Prometheus 6

Couple May Sue Over Discarded Embryo

CHICAGO - A couple whose frozen embryo was accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic has the right in Illinois to file a wrongful-death lawsuit, a judge has ruled in a case that some legal experts say could have implications in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.

In an opinion issued Friday, Cook County Judge Jeffrey Lawrence said "a pre-embryo is a 'human being' ... whether or not it is implanted in its mother's womb."

He said the couple is as entitled to seek compensation as any parents whose child has been killed.

The suit was filed by Alison Miller and Todd Parrish, who stored nine embryos in January 2000 at the Center for Human Reproduction in Chicago. Their doctor said one embryo looked particularly promising, but the Chicago couple were told six months later the embryos had been accidentally discarded.

In his ruling, Lawrence relied on the state's Wrongful Death Act, which allows lawsuits to be filed if unborn fetuses are killed in an accident or assault. "The state of gestation or development of a human being" does not preclude taking legal action, the act says.

Lawrence also cited an Illinois state law that says an "unborn child is a human being from the time of conception and is, therefore, a legal person."

"There is no doubt in the mind of the Illinois Legislature when life begins," Lawrence wrote.

Another judge had thrown out the couple's wrongful-death claims, but Lawrence reversed that decision, partly because that judge did not explain his decision at the time.

Many black speakers shun February spotlight

By Associated Press  |  February 5, 2005

NEW YORK -- The only black county commissioner in Dallas, John Wiley Price spoke Monday to 100 mostly black middle school students about history, responsibility and their futures. If he had been invited the following day -- Feb. 1 -- he would have refused.

That's not because of a scheduling conflict. Price no longer makes public appearances during Black History Month. Like some other top speakers, Price has grown weary of being in high demand for just a few weeks and then often ignored.

''I'm not going to be, as the kids say, 'pimped' during the month of February," Price said.

A few years ago, Price said, he was inundated with speaking requests. Then he said he realized that ''black people were visible during February, but the other 11 months of the year we became the invisible people."

Social Security Poker: It's Time for Liberals to Ante Up

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Liberals are making a historic mistake by lining up so adamantly against Social Security reform.

It's impolite to say so in a blue state, but President Bush has a point: there is a genuine problem with paying for Social Security, even if it isn't as dire as Mr. Bush suggests.

As Bill Clinton declared in 1998 about Social Security reform: "We all know a demographic crisis is looming. ... If we act now it will be easier and less painful than if we wait until later." Mr. Clinton then made Social Security reform a central theme of his 1999 State of the Union address, saying, "Above all, we must save Social Security for the 21st century."

Kristof goes on to accuse Democrats of not having a plan to save Social Security. But he's wrong.

How many times must it be said: cancel the Bush tax cuts those making $350,000 per year.

The response, of course, is "Bush says that's a non-starter," to which you reply "Tough titty...that's my plan."

You see, he's not saying "you don't have a plan," he's saying "you don't have a plan Bush will accept." And your marketing simply echoes the Republican age-based approach. "If you make less than $350,000 you don't have to worry...and if you make more than that you don't have to worry."

Besides, and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe "cancel the tax cuts" is more a matter of "let them expires as agreed upon" and "don't implement future cuts that you haven't even gotten yet anyway."

You really have to start watching Now on PBS. Constance Rice is going to be a regular contributor. Sister is direct and correct.

Rice is a co-founder of The Advancement Project, a public policy and legal action group that supports organizations working to end community problems and address racial, class and other barriers to opportunity.

More from Constance Rice:

• Commentaries by Constance Rice on THE TAVIS SMILEY SHOW
• The Advancement Project
• View Constance Rice's 2004 appearance on NOW.

Articles referred to in the February 2005 discussion:

• "The New Deal: How Just a Handful of Setbacks Sent the Ryans Tumbling Out of Prosperity," Peter G. Gosselin, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 30, 2004
• "The New Deal: The Poor Have More Things Today -- Including Wild Income Swings," Peter G. Gosselin, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 12, 2004

On The News Hour, David Brooks ran the standard line: "The Democrats don't want privatization...they don't have a counter proposal..."

The Republicans don't have a proposal...why should there be a counter-proposal?

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience presents a new interpretation of African-American history, one that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. Of the thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America, only the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trades were coerced, the eleven others were voluntary movements of resourceful and creative men and women, risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settlement and development of the Americas. Their hopeful journeys changed not only their world and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also the Western Hemisphere.

These journeys did not originate in the east with the1619 arrival of Africans in Jamestown, Virginia, as is commonly believed, but almost a century earlier, further south. Indeed, African-American history starts in the 1500s with the first Africans coming from Mexico and the Caribbean to the Spanish territories of Florida, Texas, and other parts of the South. And as early as 1526, Africans rebelled and ran away in South Carolina.

These precursors were followed by successive generations of runaways who did not confine themselves to running North and to Canada on the Underground Railroad as traditional history teaches us. With pragmatism and efficiency, they also moved south to Mexico, or took their canoes to the Bahamas. They left the plantations and settled, secretly, in the urban centers of the South or found refuge in the swamps and among Native populations.

The new interpretation of African-American history that we present here also puts the Caribbean, Haitian, and contemporary African immigrations into the unfolding of the African-American migration experience. Peoples of the African Diaspora have contributed immensely to the fabric of African America and the nation. They too, with their specificities, are part of the African-American experience. Whether they came from Saint Domingue in 1791 and settled in Louisiana, left the Bahamas in the nineteenth century to develop Miami and Key West, Florida, or recently moved from Nigeria to Texas.

Migration has been central in the making of African-American history and culture and in the total American experience. The transatlantic slave trade was fundamental to the development of the colonial economy; and after the War of Independence, the domestic slave trade was the engine that enabled the expansion of the cotton economy not only within the United States but also, through trade, to the international scene. In the twentieth century, black migrations from the South were crucial to America's urban industrial development. They transformed a southern, rural population into a national, urban one, and the black presence throughout the country has influenced American legal systems as well as social and cultural policies and practices.

In addition, the cultures of black migrants from the South, the Caribbean, Haiti, and Africa have had an extraordinary impact on American arts and culture.

The Progress Report:

NEVER MIND THE GAP: In a "significant shift in his rationale for the accounts," President Bush has apparently dropped his claim that private accounts would help solve Social Security's fiscal problems   "a link he made during last year's presidential campaign." A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, admitted "the individual accounts would do nothing to solve the system's long-term financial problems." The aide's admission is backed up by the details of the plan revealed so far; the Washington Post reports the plan would not "close the projected $3.7 trillion gap between Social Security benefits promised over the next 75 years and taxes expected to be collected. That gap would have to be closed through benefit cuts that have yet to be detailed."

NOT A BETTER DEAL: Having dropped the rationale that private accounts will help finance Social Security, President Bush now says the accounts are desirable "because they would be 'a better deal'" for workers. But analysis of the plan so far does not prove the accounts would be a better deal for anyone not working on Wall Street. Workers who opt for the private accounts would recover forfeited benefits through their accounts only "if their investments realized a return equal to or greater than the 3 percent earned by Treasury bonds currently held by the Social Security system." But CBO factors out stock market risks to assume a 3.3 percent rate of return. With 0.3 percent subtracted for expected administrative costs on the account, "the full amount in a worker's account would be reduced dollar for dollar from his Social Security checks, for a net gain of zero."

Can I add something?

Say we decide it's okay to increase the debt and lower the benefits for our children. We have to figure out a way to reduce the fees so we can project a return from the investment that's greater than the reduction in Social Security benefits, right? So we pool the money into a couple of investment funds. You get to choose which fund or balance of funds in your account. Assuming the funds are well managed, it would insure the money only goes to sane investments. The fees would make stupid profit for someone, but they'd be less per citizen-investor. All reasonable, right?

Now comes proxy season, when shareholders vote on the direction of the company, can raise issues, challenge board directors and such.

Tell me...who is going to vote the shares held in the investor funds?

Talk about government power distorting the market...

On another, related, subject...since George W. Bush has explicitly said privatizing Social Security would help solve its problems, letting that issue drop because someone said something anonymously might not be the best play.

Talking Points Memo:

As usually happens when a bit more hard data comes in and replaces pessimistic prognostication, the Social Security gotterdammerung gets pushed back even further. So says the CBO today. This time from 2018 to 2020, as the date that Social Security will begin drawing on its accumulated Trust Fund money.

It's a small nudge, but a telling one.

The program is in such a dire state of crisis, it would seem, that every time the bean counters run the numbers, its solvency seems assured even further into the future.

Cobb evolution case draws offers of help
By KRISTINA TORRES
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/04/05

The Cobb County school board has a standing offer of help and money from a powerful Christian legal group as it appeals a federal court ruling banning its textbook disclaimers about evolution.

The Alliance Defense Fund, founded 11 years ago by leaders of nationally known ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ, made the offer as late as Jan. 20 in a letter to Cobb school board attorney Linwood Gunn.

Board Chairwoman Kathie Johnstone also received a letter Jan. 15, two days before the board voted to appeal. However, Johnstone said Thursday it was not a consideration in the board's decision and that the board had no plans to accept it or any other offers of help.

Silent Covenants: Brown V. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform by Derreick Bell, pg 55 and thereabouts:

The prevailing view in the North was that the Civil War was intended to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. But when, during the Civil War field commanders issued orders on their own initiative freeing slaves in the area of their military operations, Lincoln vetoed their actions. In his view, the question of emancipation was political and not military. Abolitionists, who had been urging Lincoln to end slavery, denounced his overruling of the field commanders. In a famous response to one of them, Horace Greeley, the editor of New York Tribune, Lincoln indicated his primary goal was to win the war and preserve the Union. He wrote Greeley:

I would save the union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be the Union as it was. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps me save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe that what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the . I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Lincoln's response to Greeley is significant for more than its candor. Here was, for perhaps the first and last time, a president of the United States acknowledging that the civil rights of blacks, even the basic right not to be a slave in a society dedicated to individual liberty, must take a lower priority to the preservation of the Union.

I saw an article the other day discussing the impact of adding $2-3 trillion dollars to the equity markets (the very goal of privatization). I know that's vague but anyway I forgot to bookmark it. If anyone runs up on it or something similar, I'd appreciate a link.

AARP has this faq called Ten Facts to Remember About Social Security that put the most interesting (to me, anyway) point next to last. I guess because it's wonky and factual...

9. Trust fund assets earned 6.7 percent in 2001, and the cost of administering Social Security is minimal.

The trust funds are invested in special U.S. Treasury securities that earn market-based returns (6.7 percent in 2001). In addition, the trust funds' holdings of government bonds are not subject to the risk of price losses if they are redeemed early, unlike other bond investments. The trust funds will continue to grow until 2017. Under the Social Security actuaries' mid-range assumptions, assets will total nearly $3.3 trillion by 2010. In 2001, the Social Security trust funds had administrative costs of about 7/10 of 1 cent of every dollar of income. Social Security can achieve these low administrative costs because all Social Security tax dollars are reserved solely to pay benefits and administer the program. Social Security's administrative costs are appreciably lower than the average administrative cost of a mutual fund, which is about 1.5 percent of the account balance.

Steady Leadership
President Bush's cognitive dissonance.
By William Saletan
Updated Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005, at 10:27 PM PT

Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day.

Tonight's State of the Union Address demonstrated again that President Bush is a man of very clear principles. He's just flexible about when to apply them.

He's for historical reflection when a Democratic program has lost the context that initially justified it: "Social Security was created decades ago, for a very different era. In those days, people did not live as long. Benefits were much lower   Our society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen."

He's against historical reflection when a Republican war has lost the context that initially justified it. All that matters is the new rationale: "The victory of freedom in Iraq will strengthen a new ally in the war on terror, inspire democratic reformers from Damascus to Tehran, bring more hope and progress to a troubled region  "

One more thing I'd like to point out: fixing ANYTHING forever, much less Social Security, is impossible.

Raw Story has acquired a copy of Saving Social Security: A Guide to Social Security Reform, printed by the House and Senate Republican Conferences as a guide for Senators and Representatives to market private accounts for the Social Security system.

The document is filled with suggestions for communicating with constituents such as, "Talk in simple language: Your audience doesn't understand financial jargon," and "Offer an alternate reality." The first several pages of the 103-page document are posted here.

The playbook, first reported on by Raw Story, has been subsequently reproduced by various liberal weblogs. View the entire document in PDF format here (2mb).

The Revolution Will Be Visualized: Emory Douglas in the Black Panther

...

On the back of each Black Panther weekly tabloid paper was a poster, usually created by Douglas. Like rap lyrics that layer "rhymes" to create images, Douglas's densely packed layered images told detailed stories.

In this back page poster, Douglas spanned a range of issues and condensed the anguish in American black communities into one mixed media collage.

When The Black Panther newspaper was first published, African Americans were virtually absent from the mainstream (white) American media landscape. Public images of black people were almost exclusively limited to roles of servants or cultural stereotypes. The black press, influential in African American communities because of segregation, followed the pattern of mainstream media in concentrating on the middle class. Black Panther Party leaders profoundly understood that an essential key to black liberation was creating and controlling images used to represent black people.

No one is here to read about my life. I know that because I don't much write about it, and you're here. But sometimes...and due to a lack of decent social reflexes (maaaaybe I'll write about that too) there's rarely anyone I can vent on.

Recently Mayor Bloomberg appeared on Staten Island to tell folks all the wonderful things he has in mind for us. One thing he promised was to increase police presence around here, and damned if he didn't do it...it looks like the whole graduating class of the Police Academy has been assigned to my neighborhood and that is NOT hyperbole.

Frankly, I'm a bit tired of them. Cops expect you to react to their mere presence (I will never forget my encounter with the now officially disbanded Street Crimes Unit). I am quite aware of them, just as I am any other street character but I pay about the same amount of attention to them and that seems to twist their nipples a bit. I suppose they're trying to do the community policing thing so they're staring at me in the hope of being friendly. They aren't giving people grief of any sort as far as I can see but that is because everyone responds as they expect them to...except me. When a knot of them are blocking the sidewalk I'll walk down the middle of the crowd rather than walking into the street to get around them. That sort of thing.

And I suppose it doesn't help that I'm noticeable. At 6'2", 195 lbs, 32" waist, wearing a Black leather coat that looks like I borrowed it from Neo (and at the moment an eczema flare-up on my face...) people usually check me out to see if I'm going to smack them. I have a walking stick because there's a little nerve damage in my feet due to diabetes (starting to see why I don't talk about me much?), and I always have my mp3 player kicking. The nerve damage doesn't interfere with my rhythm, so I tend to walk to the music. Hey, why have it with you if you're not going to enjoy it?

I give you the visual so maybe you can understand this better than I.

I'm heading for the bus stop and there's two cops, tall male-short female between me and said bus stop. As I walk, tall male crooks his finger at me. I frown and he says, yeah you. I shrug and walk over. He leans over to whisper something in my ear. I stop him and take off my headset.

He says "Sword canes are illegal in New York."

I say, "What?"

He says, "Yes, they're illegal. I don't know if you know that..."

I stop him and offer it to him, laying across my open palms. He says, "Oh, I don't want to check it, I'm not asking if that's what it is, I'm just letting you know. I noticed the metal band below the handle, and that how sword canes are connected."

Well, gee, that's how wooden handles are connected to the staff of the walking stick too.

I start to walk away and he says "I know because I have two of them."

I stop, walk up to him and say, "You have two of them. You. And they're illegal in New York. I find that hysterical." And I turn to walk off.

And as I'm walking he says "We can have them."

Now, that obviously didn't turn out as homie expected. But I wish I had slowed down to examine that "we." Because if "we" is he and I, they aren't illegal and he had no business discussing it with me. And if "we" doesn't include me it sounds an awful lot like he's saying cops can own illegal weapons because they're cops. And maybe he meant it's illegal to carry them but that's not what he said...He said "Sword canes are illegal in New York."

And the whole fucking thing is annoying.

Quote of note:

About a dozen minority students gathered Wednesday afternoon in Myers Hall to discuss the mural. They agreed it was a beautiful display but were upset by the racist word.

"I don't think that quote was necessary," said Stephanie Reyes, a second-year student from Augusta. "Of all the things for them to highlight, why that?"

Tribute to UGA integrator draws fire
By KELLY SIMMONS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/03/05

A memorial to a woman who helped integrate the University of Georgia has offended some of the school's students by including a racist term about African-Americans.

The exhibit, on the achievements of Charlayne Hunter-Gault, was unveiled two weeks ago in Myers Hall, her dormitory when she attended UGA in the 1960s.

Pictures and newspaper clippings on the wall-sized mural show Charlayne Hunter pushing through protesters on her way to class. In larger letters beneath the photos is an unattributed quote: "Make way for the nigger." University Housing Director Jim Day said Wednesday that the words were shouted at Hunter as she walked through the crowd.

Hunter-Gault, who lives in South Africa, could not be reached for comment.

Several students plan to raise the issue tonight at a meeting of the UGA chapter of the NAACP. Mickey Nzira, a December graduate from Zimbabwe, said he worried that the mural sent the wrong message to many students on a campus where race remains an issue.

"If this was a predominantly black school, that probably wouldn't offend anyone," Nzira said. "There are ignorant people on campus who will see it and think it's all right to say it."

Quote of note:

The residents' insistence that Nagapattinam's orphans, mostly Hindus, not be sent away partially stems from fear that the children will be converted to other religions. Locals think religious organizations, especially those associated with the West, are on a conversion spree. The fear, which religious groups say is unfounded, is magnified with the influx of international relief organizations into a largely insular community.

Rumors of evangelizing priests picking up children are readily believed, although they are unconfirmed. Two weeks ago in Akkarapettai, two Indian Christian nuns helping in relief work were surrounded by angry villagers and left fearing for their lives.

Fears of child trafficking also have made Nagapattinam residents suspicious. The relatively handsome government compensation -- children who lost one or both parents will receive $11,700 when they turn 18 -- has created another level of distrust. Announcing the compensation package so soon, activists say, raises the risk that unscrupulous people would be more concerned with the money than the children's welfare.

Communities fearful of outside adoptions of disaster orphans

By Mannika Chopra, Globe Correspondent  |  February 3, 2005

PATTINACHERRY, India -- From deep inside his shirt pocket, the head of the local village council withdrew several business cards. One, from a Christian organization, was emblazoned with a crucifix and a picture of what seemed to be a priest. Another is from Art of Living, a spiritual group headed by India's popular new-age guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Representatives from these organizations have been visiting villages like Pattinacherry to offer relief and inquire about adopting children who lost their parents because of the tsunami.

"They have come to take away our orphans," said Govindraj, the council leader, who like many Indians in the region goes by one name. "But we won't allow it."

Fishing communities along the coast of Nagapattinam, a district in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, lost much to the tsunami. Now they do not want to lose the victims' children, as well. The communities, devastated psychologically and economically, are closing ranks against the idea of outsiders adopting the orphans.

Nongovernmental organizations operating here also favor community adoptions. And the government supports outside adoptions only if local ones cannot be arranged, although for now, it has prohibited adoption of tsunami orphans by international agencies or individuals. But the assurances have not been enough for distressed residents.

White House notes plan lacks solutions for shortfall

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff  |  February 3, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Social Security plan outlined last night by President Bush does not include any direct means of dealing with the projected $10.4 trillion shortfall that he and his advisers say is driving his desire to overhaul the system, and it leaves unsaid whether Bush thinks a cut in future benefits is necessary, White House officials acknowledged.

Bush did provide new details about the size of what he calls "voluntary personal retirement accounts." One-third of Social Security taxes could be invested in the private accounts and the plan would apply only to those younger than 55. Those and other details tracked what Bush and his aides have said for months, and build on a similar proposal put forward by Bush's handpicked Social Security Commission in 2001.

But Bush did not endorse the more painful aspects of his commission's recommendations, such as cutting future promised benefits by switching from wage to price indexing. Prices are rising more slowly than wages, so a switch to price indexing would reduce benefits. Instead, Bush left that politically difficult choice up in the air, saying: "Fixing Social Security permanently will require an open, candid review of the options...I will work with members of Congress to find the most effective combination of reforms."

Quote of note:

The House this year also voted to change its rules to make it harder for the committee to investigate its members. It now requires a majority of the committee, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, to approve a probe.

and

Hefley, who had predicted his own removal, said in a statement Wednesday that it was "somewhat of a relief" to be free of the responsibility of being chairman.

...Many Republicans were angry with Hefley for admonishing DeLay last year on the hardball political tactics that DeLay's backers credited with strengthening the GOP's majority in the House and advancing the Republican legislative agenda.

So popular is DeLay that current and former members of Congress and their PACs contributed $174,500 to DeLay's legal defense fund in the last quarter of 2004, according to Public Citizen, a watchdog group.

DeLay Critic Removed From Ethics Committee
Doc Hastings replaces Joel Hefley, who had rebuked the majority leader three times.
By Richard Simon
Times Staff Writer

February 3, 2005

WASHINGTON   The House ethics committee chairman who presided over three rebukes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was bounced from the job Wednesday and replaced by a Republican congressman from Washington state.

The new chairman is Rep. Doc Hastings, the committee's second-ranking Republican. He was named by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to take the gavel from Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.).

In addition, Hastert appointed three new members to the panel, including two   Reps. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.)   whose political action committees have contributed to DeLay's legal defense fund. Smith's PAC contributed $5,000 in 2001 and an additional $5,000 between July and September 2004; Cole's gave $5,000 between July and September 2004.

The third new Republican member is Rep. Melissa A. Hart of Pennsylvania.

Martha Stewart to star in new `Apprentice'
- DERRIK J. LANG, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2005

(02-02) 13:57 PST NEW YORK (AP) --

Martha Stewart, you're hired.

The masterminds behind "The Apprentice" -- Donald Trump and Mark Burnett_ and NBC announced Wednesday that Stewart will host "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart."

"Mark and I have always admired her," Trump said. "She's a very brave woman. She's built a multimillion-dollar empire. It was an easy decision. We think this will be an absolutely tremendous success."

Canada to counter Patriot Act

By JIM BRONSKILL

OTTAWA (CP)   The government will revamp the wording of future federal contracts with the aim of countering U.S. powers, granted under anti-terrorism laws, to tap into personal information about Canadians.

The move is intended to prevent the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation from seeing sensitive Canadian data the government supplies to American firms doing business with federal departments in Ottawa.

The government has also asked all agencies and departments to conduct a  comprehensive assessment of risks  to Canadian information they release to U.S. companies carrying out work under contract.

All Players Gained From 'Oil-for-Food'
On the U.N. Security Council, competing national interests and economic stakes in Iraq chilled willingness to scrutinize the program.
By Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writer

...The 15 members of the U.N. Security Council, including the United States, were at best complacent and at times complicit in Hussein's exploitation of the program, diplomats and U.N. officials say. Competing national interests and economic stakes in one of the world's biggest oil producers chilled the council's willingness to scrutinize the program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil in exchange for cash intended to be used only to buy food, medicine and other essentials.

Systemic corruption on Hussein's part, inaction of world governments and mismanagement by the United Nations combined to allow one of the greatest frauds in U.N. history.

...All five permanent members of the Security Council diminished the sanctions. Even the United States, Iraq's most implacable adversary, made a crucial compromise when the original sanctions were put in place. For 12 years, citing national interests, Washington exempted Turkey's and Jordan's substantial illegal trade from a law that would have blocked U.S. aid to countries that violated the sanctions on Iraq.

The U.S. and Britain also looked the other way when their citizens and businesses traded favors for oil and brought it into the country in ways that skirted legality, say U.N. officials who oversaw oil contracts.

Study: Southern Blacks Die at Higher Rate
- By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2005

(02-02) 17:32 PST New Orleans, LA (AP) --

Blacks in the South apparently get a double whammy of stroke risk: They die at much higher rates than either Southern whites or blacks who live elsewhere.

Researchers have long known that stroke deaths are greater among blacks and people in the "Stroke Belt" across the eastern part of the nation's midsection. But they thought the combined risk posed by race and geography was small.

"Much to our surprise, the finding is: No, it's not," said George Howard, a biostatistician who presented his research Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference in New Orleans.

The rate of stroke deaths among black men in the South was 51 percent higher than it was among blacks in other parts of the country. And black men in the South had roughly four times the risk of dying of a stroke as white men living outside the South.

"That's a pretty big difference," Howard said.

I remember why I was going to skip it.

The State of the Union address, at it's best, actually tells you the state on the union. All it is now is a stump speech.

I'll watch the damn State of the Union Address.

Big Board Report Says Ex-Chief Was Overpaid by $144 Million

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Richard A. Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, received $144 million to $156 million in excess compensation during his time at the Big Board, taking deliberate steps to keep his high-profile board in the dark about his soaring pay and get the money out early, according to a stinging internal report released today by the exchange.

Authorized by Mr. Grasso's successor, John S. Reed, the 128-page report was compiled by Dan K. Webb, the exchange's lawyer, and delivered to Mr. Grasso's lawyers today in response to an order from a New York state judge.

The document, known widely as the Webb report, paints a vivid picture of a stock exchange board packed with Wall Street chief executives and close associates of Mr. Grasso that was in many ways asleep at the switch, standing by as Mr. Grasso, who worked his entire career at the exchange, came to be paid at levels that equaled and in some cases exceeded his peers at large financial companies.

It documents a culture of excessive pay at the exchange, whereby Mr. Grasso's executive assistant was paid $240,000 a year and his two drivers $130,000.

When did we stop talking about means testing as a part of working out any Social Security issues that may (or may not) exist?

WHY did we stop talking about means testing as a part of working out any Social Security issues that may (or may not) exist?

Could it be...because it would negatively affect rich folks?

Because he points out things like

In other words, to believe in a privatization-friendly rate of return, you have to believe that half a century from now, the average stock will be priced like technology stocks at the height of the Internet bubble - and that stock prices will nonetheless keep on rising.

and says things like

They can rescue their happy vision for stock returns by claiming that the Social Security actuaries are vastly underestimating future economic growth. But in that case, we don't need to worry about Social Security's future: if the economy grows fast enough to generate a rate of return that makes privatization work, it will also yield a bonanza of payroll tax revenue that will keep the current system sound for generations to come.

Alternatively, privatizers can unhappily admit that future stock returns will be much lower than they have been claiming. But without those high returns, the arithmetic of their schemes collapses.

It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.

Many Unhappy Returns

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The fight over Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have. But it's also about numbers. And the numbers the privatizers use just don't add up.

Let me inflict some of those numbers on you. Sorry, but this is important.

Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows much faster than anyone is now expecting.

To explain why, I need to talk about stock returns. The yield on a stock comes from two components: cash that the company pays out in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, and capital gains. Right now, if dividends and buybacks were the whole story, the rate of return on stocks would be only 3 percent.

To get a 6.5 percent rate of return, you need capital gains: if dividends yield 3 percent, stock prices have to rise 3.5 percent per year after inflation. That doesn't sound too unreasonable if you're thinking only a few years ahead.

But privatizers need that high rate of return for 75 years or more. And the economic assumptions underlying most projections for Social Security make that impossible.

The Social Security projections that say the trust fund will be exhausted by 2042 assume that economic growth will slow as baby boomers leave the work force. The actuaries predict that economic growth, which averaged 3.4 percent per year over the last 75 years, will average only 1.9 percent over the next 75 years.

In the long run, profits grow at the same rate as the economy. So to get that 6.5 percent rate of return, stock prices would have to keep rising faster than profits, decade after decade.

The price-earnings ratio - the value of a company's stock, divided by its profits - is widely used to assess whether a stock is overvalued or undervalued. Historically, that ratio averaged about 14. Today it's about 20. Where would it have to go to yield a 6.5 percent rate of return?

I asked Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to help me out with that calculation (there are some technical details I won't get into). Here's what we found: by 2050, the price-earnings ratio would have to rise to about 70. By 2060, it would have to be more than 100.

In other words, to believe in a privatization-friendly rate of return, you have to believe that half a century from now, the average stock will be priced like technology stocks at the height of the Internet bubble - and that stock prices will nonetheless keep on rising.

Social Security privatizers usually defend their bullishness by saying that stock investors earned high returns in the past. But stocks are much more expensive than they used to be, relative to corporate profits; that means lower dividends per dollar of share value. And economic growth is expected to be slower.

Which brings us to the privatizers' Catch-22.

They can rescue their happy vision for stock returns by claiming that the Social Security actuaries are vastly underestimating future economic growth. But in that case, we don't need to worry about Social Security's future: if the economy grows fast enough to generate a rate of return that makes privatization work, it will also yield a bonanza of payroll tax revenue that will keep the current system sound for generations to come.

Alternatively, privatizers can unhappily admit that future stock returns will be much lower than they have been claiming. But without those high returns, the arithmetic of their schemes collapses.

It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.

And I suspect that at least some privatizers know that. Mr. Baker has devised a test he calls "no economist left behind": he challenges economists to make a projection of economic growth, dividends and capital gains that will yield a 6.5 percent rate of return over 75 years. Not one economist who supports privatization has been willing to take the test.

But the offer still stands. Ladies and gentlemen, would you care to explain your position?

Quote of note:

In a confidential letter to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, the group said it was disappointed with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage.

Backers of Gay Marriage Ban Use Social Security as Cudgel

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The move came as Senate Republicans vowed on Monday to reintroduce the proposed amendment, which failed in the Senate last year by a substantial margin. Party leaders, who left it off their list of priorities for the legislative year, said they had no immediate plans to bring it to the floor because they still lacked the votes for passage.

But the coalition that wrote the letter, known as the Arlington Group, is increasingly impatient.

In a confidential letter to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, the group said it was disappointed with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage.

The letter, dated Jan. 18, pointed out that many social conservatives who voted for Mr. Bush because of his stance on social issues lack equivalent enthusiasm for changing the retirement system or other tax issues. And to pass to pass any sweeping changes, members of the group argue, Mr. Bush will need the support of every element of his coalition.

"We couldn't help but notice the contrast between how the president is approaching the difficult issue of Social Security privatization where the public is deeply divided and the marriage issue where public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side," the letter said. "Is he prepared to spend significant political capital on privatization but reluctant to devote the same energy to preserving traditional marriage? If so it would create outrage with countless voters who stood with him just a few weeks ago, including an unprecedented number of African-Americans, Latinos and Catholics who broke with tradition and supported the president solely because of this issue."

The letter continued, "When the administration adopts a defeatist attitude on an issue that is at the top of our agenda, it becomes impossible for us to unite our movement on an issue such as Social Security privatization where there are already deep misgivings."

The letter also expressed alarm at recent comments President Bush made to The Washington Post, including his statement that "nothing will happen" on the marriage amendment for now because many senators did not see the need for it.

"We trust that you can imagine our deep disappointment at the defeatist position President Bush demonstrated" in the interview, the group wrote. "He even declined to answer a simple question about whether he would use his bully pulpit to overcome this Senate foot-dragging."

The letter also noted that in an interview before the election Mr. Bush "appeared to endorse civil unions" for same-sex couples.

Quote of note:

"It's confusing to me and my mom why they are constantly invoking him without presenting his position on Social Security," said Maura Moynihan, the senator's daughter, referring as well to his widow, Elizabeth.

"I think it's odd or strange or unsettling that the Democrat being invoked here is dead and not able to defend or explain his position, which we all know he would have done with eloquence and passion," said Ms. Moynihan, who described herself as a liberal who supported Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in the presidential race.

Bush Finds a Backer in Moynihan, Who's Not Talking

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - As he pushes ahead with his proposal to remake Social Security by adding private investment accounts, President Bush has so far failed to attract any prominent Democratic supporters.

At least, no prominent Democrats who are still alive.

Instead, Mr. Bush is taking cover under the reputation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who died nearly two years ago. Mr. Moynihan served as co-chairman of the commission Mr. Bush established in 2001 to recommend ways of establishing personal accounts, a fact the president and his aides mention almost every time they discuss the issue publicly.

"Much of my thinking has been colored by the work of the late Senator Moynihan and other members of the commission, who took a lot of time to take a look at this problem and who came up with some creative suggestions," Mr. Bush said to reporters last month in the Oval Office.

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow began an op-ed article about Social Security in The Wall Street Journal recently by invoking Mr. Moynihan. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, frequently refers to Mr. Moynihan's leadership of the commission in defending the president's call for personal accounts.

Quote of note:

All 103 issues of the Freedom's Journal have been digitized and placed into Adobe Acrobat format. PLEASE NOTE: Each file is over 1 megabyte in size, refer to the file size information next to the link before clicking on the link.

Volume 1 (March, 1827-March, 1828)
Volume 2 (April, 1828-March, 1829)

African-American Newspapers and Periodicals

Freedom's Journal

OCLC#: 1570144
LC card #: sn83-30455

"We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us."

Thus declare Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm on the front page of Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829. John B. Russworm edited the journal alone between March 16, 1827 and March 28, 1829. Later,  Samuel Cornish served as co-editor (March 16, 1827 to September 14, 1827). Freedom's Journal was superseded by The Rights of All, published between 1829 and 1830 by S. E. Cornish.

Freedom's Journal provided international, national, and regional information on current events and contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching, and other injustices. The Journal also published biographies of prominent African-Americans and listings of births, deaths, and marriages in the African-American New York community. Freedom's Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada.

The newspaper employed subscription agents. One of these, David Walker, in 1829 published the first of four articles that called for rebellion.  Walker's Appeal stated that ".it is no more harm for you to kill the man who is trying to kill you than it is for you to take a drink of water," this bold attack was widely read. Walker distributed copies of his pamphlet into the South, where it was widely banned.

Never-ending penalty
OUR OPINION: PUNISHMENT AFTER TIME SERVED IS WRONG

Gov. Jeb Bush has the constitutional power to automatically restore civil rights to people who have fully completed their criminal sentences. Two powerful Republicans are urging him to end the felon-rights ban. The governor can, and should, do so as soon as possible. It's past time to end an antiquated provision that permanently bars ex-felons from voting, serving on juries and other rights despite having paid their debt to society.

Gov. Bush should end the state's cumbersome clemency process, currently the only hope for ex-felons regaining their rights. A Herald investigative series last year described a backlogged, bureaucratic gantlet that denies or delays eight in 10 offenders who seek to have their rights restored. To his credit, Gov. Bush has recommended a number of improvements, but these simply won't fix the system's basic flaws.

Why spend $4 million a year on a bureaucracy that essentially will remain unfair? Denying ex-felons their civil rights makes rehabilitation and reentry into society more difficult. Gov. Bush himself has told The Herald that he believes ``that people who learn from their mistakes and apply those lessons to their lives deserve a second chance.''

In this case, smaller government and automatic restoration of rights is better. Gov. Bush says he opposes automatic restoration of rights as a matter of ''public safety.'' That's poor justification for perpetuating a wrong.

Quote of note:

SCLC/Women has placed eight markers in all, many of them continually vandalized.

"Racism is still alive and well in Alabama," the Rev. James Orange, tour transportation director, said at a news conference. "When we leave a monument, they shoot it up still."

Tour to trace 'Bloody Sunday' route
By MARCIA LANGHENRY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/02/05

Three monuments to pioneers of the civil rights movement will be unveiled as part of a tour marking the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights that ended in violence.

The tour is organized each year by Evelyn G. Lowery, and sponsored by SCLC/Women, which she founded in 1979 in affiliation with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, formed by her husband, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others.

via HungryBlues

Bush tells CBC he's 'unfamiliar' with Voting Rights Act

by Roland S. Martin, Chicago Defender
January 27, 2005

President George W. Bush met with the Congressional Black Caucus Wednesday for the first time as a group in nearly four years, but what CBC members said stood out the most was the president's declaration that he was "unfamiliar" with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in the history of the United States.

Tests Said to Tie Deal on Uranium to North Korea

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: February 2, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - Scientific tests have led American intelligence agencies and government scientists to conclude with near certainty that North Korea sold processed uranium to Libya, bolstering earlier indications that the reclusive state exported sensitive fuel for atomic weapons, according to officials with access to the intelligence.

They've already screwed us all royally with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The banks got what they wanted in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. They got permanent limits on state authority to enact stronger laws in some areas of credit reporting. Credit reports are financial résumés collected by third-party companies that are used for credit decision making. In the 1996 Congress, the law was strengthened because of a lot of mistakes the companies were making. And for eight years after 1996, states were limited in some ways. Last year Congress limited the states permanently from enacting stronger laws in a number of areas. ... It was a major, major campaign by every bank, every trade association, every car finance company, every mortgage company, every insurance company. The entire financial industry, not only the credit card companies, lobbied for permanent limits on state authority to enact stronger credit reporting laws.

Class-Action Lawsuits

Tort reform is in the eye of the beholder. In the name of reforming the nation's civil justice system, and with scant public debate, President Bush and Congressional Republicans are racing to reward wealthy business supporters by changing the rules for class-action lawsuits. Their real objective is to dilute the impact of strong state laws protecting consumers and the environment and to make it harder for Americans to win redress in court when they are harmed by bad corporate behavior.

The proposed legislation, the so-called Class Action Fairness Act, will be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, with a vote by the full chamber expected as early as next week. Under the bill's sweeping provisions, nearly all major class-action lawsuits would be moved from state courts to already stretched federal courts. New procedural hurdles and backlogs would be destined to delay or deny justice in many cases, and to discourage plaintiffs and plaintiffs' lawyers from pursuing legitimate claims in the first place.

The proposed lunge to federal courts is so extreme that cases would be removed to federal courts even when a vast majority of the plaintiffs were from one state, the claimed injuries occurred in the state and involved possible violations of state law, and the principal defendant had a headquarters elsewhere but did substantial business in the state.

In a revealing but disappointing move last year, the measure's proponents rejected a balanced compromise that would have broadened federal jurisdiction while preserving the role of state courts in cases that are more local than national in flavor. Despite some useful provisions aimed at genuine abuses, the bill would reduce the accountability of corporations that violate laws protecting employees, consumers and the environment.

Don't commit war crimes. But that may be asking too much at this point.

Anyway...

Why Should We Shield the Killers?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Two weeks ago, President Bush gave an impassioned speech to the world about the need to stand for human freedom.

But this week, administration officials are skulking in the corridors of the United Nations, trying desperately to block a prosecution of Sudanese officials for crimes against humanity.

It's not that Mr. Bush sympathizes with the slaughter in Darfur. In fact, I take my hat off to Mr. Bush for doing more than most other world leaders to address ethnic cleansing there - even if it's not nearly enough. Mr. Bush has certainly done far more than Bill Clinton did during the Rwandan genocide.

But Mr. Bush's sympathy for Sudanese parents who are having their children tossed into bonfires shrivels next to his hostility to the organization that the U.N. wants to trust with the prosecution: the International Criminal Court. Administration officials so despise the court that they have become, in effect, the best hope of Sudanese officials seeking to avoid accountability for what Mr. Bush himself has called genocide.

Mr. Bush's worry is that if the International Criminal Court is legitimized, American officials could someday be dragged before it. The court's supporters counter that safeguards make that impossible. Reasonable people can differ about the court, but for Mr. Bush to put his ideological opposition to it over the welfare of the 10,000 people still dying every month in Darfur - that's just madness.

Health Secretary Calls for Medicaid Changes

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, called Tuesday for sweeping changes in Medicaid that would cut payments for prescription drugs and give states new power to reduce or reconfigure benefits for millions of low-income people.

In his first speech as secretary, Mr. Leavitt also said it should be more difficult for elderly people to qualify for Medicaid by transferring assets to their children.

"Medicaid must not become an inheritance protection plan," Mr. Leavitt said at a convention of health care executives here. "Right now, many older Americans take advantage of Medicaid loopholes to become eligible for Medicaid by giving away assets to their children. There is a whole industry that actually helps people shift costs to the taxpayer."

Medicaid helps pay the bills for two-thirds of the 1.6 million people in nursing homes in the United States.

Mr. Leavitt said President Bush wanted to join Congress in an effort to rein in the cost of Medicaid, the nation's largest health insurance program. Medicaid spending has shot up 63 percent in the last five years. Federal and state outlays now total more than $300 billion a year.

Yeah, Africa needs to get in the mix somehow. And since they're doing the call center thing even cheaper than prison labor would maybe the need to jail so many Americans will be reduced.

Cynical, I know.

Anyway...

Accents of Africa: A New Outsourcing Frontier

By MARC LACEY

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 30 - Susan Mina, a Kenyan who has never stepped foot out of Africa, speaks English like the haughtiest of Britons. She can also put on a fair imitation of an American accent by swallowing all her words. Still, every once in a while, some Swahili slips out of her and that is not at all helpful as she tries to enhance Africa's role in the global explosion of outsourcing.

It happened the other day when she was trying to get a British man to sign up for a new cellular telephone service. He was in his home, minding his own business. She sat near the Nairobi airport, doing her business as a sales agent for KenCall, Kenya's first international call center. The man's accent - she pegged it as Irish - was unintelligible to her. "Pole sana?" she blurted out, which is what one says in Swahili instead of "Huh?"

Controlling one's Swahili is just one of the challenges that Kenyans are facing as they play catch-up in an industry that India and other countries have turned into major job generators.

Kenya's regular phone lines are so abysmal that the founders of KenCall had to go through the cumbersome process of getting government approval to use a costly satellite hookup. Even more dollars were burned on an elaborate generator system aimed at keeping KenCall's computer screens running during Nairobi's frequent power failures.

"Africa needs to raise its game," said Russell Southwood, who publishes an online newsletter on telecommunications in Africa at balancingact-africa.com. "It needs to show the world that it can do more than pick minerals out of the ground and grow fruits and vegetables."

KenCall is now up and running, and eager to lure business from Western companies that want cheap labor - but educated cheap labor like Ms. Mina, who has a university degree but earns less than $5,000 a year, not as much as a fast-food cashier would make in the United States.

Study Ties Bankruptcy to Medical Bills

By REED ABELSON

Sometimes, all it takes is one bad fall for a working person with health insurance to be pushed into bankruptcy.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans file for personal bankruptcy each year because of medical bills - even though they have health insurance, according to a new study by Harvard University legal and medical researchers.

"It doesn't take a medical catastrophe to create a financial catastrophe," said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who studies bankruptcy and is one of the authors of the study.

The study, which is scheduled to appear today on the Web site of Health Affairs, an academic journal, provides a glimpse into a little-researched area connecting bankruptcy and medical costs. About 30 percent of people said they filed for bankruptcy because of an illness or injury, even though most of them had health insurance when they first got sick.

Many lost their jobs - and their insurance - because they got sick, while others faced thousands of dollars in co-payments and deductibles and for services not covered by their insurance.

One person cited in the bankruptcy study, for example, broke a leg, missed a couple of months of work and then had $13,000 in unpaid medical bills, though his employer-based health plan had already paid for much of his care, Ms. Warren said.

Another respondent to the survey was able to pay for hospital stays for lung surgery and a heart attack but could not return to his old job. When he found a new job, he was denied coverage because of his pre-existing conditions, which continued to require costly medical care and contributed to his bankruptcy.

Policy analysts say these findings underscore the limitations of the nation's current system of providing health insurance largely through employers. Some argue that even for those with insurance, benefits can be ephemeral.

"You can lose it because it's tied to employment," said Joseph Antos, a health policy researcher with the American Enterprise Institute, who said people were also at risk if their employers went out of business.

Quote of note:

After all, African Americans did not abandon the Republican Party; the Republican Party abandoned African Americans.

I couldn't have said it better...or even as well...myself

Why blacks shy away from the GOP

By OSCAR EASON JR.
GUEST COLUMNIST

In his farewell speech in 1901, Rep. George White, a Republican and the last African American to leave the U.S. Congress following the Reconstruction period, said, "Phoenixlike, he (the African American citizen) will rise up some day and come again."

There were 22 African Americans serving in Congress from 1870 to 1901; two were senators and most, if not all, were Republicans. Today, there are 39 African Americans in Congress and they're all Democrats.

Anyone who is politically curious has seen present-day Republican pundits proclaim their party to be historically "the party of Lincoln"; what is unfailingly left out of this declaration is the historical metamorphosis of the Republican Party after Reconstruction. Anyone who does not understand this genealogy cannot hope to understand the predominately white face of today's GOP.

The famous "Hayes-Tilden Betrayal" is said to have reversed many of the political, social and economic gains made by African Americans during Reconstruction. The 1876 presidential election was similar in many ways to the 2000 election in that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden ended up in an almost dead heat. Tilden won a majority of the popular vote. The electoral votes in South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida and Oregon were disputed, causing a special commission to decide the election.

It is said a deal was cut that gave all disputed ballots to candidate Hayes in exchange for a guarantee that all federal troops would be removed from the South, leaving African Americans vulnerable to white Southern retaliation. Hayes was then elected president by one electoral vote. Once that deal was solidified, a retaliatory blood bath targeting African Americans promptly ensued throughout the South.

In the late 1940s President Truman, a Democrat, decided it was time to racially integrate the armed forces, causing outrage among some white Southern Democrats. As if this weren't enough, in 1948 the Democratic Party publicly declared its support for the civil rights movement. That was more than some white Southern Democrats could stomach, so they formed a "states rights" ticket that was appropriately labeled the Dixiecrats.

In the mid 1960s, the Dixicrats switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party to assist Barry Goldwater in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency against Lyndon Johnson. They were, however, pivotal in the Southern strategy that won the White House for Richard M. Nixon in 1968. President Reagan, a Republican, is credited with bringing all factions of the Republican right-wing conservative movement together, steeped in the Dixiecrat states' rights tradition.

During Reagan's administration, the issues and concerns of the Dixiecrats became principally those of the Republican Party. It was precisely at this juncture that the Republican Party ceased being the Party of Lincoln and evolved into what it is today to the vast majority of black America -- almost racially exclusive and dedicated to protecting and maintaining the status quo. In this context, it is difficult to imagine how the average civil rights-sensitive black citizen could blend in to today's Republican Party.

It is noteworthy that, in order to be welcomed into the fold, those few African Americans who now call themselves Republicans seem compelled to publicly denounce the shared reality of the average black citizen. They declare a level racial playing field in America where there obviously is none; they insist that America's racial problems are over, when it is intuitively not the case; they speak contemptuously of established black leadership, and adopt an individualistic, every-man-for-himself mantra that is the essence of social isolation.

Nearly 90 percent of African Americans voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2000 presidential election. African Americans must have accepted Rep. George White's challenge from the floor of Congress more than 102 years ago as rationale for the racial strife, periodic violent confrontations, civil conflict and the social movement that followed in the history of this nation. Few knowledgeable Americans would deny that the African American civil rights movement has been the primary catalyst in the reshaping of America's moral conscience. There seems to be a visceral distrust and uneasiness in the African American community today, a shared suspicion that our civil rights legacy is being purposefully misinterpreted and politically manipulated.

At present it would appear as if those issues and concerns of African Americans sensitive to civil rights are positioned diametrically opposite to those of the controlling elements in the Republican Party. There does not seem to be any political justification for the Republican Party to belabor issues near and dear to the African American community; these issues are simply not on the agenda, owing to the fact that there is no internal pressure to bring civil rights concerns to the table. It can almost be said that any minority group joining this party with a civil rights issue would certainly cause a degree of discontinuity; which explains why many Republicans are quick to say they welcome members of minority groups "as individuals."

Still, there is concern within some quarters of the Republican Party that the party is a bit too "white" and must absorb conservative minority individuals in order to truthfully boast of being the "All-American Party." Before there is a desire on the part of African Americans to leave the Democratic Party, however, there would have to be political, social and economic incentives to prompt this action. After all, African Americans did not abandon the Republican Party; the Republican Party abandoned African Americans.

Oscar Eason Jr. of Seattle is former national president of Blacks In Government and former president of the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Sadly, it's necessary because of this asininity:

Recasting Republicans as the Party of Civil Rights
Strategists reach back to GOP's antislavery roots in an attempt to lure black voters.
By Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writer

January 29, 2005

WASHINGTON   Condoleezza Rice took the oath Friday as the first black woman to be secretary of State, then immediately reached back into history to invoke the legacy of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Her words were the latest example of President Bush and his top aides citing the Republican Party's often-forgotten 19th century antislavery roots   a strategy that GOP leaders believe will help them make inroads among black voters in the 21st century.

And if it reminds voters that the Democrats once embraced slavery, that's not such a bad byproduct, strategists say.

The absurdity of this posture can be revealed by the answer to a single question: Did Republicans of the time embrace slavery?

But let's go a bit deeper. Let's nail it down...it will be a multi-day process.

Since Republicans are claiming to be The Party of Lincoln, let's see what Lincoln had to say about Black folks. Let's start with the first of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

I grant this was a noble position given the social state of affairs. But this means The Party of Lincoln is more than satisfied with Black Americans being subordinated...this means it is that party's preference.

Okay, let's see if President Lincoln became more liberal once he was elected...I direct you to his first inaugural address.

Fellow-Citizens of the United States:

In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of this office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration.

I was pretty sure "No, there's too much to read already" was an option someone would take. I actually think it will wind up the most popular option.

Quote of note:

The Economic Policy Institute found that all but two states Hawaii and Wyoming failed to make the projections put forth by the administration. Twenty-nine states both blue and red states have fewer jobs than when the recession started in March 2001. The other states experienced job growth so anemic that the added jobs could not keep up with the expansion of the workforce as a whole. Overall, the promise of 5.5 million jobs fell 3.1 million jobs short one of the worst job-creation records in the past century (the president s best chance to burnish his record is to compare himself to Herbert Hoover).

As important, wages are stagnating which explains why people remain very nervous about the economy. As EPI reports in a related analysis:  Since the recovery s start in the fourth quarter of 2001, (real) private wage and salary income is up only 3.9 percent. The average for all economic recoveries that lasted 11 quarters or more from 1947 to1982 is 18.2 percent, and even the  jobless recovery  of the early 1990s saw 7.4 percent growth. 

Show Us The Jobs

February 01, 2005

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office revealed the U.S. deficit has reached staggering levels  and that s without calculating the cost of the ongoing occupation in Iraq. Among his priorities this year, President George W. Bush wants to make his tax cuts permanent. Not only do these tax cuts heap billions onto our national debt, but Jonathan Tasini explains that the evidence shows they don t produce the jobs his administration claims they will.

Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

When the president delivers the State of the Union address, he will lie. He will tell the American people that his tax cuts have helped people get jobs and boosted the economy as a whole. And he will use those untruths to push Congress to make his tax cuts permanent.

Let s go way back in history three years to the Bush administration s so-called  Jobs and Growth Plan.  (Do journalists on the administration s payroll come up with those Orwellian slogans?) The administration s Council on Economic Advisers claimed the plan would create 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004. In his State of the Union address a year ago, the president himself said that, due to his tax cuts,  Productivity is high, and jobs are on the rise.  And then he said,  For the sake of job growth, the tax cuts you passed should be permanent. 

So understand, the president was trying to make you believe that his tax cuts mean more jobs. Rubbish. Here s what he claimed originally for his phony plan: The tax cuts alone would yield 1.4 million jobs, along with another 4.1 million jobs that would result from other policies. But pesky facts cause problems for this administration.

In the wake of the "I'm lovin' it" campaign, McDonalds creates the stupidest marketing blunder since Chevrolet tried introduced the Nova into South America's Spanish speaking market ("no va" means "doesn't go").

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The administration has already thrown open millions of acres of the American West to energy exploitation and more millions in the former national petroleum reserve west of the Arctic plain and Prudhoe Bay. Some of the openings make sense, others don't. The latest ruckus is over allowing oil and gas wells on desert grassland in New Mexico, putting water supplies at risk. State officials solidly opposed the drilling but got a brushoff at the Interior Department.

A Sneaky Bid for Arctic Oil
February 1, 2005

Drill for oil in Yosemite Valley? A geothermal steam plant near Old Faithful? A hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon? Even the Bush administration would not go that far in search of energy sources because law bans such exploitation in the national parks. But its zeal for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is nearly as dumb. The refuge should have been made a national park in 1980, when Congress considered the designation. But for the oil industry, it would have been.

For the fifth consecutive year, the administration is seeking congressional approval to industrialize parts of the Alaskan North Slope   for only enough oil to meet the nation's needs for, at most, six months. Thwarted in the past in up-or-down votes in the Senate, the administration now is attempting to win approval by slipping a rider into the budget bill. The thinking is that no one would risk the wrath of voters by trying to kill the budget just because it contained the refuge rider. Think again. Polls show that most Americans oppose drilling and production in the refuge and disruption of its amazing variety of birds, fish and other animal life.

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The jurors determined that Glendale-based Nestle should have paid Christoff $330,000 for the use of his likeness. They also voted to hand Christoff damages equal to 5% of the profit from Taster's Choice sales during the six-year period, or $15.3 million.

Nestle USA executives declined to comment. Lawrence Heller, the company's lawyer, said the food and beverage giant would appeal the verdict.

"The employee that pulled the photo thought they had consent to use the picture," Heller said.

Verdict Creates Instant Millionaire
Nestle must pay a model $15.6 million for using his image without his consent. It will appeal.
By Meg James
Times Staff Writer

February 1, 2005

Russell Christoff was standing in line at a Home Depot in the spring of 2002 when a woman leaned over and said, "You look like the guy on my coffee jar."

Christoff smiled. The Northern California model had been recognized before after appearing in corporate training films and landing a few movie and TV roles. He had even hosted his own program for public television, "Traveling California State Parks."

But Christoff had never appeared on a coffee jar   or so he thought until several weeks later.

That's when Christoff, shopping for bloody mary mix at a Rite-Aid store, happened to come face to face with himself on a label for Nestle's Taster's Choice.

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One parent who pulled her son from Oak Grove and sent him to Sequoia Middle School in Pleasant Hill called it "The Great White Flight."

Kristy Caldwell's two children, who attend the high-performing Bancroft Elementary in Walnut Creek, would attend Oak Grove, and that deeply concerns her.

"I'm not prejudiced, (but) the school became English-as-a-second-language, " she said. "You would be taking my kids from a great environment to a ghetto environment where they're struggling with other needs ... The test scores at Oak Grove are terrible."

Families flee school's sinking scores
'Underperforming' label exacerbates problem in Concord
- Carrie Sturrock, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Oak Grove Middle School has low state test scores, and for many parents -- and teachers -- that's all they need to know.

It doesn't matter that the Concord school once was honored as a California Distinguished School and has classes for gifted and talented students, a state-of-the-art technology program and even a psychologist on campus to support the kids.

What matters is that widely publicized state test scores and the federal No Child Left Behind Act have labeled the school underperforming, giving parents a reason to leave. Enrollment has dropped from 915 last year to 750, and the parents of another 180 students have requested transfers by the fall. The act also has figured in the loss of 40 teachers in recent years, Principal Lorie O'Brien said.

"The court of public opinion has not served us well," she said. "When these labels first became part of our lives, a tremendous amount of (my) time went into being a counselor. It took a lot for people to come to terms with that."

The flight of well-prepared students from once-well-regarded schools such as Oak Grove is happening across the nation as a consequence of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, educators say. The schools fail to meet state and federal accountability standards often because they're struggling to teach low-scoring students who are learning English after immigrating to the United States, said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C., an advocacy organization for more effective public schools which has studied the effects of the federal law.

Jennings and other education experts say that as the schools' test scores spiral downward, it's not uncommon for the more educated families to pull their kids out, increasing the percentage of low-scoring students and making it even more difficult to raise the scores. As a result, the schools -- which range from suburban ones such as Oak Grove to urban campuses -- lose per-pupil funding and the benefits of parents with the time and resources to get involved.

Educators say that while No Child Left Behind has benefits, such as English learners getting more attention than ever before, schools get labels that are hard to shake.

"(At) schools that are so labeled, sometimes teachers feel they're being blamed unfairly, and sometimes teachers are looking for ways to leave," Jennings said. "Sometimes the better-educated parents take advantage of the school choice option."

Oak Grove has always had a mix of students from blue- and white-collar families who live in Concord and more affluent Walnut Creek. In 1996, the state named it a California Distinguished School for its exemplary teaching and high standards.

But in the seven years since the first of the state's new test scores -- which the federal law uses to gauge a school's performance -- the school has seen a marked shift in its demographics: The Hispanic population -- which is largely from the Monument Boulevard area in Concord -- has jumped from 27 to 52 percent, while the white population has dropped from 57 to 30 percent, according to the state Department of Education.

Well, the military is giving away free tits...

Medicare to Cover Drugs for Impotence
The prescription benefit will take effect next year. The decision to include pharmaceuticals that enhance the quality of life is a matter of debate.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Denise Gellene
Times Staff Writers

February 1, 2005

WASHINGTON   Medicare's new prescription benefit will cover sexual performance drugs, like Viagra, in addition to medications for such ailments as high blood pressure and heart disease, program officials confirmed Monday.

The move into what some consider "lifestyle"   rather than life-saving   pharmaceuticals is being criticized by conservatives, who see it as an unnecessary frill for a program that already is projected to cost at least $400 billion over its first decade.

"Ordinary Americans are going to be surprised," said Robert E. Moffit, a healthcare analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and educational institution in Washington. "But this should not be a shock . Once you create a universal entitlement, the tendency is for the entitlement to expand."

Clinical experts said that from a medical perspective, the decision made sense and followed the practices of private insurance plans and other government healthcare programs.

"These are drugs that treat a condition that compromises the quality of life but doesn't threaten life," said Dr. Ira Sharlip, a professor of urology at UC San Francisco. "But there are many drugs that are approved for quality-of-life indications. It wouldn't be right to single out [impotence drugs] as frivolous when there are so many others in the same category"   such as prescription drugs for indigestion or mild pain, he said.

NIH to Ban Deals With Drug Firms
Federal researchers will no longer be able to accept fees to consult for companies, officials say. The lucrative pacts have sparked ethics probes.
By David Willman
Times Staff Writer

February 1, 2005

WASHINGTON   Under a far-reaching reform to be announced today, all staff scientists at the National Institutes of Health will be banned from accepting any consulting fees or other income from drug companies, and the employees must also divest industry stock holdings, officials said.

The new regulations   drawn up by administrators from the NIH, the Office of Government Ethics and the Department of Health and Human Services   are aimed at halting lucrative deals that have led to conflict-of-interest inquiries at the government's premier agency for medical research.

The changes exceed the partial and temporary curbs on outside income proposed earlier by the NIH director, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni. Although the new rules could be reassessed after one year, officials familiar with the matter said they viewed the changes as permanent.

For the last decade, government scientists at the NIH have quietly been allowed to consult for biomedical companies under policies that defenders have said helped attract talented personnel to the agency. Hundreds of scientists took millions of dollars in fees and stock from industry. Most of the payments were hidden from public view, raising questions about the scientists' impartiality in overseeing clinical trials and in making recommendations to doctors for treating patients.

Tonight at 10 pm on most PBS stations:

Independent Lens
February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four
Tuesday, February 1, 10:00pm

CHANNEL 13 (Thirteen/WNET New York)

On February 1, 1960, four college students staged a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement. In this intimate portrait, viewers learn what led these four friends to protest   and how their lives have been affected. Producers: Steven Channing and Rebecca Cerese. Co-presentation with South Carolina ETV

CC TVPG Educational Taping Rights: 1 year

Again, PBS set up an excellent supporting web site for this show. And this is critical: What "Education taping rights" means is you can record and distribute this episode of Independent Lens for educational purposes for a year after the broadcast is aired. So get your recorders, people.

Bush's Unprecedented Attack on African Americans
by James Ridgeway
January 27th, 2005 4:21 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C. For four years Bush didn't meet with the Congressional Black Caucus and paid no heed to African Americans, except, of course, to repeat the Republican mantra of how terribly concerned we all are and how we just want to include you under the big Republican tent. But yesterday, reinvigorated by his election mandate, Bush called the caucus and fed them a line of bullshit.

...Social Security reform that turns over substantial hunks of a person's account to Wall Street, where the vicissitudes of the marketplace can yo-yo it up and down, is little help to anyone, let alone blacks. The only source of retirement for 40 percent of all African Americans is Social Security, according to Melvin Watt, a Democratic rep from North Carolina. Without it, poverty rates among blacks would double.

Adam at The Questions to your Answers:

February is Black History Month. It is my goal in the next twenty-eight days to write at least four well thought out entries about African American history, and I am urging each of my readers to do the same.

This entry will stay on top the entire month of February and will list all of my writing as well as yours. Hit this entry with a trackback, or leave me a comment, and I will list your writing. At the end of February I will pick one entry that stands out among all the rest and give that author a gift of my choosing. Most likely it will be a book dealing with Black history.

So get the message out to all your readers. If you see somebody writing about Black History month, send them my way so they can have a chance to win a prize. These next few weeks are about celebrating cultural diversity, educating others on that beauty, and learning new things yourself. Please join with me this whole month as we celebrate Black History Month.

Obviously I'll be writing relevant stuff so I'll trackback a couple of times, but I'm disqualifying myself for two reasons:

1. too damn many books already
2. I'd rather incentivize

I have a suggestion of two on the prize which I'll discuss with Adam. And when he picks the winner, I will post it here and at The Niggerati Network. And I'll offer a week guest posting slot here...no topical restrictions as I obviously don't believe in them.

via Michael at Public Domain Progress:

Joshua Mc George	Crystal Swain	Meiissa [sic] Smith	Ralph Parr	Michael Swain

Check Michaels page to find out why I ask. Writing about it will make my keyboard all tacky and smell bad.

It's hard to think of a more disturbing story.

U.S. students say press freedoms go too far
By GREG TOPPO
USA TODAY

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released Monday.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36 percent believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51 percent say they should be able to publish freely; 13 percent have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32 percent say "too much," and 37 percent say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.

The findings aren't surprising to Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Even professional journalists are often unaware of a lot of the freedoms that might be associated with the First Amendment," he says.

The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time," he says: Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults' attitudes.

Although a large majority of students surveyed say musicians and others should be allowed to express "unpopular opinions," 74 percent say people shouldn't be able to burn or deface an American flag as a political statement; 75 percent mistakenly believe it is illegal.

Hillary Clinton collapses during speech in New York
Senator declines hospitalization; reportedly will appear at second event

NBC News and news services

Updated: 1:57 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2005

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton collapsed Monday during during a speech but aides said the former first lady quickly recovered from what they described as a fainting spell triggered by a 24-hour flu and planned to appear at a second public engagement.

"She's fine," aides to the junior senator from New York told NBC News.

An aide to the 57-year-old Clinton, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the senator had been suffering from a flu bug but pressed ahead with an appearance before a group of women voters.

She was speaking about Social Security in a warm room in the Saturn Club in front of 150 people when she briefly lost consciousness, according to the aide.

"She was weak and needed to sit down. She fainted," the aide said.

Colleen DiPirro, president of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce, told WBEN radio station that Clinton told the audience she was feeling weak from a stomach ailment. She then began speaking and collapsed, DiPirro said.

Or, "The Real Reason Social Security Must Change."

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In the early years of Social Security, when many people received full benefits without contributing into the program for their entire working life, they typically took out twice as much money as they put in.

But since 1980, the ratio of benefits to contributions has begun to decline for many reasons. One is that more workers live to collect the benefits. Another is that payroll taxes have been raised to keep the program solvent.

According to C. Eugene Steuerle, an economist at the Urban Institute, most baby boomers will continue to take more money out of the system than they put in; the exception will be those with high lifetime earnings.

But by the time the Generation Xers, those aged 25 to 34, retire beginning in 2030, Steuerle warns that the only positive returns will be enjoyed by one-earner couples and two-earner couples with moderate or low lifetime earnings.

Debate Has Many Sides— and Myths

By Steven Pearlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 7, 1997; Page A01

From some angles, it looks to be a pension plan offering monthly retirement benefits commensurate with contributions. From others, it's an insurance policy against disability or untimely death. From still others, it has all the contours of a massive welfare program that transfers income from the young to the old and from the rich to the poor.

In fact, Social Security has tried to do all of these things. But as a result of unfavorable economic and demographic trends in recent years, meeting all those goals no longer seems possible and some trade-offs are required. That's why a blue-ribbon panel of experts has concluded that the system should be reconceived, the parts unbundled, and each part reformed to make it more efficient and politically sustainable.

Now the debate begins over how to do it. Within minutes of the release of the panel's report yesterday, Washington interest groups and ideological camps moved to claim that one plan or another would "save" the popular retirement system while the other would bankrupt the country or leave the elderly to live out their years in poverty.

At the core of most of these hard-edge positions lay one of several popular myths about Social Security that can be as misleading as they are widely believed.

Below is a brief guide around those myths and through the economic, demographic and political thickets of Social Security:

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"There is really no strong evidence to suggest any positive aspects of moving Social Security funds into equities," Greenspan, the chief architect of the government's last major revisions to Social Security 16 years ago, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Greenspan Wary of Market Role in Social Security Rescue
By Amy Goldstein and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 21, 1999; Page A1

President Clinton's surprise proposal to link the fate of Social Security more closely to the stock market began to stir doubts yesterday about how his initiative would affect the U.S. economy and prompted potent criticism from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

A day after Clinton made an overhaul of Social Security the centerpiece of his State of the Union address, his plan raised fundamental questions about whether the federal government should assume an unprecedented role in the workings of private enterprise.

Greenspan, reflecting a wave of criticism that surfaced yesterday, contended that by pouring billions of dollars in Social Security reserves into Wall Street for the first time, the government inevitably would mingle politics into its investment decisions and would not produce the kind of returns that the administration hopes for. He also raised concerns about whether the government would end up in the business of picking which American companies are worth investing in.

Congressional Republicans Agree to Launch Social Security Campaign
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 31, 2005; Page A04

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- Congressional Republicans, after three months of internal debate, this weekend launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that rewriting the Social Security law would be cheaper and less risky than leaving it alone, as the White House opened a campaign to pressure several Senate Democrats to support the changes.

The Republicans left an annual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains with a 104-page playbook titled "Saving Social Security," a deliberate echo of the language President Bill Clinton used to argue that the retirement system's trust fund should be built up in anticipation of the baby boomers' retirement.

Though I've never suggested it before, it may be time to get ol' Bill back in the public debate.

Clinton never supported privatization of Social Security. He said he was open to considering the idea.

"I don't know what I would do, but I am open to the idea that if we can get a higher rate of return in some fashion than we have been getting in the past, while being fair to everybody and guaranteeing that we'll still be lifting the same percentage of people out of poverty, we ought to be open to those options," Clinton said at a forum on Social Security at the University of New Mexico. "Because I think that's better than raising the payroll tax a lot more. . . . I don't want to cut benefits substantially . . . and I don't want to, you know, close down the National Park Service or stop supporting education."

The overall agenda of this administration will enrich those who are not in need, has already impoverished so many that small increase relative to the growth of the economy in funding the safety net and other programs to prevent poverty must be spread so widely that each person in need gets less.

As for the National Park Service, it seems Bush intends to fold it into the Department of Energy,

Clinton's support for privatization was contingent on its not damaging the middle and lower classes. And he asked (futilely) for budgetary restraint on the part of Republican Congresscritters.

Clinton used the opportunity to urge congressional Republicans once again not to use projected budget surpluses for deep tax cuts and to stash it away for Social Security. "In an election year, asking politicians to hold off on a tax cut is almost defying human nature," he said. But "let's deal with first things first."

And actually, even Republicans saw the sense in that.

House Republicans went into Tuesday's election promising to make deep tax cuts next year but emerged stressing the need to first ensure the financial future of the Social Security system.

"I am prepared to lead a bipartisan effort in the Congress and I'm counting on you to do your part," Bill Archer (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said yesterday in a letter to President Clinton, asking him to submit a "legislative initiative that is second to none."

Neither party has committed itself to support specific changes in the popular retirement program, and Republicans clearly want Clinton to go first.

Still, Archer's statements represented an important shift for House Republicans who had pushed unsuccessfully for big tax cuts this year only to be burned by Democrats' apparent success using Clinton's call to "save Social Security first" in several fall races.

But what did they do first? Dip into the surplus for tax cuts. Then cut tax rates so the surplus couldn't be recovered...and that surplus was the collateral for the retirement benefits they claim they were trying to protect.

If they want to invoke Bill Clinton, they have to live with his pointing out they are misrepresenting him.

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In the final rules, the administration said it had tried to balance two "potentially competing objectives": maximizing the number of employers who qualify for subsidies and "providing greater protection to beneficiaries."

Employers Can Get Medicare Subsidies for Lower Benefits
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: January 31, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - The Bush administration has touched off a furious debate with new rules allowing employers to collect billions of dollars in federal subsidies for prescription drug benefits less generous than what many retirees were expecting under the new Medicare law.

In theory, those retiree benefits should be at least equal in value to the new Medicare drug benefit. But that will not always be the case, according to Medicare officials, labor unions and specialists in employee benefits.

In comparing retiree benefits with Medicare, the administration said, many employers will be able to ignore Medicare's catastrophic coverage, which helps people with high drug costs and accounts for about one-fourth of the annual value of the standard Medicare drug benefit, $300 out of $1,220.

Final rules for the new program were published Friday in the Federal Register. The new drug benefit becomes available next January.

In issuing the rules, Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the federal subsidies would reverse the erosion of retiree health benefits and enable employers to "offer high-quality retiree coverage at a much lower cost." To qualify, Dr. McClellan said, employers must provide coverage "as good as or better than" the standard Medicare drug benefit.

But JoAnn C. Volk, a health policy analyst at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, "The rules allow an employer to get the subsidy for a benefit that is less valuable to retirees than what they would receive if they signed up for the Medicare drug benefit and the employer dropped coverage altogether."

OPEC Ministers Leave Production Unchanged

By JAD MOUAWAD

VIENNA, Jan. 30 - OPEC ministers, whose efforts failed to contain rising oil prices last year, decided to leave their production unchanged after meeting here today, as they become increasingly convinced that current high prices are not hurting global economic growth.

Oil ministers with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept the group's production at 27 million barrels a day. Sheik Ahmad Fahad al-Sabah, OPEC's president, said producers would cut their output before the group's next meeting in seven weeks if prices tumbled because of a seasonally weaker second quarter.

OPEC, which accounts for half the world's oil exports, also dropped a pledge to maintain its benchmark price between $22 and $28 a barrel, saying that the price band had become "unrealistic" but did not say what new level the group would be seeking in the future.

"We have to find an acceptable figure to defend," said Sheik al-Sabah, who is also the oil minister from Kuwait. "As Kuwait's representative, I think $32 to $35 a barrel would be a good number but all my colleagues have a different number in mind."

U.S. Property Prices Too High? Some Funds Look Abroad

By J. ALEX TARQUINIO

INVESTORS who worry that the American property market may be peaking have another option: putting money into real estate abroad.

Such moves have become more attractive, thanks to the export of an American form of real estate ownership, the real estate investment trust. REIT's, which generally own commercial properties like office towers, shopping malls or apartment buildings, are required to distribute most of their profits as dividends each year. Within the last four years, France, Japan and Hong Kong have allowed real estate companies to operate like American REIT's, and lawmakers in Britain and Germany are taking steps in that direction.

The spread of this ownership structure has contributed to a flood of dollars into three American mutual funds that specialize in foreign real estate. Investors put $79.3 million into the two largest, Alpine International Real Estate and ING Global Real Estate, from July 1, 2004, through Wednesday, compared with a net inflow of $4.1 million to both funds in the first half of 2004, according to AMG Data Services.

"Investors are aware that real estate prices have moved up a lot in the U.S.," said Samuel A. Lieber, manager of the Alpine fund. "There's too much money trying to chase property. Smart investors are saying, 'Let's go abroad.' "

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The evidence thus far, however, indicates that Muslims living in America haven't constituted a social base for Al Qaeda. It is striking, in fact, that so little illegality has been uncovered in a population so thoroughly investigated. Prosecutions of alleged terrorist-related activities, which should represent the most definitive picture of the internal threat, have established very little - if any - evidence of domestic Al Qaeda cells. Nothing else in the public record of this massive law enforcement and intelligence effort suggests that a conspiracy exists - a remarkably clean bill for these communities.

Notably, the 9/11 commission itself found no evidence of a domestic social base knowingly aiding the hijackers prior to their attack. Some of the 19 conspirators received minor assistance from an individual or two, but those individuals haven't been identified, described, or prosecuted; if they existed, they were very likely not rooted in local communities, and indeed the hijackers stayed clear of such attachments as well.

...So it can scarcely come as a surprise that in surveys in the Muslim world, even in friendly places like Turkey and Jordan, the US is viewed as a menace, at war with Islam. The great danger here is that with years of suspicion, innuendo, and harassment, buttressed by a new culture of internal security, Muslims in America will feel increasing isolation and hostility, beyond even what they sense today. This could even result in a strain of radicalism among their youth.

A focus on facts ought to dispel mistrust of US Muslims

By JOHN TIRMAN

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - One of the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks and the frequent terrorist alerts ever since is the role played, if any, by American Muslims in supporting Al Qaeda operations. The US government acts as if there is a support base of some kind. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told a CNN reporter during the Republican convention, "We know there are Al Qaeda cells" operating inside the country. During the early August scare about terrorists targeting financial institutions, newspaper reports often alluded to, but did not identify or describe, a support network or individuals living in the US.

The antiterror campaign has shaken the 5 million or so Muslims in the US, a large majority of whom are American citizens. Law enforcement agents have interviewed nearly 200,000 Muslims and others from predominantly Islamic countries; hundreds have been deported or detained for long periods; thousands were subject to a "special registration," and now hundreds have been indicted in widely publicized "terrorist" prosecutions. Charities and other social institutions have been shut down or disabled, and surveillance in these communities is now a given.

But the cardinal question of whether domestic Muslim populations actually pose a security threat remains unanswered - indeed, unarticulated - in public discourse and official pronouncements.

The question is neither impolite nor unimportant. We know that most politically violent groups require a "social base" - knowing supporters who don't participate directly in militant operations. Such a base is likely to exist where such groups carry out attacks. Diasporas often support such groups with money, communications, and political access. None of this is particularly new, but before 9/11 the violence was always somewhere else - Northern Ireland, Palestine, South Africa, and the like.

Now the nexus of threat is here, and the rules of the game are altered. There is no territorial struggle, and the numbers of ethnic and national populations involved number two dozen or more. International migration has created enormous flows of people. Muslims, like many immigrants before them, tend to gravitate toward one another into neighborhoods where mosques, common language, social networks, and opportunities exist.

It is these communities in Brooklyn, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere that have attracted law enforcement attention.

Okay, it's more like "I'm sorry these folks are opportunistic bastards."

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...since 2000, Evangelical Christians across the globe have mounted a missionary effort targeting the "10/40 Window" - the Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist nations between 10 degrees and 40 degrees north latitude. East Asians, such as Koreans, as well as Westerners are active in several countries.

But now the tsunami has drawn a host of smaller Christian groups to the region. They see the tragedy as an opportunity to present their spiritual message along with material aid.

Disaster aid furthers fears of proselytizing

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For countries with thousands left homeless and bereft by the tsunami, the outpouring of help from around the world is a godsend. Yet in some nations, the growing presence of faith-based agencies dispensing the aid is posing another challenge - stirring tensions already simmering around evangelism and anti-Christian violence.

In Sri Lanka, for example, prior to the tsunami, two anti-conversion bills that would make "unethical conversions" illegal were introduced into parliament. Reacting to a perceived increase in Christian proselytizing, the bill proposed by a militant Buddhist party would impose fines and five to seven years imprisonment for anyone who gives material aid to someone of another faith.

Omalpe Sobitha, a Buddhist monk member of parliament, charged aid groups with offering money, food, employment, or other inducements to convert people to Christianity.

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Journalists recognize the techniques in the program as "spinning" - in this case enlisting peer-reviewed science in making the case for an idea that hasn't been submitted to the intense rigor of that same peer-review process. Intelligent design so far has failed to meet the most basic of scientific standards.

Another notable quote:

All of this is not to say that intelligent design, as a religious belief or philosophy, has no place on public television. If the program honestly presented the idea in the context of religion - not claiming it is science but that it does seek standing as science - it might well have been worthy of a public TV broadcast, as would differing or competing religious or philosophical beliefs about creation.

Editorial: KNME did right thing to pull 'science' show

January 27, 2005

As a scientific theory, "intelligent design" simply isn't.

As an extension of Judeo-Christian dogma on the subject of creation, it might provide a compelling argument for those who need to justify their personal religious beliefs by organizing the natural world to fit those beliefs.

That's fine. We respect that and all who hold such beliefs.

But faith is not science. And science is not faith. And the controversial TV program "Unlocking the Mysteries of Life" is not science programming suitable for tax-supported public television. The program does not pass educational, journalistic, artistic or informational tests.

Intelligent design, presented in this program as a counterpoint to biological evolution, raises serious ethical, balance and intellectual questions that cannot be escaped by simply claiming the film presents an alternative scientific view to evolution and that, as such, it deserves airtime on public TV stations such as Albuquerque's KNME Channel 5.

Journalists recognize the techniques in the program as "spinning" - in this case enlisting peer-reviewed science in making the case for an idea that hasn't been submitted to the intense rigor of that same peer-review process. Intelligent design so far has failed to meet the most basic of scientific standards.

KNME has come under fire for deciding, based on the station's established guidelines, not to broadcast the program earlier this month. KNME's basis for not airing it was not the program's content - although perhaps it should have been.

KNME's decision was based on the station management's inability to establish that the content of this program - which was not produced within the Public Broadcast System - was produced independently of the program's funding sources. In this case, those providing the funds were religious organizations and affiliated groups, whose avowed mission is to promote intelligent design as science - which it is not.

Don't take our word for that. Take the word of the largest organization of scientists in the world, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On intelligent design, the AAAS position is simple: It is not science and does not belong in a science education curriculum.

The AAAS statement says "individual scientists and philosophers of science have provided substantive critiques of `intelligent design,' demonstrating significant conceptual flaws in its formulation, a lack of credible scientific evidence and misrepresentation of scientific facts."

None of the AAAS critique appears in "Unlocking the Mysteries of Life." No one from the AAAS is interviewed. No biologists are interviewed about scientific problems with intelligent design. No contrary voices or evidence is offered, although thousands exist.

Why? Perhaps because the scientific theory that explains how life came to exist on Earth is evolution, and it has stood the test of time across centuries. Unlike intelligent design, it has endured the most intense scientific scrutiny.

It not only has been sustained but also has evolved and prospered amid modern scientific revelations, such as the importance of genetics and the vital role DNA serves as the chemical code of life.

Evolution is the very core of biology. But as a scientific principle, evolution is not unique to biology. It is fundamental to all science in explaining how nature works, from the smallest, complicated living cell to the realities of planetary geology to the physical and chemical births of stars within evolving galaxies and the stars' evolution into solar systems.

KNME acted properly and in the interest of its viewers. Those who tune in public TV programs should be grateful. They are entitled to see accurate and transparent programs - not religion disguised as science any more than science posing as religion.

All of this is not to say that intelligent design, as a religious belief or philosophy, has no place on public television. If the program honestly presented the idea in the context of religion - not claiming it is science but that it does seek standing as science - it might well have been worthy of a public TV broadcast, as would differing or competing religious or philosophical beliefs about creation.

KNME is a precious community, regional and national TV resource. In this decision, it affirmed worthy and cherished values of public broadcasting. In adhering to those values, it deserves the support of Albuquerque and other New Mexico citizens.

Bush Urges Parents to Turn Off Indecent TV
Fri Jan 28, 2005 04:07 PM ET

By Peter Kaplan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said parents should turn off their televisions if they feel the programs being broadcast violate their standards of decency.

In a taped interview to be aired on the public affairs channel C-SPAN on Sunday, Bush waded into the thorny debate over how far the government should go to clamp down on indecent antics on radio and TV.

"As a free-speech advocate, I often told parents who were complaining about content, you're the first line of responsibility; they put an off button (on) the TV for a reason. Turn it off," Bush told C-SPAN interviewer Brian Lamb.

The comments come as Capitol Hill lawmakers discuss a possible crackdown on radio and TV indecency and Bush considers who should replace the outgoing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Powell.

Nope.

Officials: U.S. Rebuffs Europe on Iran Nuke Talks
Sun Jan 30, 2005 01:06 PM ET
By Saul Hudson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has rebuffed pleas to join a European diplomatic drive to persuade Iran to give up any ambitions to add nuclear bombs to its arsenal, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats say.

For months, Britain, France and Germany have hoped to improve their bargaining power with the Islamic republic by involving Washington in a proposed accord over an end to its uranium enrichment activities.

That effort has intensified since President Bush's re-election in November, culminating last week with ministerial visits to Condoleezza Rice days before she took up her new post as secretary of state, they said.

So far, the Americans show no sign of giving ground.

"It's what they (the Europeans) have always wanted to do," a senior Bush administration official said. "(British Foreign Secretary) Jack (Straw) came over hoping Condi would change our policy and she didn't."

A senior State Department official said Straw, who visited on Monday, one day before Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer came on a similar mission, outlined European hopes for the negotiations.

The idea of getting the Bush administration into the talks "is in the air," he said.

"But we have not been (formally) asked yet and when we are, we will say, 'What good would it do?"'

via Politopics

Looking Black and talking white
by ALTON H. MADDOX JR.
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 1/26/2005

Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two days. With Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry dissenting, sixteen members of the Committee, including Sen. Barack Obama, sent her nomination to the floor of the Senate for confirmation.

I watched the hearings. If I were without any prior knowledge of Rice and Obama and had been blindfolded, I would have never been able to sense that either Rice or Obama had ever shared the African experience. Ebonics was out of the question.

White legislators, on the other hand, never forget to mention the "Founding Fathers."  They respect the  Founding Fathers  for making them who they are. Blacks have their own Founding Mothers and Fathers. Usually, they are kept in storage while Blacks adopt the "Founding Fathers." 

Rice's family lived in "Bombingham" during Dixie's bloody days of the 1960's, but they were far removed from the civil rights movement. Obama also had no connection with the Black struggle. Obama, Rice and their ilk have hijacked the goals of the movement.

Ms. Winters of Politopics feels this is "unfair" (regular quotes, not sneer quotes):

What does that mean? Not every black person is going to be like these people and not every black person should? And who says that these people represent the only true black experience? Who says that their sacrifice is the only standard by which sacrifice can be measured? We have to move beyond the days of determining one's commitment to their race based on how they sound when they speak or how much their acts and deeds mimic those of others that came before. We all contribute in different ways because we are all different people. There shouldn't be any "black" way to talk, think, sacrifice or anything else.

Let us consider this.

Once a fictional person challenged my "right to speak for Black people" (THOSE are sneer quotes). He said he lived next to an upper middle class Black person who he was confident wouldn't agree with any of my 'answers.' I told him that was possible, but I'd be willing to be we'd agree on the questions. Mr. Maddox is pointing out that Sen. Obama and Dr. Rice do not appear to agree with the majority of Black folks on those questions.

Maybe it's just the weight they place on the questions. Maybe it's that they feel the questions lie outside their domain. But Dr. Rice and Sen. Obama are catching some heat for it, just as Black kids are told they are "acting white" when they seem to disrespect (by not attending to) the things other Black kids find important self-identifiers. They stand as much chance of being accepted as exemplars by Black folks as you would have of being an exemplar for Christian evangelists by insisting the church celebrate Passover.

Personally, I have little beef with the choices these folks have made. Sen. Obama in particular said right up front he's not going to inherit Adam Clayton Powell's role as the Senator from Black America...I actually respect that enough that I was one of the first folks to add him to my blogroll (until the election was over, anyway). Dr. Rice I find more problematic because she publicly equated the Iraq invasion with the Civil Rights movement...still I categorize her as a loyal employee and let it go at that.

Still, this means I am not saying either of their actions are representative or specifically supportive of the Black American communities. I'm saying you shouldn't expect it of them. And I'm saying they aren't "really" Black...I'd say that's a larger matter than one's performance in a very public job. But I can Sen. Obama is not a "race man," Dr. Rice is not a "race woman."

Something else to consider.

Ms. Winters says there should be no Black way to "talk, think, sacrifice or anything." How would your average Republican supporter respond to this statement?

There shouldn't be any "American" way to talk, think, sacrifice or anything else.

Maybe she's right...but we are shaped in large degree by our experiences an common experiences bring about common ways. So even if there "shouldn't be" a Black way of being, there is.

I must admit, though,

Conservatives judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. Or did I get that in the wrong order?

Charles Krauthammer, a psychologist, learned man, writer of presidential speeches, and failed admitter of the aforementioned fact when it's relevant, engages in such blatant white paternalism that it surprises me he didn't rename himself "Boss" for the article.

Because of her race, her symbolism and her personal story, Rice is not a run-of-the-mill appointment but a historic one. Which makes some of the more vitriolic charges against the first African American woman ever chosen for the office once held by Thomas Jefferson particularly wounding and politically risky.

Mark Dayton of Minnesota accused her of lying in order to persuade the American people to go to war -- a charge that is not just false but that most Americans don't believe. Rice was not a generator of intelligence. She was a consumer -- of a highly defective product.

Ms. Black Rice, who is black, was blackily blacking along when...

that last line is one of the better summations I've read...

WHEN TO OPPOSE A CABINET NOMINEE?

Washington - In the opening weeks of the new legislative session, Democrats on Capitol Hill have vigorously disputed the fitness of Condoleezza Rice, a black woman, to become secretary of state, and promised to raise tough objections to a Hispanic nominee, Alberto R. Gonzales, the president's choice for attorney general.

What's the point of even making that observation, like anyone on the damn planet that might possibly read your article doesn't know?

Republicans expressed surprise that their adversaries have aimed such intense fire at two Cabinet nominees who are seen by many as exemplary members of two groups whose votes are crucial to Democratic political success. And they wondered whether such tactics would come back to haunt the Democrats in the next election.

Oh. Race card.

Bush and Brown head for showdown on debt relief
US likely to block Britain's 'Marshall Plan for Africa' at G7 summit
Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer

George W Bush will emerge as the major obstacle to Britain's ambitious proposals for a new 'Marshall Plan' for Africa this week as the world's finance ministers converge on London for the G7 summit.

With troops mired in Iraq, and Bush under pressure to reduce his vast budget deficit, Washington is reluctant to commit extra cash to relieve the plight of Africa.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder set the scene for a transatlantic confrontation when he became the latest European leader to throw his weight behind Britain's plans for an International Finance Facility that Gordon Brown hopes will release an extra $50 billion for the world's poorest countries. France and Italy had already expressed support for a large increase in aid and debt relief, and a Treasury official said: 'We can go into the G7 this week with Europe presenting a united front. There's a momentum building.'

However, campaigners are warning that US opposition could prove a major stumbling block. 'We are not expecting a complete agreement along the lines of the UK proposals: I think the US is still pretty intransigent,' said Romilly Greenhill of Action Aid.

Japan has also expressed doubts about the proposals, but the Treasury believes Tokyo would fall into line if the US signed up.

Social Security Semantics, Continued

Earlier this week CJR Daily wrote about the war of words that has broken out over the terminology reporters are using to describe the investment accounts central to President Bush's plans for a Social Security overhaul. So far the battle has been fought out between "private accounts" -- the longtime favorite of investment account proponents -- and "personal accounts" -- the new favorite of investment account proponents. The plan's proponents prefer "personal accounts" because polling has shown the public more receptive to those words than to "private accounts. "

Over the last couple of days a third phrase -- "individual accounts" -- has emerged. In yesterday's Washington Post Mike Allen labeled the accounts, "individual stock and bond accounts," and today the New York Times' David Rosenbaum used the term, "individual investment accounts."

Earlier, we asked the AP's David Espo, whose writing has reflected a shift from "private" to "personal" over the last two months, what inspired the switch. Espo told us that he was unaware of the change.

So we put the same questions to Allen and Rosenbaum.

Asked why he had chosen "individual," Allen responded via email: "In writing about Social Security, we are trying to choose language that is precise and descriptive, and does not buy into loaded terms that may be preferred by one side or the other. My mission when I am choosing words is to serve the reader, by being accurate and neutral without being obtuse."

Rosenbaum, who has used the "individual" phrase in the past, and also used "private" and "personal" in today's article, told CJR Daily, that he doesn't "consciously decide" which term to use. He said, "I don't see any difference between private, personal, or individual," and therefore uses them all. He added, "I'm sorry the White House doesn't like the word "private" because it doesn't poll well...[but] that's just too bad."

Rosenbaum also shared a lesson he learned from covering the Reagan presidency twenty years ago that he is carrying over to his coverage of today's Social Security debate, "I don't use 'reform' because I think 'reform' has a spin on it." In writing about Social Security, Rosenbaum said he will stick to more "neutral" words, such as "change" or "revamp."

Quote of note:

Scalia has launched a "charm initiative," said Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal organization People for the American Way, which would strongly oppose a Scalia promotion.

To Some, 'Chief Justice Scalia' Has a Certain Ring

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A07

Justice Antonin Scalia struck a pessimistic note when he spoke at the right-of-center Ethics and Public Policy Center here last Sept. 20. Lamenting his inability to stop the Supreme Court's slide away from the principles of judicial restraint he espouses, Scalia said he felt like "Frodo in 'The Lord of the Rings,' soldiering on."

Scalia's mood was much brighter on Jan. 13, when he appeared at the American University's Washington College of Law for an unusual televised "conversation" on international law with his liberal colleague Stephen G. Breyer -- a frequent target of Scalia's barbs in written opinions. The two traded quips and generally disagreed without being disagreeable. "Stephen and I do not fight," Scalia joshed. "We do not fight at all."

Some Scalia-watchers think they know what accounts for his sunnier public face of late: On Nov. 2, President Bush was reelected and Republicans captured 55 seats in the Senate. They believe that Scalia -- seeing an opportunity to move up to chief justice if the current chief, William H. Rehnquist, who is 80 and seriously ill, leaves -- is fine-tuning his image.

Quote of note:

All presidents weigh the political implications of their agendas, and hope that policies that prove popular will strengthen a party's claims on particular constituencies. What is notable about the Bush White House, some analysts believe, is the extent to which its agenda is crafted with an eye toward the long-term partisan implications.

"I've been assuming all along that creating the basis for a durable Republican majority was one of the major purposes of the administration's policy agenda," said Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. "Indeed, I don't think these guys do anything without weighing the potential partisan consequences and are particularly attracted to policies that might increase the Republican coalition."

This is something you should keep in mind when judging the Bush agenda...yes, motivation is something you need to take into account.

We know spin is a major element of all political speech, so we know what is said is not the true reason anything is done. What you need to look at is impact.

Anyway...

Bush Aims To Forge A GOP Legacy
Second-Term Plans Look to Undercut Democratic Pillars

By Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A01

When President Bush stands before Congress on Wednesday night to deliver his State of the Union address, it is a safe bet that he will not announce that one of his goals is the long-term enfeeblement of the Democratic Party.

But a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.

Legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party.

GOP strategists, likewise, hope that the proposed changes to Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans.

Less visible policies also have sharp political overtones. The administration's transformation of civil service rules at federal agencies, for instance, would limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery.

If the Bush agenda is enacted, "there will be a continued growth in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republican, both in terms of self-identified party ID and in terms of their [economic] interests," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and an operative who speaks regularly with White House senior adviser Karl Rove.

This is from Nick Bradbury, the guy that wrote my RSS reader, FeedDemon.

Get the Film

For more than 10 years Eyes on the Prize has been unavailable on video and blocked from television-- it is still available in many libraries. UPDATE: we have taken down the torrent links to these videos at the request of lawyers for Blackside, Inc. This sucks!

Like I said, just ganking shit ain't the way to go.

Confession: I have my copies. I am not having any "showings" outside my nieces and grandnieces...and that won't even be me, it will be my sisters. I'm not spreading it broadly though. It would interfere with Blackside, Inc.'s efforts to renew the licensing...and it's going to be hard enough.

What's to say?

The inability to identify most of the candidates basically means people must vote party or ethnicity (same thing in Iraq, for the most part). And those who are known and inaccessible to the insurgents have a huge advantage. Functionally, that means those who are already working with the USofA, like Allawi.

With 7000 candidates, most of whom deliberately kept their identities hidden, what are Iraqis voting for? They're voting for the right to vote...a symbolic gesture to which I can relate. And with a solid majority making that gesture the turnout would be high. Going back to when Black folks' in America first got the vote shows that you aren't necessarily going to benefit from that theoretical right. I've known people that felt if voting could actually change things it would be illegal. But regardless of the outcome, this election is important to the USofA because regardless of any claims to the contrary about intent it is the first necessary step to taking the target off of American asses.

Just get ready for another flip-flop domestically. First this election was Iraq choosing its own destiny, then the fact there's an election at all is a huge victory. Today, a 50% turnout will likely have the Neocon's pundits talking about Iraq choosing its own destiny again (I'm not watching TV yet so I don't know what they're saying).