Friday, March 27, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2015





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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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PLEASE SHARE WIDELY

Iraq: Where Are We, and Where Are We Going?
Into the 12th year of the U.S. War in Iraq

Iraq Veterans Against the War, American Friends Service Committee,
& the Friends Committee on National Legislation
present a discussion on the U.S. in Iraq after twelve years of war.

Sunday March 29, 2015 at 6 pm

San Francisco. 65 9th Street between Mission and Market Streets, two blocks from Civic Center BART/Muni
Please enter through the North Door, closest to Market Street.

The Friends Meetinghouse is accessible.

Speakers:

Raed Jarrar, Policy Impact Coordinator. Office of Public Policy and Advocacy, American Friends Service Committee.  Raed Jarrar serves as AFSC's Policy Impact Coordinator at the Office of Public Policy and Advocacy in Washington, D.C. Since his immigration to the U.S. in 2005, he has worked on political and cultural issues pertaining to U.S. engagement in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Born in Baghdad to an Iraqi mother and a Palestinian father, Raed Jarrar grew up in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq. He received his bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Baghdad, and his master's degree in architecture, with a specialty in post-war reconstruction in Iraq, from the University of Jordan.  Raed has appeared in numerous media outlets, including MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Alternet. His opinion pieces have been published in the Chicago Tribune and Common Dreams.

Wardah Khalid is a Scoville Fellow at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, focusing on research, development and presentation of non-violent policy solutions to counter the self-described Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as well as highlighting why U.S. militarism is undermining locally-led peacebuilding approaches in these countries and throughout the region.  Prior to joining FCNL, Wardah worked as a CVE consultant in Houston, focusing on creating a community plan to counter violent extremism in the local Muslim American community. She is also the author of the "Young American Muslim" blog for the Houston Chronicle.   See "Bombs Are Not the Answer: Five Non-Military Ways to Stop the Islamic State Group" in US News & World Report at http://www.usnews.com/topics/author/wardah-khalid

Discussion will follow the presentation. Raed will be joining us by video conference. there will be snacks.

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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

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) Justice Dept., Criticizing Philadelphia Police, Finds Shootings by Officers Are Common
By




2) Utah: Governor Signs Law Allowing Firing Squads
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




3) Oklahoma Senate Panel Approves Nitrogen Gas Executions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





4 How Poor Are the Poor?
By




5) Smartphone Use Changing Our Brain and Thumb Interaction, Say Researchers
By Jim Drury, REUTERS





6) U.S. Air Raids Struck ISIS in Tikrit for Over 8 Hours, Iraqi Military Leaders Say
By




7) Texas: State Obtains More Lethal Drugs
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




8) Increased Military Spending Wins Out After Dueling Budget Votes in House
By




9) Many in Ireland Vow Not to Pay a New Water Tax
By





10) A Dangerous Escalation in Iraq
By




11)  Out of Debtors’ Prison, With Law as the Key
"We have a two-tier system: The rich pay fines. The poor go to jail."
By






12) Deputies Said to Taunt Prisoners
By LIAM STACK




13) Study Finds Older Workers Often Missing From Rising Job Rate
By Elizabeth Olsen


































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1) Justice Dept., Criticizing Philadelphia Police, Finds Shootings by Officers Are Common
By

WASHINGTON — Roughly once a week, 390 times over the past eight years, Philadelphia police officers opened fire at a suspect. The shootings involved 454 officers, most of them on patrol. Almost always, the suspects were black. Often, the officers were, too.

Fifty-nine suspects were unarmed. Officers frequently said they thought the men — and they were almost always men — were reaching for a weapon, when they were actually doing something like holding a cellphone.

The statistics were laid out in a Justice Department report on Monday, which does not allege racial discrimination but offers an unusually deep look at the use of lethal force inside a major city police department, including information on the race of officers and suspects. It is the kind of data that has been nearly absent from the debate over police tactics that began last summer with a deadly shooting in Ferguson, Mo.Only a handful of major departments regularly publish statistics on police shootings, and those that do are not always consistent. That makes comparing the records of police departments difficult. But even with such spotty figures, Philadelphia stands out when compared with the public data in other cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. In many years, Philadelphia saw more police shootings than New York, a city with five times the number of residents and officers.

“I want to express regrets for all who have been shot and killed in Philadelphia — civilian and police officers,” Mayor Michael A. Nutter said at a news conference Monday.

The report comes as tensions linger over the death of Brandon Tate-Brown, a 26-year-old Philadelphia man who was stopped in December for driving with his headlights off. The district attorney, R. Seth Williams, said Mr. Tate-Brown had been shot and killed while reaching for a gun in the car. Mr. Williams called it a “terrible tragedy, but not a crime.”

Last month, the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Police Department in Ferguson, where, the authorities said, officers engaged in unconstitutional practices. In its tone and findings, the Philadelphia report is very different. It was conducted by federal experts who specialize in community-oriented policing, rather than federal prosecutors. And while the Ferguson report contains vivid anecdotes of ticket-fixing, racist emails and unwarranted arrests, the Philadelphia report is a simple, by-the-numbers accounting.

Philadelphia has one of the nation’s most turbulent histories of police violence and corruption. In 1979, the Justice Department sued the city over police brutality. Six years later, in a standoff with the radical group Move, the police dropped a bomb on a house and allowed the fire to burn for nearly an hour before trying to control it. Six adults and five children were killed and 250 people were left homeless after the fire destroyed 61 homes. More recently, police officers have been videotaped punching and beating people. Last month, two officers were arrested and accused of knocking a man off his scooter and beating him with their fists and batons.

“History does matter,” said Ronald L. Davis, the director of the Justice Department’s office that focuses on community-oriented policing. “That history can change people’s views with regards to trust.”

Charles H. Ramsey, Philadelphia’s police commissioner, requested the Justice Department inquiry after a philly.com article in 2013 revealed that while crime was down, the number of officers firing at suspects was on the rise. At the time, Commissioner Ramsey said he considered the department’s policy on lethal force to be an industry “best practice.”

The Justice Department report, however, found repeated flaws. It describes a department where training is weak, oversight is spotty and shootings are all too frequent.

Officers are not routinely given less lethal tools like stun guns and receive inadequate training on how to defuse situations without violence. “Instructors should train students not only when and how to use force, but when and how not to use force and to de-escalate, verbally and tactically, if appropriate,” the Justice Department wrote.

Philadelphia is the nation’s fifth-largest city but maintains the only police department that has more than 1,000 officers and does not offer a field training program for new officers. Instead, the Justice Department said, new officers are assigned to foot patrol. “As a result, recruits can be thrown into situations where their only guidance comes from their rookie partner,” the report found. Patrol officers accounted for 93 percent of the shootings. The average age of the officers was 33.

Commissioner Ramsey has emerged recently as a national figure in the policing debate. He leads President Obama’s policing task force, which recently made recommendations on how to improve trust between law enforcement and minorities. “I wasn’t selected because the president thought we had the perfect police department,” he told reporters on Monday.

“Commissioner Ramsey and his team have been implementing change from Day 1,” said Mr. Nutter, who because of term limits cannot run for re-election in November. “We will hand off a road map, and a blueprint, and a game plan to whoever the new mayor will be.”

The Justice Department called on the department to be more forthcoming with details about police shootings, publish annual data on shootings and appoint an independent investigator whenever officers kill an unarmed person.

Over all, despite some high-profile cases of the police shooting African-American suspects, the report did not find a pattern of racial targeting. While blacks accounted for 80 percent of police shooting victims, whites who were shot by the police were more likely than blacks to be unarmed, the Justice Department concluded. When federal investigators looked at the race of the officers and the suspects, they found no statistically significant difference in the outcomes.

Nevertheless, the debate over Mr. Tate-Brown’s shooting remains racially charged. Ten people were arrested at a public forum last week when protesters tussled with police officers.

Both Commissioner Ramsey and Mr. Nutter, who are black, said they welcomed the Justice Department’s conclusions and would quickly begin acting on the recommendations. But they reminded people of the violence plaguing the city.

“Folks need to quit killing each other,” Commissioner Ramsey said, noting that about 85 percent of victims and perpetrators in Philadelphia are black. He said he was not proud of that figure. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m black myself.”

Mr. Nutter added: “People want good police officers. Police officers need good citizens.”

Bryon MacWilliams contributed reporting from Philadelphia. 




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2) Utah: Governor Signs Law Allowing Firing Squads
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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3) Oklahoma Senate Panel Approves Nitrogen Gas Executions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OKLAHOMA CITY — Legislation that authorizes the use of nitrogen gas to execute Oklahoma death row inmates has been approved by a state Senate committee.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 8-0 Tuesday for the House-passed measure and sent it to the full Senate for a vote.

Under the bill, lethal injection would remain the primary method of execution, but nitrogen gas would be an alternative if lethal injection is declared unconstitutional or if the drugs are unavailable.

Currently, electrocution is the second option, followed by firing squad. The bill would make electrocution the third method, followed by firing squad.

Supporters began studying alternative methods after an execution went awry last year and led the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of Oklahoma's three-drug protocol.


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4 How Poor Are the Poor?
By

There is a consensus among poverty experts that over the past 50 years there has been some improvement in the condition of the poor.

“Anyone who studies the issue seriously understands that material poverty has continued to fall in the U.S. in recent decades, primarily due to the success of anti-poverty programs” and the declining cost of “food, air-conditioning, communications, transportation, and entertainment,” David Autor, a professor of economics at M.I.T., wrote in response to my query.

Despite the rising optimism, there are disagreements over how many poor people there are and the conditions they live under. There are also questions about the problem of relative poverty, what we are now calling inequality. Poverty cannot be viewed in isolation from the larger economy. We must take disparities in the way the benefits of growth and productivity are distributed into account.I set out to ask a number of experts about this in response to a controversial essay published in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, “The War on Poverty: Was It Lost?” by Christopher Jencks, a sociologist at Harvard with unassailable liberal credentials.

Jencks argues that the actual poverty rate has dropped over the past five decades – far below the official government level — if poverty estimates are adjusted for food and housing benefits, refundable tax credits and a better method of determining inflation rates. In Jencks’s view, the war on poverty worked.

The Jencks article and the response among those I contacted reveals how politically explosive and ideologically charged the seemingly arcane debate over the determination of the poverty rate is.

Democratic supporters of safety net programs can use Jencks’s finding that poverty has dropped below 5 percent as evidence that the war on poverty has been successful.

At the same time liberals are wary of positive news because, as Jencks notes:

It is easier to rally support for such an agenda by saying that the problem in question is getting worse than by saying that although the problem is diminishing, more still needs to be done.

The plus side for conservatives of Jencks’s low estimate of the poverty rate is the implication that severe poverty has largely abated, which then provides justification for allowing enemies of government entitlement programs to further cut social spending.

At the same time, however, Jencks’s data undermines Republican claims that the war on poverty has been a failure – a claim exemplified by Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 quip: “In the sixties we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won.”

Jencks’s methodology is simple. He starts with the official 2013 United States poverty rate of 14.5 percent. In 2013, the government determined that 45.3 million people in the United States were living in poverty, or 14.5 percent of the population.

Jencks makes three subtractions from the official level to account for expanded food and housing benefits (3 percentage points); the refundable earned-income tax credit and child care credit (3 points); and the use of the Personal Consumption Expenditures index instead of the Consumer Price Index to measure inflation (3.7 percentage points).
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Jencks’s conclusion: “The absolute poverty rate has declined dramatically since President Johnson launched his war on poverty in 1964.” At 4.8 percent, Jencks’s calculation is the lowest poverty estimate by a credible expert in the field.

No one casts doubts on Jencks’s expertise. Nevertheless, his conclusion — that instead of the official count of 45.3 million people living in poverty, the number of poor people in America is just under 15 million — understates the scope of hardship in this country.

Other credible ways to define poverty paint a different picture. One is to count all those living with less than half the median income as poor. There are strong theoretical justifications for the use of a relative poverty measure. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development puts it this way:

In order to participate fully in the social life of a community, individuals may need a level of resources that is not too inferior to the norms of a community. For example, the clothing budget that allows a child not to feel ashamed of his school attire is much more related to national living standards than to strict requirements for physical survival.

Using one-half of the median income estimates the number of poor people at over 70.6 million, far above the 45.3 million official number, according to Shawn Fremstad, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Timothy Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes in an email that that “the official poverty line was about half of median income in 1963, but is less than 30 percent of median now because of general economic growth.”

Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, pointed out to me in an email that using a relative measure shows that the United States lags well behind other developed countries:

If you use the O.E.C.D. standard of 50 percent of median income as a poverty line, the United States looks pretty bad in cross-national relief. We have a relative poverty rate exceeded only by Chile, Turkey, Mexico and Israel (which has seen a big increase in inequality in recent years). And that rate in 2010 was essentially where it was in 1995.

Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, responded by email to my question on the relative measure:

Most Americans are probably relativists when it comes to thinking about poverty today. Even if they acknowledge that the absolute living standards of fellow citizens in the bottom 15 percent of the income distribution have improved over time, they probably think of poverty in terms of the economic and social distance between someone in the exact middle of the distribution and a person who is near the bottom.

While the United States “has achieved real progress in reducing absolute poverty over the past 50 years,” according to Burtless, “the country may have made no progress at all in reducing the relative economic deprivation of folks at the bottom.”

Burtless’s point goes to the heart of the dispute: How severe is the problem of poverty?

Part of the answer hinges on which measures you use to calculate inflation. Measures that show a higher rate of inflation will increase the number of poor people because the cost of basic necessities rises at a faster clip. A measure that shows a slower rate of inflation will lead to the appearance of reduced poverty levels because the cost of food, shelter and other needs will be lower.

Fremstad, of the Center for American Progress, points to a consequence of Jencks’s use of the Personal Consumption Expenditures index instead of the Consumer Price Index to determine increases in the cost of living. Since the P.C.E. measure provides a lower inflation rate than the C.P.I., the P.C.E. index suggests that the poor can live on even less income than provided for in the official government calculation.

Fremstad notes that using the P.C.E. measure, “an elderly couple was not poor in 2013 if they had an income, including housing and food benefits, equal to $11,300.” Under the C.P.I. measure, by contrast, the same couple was officially poor as long as their income remained under $14,095.“The vast majority of Americans would say that an elderly couple needs more than $14,095 today to have a minimally decent living standard, and I imagine even more would think that $11,300 is far below minimally decent,” Fremstad noted.

At the same time, two other poverty researchers, Kathryn Edin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins, and Luke Schaefer, a professor of social work at the University of Michigan, contend that the poverty debate overlooks crucial changes that have taken place within the population of the poor.

These changes have produced winners and losers, those who have benefited from two major policy initiatives adopted over the past 20 years, and those who were left behind.

The first policy initiative was the enactment of welfare reform, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act), which limited eligibility for welfare benefits to five years. The limitation has forced many of the poor off welfare: over the past 19 years, the percentage of families falling under the official poverty line who receive welfare benefits has fallen from to 26 percent from 68 percent. Currently, three-quarters of those in poverty, under the official definition, receive no welfare payments.

The second policy initiative was the enactment of expanded benefits for the working poor through the earned-income tax credit and the child care credit.

According to Edin and Schaefer, the consequence of these changes, taken together, has been to divide the poor who no longer receive welfare into two groups. The first group is made up of those who have gone to work and have qualified for tax credits. Expanded tax credits lifted about 3.2 million children out of poverty in 2013. So far, so good.

The second group, though, has really suffered. These are the very poor who are without work, part of a population that is struggling desperately. Edin and Schaefer write that among the losers are an estimated 3.4 million “children who over the course of a year live for at least three months under a $2 per person per day threshold.”

While Edin and Schaefer address the growing advantage the working poor have over nonworkers, Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, raises a different set of issues. He agrees with the general finding that “government programs — transfers and tax subsidies — have helped lift low incomes, and poverty, correctly measured, has fallen.” But focusing on these findings, Mishel argues, diverts attention from the more serious problem of “the failure of the labor market to adequately reward low-wage workers.”

To support his case, Mishel points out that hourly pay for those in the bottom fifth grew only 7.7 percent from 1979 to 2007, while productivity grew by 64 percent, and education levels among workers in this quintile substantially improved.

The effectiveness of government programs rewarding work, according to Mishel, means that in practice, taxpayers “are subsiding low-wage employers,” who, he wrote, “are not putting in enough relative to the publicly provided social safety net.”

A report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, “The War on Poverty 50 Years Later,” which was published last year, provides support for Mishel’s case that falling private sector wages are a major factor in the problems of those in the bottom quintile of the income distribution. The following chart, Figure 1, shows that if there had been no new government initiatives after 1967, the poverty rate now would be higher than it was 48 years ago.

The question of how to compare levels of poverty over a half-century remains hotly contested. Jencks argues in his email for consistency:

The poverty line was too low in 1964, and it is still too low today. But if you want to measure absolute progress, you can’t move the goal posts just because you think they were set in the wrong place.

The measurement of absolute progress is a worthy undertaking, but in terms of evaluating the lived experience of poverty and its detrimental effects, it is equally important, if not more so, to explore the relative progress of the poor. The semi-success of government anti-poverty policy has also marginalized and beaten down millions of people. Without understanding relative poverty — and in particular the “small percentage” that falls to the very bottom, almost off the grid — we haven’t really begun to tackle the problem.



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5) Smartphone Use Changing Our Brain and Thumb Interaction, Say Researchers
By Jim Drury, REUTERS

Typing text messages, scrolling web pages, and checking your email on your smartphone could be changing the way your thumbs and brain interacts. That's according to researchers from the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, and University of Fribourg.

Dr Arko Ghosh, of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, led the research which involved using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the cortical brain activity in 37 right-handed people, 26 of whom were touchscreen Smartphone users and 11 users of old-fashioned cellphones.

A total of 62 electrodes were placed on an EEG cap worn by subjects to record how the brain processed touch from their thumb, forefinger and middle finger. Brain activity was then compared with the individual commands recorded by each individuals' phone logs.

"We measured people's brain activity using a bunch of electrodes on the scalp and what these maps indicate is essentially how much of the variance between people we could explain by just looking at the phone logs, so how much brain activity can be explained by looking at people's history of use on the phones alone," said Ghosh.

Pointing at brain scans on his computer he added: "For instance these red spots here indicate when you measure the signals of these electrodes a lot of the differences between one person and the next can be explained simply by how much phone they were using in the previous ten days."

Electrical activity in the brains of smartphone users was shown to be enhanced when all three fingertips were touched. According to research student Magali Chytiris, activity in the cortex of the brain associated with the thumb and index fingertips was directly proportional to the intensity of phone use, as quantified by built-in battery logs.

"This activity is related to the amount of use from the past days of phone use," said Chytiris. "So we used the logs, the battery logs, from the phone and we found that if the EEG recording was just after the peak of high intensive use then the brain activity was higher."

Ghosh says the results suggest that repetitive movements over the touchscreen surface reshape sensory processing from the hand, with daily updates in the brain's representation of the fingertips. He believes that cortical sensory processing in the contemporary brain is continuously shaped by personal digital technology.

"Most superficially what we found was that smartphone users have a brain that processes touch differently than people who don't use smartscreen touch phones," said Ghosh. "However, if you dig a bit deeper into the data what you essentially see is that the most recent usage that people accumulated on their smartphones that reflected on the way that brains processed information from their fingertips. So essentially these day-to-day fluctuations that we encounter through our daily lives they imprint on the brain on the way that it processes information from your hands."

Ghosh says that smartphone use is an ideal way to explore the everyday plasticity of the human brain. "It gives us a very good excuse to go back and look into the phone logs in greater detail to understand how our digital histories could be used to understand brain function and develop real world solutions by studying the real world example of brain plasticity," he said.

The team published their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.


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6) U.S. Air Raids Struck ISIS in Tikrit for Over 8 Hours, Iraqi Military Leaders Say
By

AL RASHID AIR BASE, Iraq — Iraqi military leaders said that American-led air raids pummeled Islamic State positions in Tikrit for eight and a half hours, subsiding only at dawn on Thursday, when the Iraqi military’s handful of Russian-made fighters took over.

Apparently eager to claim some share of the credit for their role in bombing the extremists, Iraqi officials brought journalists on a visit to the Al Rashid Air Base, on the southeastern edge of Baghdad, as a squadron of five Iraqi Sukhoi-25 fighter bombers landed and took off on what officials said were bombing runs over Tikrit.

Iraqi officials in the Tikrit area said later that they were unaware of any Iraqi raids on Thursday.

By 10 a.m. Thursday, the Iraqi jets had carried out four waves of attacks, consisting of up to five jets each from this base, taking over from the American bombers in the coalition, according to Staff Gen. Anwer Hamad, the commander of the Iraqi Air Force. General Hamad said that American bombers had carried out a classified number of airstrikes, which he described as “intensive” and “many in number,” from 10 p.m. Wednesday until 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

He said that for operational reasons, American aircraft would concentrate on night raids, and the Iraqis would continue their daytime assaults.

“Their role in this fighting is very important to us,” he said. “They have a high number of aircraft, and they have good capabilities. They can really help us.”

While the Americans and their coalition partners have hundreds of aircraft at their disposal, the Iraqi Air Force has about a dozen of the Russian-made Sukhoi-25s.

Visiting the base and posing in the cockpit of a Sukhoi-25 between assaults, Khaled al-Obeidi, the defense minister, said the combined operation would make quick work of the insurgents remaining in Tikrit. Some had already been seen fleeing, he said.

“We cannot tell when the battles will end, because we always have to prepare for the worst on the battlefield,” Mr. Obeidi said. “But we expect that the battle will be settled soon, and after the liberation of Tikrit, we will advance to the north and west.”

Iraqi forces had launched their offensive to retake Tikrit, a strategic crossroads in the heart of Sunni territory in central Iraq, on March 2, boasting that they would subdue the town within a few days, and that they would do so without help from the American-led coalition.

Iraq’s popular mobilization forces, predominantly Shiite militiamen, made up the bulk of the 30,000 Iraqi forces attacking Tikrit, under the tutelage of Iranian advisers on the ground. They proved unable to dislodge remaining Islamic State defenders, however, who were said to number only in the hundreds, and they announced that the advance was going to pause to protect lives and property.

That pause gave time for Iranian advisers to pull back from the fighting on Sunday, allaying American fears that if they launched airstrikes against Tikrit, they would seem to be providing air support to Iranian-led militias, rather than to regular Iraqi military units.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally requested that the United States join the offensive against Tikrit with airstrikes. President Obama authorized the strikes the same day, but it was clear that planning for them by the American military was well advanced. They began within hours of the president’s order.

The American-led military coalition has been carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, since last summer in Kurdistan and around Mosul in northern Iraq, as well as in Syria, but it had not previously joined the Tikrit offensive.

The coalition has advisers and trainers in Iraq, but unlike the Iranians, it has not, so far as is known, sent them to front-line positions with Iraqi ground forces. That is at least in part because those forces have been dominated by militiamen in the wake of last summer’s near collapse of the regular Iraqi Army.

A news release issued by the American military command late Wednesday said that “Iraqi security forces have ISIL in Tikrit encircled.”

“Renewed efforts on the ground supported by the coalition are aimed at dislodging ISIL fighting elements from Tikrit and once again placing the town under the government of Iraq control,” it said.

A reporter, on the outskirts of Tikrit, described an unusually heavy bombardment from Wednesday night until dawn on Thursday.

The deputy governor of Salahuddin Province, Ammar Hikmat, said that the coalition had carried out 180 airstrikes during the first night of bombing.

Both the journalist and the mayor of Tikrit, Omar al-Tikriti, who was also on the outskirts of the city, said there was no evidence of Iraqi airstrikes during daylight hours on Thursday.

Some of the remaining Islamic State fighters were seen trying to swim across the Tigris River, but about 150 fighters remained surrounded in a former palace of Saddam Hussein and in the center of Tikrit, according to Mr. Hikmat.

An Iraqi military official in Salahuddin, speaking on the condition of anonymity, reported that 73 Islamic State fighters had been killed in the American bombing raids on the palace, while another seven were killed trying to flee across the river.

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Salahuddin Province, and Falih Hassan from Baghdad.



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7) Texas: State Obtains More Lethal Drugs
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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8) Increased Military Spending Wins Out After Dueling Budget Votes in House
By

WASHINGTON — House Republicans beat back protests from fiscal hawks and narrowly passed a budget that increases war spending but slashes domestic programs and begins to privatize Medicare with a goal of balancing the federal books in nine years.

In an unusual move, House leaders put two Republican budgets to a vote, one that included $94 billion in off-budget war spending, $20 billion of which was supposed to be offset by cuts elsewhere, the other with $96 billion in war spending and no corresponding cuts.

With the competition over, the winning budget was ratified with one last vote, 228-199. Seventeen Republicans opposed it. No Democrats supported it.

That triumph for more military spending was an anomaly in the budget blueprint, which would cut spending $5.5 trillion over the next decade. It also includes parliamentary language, called reconciliation, that orders House committees to draft legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. Under budget rules, that reconciliation repeal bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate and would need only a majority vote to pass.

The budget would turn Medicaid into block grants to the states, cutting health care spending for the poor by $900 billion. The food stamp program would also be turned into block grants and cut by hundreds of billions of dollars. Special education, Pell Grants, job training and housing assistance would all be cut. Medicare would transition to a system where future seniors would be encouraged to use government-funded vouchers to purchase insurance in the private market.

To be sure, the congressional budget does not have the force of law. It sets overall spending levels for the coming fiscal year, and if the House and Senate can reconcile competing blueprints, a final budget can ease passage of future legislation — such as a repeal of the health care law that Republicans have promised, even though President Obama would veto it.

But its specific policy prescriptions are aspirational, not binding. “It’s a messaging document,” said Representative Diane Black of Tennessee, a senior Republican on the Budget Committee.

Republicans framed the debate around the imperative to shrink the government’s reach, balance the budget and begin to pay down a soaring federal debt — without raising taxes.

“We aim to respect the American people and talk to them about the seriousness of the challenges that we face, but provide positive alternatives, real solutions with real results,” said Representative Tom Price of Georgia, chairman of the House Budget Committee. “That is what they are longing for, real leadership in this town.”

Democrats focused on the cost of those decisions. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House’s No. 2 Democrat, accused Republicans of “mercilessly gutting priority investments in education, job training, innovation, research and other priorities of this nation.”

“This budget is a severe disinvestment in America’s future,” he said.

Just passing the budget was important for House Republican leaders. They had to navigate a deep divide between deficit and defense hawks, then maneuver around a deadlocked House Budget Committee and cycle through multiple approaches to floor action.

The Senate will go through its own version Thursday and deep into Friday morning with what has become known as a “vote-orama,” a free-for-all of unlimited amendments — some budget oriented, many politically loaded and none binding.

If at dawn the Senate then passes its budget, House and Senate Republican negotiators will set out to reconcile similar but competing versions, hoping to present a unified Republican plan for the first time in a decade.

The House debate showcased the gulf that separates the two parties in the chamber. Republicans barely discussed the severity of the spending cuts and policy changes they envisioned. Instead, they split over how much spending they would pile into a war account that is supposed to be reserved for emergencies overseas.

President Obama’s budget proposal simply ignored strict caps on military spending set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, adding $38 billion to the $523 billion limit. Republicans have been unwilling to breach those limits; instead, they piled $96 billion into the off-budget war account, nearly $40 billion more than the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested. Total military spending would be just higher than Mr. Obama requested, though the Defense Department will be challenged with far more than it wanted in war funding and far less for basic operations.

“At the end of the day, the fight in the House — this is all about spending as much money on defense as Obama,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “That’s what the $2 billion is about — getting above Obama by a billion. It’s sort of a silly exercise.”

To fiscal hawks, that was a sleight of hand too much.

“I am curious how the self-proclaimed defense hawks claim to defend our country when our credit is shot and out debt service is approaching $1 trillion a year,” said Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, who has led the opposition to the added military spending.

But his view did not prevail.

“We cannot let fiscal sanity and national security be juxtaposed as opponents,” said Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona. “It’s like trying to discern which wing on an airplane is more important. You can’t have one without the other.”

Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter is to speak on Thursday at the State Department. Aides said he would criticize the House budget as failing to meet the needs of the military.

Democrats focused on the rest of the budget, and that portends a very messy fall. President Obama has already vowed to veto any spending bill that abides by the strict limits both the House and Senate budgets continue.

There are no moves afoot to resume budget negotiations that would resolve an impasse that both sides foresee in October when the government not only runs out of money but also reaches its borrowing limit.

“The Republicans control both sides. They can’t say, ‘Well, we had this great plan, but Harry Reid wouldn’t let it go forward,’ ” Mr. Hoyer said, referring to the Nevada Democrat and former Senate majority leader. “They’re going to have to go to conference, going to have to reach agreement, and I predict we’re going to see that deep divide we’ve seen so often reflected in a few months all over again.”



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9) Many in Ireland Vow Not to Pay a New Water Tax
By

DUBLIN — Miranda Lumsden, 43, a single mother of four, had never protested against anything before the Irish government introduced new water fees last summer.

But the prospect of yet another bill arriving in the mail made her angry enough to join a cluster of demonstrators outside Dublin’s City Hall recently, even as sleet turned their homemade “We Won’t Pay” posters soggy.

“I’m scrimping from week to week as it is,” said Ms. Lumsden, pulling her jacket closer. “I’ve only got my bus fare home to last me the rest of the week.”

Until now, Ireland had been the poster child for German-led austerity policies. Its citizens offered little resistance as their government — grappling with huge debts from the country’s failed banks — introduced new taxes and increased old ones, even while laying off workers and slashing health and welfare benefits.

In recent months, however, the Irish have been anything but quiet. The prospect of paying for water, which many see as yet another new tax at a time when the government has assured them that austerity is over, has prompted a series of mass protests across the country, from Dublin to Cork. Many demonstrators say they have no intention of paying the new fees.

About a third of the country’s households have simply refused to register with the newly created state authority that is to run the country’s water service, though the deadline for doing so has now been extended three times. In some neighborhoods, workers trying to install meters have been met with angry mobs and forced to flee.

The pushback has been so strong that the government has already lowered its sights somewhat, setting a cap on the water charges, at least for now, and adding a sweetener — 100 euros, equal to about $110, for households that register.

Still, some experts say the protests are far from over, reflecting growing fatigue with austerity policies that have taken a toll on most families, even as the economy has recovered to the point that it is the fastest-growing in Europe.

Many expect a widespread refusal to pay when the bills are sent out in April.

“It’s been like watching a dam bursting,” said Paddy Prendiville, the editor of a biweekly political and current affairs magazine, The Phoenix. “A defiance that wasn’t there is here now. The water charges have been the final straw for people.”

Anger over austerity policies has already changed the face of politics in Greece, where, after trading power for decades, the center right and left parties recently lost national elections to a leftist party, Syriza. In Spain, the new leftist party Podemos has been ahead in the polls for months, with elections expected later this year.

Here too, polls indicate that a political shift is brewing. Support has been growing for the anti-austerity, left-wing opposition Sinn Fein party and for smaller parties that are, like Syriza in Greece, calling for the renegotiation of terms on loans.

Sinn Fein is the political offshoot of the Irish Republican Army and is headed by Gerry Adams, who

Sinn Fein is polling at more than 20 percent of the vote, about level with Ireland’s two traditionally dominant parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, and more than twice the votes it got in 2011. Elections must take place by April 2016, but could take place later this year, experts say.

“Things could get very interesting,” said Mr. Prendiville. “Sinn Fein will surely double its seats. No one cares what the I.R.A. did 30 years ago.”

The present Irish government, a coalition of the center-right Fine Gael party and the center-left Labor Party, appears to have been taken by surprise by the depth of resentment over the water charges.

The protesters say they have been paying taxes for water for years and the government is double-billing now.

At first, Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s administration sought to install meters and charge citizens by water usage. But then the government capped charges and promised that the rates would not change until 2019. For most households, that means paying no more than $285 a year, officials said.

Alan Kelly, the minister of environment, community and local government, said that creating an authority with a dedicated revenue stream that can sell bonds is the best way to finance the infrastructure work that is needed. He dismisses the protesters as “left wing” or “populists” and recently suggested they were in “cloud cuckoo land.”

But Sarah Murphy, 35, who lives in Ballymun, one of the poorest areas of Dublin, said that her husband has been unable to find work since his business collapsed in 2008. The family, after paying rent and electricity, lives on $73 a week for five people, she said.

“We are not paying it,” she said. “We don’t have it.”

Ireland’s economy has been recovering. It grew by nearly 4.8 percent in 2014, and unemployment fell to about 10 percent from a high of 15 percent. But many experts say the figures are misleading, as the unemployed continue to leave the country and many multinational companies, based in Ireland because of its low corporate tax rate, are recording financial transactions that actually take place elsewhere.

A report by the country’s Central Statistics Office that was released in January painted a more dire picture of what has happened in Ireland since the crisis began. The most recent figures available show that Nearly a third of the population in 2013 was suffering from “enforced deprivation” characterized by a lack of two or more basic requirements for a comfortable standard of living, such as adequate food, heating or a warm winter coat, up from 13.7 in 2008, before the financial crisis and the recession.

Confrontations between protesters and water meter installers have resulted in numerous arrests, with five protesters receiving what many considred hefty sentences of 28 to 56 days recently for violating a judge’s order to stay more than 20 feet away from the installers before the proceedings were voided on a technicality.

One Socialist Party member of Parliament, Paul Murphy, who was elected in a by-election last October on a pledge of abolishing the water charges, was also arrested, accused of having a role in a protest last November that trapped the deputy prime minister and leader of the Labor Party, Joan Burton, in her car for hours.

The police did not arrive at Mr. Murphy’s house until Feb. 9 at about 7 a.m., prompting members of his party to suggest that the arrest was more about damaging the movement against water charges than anything else.

Mr. Murphy, still in his pajamas when the police arrived, was given time to get dressed before spending more than eight hours in the police station answering questions. He said he had no idea whether the case against him would proceed.

He said he believes that even households that have registered, many because they were eager to get the 100 euros, will not be paying their bills.

Refusal to pay could bring the project to its knees, Mr. Murphy believes. The government cannot automatically take the water charges from people’s paychecks, as it can with a tax, though officials have said that those who do not pay could face late charges.

“A lot of people now see the bailouts of the banks as an ongoing crime,” Mr. Murphy said. “There is a real sense out there of ‘O.K., is there going to be any recovery for us?’ ”

Douglas Dalby contributed reporting.



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10) A Dangerous Escalation in Iraq
By

By ordering the bombing of the Iraqi city of Tikrit, President Obama has escalated America’s involvement in the fight against the Islamic State without providing a shred of evidence showing how it could advance American interests, or what happens once the bombs stop falling.

The strikes are part of a campaign that from the outset has been waged without the authorization from Congress required by the Constitution. Mr. Obama is pursuing the operation at the request of Iraqi officials, who said air power was needed to break a stalemate. His reliance on two Bush-era war authorizations, for Afghanistan and Iraq, are insufficient to embroil the nation in the war against ISIS, which has been underway for eight months and could continue for years.These strikes could further destabilize Iraq if the United States is seen to be siding with Shiite militias — which make up the bulk of the ground forces battling ISIS in Tikrit — over Iraq’s minority Sunnis. Yet in a sign of just how unpredictable the dynamics of the region are, some of the militias see the United States as the greater evil and are so angered by the airstrikes that they have already announced they are pulling out of the fight.

Until now, America has left the battle in the hands of a force of about 30,000 Iraqis led by Iran and composed mainly of Iran-backed militias; they are facing a far smaller group of ISIS jihadists. The Iraqi government and its army have been largely sidelined, having lost credibility when the army failed to stop the ISIS onslaught last year. Mr. Obama ordered the airstrikes on Wednesday after the nearly four-week-old ground offensive to retake the city had stalled. Tikrit is a strategic crossroads in the heart of Sunni territory in central Iraq, and its liberation from ISIS control could make it easier to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which is now also under the control of the Islamic State.

The overwhelmingly Shiite ground forces battling ISIS in Sunni Tikrit have become increasingly powerful as the government army has disintegrated. The militias have a brutal record of sectarian bloodletting, including burning and bulldozing thousands of homes and other buildings in dozens of Sunni villages after American airstrikes drove ISIS out of the town of Amerli in northeastern Iraq last summer. If that happened in Tikrit, the United States would be blamed for helping to trigger yet another cycle of horrific sectarian violence.

In the fight against ISIS, the United States and Iran, bitter enemies for decades, share the goal of defeating the group. American officials insist they are not cooperating with Iran, but the two governments communicate, through the Iraqis if not directly, and their operations have often been complementary. Many of America’s Sunni allies are concerned about Iran’s growing influence in the region, including in Iraq.The administration may hope that a victory in Tikrit will bolster the standing of Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has made some strides in restoring Baghdad’s credibility after the disastrous tenure of his predecessor, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. There was also hope of ensuring that the Americans, not the Iranians, would be the dominant foreign force in any coalition that attempts at some point to retake Mosul.

Before ordering the airstrikes, Mr. Obama reportedly insisted that the Shiite militias move aside so the Iraqi Army could play a larger role, and on Thursday Iraqi special forces were reported to be advancing on Tikrit. Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, who had been advising forces around Tikrit, reportedly left the area on Sunday.

The core problem is that if ISIS is expelled from Tikrit, the Americans and Iraqis will need to bring security and ensure there is a government that respects the rights of all citizens. That should involve reaching out to leading Sunnis and assuring them that they will be central to rebuilding, securing and governing their city. It has long been apparent that no amount of American military assistance alone can save Iraq if the country’s leaders continue to marginalize the Sunnis.

Relief aid, including electricity and water, should be delivered immediately to Tikrit. The militias must be marginalized or their fighters integrated into Iraqi institutions like the army and the police so that they serve the state rather than a warlord or faction. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior leader of the Shiite world, can have an important function in making the case for a more inclusive government. So can Iran, whose fitness for rejoining the international community will be judged by its willingness to cooperate on security in the region.

 


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11)  Out of Debtors’ Prison, With Law as the Key
"We have a two-tier system: The rich pay fines. The poor go to jail."
By



When Jack Dawley returned in 2007 to his hometown, Norwalk, Ohio, after eight years in prison and on parole in Wisconsin, he knew getting by would be difficult. He had a felony conviction and a history of past drug and alcohol abuse, although he’d been sober since 1999. He was unprepared for another obstacle, however: A few years later, he would keep landing in debtors’ prison.

Dawley did all right at first. For four years, he worked construction jobs and paid down the $1,400 in fines and court fees he owed the municipal court in Norwalk for domestic violence and D.U.I. convictions during his drunken years. But in 2012, he injured his back, lost his job and missed a payment on his court debt.

He was arrested and sentenced to jail for 10 days. When he got out, he had 90 days to make a payment. He failed, and went back to jail. A cycle was beginning: jail every 90 days.

Later in 2012, he took a job as a cashier. He was on his way to cash his first paycheck when he was pulled over and arrested, again for an infraction stemming from his debt. Back in jail, he missed eight days of work. When he got out, his job was gone. He stayed out of jail, but was homeless for the next two years.

Although the United States outlawed debtors’ prison two centuries ago, that, in effect, is where Dawley kept going.

It is crowded there. The most infamous example today is Ferguson, Mo. There, the recent Department of Justice investigation of the police and courts portrays a system designed to jail the poor for their poverty.

The purpose of law enforcement in Ferguson, said the Justice Department, is not public safety, but revenue generation. The city’s second-largest source of income is fines and fees paid by citizens, the vast majority stemming from parking, traffic or other very minor infractions. The police find any excuse to arrest black residents and charge them with multiple violations. The courts then extract exorbitant fines and fees. Those who cannot pay are threatened with jail, and many go.

Ferguson may be an extreme — or it may not — but across America, courts levy fines and fees totaling hundreds or thousands of dollars on misdemeanor offenders, and jail them when they cannot pay.

You don’t go to jail for walking your dog without a leash, making an illegal left turn or burning leaves without a permit, but in many states you will go to jail if you can’t pay the resulting fees and fines. We have a two-tier system: The rich pay fines. The poor go to jail.

The rise of debtor’s prisons has been well documented in the last few years in reports by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union(pdf) and by news investigations. (A series by NPR’s Joseph Shapiro and a New Yorker article by Sarah Stillman are particularly good.) In the past two years, though, attention to this issue has started to produce change.

First, some background: Courts didn’t always charge defendants fees, but now they do in every state. In the 1980s and 1990s, as prison and jail populations rose alongside anti-tax fever, legislators began shifting the burden of paying for justice from the taxpayer to the offender. They raised fines for misdemeanors and imposed dozens of fees and surcharges.

In most states, you pay to be arrested, pay for a public defender, and pay for your own probation. In some, you emerge from jail owing room and board or are billed for a jury trial. Fines and fees have become important sources of city income, giving legislators and judges an incentive to assess large sums for minor offenses — and to compel payment by jailing those who don’t pay, no matter what their economic situation.

The injustices are compounded when governments contract with private companies to manage probation, as they do in 13 states, according to Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. These companies offer their services free to a city — and then charge offenders fees sometimes as large as or larger than their debt, with jail the penalty for nonpayment. In many cases, debt collection is the only service they perform. Human Rights Watch has said that most states that use private probation ”do not currently subject probation companies to any meaningful oversight or regulation at all.”

Debtors’ prison is both senseless and illegal. Jailing defendants often costs far more than they owe, and makes it very difficult for them to pay. Going to jail each time a payment is missed isn’t conducive to holding down a job. And in 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that courts must inquire about a defendant’s ability to pay fines and can jail only those who can pay but won’t. Nonpayment of court fees can be punished by garnishment, but not jail.

Yet defendants don’t know this. They don’t know they can ask for a hearing on their ability to pay, with counsel. Courts routinely fail to suggest a hearing or ask any questions about ability to pay.

Ohio has been a leader in reforming debtors’ prison. The impetus came from the A.C.L.U.’s Ohio chapter, which, in 2013, issued a report that told stories of affected people (including Dawley), and calculated how much money the state was losing by jailing people for debt.

The report found that in many municipal courts and mayors’ courts, indigent offenders were jailed without hearings about their ability to pay. Ohio law said that people jailed for nonpayment (which should not happen if they are indigent) should get a $50 credit against their debt for each day in jail. But courts routinely ignored this.

The A.C.L.U. sent its findings to state officials, including Maureen O’Connor, Ohio’s chief justice, who asked immediately for a meeting.

O’Connor assembled a committee of judges to draft a memo called a bench card (pdf), which she issued to every municipal court judge. The card sets out the law — most important, the requirement to determine ability to pay. It lists the steps for doing so, and acceptable and unacceptable ways to collect fines and fees. O’Connor asked the A.C.L.U. to let her know of new complaints.

“Since the bench card, complaints have fallen precipitously,” said Mike Brickner, senior policy director of the A.C.L.U. Ohio. “When we have substantiated claims, we have alerted the Ohio Supreme Court and they have intervened — and that has changed things.” People jailed also received retroactive credit for their jail time.

One beneficiary is Dawley. He stayed out of jail after 2012 by borrowing small sums from friends to make his payments. He eventually got a job in a produce warehouse, where he rose to quality control inspector. Now he works as a paint finish master, reconditioning trucks. No longer homeless, he’s been in his own apartment for a year. And, aided by credits for time served, he’s finished paying his debt.

Serious problems remain in Ohio; there will always be abuses in a system funded by offender fines and fees. But the use of debtors’ prison has been greatly reduced. Why so easily? O’Connor said all that was needed was to correct misperceptions. “I don’t think judges were intentionally not following the law,” she said. “It wasn’t: ‘I don’t care what the law is and I’m going to do it my way.’ This was clearly an area they needed to brush up on.”

Brickner believes that once judges realized that their cities were losing money by jailing the indigent, the practice became less attractive. Another possible reason is that most people can imagine themselves affected. “Anyone can get a traffic ticket,” said Sarah Geraghty, a senior attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, who represents plaintiffs in debt cases.

Since Ohio’s bench card, legislatures or courts in several other states have issued rulings protecting offenders from debtors’ prison. In Washington and, yes, Missouri, state supreme courts have ruled that courts must determine an offender’s ability to pay, to set fees and fines accordingly, and to jail only those who can pay but willfully refuse. (Class action lawsuits against Ferguson and the neighboring city of Jennings have just been filed in federal court.) Colorado passed a similar law last year.

The most remarkable example is emerging now in Georgia. That state started using private probation in 1991, and became the state most dependent on it. About 80 percent of Georgians on misdemeanor probation — 175,000 people at a time — are supervised by for-profit companies that, according to Human Rights Watch, earn about $40 million a year from offenders.

The A.C.L.U. and the Southern Center sued, and last week won a settlement that will produce an Ohio-style bench card in DeKalb County. Meanwhile, Georgia’s government is instituting reforms. Just after his election in 2011, Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, established a bipartisan council to propose changes in the criminal justice system. Last year, he asked the council to follow up on a state audit’s finding that the ways courts oversaw misdemeanor probation were leading to abuses.

The council’s recommendations (pdf, page 21) include better oversight and transparency, and caps on fees to private companies that oversee pay-only probation. Judges must determine an offender’s ability to pay, and waive or modify fees and penalties for the indigent. These reforms are included in a bill that passed the Georgia House and is expected to pass in the Senate.

It’s a remarkable example of bipartisan compromise. Probation reforms are endorsed by the advocacy groups and the probation companies too. “As with any industry, you have good actors and bad actors,” said W. Thomas Worthy, a former legal aide to the governor who was co-chairman of the council, and now is director of governmental affairs at the state bar. “The good ones knew major reforms were coming, and came to the table.”

John Bozeman, a lobbyist for the Community Corrections Association of Georgia, said the consequences could have been much more onerous for the companies. “They could have written a bill where our guys could not have functionally operated. Instead, it was: How can we solve the problem?”

Last year, the legislature passed a very different bill that shielded companies in secrecy (Governor Deal vetoed it). That only a year later they felt the need to compromise shows that public outrage can, occasionally, accomplish something.

“People who had minor interaction with the criminal justice system were sucked further in for no good reason other than to enrich a private company,” said Geraghty. “We’ve reached a point in this state where the abuses by many of these private companies have been so flagrant and so frequent that people in power, the governor and others, agree that the time has come for significant reform.”





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12) Deputies Said to Taunt Prisoners
By LIAM STACK

San Francisco’s public defender called on Thursday for an independent investigation into the Sheriff’s Department after accusations that four deputies forced prisoners to engage in “gladiator-style fights” for their own amusement.

Jeff Adachi, the public defender, said at a news conference that the deputies forced the smallest prisoner, Rico Palikiko Garcia, who weighs 150 pounds, to fight the largest prisoner, Stanly Harris, who weighs 350 pounds.

They also “appeared to delight” in taunting Mr. Harris with jokes about his weight, the public defender’s office said in a statement, and forced him to participate in “boot camp-style exercises.”

“It was a sadistic pleasure,” Mr. Adachi said in a telephone interview. “This was like something right out of ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”

The prisoners were told they would be rewarded with a hamburger if they won, but would be sprayed with Mace, severely beaten and transferred to dangerous housing quarters if they refused to fight at all, he said. Both men were injured in the fights but were told they would be beaten if they sought medical attention.

Mr. Garcia, the smaller inmate, suffered fractured ribs, Mr. Adachi said.

All four deputies were transferred to other prisons on Thursday morning before the public defender’s office made its accusations against them, Mr. Adachi said. Both Mr. Garcia and Mr. Harris were also moved to new prisons.

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi could not be reached for comment, and the San Francisco Police Officers Association did not respond to a request for comment.


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13) Study Finds Older Workers Often Missing From Rising Job Rate
By Elizabeth Olsen

Thomas R. Collins, 66, a former sheriff’s deputy, takes little comfort in the lower national unemployment rate because, like many older workers, he has had a long spell of joblessness since he retired in 2010.

A former lieutenant in the Cook County sheriff’s department in Illinois, Mr. Collins receives a pension, which, he said, is a “nice cushion,” but he needed to cover other expenses. He continued a part-time job in security for the retail clothing discounter Syms, in Niles, Ill., but the company went out of business the following year, in 2011, and the position disappeared.

Since then, he has been looking for a job as he worries about the future of his pension in light of the debate swirling in Illinois over how to offset its huge state budget shortfall. One proposal is to make serious cutbacks in the public employee pension system.“I don’t live high,” said Mr. Collins of Algonquin, Ill. “But even trying to get part-time work is discouraging. Employers can hire someone younger and for a lot less, and they would hire 80 percent of the people ahead of me before they would hire me.”

Despite some indications here and there that the baby boom generation is working longer, few workers were hurt as badly as those over 50 in the years following the economic crisis that began unfolding in 2008. Many were forced to take jobs at lower pay, with fewer hours and less generous benefits — or no job at all.

To gauge the toll the recession took on older workers, the AARP Public Policy Institute questioned 2,492 people who had been jobless in the previous five years and will release the report, “The Long Road Back: Struggling to Find Work After Unemployment,” on Monday.

Long-term unemployment among older workers has been a major concern. On average, 45 percent of job seekers age 55 and older like Mr. Collins have been looking long term, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which defines long term as 27 or more weeks without work. To address the reluctance of employers to consider such workers, the Obama administration last year started an initiative to encourage private and public companies to hire the long-term unemployed.

“Although the general unemployment rate is falling, that can be misleading for people who are 55 and older who are long-term unemployed,” said Gary Koenig, who wrote the AARP report with Lori Trawinski and Sara Rix. The survey was conducted in October 2014 and included people from 45 to 70 years old.

Mr. Koenig, an economist, said that the study’s results were “a mixed bag. You have about half who remain unemployed or have dropped out of the labor force, and the other half who have been able to find new employment, but conditions of that employment vary.”

The occupations growing the fastest, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are personal care and home health aides. Other growing job areas, which require specialized training, are nearly all in the health field and include occupational and physical therapy assistants, physician assistants and genetic counselors.

For those who speak foreign languages, labor experts also project that there will be a rising need for interpreters and translators in courtrooms and other settings. But finding any of this work is harder for those who have been unemployed for lengthy periods because companies often view them as too old, not flexible and not computer-literate.

Repeated joblessness, Mr. Koenig said, takes a financial toll, adding, “Jobs that pay less or have fewer hours undermine financial security for these workers now and into the future.”

About one-fifth of those in the AARP study had two stints of unemployment over the last five years, and 23 percent had three or more jobless spells over the same time period. About 57 percent had one period of unemployment.

Over all, 73 percent of those who told the AARP they were unemployed had been out of work for six months or longer, and the rest were shorter-term unemployed. That did not include the estimated 12 percent who have left the labor force completely after failing to find a job. Even though the total numbers of long-term unemployed have declined, Mr. Koenig said older workers are still seriously affected — many by age bias. (Age discrimination is hard to prove, however, and lawsuits are on the decline).

“People don’t want somebody old,” agreed Lawrence Hardy, 65, an Internet services consultant of Columbus, Miss. A former teacher and employee of Sprint and Teletech in the Denver area, Mr. Hardy also wrote a book on the history of computing.

Since returning to Mississippi, where he was born, Mr. Hardy found some employment and lists himself as retired. He said he had gotten the brushoff from many prospective employers.

“They are too smart to say it’s an age issue, but they see my degree was from 1975 and they say, ‘We’ll call you back.’”

Despite the competition for fewer jobs and the impediment of age bias, Mr. Koenig said that of those who reported they were able to find a new job, two-thirds said they had full-time jobs and the rest found part-time work. Full time work is considered 35 hours a week or more.

Among those who had found employment, fewer than one-third of those responding said they were earning more, and even fewer said their benefits were better.

It took Cheryl Moyer, 62, of Leonidas, Mich., several years to find a job after she was laid off in 2006 when the appliance parts company where she worked was closed. She had been a factory worker for more than two decades at different locations. She had a brief stint in security work, but then needed to care for her husband, Jerry, who died in early 2014.

In 2011, she found a part-time job working as deputy treasurer for Leonidas. The position has no benefits, and pays a minimum hourly wage. And like some 45 percent of the re-employed, she found her job through contacts, and not social media, which was little used by older job seekers.

Among those who were able to find work, nearly half, including Oscar Rojas, 65, of Tampa, Fla., said they had a better work situation — despite lower salaries and fewer benefits. Mr. Rojas lost his job last year as a Medicare insurance agent after his employer, Physicians United Plan, a large private insurer, was declared insolvent.

He spent four months unemployed, then found work with a tax preparation company helping people register and get subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

“I don’t get any fringe benefits,” he said, “but I don’t have to travel 7,500 miles a month around Florida to visit our clients.”

Others, like Gary L. Olson, 61, of Portland, Ore., are shaping their working lives with their own businesses.

When Mr. Olson, a retirement plan administrator in California, moved back to Oregon after his wife died in early 2013, he found that employers “took one look at my job history and my salary level, and I’m all gray and white hair. I pretty much look my age, so I could see that they were thinking that ‘I can hire someone and pay a lot less.’”

After sending out 20 applications and receiving only two interviews, he decided to go into a different occupation, a path that was taken by some 53 percent of those who found a job after stints of unemployment.

On March 1, he closed on Le Cookie Monkey, a cake and cookie shop in Portland, which he bought from its founder.

“I used some retirement funds to buy the business,” he said, “but it’s got good people who work there. I’m going to be taking care of the financial end and let them handle the baking.”


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