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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
(If you would like to be added to the BAUAW list-serve and receive this newsletter via email, send your name (opitional) and email address to: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com -- it's free. Please put "Add me to the list" in the subject line.)
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Bail Out Working People -- NOT the Banks!
Join us on May 9 in San Francisco for a
TEACH-IN & MASS MOBILIZATION PLANNING MEETING
SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2009 - 1 to 5 p.m.
(registration begins at 12:30 p.m.)
Plumbers Hall,
1621 Market St. @ Franklin St.
San Francisco
- No layoffs. Massive job-creation program.
- Tax the rich -- don't bail out the banks.
- Pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Single-payer healthcare for all.
- Affordable housing for all. Tenants' rights. Moratorium on foreclosures & evictions.
- Funding for jobs and for social services & infrastructure, not for war.
- Stop the ICE raids and deportations. Legalization for all!
Speakers:
- Art Pulaski, Secretary-Treasurer, California Federation of Labor;
- N'tanya Lee, Executive Director, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth;
- Mark Dudzic, National Organizer, Labor for Single Payer Healthcare Campaign (Washington, D.C.);
- Rosie Martinez, SEIU Local 721 (Los Angeles);
- Steve Williams, Executive Director, POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights);
- Conny Ford, Vice President, San Francisco Labor Council;
- Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10;
- Jack Rasmus, Professor of economics St. Mary's College and Santa Clara Univ.;
- Alan Benjamin, Executive Committee, San Francisco Labor Council and Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign;
- Student representative, City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus.
ALSO:
Extended remarks from Bay Area labor and community leaders -- and ample time for dialogue among teach-in participants.
AND:
Spoken Word performance by YOUNG PLAYAZ
- Join us and help build a movement.
- Together we can prevail.
- An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!
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JROTC MUST GO!
San Francisco School Board to VOTE
on restoring JROTC at its next meeting.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 6:00 pm
555 Franklin Street at McAllister, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/241-6427 or (415) 241-6493
(To get on the speaker's list call the Monday before the meeting from 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM or Tuesday, the day of the meeting from 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM. You will get at most, two minutes and most probably only one minute to speak.)
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Protest Bank Robbery!
Fed-up? Make Your Voice Heard-Speak Out!
Wed. May 12, 5-6:30pm
Bank of America & Sen. Feinstein's Office
Market and Montgomery Sts., S.F.
Volunteers Needed! Call 415-821-6545 to get involved. Outreach Session - Mon. May 4, 5-8pm, meet at 2489 Mission St. #24, SF. Help flyer, poster and make alert phone calls about the May 6 action.
The government has handed over hundreds of billions of dollars of our money to the biggest banks in the country-Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and others-with NO STRINGS ATTACHED!
The big banks and investors set off the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s by their wild betting spree on sub-prime mortgages, hedge funds and other risky investments. Millions of people have lost their jobs, homes, health care, pensions and more because of the crisis caused by Wall Street. But it is the super-rich who are being rescued with ten trillion dollars-$10,000,000,000,000-while working people are left to fend for ourselves.
Congress and the White House didn't even require the banks to reveal what they used the money for. When asked, bankers have simply replied, "We choose not to disclose that information." AMAZING! Anyone else who gets the smallest grant from the government is required to report what they did with the money, otherwise they have to give it back. But not the giant banks who have just been given the biggest gift in history.
Neither Congress, nor the White House have put any conditions on the giveaway that would protect the people! So, no sooner did the banks get the bailout money-our money-than they doubled and tripled interest rates on credit cards, cut credit limits and closed many accounts. It didn't matter if you were making payments or not.
Now the bailed-out banks are stepping up foreclosures and evictions that have already put millions of people out of their homes. In March 2009, the foreclosure rate on homes went up 24%, the biggest increase on record.
What's going on is a double rip-off. The banks are receiving trillions of dollars of our money on the one hand, while increasing their profits by extracting every dollar they can from people who are suffering as a result of the crisis the banks themselves have caused.
WE SAY: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
We demand government action at the federal, state and local level to:
- Stop all foreclosures and evictions. There are now 18.9 million vacant housing units in the U.S.-everyone should have the right to a home.
- Rollback and cap credit card rates at no more than 5% interest.
- Bailout the people, not the banks-fund people's needs, not war and the super-rich. The money is there!
For more info: 415-821-6144, justicefirstsf@gmail.com
Justice First is a newly formed national organization that is dedicated to fighting for the people's economic, social and political rights. Justice First believes that everyone has the right to a job or living income, food, housing, health care, education and more. As the bailout has proved, the money is there. Join us in building a movement to put the people's needs first!
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End the Siege of Gaza! Rally in San Francisco on June 6
Solidarity Day on the 42nd Anniversary of Israel's seizure of Gaza
Support the Palestinian Right of Return! Stop U.S. Aid to Israel!
Saturday, June 6
12:00 noon
UN Plaza (7th and Market Sts.)
Saturday, June 6 marks the 42nd anniversary of the Israeli seizure of Gaza. Organizations and individuals in solidarity with the people of Palestine will be taking to the streets once again to demand: End the Siege of Gaza!
The world looked on in horror this past winter as Israel mercilessly starved and bombed the people of Gaza, killing around 1,200 Palestinians (at least a third of whom were children). The Arab world now refers to the dark days from the end of December to mid-January "The Gaza Massacre." Although the mainstream media no longer focuses on Gaza, the suffering continues there nonetheless. Using the pretext of combating terrorism, Israel has refused to allow in even one truckload of cement into Gaza. In other words, the city that was reduced to rubble still lies in rubble today. All these months later, people are still living in tents and are scarcely able to secure the necessities of life.
People of conscience around the world continue to raise their voices in outrage at this crime against humanity, and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza. We will also stand for all Palestinian people's inalienable right to return to their homes from which they were evicted. Let your voice be heard -- join us Saturday, June 6, at 12 noon at UN Plaza in San Francisco (7th and Market Sts.). There will be a joint action in Washington DC on June 6.
Sponsoring organizations include ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom, National Council of Arab Americans (NCA), Free Palestine Alliance (FPA), Al-Awda - Palestine Right of Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and more!
Contact us at 415-821-6545 or answer@answersf.org to endorse or volunteer!
The June 6 demonstration is a major undertaking and we can't do it without the support of the large number of people who are standing with Palestine. Please click this link right now to make a generous donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr010=5e0ldsoh91.app6a
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ATTEND THE JULY 10 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CONFERENCE IN PITTSBURGH!
REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE and DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE BROCHURE (8.5 X 14) at:
https://natassembly.org/Home_Page.html
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
On behalf of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, we are writing to invite you and members of your organization to attend a national antiwar conference to be held July 10-12, 2009 at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting.
We believe that such a conference will be welcomed by the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iran, who are the victims of these policies. It will also be welcomed by victims of the depression-type conditions in this country, with tens of millions losing jobs, homes, health care coverage and pensions, while trillions of dollars are spent bailing out Wall Street and the banks, waging expansionist wars and occupations, and funding the Pentagon's insatiable appetite.
This will be the National Assembly's second conference. The first was held in Cleveland last June and it was attended by over 400 people, including top leaders of the antiwar movement and activists from many states. After discussion and debate, attendees voted - on the basis of one person, one vote - to urge the movement to join together for united spring actions. The National Assembly endorsed and helped build the March actions in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the April actions in New York City.
We are all aware of the developments since our last conference - the election of a new administration in the U.S., the ongoing occupation of Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the extreme peril of an additional war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. Given all this, it is crystal clear that a strong, united, independent antiwar movement is needed now more than ever. We urge you to help build such a movement by attending the July conference and sharing your ideas and proposals with other attendees regarding where the antiwar movement goes from here.
For more information, please visit the National Assembly's website at natassembly.org, email us at natassembly@aol.com, or call 216-736-4704. We will be glad to send you upon request brochures announcing the July conference (a copy is attached) and you can also register for the conference online. [Please be aware that La Roche College is making available private rooms with baths at a very reasonable rate, but will only guarantee them if reserved by June 25.]
Yours for peace, justice and unity,
National Assembly Administrative Body
Zaineb Alani, Author of The Words of an Iraqi War Survivor & More; Colia Clark, Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee, Grandmothers for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC) and Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Alan Dale, Iraq Peace Action Coalition (MN); Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Jerry Gordon, Former National Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-Era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) and Member, U.S. Labor Against the War Steering Committee; Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer, Author of Anti-War Soldier; Co-Founder of Appeal for Redress; Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace, Middle East Crisis Coalition; Jeff Mackler, Founder, San Francisco Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice; Fred Mason, President, Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Progressive Democrats of America/Ohio Branch; Lynne Stewart, Lynne Stewart Organization/Long Time Attorney and Defender of Constitutional Rights [Bay Area United Against War also was represented at the founding conference and will be there again this year. Carole Seligman and I initiated the motion to include adding opposition to the War in Afghanistan to the demands and title of the National Assembly.
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Alert: This could be it for Troy Davis
Global Day of Action for Troy Davis
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/troy-davis-finality-over-fairness/sign-up-for-the-day-of-action-for-troy-davis/page.do?id=1011672&ICID=A0904A4&tr=y&auid=4803928
While news channels across the country are consumed with counting up to President Obama's first 100 days in office, Troy Davis has been counting down his last 30 days before a new execution date could be set. Help make these extra days count.
On May 19th help save Troy Davis by putting together any activity, event or creative action that calls attention to his case.
The 30-day stay issued by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals expires on May 15th.
So now is the time for us to organize to save the life of Troy Anthony Davis. We're asking everybody to come out strong on May 19th - a day marked in human rights calendars across the world as the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis.
Whether you're holding a "Text TROY to 90999" sign on a busy street or organizing your local Amnesty chapter to hold a public demonstration or vigil, we need everybody to contribute their time on May 19th to make sure that the state of Georgia does not kill a man who may well be innocent. Register your Global Day of Action for Troy Davis activity or event now.
We know that time is short for organizing public events, but an execution date could be set as early as late May, so it is essential that action be taken soon. It's also really important that we get an accurate count of how many events and activities are taking place on May 19th, so we can share this information with officials in Georgia. Our emails and phone calls have gone a long way in buying Troy some much-needed time, but now we've got to take our action to the streets.
We appreciate the tens of thousands of you who have stood in Troy's corner while heart-stopping scenes have unfolded. On three separate occasions, Troy has been scheduled for execution. And on three separate occasions, his life was saved within a short period of time, even minutes, of his scheduled execution date.
Each time, those last minute stays came after people like you turned out by the thousands to rally in his defense. It was no coincidence. Troy's sister and long-time Amnesty activist, Martina Correia, has acknowledged Amnesty's powerful role in saving her brother's life each of those times.
Now here we are again with the clock winding down. While we can see little opportunity for legal recourse or second chances, we know that your advocacy has a strong record of making amazing things happen.
When we first introduced you to Troy Davis in early 2007, few people outside of Georgia knew about the injustice taking place. In the past two years, countless people have come to see Troy's case as a prime example of why the death penalty must be abolished - the risk of executing someone for a crime they did not commit is just too high.
We are serious when we say that we need everyone to support Troy Davis on May 19th by organizing their own event or awareness-raising activity.
After all, if you had 30 days left to fight for your life, wouldn't you want to know that you had thousands standing in your corner?
In Solidarity,
Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn
Director, Death Penalty Abolition Campaign
Amnesty International USA
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Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/healthwellness/138768/jon_stewart_slams_media_swine_flu_fear_mongering_/
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Free Ehren Watada!
For more backfround on Lt. Ehren Watada, go to:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/702/1/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) U.S. Raids Killed Afghan Civilians, Red Cross Says
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?hp
2) United Nations Rebukes Israel for Gaza Attacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | United Nations
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/world/middleeast/06briefs-israel.html?ref=world
3) Dismissal of Guilty Pleas Is Sought for Immigrants
By JULIA PRESTON
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/06immig.html?ref=us
4) Lawmakers Strike Deal to Rescue New York Transit
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/nyregion/06mta.html?ref=nyregion
5) A U.S. Hog Giant Transforms Eastern Europe
By DOREEN CARVAJAL and STEPHEN CASTLE
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/global/06smithfield.html?ref=business
6) Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp
7) What Happens to the American Dream in a Recession?
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08dreampoll.html?hp
8) Schwarzenegger Urges a Study on Legalizing Marijuana Use
By REBECCA CATHCART
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07arnold.html?ref=us
9) Lines Shift a Bit on a Senate Labor Bill
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
"But businesses object that card check would bypass secret ballot elections and allow union organizers to bully workers into signing cards."
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/business/07union.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1241715631-d0rBr2V4vEyiuItfQMrTvw
10) California: Jury Transcripts Are Sealed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | West
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07brfs-JURYTRANSCRI_BRF.html?ref=us
11) New Fines Pit Carpenters Against Union Leaders
"The dispute escalated in March, when the union's welfare fund trustees voted to stop sending vacation-pay disbursements to anyone who had not signed the authorization card, infuriating rank-and-file members."
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/nyregion/07carpenters.html?ref=nyregion
12) Deal Reached to Keep Boston Globe in Print
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/business/media/07paper.html?ref=business
13) Government Reports Criticize Health Care System
By KEVIN SACK
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07care.html?ref=health
14) Stressing the Positive
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08krugman.html
15) U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%, but Pace of Losses Eases
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY
May 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/business/economy/09jobs.html?hp
16) U.S. Admits Civilians Died in Afghan Raids
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?ref=world
17) Former U.S. Soldier Convicted in Rape and 4 Slayings in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/07/us/AP-US-Iraq-Rape-Slaying.html?ref=world
18) Canadian Governments Tell Union to Offer More Concessions to G.M.
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/business/global/08caw.html?ref=world
19) Leaving the Trailers
Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing
[This story exposes the bare bones of the stone-cold heartlessness of this rotten system of profits over people...bw]
By SHAILA DEWAN
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08trailer.html?ref=us
20) Taxing Those With Insurance to Pay for Those Without
By REED ABELSON
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/health/policy/08healthtax.html?ref=us
21) Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe
By Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
May 08, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3858
22) Far From Over
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/opinion/09herbert.html
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1) U.S. Raids Killed Afghan Civilians, Red Cross Says
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - Dozens of Afghan civilians were killed in American air raids in western Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday. But Afghan officials gave far higher death tolls, ranging from 100 to 130 or more.
The reports offered a grim backdrop to talks coming Wednesday afternoon in Washington between President Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, whose office called the civilian deaths "unjustifiable and unacceptable" and said a government team had been sent to investigate. If the deaths are confirmed to have been from American bombing raid, this would be the largest case of civilian death in Afghanistan since President Obama took office.
The continuing toll in civilian casualties has been a principle factor in turning many Afghans against the fighting against the Taliban.
The governor of Farah Province, where the strikes occurred overnight Monday, told the national Parliament in a phone call played on loudspeaker that about 100 civilians had been killed, according to a legislator, Mohammad Naim Farahi.
Mr. Farahi said that there might be even more deaths. He said he gathered accounts from villagers, tribal elders and officials and calculated that 130 people, including many women and children, had been killed.
On Tuesday, enraged villagers took between 20 and 25 bodies from their district to the capital of Farah Province to show them to officials. Villagers' accounts then put the death toll at 70 to 100, they said.
In Washington on Wednesday morning, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton held a joint news conference with Mr. Karzai. : "We deeply, deeply regret" the loss of innocent life
"We hope we can work together in reducing and eventually eliminating civilian casualties," Mr. Karzai responded.
Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, said the organization had sent a team to scene of the bombing on Tuesday. The team members saw houses destroyed and dozens of dead bodies. Some, the team reported, had died while trying to shelter in a house.
"What our team saw was dozens of bodies, graves and people preparing burials," she said in a telephone interview.
The dead included women and children. "It's not the first time," Ms. Barry said, but "really this is one of the very serious and biggest incidents for a very long time."
In a statement on its Web site, the International Committee blamed the deaths squarely on the airstrikes.
"We know that those killed included an Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed in an air strike," the statement said, quoting Reto Stocker, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Kabul.
On Tuesday, the head of provincial council in Farah, Muhammad Nazir, said he had seen 20 to 25 bodies of women and children brought in two trucks to a regional administrative center. Eight or nine people, mostly children, were still in the provincial hospital, he said. But, he said, the precise toll was not yet clear.
He said the raids, which took place in the village of Granai in the Bala Baluk district of the province on Monday, had made local people "very furious" against both the Afghan government and American and NATO forces. But he blamed the deaths on a Taliban tactic of attacking police posts to provoke airstrikes that risked civilian casualties.
The bombardment may prove to be the largest case of civilian casualties since an attack on the village of Azizabad in western Afghanistan last year, in which United Nations officials said there was convincing evidence that 90 civilians were killed. The United States military only ever acknowledged that 30 civilians had died. The case led to stricter rules for calling in bombing raids on Afghan houses.
On Tuesday, the provincial governor of Farah, Rohul Amin, confirmed there had been heavy fighting and aerial bombardment in Bala Baluk, where Taliban and drug smugglers are active. He said then that 25 to 30 Taliban had been killed and that there had also been civilian casualties. He said he was sending a government delegation to the area to investigate.
The top United States spokesman in Afghanistan, Col. Greg Julian, confirmed that coalition forces had participated in the battle, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. Colonel Julian said that several wounded Afghans had sought medical treatment at a military base in Farah, but that officials were still investigating the reports of civilian deaths.
The Taliban had gathered in several villages named Shewan Kalai, Ganjabad, and Durani Kalai, in the Bala Baluk district, Mr. Amin, the provincial governor, said by telephone. They attacked police checkpoints in the villages around midnight on Monday and the fighting steadily escalated. Three policemen were killed and three others wounded. Two police cars were set on fire and one was stolen.
An Afghan Army unit was sent to the area, but found a heavy contingent of Taliban and later called in airstrikes. The Afghan Army has American trainers embedded with them who are able to call in air support. The fighting lasted about 12 hours through the night, the governor said.
"We don't know the exact numbers of the civilians' casualties; it is a densely populated area where the fighting broke out," the governor said Tuesday. "The Taliban are using civilians' houses for their own protection and as a shield," he said.
He said he would ask tribal elders to go to the region to investigate the villagers' claims, because the area was too full of the Taliban for government officials to go there.
Villagers told Afghan officials that they had put children, women, and elderly men in several housing compounds away from the fighting to keep them safe. But the villagers said fighter aircraft later attacked those compounds in the village of Gerani, killing a majority of those inside, The A.P. reported.
Mohammad Nieem Qadderdan, the former top official in the district of Bala Baluk, said he had seen dozens of bodies when he visited the village of Gerani.
"These houses that were full of children and women and elders were bombed by planes. It is very difficult to say how many were killed because nobody can count the number, it is too early," Mr. Qadderdan, who no longer holds a government position, told The A.P. by telephone. "People are digging through rubble with shovels and hands."
Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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2) United Nations Rebukes Israel for Gaza Attacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | United Nations
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/world/middleeast/06briefs-israel.html?ref=world
A United Nations report released Tuesday condemned Israel for attacking United Nations schools and other facilities during its military campaign in Gaza in January. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, left, said a United Nations investigation found conclusively that Israeli weaponry, some containing white phosphorus, was "the undisputed cause" of attacks on several schools, a health clinic and the organization's Gaza headquarters. He demanded that Israel compensate the United Nations for its losses.
Israel denied that it had intentionally struck the compounds, saying that it was forced to act against militants using the buildings and other civilian areas for cover. In his presentation on Tuesday, Mr. Ban took pains to point out that Israeli citizens in southern Israel "faced and continue to face indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups." Israel's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, called the report "biased."
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3) Dismissal of Guilty Pleas Is Sought for Immigrants
By JULIA PRESTON
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/06immig.html?ref=us
The immigration lawyers' national bar association called on the Justice Department on Tuesday to consider dismissing the guilty pleas of nearly 300 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a meatpacking plant raid in Iowa last year, one day after the Supreme Court rejected a statute that prosecutors used to pressure them.
In its decision Monday, the court ruled that to win convictions for identity theft, prosecutors had to show that illegal immigrants knew that false identification documents they presented to employers actually belonged to another real person.
A Federal District Court in Iowa saw immediate fallout on Tuesday from the Supreme Court's decision, as prosecutors dropped one charge against a human resources manager from the meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa.
Earlier, a federal district judge had ruled that the manager, Laura Althouse, could withdraw a guilty plea she entered last year in the case. Ms. Althouse had pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft, after prosecutors accused her of helping illegal immigrants to hire on at the plant using documents that she knew were false.
In legal papers, Ms. Althouse's lawyers argued that she had not been aware that the documents some of the immigrants presented belonged to other people and were not wholly fabricated fakes. She is still facing sentencing next week on a separate charge in the case.
But the prosecutors' swift action to dismiss the charge against Ms. Althouse raised new concerns about the convictions of hundreds of illegal immigrants from Postville. In a statement, the American Immigration Lawyers Association praised the Supreme Court decision and called on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to order a case-by-case investigation of the prosecutions.
"The federal prosecutors used the law as a hammer to coerce the workers," said David Leopold, a vice president of the association. He said Mr. Holder should dismiss the charges in cases where the threat of prosecution under the statute "was a miscarriage of justice."
The aggravated identity theft statute carries a mandatory added sentence of two years in prison, above any other sentence imposed. Fearing that they would be convicted in a trial, most of the immigrants pleaded guilty to lesser charges of document fraud and also agreed to summary deportation. They served five months in prison, and most have been deported.
The Postville cases were the toughest application to date of criminal charges against illegal immigrants whose main offense was that they were working without authorization.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the House immigration subcommittee, went further than the immigration lawyers. The Justice Department should "start from scratch and pretend these cases never happened," she said. "They did not comport with the requirement of the law."
Bob Teig, a spokesman for the United States attorney in Cedar Rapids, declined to comment on the Postville cases because some are still making their way through the court. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, covering Iowa, had upheld the interpretation of the identity theft law that prosecutors applied to the immigrant workers from Postville.
The immigration lawyers group also raised new questions on Tuesday about the recommendation for the post of United States attorney of Stephanie Rose, an assistant United States attorney in the Northern District office who was a leading prosecutor in the Postville cases. Ms. Rose has been recommended for the position by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, although she has not yet been nominated by the White House.
Some Iowa defense lawyers have said that Ms. Rose was the main prosecutor in charge of securing guilty pleas from hundreds of Postville immigrants.
In a statement Tuesday, Senator Harkin said Ms. Rose "had no role in deciding what charges to bring or what plea agreements to offer." He said Ms. Rose, who has been an assistant United States attorney in Iowa for 12 years, "has demonstrated great intellect and judgment, outstanding leadership and strength of character."
Eleven criminal defense lawyers who represented immigrant workers from Postville wrote in an open letter that Ms. Rose "worked incredibly long hours and exhibited a level of competence and ability that would be hard to overstate."
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4) Lawmakers Strike Deal to Rescue New York Transit
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/nyregion/06mta.html?ref=nyregion
After months of stalled negotiations among state leaders, Gov. David A. Paterson announced on Tuesday a long-awaited deal to rescue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that will hold the increase in the base subway fare this year to 25 cents.
Under the deal, the base fare for a single bus or subway ride would rise to $2.25 from $2. The cost of a monthly MetroCard would probably rise to about $89 from $81, according to officials in the Legislature. Other fares and tolls, including tickets on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, would go up about 10 percent.
The agreement would prevent a 20 to 30 percent increase in fares and tolls that was set to go into effect within weeks, and stave off deep service cuts.
The plan calls for a payroll tax, a surcharge on taxi rides and increases in vehicle-registration and license fees and the auto-rental tax.
"This has been very difficult on the commuters of the M.T.A. region," Mr. Paterson said at a news conference in Albany, flanked by the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and the Senate majority leader, Malcolm A. Smith. "We can assure them this evening that there will be no surprises, that there will be no further cuts or fears about fare hikes or toll increases. We have resolved that issue this evening."
Mr. Smith and Mr. Silver said they expected to call for a vote on the plan, and pass it, on Wednesday.
Officials said that the rescue plan will help the authority get through a financial crisis in which it faced growing budget deficits, made even worse as tax revenues shrink in the slumping economy.
It will also provide financing for at least the first two years of the authority's 2010 to 2014 capital program, which pays for key maintenance and modernization projects needed to keep the transit and commuter rail system in good repair.
The breakthrough to limit the fare hike came after months of agonizing stalemate and brinksmanship in Albany. The base subway and bus fare was scheduled to rise to $2.50 on May 31; monthly MetroCards would have increased to $103.
The plan announced on Tuesday calls for fares and tolls to rise again in 2011 and 2013, each time by enough to increase revenues from those sources by 7.5 percent.
The rescue package had been held up due to disagreements in Albany, mostly among Democratic legislators and mostly in the Senate, where Democrats hold a 32 to 30 majority.
Republicans have refused to support the plan.
Negotiations on the rescue took a major step forward on Monday when two Democratic senators from Long Island dropped their opposition to the plan's centerpiece: a tax on payrolls to be paid by employers in the 12-county region served by the authority.
The senators, Craig M. Johnson and Brian X. Foley, agreed to accept a compromise offered by Mr. Paterson, under which the state would reimburse school districts for the cost of the new tax.
That was followed by intensive negotiations on Tuesday, as officials tried to work out a formula that would provide enough money for the capital program without imperiling the authority's operating budget or driving fares too high.
Under the agreement, about $400 million will be set aside each year from the payroll tax proceeds for capital needs. That will pay the cost of borrowing about $6.5 billion through bonds, enough to get a start on the capital plan, Mr. Silver said.
But negotiators decided that in order to set aside that much money for capital expenses, they would need more money for the authority's operating expenses. They agreed to raise fare and toll revenues by 10 percent this year, rather than the 8 percent increase previously proposed as part of the bailout plan.
Each 1 percent increase in fares and tolls generates an additional $50 million in revenue a year. A 10 percent fare and toll increase will bring in about $500 million a year.
The legislative leaders also agreed to set a single rate for the payroll tax in all 12 counties served by the authority - a tax of 34 cents for every $100 of payroll. An earlier Senate version of the plan called for a lower rate in three outlying counties.
The payroll tax is expected to raise $1.53 billion a year.
The plan also includes a series of charges on vehicles and drivers in the 12- county region: a 50-cent surcharge on taxi rides, a $25 increase in vehicle registration fees, a 25 to 30 percent rise in drivers' license fees and a 5 percent increase in a tax on car rentals. Those fees are expected to generate a total of $270 million a year.
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5) A U.S. Hog Giant Transforms Eastern Europe
By DOREEN CARVAJAL and STEPHEN CASTLE
May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/global/06smithfield.html?ref=business
CENEI, ROMANIA - For centuries - from the Hapsburg Empire through Communist dictatorship - peasant farmers here have eked a living from hogs, driving horses along ancient pocked roads and whispering ritual prayers on butchering day.
Old customs and jobs are dying and the air itself is changing, however, transformed by an American newcomer, Smithfield Foods. Almost unnoticed by the rest of the Continent, the agribusiness giant has moved into Eastern Europe with the force of a factory engine, assembling networks of farms, breeding pigs on the fast track, and slaughtering them for every bit of meat and muscle that can be squeezed into a sausage.
The upheaval in the hog farm belts of Poland and Romania, the two largest E.U. members in Eastern Europe, ranks among the Continent's biggest agricultural transformations.
It also offers a window on how a Fortune 500 company based in Virginia operates in far-flung outposts. Smithfield has a joint venture in a Mexican hog farm located near where United Nations scientists are investigating a potential link between pigs and the new strain of influenza in humans. With the exact origins of the virus still in doubt, Smithfield emphasizes that the disease has struck none of its hogs or employees.
But Smithfield's global approach is clear; its chairman, Joseph Luter III, has described it as moving in a "very, very big way, very, very fast." In less than five years, Smithfield enlisted politicians in Poland and Romania, tapped into hefty European Union farm subsidies and fended off local opposition groups to create a conglomerate of feed mills, slaughterhouses and climate-controlled barns housing thousands of hogs.
It moved with such speed that sometimes it failed to secure environmental permits or inform the authorities about pig deaths - lapses that emerged after swine fever swept through three Romanian hog compounds in 2007, two of which were operating without permits. Some 67,000 hogs died or were destroyed, with infected and healthy pigs shot to stanch the spread.
In the United States, Smithfield says it has been a boon to consumers. Pork prices dropped by about one-fifth between 1970 and 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, suggesting annual savings of about $29 per consumer.
In Eastern Europe, as in American farm states where Smithfield developed its business strategy, the question is whether the savings are worth the considerable costs. The company says it is "sensitive to our neighbors' concerns" and that complaints are often from disgruntled residents left behind.
But Robert Wallace, a visiting professor of geography at the University of Minnesota says Smithfield's global rise is part of a broader "livestock revolution that has created cities of pigs and chickens" in poorer nations with weaker regulations. "The price tag goes up for small farmers."
In Romania, the number of hog farmers has declined 90 percent - to 52,100 in 2007 from 477,030 in 2003 - according to European Union statistics, with ex-farmers, overwhelmed by Smithfield's lower prices, often emigrating or shifting to construction. In their place, the company employs or contracts with about 900 people and buys grain from about 100 farmers.
In Poland, there were 1.1 million hog farmers in 1996. That number fell 56 percent by 2008, as the advent of modern farming methods transformed agriculture, according to the Polish National Agricultural Chamber.
Two years ago, Daniel Neag housed 300 pigs in the empty stalls of his windswept farm near Lugoj, in Romania. Since 2005, membership in his breeder association plunged to 42 from 300. The secretary treasurer tends honeybees.
The impact on the environment is even more marked. With almost 40 farms in western Romania, Smithfield has built enormous metal manure containers to inject waste into the soil. "We go crazy with the daily smell," said Aura Danielescu, the principal of a school in Masloc, who closes her windows tight.
Smithfield farms in Romania's Timis County are among the top sources of air and soil pollution, according to a local government report, which ranked the company's individual farms No. 13 through No. 40. The report also indicates that methane gases in the air rose 65 percent between 2002 and 2007.
Taxpayers footed part of the bill; Smithfield tapped into millions of euros in subsidies - from a total of €50 billion available in the E.U. last year - that are meant to encourage modern farming balanced with care for the environment.
In a similar chain of consequences, separate subsidies mined by Smithfield helped support the export of cheap pork scraps from Poland to Africa, where some hog farmers also are giving up because they cannot compete.
Smithfield representatives strongly defend their methods. They say they did everything they could to quash the Romanian swine fever outbreak, and they contend the lack of licenses was an oversight. "We have learned not to assume that a government's awareness of our plans and operations is the same as permission to keep moving forward until we have obtained all necessary permits," Charles Griffith, a company lawyer, said in answer to written questions.
Company officials also point to heavy investment in poor parts of Eastern Europe and a commitment to reinvesting profits locally. Mr. Griffith highlighted among Smithfield's contributions the "acquisition, renovation, and construction of meat processing plants, swine farms, feed mills, and cold storage facilities," and support for "networks of independent farmers that are contracted to shelter and feed pigs to market weights."
For all that, some villagers in the new hog country say they are dazed. "For them, it's like dealing with primitive people in the bush, where only power and strength is important," said Emilia Niemyt, the mayor of Wierzchkowo, a Polish village of 331 people that has pressed complaints about odors. "They fulfill the idea of conquering the East with the methods of the Wild West."
ASSEMBLY LINE OF PIGS
When the East beckoned in 1999, Smithfield exported a vertical integration strategy, copied from the poultry giant Tyson Foods. The chief promoter of that strategy was Mr. Luter, whose family transformed a 73-year-old meatpacking operation into a behemoth with almost $12 billion in annual revenue.
Every stage of a hog's life - from artificial insemination to breeding genetic characteristics - is controlled. A handful of employees tend thousands of hogs that spend their lives entirely indoors, under constant lighting, to spur growth. Sows churn out litters three or four times a year. Within 300 days, a pig weighing roughly 120 kilograms, or 270 pounds, is ready for slaughter.
Smithfield fine-tuned its approach in the depressed tobacco country of eastern North Carolina in the 1990s. In 2000, money started flowing from a Smithfield political action committee in that state and around the United States. Ultimately, more than $1 million went to candidates in state and federal elections. North Carolina lawmakers helped fast-track permits for Smithfield and exempted pig farms from zoning laws.
As Smithfield flourished, the number of American hog farms plunged 90 percent - to 67,000 in 2005 from 667,000 in 1980. Some farm states grew wary. When Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in 1999, torrential rain breached six pig waste lagoons, prompting the authorities to impose a construction moratorium on new pig farms using lagoons.
Missouri, too, pressed Smithfield to install technology to reduce odor. In Iowa, Smithfield lobbyists fended off efforts to force meatpackers to purchase hogs on the open market instead of using only their livestock.
Facing more restrictions in the United States, Smithfield took its North Carolina game plan to Poland and Romania, where the company moved nimbly through weak economies and political and regulatory systems.
Today Smithfield is the biggest pork producer in Romania, where it owns an enormous meatpacking plant, almost 40 hog farms and croplands sprawling over 50,000 acres. In Poland, the company employs 500 farmers to raise hogs that are bound for its Communist-era slaughterhouse, Animex.
Smithfield declined to disclose the total of subsidies it has collected. Romania pays a levy of around 30 euros per pig raised suggesting that, by producing 600,000 a year, Smithfield was eligible for 18 million euros in special national subsidies intended to improve the leanness of hogs. Though the company said late Tuesday that not all its pigs qualified for the subsidy, it did not say how many are. Newly released Romanian data show the company collected almost €300,000 in cropland subsidies last year and more than €200,000 in special funding for new European Union states. In Poland, Smithfield reaped more than €2 million for its subsidiary Agri Plus.
"Subsidies are money," Luis Cerdan, chief executive of Agri Plus, said. "It improves the profits of the company."
But Mr. Griffith, Smithfield's lawyer, characterizes total benefits as tiny. Even more so, he said, "when you consider that we have not taken any cash out of these operations and have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future."
HELP AT HIGH LEVELS
When it first arrived in Eastern Europe, Smithfield courted top politicians in both Poland and Romania, the latter a particularly poor country of 23 million with a weak government and under constant E.U. pressure over corruption.
In the post-Communist disorder, it is essential to know your way about. In Bucharest, Smithfield turned to Nicholas Taubman, a wealthy Republican businessman who was the U.S. ambassador to Romania during the administration of President George W. Bush. Mr. Taubman escorted Smithfield's top executives during meetings with the Romanian president and prime minister and president.
"I'm from Virginia and they're a large corporation and I know them very well," Mr. Taubman said, noting that he had also helped Ford Motor, which had an easier time in Romania because it had the support of a government minister.
Once the top leaders in Romania showed their support for Smithfield, developments fell into place; about a dozen Smithfield farms were designed by an architectural firm owned by Gheorghe Seculici, a former deputy prime minister with close ties to President Traian Basescu of Romania, who is godfather to his daughter.
Further help came from a familiar front: Smithfield's lobbyist, the Virginia firm McGuireWoods, set up a Bucharest office in 2007 to liaise between Smithfield and the Romanian government. In many ways McGuireWoods was the perfect choice; it had also represented Romania for three years to press its NATO-membership campaign.
Mr. Basescu, the president, was not shy in acknowledging the company, which he praised at a joint news conference with President George W. Bush at a NATO summit meeting last year. Smithfield was also very visible in its appreciation: It contributed €20,000 to pay for Romanian ceremonial uniforms at the summit meeting, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Taubman said that access was vital. "It's extremely difficult to do business there unless you have someone like the prime minister or someone in the prime minister's office who reaches down to whomever is concerned and says this is what to do," he said.
As straightforward as that may seem, lobbying on the part of a big firm from the United States - the superpower that East Europeans seek to please - raised some eyebrows.
"We understand public diplomacy and political lobbying," noted Steen Steensen, an agriculture expert at the Danish Embassy, whose country has also expanded hog farms into Eastern Europe. ''But we trust that the business and commercial channels operate in a normal and fair way."
"Smithfield's dominance and manifest aggressive approach is worrying," Mr. Steensen said in one agricultural report.
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS
The connections in the upper reaches of government meant that Smithfield could weather protests from local communities. The company was fined €9,000 for spilling manure on a local highway while transporting waste from a leaking container; €35,000 for a leaking bin that seeped hog waste into soil; another €35,000 for four farms operating without permits in Arad County; and €18,500 for not preventing water pollution.
Some villagers, however, concentrate on the advantages. "I have land near them and there's no problem," Dorin Mic Aurel, mayor of Masloc, said. Smithfield is the biggest taxpayer in Masloc, contributing $27,000 yearly that helped bring running water to the village.
But Smithfield found it hard to overcome fallout from the swine fever outbreak that struck Cenei. At the time, hog corpses lay in heaps, and residents remember chaotic efforts to shoot and burn them. That particular strain affects only hogs, but scientists have found elements of swine viruses - one from Europe or Asia, the other from North America - in the genetic code of the new influenza A(H1N1) virus.
When Ioan Ciprian Ciurdar, deputy mayor of Cenei, said that the stench from nearby farms was overpowering, Smithfield responded that a heat wave was to blame.
Mr. Ciurdar said that he had visited the farm with a colleague who snapped photographs until a security guard demanded the camera and destroyed the pictures. "If you're an owner," he said, his voice rising, "it doesn't mean you can do whatever you want."
Smithfield contends that "it is impossible to know" why the pigs got sick, while noting a breakdown in the supply of government-supplied swine flu vaccines. But several officials on both sides of the debate believe that Smithfield was overwhelmed by its own industrial machine and its ever multiplying pigs.
"Thousands of piglets were born," Mr. Seculici, the architect, said. "There was no place to put them because the new farms weren't finished. Nobody admits this, but this was the cause of swine flu. They were forced to improvise."
Smithfield acknowledges that it placed young pigs on farms under construction, but insists that doing so had no impact on health.
"It was done too fast; that caused a lot of problems," Mr. Taubman, the former U.S. ambassador, said.
When it came to cleanup, Smithfield again turned to special E.U. subsidies, requesting $11.5 million in compensation. But the local authorities - those with the power to dole out the money - balked at the demand, outraged that the epidemic was taking place on unlicensed farms which they accused of lax biosecurity measures.
A special mission of the European Commission confirmed some of their complaints, finding that Smithfield had failed to submit regular reports on the deaths of its pigs and that employees moved freely between farms despite suspicions of swine fever.
"Although we acknowledge these dysfunctions, this does not mean that our farms were operating outside the purview of Romanian authorities," Mr. Griffith, a lawyer for Smithfield, wrote. "Our farms were operating openly and in regular, day-today contact with those authorities."
"When we discovered that a number of our farms in Romania were operating on an emergency basis without all required permits," Mr. Griffith said, Smithfield acted "to obtain all required permits."
Blocked from collecting the money, Smithfield turned to Valeriu Tabara, head of the Romanian Parliament's agricultural committee. With support from other politicians, Mr. Tabara pushed for an amendment that would enable animal owners to be compensated for disease-driven losses regardless of ignoring proper biosecurity measures.
Smithfield is uncertain if the amendment will be beneficial to the company. The revision, Mr. Griffith said, "would generally not apply retroactively to our claim."
Mr. Tabara has no doubts, however, saying that "Smithfield is in the category of companies that have registered losses."|
A STRUGGLE ACROSS CONTINENTS
When Mr. Neag, the former hog farmer, strides his land, only two animals trail him: battered mutts.
He is a cereal farmer now, like many other former hog farmers who complain their annual incomes have fallen by about half to €5,000.
"I didn't think they were the enemy like someone who comes to take the bread from our mouth," Mr. Neag said, recalling the arrival of Smithfield.
That lament echoes as far away as the Ivory Coast.
Patrice Yao's pig farm in Abidjan, near a local prison, is part of a cluster where farmers like him and Basile Donald Yao are trying to survive despite a flood of cheap frozen pork from Europe.
"My farm isn't working," said Mr. Yao, 27, who owns about 45 hogs, compared with 100 three years ago. "The Europeans are sending all their cheap meat to our market."
The Animex packing house spokesman, Andrzej Pawelczak, declined to identify where the Smithfield pork products were sent in West Africa. But in Polish Farmer Magazine he identified the countries as Liberia, Equatorial Guinea and the Ivory Coast.
According to Polish agricultural officials, Animex collected more than €3 million in export funds.
In the face of that, Ivorian farmers cannot compete. Fresh local pork sells for under $2.50 a kilo, while Europe's frozen offal is a bargain in bustling markets at $1.40.
Mr. Yao said that many pig farmers have left, in search of work. Like Romanian ex-farmers combing Europe's construction sites for work, he is considering becoming an export himself.
"I've already got my passport and when the occasion presents itself I am going to leave," he said.
"I dream of leaving for Italy or Spain. There is nothing here for us."
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6) Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - Chanting "Death to America" and hurling rocks, hundreds gathered Thursday in western Afghanistan to protest American airstrikes that Afghan officials and villagers said had killed many civilians, threatening to stiffen Afghan opposition to the war just as the Obama administration is sending 20,000 more troops.
The two-hour demonstration came a day after talks on Wednesday in Washington between President Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, whose office called the civilian deaths "unjustifiable and unacceptable." Afghan officials and villagers said the airstrikes had killed dozens and perhaps more than 100 civilians.
In the main city of Farah province, protesters gathered at a police station and the local governor's office, chanting slogans against the American and Afghan governments, witnesses reported. Traders shuttered their stores and said they would not reopen them until the airstrikes had been fully investigated and the demonstrators' demands had been met. Participants in the protest, interviewed by telephone, said demonstrators called for an American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Outside the governor's office, police opened fire on stone-throwing protesters and wounded three of them. Three high-ranking officials met the protesters and offered to resign in sympathy with the demonstrators, according to Allauddin Khan, a tribal elder among those who met with the local officials.
Another protester, Bismillah Khan, said the demonstrators accused American authorities of bombing civilians instead of Taliban fighters. He put the number of protesters at 2,000 from many parts of the province.
If the reports of a high death toll are borne out, the bombardment, which took place late Monday, will almost certainly be the worst in terms of civilian deaths since the American intervention began in 2001. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said there would be a joint investigation and she expressed regret at the loss of civilian lives, although she cautioned that the full circumstances were not known. Defense Department officials said investigators were looking into the possibility that Taliban militants were responsible for the civilian deaths.
One villager reached by telephone, Sayed Ghusuldin Agha, described body parts littered around the landscape. "It would scare a man if he saw it in a dream," he said.
Civilian deaths - more than 2,000 Afghans were killed last year alone, the United Nations says - have been a decisive factor in souring many Afghans on the war. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed dozens dead so far in this bombing, in the western province of Farah.
The American military confirmed that it had conducted airstrikes aimed at the Taliban, but not the number of deaths or their cause.
"We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties," said the senior American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan. He would not elaborate but said American and Afghan investigators were already on the ground trying to sort out what had happened.
In a phone call played on a loudspeaker on Wednesday to outraged members of the Afghan Parliament, the governor of Farah Province, Rohul Amin, said that as many as 130 civilians had been killed, according to a legislator, Mohammad Naim Farahi. Afghan lawmakers immediately called for an agreement regulating foreign military operations in the country.
"The governor said that the villagers have brought two tractor trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the casualties that had occurred," Mr. Farahi said. "Everyone at the governor's office was crying, watching that shocking scene."
Mr. Farahi said he had talked to someone he knew personally who had counted 113 bodies being buried, including those of many women and children. Later, more bodies were pulled from the rubble and some victims who had been taken to the hospital died, he said.
Early reports from American military forensic investigators at the scene raised questions about the Afghan account, according to a United States military official briefed on the inquiry.
Defense Department officials said late Wednesday that investigators were looking into witnesses' reports that the Afghan civilians were killed by grenades hurled by Taliban militants, and that the militants then drove the bodies around the village claiming the dead were victims of an American airstrike.
The initial examination of the site and of some of the bodies suggested the use of armaments more like grenades than the much larger bombs used by attack planes, said the military official, who requested anonymity because the investigation was continuing.
"We cannot confirm the report that the Taliban executed these people," said Capt. John Kirby, the spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. "We don't know if it's true, and we also don't know how many civilians were killed as a result of this operation."
Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for the United States military in Kabul, confirmed that United States Special Operations forces had called in close air support in the area on Monday night, including bombs and strafing with heavy machine guns. "There is a heavy insurgent presence there," he said.
Villagers reached by telephone said many were killed by aerial bombing. Muhammad Jan, a farmer, said fighting had broken out in his village, Shiwan, and another, Granai, in the Bala Baluk district. An hour after it stopped, the planes came, he said.
In Granai, he said, women and children had sought shelter in orchards and houses. "Six houses were bombed and destroyed completely, and people in the houses still remain under the rubble," he said, "and now I am working with other villagers trying to excavate the dead bodies."
He said that villagers, crazed with grief, were collecting mangled bodies in blankets and shawls and piling them on three tractors. People were still missing, he said.
Mr. Agha, who lives in Granai, said the bombing started at 5 p.m. on Monday and lasted until late into the night. "People were rushing to go to their relatives' houses, where they believed they would be safe, but they were hit on the way," he said.
Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the organization had sent a team to the scene on Tuesday. It saw houses destroyed and dozens of bodies in each of two locations.
"It's not the first time," Ms. Barry said, but "really this is one of the very serious and biggest incidents for a very long time." The dead included a volunteer for the Afghan Red Crescent and 13 of his relatives, she said.
She and Afghan officials worry that with the increase of American troops this year, the conflict is likely to intensify. "With more troops coming in, there is a risk that civilians will be more and more vulnerable," she said.
United States and NATO forces have sought to reduce civilian casualties. After a prominent episode last year in Azizabad, General McKiernan issued a directive in December saying "all responses must be proportionate."
The United Nations has said that figures in the first three months of this year have declined from the same period last year.
Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan. Reporting was contributed by Sangar Rahimi and Thom Shanker from Kabul, and Eric Schmitt and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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7) What Happens to the American Dream in a Recession?
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08dreampoll.html?hp
Given the battered economy, increasing joblessness and collapse of the housing market, what is the state of the American dream?
Pollsters for The New York Times and CBS News set out last month to try to answer that question. And the results seemed somewhat contradictory.
Although the nation has plunged into its deepest recession since the Great Depression, 72 percent of Americans in this nationwide survey said they believed it is possible to start out poor in the United States, work hard and become rich - a classic definition of the American dream.
And yet only 44 percent said they had actually achieved the American dream, although 31 percent said they expect to attain it within their lifetime. Only 20 percent have given up on ever reaching it. Those 44 percent might not sound like much, but it is an increase over the 32 percent who said they had achieved the American dream four years ago, when the economy was in much better shape.
Compared with four years ago, fewer people now say they are better off than their parents were at their age or that their children will be better off than they are.
So even though their economic outlook is worse, more people are saying they have either achieved the dream or expect to do so.
What gives?
We asked Barry Glassner, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and studies contemporary culture and beliefs.
"You want to hold on to your dream even more when times are hard," he said. "And if you want to hold on to it, then you better define it differently."
In other words, people are shifting their definition of the American dream. And the poll - conducted on April 1 to 5 with 998 adults, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points- indicated just that.
The Times and CBS News asked this same open-ended question four years ago and again last month: "What does the phrase 'The American dream' mean to you?"
Four years ago, 19 percent of those surveyed supplied answers that related to financial security and a steady job, and 20 percent gave answers that related to freedom and opportunity.
Now, fewer people are pegging their dream to material success and more are pegging it to abstract values. Those citing financial security dropped to 11 percent, and those citing freedom and opportunity expanded to 27 percent.
Here's some respondents' answers that were put in the category of freedom and opportunity:
"Freedom to live our own life."
"Created equal."
"Someone could start from nothing."
"That everybody has a fair chance to succeed."
"To become whatever I want to be."
"To be healthy and have nice family and friends."
"More like Huck Finn; escape to the unknown; follow your dreams."
Those who responded in material terms were hardly lavish. Here's a sampling:
"Basically, have a roof over your head and put food on the table."
"Working at a secure job, being able to have a home and live as happily as you can not spending too much money."
"Just financial stability."
"Owning own home, having civil liberties."
Mr. Glassner said, "For the vast majority of Americans at every point in history, the prospect of achieving the American dream has been slim but the promise has been huge."
"At its core, this notion that anyone can be president or anyone can be a billionaire is absurd," he said. "A lot of Americans work hard, but they don't become president and they don't become billionaires."
Still, he said, Americans have always believed in possibilities. And they have consistently said over time that they can start poor in this country and become rich, regardless of the economy or their circumstances. The 72 percent who feel that way today is down from the 81 percent who felt that way in 2007, but 72 percent is still a very high percentage, especially given the downward economy.
"It would be hard to find another country where it's as high," Mr. Glassner said.
The percentage of people who say the American dream does not exist or is only an illusion has remained low - 3 percent today and 2 percent four years ago. As one such person put it to our pollsters last month: "A bunch of hooey."
By the way, the phrase "the American dream" is generally agreed to have been coined first in 1931, in the midst of the Depression. In his book, "The Epic of America," the historian James Truslow Adams wrote, "It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable."
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8) Schwarzenegger Urges a Study on Legalizing Marijuana Use
By REBECCA CATHCART
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07arnold.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the discussion over whether to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use in California would benefit from a large-scale study, including international case comparisons, to show the possible impact of such a change.
Pressure to mend the state's fractured budget along with growing public support of marijuana legalization moved him to support such a study, Mr. Schwarzenegger said.
"I think it's time for a debate," he said. "I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues; I'm always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs. What effect did it have on those countries?"
A Field Poll from April showed 56 percent of the state's registered voters in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana for recreational use to fill some of the budget deficit. Mr. Schwarzenegger told reporters at a fire-safety event in Davis, Calif., that he did not support sweeping legalization, but that more information would help.
Marijuana advocates said the governor's invitation to have a discussion at all was a landmark.
"What stands out about Gov. Schwarzenegger's comment is not that he thought it, but that he said it," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "There has been enormous fear at a political level about saying out loud and on the record that we should think about this."
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, Democrat of San Francisco, introduced legislation in February that would legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana for recreational use. Mr. Ammiano's proposal has been shelved this session, but he has said he would reintroduce it next year. Sales could raise $1.2 billion to $1.34 billion in annual tax revenue, some estimates say.
But that would be little salve for the state's deficit, which could reach $20 billion in 15 months if ballot initiatives proposed by the governor do not pass, said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, Republican of Irvine. Mr. DeVore said he did not support legalizing marijuana, and was surprised to hear the governor's comments.
"I think this shows the governor's growing desperation over the budget," Mr. DeVore said.
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9) Lines Shift a Bit on a Senate Labor Bill
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
"But businesses object that card check would bypass secret ballot elections and allow union organizers to bully workers into signing cards."
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/business/07union.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1241715631-d0rBr2V4vEyiuItfQMrTvw
As labor leaders and Senate Democrats work intensely to cobble together 60 votes in the Senate to salvage a bill that would make it easier to unionize, the lines of possible compromises are taking shape.
Several Democrats have voiced opposition to the bill's "card check" provision, which would generally require employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of employees signed cards supporting it.
While most Democrats back the bill, an all-out lobbying effort by business has helped persuade several Democrats to oppose it. Labor complains that under current law companies often intimidate workers into voting against unions during lengthy antiunion campaigns. But businesses object that card check would bypass secret ballot elections and allow union organizers to bully workers into signing cards.
To win more support and prevent any intimidation, Senate Democrats are considering a proposal pushed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat. In a procedure similar to the early voting that precedes elections in many states, workers could sign cards and mail them to the National Labor Relations Board. If a majority mailed cards, the board would order the employer to recognize the union, as it now does when a majority of workers vote for a union through secret ballots.
To obtain a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, the bill's supporters would need the support of all 57 Democrats, the two independents - and at least one other senator, perhaps Al Franken of Minnesota, if he is seated.
Tom Harkin of Iowa, the bill's chief sponsor in the Senate with Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, has held intense talks in recent days with several Democrats, including Ms. Feinstein and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who recently left the Republican Party.
Mr. Harkin said, "There is one thing that won't work, and that is the status quo." He added, "Another key point is not to have these long drawn out elections that become an all-out war."
Mr. Specter announced in March that he would oppose the bill, as written, objecting to card check and a provision that calls for arbitration if management and labor do not agree on a contract within 120 days of a union winning recognition. Business has denounced that provision, saying government arbitrators should not dictate a company's wages and working conditions.
Several unions have signaled they would support a challenger to Mr. Specter in a Democratic primary unless he shows more support for the bill.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Specter said, "I have long believed that labor law reform is urgent." He said he had talked with labor leaders, but still had strong reservations about the bill. "I'm prepared to work hard to find an answer to the issue." He said he would consider quick elections instead of card check.
Several union leaders said they might support changes that would call for holding secret-ballot elections within a week or two of the labor board ordering an election, thereby preventing long, acrimonious campaigns.
Mr. Specter said, "I would support quicker elections but not too quick," declining to be specific.
Randel K. Johnson, the United States Chamber of Commerce's vice president for labor affairs, criticized quick elections. "Employers need a decent amount of time to tell their side of the story," he said. "That's probably about 45 days." He said the Senate should delay any labor law change pending hearings. "America deserves better than some senators trying to cobble together a deal to please the unions in a rush to get something done."
But Mr. Harkin said, "If the Chamber of Commerce says they're opposed to everything, then they're not going to be a player." He cited a proposal by Mr. Specter that might help preserve the arbitration provisions. Under it, the arbitrator would choose between offers by an employer and by a union. "The last, best offer idea might have legs," Mr. Harkin said.
Several labor leaders said they would accept legislation with fast elections only if it included arbitration and tougher penalties for companies that break labor laws. One view is to wait until 2011 to push for sweeping labor law changes, on the assumption that Democrats will enlarge their Senate majority in the 2010 elections.
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10) California: Jury Transcripts Are Sealed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | West
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07brfs-JURYTRANSCRI_BRF.html?ref=us
A judge sealed the grand jury transcripts of testimony by a man who says he killed an Oakland journalist who was investigating a community group. The judge, Morris Jacobson of Alameda County Superior Court, sided with prosecutors who said additional publicity could compromise the defendants' right to a fair trial. The now-sealed testimony was from Devaughndre Broussard, a former handyman at the Your Black Muslim Bakery who has testified he carried out the slaying of the Oakland Post's editor, Chauncey Bailey, on orders from the owner of the bakery, now defunct. The owner, Yusuf Bey IV, 23, was indicted last week in the killing of Mr. Bailey.
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11) New Fines Pit Carpenters Against Union Leaders
"The dispute escalated in March, when the union's welfare fund trustees voted to stop sending vacation-pay disbursements to anyone who had not signed the authorization card, infuriating rank-and-file members."
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/nyregion/07carpenters.html?ref=nyregion
The union representing New York City carpenters, one of the area's largest construction trades, continues to be roiled by turmoil after years of investigations into corruption and organized-crime influence and, since 2007, the federal convictions of four shop stewards for fraud, conspiracy or bribetaking.
The latest dispute has pitted many carpenters against the union leadership over a plan to withhold quarterly benefits checks from workers who refuse to grant the trustees of their welfare fund a new power to levy fines against them.
Leaders of the union, the District Council of Carpenters and Joiners, say the fines are necessary to deter carpenters from working off the books. Many carpenters say they are reluctant to give the union additional, and vaguely outlined, authority to fine workers.
The increasingly bitter dispute began last summer, after carpenters, joiners, timber workers and other union members were asked by the welfare fund trustees to sign a deduction-authorization card that would allow fund administrators to levy new but unspecified "fines or penalties" on workers' accrued vacation pay.
The welfare fund provides life insurance, hospitalization, medical care, pension and vacation benefits to union members.
Vacation pay is contributed by employers. Workers pay taxes on the money, but they authorize the welfare fund to collect and to disburse it to them four times a year.
Union leaders tried to calm the waters in October with a letter explaining that the new fines or penalties were meant to deter "cash hounds" - members who illegally work for cash. Still, many members declined to sign the cards out of distrust of the trustees, a panel that includes employers' representatives as well as the union's top elected leadership, carpenters said.
"That card was a threat," said a carpenter who agreed to be interviewed this month only on condition of anonymity because he said he feared retribution. "It was like signing a blank check to let them take out whatever they want, whenever they want."
About 1,000 of the union's 18,000 or so working members have not signed the card, a lawyer for the union said on Thursday. Many others signed it reluctantly, several union members said, because they needed the thousands of dollars that accrue each quarter.
"The average guy in this business has a family; he counts on the income from that vacation fund," said Michael Power, 37, a carpenter and 19-year union member who has refused to sign. "I talked to a lot of guys who said they feel cornered. They didn't want to sign the card, but they felt like they had no choice."
The dispute escalated in March, when the union's welfare fund trustees voted to stop sending vacation-pay disbursements to anyone who had not signed the authorization card, infuriating rank-and-file members.
The legal basis for withholding vacation-fund payments is unclear. The fund's trustees, comprising five union officials and five employer representatives, voted to stop distributing vacation checks without seeking the consent of the fund's lawyers, said Stuart GraBois, the welfare fund's executive director.
Gary Rothman, a lawyer for the carpenters' union, said, "Trustees have the authority to make reasonable rules as to the distribution of those benefits." But Mr. Rothman added that since they voted to withhold the checks, the trustees have asked for a legal opinion, to be given at the next trustees' meeting, on May 14.
Many union members say they have good cause to resist their leaders. Since October 2007, four union officials have been convicted of either taking illegal payments from union employers or cheating their own union's benefit funds. The carpenters' union has operated under federal court supervision since 1994.
Herman Benson, the founder of the Association for Union Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group based in Brooklyn, said the union leadership's idea to withhold vacation pay was troubling.
"There's something particularly outrageous about it, because the money that they're withholding is not theirs; it's the workers'," Mr. Benson said.
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12) Deal Reached to Keep Boston Globe in Print
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/business/media/07paper.html?ref=business
The stare-down between The New York Times Company and workers at The Boston Globe reached its crucial moment Wednesday when the newspaper's largest union agreed to vote on a package of painful wage, benefit and job security concessions that would head off the threatened closure of one of America's premier newspapers, but could also presage significant layoffs.
The potential deal by no means resolves The Globe's - or the company's - problems. Globe workers said it was not clear to them that their colleagues would approve the givebacks, and even with concessions tentatively made by all the company's unions, the paper would still be losing tens of millions of dollars a year and the company would still be struggling.
The Boston Newspaper Guild said Wednesday that it would put the deal before its members for a vote at an undetermined date, but people briefed on the union's plans said it would not make a recommendation on how its members should vote.
The concessions would make it easier for the Times Company to sell The Globe, a prospect that has been discussed with a handful of potential buyers and their intermediaries, according to people briefed on those discussions, some of whom said the company had been actively shopping the paper around. The company declined comment, but executives have said that the company is open to selling The Globe for a small fraction of the $1.1 billion it paid for the paper in 1993.
But this tentative deal appears to forestall the imminent death of a civic institution that, even after years of cutbacks, remains the dominant news organization in New England and a local fixture as central to Boston's self-image as white chowder and the Green Monster.
"My reaction is pure relief," said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. "The Globe is essential to Boston and New England and it would have been a catastrophic thing for it to have shut down."
For the more than 600 Guild members at The Globe, whose pay has already been frozen for several years, the price of survival is steep, as described by several people briefed on the possible deal, who were given anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The company and the Guild, which represents workers in the newsroom, the advertising department and some other offices, said Wednesday that they would not discuss the details until a union membership meeting to be held Thursday night.
But the people briefed on the deal said the package included a pay cut of at least 8 percent - as much as 8.5 percent by some accounts - and an unpaid, one-week furlough this year, equivalent to an additional 2 percent pay cut. Company contributions to retirement plans would be eliminated, with limited exceptions for older employees.
Perhaps more important to the company - and to a potential buyer - the Guild would agree to end lifetime job guarantees for employees who started working at The Globe before 1992, in return for improved severance packages for those workers. That would make it easier to lay people off. Union leaders have said the company has made it clear that more layoffs are on the way.
The Globe's other unions tentatively made similar concessions in all-night talks that wrapped up Monday morning. The immediate concessions on pay and benefits would cut operating costs by $20 million - half of that coming from the Guild - while the end of job guarantees could save millions more, depending on the extent of any downsizing. But that would merely lessen the red ink at a paper that company executives say lost $50 million in 2008, and is on track to lose $85 million this year on less than $500 million in revenue.
"I think everyone understands that no one would buy The Globe with the lifetime job guarantees in place, and everyone understands that there will be downsizing," said Dan Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University. "I'm certainly relieved that the worst didn't happen, but the alternative is pretty ugly, as well."
Ken Doctor, an industry analyst with Outsell, a research company, said, "there's not much prospect of getting The Boston Globe into the black in the short run," but it made sense to minimize losses, whether the company planned to sell or not. "As I look out 12 to 18 months, the economy will rebound, advertising for real estate and cars will rebound and the fortunes of the surviving, downsized newspapers will look somewhat better."
When the Times Company bought The Globe, it was the highest price ever put on an American newspaper. Analysts said at the time that the price was excessive, but The Globe was highly profitable for several years. Boston benefited from the dot-com boom and so did The Globe, which swelled with help-wanted ads, until the paper was hit hard when that bubble burst.
The Globe also has a relatively high cost structure, experts say, in part because of the lifetime job guarantees for some of the paper's unions before the Times Company takeover, and still enjoyed by about 430 employees, including about 190 Guild members. While most major cities have just one newspaper, The Globe competes for readers and ads with The Boston Herald.
The Globe has a paid circulation of 303,000 on weekdays and 466,000 on Sundays. Those figures rank 17th and 13th in the country, but they are down more than a third since 2000. The Herald is at 151,000 on weekdays, and 95,000 on Sundays.
Like nearly all of the nation's top regional newspapers, The Globe has shut bureaus, closed sections, focused more on local news, stopped delivering to far-flung areas and shrunk its news and business staffs - including a round of newsroom layoffs completed barely a month ago. The newsroom has about 340 people, still one of the largest in the country, but down from more than 500 earlier in this decade.
But all the cutting by the Times Company and the industry as a whole has not kept pace with collapsing revenue. The company's newspaper ad revenue fell 28.4 percent in the first quarter and 31.6 percent in its New England segment, dominated by The Globe. Other newspapers and publishing companies have reported similar declines.
Despite cutting thousands of jobs in the last few years, the Times Company reported a net loss of $57.8 million for all of 2008, and $74.5 million for the first quarter of 2009.
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13) Government Reports Criticize Health Care System
By KEVIN SACK
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07care.html?ref=health
Two annual government reports released Wednesday show that progress in improving the quality of health care and narrowing health disparities among ethnic groups remains agonizingly slow, and that patient safety may actually be declining.
One of the reports, compiled by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, found measurable improvement in fewer than half of the 38 patient safety measures examined, like accidental lacerations and catheter-associated infections. The agency concluded that one of every seven hospitalized adults on Medicare had experienced at least one adverse event, calling the finding "disturbing."
"Despite promising improvement in select areas, the health care system is not achieving the more substantial strides needed to close the gap or 'quality chasm' that persists," the report concluded. "Despite efforts to transform the U.S. health care system to focus on effective preventive and chronic illness care, it continues to perform better when delivering diagnostic, therapeutic, or rehabilitative care in response to acute medical problems."
A separate report on health care disparities noted some improvements in closing the gaps between ethnic groups but found little progress in addressing the most glaring differences. For instance, black Americans continue to be nearly 10 times more likely than whites to contract AIDS, little changed since 2005. They are twice as likely to have a leg amputated because of diabetes and pregnant black women are twice as likely not to receive prenatal care in the first trimester.
Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, the agency's director, said the reports' most notable finding was "the collective lack of dramatic improvement." She noted, for instance, that only 40 percent of diabetics were receiving each of three recommended annual treatments: a hemoglobin test, an eye exam and a foot exam. That figure, for 2005, was down by 5 percentage points from 2003.
Like previous research, the studies found significant variations in quality between states and among procedures. The rate of influenza vaccinations for diabetic adults was as high as 66 percent in one state and as low as 24 percent in another. While 96 percent of hospitalized heart attack patients received recommended care, like the administration of aspirin and beta blockers, only 60 percent of colon cancer patients were properly treated through the removal of lymph nodes for biopsy.
Across 45 core measurements, the median level of receipt of needed care was only 59 percent. "We can and should do better," the report on quality said.
While progress was being made in almost all of the core measures, the median annual rate of improvement was only 1.8 percent. The rate of improvement in the treatment of acute conditions, like heart attacks, was twice that for prevention or for the management of chronic conditions, like cancer screenings. The rate of improvement was more marked in hospitals than in long-term care or ambulatory care facilities.
The agency found an average decline of nearly 1 percent in its patient safety measurements over each of the last six years. Contributing to the drop were increases in the rate of accidental punctures and lacerations during procedures and of infections and other complications stemming from the placement of central venous catheters.
The secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, highlighted the reports on Wednesday in announcing the availability of $50 million in federal stimulus grants to helps states combat infections associated with health care. She also challenged hospitals to reduce blood stream infections from central catheters by 75 percent over the next three years.
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14) Stressing the Positive
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08krugman.html
Hooray! The banking crisis is over! Let's party! O.K., maybe not.
In the end, the actual release of the much-hyped bank stress tests on Thursday came as an anticlimax. Everyone knew more or less what the results would say: some big players need to raise more capital, but over all, the kids, I mean the banks, are all right. Even before the results were announced, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, told us they would be "reassuring."
But whether you actually should feel reassured depends on who you are: a banker, or someone trying to make a living in another profession.
I won't weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators didn't have the resources to make a really careful assessment of the banks' assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A rigorous audit it wasn't.
But focusing on the process can distract from the larger picture. What we're really seeing here is a decision on the part of President Obama and his officials to muddle through the financial crisis, hoping that the banks can earn their way back to health.
It's a strategy that might work. After all, right now the banks are lending at high interest rates, while paying virtually no interest on their (government-insured) deposits. Given enough time, the banks could be flush again.
But it's important to see the strategy for what it is and to understand the risks.
Remember, it was the markets, not the government, that in effect declared the banks undercapitalized. And while market indicators of distrust in banks, like the interest rates on bank bonds and the prices of bank credit-default swaps, have fallen somewhat in recent weeks, they're still at levels that would have been considered inconceivable before the crisis.
As a result, the odds are that the financial system won't function normally until the crucial players get much stronger financially than they are now. Yet the Obama administration has decided not to do anything dramatic to recapitalize the banks.
Can the economy recover even with weak banks? Maybe. Banks won't be expanding credit any time soon, but government-backed lenders have stepped in to fill the gap. The Federal Reserve has expanded its credit by $1.2 trillion over the past year; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become the principal sources of mortgage finance. So maybe we can let the economy fix the banks instead of the other way around.
But there are many things that could go wrong.
It's not at all clear that credit from the Fed, Fannie and Freddie can fully substitute for a healthy banking system. If it can't, the muddle-through strategy will turn out to be a recipe for a prolonged, Japanese-style era of high unemployment and weak growth.
Actually, a multiyear period of economic weakness looks likely in any case. The economy may no longer be plunging, but it's very hard to see where a real recovery will come from. And if the economy does stay depressed for a long time, banks will be in much bigger trouble than the stress tests - which looked only two years ahead - are able to capture.
Finally, given the possibility of bigger losses in the future, the government's evident unwillingness either to own banks or let them fail creates a heads-they-win-tails-we-lose situation. If all goes well, the bankers will win big. If the current strategy fails, taxpayers will be forced to pay for another bailout.
But what worries me most about the way policy is going isn't any of these things. It's my sense that the prospects for fundamental financial reform are fading.
Does anyone remember the case of H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent New York lawyer whom The Times has described as a "Wall Street éminence grise"? He briefly made the news in March when he reportedly withdrew his name after being considered a top pick for deputy Treasury secretary.
Well, earlier this week, Mr. Cohen told an audience that the future of Wall Street won't be very different from its recent past, declaring, "I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system." Hey, that little thing about causing the worst global slump since the Great Depression? Never mind.
Those are frightening words. They suggest that while the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration continue to insist that they're committed to tighter financial regulation and greater oversight, Wall Street insiders are taking the mildness of bank policy so far as a sign that they'll soon be able to go back to playing the same games as before.
So as I said, while bankers may find the results of the stress tests "reassuring," the rest of us should be very, very afraid.
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15) U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%, but Pace of Losses Eases
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY
May 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/business/economy/09jobs.html?hp
The American economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate leapt to 8.9 percent, the government reported Friday, yet the deterioration was slightly milder than expected, buoying hopes that better days are approaching.
"The labor market is still very weak, but it looks like the most intense spate of weakness is probably behind us," said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the research and trading firm MKM Partners. "Less bad is always a prelude to good. It's going to take some time for this economy to get back on its feet, but we might be closer to the recession ending."
Investors on Wall Street appeared to buy into that message, sending stock prices higher on Friday.
In Washington, President Obama called the increase in unemployment a "sobering toll" of the recession and warned of more job losses ahead. He said that a recovery could take months or years, but that the moderation in the rate of declining jobs was encouraging.
"The gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again," Mr. Obama said. "Step by step, we're beginning to make progress."
Coming a day after the Treasury pronounced American banks healthier than many analysts had expected, the Labor Department's monthly snapshot of the job market presented the clearest evidence to date that the nation's economic free fall had been arrested. The acute shock that began last fall as the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, followed by several other prominent institutions, appears to be relenting. Panic is no longer the dominant motif of American commercial life.
"It's a confirmation that we're in the early stages of a turn," said Ethan Harris, co-head of United States economic research at Barclays Capital. "We're getting further and further removed from the confidence shock of last fall."
But others emphasized that the easing of dire worry, while unambiguously positive, did not mean the economy was close to regaining vigor. The economic crisis may have merely given way to something more familiar and milder, yet still miserable for tens of millions of people: a continued slog through the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression, with demand for goods and services weak and jobs exceedingly hard to find.
"This is really horrible in any normal context," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "This isn't recovery. It's a slowing recession. In any other time other than the recession we're in, we'd be appalled by these numbers."
The numbers for April looked good only in comparison with recent months, with February's data revised to show a net reduction in jobs of 681,000 - compared with an initial estimate of 651,000 - and March revised to 699,000, from an initial loss of 663,000.
The slightly less awful jobs report for April appeared to reflect a moderate slowdown in the pace of layoffs, but not a sudden predilection among businesses to hire. The April data was bolstered by a surge of government hiring in preparation for the 2010 Census, while private payrolls actually dipped by 611,000.
Most experts contend that significant hiring will probably take many more months if not years to emerge. Businesses are expected to cut an additional two million jobs before the economy begins growing again and the unemployment rate begins to ebb, probably sometime in 2010. Any recovery that takes hold is expected to be long and faltering, though economists expressed hope that the worst losses were ending.
It is often said that the labor market is a lagging indicator, meaning it tends to improve long after other aspects of the economy trend up. But the job market also happens to be the piece of the economy that is most important to ordinary people, and now particularly so, making such pronouncements cold comfort in many households.
After years of borrowing against soaring home prices and tapping cheap credit cards to spend in excess of incomes, millions of Americans have been forced to live within the confines of what they bring home from work. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have disappeared from the economy. In recent months, wages have stopped growing. This retrenchment chokes off the spending power needed to generate demand for more employees at factories, shopping malls and offices.
"We're seeing fewer people employed, and those who are employed aren't seeing their earnings power increase," Mr. Baker said. "It's tough to see where a recovery can come from."
But those with more optimistic outlooks put the emphasis on the huge government-led initiatives under way aimed at bolstering demand for goods and services, and thus increasing the need for workers.
A $787 billion package of federal aid to state and local governments, along with tax cuts, is beginning to wash through the economy and should bolster fortunes later this year. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury have been pouring money into mortgage markets and other areas of finance, bringing down the costs of borrowing.
"You have monetary and fiscal stimulus the likes of which the world has never seen," Mr. Darda of MKM Partners said.
The question is whether fresh job losses combined with continued declines in real estate prices will prompt millions more Americans to fall behind on their mortgage payments, leaving banks counting fresh losses and prompting them to pull back anew on lending. If that happens, the economy could weaken further, exacerbating joblessness. The next few months should offer indications of whether the Obama administration's initiatives are adequate to avert that situation.
For another month, the jobs report offered up a catalog of unfolding household distress. Manufacturing jobs declined by 149,000, employment in professional and business services retrenched by 122,000 and construction employment slipped by 110,000.
The unemployment rate reached 15 percent among African-Americans, 21.5 percent for teenagers, and 9.4 percent for adult men.
Those figures do not account for the millions of people working part time because their hours have been cut or they have failed to land full-time jobs. When those people are counted along with those who would like jobs but have given up looking, the so-called underemployment rate reached 15.8 percent - up from 15.6 percent in March and 9.2 percent a year earlier.
For those out of work, this recession has already proven to be the most punishing since the government began tracking the length of unemployment in 1948: Among the officially jobless, 27.2 percent were unemployed for more than six months, the highest figure on record.
"We can't forget that joblessness lasts well after the official end of recessions," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project in New York. "It's going to take a lot of job training and unemployment benefits well through 2010."
Catherine Morse of East Mesa, Ariz., is among those suffering the realities of such data points. She has been looking for work for six months since she lost her job as an officer manager at a building company. She has been living on her savings, which are dwindling, she said.
"I've been looking every day, but I haven't been getting anything," she said.
Whatever happens to the economy going forward - whether the government initiatives successfully spur growth, or whether banks stumble anew and commerce contracts - businesses will almost surely hire timidly, say economists, with elevated levels of joblessness likely to be a feature of American life for many months.
"We have to start facing up to the fact we're headed for an unemployment rate above 10 percent," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, adding that the rate "will stay high for quite a while."
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16) U.S. Admits Civilians Died in Afghan Raids
By CARLOTTA GALL and TAIMOOR SHAH
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - United States officials acknowledged Thursday for the first time that at least some of what might be 100 civilian deaths in western Afghanistan had been caused by American bombs. In Afghanistan, residents angrily protested the deaths and demanded that American forces leave the country.
Initial American military reports that some of the casualties might have been caused by Taliban grenades, not American airstrikes, were "thinly sourced," a Pentagon official in Washington said Thursday, indicating that he was uncertain of their accuracy.
"It looks like at least some of the casualties were caused by the airstrikes," the official acknowledged. A second Pentagon official said, "It wouldn't surprise me if it was a mix," but added that it was too soon to tell.
A more complete report was due from Afghan and American investigators at the scene within 24 hours. Both officials requested anonymity so that they could speak more candidly.
The deaths drew hundreds of Afghans into the streets to protest outside police stations and the governor's office in Farah Province, where two villages were bombed after Afghan forces were ambushed by Taliban insurgents on Monday night.
Outside the governor's office, police officers fired on demonstrators who threw stones, wounding three of them.
The United States defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, questioned by journalists as he visited the capital, Kabul, apologized for any loss of innocent life. But he said that "exploiting civilian casualties and often causing civilian casualties are a fundamental part" of the insurgents' strategy.
"We regret any - even one - innocent Afghan civilian casualty," he said. "And we will make whatever amends are necessary." He said that he had heard initial reports indicating that the casualties might have been caused by Taliban grenades, not American airstrikes, but said that he had no confirmation.
The number of civilians killed in military operations, particularly American bombing raids, has become a chief source of Afghan disenchantment with the war against the Taliban. The United Nations estimated that more than 2,000 civilians were killed in fighting last year.
Villagers and Afghan lawmakers disputed the initial American claims that Taliban grenades had caused the casualties. Muhammad Naeem Farahi, a Parliament member who is from the area and has followed the case closely, laughed at the suggestion. "No, that's not true," he said, "and I am someone who supports the American presence."
He said he had gathered no reports of civilians wounded in the firefight before the bombing. He accused the Americans of using petty criminals as informants who often gave false reports and might even work for the Taliban.
Asked to repeat their accounts of what happened in their villages on Monday, two villagers reached by telephone gave the same details of the sequence of events as before.
Fighting broke out when Taliban fighters attacked Afghan Army and police forces at a police checkpoint on the main road some 500 yards from one of the sites that was bombed, said Muhammad Jan, whose village, Shiwan, was bombed.
The fighting did not reach the village or cause casualties there, he said. The Taliban pulled back into the village and then left the area. Later, planes came and bombs fell, but by then no Taliban fighters were in the village.
The bomb damage was so extensive that it could not have been caused by grenades, Mr. Jan said. "Taliban have no strong weapon to bring these kinds of casualties" he said. "The Taliban did not throw grenades into civilians' houses."
Jamil Ahmad, who lives in another bombed village, Granai, supported the account. "The battle finished and the Taliban retreated," he said, adding "They did not stay in the villages."
Protesters interviewed by telephone said they demanded a withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.
In the main city of Farah Province, traders closed stores and said they would not reopen them until the airstrikes had been fully investigated and the demonstrators' demands were met.
Three high-ranking officials met the protesters and offered to resign in sympathy, according to Allauddin Khan, a tribal elder who was among those who met with the local officials.
Secretary Gates's remarks did little to relieve the anger. He accused the Taliban of using civilians as shields and of causing civilian casualties by hiding among noncombatants during attacks in a tactic to divide the population from the government and its American supporters.
He said civilian casualties had dropped 40 percent so far, compared with last year, while casualties among Afghan security forces and American and coalition troops were up 75 percent.
Mr. Gates arrived in Kabul after visiting troops in southern Afghanistan and bases that are being expanded for some of the additional American forces President Obama requested.
Elsewhere, in Helmand Province, in the south, a suicide bomber on a motorbike struck a NATO convoy as it was passing through the main street of a town, Gereshk. The blast killed 12 civilians, including children, and wounded 32 others, a government spokesman said.
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan. Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Thom Shanker from Kabul.
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17) Former U.S. Soldier Convicted in Rape and 4 Slayings in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/07/us/AP-US-Iraq-Rape-Slaying.html?ref=world
Filed at 10:34 p.m. ET
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- A jury convicted a former soldier Thursday of raping and fatally shooting a 14-year-old girl after killing her parents and younger sister while he was serving in Iraq.
Pfc. Steven Dale Green faces a possible death sentence when the penalty phase of his trial begins Monday. Green, 24, of Midland, Texas, was being tried in civilian court because he had been discharged from the Army for a personality disorder before he was charged with the Iraq crimes.
Green stared straight ahead as the verdict was read in U.S. District Court in western Kentucky.
Defense attorney Darren Wolff, speaking afterward, said the defense never denied Green's involvement.
''Is this verdict a surprise to us? No. The goal has always been to save our client's life,'' Wolff said. ''And, now we're going to go to the most important phase, which is the sentencing phase and we're going to accomplish that goal.''
The lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marisa Ford, declined comment.
The trial started April 27, and jurors deliberated for more than 10 hours beginning Wednesday before finding Green guilty.
His defense team had asked them to consider the ''context'' of war, saying soldiers in Green's unit of the 101st Airborne Division lacked leadership and received little help from the Army to deal with the loss of friends in combat.
The prosecution rested six days into the trial after presenting witnesses who said Green confessed to the crimes and others who put him at the home of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, heard him shoot her family and saw him rape and shoot the girl.
During opening arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Skaret said Green talked frequently of wanting to kill Iraqis, but when pressed, would tell people he wasn't serious. In the weeks before the attack on the family, several soldiers from Green's unit were killed in combat.
In closing arguments, Ford said the March 12, 2006, crime was planned and premeditated. ''This was a crime that was committed in cold blood,'' she said.
Prosecutors told jurors that the plot against the family was hatched among Green and fellow soldiers who were playing cards and drinking whiskey at a checkpoint. Talk turned to having sex with Iraqi women, when one soldier mentioned the al-Janabi family, who lived nearby, Skaret said.
Three other soldiers are serving time in military prison for their roles in the attack, and testified against Green at his trial.
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18) Canadian Governments Tell Union to Offer More Concessions to G.M.
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/business/global/08caw.html?ref=world
OTTAWA - The governments of Canada and Ontario told the Canadian Auto Workers on Thursday to offer General Motors of Canada additional concessions in contract talks.
The union signed an agreement in March that reduced G.M.'s Canadian labor costs by an estimated 7 Canadian dollars an hour ($5.96). But in April, the auto workers agreed to 19 Canadian dollars an hour ($16.17) in savings for Chrysler Canada which, unlike its parent company, is not under bankruptcy protection.
Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario, suggested to reporters that the union would have to offer a deal to G.M. Canada along the lines of its pact with Chrysler Canada before the government's new deadline of May 15.
Ken Lewenza, the president of the union, said he had been told that without additional concessions, the two governments would not extend aid to G.M.'s Canadian unit. That, he added, would force the liquidation of the General Motors subsidiary.
"This is an unbelievable situation," Mr. Lewenza told reporters at a news conference.
"I would ask folks to keep in mind what happened in the case of Chrysler," Mr. McGuinty said.
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19) Leaving the Trailers
Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing
[This story exposes the bare bones of the stone-cold heartlessness of this rotten system of profits over people...bw]
By SHAILA DEWAN
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08trailer.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS - Earnest Hammond, a retired truck driver, did not get any of the money that went to aid property owners after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
He failed to qualify for one federal program and was told he missed the deadline on another. But he did get a trailer to live in while he carries out his own recovery plan: collecting cans in a pushcart to pay for the renovations to his storm-damaged apartment, storing them by the roomful in the gutted building he owns.
It is a slow yet steady process. Before the price of aluminum fell to 30 cents a pound, from 85 cents, he had accumulated more than $10,000, he said, almost enough to pay the electrician. But despite such progress, last Friday a worker from the Federal Emergency Management Agency delivered a letter informing him that it would soon repossess the trailer that is, for now, his only home.
"I need the trailer," said Mr. Hammond, 70. "I ain't got nowhere to go if they take the trailer."
Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May. The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another.
Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned "Katrina cottages" has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings.
Nonetheless, FEMA wants its trailers back, even though it plans to scrap or sell them for a fraction of what it paid for them.
"All I can say is that this is a temporary program, it was always intended as a temporary program, and at a certain point all temporary programs must end," said Brent Colburn, the agency's director of external affairs. He said there would be no extensions.
As of last week, there were two groups still in the agency's temporary housing program: more than 3,000 in trailers and nearly 80 who have been in hotels paid for by FEMA since last May, when it shut down group trailer sites. Most are elderly, disabled or both, including double amputees, diabetes patients, the mentally ill, people prone to seizures and others dependent on oxygen tanks.
Of those in trailers, more than 2,000 are homeowners who fear that the progress they are making in rebuilding will come to a halt if their trailers are taken.
"They had helped me out up until this point, and I couldn't believe that they suddenly decided, no, we're not going to let you finish the house, we're just going to take the trailer, and you can sit here on an empty lot," said Philipp Seelig, 70, a retired handyman. He said he was about two months from being able to move back into his duplex in the Broadmoor neighborhood. A grant to elevate his house to the required height did not come until December.
Progress on renovations has been slow for many reasons: contractors who did shoddy work or simply absconded with money, baffling red tape and rule changes, and inadequate grants. The opening of new rental units began to accelerate this year, but many projects have been stymied by the recession.
FEMA says it has done everything it can to help those in temporary housing. But, as is so often the case when it comes to Katrina issues, the agency's clients give a different account. Agency officials insist, for example, that they have been working "extensively" to help families in trailers and hotels find permanent solutions.
"A lot of people are involved in the process of making sure that no one falls through the cracks," said Manuel Broussard, an agency spokesman in Louisiana. "Everyone's been offered housing up to this point several times. And for various reasons, they have not accepted it."
But the dozen temporary housing occupants interviewed for this story said they had received little if any attention from FEMA workers and were lucky to get a list of landlords, much less an offer of permanent housing.
In Baton Rouge, Troy Porter, 47, had been staying in virtual isolation at a $100-a-night Courtyard Inn by Marriott since last June. There, his normally manageable depression deepened until, he said, he would go for weeks without leaving his room.
"The only time I've seen FEMA workers was in the last couple of weeks, where they come and give you the paper saying this month is your last month," Mr. Porter said. "They handed you the paper, and they turned around and walked off."
Mr. Porter perked up last week when he was visited by Sister Judith Brun, who has been working with Katrina evacuees. In her view, the type of case management endorsed by FEMA - which primarily involves handing someone a list of phone numbers for other overtaxed agencies and, according to numerous Katrina victims, declining to return phone calls - lacks the type of personal engagement that someone like Mr. Porter needs to become self-sufficient.
"Because nobody comes in at a personal level to help him recover," Sister Judith said, "it costs us tons of money."
Last year, the Louisiana Recovery Authority was supposed to unveil a more intensive caseworker system for people in temporary housing, but it never materialized. The authority has now asked homeless service organizations like Unity of Greater New Orleans and the Capital Area Alliance for the Homeless in Baton Rouge to help find stable housing for the hotel occupants.
FEMA officials also say that residents can buy their trailers, sometimes for as little as $300. But virtually all of the residents interviewed said they had offered to do so and been told they could not.
Residents said FEMA workers had started visiting them in the past two months, advising them not to move out and saying extensions would be available to those who showed hardship or progress in rebuilding. But agency officials said that was not the case.
Jane Batty, Mr. Seelig's longtime tenant, who has her own trailer next to his, was not surprised. "There is only one way to categorize this kind of behavior: it's crazy making," she said. "They've always had a different answer or had a different ploy to get us out of trailers that we had already agreed to buy."
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20) Taxing Those With Insurance to Pay for Those Without
By REED ABELSON
May 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/health/policy/08healthtax.html?ref=us
It is an alluring way to pay for the ambitious plan to expand health coverage to the nearly 50 million people who are now uninsured. Simply put, the government would tax the people who already have the most expensive health benefits, as provided by their employers.
By one Congressional estimate, taxing this "Cadillac coverage," as some call it, could yield $100 billion in revenue over five years. No wonder Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is a leader of the health reform effort, seems keen on the idea. And although the candidate Barack Obama criticized the notion last year when Senator John McCain promoted it, the concept now has some support in his administration as part of an overhaul of the health care system.
"There aren't that many pots of gold to pay for health reform," said Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy expert at the University of North Carolina.
But Mr. Oberlander and some other experts say Congress may have a difficult time devising a new tax on health benefits that does not threaten to do more harm than good.
If the plan is not designed carefully, they say, the additional taxes could affect many workers who are far from affluent and put the cost of adequate coverage further beyond the reach of many Americans. Some critics also warn that the taxes could undermine the employer-based coverage that is the bedrock of the nation's health insurance system.
The details have not yet been worked out. But critics say a tax could add to the burden of many employees, who already pay a hefty portion of their own insurance premiums and have additional out-of-pocket costs in the form of deductibles and annual co-payments.
And many people have high-priced insurance that is expensive for reasons unrelated to the quality of the coverage because they live in a high-cost city or work for a small business with old or sick employees.
"We too often equate expensive health insurance with generous health insurance, and they're not the same," Mr. Oberlander said. "It's not clear that you are going after 'Cadillac' health plans at all."
Right now, the amount that an employer spends on a worker's health insurance is not taxed as income, and employees can pay their share of premiums with before-tax earnings. The proposals being debated in Congress would start considering some part of the value of the health benefit as income and tax it accordingly.
Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which presides over tax legislation, made clear on Wednesday that he opposed a change in the tax treatment of health benefits.
And employer groups and labor officials have also come out against the idea. They say taxing benefits could endanger the current system of employer-based coverage, which now is responsible for insuring nearly two-thirds of Americans who are under 65 years old and have coverage.
"If we began to tax employee benefits, there would be mutiny at the gate," said J. Randall MacDonald, an I.B.M. executive who is chairman of the HR Policy Association, which represents corporate human resource professionals. "It's just counterintuitive to the problem we're trying to solve."
The challenge for Congress, aside from the political battles already stirring, is whether policy makers can come up with a proposal that addresses opponents' concerns, by limiting the tax to the wealthy, or otherwise fine-tuning it.
Proponents argue that the revenue could be raised by taxing only the most expensive policies for those people who can afford the few hundred or thousand dollars at stake - money they say is essential to government's ability to provide basic coverage to more people.
"We need the money," said Len Nichols, a health economist at the New America Foundation, which supports overhauling the current insurance system to give more people access.
Some supporters of these plans say the current system gives an advantage to people who get coverage from their employer and to people with high incomes.
"There is a huge consensus that this is inequitable and unfair tax treatment," said Robert E. Moffitt, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, which has long supported changing the tax laws and contends this is an area that might have significant bipartisan support.
What is more, some economists and policy analysts say the current system encourages overly generous coverage, which they say helps drive up the cost of medical care by keeping patients insulated from the true costs. "One of the arguments for doing it is trying to achieve higher value through the health care system," said Katherine Baicker, a health economist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
But the political opposition remains fierce.
Union officials, for example, say that the proposed policy could translate into higher taxes for some of its members, many of whose contracts call for generous health benefits. "Capping the tax exclusion would undermine the place where most Americans now get their coverage, before we have built a proven effective, sustainable alternative to employer-based plans," said Gerald M. Shea, an official with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in recent testimony before Congress.
And there is little doubt that more expensive coverage does not always mean more generous coverage. Small companies, for example, typically pay more for the same benefits than large employers do. And some companies pay more in premiums because more of their employees are older or sicker.
Moreover, the cost of insurance varies in different parts of the country, so that someone with the same plan in New York or California will pay more than someone in North Dakota.
Congress may be able to balance these issues. But the problem, some policy analysts say, is that if a grand compromise ends up too narrowly defining the group of people who will end up paying the new tax, the amount of money raised might not be enough to make a difference in paying for health reform.
"I think it's got some traction, but what happens when push comes to shove?" asked Paul Fronstin, an analyst for the Employee Benefit Research Institute, who recently completed a lengthy analysis of changing tax policy.
"If it's not going to buy them much, why do it?" he asked.
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21) Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe
By Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
May 08, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3858
During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.
Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.
On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President's office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:
"We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities."
I stated, "By nailing this petition to the door of the President's office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges."
After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice's responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal Iraq War: (Video here)
As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration's campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.
A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice's image on campus.
In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees' office which demanded that Stanford "halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia."
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law" and co-author of "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent." Read her articles at www.marjoriecohn.com.
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3858
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22) Far From Over
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/opinion/09herbert.html
It’s a measure of just how terrible the economy has become that a loss of more than a half-million jobs in just one month can be widely seen as a good sign. The house is still burning down, but not quite as fast.
I can understand why people are relieved that we no longer seem to be hurtling toward a depression, but beyond that I see very little to be happy about.
The economy is in shambles. Nearly 540,000 jobs were lost in April, a horrifying number. The unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent. Even the most optimistic observers expect the job losses to continue, although, hopefully, at a slower pace. The unemployment rate is expected to keep on climbing, like some monster from the movies, toward double digits.
We are stuck in what is — or will soon be — the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Newspapers and the U.S. auto industry are on life support. The employment picture for even the most well-educated Americans — men and women with four-year college degrees or higher — is the worst on record.
If there is something about this economy to be cheerful about — something real — I wish someone would let me know.
Poverty and homelessness are increasing and, as Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said during an interview this week, “There are a whole lot of people who are going to be economically desperate for many years.”
Joblessness is like a cancer in the society. The last thing in the world that you want is for it to metastasize. And that’s what’s happening now. Don’t tell me about the stock market. Don’t tell me about the banks and their perpetual flimflammery. Tell me whether poor and middle-income families can find work. If they can’t, the country’s in trouble.
One reason the employment losses slowed somewhat in April was that the government added 72,000 jobs, most of them temporary hires as part of the preparation for the 2010 Census. The private sector dumped 611,000 jobs. Moreover, the Labor Department revised the job losses for March upward, from 663,000 to 699,000, and for February, from 651,000 to 681,000. Some 5.7 million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession in December 2007.
Mr. Mishel has been trying to call attention to the human toll caused by job losses on this vast scale. The institute estimates that the poverty rate for children is in danger of increasing from 18 percent, which is where it was in 2007, the last year for which complete statistics are available, to a scary 27.3 percent in 2010.
For black children, you don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you anyway. The poverty rate for black kids was 34.5 percent in 2007. If the national unemployment rate rises, as expected, to the vicinity of 10 percent next year, the poverty rate for black children would rise to 50 percent or higher, analysts at the institute believe.
That would be a profound tragedy.
We already know that children are being harmed in families hammered by job losses, home foreclosures and the myriad stresses that grip families trying to cope with economic reversals. Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children’s Health Fund and a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has referred to these youngsters as the “recession generation,” and has described what is happening to them as “a quiet disaster.”
Much of the impact of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus efforts is still to come, but those efforts were never narrowly focused on the need for job creation and are not nearly large enough to cope with the mammoth job losses that are occurring. The official unemployment rate for men is already at 9.4 percent, and for black workers 15 percent.
To get a sense of the task ahead, consider that 7.8 million jobs would have to be created just to bring us back to where we were when the recession began. That’s because the working-age population has continued to grow since then. The economy has to create about 127,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. That comes to more than 2 million jobs since the start of the recession, which you then add to the 5.7 million that have been lost.
There is no light yet at the end of this tunnel.
It may not be popular, and it certainly won’t sit well with the so-called deficit hawks in Congress, but there is a real need for additional government spending to further stimulate the economy and create jobs. (Think infrastructure, among other things.) The kind of employment distress we’re confronting is not sustainable. Help will be needed for people whose unemployment benefits run out, who are ill but not covered by medical insurance, who are homeless or otherwise in desperate economic straits.
This crisis is far from over.
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