or Haqqani," he said. "If they are so sure Mullah Omar is in Quetta or Karachi, why don't they tell us where he is?"
The CIA declined to comment. "We don't as a rule comment on the agency's relationship with foreign partners or on reports of our operational activities," it said.
The aggressive American approach to Balochistan contrasts with the low-key British tone, despite the fact Balochistan lies across the border from Helmand, where 9,000 British troops are fighting the Taliban.
A British official said the government was reluctant to publicly criticise Pakistan for fear of endangering the relationship between MI6 and ISI in tracking suspected extremists moving between Britain and Pakistan. "That's our priority. It's a matter of national security," he said.
But SAS soldiers have been active in the province. The former Nato officer said SAS units were active in Balochistan in 2002, 2003 and possibly beyond, attacking drug traffickers. "It was of strategic concern to the UK at the time," he said. Until now the US has heeded Pakistani objections to drone strikes in Balochistan. But that could change, if troop casualties mount, a former senior US official warned. "We could get tired and say 'you know what, we are sending in Predators to take out Mullah Omar and his gang in Quetta'. And then we'll see what happens."
* guardian.co.uk c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
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18) A Who Done It
The Medicare Murder Mystery
By MARY LYNN CRAMER
December 21, 2009
http://www.counterpunch.com/cramer12212009.html
"It was a cold and snowy night in December 2008, when the insurance company Executive Officer sat alone in his brightly lit office suite. He himself was all a glow with warm fuzzy feelings as he composed a memo to his staff advising them of his planned absences from corporate headquarters over the next several months. None other than the President-elect of the United States had personally called and invited him to Washington DC to help design a new health care reform policy. Yes, he'd be spending a lot of time in his new office at the nation's capitol-several days or weeks a month. Of course, he would be one of several other CEOs from the largest health insurance corporations in the nation also working on the reform plan. But tonight, he needed to compose a staff memorandum stressing the importance of his role in advising the new President during these times of economic instability. A brief memo that would assure his staff, yet impress them with the significance of his mission on behalf of their corporation and the entire insurance industry." Fiction or Fact?
Listening to the President predict the threatening consequences citizens and corporations alike will suffer if Congress failed to pass his health reform bill, my Swedish grandmother would have simply chuckled and called him a "cheerful liar." That was her light-hearted response to a wide-range of what she recognized as comical attempts to excuse or blame others for the inevitable outcome of one's own self-interested and manipulative behavior. The label applied to her grandchildren and politicians alike. I don't have her sweet sense of humor. And, unfortunately, I was driving down a busy street listening to the car radio on a rainy December night in 2009, when I heard Obama's stern warning "If we don't get this done, your premiums are guaranteed to go up." My immediate response was short of "road rage", but definitely more heated than grandma's would have been. I was yelling: "Going to go up!? You know damn well the deal was made months ago to raise my monthly premiums over 50%!"
The President's artful pretense at grave sincerity is all the more infuriating because of his obvious success at conning those liberals who want desperately to believe he is "The Change we have been waiting for." With all the evidence before them--months of presidential and congressional assurances that the health insurance makeover would be "deficit neutral," thanks in large part to an unquestioned, undebatable $500 billion cut in funding for "wasteful" Medicare Advantage programs; plus the fact that low-income seniors had already received in November 2009 notice of increases in their 2010 Medicare Advantage plan premiums as high as 52%-progressive organizations supposedly dedicated to advocating for seniors and single-payer, cannot believe that their Obamessiah could have possibly double-crossed them. Attempts to engage these indefatigable cheerleaders in rational conversation about the already implemented detrimental "facts on the ground" are, in my experience, useless. Their cheerfully defensive replies are naively similar: "The bill hasn't even been finalized or passed. How do you know that the 52% increase in your premium has anything to do with reforms that won't even go into effect until 2013?" This, together with enthusiastic invitations to join them in fighting for Single-Payer and Medicare-For-All-"We'll never give up!"-make one wonder how they avoid dealing with daily reality. See "Progressives Abet Obama-Fraud" and "Health Reform and the Skinning of Seniors")
It never fails to frustrate and amaze me how belief systems can wipe out any rational or material evidence to the contrary. Barack has brought us "HOPE." And damn it, we are not going to let go of "HOPE" no matter what! Barack says the $500 billion decrease in federal funding to Medicare Advantage plans is only to cut "waste" and "fraud." So the fact that the Report to Congress: Medicare Payment Policy March 2009) states repeatedly that Medicare Advantage HMOs provide higher quality services more efficiently, and at lower cost than Original FFS Medicare can and less expensively than Fee-For-Service Medicare could even if it provided the much more comprehensive services of a Medicare Advantage HMO) means nothing to those with "HOPE."
Obama says that Medicare Advantage costs the government 14% more than services under Original FFS Medicare. So, even if the Report to Congress makes it clear that it is not the efficient Medicare Advantage HMO, but the other three more expensive Medicare Advantage plans PPFS, PPO, SNF), that account for the 14% higher cost, let's stick it to the low-income elderly on Medicare Advantage HMO plans. HMOs are traditional health maintenance organizations; PPFS are private fee-for-service plans like traditional Medicare allowing one to see any physician who accepts the plan; PPOs are loosely structured preferred provider organizations; SNPs are special needs plans serving those eligible for Medicaid, who are institutionalized or have severe chronic, disabling conditions.)
While Medicare Advantage providers are already raising their HMO monthly premiums, drug charges, and co-payments through the roof, many of them are also closing down the more costly PPFS and PPO plans the "14%" overcharge sinners), leaving seniors enrolled in those programs scrambling to find a new source of insurance, or to enroll in the hugely inadequate Original Medicare before the December 31, 2009 enrollment deadline. Of course, none of this was preplanned or could have been foreseen.
What is missing in the ideology of Hope, is any understanding, it seems, of how private enterprise works. Even if a large corporation thought it might be faced with enormous loses in income within a couple of years, they would not wait until doomsday to take strong measures to insure their ongoing profitability. Yes, cut costs and increase prices of essential "products" whenever/wherever possible, ASAP. However, the politics behind the economic decisions in this case are not so textbook clean and practical. In spite of the fact that those of faith cannot believe their Man of Change could have been involved in any backroom horse trading, there is plenty of proof that that is the case. For those of us who have just been notified of unanticipated and outrageous increases in 2010 premium, drug and co-pay costs, it seems obvious that short-term losses on Medicare Advantage plans--in exchange for enormous profits guaranteed by mandated private health insurance purchases for every citizen-were agreed to before a health insurance reform bill had been debated or passed. However, if any of the leadership of those progressive organizations purporting to advocate for seniors were interested in obtaining more evidence of that fact, it is easily available.
They could begin by simply calling the Customer Service Department of their personal Medicare Advantage HMO and ask them why premiums have shot up overnight, along with the big increases in the cost of drugs, and additional co-pays. I have noticed that the leadership of these organizations tend to appear too young and/or too affluent to be on a Medicare Advantage HMO plan, but they could have one of their legitimate elderly, low-income members call their Medicare Advantage HMO plan. When I did that, I was able to obtain quite a lot of information.
Some of that readily available information might cause even a true believer to think about what deals had already been made, and what is really being "debated" in Congress. For example, when I made a call to a Medicare Advantage HMO Customer Service Department, I was informed that the CEO had sent round a memo to his staff one year ago, in DECEMBER 2008, that he had been invited by President-elect Barack Obama to consult with him regarding health insurance reform. He also let staff know that, for the next several months, he would be dividing his time between the home office and a new office he would have in Washington DC while he worked with President Obama and CEOs from other large health insurance corporations to address new health care overhaul possibilities.
After some months of apparently successful discussions and decision-making, said CEO returned to the home office with instructions for his staff on how implementation of big changes for elderly "members" enrolled in the Medicare Advantage HMO plans would be handled. Subsequently, elderly "members" sometimes called "beneficiaries") received letters letting us know that we were going to pay through the nose for the bargains made in D.C. However, those letters did not offer us any explanation. The insurance company staff, on the other hand, was given an explanation for why drastic increases in premiums, drug costs, and additional co-pays were now necessary. They were told that federal funding of Medicare Advantage plans was to be cut by hundreds of billions of dollars. What? But there wasn't even a bill being debated yet!) And, that the government had reduced payments to Medicare Advantage HMO plans by $40 per person per month. Costs to the corporation will increase by another $40 per person per month, amounting to a loss for the insurance company of $80 per person per month. Some of this enormous loss in income would have to be made up for by large increases in premiums for the low-income elderly enrolled in those plans, along with additional increases in what seniors pay for drugs and co-pays. The remaining shortfall would be "absorbed" by the corporation, and by the medical groups of physicians and hospitals that contract to provide services under the HMO plan.
This was the first time in five years this Medicare Advantage HMO had been forced to raise premiums and drop plans I was told. Staff can't keep up with the number of calls they are getting. Besides "members" own desperate concerns, they are relating horror stories about friends and relatives across the country losing their plans, or premiums and other costs skyrocketing. And this is only the beginning. Further cuts in government funding are anticipated once the health reform bill is actually passed.
Both Republicans and Democrats have consistently been in agreement with the $500 billion cut in funds for Medicare Advantage programs. They have never seriously questioned, or publicly debated that decision. See my previous article "Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors" www.counterpunch.org/cramer11242009.html). If you don't understand the consensus around this issue, then you really do not understand the purpose of the health insurance makeover bill now being debated. Were you also listening to the President's promises and dire warnings broadcast to the nation as he stood surrounded by Senate Democratic leaders? He said:
"This plan will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of that program. And because it gets rid of the waste and inefficiencies in our health care system, this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in over a decade....
"These aren't small changes. These are big changes. They represent the most significant reform of our health care system since the passage of Medicare. They will save money. They will save families money. They will save businesses money, and they will save government money. And they're going to save lives....
"The stakes are enormous for businesses, who are already seeing their premiums go up 15, 20, 30 percent. You know, a lot of the critics of this entire process fail to note what happens if nothing gets done, and the American people have to be very clear about this. If we don't get this done, your premiums are guaranteed to go up. If this does not get done, more employers are going to drop coverage because they can't afford it. If this does not get done, it is guaranteed that Medicare and Medicaid will blow a hole through our budget..." AP 12/15/09)
So Medicare is the culprit. Cuts in Medicare will be our salvation. Failure to stop the wasteful spending in Medicare will defeat the entire plan. And "stakes are enormous for businesses!" Big Businesses, not the poor and elderly citizens, are suffering from higher premiums already increased as much as 15% - 30%!
This attempt to make low-income elderly and their "wasteful" Medicare Advantage programs the butt of demands for health care overhaul has been the focus of a disinformation campaign from the beginning. Early arguments purporting to analyze "Medicare Advantage overpayments," play greedy, aging elders against all other groups competing for scarce medical resources: elderly vs. those under 65, and the "50 million [young] uninsured people," and the underpaid physicians, not to mention those needy insurance companies the Prez said are suffering from high premiums!). While agreeing on the need to cut funding to Medicare Advantage plans, representatives for the largest private health insurance companies e.g. AARP) have also wanted to extend Medicare coverage to 50 - 65 year olds. Private insurers also, from the get-go, have promoted the idea that requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance would solve the scarce resources problem. Drug companies early on proposed covering the uninsured by expanding Medicaid, and have supported federal subsidies for the middle-class. AP, 6/1/09 "Health Overhaul Draws Group's Competing Demands.") It is clear who has to bite the bullet here. As one reader wrote me, it is time for low-income seniors to "sacrifice" and "share" their benefits.
In this strategy of "divide and conquer," pitting the elderly against "minorities" is another underhanded tactic as if minorities are not part of the elderly population enrolled in Medicare Advantage HMO plans). Early in the game the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities CBPP) raised the issue in their 2/20/09) publication entitled "Curbing Medicare Advantage Overpayments Could Benefit Millions of Low-income and Minority Americans." They think that cuts in funding to Medicare Advantage plans is the solution to financing universal coverage that would include affordable health care for "more than 25 million Americans belonging to minority groups" who lack insurance. The CBPP repeats the same misleading arguments about services under Medicare Advantage costing more, on average, than the same services under traditional Medicare.
Dear goddess, if traditional Medicare were comparable to Medicare Advantage coverage, why would anyone want anything but traditional Medicare? The fact that traditional Medicare doesn't even cover annual physicals, eye exams, hearing exams, eye glasses, etc.; and requires deductibles, and additional payments of 20% - 50% of physicians' charges-and therefore would cost me far more per month than my Medicare Advantage HMO premium prior to 2010!!), has been explained by me elsewhere and often in previous Counterpunch articles. That, together with the fact that when you "disaggregate" the data, it is crystal clear that Medicare Advantage HMO plans are more efficient and cost less than traditional Medicare for the same services. Again, see Report to Congress: Medicare Payment Policy of March 2009, cited in my previous Counterpunch article, "Health Reform and the Skinning of Seniors.")
The CBPP goes on to argue that most minorities are enrolled in Medicaid, not Medicare. Yes, if they are low-income, uninsured, disabled, and not eligible for Medicare, that is true. It is also true that that due to "disparities in income and employment," minorities are "less likely to have health insurance through jobs," low-wages making insurance unaffordable even if the employer offers it. But, how do you get from these facts to the conclusion that the only way to resolve competition over supposed scarce resources a/k/a 'the expense of extending coverage to minorities') requires stiffing low-income seniors on the least costly of all Medicare Advantage plans the HMO)? Well, of course, the only way the nation can afford the expense of extending coverage to uninsured minorities is to curb "excessive payments" to Medicare Advantage programs. I grew up in a country where racist thinking went largely unquestioned. I had no idea how quickly ageism would find a place in the Capitalist tool kit.
Many may think it sacrilege to criticize the work of the CPBB. Nevertheless, the ideological bias that plots the path to universal coverage benefiting minorities by way of destroying Medicare Advantage HMO plans for low-income elderly is undeniable. The CPBB does not appear to recognize that fighting over crumbs dropped by gluttonous billionaires is not the only framework within which to analyze possibilities for real universal health care coverage. Once you buy into a model based on existing limits of so-called scarce social resources, the circular reasoning goes on and on.
Another agency schooled in this same political perspective is the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission MedPAC), also based in Washington, D.C. MedPAC is an "independent Congressional agency" established in 1997 to advise Congress" on payments to private health plans participating in Medicare and providers in Medicare's traditional fee-for-service program." Carlos Zarabozo is a consultant, and Scott Harrison a policy analyst for MedPAC. An abstract of their paper "Payment Policy and the Growth of Medicare Advantage" appeared in "Health Affairs" on November 24, 2008. Again, not to beat this poor dead horse much more, they ignore the distinction made by the Report to Congress on Medicare spending, and regurgitate the well-chewed wisdom that Medicare Advantage plans, "on average" are paid "113% of what expenditures would have been under the traditional Medicare program." No mention of the fact that the data they base this statement on also shows that Medicare Advantage HMO plans cost 98% of what expenditures would be under the traditional Medicare program, according to MedPAC's own analysis!
They note that from 2003 to 2008 the number of "beneficiaries" enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans doubled. Medicare Advantage programs were created in 2003 as part of the Medicare Modernization Act. In that first year of existence, 5.3 million enrolled. By 2008 the number was 10 million enrolled. They admit that the more expensive plans PFFS) that allow enrollees to choose their own physicians, hospitals, and specialists have grown the fastest. And, apparently, on that basis they support "Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee" and his plan to "address overpayments to private insurers in the Medicare Advantage program." Wait a minute! What about my HMO plan that comes in at 2% under what the cost would have been under traditional Medicare? You know, the plan that millions of low-come elderly found not only affordable, but provided the more comprehensive, high-quality coverage. What is the rationale for killing that program? Well, actually, it has not yet been killed-just priced out of sight for most of us who were on it--due to its efficiency no doubt!
Remember, these arguments for taking hundreds of billions of dollars in funding away from insurance plans for low-income elderly were already being pushed as President-elect Obama began choosing his cabinet and advisors over a year ago. He subsequently became the most vocal proponent of paying for "deficit-neutral universal health care reform" by cutting $500 billion in funding to Medicare Advantage plans. On that point the President has never equivocated. It is has been the one means of paying for the enormous bailout of the insurance industry that Obama and Congress seem to agree on. By December 3, 2009, ABC News could announce that the manly men of the Democratic party had stood their ground and ripped off senior citizens without a shutter: "Unflinching on a critical first test, Senate Democrats closed ranks Thursday behind $460 billion in politically risky Medicare cuts at the heart of health care legislation, thwarting a Republican attempt to doom President Barack Obama's sweeping overhaul."
David Espo, AP Special Correspondent "Health Bill Survives First Big Test-On Medicare" 12/2/09)), reported "The bid by the bill's critics to reverse cuts to the popular Medicare program failed on a vote of 58 - 42, drawing the support of two Democratic defectors. Approval would have stripped out money needed to pay for expanding coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans." So there, take that you greedy, racist low-income elderly!
The Senatorial Terminators had AARP covering their backs: "The AARP supported the 10-year package of cuts in projected spending, giving Democrats political cover for their decision to pare back subsidies to private Medicare plans as well as payments to hospitals, hospices, home health agencies and other providers." And, of course, there was Sen. Baucus assuring us that "Our bill does nothing to reduce guaranteed Medicare benefits." He should have added, "as long as you can afford to pay for them, now that we are not going to fund them."
While the Dems insisted that no benefits would be cut and "its finances would be strengthened," I was looking at the letter I had received weeks earlier advising me of the 52% increase in my Medicare premiums.
If you want the "inside dope" on who done it, I strongly urge you to check it out for yourself. Call your Medicare Advantage HMO and ask them. But be nice. After all, they are just workers following orders, doing their job. If you want to call someone to account, write the CEO and the members of Congress who misrepresented you.
Mary Lynn Cramer, MA, MSW, LICSW, a low-income senior enrolled in a Medicare Advantage HMO plan, has a background in the history of economic thought, and clinical social work. She can be reached at mllynn2@yahoo.com.
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18) Ohio Mom Calls Cops on Her Shoplifting 6-Year-Old
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/23/us/AP-US-Young-Shoplifter.html
Filed at 10:42 a.m. ET
COLUMBUS, Ohio AP) -- An Ohio woman is defending her decision to call police after she discovered her 6-year-old daughter had shoplifted a package of stickers.
Diane Lyons of the village of Carrollton in eastern Ohio says she wanted to teach her daughter a lesson early in life.
The 31-year-old Lyons was shopping at a drugstore Dec. 15 when another daughter told her that 6-year-old Shiane SHY'-ann) had taken the temporary-tattoo stickers.
Lyons asked a drugstore employee to call Carrollton police. A police report says Chief Ronald Yeager took the girl to the police station, where she was released to her mother.
Lyons says she thought briefly about claiming a $25 reward for identifying shoplifters but decided not to.
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19) Americans Without Work
Putting Jobs First
NYT Editorial
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/opinion/23wed1.ready.html?hp
The $154 billion jobs bill passed by the House last week will allow the 217 Democrats who voted for it to tell their constituents that they care about unemployment. But it's unlikely to do much else. The Senate will not address the issue until next year. By then, midterm election politics will be coming into full swing, with Democrats calling for more jobs and Republicans fanning voter fears about deficits.
The real challenge - for President Obama and for Congressional Democrats - is to not get bogged down in that debate but rather to make job creation the undisputed priority for 2010.
Right now, finding people work is a more urgent task than reducing the deficit. Indeed, deficits cannot be tamed without more jobs to generate more tax revenue. A government boost to job growth is also necessary to help replace the millions of jobs that have been lost in the recession.
Perhaps most important, without a revival in hiring, the economy itself - which appears to be recovering - could regress. A second contraction could be worse than the first, bringing a downward spiral of falling wages, falling prices and even higher unemployment. With interest rates at rock bottom and other market interventions already deployed, policy makers would have few weapons left.
The House bill has strong features. It would extend unemployment benefits, now set to expire in February, through June. It would also increase aid to states and local governments. These are the bedrocks of any jobs program because, by increasing demand, they help preserve and create jobs.
But with joblessness at record levels, unemployment benefits should be extended even further - to the end of the year. Similarly, the stimulus plan for the states should be extended well into 2011; otherwise, federal aid will dry up midway through most states' fiscal years, leaving them vulnerable to a relapse.
The House bill has other good provisions, including programs to spur small business lending and increase infrastructure spending. But what is most needed now is presidential leadership to get these and other job-creation programs enacted. Piecemeal measures - serial extensions of jobless benefits, for instance - are vital, but they are unlikely to inspire the enthusiasm and confidence necessary for a self-sustaining recovery to take hold.
Focusing on job creation does not mean playing down the deficit. President Obama must assure the nation - and its foreign lenders - that major legislative initiatives like health care reform will be credibly paid for and that Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy will not be extended beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010. And at some point, he will have to ask for new taxes and more spending restraint. But, for the moment, jobs come first.
Reconnecting Young People
The House's jobs bill is an honorable effort to increase jobs among construction workers, teachers, firefighters and other adults - hence its name, the Jobs for Main Street Act. But it is seriously deficient in one important respect. It does not do nearly enough to address the ominous shortfall of jobs among the young people who have been driven from the job market - and marginalized economically - in record numbers.
The problem is especially alarming in low-income, minority communities where the jobless rate for high school students is hovering near 90 percent.
The part-time jobs that were once a rite of passage began to disappear rapidly at the start of this decade. According to an analysis released this week by Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, employment rates among teenagers have dropped nearly four times faster than the rate among adults since 2000.
As a consequence, he says, men 65 and older - people old enough to be their grandfathers - are now more likely to find work than 16- to 19-year-olds.
According to the analysis, the joblessness rate for teenagers generally is the highest ever since the country began keeping statistics just after World War II. Things are especially bleak for low-income black students: only 4 in 100 found work this fall.
This is worrisome on several counts. First, young people who do not find work tend to become discouraged early on and stop trying. They fail to develop the work force skills that make them attractive to employers, which means that they are likely to remain unemployed or underemployed well into their adult years.
People who do not find work in their early years also have higher dropout rates and are more likely to commit crimes - meaning they are at higher risk of becoming permanent burdens to society.
Earlier this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank representing developed nations, urged the federal government to take steps to keep young people from dropping out of the job market. Most importantly, it called on federal officials to do a better job of reaching out to "disconnected youth" with training and support that helps them find work.
The House's jobs bill includes some commendable employment provisions for young people. But what's needed, Mr. Sum and others say, is a broader, coordinated stimulus plan that would reach disengaged inner-city teenagers who are increasingly being left out of the economy.
Given the risks of doing nothing, Congress would be wise to consider the idea.
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20) General Backs Off Court-Martial Threat for Pregnant Soldiers
By JIM DAO
December 22, 2009, 5:24 pm
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/general-backs-off-court-martial-threat-for-pregnant-soldiers/
It didn't take long. Just three days ago Stars and Stripes broke the story that the commander of United States forces in northern Iraq had threatened to court-martial military personnel under his command who became pregnant, or impregnated someone else. The order applied also to married couples who are deployed together.
But on Tuesday, the commander, Maj. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III, told ABC News that he would use only lesser, nonjudicial punishments to enforce the order. Courts-martial can lead to loss of all benefits and jail time.
"I see absolutely no circumstance where I would punish a female soldier by court-martial for a violation ... none," General Cucolo told ABC News.
General Cucolo, who commands 22,000 soldiers in northern Iraq, said that seven soldiers, four of them women, have been punished under his order, which was issued in early November. Those punishments mostly involved letters of reprimand.
Documents General Cucolo's order lists about 20 activities punishable by court-martial, including entering a mosque without orders, drinking alcohol or using illicit drugs, and photographing detainees.
But it was the prohibition on pregnancy that caused controversy, with critics saying it discriminated against women and could lead to hasty abortions.
Some legal experts and soldiers, however, said it seemed a reasonable way to prevent a depletion of the ranks. Typically, troops who become pregnant in a combat theater are sent home.
"I've got a mission to do, I'm given a finite number of soldiers with which to do it and I need every one of them," General Cucolo told the BBC in explaining the order.
The Pentagon itself put out a news story on Tuesday afternoon explaining the policy and the general's decision to avoid court martial for pregnancy.
Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said General Cucolo probably never intended to court-martial a pregnant soldier and just wanted the threat to discourage pregnancies.
"The question is, is it reasoanble?" Mr. Fidell said. "And I think it is. It's at the intersection between personal autonomy and military exigencies. What he's reacting to is the extraordinary difficulty of filling vacancies in a war zone."
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21) U.S. Put Jails in Lithuania, Premier Says
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/europe/23lithuania.html?ref=world
MOSCOW - The prime minister of Lithuania, a former Soviet republic that broke from Moscow's orbit and is now a member of NATO, accused the United States on Tuesday of using "Soviet methods" to set up two secret prisons in Lithuania for terrorism suspects.
The prime minister, Andrius Kubilius, said the United States had reached what he contended were clandestine and illegal arrangements with the Lithuanian secret services for prisons that were outside civilian control.
Mr. Kubilius made his remarks on the day that the national security committee in the Lithuanian Parliament released a report that determined that the country was the site of two small secret prisons, though it did not indicate how they were used.
The report was based on testimony from politicians and national security officials. It was initiated after ABC News described Lithuania's role in hosting so-called black sites, and other questions were raised about its activities in the fight against terrorism.
Arvydas Anusauskas, chairman of the national security committee, said state security officials "received requests from the C.I.A. to establish detention facilities."
He said it was not clear who was housed in the facilities because five planes that apparently transported people to Lithuania were never inspected by civilian officials.
The report contended that state security officials never informed senior government officials, like the prime minister, about the prisons, which supposedly could hold a handful of people.
The scandal over the secret prisons has shaken Lithuania's political system and could lead to an overhaul of the security services. The intelligence chief has already resigned.
Mr. Kubilius did note that "Lithuania is a strategic United States ally, and cooperation in many fields, including secret operations and counterterrorism, is very important." But he said it was "deeply worrying" that security officials established the prisons without oversight from senior civilian officials.
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22) Whites Smoke Pot, but Blacks Are Arrested
By JIM DWYER
About New York
December 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/nyregion/23about.html?ref=nyregion
Outside a music club on Greenwich Street in SoHo, the bouncers smoke joints as they check in the arriving customers. A young graphic artist routinely strolls through Chelsea, joint in hand. And when a publicist calls her supplier to order pot, she uses code words - a studio, a one- or two-bedroom - to signal how much she wants.
New York City is now entering its 10th year of pouring tens of millions of dollars into arresting people for the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana cases.
But the SoHo bouncers and the Chelsea graphic artist don't have much to worry about, at least from the police: they are white. Even though surveys show they are part of the demographic group that makes the heaviest use of pot, white people in New York are the least likely to be arrested for it.
Last year, black New Yorkers were seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession and no more serious crime. Latinos were four times more likely.
In 2001, during his first campaign for mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg was asked by New York magazine if he had ever used marijuana. "You bet I did," he replied. "And I enjoyed it."
Like most white New Yorkers, he stood almost no chance of being locked up for his pot use, then being handcuffed, fingerprinted and spending a night in Central Booking.
Mr. Bloomberg may have been the first major city candidate to acknowledge using pot, but as mayor he has led a sweeping expansion of arrests, according to a recent study by Harry G. Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College.
During Mr. Bloomberg's first two terms in office, the lowest-level marijuana arrests were up, on average, by 50 percent over when his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, was in office. Last year, Professor Levine said, the city made 40,300 such arrests - about 12 percent of arrests for all crimes. Of these, 87 percent were of blacks or Latinos.
In 2008, the police made more pot arrests "than in the 12 years of Mayor Koch, plus the four years of Mayor Dinkins, plus the first two years of Mayor Giuliani," Mr. Levine wrote. "In other words, in one year, 2008, Bloomberg made more pot arrests than in 18 years of Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani combined."
The mayor's office said on Tuesday that it could not estimate the cost of such arrests. Mr. Levine, drawing on studies done in other cities, estimated that they could range from $53 million to $88 million annually.
WHATEVER the precise costs, are all these marijuana arrests - wildly disproportionate in their racial impact, and consuming the energy of thousands of police officers, the courts, prosecutors and defense lawyers - truly helping the city?
Mr. Bloomberg's chief criminal justice aide, John Feinblatt, declined to discuss the city's approach to marijuana arrests, or the findings of the study. But through a spokesman, he issued a statement maintaining the pot arrests have helped drive down violent crime.
"Marijuana arrests - which rarely lead to jail - are concentrated in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of violent crime because that's where the police focus their attention in order to reduce victimization," Mr. Feinblatt said. "This continued focus on low-level offending has been part of the city's effective crime-reduction strategy, which has resulted in a 35 percent decrease in crime since 2001."
In effect, Mr. Feinblatt was arguing a variation on the "broken-windows" theory of crime-fighting - that cracking down on symptoms of public disorder helps head off more serious problems.
Mr. Levine argues that such arrests drain resources needed for dealing with serious threats.
The possession of less than an ounce of marijuana was decriminalized by the State Legislature in 1977, reduced to a violation, the equivalent of a traffic ticket. "Burning" it or having it "open to public view" is a misdemeanor.
The handful of white pot smokers who do get arrested can be found in court on Mondays and Tuesdays, when they must answer tickets typically issued for smoking pot in a park. The rest of the week is taken up with blacks and Latinos, who are more likely to have spent a night in jail before court, said Edward McCarthy, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society.
"Some of the police officers, who are at the start of their careers, are apologetic when they make these arrests," Mr. McCarthy said. "They say, 'if my lieutenant or sergeant weren't here, I'd let you go.' "
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
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23) Heads of Fannie and Freddie Could Earn $6 Million
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/business/25fannie.html?ref=business
The top executives at the mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could get paid as much as $6 million for 2009, despite the companies dismal performance this year.
The chief executive of Fannie Mae, Michael J. Williams, and of Freddie Mac, Charles E. Haldeman Jr. will each receive $900,000 in salary, $3.1 million in deferred payments next year and another $2 million if they meet certain performance goals, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
The pay packages were approved by the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the two mortgage lenders.
Fannie and Freddie, which were seized by regulators in September 2008, have needed $111 billion in taxpayer money to stay afloat. The news of the chief executives pay could spark new criticism about the government s numerous bailouts.
Freddie Mac hired Mr. Haldeman, a former mutual fund executive, in July. At the time, the company disclosed his annual salary of $900,000 but did not disclose other incentives. In September, the company hired a chief financial officer, Ross J. Kari, and said his pay package would be worth up to $5.5 million.
Mr. Williams, formerly Fannie Mae s chief operating officer, took overas chief executive in April and earned a base salary of $676,000 last year, plus a retention award of $260,000.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide vital liquidity to the mortgage industry by purchasing home loans from lenders and selling them to investors. Together, they own or guarantee almost 31 million home loans worth about $5.5 trillion. That is about half of all mortgages.
Without government aid, the firms could have gone broke, leaving millions of people unable to get a mortgage. And most experts say the price tag for the bailouts will rise and complicate the government s exit strategy.
Though the Obama administration has yet to divulge its long-term plans for the two companies, they are unlikely to return to their former power and influence.
Barclays Capital predicts the companies will need anywhere from $230 billion to $300 billion out of a potential $400 billion lifeline, which the Obama administration expanded from the original $200 billion authorized last fall.
Most analysts do not expect the money to be returned anytime soon, if ever.
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