Sunday, February 22, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015


SF Anti-war Protest on 12th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Saturday, March 21, 12 noon, Powell and Market Sts.

In solidarity with the “Spring Rising” protest at the White House on Mar. 21

Stop Pres. Obama’s proposed new 3-year AUMF – Authorization for Use of Military Force!

End U.S. War and Occupation in the Middle East and Central Asia – U.S. Out!

No to U.S. sanctions and intervention vs. Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, Russia, Haiti and everywhere

Free Palestine – End U.S. Aid to Israel!

Fund People’s Needs, Not Endless War!

To Endorse or Volunteer reply to: answer@answersf.org
More info: 415-821-6545 or visit www.ANSWERsf.org.
ANSWER SF

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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Protest War Criminal Netanyahu’s Speech to Joint Session of Congress

Tuesday, March 3, 5:00 pm, Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St., San Francisco

Join us on March 3 to say: No to War Criminal Netanyahu - No New War on Iran - End the Colonial Occupation of Palestine - End U.S. Aid to Israel!

More info: 415-821-6545 or www.ANSWERsf.org


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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) When One Penalty Is Enough
By




2) As Walmart Gives Raises, Other Employers May Have to Go Above Minimum Wage
By




3) Israeli Court Ruling on Protester’s Death Is Criticized
By ISABEL KERSHNER





4) Bus Ads Highlight U.S. Taxpayer Funding of “Israel’s War Crimes”
By Elaine Pasquini
February 20, 2015
http://www.wrmea.org/events-blog/bus-ads-highlight-u.s.-taxpayer-funding-of-israels-war-crimes.html




5) Dock workers, shippers face off at the Port of Oakland
By Jack Heyman
February 18, 2015
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Dock-workers-shippers-face-off-at-the-Port-of-6086072.php




6) Mexico: Protest Rattles Coca-Cola Office
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




7) 800,000 Using HealthCare.gov Were Sent Incorrect Tax Data
By




8) Two Teenagers Were Eager to Shovel Snow. Then the Police Paid a Visit.
By TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG





9) Even as Many Eyes Watch, Brutality at Rikers Island Persists
By and
[My comment to this article: The descriptions of the brutal treatment of prisoners at Rikers by the guards, reminds me of the 1906 novel, "The Jungle," by Upton Sinclair, describing the working conditions in America's meatpacking industry. The descriptions of the brutal slaughter of the animals was rivaled by the hideous working conditions the workers had to endure. The irony is, the "slaughter-house bosses" had to stand in the same blood the workers had to stand in, just as the guards at Rikers must also spend their time in that barbaric dungeon. The brutality is built into the prison system just as it is in the slaughterhouse! It's poverty that drives the worker to the slaughterhouse just as it drives the poverty-stricken to the dungeons of the U.S. gulag! This is shameful, barbaric and is the expression of the true nature of the capitalist system that puts private profits belonging to the commanders of capital first and foremost above all of humanity, and the planet itself! If the world is to survive, the system of capitalism must be replaced with a democratic, socialist system that puts the welfare of the planet and all that lives on it above all else. A democratic economic system where production is based upon the needs and wants of all, and not for private profit. A society that  allows each person to contribute based upon individual abilities and talents, under the condition where the full development of each is dependent upon the full development of all. —Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/nyregion/even-as-many-eyes-watch-brutality-at-rikers-island-persists.html?comments#permid=14210760]





10) A Deal That Preserves Greece’s Place in Eurozone, and Fiscal Restraints
By




11) Polluted Air Cuts Years Off Lives of Millions in India, Study Finds
By




12) Inmates to Be Transferred After Riot at Texas Prison
By KENNETH ROSEN




13) In Service Sector, No Rest for the Working
By




14) Greece Readies Reform Promises
(Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Giles Elgood)
By REUTERS




14) Greece Readies Reform Promises
(Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Giles Elgood)
By REUTERS





15) When Whites Get a Free Pass
Research Shows White Privilege is Real
By IAN AYRES




16) Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Man in West Bank Clashes
“'This 19-year-old young man was asleep in his house, but when he heard the noise, he went to his roof to see what was happening,' Mr. Bakri told Voice of Palestine radio. 'Israeli snipers immediately opened fire and shot him in cold blood,' he said."
By ISABEL KERSHNER




17) Eurozone Approves Greece Bailout Overhaul Plan
By and NIKI KITSANTONIS
Also see: Greek Plan Submitted to Eurogroup Finance Ministers (PDF)
http://s.kathimerini.gr/resources/article-files/keimeno--3.pdf





















 









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1) When One Penalty Is Enough
By

Millions of Americans may be in for a shock when they file tax returns and learn that they have to pay a fine for failing to enroll in health insurance in 2014 and an even bigger fine for failing to enroll in 2015 before the enrollment period ended on Feb. 15. While there is nothing they can do to avoid the 2014 fine, which must be paid this year, they could avoid the 2015 fine, payable next year, if the Obama administration allowed them more time to enroll.

The government should open a special enrollment period that lasts beyond April 15, the traditional filing time for most taxpayers. That would be fair to millions of consumers who remain uninformed about the health care law and ignorant about the subsidies it provides and the penalties for failing to enroll. And it would strengthen implementation of health care reform.

The Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or, with some exceptions, pay a fine, which is assessed at the time they pay their income taxes. For individual adults who failed to enroll in 2014, the fine is $95 or 1 percent of applicable yearly income, whichever is higher. For individuals who failed to enroll in 2015, the fine will jump to $325 or 2 percent of applicable yearly income, to be paid when taxes are filed next year. That is a big jump that will hurt many people on modest incomes. The fines leap even higher the following year.

President Obama said on Tuesday that 11.4 million people had selected private insurance plans or renewed their coverage in the enrollment period that ended on Feb. 15. Many people cited the threat of penalties if they failed to obtain insurance. Estimates of the number of people who will have to pay penalties now for failing to enroll in 2014 range from three million to six million. It seems unfair to hit them with a double-whammy for failing to enroll in 2015.

Eleven senators and three senior House Democrats have urged the Obama administration to allow a special enrollment period for those facing fines. There are at least four good reasons for doing so. It would increase the number of people with health insurance, which is, after all, the goal of the Affordable Care Act. It would reduce the number of people who must pay fines. It would enable tax preparers to help people sign up. And it would increase the number of people who receive subsidies to buy health insurance, strengthening support for the reform law. More than 85 percent people who buy insurance through the exchanges qualify for financial help.In an unrelated move, the administration extended the Feb. 15 deadline by a week, to Feb. 22, for people who tried to sign up on the federal government’s exchanges before the deadline but encountered problems with the website or its phone hotline. Many states that run their own exchanges also extended their deadlines for those who encountered problems, including, in some cases, because severe weather prevented people from venturing out to help centers.

This year 13 states and the District of Columbia are running their own exchanges, while 37 states are using the federal exchange. All Americans are required to obtain health insurance no matter where they buy it, whether on a state or federal exchange or elsewhere. The states can open special enrollment periods for those who face a fine for failing to enroll by Feb 15. The administration will announce soon whether it will grant special enrollment on the federal exchange.

Washington State on Monday opened a special enrollment period until April 17, becoming the first state to do so. Other states should follow suit. That would help their citizens obtain subsidized insurance and avoid fines. States should also ramp up efforts to enroll people who are poor enough in Medicaid and other programs that allow year-round enrollment. The more people covered, the better — for them and for health care reform.


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2) As Walmart Gives Raises, Other Employers May Have to Go Above Minimum Wage
By

Walmart is the biggest private employer in America, with 1.3 million United States workers. And many of them will soon see a raise, in the latest snippet of corporate news that suggests a firmer job market is starting to enable workers to successfully demand higher pay.

The company said it would pay even its lowest-level workers at least $9 an hour starting this spring, comfortably above the $7.25 federal minimum wage, and push that to $10 in 2016. The company also said it would strengthen a “department manager” role, giving it a minimum wage of $13 per hour this year and $15 next, thus offering low-wage hourly workers a clearer path to advancement. Including similar bumps at Walmart-owned Sam’s Clubs, the company expects 500,000 workers to receive a raise at a cost of $1 billion a year, executives said in a conference call with reporters.

Walmart is surely hoping to get plenty of good press for its decision to offer raises, but it’s worth examining the decision less based on whether they deserve applause on some moral grounds and more based on the economic forces that led them to act. Indeed, the best possible news would be if Walmart’s executives made this decision not out of a desire for good press or for a squishy sense of do-gooderism, but because coldhearted business strategy compelled it.

A first reaction may be simply: What took so long?

This has been a challenging five-year period in which, despite steady economic growth, average hourly wages for nonmanagerial workers have risen around 2 percent a year, barely more than inflation. There is no doubt that working on the floor of a Walmart store is still going to be a hard job at a pay level that makes it hard to get by. But these are enormous percentage gains, and the decision by Walmart comes on the heels of a similar announcement by the health insurer Aetna and survey data that also point to a tighter labor market and higher raises in the future.

Back in its 2007 fiscal year, before the recession, Walmart reported $183,500 in revenue per employee and $5,938 in profit. Not bad, but by 2014 those numbers had risen 18 percent and 22 percent. The company’s sales and profits rose nicely in that time while the company kept a lid on its payroll. Gains went to Walmart shareholders, not Walmart workers.So what has changed? The simple answer is that the world for employers is very different with a 5.7 percent unemployment rate (the January level) than it was five years ago, at 9.8 percent. Finding qualified workers is harder for employers now than it was then, and their workers are at risk of jumping ship if they don’t receive pay increases or other improvements. Apart from pay, Walmart executives said in their conference call with reporters that they were revising their employee scheduling policies so that workers could have more predictability in their work schedules and more easily get time off when they needed it, such as for a doctor’s appointment.

The giant question now is not whether there will be some meaningful wage gains in 2015; beyond the anecdotal evidence from Walmart and Aetna, the collapse in oil prices means even modest pay increases will translate into quite large inflation-adjusted raises. The question is whether wage gains will be strong enough to create a virtuous cycle in which rising pay for the workers at the bottom three-quarters of the income scale, who are most likely to spend the money and get it circulating through the economy, will spur more investment and hiring.

To the degree their logic was, “We think we’re going to need to raise wages this much in the next couple of years anyway to retain good workers and maximize profitability, so we may as well get ahead of the curve and get a public relations bump out of it and announce the plans in a big splashy way,” that would be the best news for American workers. Because that would imply that it won't just be Walmart workers getting a raise in 2015.



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3) Israeli Court Ruling on Protester’s Death Is Criticized
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli Supreme Court’s rejection of an appeal for damages by the family of Rachel Corrie, a young American woman who was run over by a military bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 as she protested Israeli Army actions there, has prompted criticism from the family and from Human Rights Watch.

The ruling “sends a dangerous message to Israeli armed forces that they can escape accountability for wrongful actions,” Human Rights Watch, based in New York, said this week in a statement.

Last week Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a 2012 decision by the Haifa district court that determined that the state bore no responsibility for Ms. Corrie’s death, an event that resounded internationally, on the grounds that it had occurred as a result of wartime activity.

The Haifa court characterized her death, during a ground-clearing operation in an area of southern Gaza near the Egyptian border, as a “regrettable accident.” The Israeli authorities said the area in question was one of the most dangerous in Gaza, where the military came under frequent sniper and grenade attack while trying to prevent infiltrations and weapons smuggling.

The Corrie family has argued, among other things, that Ms. Corrie’s death was the result of negligence, that the soldiers were not in immediate danger and were involved in routine activity at the time, and that the episode did not qualify as having occurred during wartime.

The family also argued in its civil suit that the investigation into Ms. Corrie’s death had been flawed.

In a separate case, the family had sought compensation relating to the autopsy on Ms. Corrie’s body at Israel’s forensic institute.

Her relatives have asserted that some body parts that were removed during the autopsy have not been handed over for burial.

In the matter of the autopsy, the Supreme Court ruled that a lower court should re-examine the family’s claims, meaning that after a decade, the legal proceedings have still not come to an end.

“Our family is disappointed but not surprised,” the Corrie family said in a statement last Thursday, the day of the Supreme Court ruling. “We had hoped for a different outcome, though we have come to see through this experience how deeply all of Israel’s institutions are implicated in the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli military.”

Ms. Corrie, who was from Washington State, was 23 and dressed in an orange vest at the time of her death in March 2003, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising.

The Israeli investigation determined that the driver of the bulldozer could not have seen her from where he was sitting when she was hit, a point long disputed by Ms. Corrie’s supporters.


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4) Bus Ads Highlight U.S. Taxpayer Funding of “Israel’s War Crimes”
By Elaine Pasquini
February 20, 2015
http://www.wrmea.org/events-blog/bus-ads-highlight-u.s.-taxpayer-funding-of-israels-war-crimes.html

Advertisements calling attention to Israel’s brutal 51-day military assault on Gaza last summer, as well as its continuing illegal occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land, went on display on San Francisco municipal buses Feb. 2.

Israel’s military assault on Gaza from July 7 to August 16, 2014 killed 2,131 Palestinians, including 1,473 civilians—501 of them children; wounded 11,000; and left at least 110,000 people homeless.

The ads, reading “ISRAEL’S WAR CRIMES, YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK,” were a joint project of the Free Palestine Movement and Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SeaMAC). The Free Palestine Movement has been organizing and participating in public advertising of this kind for more than two years, placing ads on buses and Bay Area Rapid Transit trains in San Francisco, a billboard in Sacramento, and buses in Denver.

These ads counter hateful anti-Muslim advertisements purchased by right-wing blogger Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, which ran on the same buses in January. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, District Attorney George Gascón and other city leaders condemned Geller’s advertisements, calling them racist and Islamophobic, but acknowledged they were protected free speech.

The website notaxdollarstoisrael.com was created to accompany the advertisements and bring attention to—and condemn—the more than $3 billion in American taxpayer dollars the U.S. gives to Israel every year. News and information about this use of U.S. taxpayer money and efforts to end the funding, including tax exemptions for projects in Israel that support human rights abuses, can be found on the site. The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, seamac.org, utilizes direct education through public forums, church and school presentations, and other face-to-face events to point out how U.S. support for Israel enables Israel’s continued oppression and subjugation of the Palestinian people.     

 


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5) Dock workers, shippers face off at the Port of Oakland
By Jack Heyman
February 18, 2015
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Dock-workers-shippers-face-off-at-the-Port-of-6086072.php

West Coast ports are badly congested. Ships are backed up, unable to find a berth to unload their cargo. Longshore contract negotiations are deadlocked between the shipowners and terminal operators of the Pacific Maritime Association and dockworkers represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. With big retailers and agribusiness screaming, President Obama has sent in Labor Secretary Tom Perez.

The PMA’s tough negotiating ploy has intentionally created a port crisis. The PMA, echoed by the business press, claims greedy workers engaging in work slowdowns are to blame. Yet the employers, after dragging out negotiations for nine months, have closed ports this past holiday weekend. They previously had ended night work to stop paying overtime and shift premiums, thus employers have slashed available work time in one week by 75 percent. In 2002, when PMA locked out longshore workers and shut down West Coast ports, the media conflated it with a workers’ strike. Is this a bad media rerun?

What’s really brewing here is an assault on one of the last bastions of union power left in the United States, the ILWU. In the last five years, the ILWU has faced union-busting attacks by mining titan Rio Tinto and the ABCD grain monopolies (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge Limited, Cargill Inc. and Louis Dreyfus Commodities), which control 90 percent of the world’s grain distribution. In both cases, the union conceded key contract provisions, and now maritime monopolies are smelling blood.

Two of the biggest global port employers, Ports America Inc. and Stevedoring Services of America were until recently owned in large part by the insurance monolith AIG and Goldman Sachs, respectively. This is “Wall Street on the waterfront,” and they’re out to gut the power of the ILWU, the union hiring hall, and curtail union action by using arbitrators.

Yet when longshore workers stop work, it’s often because of safety issues in a dangerous industry whose rate of work-related fatalities exceeds that of firefighters.

When Bay Area longshore workers shut down ports to protest Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting activities, that state’s AFL-CIO called the ILWU “the moral compass of the labor movement.” And when Oakland police nearly killed Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen during an Occupy movement protest, 30,000 outraged demonstrators marched into the port, closing it in protest and in solidarity with longshore workers battling the nonunion Export Grain Terminal in Longview, Wash. Shades of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike frightened West Coast port employers.

ILWU longshore jobs pay decent wages and benefits, but far less than employers claim. If a rising tide can lift all boats, then these jobs and benefits will continue to set standards for other workers. But, if Wall Street on the waterfront breaks the ILWU, wages and living standards will be driven down for all.

Don’t forget the lesson of PATCO, the air traffic controllers union destroyed by Ronald Reagan, while other unions sat idly by. The consequences devastated the entire labor movement. And, in 2012, President Obama sent Coast Guard vessels against the ILWU protesting a scab ship at the Export Grain Terminal. Longshore workers need to use their power to stop concessionary contracts, and all working people should have their back.

Jack Heyman, a retired ILWU member, has worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as a longshoreman and boatman for over 30 years. He chairs the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee. (www.transportworkers.org) 


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6) Mexico: Protest Rattles Coca-Cola Office
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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7) 800,000 Using HealthCare.gov Were Sent Incorrect Tax Data
By

WASHINGTON — About 800,000 taxpayers who enrolled in insurance policies through HealthCare.gov received erroneous tax information from the government, and were urged on Friday to hold off on filing tax returns until the error could be corrected.

The Obama administration, under heavy pressure from congressional Democrats, also announced that it would give several million people more time to buy health insurance so they could comply with federal law and avoid tax penalties.

The incorrect insurance information is used in computing taxes. Consumers can expect to receive corrected data in the first week of March. With the new data, officials warned, some taxpayers will owe more and some will owe less.

Officials said they did not know why the error had occurred.

Democratic lawmakers pressed hard for the Obama administration to open a “special enrollment period” around tax filing season for Americans who only then realize they face penalties for failing to purchase health insurance last year. Andrew M. Slavitt, the No. 2 official at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the period would last from March 15 to April 30.

When the regular open enrollment period ended Sunday, the Obama administration sent an email to consumers that said: “If you don’t sign up for health insurance today, you won’t be covered this year. So if you haven’t submitted your application and enrolled yet, this is your last chance.”

In fact, they will get another last chance. Mr. Slavitt described the special enrollment period as a one-time opportunity, and said it would not be repeated in future years.

Treasury officials said that up to six million people might be subject to tax penalties because they were uninsured in 2014. But health officials said they would help consumers obtain exemptions. Federal officials have authorized more than 30 types of exemptions from the penalty for not having insurance.

Millions of consumers received subsidies, in the form of tax credits, to help them pay premiums for coverage purchased through federal and state insurance exchanges last year. The credits were based, in part, on the consumers’ projected income for 2014 and the cost of a “benchmark plan.”

Mr. Slavitt said the government had discovered that the benchmark premiums were incorrectly reported on forms sent to 800,000 taxpayers, about one-fifth of all the forms mailed out by the federal government.

The error by the federal insurance marketplace is similar to what would happen if an employer reported inaccurate information on wages paid to an employee, or a corporation reported incorrect information about dividends paid to a stockholder.

Disclosure of the erroneous data sent to many taxpayers came after a three-month open enrollment period that was largely free of the troubles that frustrated consumers in late 2013.

On Tuesday, President Obama said that 11.4 million people had selected private health insurance plans or renewed their coverage under the Affordable Care Act, proof, he said, that the law was working “better than we anticipated” — and better than critics said.

The new special enrollment period will be available to people in 37 states that use the federal insurance marketplace. Other states may follow the federal policy if they wish, administration officials said.

State-run exchanges in Minnesota and Washington had already announced this week that they were creating their own special enrollment opportunities. Minnesota said its extra enrollment period, from March 1 to April 30, would “lessen the tax burden for some Minnesotans” who would otherwise be penalized for lacking coverage in 2015.The health care law requires Americans to have insurance, obtain an exemption or pay a tax penalty. Mr. Slavitt said the new special enrollment period was intended for people who had been unaware of the penalty, which the government calls a “shared responsibility payment.”

To qualify for the special enrollment period, consumers must certify that they filed their tax returns and paid the penalty for not having coverage in 2014. They must also certify that they “first became aware of, or understood the implications of, the shared responsibility payment after the end of open enrollment — Feb. 15, 2015 — in connection with preparing their 2014 taxes.”

It is not clear how the government could verify taxpayers’ claims about when they first realized the implications of the tax penalty. But the pressure to create the new enrollment opportunity was clear. Democrats like Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas, who had urged the move, welcomed the announcement Friday.

“Taxpayers seeing the financial consequences of being uninsured will be able to enroll for coverage sooner, instead of being forced to wait for the next enrollment period,” Mr. Doggett said.

The special enrollment period serves three purposes to the administration. It will increase the number of people with health insurance, a goal long sought by Mr. Obama. It will reduce the number of people who must pay tax penalties, potentially reducing anger at the White House and opposition to the Affordable Care Act. And it will increase the number of people who receive health insurance subsidies and thus have a personal stake in a Supreme Court case challenging payment of the subsidies in more than 30 states.

If the court rules against the administration in that case, the White House says, it would cause hardship for many low-income people and chaos in insurance markets around the country. More than eight out of 10 people buying insurance through the public exchanges qualify for financial help.

Insurance companies are leery of extended enrollment deadlines, which scramble their timelines for setting policy rates. They also fear that consumers will disregard sign-up periods if they grow accustomed to fluid end dates.

“Given that this is a new process for consumers, this targeted special enrollment period is a sensible approach for those who qualify,” said Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group.



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8) Two Teenagers Were Eager to Shovel Snow. Then the Police Paid a Visit.
By TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG

One evening last month, the night before a blizzard that threatened the Northeast with a lot of bluster, two young men in central New Jersey decided to take action.

Armed with about 100 fliers, Matt Molinari and Eric Schnepf, both 18 and seniors at Bridgewater-Raritan High School, went door to door in Bridgewater and then headed to Bound Brook, a neighboring town of about 10,000, to offer snow-shoveling services for a reasonable price the following day.

The ensuing combination of neighborhood vigilance, community policing, social media, local and national news coverage, libertarian ideology and the New Jersey Legislature swirled into an unexpected narrative about small-town living, or media fishbowls, or perhaps snowstorms.

After handing out about 40 fliers with their names and cellphone numbers, around 5:45 p.m. on Jan. 27, the two teenagers were stopped by police officers responding to a call that some suspicious characters were traipsing through yards, going door to door.

Mr. Molinari and Mr. Schnepf met the description and were told that soliciting without a permit was “technically illegal” according to a town ordinance, Mr. Molinari said. They were also violating the town’s travel ban, which had gone into effect at 5 p.m., six hours before the state’s.

The teenagers were not charged, or given a written citation.

“We weren’t trying to break the law, and we only knew about the state travel ban at 11 p.m.,” Mr. Molinari said.

Solicitation permits in the town can cost up to $200, and are valid for a year. Nonprofit groups are exempt from the fee but still have to apply for a permit before going door to door.

The ordinance does not apply to political campaigns, volunteer firefighters or real estate and insurance salesmen who have state licenses.

The officers told the snow shovelers to go home because the roads were not safe and said the teenagers could come back the next day if their services had been requested.

The snowfall did not live up to its billing, and so they got only two requests for shoveling, and made about $50 each.

Mike Bal, a town resident whose home the boys visited, saw the police stop the shovelers. After hearing the boys’ account of the police encounter, he took to the “Bound Brook NJ Events” Facebook page, a town-affiliated forum, to express his outrage.

“Are you kidding me? Our generation does nothing but complain about his generation being lazy and not working for their money,” Mr. Bal wrote on the page. “Here’s a couple kids who take the time to print up flyers, walk door to door in the snow and then shovel snow for some spending money. And someone calls the cops and they’re told to stop?”

Josh Schroeder, who runs the Facebook page, posted the boys’ flier, because he “wanted to help them make money.”

Both posts “went viral,” he said.

News media vans descended on the town; Glenn Beck talked about it, calling the situation a confrontation between young American entrepreneurship and the limits of an overly bureaucratic government.

Since the two shovelers had put their cellphone numbers on the flier, which had been published in USA Today along with an article (the flier has since been removed), Mr. Molinari and Mr. Schnepf kept their phones off for a while, they said, because they were getting hundreds of texts and calls from people who wanted to express their support or hire them for snow removal.

“It was meant to be a good deed,” Mr. Schroeder said of posting the flier on Facebook.

He said other news media outlets had skewed the story: “They twisted this into an antipolice thing,” he said. “It wasn’t the police’s fault — they were just doing their job.”

Michael Jannone, chief of the Bound Brook Police Department, said the verbal attacks on his department from outraged people across the country had been “vicious.”

“We’ve been called everything from fascists to Nazis to Gestapo,” Chief Jannone said.

“Our officers were never going to give them a ticket for that,” he added. “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve paid $5 for a cup of lemonade from a lemonade stand — I didn’t tell those kids to get a permit either.”

Chief Jannone said the danger from the storm was real: About three minutes after the officers had left the shovelers, their patrol car slid in the snow into a telephone pole, causing $11,000 worth of damage.

He also worried about the situation’s effect on community policing: “There are already disheartening relations between communities and police around the country, and then you have something like this. It doesn’t help.”

State Assemblyman Michael Doherty, a Republican whose district includes Bound Brook and Bridgewater, said he thought the law “sends young people the wrong message” when it came to hard work and entrepreneurship.

“People have been shoveling snow for their neighbors for decades, if not a few hundred years,” he said in a telephone interview. “A law like this just shows how overbearing government can be.”

So Mr. Doherty brought a bill before the Assembly this month, which stipulates that ordinances related to soliciting would not apply to snow-shoveling services offered within 24 hours of a predicted snowstorm.

In a statement about the bill, Mr. Doherty said, “We shouldn’t let government criminalize harmless childhood activities that were once rites of passage for tens of millions of American kids.”

Mr. Doherty is a frequent critic of Gov. Chris Christie, a fellow Republican, on policy issues — “I’m probably his No. 1 critic that speaks publicly,” Mr. Doherty said — but he said he thought Mr. Christie would support something like this.

Mr. Christie’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

On Tuesday, the teenagers had another snow day and got back in business, shoveling about four inches of snow from two houses.

One of the houses where they had cleared snow, a two-story, light-blue home, belonged to Daphne Ruben, a special-education teacher at their high school. By the late afternoon, the driveway and sidewalks in front of the house were clear.

Ms. Ruben said she had heard about the teenagers’ encounter with the law from another teacher. And on this morning, she said, she phoned Mr. Molinari at 8:30 to ask if she could hire the duo.

Her husband had recently had surgery, and she could not shovel the snow herself. She said she paid the two, who used shovels and snow blowers, with a check for $50, and gave them hot chocolate and chocolate-chip cookies before they left for baseball practice.

The police were not involved.

Jason Grant contributed reporting.



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9) Even as Many Eyes Watch, Brutality at Rikers Island Persists
By and

On Sept. 2, four correction officers pulled Jose Guadalupe, an inmate classified in medical records as seriously mentally ill, into his solitary-confinement cell at Rikers Island and beat him unconscious.

A little over two months later, three guards wrestled another inmate, Tracy Johnson, to the floor, pepper-sprayed him in the face and broke a bone in his eye socket. Then, on Dec. 9, yet another group of officers beat Ambiorix Celedonio, an inmate with an I.Q. of 65, so badly that, as surveillance footage later showed, he had bruises and scratches on his face and blood coming from his mouth.

The brutal confrontations were among 62 cases identified by The New York Times in which inmates were seriously injured by correction officers between last August and January, a period when city and federal officials had become increasingly focused on reining in violence at Rikers.It was in August that the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan issued a damning report about brutality at the jail complex and threatened to sue the city unless conditions there improved. And in November, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that ending pervasive violence at Rikers had become a top priority for his administration.

But The Times’s examination makes clear that the violence has continued largely unabated, despite extraordinary levels of outside scrutiny, a substantial commitment of resources by Mr. de Blasio and a new team of high-ranking managers installed by the correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, who took over the job in April.

According to Correction Department data, guards used physical force against inmates 4,074 times in 2014, the highest total in more than a decade. The increase came even as the jail’s average daily population continued to decline, falling to 10,000 this year from 14,000 a decade ago.

Seventy percent of the 62 beatings examined by The Times resulted in head injuries, even though department policies direct guards to avoid blows to the head unless absolutely necessary. And more than half the inmates sustained broken bones.

In October, a typical month, one inmate had his jaw shattered by a guard after being handcuffed and led into an elevator; another had his arm broken while handcuffed; and a third had three teeth knocked out.

The Times also identified 30 episodes from August to January in which officers suffered serious injuries in altercations with inmates. While most of the inmates involved sustained head injuries, nearly half the guards fractured bones in their hands and fingers, often after striking inmates in the head.

The findings were based on a review of hundreds of pages of Correction Department reports detailing the most serious uses of physical force by correction officers, city records describing inmate injuries, internal city investigative documents and inmate medical records. Taken together, they suggest that in the face of an unprecedented push to reform Rikers, guards are either being defiant or are indifferent to demands for change.

Correction Department officials said the scheduled opening this week of a new unit to house 250 of the jail’s most disruptive inmates should help reduce violence. The inmates will be locked in their cells 17 hours a day, instead of the usual 10, and extra officers will be assigned to the unit.

“It takes time to undo decades of mismanagement,” the department said in a statement. “We are, however, on our way to a jail system that is safer and more humane.”

Brutality by guards has long been a problem at Rikers. In July, The Times published an investigation that documented the cases of 129 inmates who had been seriously injured in encounters with guards over an 11-month period in 2013. Within three weeks, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, released his report, which described a “deep-seated culture of violence” at the complex. And several months after that, Mr. Bharara decided to sue the city over conditions at Rikers, joining a class-action lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society.

It was on Nov. 20 that Mr. de Blasio convened an unusual hourlong news conference devoted almost exclusively to Rikers. He said ending the violence there was a “moral obligation” and announced that he had set aside tens of millions of dollars for improvements.

But in trying to turn around Rikers, the de Blasio administration is contending with an agency that for years, according to the city’s Investigation Department, recruited officers who belonged to gangs, had criminal records or both. Training has long been criticized as inadequate and, once on the job, guards have learned to look the other way and cover up for fellow officers, investigators say.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge may be altering the mind-set of the 9,000 correction officers who work on the island.

“Changing the culture of violence on Rikers Island will not be easy or quick,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the Board of Correction, the city agency that serves as a watchdog over the jails. “It will not occur without constant external pressure, and consistent leadership within the Department of Correction. The demonization of detainees is embedded in everyday practice.”

Cover-Ups and Willful Neglect

Mr. Guadalupe’s altercation with correction officers started innocuously, with a disagreement over personal photos he had hung on the wall of his cell.

During a search in September, the guards tore down photos of his family, along with pictures of women he had cut out of magazines, he said in a telephone interview from Fishkill Correctional Facility. When he asked to see a supervisor, Mr. Guadalupe said, the officers pulled him into his cell, where there were no surveillance cameras, kicked and repeatedly punched him in the face and slammed his head against the wall.

Later, at Bellevue Hospital Center, he was found to have suffered a concussion, according to his medical records. He was subsequently sent back to Rikers, where he spent the next three weeks in a wheelchair.

Jail clinicians labeled Mr. Guadalupe as “S.M.I.,” or seriously mentally ill, in medical records, though the documents do not make clear the precise diagnosis. They do indicate that he had “mild mental retardation.”

His case typifies the Correction Department’s struggle in dealing with inmates who have mental illnesses, a group that now accounts for nearly 40 percent of the jail population. It is these inmates — particularly ill suited to the jail’s regimen — who tend to behave the most erratically, bringing out some of the worst abuses by guards.

Mr. Guadalupe, 23, dropped out of school in ninth grade and said he had never held a job. He has spent five of the last six years incarcerated, most recently for using a BB gun to rob a man and then trying to get away on a bicycle.

After being beaten at Rikers, he told a social worker he was scared about returning to his cell, according to a transcription of the conversation entered into a daily progress note.

“I am worried I am going to get sent back to the building that I came from and that I am going to have to deal with the same officers,” he told the social worker.

“I don’t get along with some officers because they act like they are better,” he added. “I have always been this way.”

Department protocol allows officers to use force when facing an immediate threat, but only as much as is necessary to defuse the situation. In several of the encounters examined, guards continued to use force long after an inmate had been handcuffed.

That was the case with Pernell Griffin, a member of the Bloods gang who is being held awaiting trial on an attempted murder charge. He is a contentious and sometimes violent inmate. On Oct. 28, he smashed a television and intentionally knocked over a cup of water on an officer’s desk, said his lawyer, Jason Leventhal.

According to a Correction Department report, three officers in helmets and body armor led Mr. Griffin into an elevator, where he head-butted and then kicked one of them in the groin. In Mr. Griffin’s version, the officers were the aggressors, handcuffing him first and then repeatedly punching him in the face while he was in the elevator.

What is clear from medical records is that his jaw was shattered so badly that it required two surgeries to repair. In the second, according to the records, surgeons spent nine hours transplanting bone from his hip to his jaw.

Two days after the surgery, he was put into a solitary-confinement cell.

The same week that Mr. Griffin was beaten, seven guards subdued and handcuffed Rauf Yearde, pulling his cuffed hands so far behind his back that his left upper arm snapped.

One of the federal report’s key findings was that cover-ups by guards and other jail staff members were commonplace. Cases from recent months suggest that continues to be true.

In December, after Mr. Celedonio was beaten, a Correction Department report compiled by officers said that the altercation had begun when he punched a captain, Medzid Kolenovic, in the face.

City investigators came to a different conclusion, based in part on their review of surveillance video. They called the officers’ version “false,” and noted that Mr. Celedonio “did not react with violence, but walked away from the captain,” according to investigative records.

The deaths of Jerome Murdough and Bradley Ballard, which attracted widespread attention last year after the details were reported by The Associated Press, cast a spotlight on a different issue at Rikers: willful neglect of inmates by guards. Both men had schizophrenia. Mr. Murdough died when the temperature in his cell rose above 100 degrees; Mr. Ballard was discovered in his cell naked and covered with vomit and feces, after being denied food and medicine for nearly a week.

In the aftermath, city officials said that such behavior would no longer be tolerated. Yet several recent incidents suggest that even inmates in the most desperate circumstances are still being ignored.

One such inmate, Victor Woods, died on Oct. 1 from abdominal bleeding as a guard stood over him drinking a cup of coffee. According to an investigative report, it was other inmates who stepped in to help, “comforting him, cleaning his face and helping him to an upright position.” The report quoted the guard, Wickenson DeMaitre, as saying, “I am not touching him.” The report also noted that guards were slow to notify medical staff, who took 11 minutes to arrive.Just days before, an administrative judge had recommended that Mr. DeMaitre, a 13-year veteran of the department, be fired over a pair of previous arrests. In December 2009, he had been charged with having an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old relative and sending her a photo of a penis. (The teenager later recanted, but the administrative judge felt the allegations were credible.) And in April 2010, Mr. DeMaitre had a restraining order issued against him after he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for ramming the car of a man who had been on a date with his estranged wife. The administrative judge wrote in his Sept. 29 ruling that Mr. DeMaitre displayed “a disturbing lack of judgment and self-control” and his conduct “raised doubts about his suitability to be a correction officer.”

A department spokesman said Mr. Woods’s death was being investigated but that Mr. DeMaitre had been dismissed, based on the judge’s ruling.

In a brief phone interview, Mr. DeMaitre said only that he had been “railroaded.”

System Allows Repeat Abuses

Mr. de Blasio has acknowledged that when he came into office he underestimated how dysfunctional the Rikers Island complex had become and how much effort would be required to fix it.

Rikers is made up of 10 jails, many in dire need of physical repairs. Compulsory overtime for the officers who staff them is now routine. They complain that repeated 16-hour shifts leave them exhausted, on edge and with little patience for disruptive inmates.

For now, the city is concentrating most heavily on turning around a single jail, the one that houses the island’s youngest inmates.

Since federal authorities threatened to intervene in August, the city has created several new programs at that jail, increased the size of the correctional and clinical staffs there and provided specialized training for the guards who work with teenagers.

In December, the department ended the use of solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-olds. For the first time, they all attend the jailhouse school.

The department has also installed security cameras under stairways and in hallways where beatings had long gone on out of sight.

Mr. Ponte said he hoped the jail would serve as a model for reforming the rest of Rikers. But the results so far make clear that it will not be easy. Despite all the new initiatives, use of force by guards against the youngest inmates spiked in December.

Among the most pressing needs is remaking the department’s disciplinary system, which seems incapable of holding violent guards accountable.

In December, during a meeting of correction officials, Mr. Ponte complained that he had only recently been able to sign off on disciplinary action against a captain who had left the department two years earlier, according to a city official who was briefed on the meeting. Mr. Ponte also expressed concern that the process was badly backlogged because of understaffing and low salaries in the department’s trials and investigations divisions.

One of the cases discussed at the meeting involved Officer Ramel Small. In June, Mr. Small had begun arguing with an inmate named Tamel Brantley, then punched him in the face with a set of keys in his hand, an investigative report said. Mr. Brantley’s eye socket and nose were broken, and he was kept handcuffed on the floor for over an hour without medical attention, the report said. Six months after the episode, Mr. Small still had not been interviewed by department investigators.

With a disciplinary system that is so feeble, there are officers who have been allowed to abuse inmates again and again, another issue highlighted in the United States attorney’s report.

One guard, Bob Villette, who joined the department in 2006, has been involved in at least 88 uses of force, according to department records. He has also been named in seven lawsuits, costing the city $450,000 in settlements for, among other things, cracking the teeth of one inmate and rupturing the eardrum of another.

Mr. Villette, who declined to comment when reached by phone, is a member of the elite emergency services unit, which specializes in subduing disruptive inmates. Including overtime, he has made over $100,000 annually in recent years, city personnel records show.

In December, he got into a struggle with Leon Barnes, an inmate whose arm was in a sling at the time. According to a department report, Mr. Villette wrestled the inmate to the floor, where five other officers “applied control holds” and handcuffed him.

During the encounter Mr. Barnes suffered a contusion to the scalp, a swollen jaw and a broken nose, the report said.

The six officers reported no injuries.

Susan Beachy and Mark Josephson contributed research.






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10) A Deal That Preserves Greece’s Place in Eurozone, and Fiscal Restraints
By

BRUSSELS — Just a month ago, after being propelled to power by a wave of anger at Greece’s economic miseries, Alexis Tsipras declared his left-wing Syriza party’s election victory the start of a Europe-wide revolt against austerity. “Europe is going to change,” he said before setting off on a tour of European capitals to rally support for a more relaxed new direction.

The “anti-austerity revolution” proclaimed by Syriza and its fans elsewhere, however, has now fizzled, its passions doused by the political reality that leaders in the rest of Europe do not want to join or, more important, finance the Greek-led revolt.

Greece’s hoped-for new dawn for Europe ended on a rain-drenched Friday evening in the Justus Lipsius Building, a huge, Soviet-style Brussels office block where finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro — known as the Eurogroup — had gathered for their third emergency meeting in two weeks.

A deal negotiated there lifted the threat of bankruptcy hanging over Greece and with it the immediate risk that it might have to leave the eurozone and the 28-member European Union, an exit that would have delivered a grave blow to Europe’s six-decade drive for integration.

But an agreement to extend Greece’s bailout for four months also committed it to honor fiscal targets and other conditions it had vowed to scrap and left intact the supervising role of the so-called troika — a trio of creditor bodies that Syriza wanted banished, viewing it as the hated symbol of their country’s subordination to so-called neo-liberal economic dogma. Moreover, the finance ministers made clear that Greece will not get any more cash until it satisfies them it can keep a lid on spending, setting the stage for more tense negotiations in coming days and weeks.

Syriza still claimed victory, but few outside the party — and some within it — saw anything other than an abrupt halt to its iconoclastic vision of a “new deal” in which voters, not markets and Brussels technocrats, decide how money flows and on what terms.

Asked at a news conference on Friday whether Europe had not “trashed” Greece’s democratic will, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and head of the Eurogroup, pointed to a basic truth in an economic bloc where voters in one country cannot tell voters elsewhere how to spend their money. “It cannot be one country that says ‘Can I have support but I will formulate my own conditions?’ ” he said.

Instead of scrapping the so-called memorandum — a package of austerity and other measures that Syriza had declared “dead” — Greece, according to a statement agreed to late Friday by the Greek and other ministers, pledged to “refrain from any rollback of measures” agreed to by previous governments, or “unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions,” the new euphemism for the troika.

Communist Tendency, a small far-left group inside Syriza, denounced the commitment as a betrayal of the working class and “submission to the blackmail of the troika.”

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany, who led opposition to Syriza’s demands for a thorough rethink of Greece’s bailout terms, took a swipe in comments to reporters late Friday at what he suggested had been the new Greek government’s dreamy illusions.

“Being in government is a date with reality, and reality is often not as nice as a dream,” said Mr. Schäuble, who has been pilloried in the Greek media as an unfeeling monster bent on deepening Greece’s economic suffering, which includes a catastrophic 25 percent contraction of the economy since 2010, along with unemployment of 26 percent over all and above 50 percent for youths.

But Friday’s settlement did not really mark the end of a five-year Greek drama that is still threatening Europe’s commitment to an “ever closer union.”

The next hurdle is a Monday deadline for Greece to submit a list of all the policy measures it plans to take to satisfy creditors’ demands. And even if Greece’s plan passes muster on Monday, the whole issue of how to help Athens and on what terms will resurface when the extended bailout, worth 240 billion euros, or $273 billion, expires in June and, as many expect, Greece needs a further infusion of cash to stave off default.

“Negotiations are just beginning,” Mr. Tsipras, Greece’s new prime minister, said in a television address on Saturday that cast the previous evening’s accord as a victory for his government. “We won the battle but not the war,” he said. “The real difficulties lie ahead.”

But his political opponents and outside observers derided Syriza’s cries of victory.

“I think it is almost a total capitulation,” said Raoul Ruparel, the head of economic research at Open Europe, a research group in London. “Tsipras gambled on austerity fatigue in Europe and thought that by flying the flag for change lots of other countries would follow his lead. None did.”

Even countries like Portugal, which also suffered through grinding austerity after it signed up for a bailout with tight conditions, stood firm alongside Germany, Finland and other northern European countries. Having slashed budgets and taken other unpopular steps, governments across Europe feared that siding with Syriza would only empower like-minded insurgent political groups in their own countries.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” a post on a website affiliated with Syriza said on Saturday. “This proposal equals, if not a U-turn towards the Memorandum, then the burial of any meaningful debt reduction and the freezing of even the most restrained measures in favor of the people that Alexis Tsipras had personally vowed to implement.”

Speaking in Brussels, Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, dismissed talk of defeat, pointing to a vague promise of “flexibility” included in the statement issued by the Eurogroup as a sign that Athens could still rewrite the terms. He also returned to a pugnacious tone that had infuriated Berlin and many other European capitals, warning that Friday’s deal would be “dead and buried” if creditors did not accept Greece’s proposals on Monday.

Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research group in Brussels, said Syriza had severely miscalculated from the start by taking a “confrontational approach” in a button-down European Union system that embraces quiet consensus-building and shuns emotional polemics.

But its biggest mistake, Mr. Wolff said, “was to think that all of southern Europe would align behind Greece” against what Athens has presented as German intransigence in defense of austerity for ideological reasons, or simply out of spite.

Syriza’s belief that Spain, Portugal and Italy would rally to its anti-austerity crusade was fed in part by the rapturous reception Mr. Tsipras and his lieutenants received from like-minded anti-establishment parties ahead of Greece’s election in January.

“A wind of change is blowing in Europe,” Pablo Iglesias, leader of Spain’s upstart Podemos party, told a Syriza pre-election rally in Athens. “The name of that change in Greece is Syriza, and the name of the change in Spain will be Podemos.”

But the surging fortunes of populist parties, left and right, across Europe only made sitting leaders more wary of Syriza and its policies, even those tired of Brussels-mandated budget cuts.

The anti-austerity cause also lost some of its momentum as the European Union began to let up on some of its previously harsh demands for cuts and the European Central Bank announced that, starting in March, it would buy up 60 billion euros worth of government bonds in an effort to spur growth.

Soon after taking power in Athens late last month, Mr. Tsipras and Mr. Varoufakis launched a tour of European capitals, impressing fashion mavens with their cool youthful attire, particularly their lack of ties, but also ruffling feathers with their sometimes impetuous comments.

As Syriza hit the road, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Mr. Schäuble quietly pressed their own case for financial discipline, looser labor laws and other change, inviting European leaders to Berlin even as Ms. Merkel took the lead in brokering an abortive truce to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In between trips to Brussels last Monday and again on Friday for emergency finance ministers’ meetings, Mr. Schäuble, a stern 72-year-old who has used a wheelchair since a failed assassination attempt in 1990, attended a presentation given in Berlin by the finance minister of Portugal, one of the southern European nations Greece viewed as natural allies. Like Greece, Portugal endured years of austerity after appealing for a financial lifeline.

But the Portuguese minister, Maria Luís Albuquerque, spoke in Berlin of very different lessons from austerity. She proudly detailed how Portugal had endured and emerged from a bailout aimed at mending her nation’s tattered finances. It was all about “regaining credibility” and sticking to rules, she said.

The next day, just a few hours before his finance minister flew to Brussels, Mr. Tsipras continued his own campaign to show that Greece was not beholden to Germany or other creditors and had friends elsewhere. He boarded a visiting Chinese warship in the Greek port of Piraeus and spoke of the “special importance” of investment from China.

Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens, Alison Smale from Berlin, and Gaia Pianigiani from Rome.



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11) Polluted Air Cuts Years Off Lives of Millions in India, Study Finds
By

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — More than half of India’s population lives in places with such polluted air that each person loses an average of 3.2 years in life expectancy, according to a recent study by researchers from the University of Chicago, Yale and Harvard.

Altogether, 660 million Indians could lose 2.1 billion years as a result of air pollution at enormous cost to the country’s economy, the researchers found.

“This study demonstrates that air pollution retards growth by causing people to die prematurely,” said Michael Greenstone, an author of the study and the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.A World Health Organization study last year found that 13 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India, with New Delhi’s air the world’s worst. But India’s government has made economic development its priority and has announced its intention to double the country’s use of coal over the next five years, which is likely to worsen the country’s air pollution.

But a growing array of studies has shown that the costs of India’s poor air are substantial. For instance, research has shown that India’s air pollution problems may cut agricultural production by a third. That might explain why wheat and rice yields in India have begun to level off or even drop in some states after decades of growth.

The authors of the recent study say that India should improve its monitoring of air quality, institute a system of civil monetary penalties for excessive polluters and adopt a trading system for pollution rights.

For years, Indians have seemed largely unaware of the country’s pollution woes. But a concerted campaign over the past year by Indian media outlets is beginning to change that.


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12) Inmates to Be Transferred After Riot at Texas Prison
By KENNETH ROSEN

A federal prison in South Texas over the next week will transfer up to 2,800 inmates to other institutions in the area, after a riot on Friday rendered the facility uninhabitable, an official said.

Inmates at the Willacy County Correctional Center, who took control of the prison using pipes as weapons, were compliant on Saturday evening as negotiations with the authorities continued.

Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said in a phone call that about 2,800 low-security offenders and illegal immigrants will be transferred to other facilities.

“Staff are continuing to communicate with the inmate population in an effort to regain complete control of the facility, which is now uninhabitable due to damage caused by the inmate population,” the bureau said in a statement.

The Valley Morning Star newspaper reported fires were set inside three of the prison’s 10 housing units. It was not immediately clear what caused the riot.

Administrators on Saturday met with inmates, who broke out of their housing units and entered the recreation yard, Issa Arnita, a spokesman for Management and Training Corporation, the operator of the prison, said in a statement.

Inmates did not breach the two surrounding security fences, he said.

“Correctional officers used nonlethal force, tear gas, to attempt to control the unruly offenders,” Mr. Arnita said in the statement.

Staff members and contract employees at the prison did not suffer any injuries, The Associated Press reported.

Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel were at the correctional center Saturday and were to remain throughout the night.

“The inmates are cooperating, and it appears they are interested in resolving the matter as well,” Michelle Lee, a spokeswoman with the FBI in San Antonio, said in a statement.

The private prison, about 200 miles south of San Antonio, once operated as a “tent city,” or immigration detention facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In 2011, it removed all of its detainees after reports of abuse, and a month later it reopened as a Criminal Alien Requirement prison.

In a report last year by the American Civil Liberties Union, inmates at the prison said they faced “severely crowded and squalid living conditions.”

Manny Fernandez contributed reporting.


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13) In Service Sector, No Rest for the Working
By

On the nights when she has just seven hours between shifts at a Taco Bell in Tampa, Fla., Shetara Brown drops off her three young children with her mother. After work, she catches a bus to her apartment, takes a shower to wash off the grease and sleeps three and a half hours before getting back on the bus to return to her job.

At Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, Ramsey Montanez struggles to stay alert on the mornings that he returns to his security guard station at 7 a.m., after wrapping up a 16-hour double shift at 11 p.m. the night before.

And on many Friday nights, Jeremy Little waits tables at a Perkins Restaurant & Bakery near Minneapolis and doesn’t climb into bed until 3 a.m. He returns by 10 a.m. for the breakfast rush, and sometimes feels so weary that he forgets to take rolls to some tables or to tell the chef whether customers wanted their steak medium rare.

“It makes me feel really tired,” Mr. Little said. “My body just aches.”

Employees are literally losing sleep as restaurants, retailers and many other businesses shrink the intervals between shifts and rely on smaller, leaner staffs to shave costs. These scheduling practices can take a toll on employees who have to squeeze commuting, family duties and sleep into fewer hours between shifts. The growing practice of the same workers closing the doors at night and returning to open them in the morning even has its own name: “clopening.”

“It’s very difficult for people to work these schedules, especially if they have other responsibilities,” said Susan J. Lambert, an expert on work-life issues and a professor of organizational theory at the University of Chicago. “This particular form of scheduling — not enough rest time between shifts — is particularly harmful.”

The United States decades ago moved away from the standard 9-to-5 job as the manufacturing economy gave way to one dominated by the service sector. And as businesses strive to serve consumers better by staying open late or round the clock, they are demanding more flexibility from employees in scheduling their hours, often assigning them to ever-changing shifts.

Workers and labor advocates are increasingly protesting these scheduling practices, which often include giving workers as little as two days’ advance notice for their weekly work schedule. These concerns have gained traction and translated into legislative proposals in several states, with proponents enviously pointing to the standard adopted for workers in the 28-nation European Union. It establishes “a minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours per 24-hour period.”

Britain, Germany and several other countries interpret that to require that workers be given at least 11 hours between shifts, although waivers are permitted. “If a retail shop closes at midnight, the night-shift employees are not allowed to start before 11 o’clock the next morning,” said Gerhard Bosch, a sociology professor and expert on labor practices at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

In the United States, no such national or state labor law or regulation governs the intervals between shifts, except for some particular jobs like airline pilots, although some unions have negotiated a minimum time for workers to be off, sometimes eight, 10 or 12 hours.

But at the state level this year, bills have been introduced in Maryland and Massachusetts and will be introduced in Minnesota on Monday, each of them calling on employers to give workers at least 11 hours between shifts and three weeks’ advance notice for schedules. Those proposals would require businesses to pay some time and a half whenever employees are called in before 11 hours have passed between shifts.

Paul Thissen, the Democratic leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, supports the legislation. “When it comes to scheduling, the playing field is tilted very dramatically in favor of the employer,” Mr. Thissen said. “What we’re proposing is just trying to rebalance the playing field.”

Anthony Newby, executive director at Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, a Minneapolis-based group that advocates for worker rights, among other issues, said that clopenings have become a big issue in his region. “Clopenings are hurting many of our members; many are in the restaurant field and some in construction and nursing,” he said. “We worry it has an effect on safety — workers feel they’re on autopilot. It also has a big impact on families, on mothers trying to manage a family and arrange child care.”

Ms. Brown, who works as a cashier at Taco Bell, said her children — ages 5, 4 and 2 — don’t like it when she has just seven hours between shifts. That usually means they hardly see her for two nights in a row; they sleep at their grandmother’s both nights. On the second night, after just three and a half hours’ sleep the previous day, Ms. Brown says she stops by her mother’s for an hour or two to see her children, and then heads home to sleep.

“My kids say, ‘Mommy, I miss you,’ ” she said. “I get so tired it’s hard to function. I feel so exhausted. I don’t want my kids suffering not seeing me. I try to push to go see them.”

Although Ms. Brown dislikes clopenings, she doesn’t turn them down because she needs as many hours as she can get. She makes $8.10 an hour and works about 25 hours a week.

Brandon Wagner, who works for a Zara apparel store in Manhattan, often works from 1 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m., getting back to his apartment in Brooklyn around midnight. He often must be back at work at 8 the next morning, and as a result he sleeps just five hours.

“When you question this, they give a shrug of the shoulder,” Mr. Wagner said. “They say, ‘Everybody does this. You have to put up with it or go somewhere else.’ ”

Last summer, Starbucks announced that it would curb clopenings on the same day that The New York Times published an article profiling a barista, Jannette Navarro, mother of a 4-year-old, who worked a scheduled shift that ended at 11 p.m. and began a new shift at 4 a.m.

At the time, Cliff Burrows, Starbucks’s group president for the United States, said: “Partners should never be required to work an opening and a closing shift back-to-back. District managers must help store managers problem-solve issues specific to individual stores to make this happen.” (“Partners” is the term Starbucks uses for its employees.)

Neil Trautwein, a vice president with the National Retail Federation, acknowledged that some instances of scheduling were egregious, but he pointed to Starbucks’s voluntary response to argue that states should not enact any laws to address the issue.

“Advocates have it wrong to think you can legislate and just outlaw the process,” Mr. Trautwein said. “The market adjusts to the needs of workers.” He added that what Starbucks did “demonstrates that businesses listen to their employees and adjust.” (In response to complaints about schedules changing week to week, Walmart said on Thursday that it would give workers more predictable schedules.)

But several people who identified themselves as Starbucks employees complained on a Facebook private group page that they still were scheduled for clopenings, despite the company’s pronouncement. One worker in Texas wrote on Jan. 30, “I work every other Sunday as a closer, which is at 10:30 or really 11-ish, then scheduled at 6 a.m. the next morning.” Another worker in Southern California wrote, “As a matter of fact I clopen this weekend.”

Laurel Harper, a Starbucks spokeswoman, questioned the authenticity of the Facebook posts. She said company officials had held conversations nationwide “to make sure we are giving our partners the hours they want” and to prevent clopenings.

Some managers say there are workers who don’t mind clopenings — like students who have classes Monday through Friday and want to cram in a lot of weekend work hours to maximize their pay.

Tightly scheduled shifts seem to have become more common for a number of reasons. Many fast-food restaurants and other service businesses have high employee turnover, and as a result they are often left with only a few trusted workers who have the authority and experience to close at night and open in the morning. Professor Lambert said no studies had been done on the prevalence of clopenings nationwide.

Carrie Gleason, director of the fair workweek initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal advocacy group, said one reason for the increasing prevalence of clopenings was that many companies had shifted scheduling responsibilities away from managers and to sophisticated software that she said was not programmed to prevent such short windows between shifts.

But David Ossip, chief executive of Ceridian, a human resources and payroll company, said that when his company provided scheduling software to companies, it generally recommended programming a mandated rest period. The software would then warn managers when an added shift violated that rest period.

“You would make sure you have a minimum rest period between shifts,” he said. “We would set up fairness results that call for regular working hours — not one day work at night, the next day work in the morning.” He added, “You have to be home for eight, 10 or 12 hours.”

Andy Iversen, a stocker at Linden Hills Co-op in Minneapolis, said the grocery store’s managers used to schedule him two or three times a week to work until 9 p.m., and then be back at 5 a.m.

“I was beyond exhausted,” he said, noting that he was getting to bed at midnight and waking around 3:45 a.m. At the time, he was pursuing a master’s degree and taking a course in neuroscience. “I couldn’t concentrate because I was so tired,” he said. “I had to drop out of class.”

Mr. Iversen praised his store’s managers for no longer giving him clopenings. Marshall Wright, the store’s produce manager, said, “We think it’s the right thing to do. We don’t feel people should work shifts like that.”

Mr. Iversen couldn’t agree more: “It doesn’t take that much empathy or reasoning to see that clopenings stink, and people don’t want to do it.”



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14) Greece Readies Reform Promises
(Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Giles Elgood)
By REUTERS

ATHENS — Greece's government prepared reform measures on Sunday to secure a financial lifeline from the euro zone, but was attacked for selling "illusions" to voters after failing to keep a promise to extract the country from its international bailout.

Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has insisted Greece achieved a negotiating success when euro zone finance ministers agreed to extend the bailout deal for four months, provided it came up with a list of reforms by Monday.

Greeks reacted with relief that Friday's deal averted a banking crisis which fellow euro zone member Ireland said could have erupted in the coming week. This means Tsipras has stood by one promise at least: to keep the country in the euro zone.

Tsipras maintains he has the nation behind him despite staging a climbdown in Brussels. Under the deal, Greece will still live under the EU/IMF bailout which he had pledged to scrap, and must negotiate a new program by the early summer.

"I want to say a heartfelt thanks to the majority of Greeks who stood by the Greek government ... That was our most powerful negotiating weapon," he said on Saturday. "Greece achieved an important negotiating success in Europe.".

Top Marxist members of Tsipras's Syriza party, a broad coalition of the left, have so far been silent on the painful compromises made to win agreement from the Eurogroup.

But veteran leftist Manolis Glezos attacked the failure to fulfill campaign promises. "I apologize to the Greek people because I took part in this illusion," he wrote in a blog. "Syriza's friends and supporters ... should decide if they accept this situation."

Glezos, a Syriza member of the European Parliament, is not a party heavyweight. But he commands moral authority: as a young man under the World War Two occupation, he scaled the Acropolis to rip down a Nazi flag under the noses of German guards and hoist the Greek flag, making him a national hero.

A government official said Glezos "may not be well informed on the tough and laborious negotiation which is continuing".

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said the reform promises would be ready on Sunday and submitted to Greece's EU and IMF partners in good time. "We are very confident that the list is going to be approved by the institutions and therefore we are embarking upon a new phase of stabilization and growth," he told reporters late on Saturday.

A government official said the reforms would include a crackdown on tax evasion and corruption.

The Brussels deal opens the possibility of lowering a target for the Greek primary budget surplus, which excludes debt repayments, freeing up some funds to help ease the effects of 25 percent unemployment and pension cuts. It also avoids some language which has inflamed many Greeks, angered by four years of austerity demanded by foreign creditors.

TROIKA NO MORE?

In the deal the hated "troika" of inspectors from the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF, which monitors compliance with Greek bailout undertakings, is referred to as "the three institutions".

Tsipras declared Greece was "leaving austerity, the bailouts and the troika behind". Nevertheless, government plans must still be approved by the re-named troika, although Tsipras won election last month on a pledge to end the humiliation of foreigners dictating Greek economic policy.

The opposition pounced on the climbdown from promises that have raised huge expectations among Greeks. "No propaganda mechanism or pirouette can hide the simple fact that they lied to citizens and sold illusions," said Evangelos Venizelos, leader of the socialist PASOK party.

Venizelos was deputy prime minister in the last conservative-led coalition which succeeded in raising funds from financial markets with two bond issues last year. With the economy showing signs of growth after a depression which wiped a quarter off GDP, it had prepared to exit the bailout program but lost power to Syriza on Jan. 25.

Friday's agreement merely buys time for Greece to seek a long-term deal with the Eurogroup. Euro zone members Ireland and Portugal have already exited their bailouts, but Greece faces yet another program - on top of bailouts in 2010 and 2011 totaling 240 billion euros - when the extension expires.

"Once you get them into the safe space for the next four months, there'll be another set of discussions which will effectively involve the negotiation of a third program for Greece," Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said on Saturday.

Tsipras did much of the negotiating for the deal rather than Greece's Eurogroup representative, Varoufakis. But sources close to the government said this reflected Tsipras's need to win backing from Syriza's left wing and his right-wing coalition partner, the Independent Greeks party.

Their support will be crucial in maintaining government unity during negotiations for the long-term agreement.

Likewise Tsipras needs to keep public support. Costas Panagopoulos, who heads the Alco polling firm, said the initial reaction was relief that Greece would stay in the euro. Greeks might even accept Tsipras's change in language and assertions that the troika is no more. "It may sound odd but this could turn into political gains," he told Reuters.


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15) When Whites Get a Free Pass
Research Shows White Privilege is Real
By IAN AYRES

NEW HAVEN — THE recent reunion show for the 40th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” re-aired a portion of Eddie Murphy’s 1984 classic “White Like Me” skit, in which he disguised himself to appear Caucasian and quickly learned that “when white people are alone, they give things to each other for free.”

The joke still has relevance. A field experiment about who gets free bus rides in Brisbane, a city on the eastern coast of Australia, shows that even today, whites get special privileges, particularly when other people aren’t around to notice.

As they describe in two working papers, Redzo Mujcic and Paul Frijters, economists at the University of Queensland, trained and assigned 29 young adult testers (from both genders and different ethnic groups) to board public buses in Brisbane and insert an empty fare card into the bus scanner. After the scanner made a loud sound informing the driver that the card did not have enough value, the testers said, “I do not have any money, but I need to get to” a station about 1.2 miles away. (The station varied according to where the testers boarded.)

With more than 1,500 observations, the study uncovered substantial, statistically significant race discrimination. Bus drivers were twice as willing to let white testers ride free as black testers (72 percent versus 36 percent of the time). Bus drivers showed some relative favoritism toward testers who shared their own race, but even black drivers still favored white testers over black testers (allowing free rides 83 percent versus 68 percent of the time).

The study also found that racial disparities persisted when the testers wore business attire or dressed in army uniforms. For example, testers wearing army uniforms were allowed to ride free 97 percent of the time if they were white, but only 77 percent of the time if they were black.

This elegant experiment follows in a tradition of audit testing, in which social scientists have sent testers of different races to, for example, bargain over the price of new cars or old baseball cards. But the Australian study is the first, to my knowledge, to focus on discretionary accommodations. It’s less likely these days to find people in positions of authority, even at lower levels of decision making, consciously denying minorities rights. But it is easier to imagine decision makers, like the bus drivers, granting extra privileges and accommodations to nonminorities. Discriminatory gifts are more likely than discriminatory denials.

A police officer is an out-and-out bigot if she targets innocent blacks for speeding tickets. But an officer who is more likely to give a pass to white motorists who exceed the speed limit than to black ones is also discriminating, even if with little or no conscious awareness. This is one reason the Twitter hashtag #crimingwhilewhite is so powerful: It draws attention to the racially biased exercise of discretion by police officers, prosecutors and judges, which results in whites getting a pass for the kinds of offenses for which minorities are punished.

Racial discrimination is more likely in settings in which both decision makers and bystanders cannot easily observe how comparable nonminorities are treated. A restaurant is unlikely to charge Hispanics higher prices for a hamburger, because the victim could compare her bill to the price listed on the menu. But one-off accommodations where the decision maker retains substantial discretion don’t offer any easy point of comparison. My kids, who are white, have never been turned down when I asked if they could use a bathroom designated for “employees only.” After reading the Australian bus study, I wonder whether the same is true for minority families.The bus study underscores this point. Drivers were more likely to let testers ride free when there were fewer people on the bus to observe the transaction. And the drivers themselves were probably not aware that they were treating minorities differently. When drivers, in a questionnaire conducted after the field test, were shown photographs of the testers and asked how they would respond, hypothetically, to a free-ride request, they indicated no statistically significant bias against minorities in the photos (86 percent said they would let the black individual ride free).

Of course, unconscious bias might play out differently in the United States than in Australia. But research in America, too, suggests that decision makers use discretion to bestow benefits in a discriminatory fashion. For example, a recent study of 22 law firms by Arin N. Reeves, a lawyer and sociologist, found that partners were less critical of a junior lawyer’s draft memo if they were told the lawyer was white than if they were told the lawyer was black.

What does white privilege mean today? In part, it means to live in the world while being given the benefit of the doubt. Have you ever been able to return a sweater without a receipt? Has an employee ever let you into a store after closing time? Did a car dealership take a little extra off the sticker price when you asked? When’s the last time you received service with a smile?

White privilege doesn’t (usually) operate as brazenly and audaciously as in the Eddie Murphy joke, but it continues in the form of discretionary benefits, many of them unconscious ones. These privileges are hard to eradicate, but essential to understand.

Ian Ayres is a law professor at Yale.


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16) Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Man in West Bank Clashes
“'This 19-year-old young man was asleep in his house, but when he heard the noise, he went to his roof to see what was happening,' Mr. Bakri told Voice of Palestine radio. 'Israeli snipers immediately opened fire and shot him in cold blood,' he said."
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Israeli forces shot and killed a 19-year-old Palestinian man when clashes broke out during a military raid on a refugee camp in the Bethlehem area of the West Bank early on Tuesday, the military and local Palestinians said.

Palestinian officials identified the dead man as Jihad Jaafari, a resident of the Deheishe refugee camp.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said the forces “encountered a violent crowd that was hurling stones, blocks and firebombs at them.” After attempts at crowd dispersal failed and the forces felt their lives were in danger, she said, they “fired towards an instigator.”

An Israeli soldier was wounded during the disturbances.

The Palestinian Authority governor of the Bethlehem area, Jibreen al-Bakri, said that the Israeli soldiers had come to arrest a camp resident and denied that Mr. Jaafari had been involved in the violence, accusing the Israeli troops of killing him without provocation.

“This 19-year-old young man was asleep in his house, but when he heard the noise, he went to his roof to see what was happening,” Mr. Bakri told Voice of Palestine radio.

“Israeli snipers immediately opened fire and shot him in cold blood,” he said.

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been rising in recent weeks. Israel last month began to withhold more than $100 million in monthly tax revenue it collects on behalf of the authority in response to the Palestinian leadership’s move to join the International Criminal Court.

Against the background of the worsening financial crisis in the authority, Israel’s state-owned electricity company briefly reduced the power supply to two Palestinian districts in the northern West Bank on Monday because of ballooning debt.

There has also been a wave of attacks against Israelis in recent months by Palestinians using knives, guns and vehicles as weapons. On Sunday, the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, helped his bodyguard subdue an 18-year-old Palestinian youth who had just stabbed and wounded an Israeli man near City Hall.


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17) Eurozone Approves Greece Bailout Overhaul Plan
By and NIKI KITSANTONIS
Also see: Greek Plan Submitted to Eurogroup Finance Ministers (PDF)
http://s.kathimerini.gr/resources/article-files/keimeno--3.pdf

BRUSSELS — Eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday approved Greek proposals aimed at easing the hardships created by a huge international bailout, extending that program by four more months.

The decision by the finance ministers means “national procedures for extension of the Greek programme can begin,” Valdis Dombrovskis, a vice president at the European Commission, wrote on his Twitter account.

The reworking of the bailout program by the new Greek government included pledges to take a disciplined approach to budgets, spending and tax collection, while remaining committed to easing the “humanitarian crisis” caused by years of economic hardship and high unemployment.

In trying to achieve that delicate balance — to meet the demands of its European creditors in order to keep the loan money flowing, but without reneging on the anti-austerity campaign promises on which it was elected — the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras may find a difficult road ahead, even with the backing of the eurozone finance ministers.

The extension is expected to require the approval of lawmakers in Greece, Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Netherlands and Slovakia before a Saturday deadline, when the European portion of the bailout is set to expire.

In a statement, the so-called Eurogroup of finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro said they approved the Greek proposals in an afternoon conference call, after having consulted with Greece’s other major lenders, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

“The institutions provided us with their first view that they consider this list of measures to be sufficiently comprehensive to be a valid starting point,” the Eurogroup wrote.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the Greek measures were a “valid starting point” and suggested that he might be open to changes in the conditions imposed by Greece’s creditors.

But he said that Athens needed to provide more details about what it had in mind, and that any existing conditions the Greeks did not like would have to be replaced “with measures of equal or better quality.”

The International Monetary Fund also gave the Greek proposals a lukewarm reception. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the I.M.F., welcomed commitments by Athens to fight tax evasion and corruption. But she warned that the Greek measures were “generally not very specific” and suffered a lack of “clear assurances” in “perhaps the most important” areas, like pensions, value added tax, privatizations and labor market law.

Greek stocks rose sharply in midafternoon trading, with the Athens index up about 10 percent and bank shares rising more than 15 percent. Interest rates on Greek 10-year bonds fell to about 8.4 percent. ​

The Eurogroup statement formally closes a chapter in the bitter standoff between Greece and countries like Germany and Finland, where there is deep mistrust of the new anti-austerity government in Athens. That mistrust nearly derailed weeks of late-night bargaining in Brussels.

But the statement was also a sign that lenders would continue to closely scrutinize Greece’s finances and that they could make additional demands on Athens before disbursing a loan of €7.2 billion, or about $8.2 billion — money the Greek government needs to meet its debt obligations. Under bailouts in 2010 and 2012, Greece has been granted €240 billion in exchange for pursuing various economic overhauls.

“We call on the Greek authorities to further develop and broaden the list of reform measures, based on the current arrangement, in close coordination with the institutions,” the Eurogroup wrote, referring to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

Among the overhauls are plans to improve management of the national budget, and to enact changes to Greece’s taxation system, including changes to sales tax policy, “with a view to limiting exemptions while eliminating unreasonable discounts,” according to a letter that Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, submitted to Mr. Dijsselbloem.

The letter emphasized Greece’s commitment to curbing tax evasion, particularly among the wealthy, and said that fighting corruption was “a national priority.”

The government also committed not to reverse existing privatization plans and said it would review planned sell-offs with a focus on bolstering “the state’s long-term benefits.”

In addition to streamlining the public sector, the government will review public spending at every level and will modernize the pension system in an effort to end “loopholes and incentives that give rise to an excessive rate of early retirements.”

The country still plans to raise the minimum wage, one of the government’s pre-election promises, but pledges to do so in a way that safeguards competitiveness, the letter said.

Greek television reported that some members of Mr. Tsipras’s cabinet had expressed objections to certain overhauls set out in Greece’s letter to the Eurogroup. But — in a sign that the dissent was controllable, at least for the moment — no ministers made public statements criticizing the proposed changes.

The opportunity for Greece to submit the proposals was one of the few concrete concessions it won in an accord reached with its creditors late on Friday in Brussels. That accord brought to an end the bitter standoff that began when Mr. Tsipras pledged to redraw or scrap the bailout agreement after he came to power in January.

European and Greek officials spent much of Monday exchanging drafts of the proposals to pare back austerity measures while ensuring that Greece can still meet fiscal obligations.

The government of Mr. Tsipras had an opportunity to put its “political stamp” on a bailout plan if it respected budget targets, Mr. Dijsselbloem told the parliamentary committee.

The deal to extend the country’s bailout program with European creditors by four months is subject to the approval of the Greek Parliament, where some members of Mr. Tsipras’s radical-left Syriza party have called the plan a capitulation after the party’s anti-austerity campaign promises.

Also on the list submitted by Mr. Varoufakis are plans to crack down on the smuggling of fuel and tobacco, which cost the Greek economy billions of euros a year in unrecovered tax revenue; to address tax arrears and nonperforming bank loans; and to support struggling homeowners who are unable to meet their mortgage payments.

The overhauls will also address what the new government has described as Greece’s “humanitarian crisis,” which it attributed to years of austerity, by offering measures including food stamps and free electricity for the poor, a package that Syriza has estimated would cost some €1.8 billion.

The government also plans to review a pilot program seeking to guarantee a minimum income to poor families, according to criteria like the number of children in a household or the number of unemployed. The pilot was introduced in the fall by the previous administration, offering monthly payments of €250 to €500 to families, at an estimated total cost of €750 million to €1 billion.

But the cost of extending the plan nationwide, as the new government aims to do, remains unclear.

Athens said in the letter that the assistance measures would be mostly “nonpecuniary” and would have “no negative fiscal effect.”

James Kanter reported from Brussels, and Niki Kitsantonis from Athens. Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

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