Thursday, February 12, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2015



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

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

Here's the schedule so far:

Wednesday, March 18: Peace gathering and fellowship.

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

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

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

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

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Cancel the #DetroitWater Debt and Start Afresh

Sign the petition:

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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SHUT DOWN CREECH!

Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars!

A Convergence For Peace in the Nevada Desert

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Or contact:

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

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

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Justice for Rasmea: All out for March 12!

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 https://www.unacpeace.org/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A financial contribution of any amount will be greatly appreciated.

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

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

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

Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family


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

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

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

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

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

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

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

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

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

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

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


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

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

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


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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

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

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney 

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

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

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



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

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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) Cuban Medics Fighting Ebola Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
By teleSUR
06 February 15
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/28458-cuban-medics-fighting-ebola-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize 




2) In Los Angeles, Vintage Houses Are Giving Way To Bulldozers
By




3) The Shrinking American Labor Union
Business Day | Datapoints





4) Insured, but Not Covered
"The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say. The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending."
By





5) History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names
By




6) Illinois Governor Acts to Curb Power of Public Sector Unions
By and




7) Oklahoma Debates Use of Nitrogen Gas for Executions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




8) Missouri Inmate Asks US Supreme Court to Stop His Execution
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




9) Justice Department Is Seeking Felony Pleas by Big Banks in Foreign Currency Inquiry
By and
February 9, 2015
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/u-s-is-seeking-felony-pleas-by-big-banks-in-foreign-currency-inquiry/




10) Lynching as Racial Terrorism
By




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




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




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




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




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
















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1) Cuban Medics Fighting Ebola Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
By teleSUR
06 February 15
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/28458-cuban-medics-fighting-ebola-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize
 
A team of Cuban doctors and nurses specialized in disaster situations and serious epidemics currently stationed in West Africa fighting the Ebola outbreak was nominated in Norway for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The Henry Reeve Cuban Medical Brigade’s candidacy was approved unanimously by the Annual Conference of Norwegian Trade Unions in Trondheim, a meeting attended by Cuba's ambassador to Norway, Maria Esther Fiffe, Cuban press reported Thursday.

According to official figures, 461 Cuban doctors and nurses belonging to the brigade have been stationed in West Africa since October to help fight the Ebola epidemic there, which has killed 8,921 people and infected as many as 22,334, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Since the virus was first detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, 23 outbreaks have been reported in several countries. The most recent outbreak began in Guinea, but spread to neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia, which is currently the most affected country.

The Henry Reeve Brigade was created on Sept. 19, 2005, with over 1,500 members. Its first missions were in Guatemala and Pakistan, countries that faced the consequences of a hurricane and a devastating earthquake, respectively.

Cuba had also offered to dispatch the brigade to the United States to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a move that U.S. authorities rejected.

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2) In Los Angeles, Vintage Houses Are Giving Way To Bulldozers
By

LOS ANGELES — For 50 years, the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury lived and wrote at 10265 Cheviot Drive, a bright yellow stucco home built in 1937 that is tucked away on a winding street in an eclectic and charming, affluent neighborhood on the West Side of Los Angeles.

Or rather, that was once tucked away. Early one January morning, a team of demolition workers, armed with crowbars and backed by a bulldozer, showed up to begin a methodical dismantling of this piece of history in Cheviot Hills, fending off neighbors alarmed by the racket. By the end of the month, all that was left were two chimneys and a few stucco walls.The loss of the Bradbury home was the latest in a tidal wave of teardowns that has spread across Los Angeles over the past two years. Developers, seeing the potential for high profits in this housing-starved region, have been bulldozing vintage homes in middle-class enclaves — Arts and Crafts cottages, Spanish Mission-style bungalows — to replace them with lot-filling, towering modern homes that typically sell for over $2 million.

Fights over this kind of redevelopment have broken out in communities across the nation, but the battle has become particularly pitched in Los Angeles, with its rich diversity of architectural styles, abundance of wealth and streets that look like movie sets. This is in no small part because many of the most striking neighborhoods here were built, or are lived in today, by a sizable contingent of set designers, movie producers and actors.

For builders, the teardown frenzy is a welcome sign of a recovering Los Angeles economy. They see a market response to demands of people who want bigger homes with the kinds of amenities that were not even imagined when houses were built 80 years ago — media rooms, sprawling bathrooms, elaborate kitchens.

“All of this comes down to a matter of personal choice,” said Scott Ouellette, president of the Los Angeles-Ventura chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California. “Some people want a neighborhood to never change; other people want larger, more modern housing. There needs to be some balance.”

But the destruction of thousands of classic homes is disrupting and dividing neighborhoods, raising alarm among civic leaders about potentially irreparable damage to handsome, historic and architecturally distinctive communities that they argue define Los Angeles as much as Hollywood or Venice.

The phenomenon has left some homeowners living under the shadow of looming block houses that push up against their property lines. Often, the first warning that a neighbor’s home is about to vanish comes from the beep-beep-beep of bulldozers that arrive overnight and can turn a home into a pile of wood and stone by lunchtime.

“At this point, we’ve reached a broad civic consensus that mansionization is harmful to the character and livability of Los Angeles,” said Shelley Wagers, head of the Beverly Grove Alliance, a neighborhood group that has fought this type of development. “The damage they do to our neighborhoods is irreversible. Our residential neighborhoods are the heart of the city’s character.”

Under rising pressure from neighborhood groups, the Los Angeles City Council is moving to toughen regulation of home construction — and destruction. A law that was passed in 2008 in response to an earlier wave of teardowns is now viewed as full of loopholes.

“This is already out of hand, but it could clearly get a lot worse,” said Paul Koretz, the City Council member pushing the legislation. “We are trying to respond to it as quickly as we can.”

But the effort has been slow, as the proposed changes are reviewed by city planners, fueling suspicion among neighborhood groups about the influence of developers on City Hall.

“This is not a complex process that should take two years,” said Dick Platkin, an urban planner who used to work for the city. “It could be done for three or four or five months if it was a high priority, which it’s not.”

The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety said it had issued 1,728 single-home demolition permits in 2014, up from 1,323 the year before. By contrast, just 709 were issued in 2010. The evidence can be seen in strolls through neighborhoods from Hollywood to Hancock Park: Large new homes dwarf smaller cottages, dusty lots stand where homes once did, and telltale green fences and Dumpsters are set in front of houses.

At a time when Los Angeles continues to struggle with homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, this subject is dominating conversations in many neighborhoods.

“It’s one of the hottest issues in the whole district,” said Teddy Davis, a Democrat running for City Council who has pledged not to take developer contributions. “I hear about it from Toluca Lake to Silver Lake, from Sherman Oaks to La Brea-Hancock. It really rattles people: They feel like here are these 100-year-old homes and they are gone in two hours. And then they have a giant aircraft carrier parked next to their homes.”Los Angeles has always been known for its tear-it-down, build-it-up ethos, to the concern of preservationists. The intensity of the current opposition has challenged the notion that this is a city with little interest in preserving its past.

“The biggest issue in this is the loss of community character,” said Adrian Scott Fine, the director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy, a historic preservation group.

Clark T. Carlton, a screenwriter who lives in North Beverly Grove, said, “The growing populist movement to save these neighborhoods of charming prewar homes is evidence that Los Angeles is finally becoming a world-class city and its people realize they do have a beautiful and interesting history to preserve.”

Still, this is a debate about both the future of neighborhoods and the rights of property owners.

“Some people like big ostentatious boxes — other people don’t,” Mr. Ouellette said. “When you live in a neighborhood and own a property, whether it’s for one year or 40 years, your rights are coequal. Neither of them really have the right to tell the other what to do.”

The opposition is far from unanimous. Many families want bigger homes, particularly in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods with large families. Some homeowners say they welcome developers who take down older, dilapidated homes and replace them with sleek, modern homes that they argue increase property values for all.

Whatever the historic resonance of the Bradbury home — people were lining up to grab chunks of the yellow stucco as mementos — it was hardly considered a work of architectural distinction. It was purchased by a well-known architect, Thom Mayne, who told the book blog Melville House that he viewed the home as banal and wanted to replace it with something architecturally distinct.

“There are two camps. There’s one camp that doesn’t want to see a historical home come down,” said David Roberts, 69, a retired businessman who lives up the street from the Bradbury home. “The other camp says it’s O.K. to build new things. We’re in the second camp.”

Mr. Roberts glanced at his wife, Sandy, and added a caveat: “Unless they build a monstrosity.”




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3) The Shrinking American Labor Union
Business Day | Datapoints

24.2%: private sector union membership rate, 1973

6.6%: private sector union membership rate, 2014

Source: Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson

A generation ago labor unions were often a familiar feature of the American workplace, but in private businesses across the country, unions have been shrinking. Today fewer than one in 15 private sector workers belongs to a union, compared with almost one in four back in 1973.

But dwindling union participation in the private sector stands in stark contrast with union membership among public sector workers, which rose sharply in the 1970s and has been relatively steady since 1980 at around 35 percent. Overall union membership has fallen by about a half since 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, driven entirely by the decline in the private sector.

The causes of falling union participation are hard to pinpoint but may be attributed to several factors, including the pressures of global trade, technological change, the shift away from domestic manufacturing and a tougher stance against unions from government and corporate leaders.

It is probably no accident that the drop in union membership has occurred as the incomes of many working Americans have stagnated. “The decline in unions is a huge factor explaining what’s happened to middle-class wages,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. He calculated it could account for one-third of the growth in wage inequality for men and one-fifth of that for women from 1973 to 2007.

Shrinking union participation affects the broader work force, since unions tend to provide spillover benefits to nonunion members. According to an article written by Mr. Mishel and David Cooper, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, employee compensation declined most in states like Michigan and Ohio where collective bargaining also declined sharply.

“When collective bargaining is strong in an industry, what you find is that it raises nonunion employee wages too,” Mr. Mishel said.
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4) Insured, but Not Covered
"The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say. The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending."
By

WHEN Karen Pineman of Manhattan received notice that her longtime health insurance policy didn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act’s requirements, she gamely set about shopping for a new policy through the public marketplace. After all, she’d supported President Obama and the act as a matter of principle.

Ms. Pineman, who is self-employed, accepted that she’d have to pay higher premiums for a plan with a narrower provider network and no out-of-network coverage. She accepted that she’d have to pay out of pocket to see her primary care physician, who didn’t participate. She even accepted having co-pays of nearly $1,800 to have a cast put on her ankle in an emergency room after she broke it while playing tennis.

But her frustration bubbled over when she tried to arrange a follow-up visit with an orthopedist in her Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield network: The nearest doctor available who treated ankle problems was in Stamford, Conn. When she called to protest, her insurer said that Stamford was 14 miles from her home and 15 was considered a reasonable travel distance. “It was ridiculous — didn’t they notice it was in another state?” said Ms. Pineman, 46, who was on crutches.

She instead paid $350 to see a nearby orthopedist and bought a boot on Amazon as he suggested. She has since forked over hundreds of dollars more for a physical therapist that insurance didn’t cover, even though that provider was in-network.

The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say.

The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending. But some experts say the new policies have also left many Americans scrambling to track expenses from a multitude of sources — such as separate deductibles for network and non-network care, or payments for drugs on an insurer’s ever-changing list of drugs that require high co-pays or are not covered at all.For some, like Ms. Pineman, narrow networks can necessitate footing bills privately. For others, the constant changes in policy guidelines — annual shifts in what’s covered and what’s not, monthly shifts in which doctors are in and out of network — can produce surprise bills for services they assumed would be covered. For still others, the new fees are so confusing and unsupportable that they just avoid seeing doctors.

It is true that the Affordable Care Act has erased some of the more egregious practices of the American health insurance system that left patients bankrupt or losing homes to pay bills. Insurers can no longer deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, for example. And the new policies cap out-of-pocket spending so long as the patient receives care within the plan. Most important, the act has offered health insurance to an estimated 10 million Americans who did not have any, often by expanding Medicaid or providing subsidies.

But by endorsing and expanding the complex new policies promoted by the health care industry, the law may in some ways be undermining its signature promise: health care that is accessible and affordable for all.

“I’m always curious when I read this ‘good news’ that health costs are moderating, because my health care costs go up significantly each year, and I think that’s a common experience,” said Mark Rukavina, president of Community Health Advisors in Massachusetts.

While much of the focus in the past has been on keeping premiums manageable, “premiums now tell only a part of the story,” Mr. Rukavina said, adding: “A big part of the way they’ve kept premiums down is to shift costs to patients in the form of co-pays and deductibles and other types of out-of-pocket expenses. And that can leave patients very vulnerable.”

Such policies desperately need improvement, patients and professionals like Mr. Rukavina say. But with the Republicans attacking the Affordable Care Act at all turns, even political supporters seem reluctant to acknowledge that it has some flaws. The narrative has been cast in black or white: It’s working, or it’s a failure. The reality, of course, is gray.

AT this point, we don’t have a good definition of “affordable” — or how to measure it fully and fairly. Many studies show that national health costs, while still rising, are not growing as fast as they once were. But what does that mean for individual patients? So far the research has yielded mixed results.

A study by the Commonwealth Fund this month found that the rise in health insurance premiums in employer-based plans had slowed in 31 states since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (good news, right?). But premiums were still rising faster than median incomes (hmm). More important, perhaps, the researchers found that patients were paying more in health care expenses than ever before, during a time of stagnant wages (not so great). In fact, nearly 10 percent of median household income now goes to pay premiums and deductibles, the study found. And that does not include other kinds of health payments that patients now encounter, such as co-pays and uncovered drugs or services.

A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 46 percent of Americans said they had trouble affording health care, up 10 percentage points in just one year. Some of the cost problems may ease as patients — now known as health care consumers — learn what to expect and how to choose and navigate their plans.

But other problems may be related to the process by which the plans are created. Under the Affordable Care Act each state was asked to select a benchmark plan as its standard. It had to cover certain “essential health benefits” like maternity care and prescription drugs; it had to have a defined actuarial value depending on the level of plan. Silver plans, for example, had to cover 70 percent of charges, leaving consumers with 30 percent. But within those parameters, competing insurers had leeway to set premiums, co-payments and deductibles, and to create networks by negotiating with doctors and hospitals. Naturally, they created policies that met the core criteria while minimizing their financial risk.

Suddenly there were hundreds of new insurance products that had never been tested in real time. Their shortcomings are now playing out in various ways.

Alison Chavez, 36, who is self-employed, signed up for a marketplace plan in October 2013 that she hoped would be an improvement on her previous plan. She had recently been given a diagnosis of breast cancer and was just beginning therapy, so she was careful to choose a policy on the Covered California marketplace that included her physicians.

But in March, while in the middle of treatment, she was notified that several of her doctors and the hospital were leaving the plan’s network. She was forced to postpone a surgery as she scrambled to buy a new commercial policy that included her doctors. “I’ve been through hell and back, but I came out alive and kicking (just broke),” she wrote in an email.Dr. Alexis Gersten, a dentist in East Quogue, N.Y., switched her family and 11 employees to a new Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for 2014, after a previous small-business group plan was canceled. She bought the plan through a broker, and says she was unaware that it was an Affordable Care Act plan. When her son needed an ear, nose and throat specialist, the nearest was in Albany, five hours away. Though her cardiologist was on the network list, he said he did not take the plan. She ended up driving an hour to see a new one. A dispute with the insurer about how to count deductibles left her with a $457 pediatrician’s bill. This year she has chosen a new policy.

“People may have a checklist when they buy insurance: First, premiums, then the deductible — and those are pretty easy to understand because they’re set dollar amounts,” said Lynn Quincy, associate director of health reform policy at Consumers Union. But new policies demand different and more difficult kinds of calculations, she said: “The terms are unfamiliar, and figuring out networks is especially murky.”

Compounding the problem is the lack of basic information to shop effectively. When Andrea Greenberg, a New York lawyer, called the help line of Health Republic to clarify the difference between two plans, she found herself speaking to someone reading off a script in the Philippines. “I was really outraged,” she said. “This is an important decision with potentially dire consequences. It’s not like you’re choosing a sweater.”

Likewise, it took many phone calls for Aviva Starkman Williams, a California computer engineer with insurance through her employer, to determine whether the pediatrician doing her son’s 2-year-old checkup was in-network for 2015. Only three of the pediatricians in her doctor’s six-person group were listed in her plan’s online directory, and since her deductible had tripled from the previous year’s, she wanted to limit her out-of-pocket payments.

The practice’s office manager couldn’t tell her for sure. The insurer’s representative said he didn’t know because doctors came in and out of network all the time, likening the situation to players’ switching teams in the National Basketball Association. “If you don’t have updated information, who does?” she asked. “Isn’t it your job to know?”

Ms. Quincy said regulators needed to do a much better job setting requirements and policing plan practices and offerings, particularly provider networks. Few states have clear standards and many rely on consumer complaints to ferret out problems.

Last month, the California insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, announced new emergency regulations concerning networks, noting: “Health insurers’ medical provider directories have been inaccurate, misleading consumers into signing up with a health insurer for access to a doctor, specialist or hospital, only to learn that these medical providers are not actually a part of the health insurer’s network.”

But for now, patients are most often left to fend for themselves. When Amy Moses, a tech entrepreneur in New York City, went online to select a plan, she paid a relatively pricey $650 per month for a United Healthcare plan to make sure her network included a longtime physician. One month into the year, the doctor’s practice was bought by a hospital, which then dropped the plan, so her doctor did as well. (A year later the doctor was still listed in the network directory.)

She discovered the change only when she contacted the physician for a referral for an urgent outpatient procedure costing thousands of dollars that had been recommended by an in-network surgeon. (Both the referring doctor and the surgeon had to be in-network for coverage.) “I literally had three days to find a new in-network internist and score an appointment to get a referral, or cancel my procedure,” she said. “I was stuck in insurance purgatory.”

For a continuing conversation about health care costs and pricing in the United States, please join our Facebook group, Paying Till It Hurts.


Elisabeth Rosenthal is a New York Times correspondent who is writing a book about the health care system.



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5) History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names
By

DALLAS — A block from the tourist-swarmed headquarters of the former Texas School Book Depository sits the old county courthouse, now a museum. In 1910, a group of men rushed into the courthouse, threw a rope around the neck of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old white girl, and threw the other end of the rope out a window. A mob outside yanked the man, Allen Brooks, to the ground and strung him up at a ceremonial arch a few blocks down Main Street.

South of the city, past the Trinity River bottoms, a black man named W. R. Taylor was hanged by a mob in 1889. Farther south still is the community of Streetman, where 25-year-old George Gay was hanged from a tree and shot hundreds of times in 1922.

And just beyond that is Kirvin, where three black men, two of them almost certainly innocent, were accused of killing a white woman and, under the gaze of hundreds of soda-drinking spectators, were castrated, stabbed, beaten, tied to a plow and set afire in the spring of 1922.

The killing of Mr. Brooks is noted in the museum. The sites of the other killings, like those of nearly every lynching in the United States, are not marked. Bryan Stevenson believes this should change.

On Tuesday, the organization he founded and runs, the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., released a report on the history of lynchings in the United States, the result of five years of research and 160 visits to sites around the South. The authors of the report compiled an inventory of 3,959 victims of “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.

Next comes the process of selecting lynching sites where the organization plans to erect markers and memorials, which will involve significant fund-raising, negotiations with distrustful landowners and, almost undoubtedly, intense controversy.

The process is intended, Mr. Stevenson said, to force people to reckon with the narrative through-line of the country’s vicious racial history, rather than thinking of that history in a short-range, piecemeal way.

“Lynching and the terror era shaped the geography, politics, economics and social characteristics of being black in America during the 20th century,” Mr. Stevenson said, arguing that many participants in the great migration from the South should be thought of as refugees fleeing terrorism rather than people simply seeking work.

The lynching report is part of a longer project Mr. Stevenson began several years ago. One phase involved the erection of historical markers about the extensive slave markets in Montgomery. The city and state governments were not welcoming of the markers, despite the abundance of Civil War and civil rights movement memorials in Montgomery, but Mr. Stevenson is planning to do the same thing elsewhere.

Around the country, there are only a few markers noting the sites of lynchings. In several of those places, like Newnan, Ga., attempts to erect markers were met with local resistance. But in most places, no one has tried to put up a marker.

Efforts to count the number of lynchings in the country go back at least to 1882, when The Chicago Tribune began publishing each January a list of all executions and lynchings in the previous year. The Tuskegee Institute began releasing a list in 1912, and in 1919, the N.A.A.C.P. published what its researchers said was a comprehensive list of lynchings in the previous three decades. In 1995, the sociologists Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck researched the existing lists, eliminated errors and duplicates, and compiled what many consider the most accurate inventory to that time.

The report released Tuesday says that the new inventory has 700 names that are not on any of these previous lists, many of which Mr. Stevenson said were discovered during the compilation of the report.

Professor Beck, who teaches at the University of Georgia, has not reviewed the new list. But he pointed out that, with racial violence so extensive and carried out in so many different ways, compilers of lists may differ on what constitutes a lynching; the new list, as opposed to some previous ones, includes one-time massacres of large numbers of African-Americans, such as occurred in Arkansas in 1919 and in Louisiana in 1887.

“If you’re trying to make a point that the amount of racial violence is underestimated, well then, there’s no doubt about it,” Professor Beck said. “What people don’t realize here is just how many there were, and how close. Places they drive by every day.”

Among Professor Beck’s findings were that the number of lynchings did not rise or fall in proportion to the number of state-sanctioned executions, underscoring what Mr. Stevenson said was a crucial point: that these brutal deaths were not about administering popular justice, but terrorizing a community.

“Many of these lynchings were not executing people for crimes but executing people for violating the racial hierarchy,” he said, meaning offenses such as bumping up against a white woman or wearing an Army uniform.

But, he continued, even when a major crime was alleged, the refusal to grant a black man a trial — despite the justice system’s near certain outcome — and the public extravagance of a lynching were clearly intended as a message to other African-Americans.

The bloody history of Paris, Tex., about 100 miles northeast of Dallas, is well known if rarely brought up, said Thelma Dangerfield, the treasurer of the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter. Thousands of people came in 1893 to see Henry Smith, a black teenager accused of murder, carried around town on a float, then tortured and burned to death on a scaffold.

Until recently, some longtime residents still remembered when the two Arthur brothers were tied to a flagpole and set on fire at the city fairgrounds in 1920.

“There were two or three blacks who were actually around during that time, but you couldn’t get them to talk about it,” Ms. Dangerfield said.

She helped set up an exhibit in the county historical museum, the only commemoration of the lynchings she knows of in a town with prominent public memorials to the Confederacy. The prospect of a permanent marker had not occurred to her.

“It would be a fight,” she said. “Someone is going to have some resistance to it. But you know, I think it wouldn’t hurt to try it.”





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6) Illinois Governor Acts to Curb Power of Public Sector Unions
By and

CHICAGO — Gov. Bruce Rauner, the newly elected Republican who has often criticized public sector unions, took his first step toward curbing their power on Monday by announcing an executive order that would bar unions from requiring all state workers to pay the equivalent of dues.

Mr. Rauner, who faces a Democratic-controlled legislature with strong ties to labor, took the unilateral step saying that he believed those fees violate the United States Constitution.

“Forced union dues are a critical cog in the corrupt bargain that is crushing taxpayers,” Mr. Rauner said. “An employee who is forced to pay unfair share dues is being forced to fund political activity with which they disagree. That is a clear violation of First Amendment rights — and something that, as governor, I am duty bound to correct.”Mr. Rauner, a former private equity manager who became the state’s first Republican governor in more than a decade, is following other Republican governors in the Midwest who have aggressively taken on public sector unions in recent years.

Those include Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who ended collective bargaining by state workers by executive order; Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who led efforts to cut collective bargaining rights for most public employees; and Rick Snyder of Michigan, who signed legislation ending the requirement that all workers in unionized workplaces pay union dues.

The governor’s executive order affects about 6,500 of the state employees who are not in unions but currently pay fees in lieu of union dues. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said that about 42,000 state employees are represented by unions.

But labor leaders say Mr. Rauner’s intent is far broader, aimed at shrinking union membership in the future and diminishing labor’s power in Illinois. Union leaders have described the fees, often called “fair share” payments, as reasonable contributions from workers who, while choosing not to be union members, still benefit from collective bargaining agreements.

The order does not affect private sector unions or state employees who choose to be in unions. A spokesman for the governor said that the executive order would take effect immediately but that the money from the union fees would be placed in escrow in case the order was challenged in the courts.

Last week, in his first State of the State address, Mr. Rauner called for the state to ban political contributions by public employee unions to “the public officials they are lobbying, and sitting across the bargaining table” from, as well as allow local governments to enact “right to work” laws. Those laws typically abolish the practice of making both union membership and dues-paying automatic in unionized workplaces and have often led to declines in union ranks.

“Bruce Rauner’s scheme to strip the rights of state workers and weaken their unions by executive order is a blatantly illegal abuse of power,” said Roberta Lynch, executive director of Afscme Council 31. “Perhaps as a private equity C.E.O., Rauner was accustomed to ignoring legal and ethical standards, but Illinois is still a democracy and its laws have meaning.”

“It is crystal clear by this action,” she continued, “that the governor’s supposed concern for balancing the state budget is a paper-thin excuse that can’t hide his real agenda: silencing working people and their unions who stand up for the middle class.”

Afscme, which is set to negotiate a contract with the state this year, is one of many unions that backed Mr. Rauner’s Democratic opponent in last year’s election.Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee, said Monday’s action could be seen as a natural progression from recent victories in nearby states. “There will inevitably be a union battle on this,” he said, “but we’re excited this is bringing this issue to the forefront.”

Still, the order covers only state employees, he said, and an expansion of the policy to both public and private sector workplaces would be difficult.

“We’d like to see Illinois become a right-to-work state,” he said. “Obviously, you need more than just the governor to get that done.”

Some critics of the governor said it was clear why he had chosen to make an executive order rather than offer a legislative proposal. The state’s legislative chambers are controlled by Democrats, many of whom have received union support over the years. On Monday evening, the reaction from legislative leaders seemed surprisingly tempered.

“Our legal staff is reviewing the governor’s executive order regarding fair share,” said the Senate president, John Cullerton, a Democrat. “At the same time, I look forward to hearing the governor’s budget as we search for common ground to address our fiscal challenges.”

Bob Bruno, director of the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the governor’s action was an aggression against public unions in a state where organized labor’s influence runs deep. That said, he questioned the legal justification for the measure and its practical effect, noting that most eligible state employees are union members.

“In principle, it’s a pretty serious assault. In terms of impact, it remains to be seen because it’s a relatively small percentage of the population that’s chosen fair share,” Mr. Bruno said. “This is an assault on the institutional existence of the union in the public sector, and these sorts of fights are historic fights and have big impact.”


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7) Oklahoma Debates Use of Nitrogen Gas for Executions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OKLAHOMA CITY — With executions in Oklahoma on hold amid a constitutional review of its lethal injection formula, Republican legislators are pushing to make Oklahoma the first state to allow the use of nitrogen gas in executions.

Two bills scheduled for hearings this week in legislative committees would make death by “nitrogen hypoxia” a backup method. Representative Mike Christian, an Oklahoma City Republican, said: “You wouldn’t need a medical doctor to do it. It’s a lot more practical. It’s efficient.”

The United States Supreme Court is reviewing Oklahoma’s three-drug method in a challenge sparked by a botched lethal injection last spring in which an inmate groaned and writhed on the gurney before a problem was discovered with an intravenous line.The case centers on whether the sedative midazolam properly renders an inmate unconscious before the second and third drugs are administered. Three scheduled lethal injections in Oklahoma have been delayed pending the high court’s review.

Oklahoma officials concede midazolam is not the preferred drug for executions, but death penalty states have been forced to explore alternatives as manufacturers of more effective drugs refuse to sell them for use in lethal injections.


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8) Missouri Inmate Asks US Supreme Court to Stop His Execution
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ST. LOUIS — A Missouri inmate just hours away from execution is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in, arguing that lethal drug could cause unconstitutional pain and suffering.

The appeal was filed Tuesday on behalf of Walter Timothy Storey. He is scheduled for lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday for killing a female neighbor in 1990.

Missouri prison officials refuse to disclose details about how or if its execution drug, pentobarbital, is tested. Storey's attorneys argue that the secrecy makes it impossible to know if the drug will quickly work or cause an unconstitutionally painful death.

The Missouri Attorney General's office says 12 executions performed with the same drug have been "rapid and painless."

If the court doesn't step in, Storey's execution will be the state's first in 2015.


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9) Justice Department Is Seeking Felony Pleas by Big Banks in Foreign Currency Inquiry
By and
February 9, 2015
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/u-s-is-seeking-felony-pleas-by-big-banks-in-foreign-currency-inquiry/

The Justice Department is pushing some of the biggest banks on Wall Street — including, for the first time in decades, American institutions — to plead guilty to criminal charges that they manipulated the prices of foreign currencies.

In the final stages of a long-running investigation into corruption in the world’s largest financial market, federal prosecutors have recently informed Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Citigroup that they must enter guilty pleas to settle the cases, according to lawyers briefed on the matter. The pleas would be likely to carry a symbolic stigma, if limited actual fallout, in handing felony convictions to some of the world’s biggest banks.

Yet even as those cases head toward negotiations over potential plea deals — a development that has not been previously reported — additional currency misconduct has surfaced in a New York state investigation, confidential documents show. The documents, excerpts from online chat rooms reviewed by The New York Times, suggest that banks designed electronic trading platforms that effectively drove up the price of currencies sold to clients. In the chats, replete with expletives and industry jargon, employees described and even joked about how the platform would cancel trades that ceased to be profitable for the bank.

New York’s financial regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, initially focused on platforms at Barclays and Deutsche Bank, but he has since subpoenaed four other banks: Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas and Société Générale. None of the banks have been accused of wrongdoing, and they are cooperating with the investigation.

The Justice Department’s plea deals, if ultimately reached, would not cover any wrongdoing that surfaces from Mr. Lawsky’s investigation. Negotiations with the Justice Department are likely to center on which entity will plead guilty: the bank’s parent company, or a subsidiary that housed the misconduct. The banks, which have argued that the wrongdoing was isolated to midlevel employees, prefer that a subsidiary take the fall.

The currency case is expected to ensnare traders but not top-level executives. As a result, it may add fuel to the criticism that prosecutors have not charged one top executive on Wall Street. Without charges to mollify the public anger over the financial crisis, the recent cases have presented little more than a pyrrhic victory for the Justice Department.

Still, the developments underscore a broader reality on Wall Street of late: One investigation begets another. With each settlement for money laundering, manipulating interest rates or aiding tax fraud, new cases crop up, often unearthed in the course of the previous investigation.

The currency investigation would expand on those cases, which produced guilty pleas only from foreign banks. In pursuing cases last year against those foreign banks, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, prosecutors confronted the popular belief that banks had grown so important to the economy that they could not be charged.

After those deals set off few if any practical repercussions — the stocks of the banks actually jumped following the news — prosecutors in the currency case are now demanding pleas from JPMorgan and Citigroup, the lawyers said, in addition to Barclays of Britain and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The banks, before entering a guilty plea for any entity, will likely seek assurances that the charges would not prompt a revocation of their licenses or cost them any major business lines. If the banks resist, the Justice Department has warned that an indictment and ultimately a trial await.

For the Justice Department, the currency case represents a last opportunity to shape the white-collar legacy of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has announced plans to step down once his replacement is confirmed. Blamed for the lack of criminal cases against Wall Street executives, Mr. Holder has emphasized that “no financial institution, at home or abroad, is too powerful to be held accountable for wrongdoing.”

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did all of the banks under investigation. The lawyers briefed on the investigations spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private settlement talks.

The Justice Department and the banks, the lawyers said, will most likely take weeks or even months to negotiate a settlement. The deals could be announced in close succession, if not on the same day.

The currency investigation began in earnest two years ago with the suspicion that traders across Wall Street manipulated the foreign exchange market, pushing prices up and down to suit their own holdings. Although foreign exchange is an enormous global market, with more than $5 trillion changing hands each day, it is one of the least regulated.

Banks eventually fired dozens of traders implicated in the scheme. Authorities around the globe scrambled to stake a claim to the investigation.

In November, six banks sought to close the first chapter of the case, agreeing to pay a combined $4.25 billion to settle with financial regulators in Washington and Britain. The settlement, which included JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, the Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and HSBC, exposed the way banks colluded to manipulate currencies through emails and online chat rooms.

“He’s sat back in his chair… feet on desk… announcing to desk… that’s why I got the bonus pool,” one trader remarked to a rival after they colluded on a rate, earning, according to regulators, a profit of $513,000 on the trade. Traders who collaborated to rig the market called themselves “the Players” and “the Three Musketeers.”

On the eve of the settlement, Barclays withdrew from the deal over concerns that it would not completely resolve its liabilities. The bank had hoped that Mr. Lawsky’s agency would join the pact.

Now that the Justice Department has opened settlement talks in the case, demanding guilty pleas for antitrust and fraud charges, Mr. Lawsky is likely to join. Each agency will assess its own fines, the lawyers briefed on the matter said.

The Justice Department might also pursue its own investigation into the electronic trading platforms under scrutiny by Mr. Lawsky, the lawyers said. Unlike the original currency investigation, which centered on the behavior of individual traders who altered currency prices to benefit their own positions, Mr. Lawsky’s inquiry suspects a more systematic gaming of the currency markets through electronic trading platforms.

Over the last decade, many banks began to trade currencies through electronic platforms. Not all such platforms were meant to benefit the banks at the client’s expense.

But late last year, Mr. Lawsky’s agency began to scrutinize the platforms at Deutsche Bank and Barclays, as Bloomberg News reported in December.

In the confidential documents reviewed by The Times, it appeared that at least one bank steered certain clients to its platform, which provided the bank a moment to weigh its options in an otherwise high-speed environment.

For example, once a client agreed to buy euros at a certain price from a bank, the platform would detect whether the market had suddenly moved in a way that made the trade less profitable for the bank. The platform would then allow the bank to cancel the trade, possibly setting up a chance for the bank to eventually process the trade at a higher price.

In the online chat rooms, bank employees mocked their clients for not detecting the setup. And in some cases, when clients inquired about the cancellation, the banks falsely blamed a technical glitch.




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10) Lynching as Racial Terrorism
By

It is important to remember that the hangings, burnings and dismemberments of black American men, women and children that were relatively common in this country between the Civil War and World War II were often public events. They were sometimes advertised in newspapers and drew hundreds and even thousands of white spectators, including elected officials and leading citizens who were so swept up in the carnivals of death that they posed with their children for keepsake photographs within arm’s length of mutilated black corpses.These episodes of horrific, communitywide violence have been erased from civic memory in lynching-belt states like Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. But that will change if Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney, succeeds in his mission to build markers and memorials at lynching sites throughout the South as a way of forcing communities and the country to confront an era of racial terror directly and recognize the role that it played in shaping the current racial landscape.

Mr. Stevenson’s organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, took a step in that direction on Tuesday when it released a report that chronicles nearly 4,000 lynchings of black people in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950. The report focuses on what it describes as “racial terror lynchings,” which were used to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. Victims in these cases were often murdered without being accused of actual crimes but for minor social transgressions that included talking back to whites or insisting on fairness and basic rights.

The report is the result of five years of hard work. Researchers reviewed local newspapers, historical archives and court records; interviewed local historians, survivors and victims’ descendants; and scrutinized contemporaneously published articles in African-American newspapers, which took a closer interest in these matters than the white press. In the end, researchers found at least 700 more lynchings in the 12 states than were previously reported, suggesting that “racial terror lynching” was far more common than was generally believed.

The report argues compellingly that the threat of death by lynching was far more influential in shaping present-day racial reality than contemporary Americans typically understand. It argues that The Great Migration from the South, in which millions of African-Americans moved North and West, was partly a forced migration in which black people fled the threat of murder at the hands of white mobs.It sees lynching as the precursor of modern-day racial bias in the criminal justice system. The researchers argue, for example, that lynching declined as a mechanism of social control as the Southern states shifted to a capital punishment strategy, in which blacks began more frequently to be executed after expedited trials. The legacy of lynching was apparent in that public executions were still being used to mollify mobs in the 1930s even after such executions were legally banned.

Despite playing a powerful role in the shaping of Southern society, the lynching era has practically disappeared from public discourse. As the report notes: “Most Southern terror lynching victims were killed on sites that remain unmarked and unrecognized. The Southern landscape is cluttered with plaques, statues and monuments that record, celebrate and lionize generations of American defenders of white supremacy, including public officials and private citizens who perpetrated violent crimes against black citizens during the era of racial terror.”

Mr. Stevenson’s group makes the persuasive argument that this history needs to be properly commemorated and more widely discussed before the United States can fully understand the causes and origins of the racial injustice that hobbles the country to this day.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The union has declined to discuss the negotiations.

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

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

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

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

Noah Smith contributed reporting.




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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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13) Education Is Newest Target of Kansas Budget Cuts
By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some districts worry that their reserves might dry up.

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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