Prometheus 6

Americans Jailed in Haiti Plead for Help
By IAN URBINA

The 10 American Baptists detained in Port-au-Prince on child trafficking charges say the United States government could be doing more on their behalf.

Bills Stalled, Hospitals Fear Rising Unpaid Care
By REED ABELSON

President Obama says he aims to keep trying. But what happens if the health care legislation cannot be revived, and tens of millions of uninsured Americans continue without coverage?

For the nation’s hospitals, at least, the cost of doing nothing in Washington translates into tens of billions of dollars each year in medical bills that go unpaid by patients with little or no insurance.

Nationwide, the cost of unpaid care for hospitals, which includes charity care as well as money that could not be collected from patients, was around $36 billion in 2008. It is expected to spiral higher. The number of people without insurance in this country could increase to as high as 58 million by 2014, from about 49 million now, according to an estimate by the Urban Institute.

No wonder hospital systems like Park Nicollet Health Services near Minneapolis worry about their futures if the health care legislation remains stalled.

“Our business model will continue to falter,” said Dr. David Abelson, chief executive of Park Nicollet, a not-for-profit system that runs a 426-bed hospital and a chain of clinics.

Park Nicollet has had to cut back services and lay off hundreds of employees as its level of uncompensated care rose — to $43 million last year, up from $29 million in 2007.

And when the hospital provides care under state and federal programs like Medicaid and Medicare, it is already reimbursed below its costs, Dr. Abelson said. Park Nicollet, whose revenue was $1.2 billion last year, says it expects to lose $120 million on government programs in 2010.

Can't have Black folks looking more unified than white folks.

Professor Ogletree says he “finds puzzling the idea that a president who happens to be black has to focus on black issues,” and Dr. Height agrees. Having counseled every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt on matters of race, Dr. Height made a plea in a recent interview for Mr. Obama to be left alone.

“We have never sat down and said to the 43 other presidents: ‘How does it feel to be a Caucasian, how do you feel as a white president? Tell me what that means to you,’ ” Dr. Height said. “I am not one to think that he should do more for his people than for other people. I want him to be free to be himself.”

Blacks Question Obama’s Approach to Race
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — There was no big speech or fancy ceremony when President Obama observed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last month. Instead, for his first King holiday as president, Mr. Obama quietly installed a rare signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office and invited a small group of African-American elders and young people to come see it.

The private gathering — “an intimate discussion,” in the words of Dorothy Height, a 97-year-old grande dame of the civil rights movement — was typical of Mr. Obama, who has steered clear of putting race front and center in his administration. But that low-key approach is frustrating some black leaders and scholars, who are starting to challenge Mr. Obama’s language and policies.

On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are expressing irritation that Mr. Obama has failed to create programs tailored specifically to African-Americans, who are suffering disproportionately in the recession. In December, some of them threatened to oppose new financial rules for banks until the White House promised to address the needs of minority groups.

“I don’t think we expected anything to change overnight because we had an African-American in the White House, but the fact still remains that we’ve got a constituency that is suffering,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. “I think he could do more, and he will do more.”

Lobbyists and Student

The private lending companies that earn billions of dollars in undeserved profits from the federal student loan program are working overtime to kill a bill that would stop their gravy train once and for all — and should have been enacted long ago. The House stood up to the powerful lending lobby last fall and passed a student loan reform bill. The White House has been pushing the Senate, but it is having trouble finding its spine and has yet to introduce a bill.

The House version phases out the wasteful part of the federal college lending program that pays private lenders a rich subsidy to make risk-free loans that are guaranteed by the government. The bill also expands another, more reliable and less expensive federal loan program that permits students to borrow directly from the government through their colleges.

The arguments for moving in this direction are irrefutable. The subsidized program, for example, was supposed to keep loans flowing during recessions. But the loans dried up in the last credit crunch, forcing the government to rescue the program. The direct program, by contrast, suffered no such disruption. In addition to being more reliable, the direct program costs less. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the country could save about $80 billion over the next decade by ending the private system and moving to the direct one.

In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase.

Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

“Last year, half our early-college high schools had zero dropouts, and that’s just unprecedented for North Carolina, where only 62 percent of our high school students graduate after four years,” said Tony Habit, president of the North Carolina New Schools Project, the nonprofit group spearheading the state’s high school reform.

In addition, North Carolina’s early-college high school students are getting slightly better grades in their college courses than their older classmates.

For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw
By TAMAR LEWIN

RAEFORD, N.C. — Precious Holt, a 12th grader with dangly earrings and a SpongeBob pillow, climbs on the yellow school bus and promptly falls asleep for the hour-plus ride to Sandhills Community College.

When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home.

There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years — completely free.

Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students — a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.

Here, and at North Carolina’s other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.

“We don’t want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu,” said Lakisha Rice, the principal. “We want the ones who need our kind of small setting.”

Frederick Nietzche wrote somewhere that any organization, no matter how noble the intent of its founding, eventually stops serving that intent and becomes a vehicle to power. The USofA reached that point long ago...I would estimate it was roughly when Reconstruction was reversed.

Paul Krugman

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government.

Bob Herbert

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them. Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

Lawrence Lessig

At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt. Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, Americans' faith in the Supreme Court remains extraordinarily high--76 percent have a fair or great deal of "trust and confidence" in the Court. Their faith in the presidency is also high--61 percent.

Our government is broken. As the least democratic part of it, the Senate is the point where the break erupted but as the Supreme Court insists on demonstrating, the whole thing needs repair,

Pay Up

Claimants are still looking for their money, more than a decade after the federal Department of Agriculture reached a landmark settlement for having cheated generations of black farmers through “indifference and blatant discrimination.” The 1999 agreement on what is known as the Pigford class-action lawsuit was hailed as the biggest civil rights settlement in American history. The judge estimated a swift $2 billion payout — or $60,000 each — for victimized black farmers.

It has not worked out that way, as the White House’s new budget confirms with a request for $1.15 billion to pay still-pending claims from black farmers. The same amount was requested last year but did not survive the self-interested knives and elbows of the Congressional budget scrum.

Sprint Nextel operates what it calls the L-Site, also known as the "legal compliance secure Web portal." The company even has offered a course that "will teach you how to create and track legal demands through L-site. Learn to navigate and securely download requested records." Cox Communications makes its price list for complying with police requests public; a 30-day wiretap is $3,500.

Police want backdoor to Web users' private data
by Declan McCullagh

Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They're pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to "exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process" through an encrypted, police-only "nationwide computer network."

The survey, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, is part of a broader push from law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. Other components include renewed calls for laws requiring Internet companies to store data about their users for up to five years and increased pressure on companies to respond to police inquiries in hours instead of days.

But the most controversial element is probably the private Web interface, which raises novel security and privacy concerns, especially in the wake of a recent inspector general's report (PDF) from the Justice Department. The 289-page report detailed how the FBI obtained Americans' telephone records by citing nonexistent emergencies and simply asking for the data or writing phone numbers on a sticky note rather than following procedures required by law.

...is the Saints' two point conversion.

MINUTES LATER: Okay, maybe it's Porter's interception.

On a new media monetization list I lurk on, a member who had referred...constantly...to music company executives as "retarded" was apparently taken to task for an insensitivity he just didn't see. He asked if "retarded" is a slur now, which led to a livelier thread than anyone expected.

Of course, the topic of political correctness came up and another guy brought up my favorite variant of the topic.

I'm sort of a comedian all the time. Whatever I say, I try to make it funny. "Retarded" isn't so funny most of the time, but "gay" certainly is! So is nigger, jew, fat, white, Mexican and many others. It's not really fair that the only people who get away with "nigger" are black people and sometimes stand-up comedians. I think Michael Richards went a bit out of the comedic routine and so it appeared hostile... and it probably was a bit hostile. And it was newsworthy, there wasn't any Heidi Montag story to run, etc.

I think that the sad thing is, that these are just words and people can't get over them. And I think that points to a basic human flaw... one of many.

I actually thought they intended to use the kids as props for poverty porn.

This January, Christianity Today declared adoption the next culture war issue, and a major theological development of 2009. Indeed, 2009 was filled with news of adoption, as Russell Moore, dean of the theological school at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, released his book Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches, exhorting Christians to “be at the forefront of the adoption of orphans close to home and around the world.”

Evangelicals' Adoption Battlecry
by Kathryn Joyce

For the past week, the news from Haiti has been dominated by the story of 10 American evangelicals from Idaho who were caught at the border of the Dominican Republic attempting to take 33 Haitian children, many with living parents, out of the country without documentation. The Americans, missionaries with the recently created New Life Children’s Refuge, were arrested and charged with kidnapping and criminal conspiracy—a reprieve from the child trafficking charges they may have faced.

The details that emerged about the group’s plans and leader, Laura Silsby, were unsavory. Although Silsby, the legally embattled CEO of a personal shopping business, claimed that the group never intended to put the children up for adoption, an itinerary for New Life’s mission, published by an affiliated Southern Baptist church, bluntly described a plan to “gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages” onto a bus, then take them to a hotel in the Dominican Republic. There, New Life hoped to build permanent orphanage facilities, including a beachfront restaurant and “seaside villas” for prospective adoptive parents—amenities that underscore their understanding of local adoption residency requirements, even as they claimed ignorance of Haitian law. Additional planning and fundraising documents described the group’s goal to “equip each child” with the opportunity “for adoption into a loving Christian family,” and help them “find new life in Christ.”

After the arrests, Silsby and supporters explained that they’d been called by God to help orphans in Haiti, that they were “acting not only in faith but God’s faith.”

The news of an adoption organization driven by missionary zeal surprised many, but it shouldn’t. Although New Life’s illegal actions have been condemned by other religious adoption agencies, their sense of calling fits into a growing movement of American evangelical churches embracing a new orphan theology that urges Christians to see adoption and “orphan-care” as an integral part of their faith—and a means of spreading the gospel.

Retired Officers Raise Questions on Crime Data
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

The retired members of the force reported that they were aware over the years of instances of “ethically inappropriate” changes to complaints of crimes in the seven categories measured by the department’s signature CompStat program, according to a summary of the results of the survey and interviews with the researchers who conducted it.

The totals for those seven so-called major index crimes are provided to the F.B.I., whose reports on crime trends have been used by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to favorably compare New York to other cities and to portray it as a profoundly safer place, an assessment that the summary does not contradict.

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies — felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat — to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

Others also said that precinct commanders or aides they dispatched sometimes went to crime scenes to persuade victims not to file complaints or to urge them to change their accounts in ways that could result in the downgrading of offenses to lesser crimes, the researchers said.

“Those people in the CompStat era felt enormous pressure to downgrade index crime, which determines the crime rate, and at the same time they felt less pressure to maintain the integrity of the crime statistics,” said John A. Eterno, one of the researchers and a former New York City police captain.

Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included
By Katie Drummond
February 5, 2010  | 9:42 am

The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.

The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”

Or do they just have more material to work with?

Doubts cast on whether '04 Chicago police shooting of girl, suspect was justified
Agency that reviews police shootings says it doesn't track the number of police shootings the agency had ruled unjustified in the past several years
By Lauren Rozyla, Morgan McDevitt and Sam Roe, Chicago Tribune
January 25, 2010

On a summer night in 2004, two Chicago police officers chased an alleged gunman up to the front door of a West Side two-flat.

There, according to the officers, the suspect tried to get inside the building by ramming his shoulder against the door while simultaneously turning and pointing a pistol at them.

One of the officers took cover behind a tree, then stepped out and opened fire. Moments later, police learned they had seriously injured the man as well as a 13-year-old girl hiding in the building's vestibule with several other bystanders.

Although police did not find a gun on the man or near the two-flat, law enforcement officials cleared the two officers of wrongdoing just 10 hours after the shooting.

Based largely on the officers' statements, the suspect, Seneca Smith, was arrested and eventually convicted of attempted murder of a police officer. Smith, now 30, faces up to 80 years in prison.

But an investigation by the Tribune in conjunction with journalism students from Columbia College Chicago casts doubts on the officers' version of events.

For example, one officer who chased Smith testified that he clearly saw Smith point a gun at his partner from the front door of the two-flat, in the 5300 block of West Congress Parkway. The officer testified which hand held the gun and how Smith was positioned.

But a visit to the crime scene shows it would have been impossible for the officer to see Smith from where he explicitly and repeatedly testified he was standing. The side of the two-flat would have blocked his view.

Court and police records reveal other examples of evidence contradicting police statements. Despite officers' testimony about being shot at, police didn't find a gun on Smith after he was shot. And the bystanders in the vestibule — seven teenage girls and young women — later said they never saw Smith with a gun.

They also contended in a lawsuit that police held them against their will and pressured them to say Smith had a gun. "They treated us like criminals," said Carrie Warfield, now 26.

A Black Immigrant’s Experience with Coming to Terms with Race Relations in America
Posted By The Editors | February 2nd, 2010
By Nicole Y. Dennis

I’ve come to believe that many black immigrants coming to the United States don’t really factor the existence of racism into their plan of achieving the American Dream. I think many immigrants overlook it, often seeking success with a tunnel vision. I speak from experience. That’s what I did.

There were times during my first years in America when I was a target of racism. But I never realized it until years later when I would mention the experiences to African-American friends and they would gasp, “No they didn’t!” In those moments I realized that I had been naïve about race relations in this country.

I am aware you would like me to link or display some story or other that presents a positive image of some particular person. I am not going to do it, ever.

Here's the problem. We're public policy discussion site, and we focus on now. You, on the other hand, send me links to years old articles...and to Mr. Jackson in particular if that's your real name, I'm not publishing novels in my comments. And what the fuck makes you think I have Ishmael Reed's contact info because I linked an op-ed he wrote?

At least Ms. McCarthy tried emailing me first. She only went back to last summer...and that's still too old. I only go back that far when I have a point to make.

I know you read here so here's the deal: if I know you personally, you can send me shit out of the blue. If I recognize you as a participant here you can assume I know you personally and send me shit out of the blue. You two, and everyone that wants me to link some site or article to help establish someone's online reputation...I don't know you. At all. And I will not link anything you try to send me. If you register for the purpose of dropping those links in the comments, I will delete them, suspend your account and you will find yourself unable to register here ever again. I can give you a reference from several folks I've already done that to.

This is not a commercial site, and I'm not supporting your commercial endeavors.

I don't think so. I think it's the standard operating procedure, proceeding to operate in the standard way.

Dodd Denounces Pace of Banking Overhaul
By SEWELL CHAN

WASHINGTON — Executives at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase expressed misgivings on Thursday about the Obama administration’s new proposals to restrict the size and risk-taking of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Their comments, before the Senate Banking Committee, appeared to further complicate the challenge facing the panel’s chairman, Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. For months, Mr. Dodd has been leading closed-door negotiations over a bill to overhaul the nation’s financial regulations, and on Thursday he expressed dismay at how long the process was taking.

“The fact is, I am frustrated, and so are the American people,” Mr. Dodd said at the start of the hearing, adding that few of the rules of Wall Street had changed, nearly two years after the collapse of Bear Stearns at the inception of the financial crisis.

Mr. Dodd said the White House was “on the right track” with its new ideas but warned of difficulty ahead.

“The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people, who have lost so much in this crisis,” he said.

He added that the financial services industry had sent “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms the public demands.”

I don't think he's sure either. Must be frustrating than a mug...

The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument. And that is having tragic consequences.

For the fact is that thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington now has its priorities all wrong: all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price.

Fiscal Scare Tactics
By PAUL KRUGMAN

These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.

Yet they aren’t facts. Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates. The long-run budget outlook is problematic, but short-term deficits aren’t — and even the long-term outlook is much less frightening than the public is being led to believe.

So why the sudden ubiquity of deficit scare stories? It isn’t being driven by any actual news. It has been obvious for at least a year that the U.S. government would face an extended period of large deficits, and projections of those deficits haven’t changed much since last summer. Yet the drumbeat of dire fiscal warnings has grown vastly louder.

To me — and I’m not alone in this — the sudden outbreak of deficit hysteria brings back memories of the groupthink that took hold during the run-up to the Iraq war. Now, as then, dubious allegations, not backed by hard evidence, are being reported as if they have been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now, as then, much of the political and media establishments have bought into the notion that we must take drastic action quickly, even though there hasn’t been any new information to justify this sudden urgency. Now, as then, those who challenge the prevailing narrative, no matter how strong their case and no matter how solid their background, are being marginalized.

And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.

What Price Politics?

A binge of special interest money seems inevitable unless Congress acts quickly — before this year’s election — to repair the damage from the Supreme Court ruling that ended restraints on campaign spending by corporations and unions.

In its overreach, the court’s majority hobbled lawmakers by giving what amounted to constitutional sanction to unlimited corporate and union campaign contributions. But legitimate antidotes are already in the works. Congress should focus on the most feasible proposals....For now, measures requiring transparency, shareholder participation and the like are a good start. Congress should swiftly approve them.

The Supreme Court's decision to remove all restrictions on corporate political spending has engendered the most cohesive national response seen since the 2008 national election. Yes, there are those that take the bizarre position that they "don't buy the idea that limiting corruption is a state interest sufficiently compelling to overcome the First Amendment interest in free speech". But most people were stunned, and the reaction from even media that would itself be freed by this decision ranged from Ruth Marcus' takedown of the hypocrisy of the decision to the Boston Globe's simple Corporations Are Not People. While a recent Gallup poll found public support for campaign finance law treating corporate donations the same as individuals' donations, 61% of Americans think the government should be able to limit the amount of money individuals can contribute to candidates and 76% think it should be able to limit the amount corporations or unions can give.

[P6: Here's your bipartisan issue, Mr. President.]

It is remarkable that the Supreme Court decided entities defined by state law have national citizenship rights equal to the people referred to in "We The People." The decision is wrong and unpopular. People are already struggling to come up with ways to reduce the impact of this. And many think the Supreme Court, as arbiter of the Constitution, has left no recourse for those who disagree. Fortunately, because they are making the same epistemological error the Supreme Court's majority did, those people are wrong.

The error that made this an issue is an uncritical interpretation of the word "person" in the phrase "legal person." By considering corporations to be "persons" independent of the qualifier "legal", not to mention independently of the reality underlying the term, one opens the discussion to irrelevancies such as "A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests. A corporation may want to support a particular candidate, but they may be concerned just as you say about what their shareholders are going to think about that. They may be concerned that the shareholders would rather they spend their money doing something else. The idea that corporations are different than individuals in that respect, I just don't think holds up, " advanced by Justice Roberts, and "Most corporations are indistinguishable from the individual who owns them, the local hairdresser, the new auto dealer -- dealer who has just lost his dealership and -- and who wants to oppose whatever Congressman he thinks was responsible for this happening or whatever Congressman won't try to patch it up by -- by getting the auto company to undo it. There is no distinction between the individual interest and the corporate interest. And that is true for the vast majority of corporations," advanced by Justice Scalia. There are answers to these claims...in the first case, a diversity of interests is not the distinction between a person and a legal person. A person physically exists...a legal person is a useful fiction. In the second case, the idea that a corporation is indistinguishable from the individual that owns it, contradicts the physical fact that the IRS treats them separately all the time, and in any event that individual already has constitutionally protected rights of free speech and to petition the government and so do not need it a second time.

As I say, there are answers but undoing this corporate coup doesn't require them, or an amendment to the Constitution. It requires clarification of the law. Because what most distinguishes persons from legal persons is that persons are physical, while legal persons were created by humans through legislative and legal action. If you search for a person you can generally find him; search for a legal person and you can only find what it owns.

Since a legal person only exists as defined in law, there is no legal barrier to Congress clarifying that definition. I would suggest something along the lines of:

For purposes of federal law, a legal person is a contract between persons to act as an economic unit. This economic unit has the legal right to enter into contracts as though it were a single human entity. Contracts joined by a legal person shall be enforceable under the law, under the same terms as for any single human entity.  Legal persons shall be deemed to possess such other legal rights as may be necessary to insure it may execute those contracts it undertakes.

Other legal rights may be granted to classes of legal persons or legal persons as a class, which rights shall not be interpreted such that they supersede, impede or obstruct the constitutional rights of citizens and legal residents of the United States of America, its territories, and possessions.

This would actually remove the question entirely from the Court's purview without invalidating a single law or contract, and the only economic impact it would have is on the purchase of politicians...something most of us would agree would be a good thing.

Furthermore, it strikes me that anyone who thinks Precious is "realistic" has deeply racist assumptions about Black folk.

Just sayin'...

This use of movies and books to cast collective shame upon an entire community doesn’t happen with works about white dysfunctional families. It wasn’t done, for instance, with “Requiem for a Dream,” starring the great Ellen Burstyn, about a white family dealing with drug addiction, or with “The Kiss,” a memoir about incest — in that case, a relationship between a white father and his adult daughter.

Fade to White
By ISHMAEL REED

Oakland, Calif.

JUDGING from the mail I’ve received, the conversations I’ve had and all that I’ve read, the responses to “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” fall largely along racial lines.

Among black men and women, there is widespread revulsion and anger over the Oscar-nominated film about an illiterate, obese black teenager who has two children by her father. The author Jill Nelson wrote: “I don’t eat at the table of self-hatred, inferiority or victimization. I haven’t bought into notions of rampant black pathology or embraced the overwrought, dishonest and black-people-hating pseudo-analysis too often passing as post-racial cold hard truths.” One black radio broadcaster said that he felt under psychological assault for two hours. So did I.

The blacks who are enraged by “Precious” have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them. It was the enthusiastic response from white audiences and critics that culminated in the film being nominated for six Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an outfit whose 43 governors are all white and whose membership in terms of diversity is about 40 years behind Mississippi. In fact, the director, Lee Daniels, said that the honor would bring even more “middle-class white Americans” to his film.

Is the enthusiasm of such white audiences and awards committees based on their being comfortable with the stereotypes shown? Barbara Bush, the former first lady, not only hosted a screening of “Precious” but also wrote about it in Newsweek, saying: “There are kids like Precious everywhere. Each day we walk by them: young boys and girls whose home lives are dark secrets.” Oprah Winfrey, whose endorsement assisted the movie’s distribution and its acceptance among her white fanbase, said, “None of us who sees the movie can now walk through the world and allow the Preciouses of the world to be invisible.”

...it is no longer clear that Senate leaders could muster even 51 votes to make fast-tracked changes to the Senate-passed health bill, let alone the 60 votes it would take to approve a revised measure under the normal rules.

I still think the whole problem here was caused by Democrats surendering their power in the Senate.

Obama Maps a Way Forward for a Health Overhaul
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — Speaking to enthusiastic supporters at a fund-raiser here, President Obama on Thursday evening presented his clearest plan yet to move forward with comprehensive health care legislation, saying that he wanted to meet with Democrats, Republicans and independent experts, lay out the facts for the American people and then, he said, “I think that we have got to move forward on a vote.”

Mr. Obama said he would first work with Congress to enact a jobs package that would encourage new hiring, which he said was “the thing that is most urgent right now, in the minds of Americans all across the country.” But he also said that he would take the time to refute false statements and misunderstandings about the health care legislation and to hear alternate ideas from Republicans.

After “several weeks” of work, he said, he would be prepared to live with whatever decision is made by Congress, but he also warned that voters, too, would be watching and would decide at the polls in November whether lawmakers had made the right choice.

Mr. Obama still did not chart a specific legislative strategy for moving a bill through Congress.

Because Haitian officials are reasserting judicial control.

10 Americans in Haiti Are Charged With Abduction
By MARC LACEY

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Ten Americans who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country last week without the government’s consent have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy, as Haitian officials sought to reassert judicial control after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The Americans, most of them members of a Baptist congregation from Idaho, had said they intended to rescue Haitian children left parentless in the quake and take them to what they described as an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic. But they acknowledged failing to seek approval to remove the children from Haiti, and several of the children have at least one living parent.

The Americans will face a potentially extended legal proceeding in Haiti and could, if convicted, face prison terms of up to 15 years.

In a sign of the cloudy nature of the case, the prosecutor, Mazar Fortil, decided not to pursue what could have been the most serious charge against the group, that of trafficking. The charges will now be considered by an investigative judge, who has up to three months to decide whether to pursue the matter further.

The leader of the group, Laura Silsby, a businesswoman who describes herself as a missionary as well, has also come under scrutiny at home in Idaho, where employees complain of unpaid wages and the state has placed liens on her company bank account.

The lawyer for the group, Edwin Coq, said after a hearing on Thursday that 9 of his 10 clients were “completely innocent,” but that, apparently in a reference to Ms. Silsby, “If the judiciary were to keep one, it could be the leader of the group.”[P6: Damn! Not just under the bus, but in front of it in the express lane!]

Markets Fall Sharply Amid Fears on Debt and Jobs
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ and JACK EWING

Just as America’s recession begins to ebb, trouble is brewing in Europe that may prolong a downturn on the Continent and ricochet through the global economy as it struggles toward a recovery.

A rout in stock markets that began in Europe spread to Wall Street on Thursday, amid fears that Europe may be the world’s next financial flashpoint. Pressure has been mounting across the Atlantic as Greece, Portugal and a handful of struggling countries that use the euro scramble to pay off mountains of debt accumulated from years of profligate spending.

The Dow Jones industrial average slid 2.61 percent, to 10,002.18 Thursday, after briefly falling below 10,000 for the first time since November, as American investors grew more uncertain about Europe’s economy. Stock markets across Europe slumped as much as 6 percent, and worries that the troubles might push even big European nations like Spain into a financial crisis drove the euro to $1.37, a seven-month low against the dollar.

“The question now is, how big is this fire going to be?” said Uri D. Landesman, head of global growth at ING. “What is panic, and what is legitimate? We don’t know at this point.”