Sunday, February 15, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2015



On March 21, the antiwar movement will return to Washington, DC for a massive rally against U.S. Wars

On January 10, UNAC joined many other major antiwar organizations at a meeting in Washington, DC where we planned for several days of action around the date of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  It is time that we are back in the streets in a big way.  Please plan to join us, organize buses and car pools and save the date.  For areas that are too far from Washington, DC, plan your own action in your area.    End all Wars at Home and Abroad!  Join us!

Here's the schedule so far:

Wednesday, March 18: Peace gathering and fellowship.

Thursday, March 19th: Lobbying on Capitol Hill, followed by a tour of the war machine: homes and offices of war criminals.

Friday, March 20th: Afternoon and evening teach-in: Ending Current Wars, Ending the Institution of War.
This event will examine ISIS and U.S. warmaking in Western Asia and elsewhere; the damage militarism does to the natural environment, economies, and civil rights; and how the war system can be replaced with a peace system.

Saturday, March 21st: Protest at the White House, followed by march.

To join the Facebook event for Spring Rising: https://www.facebook.com/events/430232700485435
For more information, click here:
http://nepajac.org/springrising.html

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Cancel the #DetroitWater Debt and Start Afresh

Sign the petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cancel-the-detroitwater-debt-and-start-afresh


We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the existing debts of Detroit Water and Sewerage customers and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Last year, Detroit made international headlines when tens of thousands of residents lost their access to water through an aggressive shut-off program by the water department.

The city of Detroit has endured decades of economic turmoil, drastic depopulation and repeated mismanagement. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is over $5 billion in debt (over $4,500 per family in the metro Detroit area).To compensate, they have increased rates over 119% in the last decade.¹Residents who fall behind on their bills risk water shutoff, and in 2014 that’s exactly what happened to tens of thousands of Detroiters.

The shutoff program didn't work, and the DWSD collected less than 3% of the over $100 million currently owed.² A large number of the families who entered into payment plans last year are now defaulting on them yet again because they lack sufficient income.

In contrast, a voluntary bond tender offer initiated during the shutoffs allowed the city to renegotiate high interest rates on municipal water bonds and save over $250 million in interest fees for the city.³

The bond markets know that Detroit's water debt is junk and the city will unlikely ever be able to pay the current interest rates, which is why Default Trends proclaimed Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) its "Biggest Default of 2014".⁴

Corruption in the DWSD has been rampant, with former Department head Victor Mercado currently serving an 8-month federal corruption sentence for "conspiracy to commit extortion" by padding department contracts and rigging bids that netted his business associates millions. Although many of those contracts are now being scrutinized by the city's legal team, Detroiters are still paying dearly for the fraud of past leaders.

The overbearing Detroit water debt has a human side, too: it has pushed Detroit into an outright humanitarian crisis. Rates of infectious disease and sickness are up dramatically, leading the National Nurses union recently to declare a 'Public Health Emergency' in Detroit.⁵The water department is significantly under-staffed and water infrastructure is crumbling, leading to leaks that cost taxpayers tens of millions annually. The department is unable to address these time-sensitive issues due to lack of funding, as it currently spends 46% of its operating revenue on debt service to banks - the largest line-item by far in its budget.

We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's existing debts and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Detroit's existing water/sewerage rate structure is highly-regressive and unaffordable for too many families. We call on the city to implement the 2005 Water Affordability Plan to ensure that no family pays more than the EPA-recommended threshold for water, including "lifeline rates" for essential quantities of drinking/bathing water.⁶

The water department acknowledges that 90% of its operating costs are fixed⁷, meaning they don't depend upon how much water is consumed by users. Still, they charge usage-based rates that fluctuate dramatically with weather (up to 18% decrease in usage) and with broader demographic shifts in the region (2/3 of Detroit's population has left the city since 1950). Creating a progressive rate structure based at least partially upon a family's income - as is done with many public services like streetlights, schools, libraries, etc - would more equitably distribute the burden of operating a system relied upon by over 4 million people for essential drinking water.

The Detroit Water Brigade has provided emergency relief and advocacy to hundreds of families since June of 2014, including providing immediate financial assistance to families currently without water.⁸We've seen first-hand the disastrous effects of these harsh, debt-driven austerity policies.

We pledge to escalate this campaign in the coming months until we bring relief to the tens of thousands of metro Detroit families living without water today and the millions living precariously with unaffordable water rates.


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Free Albert Woodfox!
End the Injustice. Don’t Oppose Bail for Albert Woodfox

In 1972 a young white prison guard named Brent Miller was fatally stabbed inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola.” Although no physical evidence tied Albert Woodfox to the crime, he was immediately assumed to be guilty and placed in solitary confinement; 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell, four steps long, three steps across. He was eventually convicted of the crime after trials tainted with constitutional violations and other legal issues, and has been held in solitary confinement, fighting to prove his innocence ever since.

Albert believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism and outspoken critique of injustice. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party and campaigned for better treatment, racial solidarity, and an end to the brutal sexual slavery in prison. Woodfox, Wallace and King came to be known as the Angola 3.

Albert Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 on the basis of racial discrimination in the selection of a grand jury foreperson. In late 2014, an appeals court upheld the decision in Alberts favor, and on February 6, his lawyers filed for bail. After years of the State of Louisiana appealing decisions in Albert’s favor, It is critical that Governor Bobby Jindal show leadership, and ensure that Albert’s cruel and unjust isolation is not his legacy. April 2015 will mark 43 years since Woodfox was first placed solitary - for a crime he maintains that he didn't' commit, a claim that much of the available evidence supports. It is time for the State to let the wisdom of the courts stand and ensure his release.


Amnesty International
http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1502EAIAR2&ea.url.id=359128&forwarded=true

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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SHUT DOWN CREECH!

Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars!

A Convergence For Peace in the Nevada Desert

Join us March 4-6, 2015 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada, for a national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, and everywhere. Sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Nevada Desert Experience , Veterans For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. CODEPINK will also hold vigils daily on March 2nd and 3rd, prior to the official beginning of this Creech Convergence For Peace, and welcomes everyone to join them.


In 2005, Creech Air Force Base secretly became the first U.S. base in the country to carry out illegal, remotely controlled assassinations using the MQ-1 Predator drones, and in 2006, the more advanced Reaper drones were added to its arsenal.  Creech drone personnel sit behind computers in the desert north of Las Vegas and kill "suspects" thousands of miles away.  Recent independent research indicates that the identity of only one out of 28 victims of U.S. drone strikes is known beforehand. Though officials deny it, the majority of those killed by drones are civilians. In 2014, it was leaked that the CIA's criminal drone assassination program, officially a separate operation from the Air Force's, has been piloted all along by Creech's super-secret Squadron 17. 


Since 2009 dozens of activists have been arrested for allegedly trespassing at Creech, in attempts to stop the indiscriminate killing and burning of innocent people by drones.  At the trial of the "Creech 14," the first Americans prosecuted for trespass at a drone base, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified that "to have a baby burn to death because of a 'no trespass'  sign would be poor public policy, to put it mildly."  In a time of burning children, the "no trespass" signs attached to the fences that protect the crimes perpetrated with drones are not legitimate, and they do not command our obedience.  After all, it is the U.S. military that is guilty of lethal trespassing.


The US drone program is rapidly proliferating as air bases are being converted to drone bases across the U.S. and abroad, but Creech remains the primary air base in U.S. state-sponsored global terrorism. Creech is where the killer drone program started--it is where we shall end it.


We must put an end to this desecration of our Mother Earth and all creatures who inhabit it.

We must put an end to the dehumanization of lives from Ferguson to Palestine to Pakistan.

We must close all foreign U.S. military bases.  Money for human needs. 

We must put an end to drone warfare, drone surveillance, and global militarization.

We must...
SHUT CREECH DOWN! 
More details to come soon!

Sign up on facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1525740921010540/?context=create&previousaction=create&source=49&sid_create=3742154553#

Or contact:

Toby Blomé of Code Pink, 510-215-5974 (h)

Brian Terrell of VCNV and NDE,   773-853-1886

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Justice for Rasmea: All out for March 12!

On March 12, Rasmea is set to appear once again in the Detroit courtroom of Judge Gershwin Drain, this time for a sentencing hearing. We are seeking letters to the judge requesting leniency.

For this round of letters, we are NOT looking for a mountain of individual statements, but rather letters from prominent individuals who represent broader constituencies. We need you to work with leaders of faith-based, labor, and community organizations, as well as student governments, student organizations (national), prominent professors, and legislators in your area to draft and submit letters.

Below you will find an outline you can use to draft these letters, but it is important for the authors to write them in their own voices. Letters should be submitted by February 4 to justice4rasmea@uspcn.org.

Stay tuned! Keep sharing Rasmea’s story and organizing fundraisers. Watch for calls for your support as we prepare for sentencing and appeal. Our organizing is key to winning #Justice4Rasmea.

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2015 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414

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Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015


UNAC is the major national antiwar coalition in the U.S. today.  The existence of a United National Antiwar Coalition is vital and we need your financial support to continue our work and to expand.

With U.S. wars today accelerating and expanding globally in various forms – from drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan, never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support to neo-fascists in Ukraine, and proliferating Africom forces to threats of war for regime change in Syria – we have an obligation to do whatever is possible to educate the public and to take action to stop the carnage.

The wars abroad are connected to global warming with most wars fought over energy resources with the U.S. war machine as the largest polluter.

At home, we see hugely growing income inequality, a militarized and racist police force, mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, and a massive police state apparatus that includes global surveillance and laws to quell dissent.

In spite of the trillions spent by the U.S. corporate war government and its controlled media propaganda machine to keep us in check, the people are fighting back.  We’ve been inspired and strengthened by the hundreds of thousands of new activists taking to the streets of this country to stop police brutality, to build Occupy encampments, to fight for decent wages, to demand full rights for immigrants, to win marriage equality, to end global warming, to demonstrate solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, and to protest unending U.S. wars.

UNAC has played an active, often leadership role, in all of the antiwar and social justice movements of our time.  While most activists are focused on their particular issues, the most vital role we can play is to connect the issues to their source.  All of the injustices and crimes we protest, stem from the imperialist insatiable drive for expanding profit and control – and the U.S. is the largest imperialist power militarily and economically.  When there should be plenty for all, only the obscenely wealthy benefit while the rest of the 99% struggle just to survive.

Some of our recent major accomplishments:
·       Initiated protest against NATO and 15,000 marched in Chicago in 2012.
·        Called for immediate actions against threats of war and coups directed at Libya, Iran, No. Korea, Africa, Latin America,    Ukraine, and maintaining the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
·        Organized a national tour for Afghan leader Malalai Joya.
·        Sent representatives to international NATO protests and conferences.
·        Serve on the Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms to act against Islamophobia , racist attacks on Muslims, and attacks on our civil liberties.
·        Participated in national efforts to organize anti-drone actions.
·        Campaigned to defend victims of government repression who speak out and expose Washington’s crimes, including Rasmea Odeh, Mumia abu Jamal, Lynne Stewart, Chelsea Manning, and the Midwest activists targeted by the FBI.
·        Produced national educational conference calls featuring experts on topics such as U.S. intervention in Africa, the destruction of Libya, the developing wars in Syria, and others.
·        Built an antiwar contingent in the massive New York City Climate Change march and built Climate Change action in other cities around the country.
·        Helped organize protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza
·        Helped organize protests against the murder of Blacks by white police and the militarization of the police forces in the U.S.

UNAC has a history of bringing hundreds of activists together at large national conferences to learn about the issues of the day, to discuss the way forward and to vote on an Action Program for the coming period.

The UNAC conference next May will bring activists from all the movements in motion to cross-fertilize these struggles.  We are particularly dedicated to bringing young activists together to support and learn from each other.  For this, we need your help to offer subsidies to leaders from Ferguson, from the border wars in the southwest, from the Native Americans who are fighting against the pipelines ruining their lands, from the Students for Justice in Palestine, and many others.

Please give generously so that we can continue our work to bring harmony and justice to the peoples of this earth.

You can send a check to UNAC at PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or click the button below to contribute on-line with your credit or debit card.

 https://www.unacpeace.org/

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On Behalf of Wadiya Jamal and
Mumia Abu-Jamal,
A Contribution Request

The message following is a forward from:
Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family

Samiya “Goldii” Abdullah, a daughter of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal died on December 17, 2014 after years of battle with breast cancer. Samiya would have been 37 this January 9 and is survived by two young daughters, Aiyanah and Aaiyah, affectionately known as Dolly and Puddy, ages eleven and four.

Samiya was a remarkable woman. She was accomplished as a musician, an activist and rapper on social justice, particularly in the struggle for Mumia’s freedom. She devoured books and education. During her long, often debilitating illness, Samiya finished her Masters Degree in School and Mental Health Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania with honors. She was dedicated to her young daughters and wanted them to grow up loving each other as much as she did her brothers and sisters. And she wanted her daughters to see Mumia (called “Pop Pop” by them) walk out of prison and home with their grandmother, Wadiya.

Samiya's active fight for Mumia's freedom, began at the young age of four. Mumia wrote about this in “The Visit” printed in Live from Death Row in 1994. This was recreated in the movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

"My father is still considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear, there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his conviction.
"He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the minds of the people."   
                     —Goldii

Samiya’s strength, character and spirit were nurtured by Wadiya and Mumia and are being passed on to her daughters.

On behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is a request for funds to assist Wadiya for care of her granddaughters, Dolly and Puddy.

A financial contribution of any amount will be greatly appreciated.

Please send checks or money orders, made payable to Wadiya Jamal:

Wadiya Jamal
P.O. Box 19404
Kingsessing Postal Station
Philadelphia, PA 19143-9998

In loving memory of Samiya and in tribute to her fierce fight for life,

Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family


Hear Mumia’s Words (and Song) played before the Janazah for Samiya on December 20, 2014: “Samiya Abdullah Makes Transition”:

http://prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/audio/uploads/SamiyaAbdullahMakesTransition12-19-2.mp3?download=1

This message has been sent to you by:
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations. 


SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html

CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html


Write: Lorenzo Johnson
            DF 1036
            SCI Mahanoy
            301 Morea Rd.
            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC



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Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
       
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."  

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney 

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment. 

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.

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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
mchugh_md
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
  • The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help
  • A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
  • Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
  • A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!



Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
 Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org

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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) West Coast Labor Dispute Brings Crippling Delays to Seaports
By




2) Smoking’s Toll on Health Is Even Worse Than Previously Thought, a Study Finds
By
3) Education Is Newest Target of Kansas Budget Cuts
By




4) Residents of Brooklyn Housing Project Stay Wary After Officer Is Indicted
"But for several residents, the indictment of Officer Liang — coming after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island declined to indict white officers in other deaths of unarmed black men — only underscored how capricious justice could be."
By and




5) Dutchess County to Pay Brooklyn Native $7.5 Million for Wrongful Murder Conviction
By




6) How Mortgage Fraud Made the Financial Crisis Worse
By Binyamin Appelbaum
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/upshot/how-mortgage-fraud-made-the-financial-crisis-worse.html?ref=business&abt=0002&abg=1




7) Vitamins Hide the Low Quality of Our Food
By CATHERINE PRICE




8)  Canadian Pacific Railway Engineers Go on Strike as Negotiations Break Down
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/business/international/canadian-pacific-railway-strike-may-affect-north-american-industries.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news




9)  Hundreds Protest Fatal Police Shooting in Washington
By




10) Threatened Smelt Touches Off Battles in California’s Endless Water Wars
By




11) Obama to Intervene in Dispute at West Coast Ports
By







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1) West Coast Labor Dispute Brings Crippling Delays to Seaports
By

LOS ANGELES — The container ships arrive here filled with appliances, toys and apparel, auto parts, computer components and untold other products from Asia — to head out to stores across America.

But a simmering labor dispute between the longshoremen’s union and ship owners has brought crippling delays here and to other West Coast seaports. And the slowdown escalated this week as owners said they would suspend the unloading of container and other cargo ships on four of the next five days because of what they called “a strike with pay.”

The move follows a similar two-day limit on work last weekend that angered many port workers, who saw it as a ploy to punish them and increase pressure to settle on a new labor contract after nine months of negotiations, which continue with the aid of a federal mediator.

It seems certain to worsen the congestion at the West Coast ports, which together handle half the container traffic entering the United States, including at the vast Los Angeles-Long Beach complex here and ports in Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma.

Manufacturers and farmers who rely on timely and predictable trans-Pacific trade fear even more serious disruptions.

“The continued intransigence by labor and management to reach a new contract is unacceptable,” the National Retail Federation said in response to the latest news. “This stalemate is hurting American businesses, their employees and consumers.”

The federation called on the White House to push for a settlement.

Workers and management offer diametrically opposed explanations for the delays. The ship owners say that workers in some ports have significantly slowed their work in the last few months, and that the union local here in Southern California has hampered operations since November with new limits on who may operate cranes.

For several weeks, though, citing congestion in the yards, the owners have limited night-shift activities, with no unloading of ships, reducing the nighttime payroll.

“The employers are deliberately worsening the existing congestion crisis to gain the upper hand at the bargaining table,” Robert McEllrath, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said of the restricted unloading.

The owners must pay wage premiums for night shifts and time and a half for work on holidays and weekends — on a base rate of about $36 per hour for many seasoned longshoremen. Under the union contract, both Thursday (Lincoln’s Birthday) and Monday (Washington’s Birthday) are holidays.

The owners are suspending the unloading of ships on these two days as well as the weekend, but will allow terminals to continue at their discretion with activities to move containers from their yards onto trucks and trains.

Last week, the owners made public what they called a generous contract offer. On Wednesday, the Pacific Maritime Association, which is negotiating on behalf of the ship owners, dominated by huge Chinese, Danish, Taiwanese and other companies, said the longshoremen’s union had responded to that offer “with demands they knew we could not meet,” in particular a demand for a unilateral right to fire arbitrators when the contract ends.

The statement added, “What they’re doing amounts to a strike with pay, and we will reduce the extent to which we pay premium rates for such a strike.”

On Wednesday, 14 container ships stood at anchor outside the conjoined ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Newly arrived ships have been waiting a week or two each before they can enter a terminal where looming hammerhead cranes will heft their cargoes onto shore.

Until last fall, container ships, which have carefully scripted schedules, virtually never had to anchor offshore here at the five-mile-wide harbor that takes in 33 percent of the nation’s containerized imports, said Capt. J. Kip Louttit, executive director of The Maritime Exchange, a private group that monitors ship movements here. With unloading activities suspended, the number waiting for a berth will climb, he said.

The businesses that depend on Pacific trade for parts, products or sales are starting to feel the pinch. California citrus growers have lost $500 million in export business since November because containers now sit for an intolerable 10 days at the pier before being loaded, according to California Citrus Mutual, a trade association in Exeter, Calif.

Last weekend, the owners, in a surprise move, also temporarily suspended the unloading of ships. They said they did so because they were tired of paying overtime wages for sluggish work and because they had to focus on clearing out a backlog of containers in overflowing yards.

The union, in turn, hired a small plane and distributed aerial photographs showing empty tracts in the purportedly clogged yards.

“They are trying to create a situation to focus pain on longshoremen,” Richard Montez, a certified crane operator, said when he heard about the latest cutbacks. “They just don’t want to pay overtime dollars.”

”Instead of trying to ease the situation and get back to the norm, they’re causing more grief,” he said. “I have a family, I want to work.”

In the case of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, the owners say a November decision by the union local to stop some 500 experienced, but uncertified, yard-crane operators from filling that linchpin role is to blame for the delays. The union says it made the decision for safety reasons, while the owners call it an indirect slowdown.

“There are not enough crane operators, period, to work continuously as we have in the past,” James C. McKenna, president and chief negotiator of the maritime association, said on Tuesday. On a typical day, the association says, the union provides far fewer operators than employers want, constricting all operations.

In one of many clashing narratives, union leaders deny this, saying they have men and women qualified to meet any work demands and that many certified crane operators are not even working full time.

“There’s no logical reason not to be working seven days a week around the clock,” said Bobby Olvera Jr., president of I.L.W.U. Local 13 here, which has 2,000 members.

The owners, Mr. McKenna said, had agreed to raise the base hourly wage for senior skilled workers, now $35.68, to $40.68 over five years, a 3 percent annual increase, with many of them also receiving considerable overtime and shift premiums. The owners would also continue to provide a no co-pay health plan and generous pensions.

The union has declined to discuss the negotiations.

Mr. McKenna has warned darkly of an “imminent collapse” of port operations, causing wide havoc and driving more shippers to other routes.

The union calls that a threat of a lockout, which occurred in 2002, prompting federal intervention under the Taft-Hartley Act. But the union, which insists that the parties are near agreement, has made no plans for a strike, which last happened in 1971.

Mr. McKenna said he was not forecasting a lockout but a system becoming so gridlocked that owners would have to suspend operations.

“A lockout is a last resort, nobody wins,” he said. “But at some point in time this thing will grind itself to a stop, and I wouldn’t take anything off the table.”

Noah Smith contributed reporting.




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2) Smoking’s Toll on Health Is Even Worse Than Previously Thought, a Study Finds
By


However bad you thought smoking was, it’s even worse.

A new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the toll taken by tobacco in the United States. Before the study, smoking was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer.

The new findings are based on health data from nearly a million people who were followed for 10 years. In addition to the well-known hazards of lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, the researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco.

Even though people are already barraged with messages about the dangers of smoking, researchers say it is important to let the public know that there is yet more bad news.“The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health,” said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s not a done story.”

In an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Graham A. Colditz, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new findings showed that officials in the United States had substantially underestimated the effect smoking has on public health. He said smokers, particularly those who depend on Medicaid, had not been receiving enough help to quit.

About 42 million Americans smoke — 15 percent of women and 21 percent of men — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research has shown that their death rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before nonsmokers. Smokers are more than 20 times as likely as nonsmokers to die of lung cancer. Poor people and those with less formal education are the most likely to smoke.

Mr. Carter said he had been inspired to dig deeper into the causes of death in smokers after taking an initial look at data from five large health surveys being conducted by other researchers. The participants were 421,378 men and 532,651 women 55 and older, including nearly 89,000 current smokers.

As expected, death rates were higher among the smokers. But diseases known to be caused by tobacco accounted for only 83 percent of the excess deaths in people who smoked.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really low,’ ” Mr. Carter said. “We have this huge cohort. Let’s get into the weeds, cast a wide net and see what is killing smokers that we don’t already know.”

The research was paid for by the American Cancer Society, and Mr. Carter worked with scientists from four universities and the National Cancer Institute.

The study was observational, meaning that it looked at people’s habits, like smoking, and noted statistical correlations between their behavior and their health. Correlation does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, so this kind of research is not considered as strong as experiments in which participants are assigned at random to treatments or placebos and then compared. But people cannot ethically be instructed to smoke for a study, so a lot of the data on smoking’s effects on people comes from observational studies.

Analyzing deaths among the participants from 2000 to 2011, the researchers found that, compared with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure. Smokers were also six times more likely to die from a rare illness caused by insufficient blood flow to the intestines.Mr. Carter said he had confidence in the findings because, biologically, it made sense that those conditions were related to tobacco. Smoking can weaken the immune system, increasing the risk of infection, he said. It is also known to cause diabetes, high blood pressure and artery disease, all of which can lead to kidney problems. Artery disease can also choke off the blood supply to the intestines. Lung damage from smoke, combined with increased vulnerability to infection, can lead to multiple respiratory illnesses.

Two other observations supported the findings, he said. One was that the more heavily a person smoked, the greater the added risks. The second was that among former smokers, the risks diminished over time. In general, such effects, known as a dose response, suggest that an observed correlation is more than a coincidence.

The study also found small increases in the risks of breast and prostate cancer among smokers. Mr. Carter said those findings were not as strong as the others, adding that additional research could help determine whether there were biological mechanisms that would support a connection.

A 2014 report by the surgeon general’s office said the evidence for a causal connection between smoking and breast cancer was “suggestive but not sufficient.” The same report found no evidence that smoking caused prostate cancer, but it noted that in men who did have prostate cancer, smoking seemed to worsen the outcome.

The diseases that had previously been established by the surgeon general as caused by smoking were cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, liver, pancreas, larynx, lung, bladder, kidney, cervix, lip and oral cavity; acute myeloid leukemia; diabetes; heart disease; stroke; atherosclerosis; aortic aneurysm; other artery diseases; chronic lung disease; pneumonia; influenza; and tuberculosis.


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3) Education Is Newest Target of Kansas Budget Cuts
By

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — In November, shortly after Gov. Sam Brownback won re-election, experts forecast that the state would bring in $1 billion less than expected over the next two years. He responded by cutting state agency budgets and proposing the transfer of funds among various state accounts. In December came news of a revenue slump, falling to $15.1 million below estimates. Mr. Brownback proposed increasing taxes on liquor and cigarettes, slowed reductions in the income tax and changed the way money was distributed to public schools.

But the governor’s budget headaches have continued: January receipts fell $47.2 million short of predictions, and Mr. Brownback has responded by cutting funding for public schools and higher education by a combined $44.5 million.

The move has education officials across the state seething. Here, the Kansas City Public School District has already endured $45 million in lost state revenue since 2009, said Cynthia Lane, the superintendent. Mr. Brownback’s cut of 1.5 percent to public school funding statewide would amount to a loss of $1.3 million in her district, she said.

That comes as the state has still not paid the district $3 million for capital expenses required under a formula intended to help poor districts. Mr. Brownback has asked legislators to change that formula, and they have proposed a bill that would reduce the district’s aid by another $1.4 million, Ms. Lane said.

“There is really very little room in reducing our expenditures without directly impacting students and the progress we’re making,” she said.

The cuts come amid a larger budget picture in which the governor has been forced to fill a $344 million budget gap for the fiscal year ending in June; a shortfall of nearly $600 million has been forecast for the fiscal year starting July 1. The Republican-controlled Legislature is said to be working to find a way to address that.

Mr. Brownback’s Democratic opponents and some moderate Republicans blame the state’s fickle budget situation on the deep income tax cuts that the governor has ushered into law in recent years.

“I can only expect that February revenues will be down, and then likely March revenues will be down,” said Senator Anthony Hensley, the Democratic leader. “It’s just a continuation of the same old song, basically, that the Brownback tax cuts have decimated the general fund.”

The governor and his supporters say that the state needs to operate more efficiently and find more sustainable ways to finance its largest costs: education, Medicaid and public employee pensions.

On Tuesday, after signing the bill that allowed for the cuts and cash transfers to fill this year’s deficit, Mr. Brownback again urged lawmakers to rewrite the formula used to provide aid to the neediest school districts. If the Legislature saves money by doing so, he asserted, it could restore the $28 million in cuts to K-12 public schools that he called for this month. The governor has also asked lawmakers to overhaul the means for financing schools in general.

“Kansas has good schools, and we continue to invest in education,” Eileen Hawley, the governor’s spokeswoman, wrote in an email, adding that public school funding for the current fiscal year was up $177 million from the previous one. “We need a timeout in the school funding wars so the Legislature can develop a new formula that reflects real-world costs and puts dollars in classrooms with real students to improve academic achievement.”

But the increases in school funding have mostly gone to things unrelated to classroom instruction, like building expenses and pensions, said Mark Tallman, the associate executive director for the Kansas Association of School Boards.

Another complication is added by a lawsuit brought by a group of school districts and parents asserting that the state has violated the Constitution by not providing adequate funding for education. In December, a state district court said that Kansas schools were not adequately financed, a decision that was appealed before the state Supreme Court. If the court orders the state to increase spending, it could conflict with the cuts that the governor has ordered.

Some districts worry that their reserves might dry up.

The more than $400,000 that Salina Public Schools have been forced to cut in response to the governor’s reductions is being replaced with money from the district’s reserves. But that won’t last forever, said William D. Hall, the superintendent, who said he was worried that additional cuts would come out of the Capitol.



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4) Residents of Brooklyn Housing Project Stay Wary After Officer Is Indicted
"But for several residents, the indictment of Officer Liang — coming after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island declined to indict white officers in other deaths of unarmed black men — only underscored how capricious justice could be."
By and

Akai Gurley carried no weapon, they said. All he did was step into a darkened stairwell.

And the police officer who shot him? Time to bring him to justice, the men and women of the Louis H. Pink Houses in Brooklyn said over and over on Tuesday evening, after learning that Officer Peter Liang, whose bullet killed Mr. Gurley in November, would be indicted on charges including second-degree manslaughter.

“He needs to answer to the family, to the community,” Maritza Ruiz, 45, said. “There’s a young man dead.”

Officer Liang, 27, shot Mr. Gurley while patrolling a stairwell at the Pink Houses in East New York less than 18 months into his career with the Police Department.

Officer Liang was arraigned on Wednesday afternoon. Shortly before 7 a.m., he stepped out of his home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Wearing a dark suit and gray tie, he made his way into a waiting S.U.V. and did not respond to questions from a reporter.Like other residents interviewed on Tuesday at the Pink Houses, Ms. Ruiz said she could not stop thinking about how the officer, by drawing his gun, had endangered untold lives in a building where many residents take the stairs because the elevator is unreliable.

“It could’ve been me; it could’ve been my daughter,” she said. “You don’t walk into a building with a gun loaded where a lot of innocent people live.”

But for several residents, the indictment of Officer Liang — coming after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island declined to indict white officers in other deaths of unarmed black men — only underscored how capricious justice could be.

How could they have faith in the system, they asked, if it seemed to value their lives only intermittently?

“How can you be lenient on this one, and hard on the other one?” said Robert Martin, 46, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant but was passing the Pink Houses on Tuesday. “The other cops who shot people should get the same.”

For Gregory Rosario, 24, the confusion about what exactly had happened in the stairwell made it all the more ironic that Officer Liang, a Chinese-American, was the only officer who would face charges.

“You think if the officer’s not a minority, he would get indicted?” said Mr. Rosario, who grew up in the Pink Houses. “If he was Caucasian, he wouldn’t be indicted. In Eric Garner, they had everything on the table and they didn’t do anything. Here there’s no video, no proof, but they indicted him.”

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has acknowledged that the shooting was a grave error, and police officials have said it was an accident. But residents said a lack of intent did not make the shooting less frightening.

“I just don’t understand: Why would he draw his weapon like that?” Adam Davis, 28, said. “He should never draw his gun out if he wasn’t sure there was a problem.”

Mr. Gurley’s death has brought spikes of noisy bustle to the Pink Houses — the bright lights of television news vans, the roar of protesters — but it has also left the housing project quieter, making children afraid to take the stairs or play outside, Mr. Davis said.

Kamala Crew, 43, a seamstress, said she sympathized with Officer Liang.

“I’m sorry for who died, but he was a rookie, and he’s not accustomed to this lifestyle,” she said. “This is so sad. I know cops that did worse than this and got away scot-free.”

Ultimately, many of her neighbors said, the indictment could never resolve the broader issues of race and police violence that have defined their debates and aroused their community for many months now.

All the indictment represented, they said, was the first step toward closing the case of Mr. Gurley, their friend.

“He was a good guy,” Margarita Robles, 40, said. “Would I say this is justice? Yes.”





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5) Dutchess County to Pay Brooklyn Native $7.5 Million for Wrongful Murder Conviction
By

The prize for this fight turns out to be $7.5 million, but Dewey Bozella did not win it in a boxing ring.

In 2009, a State Supreme Court judge found that the Brooklyn-born Mr. Bozella had been wrongfully convicted of the murder in 1977 of a 92-year-old woman in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

During his 26 years in prison Mr. Bozella sharpened his boxing skills, became the light heavyweight champion of Sing Sing and, after his release, won his only professional match in Los Angeles, at age 52.

As a free man, Mr. Bozella sued Dutchess County — which includes Poughkeepsie — and its officials in Federal District Court in White Plains for wrongfully locking him up, seeking $25 million in restitution. Hours before a jury was to be picked for a civil trial in early January, the county agreed to a settlement whose sum was not revealed at the time.On Monday evening, the County Legislature voted to authorize the payment of $7.5 million to Mr. Bozella, now 55. It did not, however, admit any fault or liability on the part of any of its officials.

Mr. Bozella’s lawyer, Ross E. Firsenbaum, had contended that prosecutors and police officers had withheld four pieces of significant evidence from the defense that pointed to another man as the murderer.

To pay for the settlement, the county voted to issue bonds that will be paid back over five years by county taxpayers. The $7.5 million would otherwise have been a big chunk of a county budget that for 2015 has been estimated at roughly $169 million.

Neither Mr. Bozella nor his lawyers would comment on the award because the wrongful incarceration lawsuit will not technically be withdrawn until the money is turned over, which could take several more weeks. Because Mr. Bozella’s lawyers at the firm WilmerHale took his case as a pro bono project, the entire $7.5 million will be paid to Mr. Bozella.

Mr. Bozella was twice convicted — in 1983 and at a 1990 retrial — of beating and suffocating the woman, Emma Crasper, when she returned home from a night of church bingo. He was sentenced to life. A judge later found that prosecutors relied on the testimony of two men who changed their stories to get favorable treatment for their own crimes.

The judge also found that prosecutors did not turn over to the defense crucial evidence, including a neighbor’s account of hearing rustling in the alleyway near a window where the police had found the fingerprint of a man named Donald Wise who had been convicted of killing an elderly woman in similar fashion. Prosecutors always contended that Mr. Bozella had walked through the building’s front door.


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6) How Mortgage Fraud Made the Financial Crisis Worse
By Binyamin Appelbaum

The financial crisis was caused in part by widespread fraud, which may seem like an obvious point. But it remains surprisingly controversial.

President Obama and other public officials, seeking to explain why so few people have gone to jail, have argued in recent years that much of what happened in the go-go years before the crisis was reprehensible but, alas, legal.

You will not be surprised to learn that many financial executives share this view — at least the part about the legality of their actions — and that a fair number of academics have come forward to defend the honor of lenders.

New academic research therefore deserves attention for providing evidence that the lending industry’s conduct during the housing boom often broke the law. The paper by the economists Atif Mian of Princeton University and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago focuses on a particular kind of fraud: the practice of overstating a borrower’s income in order to obtain a larger loan.

They found that incomes reported on mortgage applications in ZIP codes with high rates of subprime lending increased much more quickly than incomes reported on tax returns in those same ZIP codes between 2002 and 2005.

“Englewood and Garfield Park are two of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago,” they wrote. “Englewood and Garfield Park were very poor in 2000, saw incomes decline from 2002 to 2005, and they remain very poor neighborhoods today.” Yet between 2002 and 2005, the annualized increase in income reported on home purchase mortgage applications in those areas was 7.7 percent, strongly suggesting borrowers’ incomes were overstated.

The study is particularly noteworthy because in a study published this year, three economists argued the pattern was a result of gentrification rather than fraud. “Home buyers had increasingly higher income than the average residents in an area,” wrote Manuel Adelino of Duke University, Antoinette Schoar of M.I.T. and Felipe Severino of Dartmouth.

The three economists also argued that lending in lower-income areas played only a small role in the crisis. Most defaults were in wealthier neighborhoods, where income overstatement was less common.

“The mistake that the banks made was not that they over-levered crazily the poor in a systemic fashion,” Ms. Schoar said. “The banks were not understanding or not wanting to understand that they were increasing the leverage of the country as a whole. They were forgetting or ignoring that house prices can drop.”

The new paper by Mr. Mian and Mr. Sufi is a rebuttal. Their basic point is that the incomes reported on applications should not be taken seriously. They note that income reported to the I.R.S. in these ZIP codes fell in subsequent years, a pattern inconsistent with gentrification. Moreover, the borrowers defaulted at very high rates, behaving like people who borrowed more than they could afford. And the pattern is particular to areas of concentrated subprime lending. There is no income gap in ZIP codes where people mostly took conventional loans.

“Buyer income overstatement was higher in low-credit score ZIP codes because of fraudulent misreporting of buyers’ true income,” Mr. Mian and Mr. Sufi wrote.

The paper also notes the wealth of other sources that have accumulated since the crisis showing the prevalence of fraud in subprime lending. (I was given an early version of the paper to read and provided the professors with some of the examples cited.)

In a study published last year, for example, researchers examined the 721,767 loans made by one unnamed bank between 2004 and 2008 and found widespread income falsification in its low-documentation loans, sometimes called liar loans by real estate agents.

More colorfully, the journalist Michael Hudson told the story of the “Art Department” at an Ameriquest branch in Los Angeles in “The Monster,” his 2010 book about the mortgage industry during the boom: “They used scissors, tape, Wite-Out and a photocopier to fabricate W-2s, the tax forms that indicate how much a wage earner makes each year. It was easy: Paste the name of a low-earning borrower onto a W-2 belonging to a higher-earning borrower and, like magic, a bad loan prospect suddenly looked much better. Workers in the branch equipped the office’s break room with all the tools they needed to manufacture and manipulate official documents. They dubbed it the ‘Art Department.’ ”

Mr. Mian and Mr. Sufi argue that large numbers of early subprime defaults helped to catalyze the crisis, a case they made at length in their influential 2014 book, “House of Debt.”

The prevalence of income overstatement is sometimes presented as evidence that borrowers cheated lenders. No doubt that happened in some cases. But it is not a likely explanation for the broad pattern. It is far-fetched to think that most borrowers would have known what lies to tell, or how, without inside help.

And mortgage companies had not only the means to orchestrate fraud, but they also had the motive. Mr. Mian and Mr. Sufi have argued in previous papers that the mortgage boom was driven by an expansion of credit rather than a rise in demand for loans. It makes sense that companies eager to increase lending would have also developed ways to manufacture ostensibly qualified borrowers.

We do not have a comprehensive accounting of the responsibility for each instance of fraud — how many by brokers, by borrowers, by both together.

Some fraud was clearly collaborative: Brokers and borrowers worked together to game the system. “I am confident at times borrowers were coached to fill out applications with overstated incomes or net worth to meet the minimum underwriting requirements,” James Vanasek, the chief risk officer at Washington Mutual from 1999 to 2005, told Senate investigators in 2011.

In other cases, it is clear that the borrowers were in the dark. Some of the nation’s largest lenders, including Countrywide, Wells Fargo and Ameriquest, overstated the incomes of borrowers — without telling them — to qualify them for larger loans than they could afford.

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.



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7) Vitamins Hide the Low Quality of Our Food
By CATHERINE PRICE

THERE is much concern these days about what’s in our dietary supplements. Are they actually filled with the ingredients that the labels promise?

Maybe, maybe not. Quality control issues in the estimated 85,000 dietary supplement products available in America should give every consumer pause. But even vitamins themselves — the 13 dietary chemicals necessary to prevent deficiency diseases like scurvy and rickets — pose hidden hazards of their own.

We believe so strongly that vitamins are always good for us, and that the more we get the better, that we fail to notice that food marketers use synthetic vitamins to sell unhealthful products. Not only have we become dependent on these synthetic vitamins to keep ourselves safe from deficiencies, but the eating habits they encourage are having disastrous consequences on our health.

Discovered barely a century ago, vitamins were a breakthrough in nutritional science, providing cures and preventions for some terrifying diseases. It wasn’t long, though, before vitamins spread from the labs of scientists to the offices of food marketers, and began to take on a life of their own.

Even though an estimated two billion people around the world still don’t have access to adequate vitamins, most Americans have never experienced or seen the consequences of a serious vitamin deficiency. It’s tempting to believe that we’re being protected from these deficiencies by vitamins found naturally in the foods we eat.

In reality, however, most of the vitamins in our diets are synthetic additions, whether they’re in obviously fortified products like breakfast cereals, or hiding in plain sight. Milk, for example, has been fortified with vitamin D for so long that it’s become a major dietary source of the vitamin without most of us realizing that it’s an artificial addition.

Nutritionists are correct when they tell us that most of us don’t need to be taking multivitamins. But that’s only because multiple vitamins have already been added to our food.

Given the poor quality of the typical American diet, this fortification is far from superfluous. In fact, for products like milk and flour, where fortification and enrichment have occurred for so long that they’ve become invisible, it would be almost irresponsible not to add synthetic vitamins. If food companies didn’t do so voluntarily, the government might have to require it, to make sure that we didn’t accidentally eat ourselves into nutritional deficiencies.

Mandatory fortification will never be necessary, however, because synthetic vitamins are as essential to food companies as they are to us. To be successful in today’s market, food manufacturers must create products that can be easily transported over long distances and stored for extended periods.

They also need to be sure that their products offer some nutritional value so that customers don’t have to go elsewhere to meet their vitamin needs. But the very processing that’s necessary to create long shelf lives destroys vitamins, among other important nutrients. It’s nearly impossible to create foods that can sit for months in a supermarket that are also naturally vitamin-rich.

Luckily for manufacturers, the early days of the packaged foods industry coincided with the advent of synthetic vitamins, which made it possible to simply replace any vitamins that processing had destroyed. This fortuitous timing meant that manufacturers never had to publicly admit the nutritional inferiority of their products.Instead, they were free to make claims about the benefits of enrichment and fortification without acknowledging why the addition of synthetic vitamins was necessary to begin with. And once they began to recognize the enormous profits that synthetic vitamins could help them achieve, they never looked back. Today, it would be easy to blame food marketers for using vitamins to deceive us into buying their products. But our blindness is largely our own fault. Rather than challenge the companies that make these foods, we’ve entered into a complicit agreement with them: They depend on us to buy their products, and we depend on the synthetic vitamins they add to those products to support eating habits that might otherwise leave us deficient. The problem with this approach to nutrition is not that there’s anything inherently wrong with synthetic vitamins — it’s the shortsighted nutritional philosophy that our obsession with vitamins encourages. Sure, our easy access to synthetic vitamins means that we’re no longer likely to die from acute vitamin deficiency diseases. But extra vitamins do not protect us from the long-term “diseases of civilization” that are currently ravaging our country, including obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes — many of which are strongly associated with diet.

Indeed, natural foods contain potentially protective substances such as phytochemicals and polyunsaturated fat that also are affected by processing, but that are not usually replaced. If these turn out to be as important as many researchers suspect, then our exclusive focus on vitamins could mean we’re protecting ourselves against the wrong dangers. It’s as if we’re taking out earthquake insurance policies in an area more at risk for floods.

And adding back vitamins after the fact ignores the issue of synergy: how nutrients work naturally as opposed to when they are isolated. A 2011 study on broccoli, for example, found that giving subjects fresh broccoli florets led them to absorb and metabolize seven times more of the anticancer compounds known as glucosinolates, present in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, than when glucosinolates were given in straight capsule form. The researchers hypothesized that this might be because the whole broccoli contained other compounds that helped people’s bodies put the anticancer chemicals to use.

And yet we refuse to change our eating habits in the ways that would actually protect us, which would require refocusing our diets on minimally processed foods that are naturally nutrient-rich.

Instead, we use the presence of synthetic vitamins in so many of our foods as justification to continue to eat whatever we want, and seek to fill any remaining gaps via pills. This isn’t true just for people who exist on junk food: The popularity of dietary supplements and vitamin-enhanced processed “health” foods means that even those of us who try to do right by our health are often getting it wrong.

While the recent debate over dietary supplements is important, we mustn’t let it distract us from an even more fundamental question: how we’ve allowed the word “vitamin” to become synonymous with “health.” If we actually thought about this, we’d be forced to admit that the allure of vitamins has hijacked our common sense. And we’d realize a consequential paradox. Synthetic vitamins are now required to keep us healthy — but they also enable us to eat ourselves sick.

A science writer and the author of “Vitamania: Our Obsessive Quest for Nutritional Perfection.”


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8)  Canadian Pacific Railway Engineers Go on Strike as Negotiations Break Down
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/business/international/canadian-pacific-railway-strike-may-affect-north-american-industries.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

OTTAWA — About 3,000 locomotive engineers and conductors at the Canadian Pacific Railway walked off the job early Sunday morning in a dispute over wages and benefits.

Although the company said it would try to maintain some service by using managers, the strike is likely to disrupt key industries throughout North America, including automakers, oil companies, papermakers, lumber suppliers and agriculture and mining companies.

In a news release issued immediately before the strike, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference suggested that disagreements on rest time and other scheduling issues had led to the breakdown in negotiations.

“We require sufficient fatigue countermeasures to protect our members safety and health,” the statement said.

Canadian Pacific said it had offered improvements in both pay and benefits. It disputed the union’s suggestion that its members need more rest.

The union’s leadership, the company said in a statement, “claims that lack of time off is at the heart of its reluctance to negotiate, yet 72 percent of all engineers and conductors do not take the time off they are entitled to.”

Unifor, the union for about 1,800 maintenance and safety workers, said early Sunday morning that it had reached an agreement with the company minutes before its members were set to strike.

A prolonged shutdown would be felt in the United States as well as Canada. Producers in Canada’s oil sands have been increasingly using Canadian Pacific, as well as its rival, Canadian National Railway, for shipments to American refineries. The tightly integrated auto industry is also a major customer.

All three Toyota vehicle assembly plants in Ontario use only Canadian Pacific for rail shipments. Greig Mordue, the general manager of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, said that the company had acquired additional areas to stockpile completed cars, would add extra truck shipments and would take some production to other railways by truck.

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “We have storage spaces essentially for about five days outside of our normal routine.”

But those alternatives are not economically viable or even practical for many of Canadian Pacific’s customers.

David Lindsay, the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, said about three transport trucks would be needed to replace a single rail car. A typical paper mill, he added, would need about 40 trucks a day to move its production.

“Getting that many trucks and drivers to replace rail cars is a physical challenge,” Mr. Lindsay said, particularly in the remote regions were most mills are located.

Although lumber producers can wait out the strike simply by storing the wood outdoors, that stopgap is impossible for pulp and paper makers. In view of the general lack of large warehouses at paper mills, Mr. Lindsay said, most of them would have to stop production and lay off employees if the strike continued.

Retailers in the United States may also encounter some product shortages. Many containers ultimately bound for the United States are unloaded at ports in British Columbia, then delivered by rail to Chicago and other destinations in the United States by Canadian Pacific.

Labor relations at Canadian Pacific have been shaky in recent years. In 2012, the activist investor William A. Ackman won control of Canadian Pacific through a proxy fight. He then installed E. Hunter Harrison as chief executive, with a mandate to cut costs and improve performance, steps he had previously taken as the top executive at Canadian National. Many of Mr. Harrison’s measures have not gone over well with unions.

The Canadian government, which has clashed with Canadian Pacific over delays in grain shipments apparently caused by the growth in its oil shipping business, introduced legislation that ended a 2012 strike after nine days. It is expected that it may introduce a bill to end this strike as soon as Parliament convenes on Monday.

On Friday, Kellie Leitch, the federal labor minister, joined in the labor talks, which were held in Montreal.

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9)  Hundreds Protest Fatal Police Shooting in Washington
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PASCO, Wash. — A protest held here Saturday over the police killing of a Mexican-born apple picker had the air of a mournful family picnic.

About 500 people gathered at a park to protest the death of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, who was killed Tuesday after three officers chased him through a busy intersection with their guns drawn. As he turned to face them, raising his arms, he was felled by their bullets.

According to police reports, Mr. Zambrano-Montes had been throwing rocks at cars and officers.

His death was caught on video by a bystander and the footage has been widely disseminated on social media, fueling anger among the mainly Hispanic population of this quiet agricultural hub in southern Washington State, and drawing comparisons to the shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo.“What happened could have happened to any family, to my family,” said Maria de los Angeles Perez, 42, who had come from nearby Kennewick to show her support. She began to cry softly as she signaled to her two sons, Santiago and Samuel.

Mr. Zambrano-Montes’s family has settled in the region — many came here more than a decade ago to gather apples and asparagus in local fields. Dozens of cousins, aunts and neighbors attended the event. “We cannot count on a just government,” said one cousin, Rosa Cisneros-Zambrano, 50, in an interview before the protest. “Only on a just God.”

Supporters held signs in English and Spanish, urging officers to “use your training not your guns” and calling for “protection, not intimidation.” One man, taking the microphone, yelled into the crowd “We are all Antonio.”

But the protest held less vitriol than those that roiled Ferguson in the days after Mr. Brown’s death. Leaders here called for peace and demanded that protesters remove masks. The event was capped by a performance from a man named Fermin Cruz, 42, who strummed a guitar and sang a song called “El Inmigrante,” about a man who wished he were a tree, so he would never have had to leave his homeland. As he sang, many women held each other.

Also at the protest was a group of four people who had come to show support for the Pasco police and set up folding chairs at the edge of the gathering.

The group included Kenneth Taylor, 60, a retired police officer whose partner was killed during a traffic stop. “Social media has the tendency to incite people,” he said, adding that people should wait until a full investigation had been conducted before drawing conclusions about whether the shooting was lawful.

“What’s upset me is the immediate conviction.”

Police departments in the area have been involved in four other fatal shootings in the last seven months, and this one has drawn national attention to police practices in the Tri-Cities area, a group of municipalities with a population of about 250,000.

The Pasco Police Department, in conjunction with neighboring departments, will conduct an investigation to determine whether charges should be brought against the officers. They have been placed on leave, pending the outcome.

The coroner of Franklin County has said that he will order an inquest into the killing, a rare move that will allow a jury of six to determine whether the killing was justified.

City officials chose not to participate in the demonstration — they did, however, listen to the protesters.

Mid-protest, Dave Zabell, the city manager, was standing at the border of the gathering, dressed in khaki colors. He could hear voices booming over the microphone — and he commended residents for their measured response to the killing. “They’re trusting the process,” he said.



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10) Threatened Smelt Touches Off Battles in California’s Endless Water Wars
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RIO VISTA, Calif. — On a boat in the heart of California’s biggest river delta, a researcher pored over a sample of murky, weed-infested water, looking for a rare fish about the size of a finger. Spotting one, he shouted in triumph — then measured it and quickly tossed it overboard.

“They’re very fragile,” explained the researcher, Greg Nelson, who works as a biological science technician for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, as the silvery fish darted away.

The tiny fish, known as the delta smelt, has helped touch off some of the most cataclysmic battles in California’s unending water wars. The delta that it inhabits lies in Northern California, at the confluence of mighty snow- and rain-fed rivers that drain into San Francisco Bay before their water heads out to the ocean. The rivers supply water through the delta for about two-thirds of Californians as well as vast tracts of rich farmland. But drought and the pumping of water to users as far away as Los Angeles have depleted the smelts and the delicate ecosystem they inhabit, prompting limits on the amount of water sent to farmers and cities — and sparking political warfare among farmers, cities, environmentalists and fishermen.

“We tend to say that this is the single biggest water management challenge that California faces,” said Ellen Hanak, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. The debate over the delta, she said, ranks with those over other great national ecological landmarks, like the Everglades, the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay.

“The future of this watershed is going to affect most people in the state,” she added.

The immediate future looks grim. Despite a few powerful winter storms, California is facing a likely fourth year of drought, which is wreaking havoc on the delta’s ecosystem. The waterway where the federal researchers were working contained large patches of water hyacinth, an invasive plant that has proliferated in the dry conditions. Last fall, scientists doing a comprehensive survey recorded their lowest-ever seasonal tally of delta smelts, by a substantial margin. Another species, the longfin smelt, hit its second-lowest number.

Salmon, too, have taken a hit, not only from the drought but also from last year’s record-breaking heat, which warmed the water above their comfort level. Most salmon in California swim through the delta to and from the ocean, and scientists have estimated that 95 percent of salmon eggs and young that were spawned last summer in the upper Sacramento River died because of the heat. Partly as a way to recoup the losses, hundreds of thousands of salmon were recently released from a hatchery to swim to the ocean.

“I sure hope we don’t see another year like that this year,” said John McManus, executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, which advocates protecting salmon habitat.

Farmers are hoping the same. They have been walloped by drought, which has forced some to reduce their crop acreage. The 2014 “water” year, which ran from October 2013 to September 2014, was one of California’s driest on record. The problems could even have an impact on food prices across the nation, because California’s Central Valley holds a central place in the nation’s food supply.

“As you drive around, you see vacant, barren fields,” said Thomas Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural water district, which relies heavily on water pumped from the delta. “You see permanent crops that are being taken out of production — almonds, grapes, wine grapes, trees.”

Over the last few years, drought and cutbacks in the water pumped from the delta have forced farmers in his district to pump 40 percent more groundwater, another dwindling and contentious resource.

In the 2014 water year, California’s State Water Project, one of two major delta water-supply operations, met just 5 percent of users’ requests for water — among the lowest in the project’s history.

Also last year, the state ordered thousands of water users to stop pumping from a watershed that supplies the delta, in a sign of the drought’s severity.

Amid the crisis, the smelt has become a potent symbol of the tensions in the delta, as well as the national debate over how to manage endangered species. The federal government has listed the smelt as threatened, entitling it to protections under the decades-old Endangered Species Act and sparking frantic efforts to revive it. These measures include occasionally shutting down the pumps that send water from the delta to farmers and cities via hundreds of miles of canals and pipes. Some chinook salmon also have gained federal protection that sometimes lead to a reduction in pumping. Pumping can also be reduced for other reasons, like generally dry conditions and low reservoir storage.

Some farmers, furious at having less water to grow their crops, have focused some of their anger on the delta smelt.

“There isn’t any question that we are experiencing a hydrologic drought, but the impacts of that drought are being greatly exacerbated by federal water policy that isn’t doing a damn thing for the environment,” Mr. Birmingham said. “It isn’t doing a damn thing for fish,” he added, noting the scarcity of smelts despite the pumping restrictions.

Environmentalists say the smelt is a barometer for the ecology of the delta. “This battle is not really about the health of the delta smelt,” said Kate Poole, a senior lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It is about whether we’re going to restore this estuary, and everything it supports.”

Urban users have not yet felt the delta situation as acutely as farmers, but they could if the drought persists. The Santa Clara Valley Water District, home to Silicon Valley and the state’s technology giants, gets about 40 percent of its water through the delta. It has already cut back its supplies, but if dry conditions persist through the winter, which is California’s rainy season, the district could be forced to call on its customers this spring to reduce their water consumption by 20 percent to 40 percent. Over the long term, the district is preparing for further reductions in pumping, said Cindy Kao, a district official.

“We wouldn’t be surprised if the pumping constraints became more severe over time as the fisheries decline,” she said.

Protections for the fish have gathered legal momentum. Last month, the Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling that allowed pumping protections aiding the smelt to stand despite the considerable economic impact. The blow to farmers was slightly softened, however, when in a separate move, the Obama administration last month increased the number of fish that could be accidentally killed at the pumps.

Experts say the legal wrangling is unlikely to end. A revised long-term conservation plan for the delta and San Francisco Bay, due out for public comment soon, is bound to bring more challenges. This plan includes an effort to build two expensive tunnels under the delta to carry water and salve the region’s fragile ecology.

“It’s kind of par for the course for things to be challenged legally,” Ms. Hanak said.



 


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11) Obama to Intervene in Dispute at West Coast Ports
By

LOS ANGELES — Seeking an end to a protracted labor dispute that has led to costly delays in West Coast shipping, President Obama has decided to intervene, the White House announced on Saturday.

At the president’s request, Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, will travel to California to “meet with the parties to urge them to resolve their dispute quickly at the bargaining table,” according to a statement issued by Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. Mr. Perez will try to mediate a settlement between an association of the major shipowners of the West Coast and the union of longshoremen who unload those ships, which collectively bring in half the nation’s imported cargo.

The White House statement said the president was acting “out of concern for the economic consequences of further delay” and added, “Secretary Perez is already in contact with the parties and will keep the president fully updated.”The unusual decision to intervene in contract negotiations came as American retailers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and agricultural exporters said they had already lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of mounting port congestion, with spare parts and consumer products from Asia not arriving on time and exports like oranges and apples left to rot.

For about nine months, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, whose workers unload cargo with giant cranes, then move it onto trucks and trains, has been in negotiations with shipowners, represented by the Pacific Maritime Association. The negotiations cover operations at 29 ports, including large ones in Long Beach and Los Angeles, in Southern California; Oakland in Northern California; and the Puget Sound.

The owners and the workers each accuse the other of causing the growing congestion and delays. Hopes of a settlement had risen last month as the two sides invited in a federal mediator, but over the last two weeks, fears of a lockout or a near-total shutdown have increased.

The owners accuse the longshoremen of engaging in severe work slowdowns and, in the Los Angeles-Long Beach complex, of refusing to allow experienced but uncertified crane operators — the linchpins of dock operations — to work. But the union says plenty of qualified workers are ready to meet any demand and accuses the owners of manufacturing a crisis to punish workers financially and to force them to settle.

For several weeks, the owners — blaming unannounced labor slowdowns for congestion in the dockyards — had canceled night shifts for the loading and unloading of vessels. Then they said they were halting unloading altogether last weekend, Thursday, and Saturday, Sunday and Monday over this holiday weekend. The owners, dominated by large foreign-owned fleets, said they did not want to pay time-and-a-half weekend and holiday wages for sluggish work — what the maritime association called a “strike with pay.”

On Saturday, the number of container ships waiting at anchor in the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, which together handle one-third of the nation’s container imports, had grown to 22, from 14 on Thursday, according to the Maritime Exchange, which monitors ship traffic. That was the largest backlog yet since the previous labor contract ended on July 1, and it appeared likely to grow in the days ahead.

The total number of ships waiting to dock at these two conjoined ports on Saturday, including bulk and general cargo carriers, was 32.

In recent weeks, ships that normally operate on a rigid schedule, coordinated with trucks and trains on shore, have often waited from one to two weeks at anchorage before they could start unloading. This in turn has delayed the loading of containers — either empty or with products — for the return trip to Asia.

The owners say that full-time workers already make more than $50 an hour, including premiums and overtime, and that they have offered a significant raise, as well as a health plan with no co-payments.

The union has not commented on the negotiations, but it appears that work rules and procedures, not wages, are the sticking points.

One of the main remaining issues, according to the owners, is a condition by the union for the right to demand a change in arbitrators when labor contracts expire. Currently, both sides must agree to fire arbitrators, who are hired for the long term and adjudicate labor disputes.

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