Legacy: A Panicked Response To the 'Great Negro Plot'

By George Dewan

Staff Writer

Thirteen black men burned to death at the stake. Seventeen black men hanged. Two white men and two white women also hanged. All thirty-four were executed in New York City between May 11 and August 29, 1741, as part of the episode early New Yorkers called the "Great Negro Plot," or the "New York Conspiracy."
-- Thomas J. Davis, "A Rumor of Revolt"

In the spring and summer of 1741, New York City's white residents panicked over what they saw as an imminent slave insurrection by its growing black population, augmented by "country slaves" from western Long Island. The beginning was low-keyed, without any great portent of things to come. In late February of 1741 there was a middle-of-the-night burglary at the Broad Street shop of merchant Robert Hogg. Taken were a pair of silver candlesticks, some linen and a sack of silver coins. Arrested the next day and charged with the crime was a black slave named Caesar.

At the time, one out of every five residents of the city was a black slave. There were restrictive laws controlling slave activities on the books, but they were loosely enforced. New Yorkers still remembered a slave insurrection in 1712 involving arson and the murder of nine whites that resulted in the execution of 19 black slaves.

Caesar had been arrested at John Hughson's tavern on upper Broadway, where the slave's mistress, a white prostitute named Peggy Kerry, hung out. Hughson and his wife, Sarah, both white, came under immediate suspicion as receivers of the stolen goods. Investigators got lucky when they questioned a 16-year-old, white, indentured servant of the Hughsons named Mary Burton, who claimed to know something about the robbery, but said, "I'll be murdered or poisoned by the Hughsons and the negroes for what I should tell you."

Mary was held in protective custody and her tongue was loosened with promises of getting her released from her indenture. She accused the Hughsons of receiving stolen property from the slaves, and when the goods were found, the Hughsons were in trouble.

A new element was thrust into the escalating tensions when, on March 18, the first of a series of suspicious fires broke out in the city. The city council raised the possibility of a conspiracy of arsonists, and suspicions grew that black slaves were responsible. Four fires were set on April 6. As cries of "The Negroes are rising!" filled the air, mobs of angry white citizens roamed the streets to round up black slaves. Nearly a hundred were hauled off to jail.

Then, out of the blue, came a connection to the February burglary. It was provided to the grand jury by none other than Mary Burton. Now she accused the Hughsons, Kerry, Caesar and other slaves of plotting to burn the city and massacre the whites. "In their common conversations they used to say that when all this was done, Caesar should be governor, and Hughson, my master, king," Mary told the jury.

With her damning testimony, many New Yorkers thought that 1712 was about to repeat itself.

Caesar and another slave named Prince were found guilty of burglary, and on May 11 they were both hanged. Two more slaves, Cuffee and Quack, were hanged on May 30, but not before they had accused dozens of others of being in on a conspiracy. Mary Burton spun wilder and wilder stories, making more accusations. Though her testimony was riddled with inconsistencies, no one seemed to care. Writing it all down, the prosecuting officials cast their net wider and wider.

Scores of alleged conspirators were hauled in and interrogated. Hughson, his wife and Kerry were tried on June 4 and found guilty of conspiracy. They were hanged eight days later.

One of the alleged conspirators was a slave from Brooklyn named Doctor Harry, who was accused of bringing poison to Hughson's tavern for blacks to use on themselves if convicted. He denied ever being at Hughson's, but was burned at the stake on July 18.

Other Long Island slaves were later implicated by testimony of a city slave named Jack, who said he once proposed burning a white man's shed. "In firing the shed, that'll fire the whole town," Jack said. "And then the Negroes in town, with the Negroes that'll come from Long Island, will murder the white people."

The arrests and trials and executions continued through the summer, until, on the last day of August, the paroxysm of fear, anger and suspicion virtually ended with the hanging of a white schoolteacher, John Ury. He was officially found guilty of conspiracy, but he was really tried because he was thought to be a Catholic priest, which he wasn't. Catholics were often discriminated against in the strongly Protestant city. What got Ury in trouble was his ability to read Latin.

Mary Burton got her reward from the city on Sept. 2, 1742. It totaled 100 pounds sterling, enough to pay off her indenture and set herself free, with 81 pounds left over.

Most historians agree that there was no grand slave conspiracy. But there were real racial problems in New York City in 1741, and they exploded in the conspiracy trials, which some have compared to the Salem witch trials of 1692.

"New York's officials indulged themselves and the public in acting out their fears," Davis, a history professor at Arizona State University, wrote recently in his book. "They simply deceived themselves by systematizing real disorders into a single scheme where all the enemies of the English world suddenly surfaced."

The Rise of Slavery
New York had the most slaves in the North, and Long Island had almost half of them
By George Dewan

Staff Writer

Long Island had the largest slave population of any rural or urban area in the north for most of the colonial era. For almost two centuries, New York was a slave colony and Long Island was a slave island. Beginning with the introduction of 11 black slaves into New Netherlands in 1626, the number of slaves in New York grew to almost 20,000 on the eve of the Revolutionary War a century and a half later.

"Throughout the slave era in the north, New Yorkers held more enslaved Africans than the residents in the combined New England colonies or those in New Jersey or Pennsylvania," writes Richard S. Moss in his 1993 book, "Slavery on Long Island."

In 1698 there were 2,130 blacks in New York, almost all of them slaves, more than in any colony north of Maryland. Almost half of them were on Long Island. And one out of five Suffolk County residents was black, virtually all of them slaves.

Slavery in the New York colony was unlike that on the plantations of the Deep South, where close to a half-million slaves lived in servitude by the time of the Revolution, and would continue to be enslaved until the Civil War. New York State would not ban slavery within its borders until 1827, though two minor exceptions continued until 1841.

On Long Island, slaves were widely scattered about the thinly populated countryside, and although a wealthy 18th Century landowner like William Floyd in Mastic might have a dozen or so slaves, one, two or three was more common. So the daily family life of a Long Island slave was markedly different from his or her counterpart in the South, where large groups of blacks in separate slave quarters could at least share their religion, culture and social life, often with their own family members.

Long Island slavery may have been different, but it was slavery, nonetheless. Black men, and occasionally American Indians, were owned by white men, just as they owned cattle, sheep and farm implements.

Their daily life was regulated, both by the needs of their owners and by laws of the colony. The first major slave law came in 1702, titled "An Act for Regulating Slaves." No person could trade with a slave without permission of the slave's master or mistress. Owners could punish their slaves at their own discretion, though they were not allowed to take a slave's life or sever a body part. Slaves could not carry guns. Except when working for their owners, slaves could not congregate in groups larger than three, with whipping the penalty, up to 40 lashes. Towns could appoint a public whipper, who would be paid up to three shillings for each slave whipped.

Slaves worked in the fields alongside their owners, and many of them worked their way into more skilled jobs as craftsmen, such as shoemakers, blacksmiths and woodworkers. Female slaves also did outside work, but more often were used as household servants.

But because an owner usually had few slaves, married slaves were often forced to live apart, seeing each other only occasionally. They received little education. Many slaves converted to Christianity, and one of their few rewards was being allowed to go to church on Sunday...

U-46 suit first test for new state law
By Tara Malone, Daily Herald Staff Writer
Daily Herald.com

Suburban Chicago, IL USA - The charges of racial discrimination filed by three Latino families this week against Elgin Area School District U-46 will be the first test of the 2-year-old Illinois Civil Rights Act. The outcome could have significant ramifications for civil rights cases in Illinois.

Under the new law, someone claiming they've been discriminated against no longer needs to prove the bias was intended. The law requires only proof that the net effect of a governmental policy hurts one race or ethnic group more than another. The state law sidesteps the burden of intent required by federal law.

Wal-Mart settles with government in child labor cases
By Siobhan McDonough, Associated Press Writer  |  February 12, 2005

WASHINGTON --Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, will pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it broke child labor laws in New Hampshire and two other states, the Labor Department said Saturday.

The 24 violations, which occurred at stores in Arkansas, Connecticut and New Hampshire, had to do with teenage workers who used hazardous equipment such as a chain saw, paper bailers and fork lifts.

Wal-Mart denied the allegations but agreed to pay the penalty. A spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Ark., company said Wal-Mart was preparing a statement Saturday.

Iraq's hard-line Shi'ites vow to resist US agenda
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff  |  February 12, 2005

BAGHDAD -- A vociferous and well-organized faction of extremist Shi'ite Muslims is mobilizing to challenge the new government that emerges from Iraq's recent election and to push for a hard line against the United States.

The religious and political leaders are loosely allied with the militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and include supporters of Sadr's uprising in several cities last April. In recent days, including at prayer services yesterday, they vowed to use seats they expect to win in the Transitional National Assembly to demand a timetable for the departure of US forces.

Pregnant woman kills her attacker, police say

February 12, 2005

Kentucky

FORT MITCHELL -- A woman who is nine-months' pregnant fought off and killed a knife-wielding woman who may have been trying to steal the baby, police said yesterday. Police said 26-year-old Sarah Brady acted in self-defense in killing Katherine Smith on Thursday. No charges were filed. Smith, 22, had been falsely telling neighbors for weeks that she was pregnant, and a search of her apartment after her death revealed a full baby nursery, investigators said. Brady, 26, suffered only minor cuts. The coroner's office confirmed yesterday that Smith was not pregnant. (AP) Washington, D.C.

Bush cuts hit Democratic states, analysis finds
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff  |  February 12, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts and other traditionally Democratic states would see their share of federal grant money shrink under President Bush's 2006 budget, compared to Republican states in the South and West, according to a Globe analysis of funding projections compiled by the White House budget office.

Critics and defenders of the president's $2.6 trillion budget say they do not believe the budget proposal represents a deliberate attack on states that voted for Democrat John F. Kerry, but rather that Bush's budget priorities tend to hurt those states that rely more on the health, community development, and housing programs that are targeted for reductions.

HIV Superstrain Surfaces in N.Y.
New York Daily News
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A20

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 -- A previously unknown superstrain of the virus that causes AIDS has been diagnosed in a New York man who had unprotected sex with several men in October, sparking fears among health officials and gays.

The strain is drug-resistant and progressed in a matter of months from HIV infection to full-blown AIDS, a process that normally takes 10 or more years.

"I've been living with HIV since 1981, and I was dreading this day, because I knew this day would come when multi-drug-resistant strains of the virus would begin to enter into the community," said Dennis de Leon, president of the Latino Commission on AIDS.

U.S. Firms Losing Health Care Battle, GM Chairman Says
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 11, 2005; Page E01

American manufacturers are losing their ability to compete in the global marketplace in large measure because of the crushing burden of health care costs, General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner Jr. said yesterday as he called on corporate and government leaders to find "some serious medicine" for the nation's ailing health system.

In a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, the auto executive, who is responsible for providing health insurance for more people than any other private employer in the nation, graphically detailed how rising medical bills are eating into his company's bottom line and ultimately threatening the viability of most U.S. firms.

"Failing to address the health care crisis would be the worst kind of procrastination," Wagoner said, "the kind that places our children and our grandchildren at risk and threatens the health and global competitiveness of our nation's economy."

Sounds good so far...

Previously Untargeted Programs at Risk
68 Among Those Bush Seeks to Cut
By Peter Baker and Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A04

President Bush's budget plan calls for elimination or drastic reduction 68 federal programs that he has never targeted before, including vocational-education grants, emergency medical services for children and assistance to local law enforcement agencies, according to a list the White House released yesterday.

Brokerage Leaves Coalition
Edward Jones Pressed On Bush Plan Support
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page E01

A large Midwest brokerage abruptly withdrew from a business coalition that backs President Bush's Social Security proposals after the AFL-CIO staged protests at two of the firm's offices and attacked it on the Internet.

Edward D. Jones & Co., which operates under the trade name Edward Jones, resigned from the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a coalition of corporations and trade associations that has long pressed for the creation of private accounts as part of Social Security. The St. Louis company has been a member of the coalition since 1998, the year of its inception.

Hastert Cautions Bush About Social Security Plan

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A05

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has warned the White House that voters are not yet ready to accept fundamental changes to Social Security as wary Republicans are cautioning the president to be as vague as possible about his plan.

White House and congressional GOP tacticians said yesterday that they now see little chance that Bush will issue a detailed plan for partially privatizing Social Security the way he released specific proposals for tax cuts and other major initiatives.

Republicans Eat Their Own on Rule of Law, Gun Issues

In an astonishing display of party discipline and empty headedness, Republicans decided to not only waive all laws so they can build any fence, anywhere, at anytime; but decided its ok if the government uses the new drivers license/ID registry in the bill to serve as a gun registry.

First, the crazy fence vote. Section 102 of the Immigration Bill that passed today provides that "notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws" he determines necessary to construct barriers and fences.

Consider what this means. Not only can the Secretary waive environmental, labor and laws concerning Native American rights in connection with the construction of the 17 mile fence near San Diego, but this allows him to waive all laws concerning the construction of any fence at any time!! This means the Administration can take property without compensation, engage in direct cash payoffs to themselves and their friends, hire child labor, violate the civil rights laws, and even murder people if they think it would help them construct a barrier fence somewhere, anywhere in America. For good order the Republicans even stripped the courts of jurisdiction to review whether or not the law or their actions violate the constitution - the first time in our nation's history we will have totally preempted an independent branch of government's constitutional authority.

With passage of this provision, which is supported by the Administration and headed for the next pass supplemental appropriations bill, the Republicans will truly be turning us into a nation of men, not laws. It is hard to think of how the powers granted under Section 102 vary in any way from the powers one commonly thinks of a dictator as possessing. When Sam Farr (D-CA) sought to strip out this language, his amendment failed by a vote of 179-243.

You should read this post at Crooked Timber. Understanding it will explain why debt relief for Third World countries is appropriate, even moral. And you should see a disturbing echo of our political process as well.

Bush Threatens to Veto Changes in Medicare's Drug Benefit
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 - President Bush threatened today to veto any changes Congress might make in Medicare's prescription drug benefit, which becomes available in January 2006 to millions of elderly and disabled people.

New cost estimates have prompted many lawmakers to say they want to revisit the new Medicare law this year. Some conservatives seek cutbacks in benefits and cost controls. Liberals and some centrists want to require the government to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers.

Buttoday, Mr. Bush said, "I signed Medicare reform proudly, and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto."

Krugman:

Until now, the administration has also been able to pretend that the budget deficit isn't an important issue so the role of tax cuts in causing that deficit can be ignored. But Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem.

Why shouldn't the affluent, who have done so well from Mr. Bush's policies, pay part of the price of dealing with that problem?

Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit.

On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.)

Why, then, shouldn't a rollback of high-end tax cuts be on the table?

According to the NY Times there were 13,000 fewer people out of work than they expected (303,000 jobless people is good news, you see).

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell 13,000 last week, to the lowest level in more than four years, the Labor Department reported yesterday.

Jobless claims declined to 303,000, the lowest since Oct. 28, 2000, from 316,000 the week before, according to the report. Claims had been forecast to rise to 325,000 in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

But there were 47,000 more people who did NOT get a job (or give up looking for one...the statistical equivalent) than expected.

"Compassionate conservatism," R.I.P.
Bush's budget barely cuts his vast deficit -- and the people it hurts worst are the poorest Americans.
By Joe Conason

Feb. 11, 2005  | "I am a fiscal conservative," declared George W. Bush in 1999, when he first presented himself as a candidate for president of the United States. "And I am a compassionate conservative." The $2.5 trillion budget Bush sent to Congress last week shows once again that he is neither.

In his 2006 budget, the president demands domestic spending cuts that permanently undercut any pretence of "compassion." Exactly how much his cuts would injure the needy, the young and the elderly isn't completely clear because the numbers provided by the White House aren't fully specific -- particularly in the "out years" after 2006. Also missing from the charts and graphs provided by the president are the tens of billions in "supplemental" expenses incurred in Afghanistan and Iraq, the hundreds of billions he wants to spend on privatizing Social Security, and the true trillion-dollar cost of his Medicare prescription-drug program.

It has been said the Social Security discussion isn't as much about economics as ethics and I think that is true. The economics of the situation are clear: means testing and increasing the wage cap on Social Security payments will keep things in balance are far forward as you need to calculate. But if you follow the players in the discussion and compare their rhetoric to their interests you can start to see patterns. And those patterns should help you decide who to trust.

You have to move fast, though. There's this crew, the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, that was mentioned in this L.A. Times piece a couple of weeks ago. This is what AWRS says of themselves:

Quote of note:

Blogger Josh Marshall, who's been rallying the left on Social Security, has no doubt what Bush is saying: "We and many others had predicted that the president's angle here was to default on the Treasury bonds sitting in the Social Security Trust Fund. And now we can be pretty confident that he plans to do just that since today he said that the Trust Fund doesn't even exist."

The Amazing Disappearing Trust Fund
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, February 11, 2005; 12:43 PM

President Bush slipped something new into his Social Security pitch on Wednesday. And it was there again twice yesterday.

Of, By and For Corporate Lobbyists

The administration is set for a major push of its Orwellian "Clear Skies Act," which the National Academy of Sciences revealed last month would result in more air pollution than under current law. Yesterday, secret documents obtained by the National Resources Defense Counsel revealed the legislation was written by corporate lobbyists representing the industries it supposedly regulates. In April 2003, a group of eight power plant companies reviewed the administration's first draft and submitted a wish list of "essential" changes to further weaken already anemic pollution controls. The administration gave the polluters what they wanted. Now, Congress has to decide if it will join the charade. Apparently, the media can't be bothered to report on corporate control of administration policy. Thus far, this story hasn't been covered by a single major newspaper. Plenty of info, however, on Camilla Parker Bowles.

Starting Monday, I'm going to require logins for comments. This "Texas Hold-em" asshole needs to leave an ugly-looking comment every day. I choose to head it off before I get annoyed.

LATER: Too late. Dicks decided to try to sneak in some links immediately. And I found out why...I forgot to "rel=nofollow" the homepage link. So you may find anonymous comments impossible for a while.

So Dr. Rice is getting all these props for style during her swing through Europe. I can't help but wonder if the folks she's talking to see her kinder, gentler presentation as a real shift in policy.

I also find it interesting that people are talking about "her" arguments

The heart of Rice's argument goes something like this: The greatest strategic challenge of our time lies in the wider Middle East. It's from there that the terrorists who struck the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, emerged, and it's there that Islamist extremism is still being spawned. Poverty may contribute to the problem and should be tackled, not least in the Palestinian territories, but Osama bin Laden was hardly poor. The root causes are political. Freedom from want matters; more important by far is the want of freedom.

In shock after 9/11, the Bush administration began with a military and police response. It was going to kick butt, even if it sometimes kicked the wrong butt. Now it recognizes that addressing the underlying causes of terrorism requires more and longer-term deployment of economic, political and cultural means. "Even more important than military and indeed economic power," Rice said in Paris on Tuesday, "is the power of ideas."

and "her" thinking

OSSIE DAVIS, BELOVED ACTOR AND HUMANITARIAN, REMEMBERED
Visitation and Funeral Service, Open to the Public, Set for Friday and Saturday, February 11 &12

WHAT: Funeral services for the late Ossie Davis, 87, noted writer, actor and activist, have been confirmed. In keeping with the spirit of his life and his concern for humanity, both his visitation and funeral are open to the public.

VISITATION:
Friday, February 11-5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Abyssinian Baptist Church, 132 W. 138th Street, Manhattan

FUNERAL DETAILS:
Saturday, February 12 at 12:00pm noon,
Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive (120th street), Manhattan

The presiding ministers at the ecumenical service will be the Reverend James Forbes, pastor of Riverside Church, and the Reverend Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Davis was a member.

The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The release of the Douglass Papers, from the Library of Congress's Manuscript Division, contains approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images) relating to Douglass' life as an escaped slave, abolitionist, editor, orator, and public servant. The papers span the years 1841 to 1964, with the bulk of the material from 1862 to 1895. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches and articles by Douglass and his contemporaries, a draft of his autobiography, financial and legal papers, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous items. These papers reveal Douglass' interest in diverse subjects such as politics, emancipation, racial prejudice, women's suffrage, and prison reform. Included is correspondence with many prominent civil rights reformers of his day, including Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Horace Greeley, and Russell Lant, and political leaders such as Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Scrapbooks document Douglass' role as minister to Haiti and the controversy surrounding his interracial second marriage. The online release of the Frederick Douglass Papers is made possible through the generous support of the Citigroup Foundation.

When Bush suggested adjusting Social Security to reflect Black men's shorter expected lifespan I just nodded my head in appreciation. Not since Abraham Lincoln himself has the Republican view of Black Americans as tools to attain their own goals been so clearly articulated.

By the way, remember a few years back when everyone was saying Black males had some greater than 50% chance of dying before they were 21 years old? How did that turn out?

Yeah, we got differences in life expectancy but they get hyped for various reasons at various times. In fact, I want to share a little hearsay. This weekend in the discussion of Social Security on The McLaughlin Report, Clarence Page told Pat Robertson that life expectancy figure averages in our higher youth mortality rate and if he's lucky enough to reach 60 he's "likely to live longer than you."

On the one hand

2004 Was Fourth-Warmest Year Ever Recorded
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 10, 2005

Last year was the fourth warmest since systematic temperature measurements began around the world in the 19th century, NASA scientists said yesterday.

Particularly high temperatures were measured over Alaska, the Caspian Sea region of Europe and the Antarctic Peninsula, while the United States was unusually cool. But the global average continued a 30-year rise that is "due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said Dr. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in Manhattan.

On the other hand

Quote of note:

One of the studies, by researchers at Duke and Stanford universities and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in California, estimated that routine one-time testing of everyone would cut new infections each year by slightly more than 20 percent, and that every infected patient identified would gain an average of 18 months of life.

The other study, by Yale and Harvard researchers, found that testing people every three to five years would be cost effective for all but the lowest-risk people, like those who are celibate or are in monogamous heterosexual relationships. And even for those people, one-time testing was found to be cost effective.

Experts Want H.I.V. Testing for All Adults

Quote of note:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also called for new hearings on the drug benefit. She said she is especially interested in lifting a provision that bars the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices with the drug industry. The drug industry had insisted on that measure.

And in the spirit of bipartisanship:

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Wednesday that he wants White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten to tell Congress "what the real numbers are," and pronounced himself "very suspect of this program as to its cost."

Gregg later said outside the Senate chamber that while he would like to hold hearings on the drug benefit, "I'm a lone voice on that issue."

Medicare shortfall next on Bush's fix-it list
After new figures forecast that the Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost taxpayers at least $724 billion, President Bush vowed to make improving the program's financial picture a priority.

Quote of note:

Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time.

Five of the intelligence reports specifically mentioned Al Qaeda's training or capability to conduct hijackings, the report said. Two mentioned suicide operations, although not connected to aviation, the report said.

A spokeswoman for the F.A.A., the agency that bears the brunt of the commission's criticism, said Wednesday that the agency was well aware of the threat posed by terrorists before Sept. 11 and took substantive steps to counter it, including the expanded use of explosives detection units.

"We had a lot of information about threats," said the spokeswoman, Laura J. Brown. "But we didn't have specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures."

Not just (though not least either) because we're overextended militarily. North Korea did not break the agreement they had with the USofA, so in international legal terms we got no leg to stand on.

Anyway...

North Korea Says It Has Nuclear Weapons and Rejects Talks

By JAMES BROOKE

TOKYO, Feb. 10 - In a surprising admission, North Korea's hard-line Communist government declared publicly today for the first time that it has nuclear weapons.

It also said that it will boycott United States-sponsored regional talks designed to end its nuclear program, according to a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement transmitted today by the reclusive nation's wire service.

Quotes of note:

For local residents, who presumed Katie had been abducted by a stranger, the tragedy deepened with the arrest on murder charges of Charles Hickman, 20, a fixture in front of his family's trailer on Crothersville's main street, just across from the Dollar General and Penn Villa.

"It's changed too late," said Misty Banks, who works at the Butcher Block convenience store, where she gave Reese's peanut butter cups and Popsicles to Katie even when she could not pay. "They've known it's been going on this whole time, and they have to wait until a 10-year-old's dead?"

Too Late for Katie, Town Tackles a Drug's Scourge

Oscar's risks don't end at Chris Rock
In addition to this year's in-your-face host, key changes are expected in the set, format and how some of the Academy Awards are presented.

By Mary McNamara, Times Staff Writer

As if Chris Rock were not enough, this year's Oscar ceremony is shaping up to be hip-hop loose and in-your-face. Or at least as hip-hop loose and in-your-face as a show that revolves around a bunch of film types in evening dress getting awards and making speeches can be.

Ever since the announcement that Rock would host the 77th Academy Awards, the buzz has been as much about how the high-intensity, often blasphemous comic will fit into a traditional ceremony as it has in predicting the winners.

Strangeness of note:

Foster told authorities she saw Thompson use the device almost daily during the August 2003 murder trial of Kurt Vomberg, a man accused of shaking a toddler to death. The case ended in a hung jury. The whooshing sound could be heard on Foster's audiotape of the trial.

Okla. Judge's Career Ended by Allegations
- By JULIE E. BISBEE, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, February 8, 2005

(02-08) 16:32 PST Oklahoma City, OK (AP) --

Jurors and others in Judge Donald Thompson's courtroom kept hearing a strange whooshing noise, like a bicycle pump or maybe a blood pressure cuff. During one trial, Thompson seemed so distracted that some jurors thought he was playing a hand-held video game or tying fly-fishing lures behind the bench.

Bush Seeks $400 Million to Reward Allies
- By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005

(02-09) 21:31 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

President Bush is asking Congress to set up a $400 million fund to reward nations that have taken political and economic risks to join U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House announced the fund, dubbed the "solidarity initiative," after Bush's meeting Wednesday with Aleksander Kwasniewski, the president of Poland, a nation that is to receive one-fourth of the money.

Quote of note

Since working memory is known to predict many higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in future academic endeavors.

Smart People Choke Under Pressure
By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 09 February, 2005
7:00 a.m. ET

People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.

A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings
More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds.
By Julie Cart
Times Staff Writer

February 10, 2005

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.

The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Sick and Broke
By Elizabeth Warren
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; Page A23

Nobody's safe. That's the warning from the first large-scale study of medical bankruptcy.

Health insurance? That didn't protect 1 million Americans who were financially ruined by illness or medical bills last year.

A comfortable middle-class lifestyle? Good education? Decent job? No safeguards there. Most of the medically bankrupt were middle-class homeowners who had been to college and had responsible jobs -- until illness struck.

Bush seeks 'major shift' with blacks
By Bob Cusack

In the nearly 100 days since he was reelected, President Bush has launched an aggressive campaign to win African-American and Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party.

Political strategists say the president s meetings with minority groups and his move to highlight policies important to them is the start of a major effort to court constituencies that have predominantly embraced Democrats. 

Bush attracted 11 percent of the black vote in 2004, up three percentage points from 2000. Initial polls showed Bush attracting 44 percent of the Hispanic vote last year after getting 35 percent in 2000. Democrats have called the 44 percent figure overstated.

What is not in dispute, however, is that the battle for the minority vote will be fierce in 2006 and 2008.

Slavery and the Making of America.

Tonight, 9pm on WNET, if you're in the NYC area.

And Sunday at 2pm too. So none of that crap about ending past your bedtime.

I've been relaxing a bit today, and that involves time away from politics. I've spent some time today reading this week's Tangled Bank entries.

So I like science. Sue me. Or check it out yourself...if I linked everything I thought was cool you'd think my URL got hijacked by a science blog.

I thought this was funny. Still do.

The Nasonex bee
While collapsing on the couch Tuesday night after my first day of teaching (and burning my hand while making dinner), I caught the tail end of an ad for Nasonex, an allergy medicine. The ad caught my attention because it was using an animated honey bee as its spokes-organism, though, of course, it didn't catch my attention for the right reasons: what stood out were the glaring errors in their animated hymenopteran. The first problem is that the bee in the ad was talking with its mouth. This would be very difficult physiologically, as the bee respiratory system (the tracheal system) is not connected to the mouth at all, and thus the bee could not easily pass air over structures in its mouth to make noise.

A quick visit to the Nasonex website found two good images of the bee to critique.

Can't wait for next week:

Quote of note:

When experimenters told white golfers that the quality of their game would reflect "natural athletic ability" instead of their strategic intellectual prowess, their performance was much worse than that of black players. White male students' performance was similarly depressed when they took a math test in which Asian-Americans were said to do better.

Performance without Anxiety
Fear of reinforcing negative stereotypes, Claude Steele finds, hampers the ability to succeed. The idea is now central in affirmative action and job discrimination fights
By Sally Lehrman

In experiments starting in 1939, American social psychologists Kenneth Clark and Mamie Clark discovered that black children preferred to play with dolls that were white. Their data helped to convince the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that separate education was inherently unequal.

Study Identifies Trade-Off between Motherhood and Longevity

Motherhood is a difficult job. In fact, the results of a new study suggest that, historically, taking on the role early in life was linked to shorter lifespans. A report published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that mothers who gave birth at a young age in the 18th and 19th century also tended to die young. The results suggest that natural selection may have sacrificed a woman's longevity for reproductive success.

Jenni E. Pettay of the University of Turku in Finland and her colleagues analyzed medical records of four generations of Finns born between 1745 and 1903. They found that mothers and daughters tended to share a number of similarities, including the age at which they first gave birth and the number of children they had who survived to adulthood. Across generations, a family's lifespan was relatively consistent, with women who delayed childbirth living longer than women who had their first child at a younger age. In addition, women who waited longer between births lived longer than did mothers who gave birth in quick succession. For males, meanwhile, there was no significant link between the age of first fatherhood and longevity.

Six years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service. This sparked a wave of other sit-ins in college towns across the South. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced "snick"), was created on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh two months later to coordinate these sit-ins, support their leaders, and publicize their activities.

Over the next decade, civil rights activism moved beyond lunch counter sit-ins. In this violently changing political climate, SNCC struggled to define its purpose as it fought white oppression. Out of SNCC came some of today's black leaders, such as former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry, Congressman John Lewis and NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Together with hundreds of other students, they left a lasting impact on American history.

Quotes of note:

In fact, the worst conflicts on the continent are over control of land and natural resources - the oil, diamonds, copper and silver that have fueled the bloodiest conflicts - and the best means of grasping at those has traditionally been to control the central government.

Indeed, if the colonial nation-state is the black man's burden, it has also been the African despot's best friend, a powerful tool when wielded by crafty hands.

But often enough it is the insurgents themselves who oppose the breakup. Having seen how lucrative centralized power can be, most are reluctant to give it up for what is often paradoxically seen as the lesser goal of independence.

Lands Carved for a Colonial Feast: What of the Borders?

By LYDIA POLGREEN

KHARTOUM, Sudan - It is a truism of Africa that the borders bequeathed by white colonial powers, drawn in the 19th-century scramble for Africa at the convenience of London, Paris and Brussels, became the black man's burden.

Like most truisms, this one holds a large measure of truth: the division of the spoils of African conquest created a continent of malformed states that cross ethnic, religious and tribal lines, an elaborate set of booby traps that have exploded into mayhem over the past 50 years.

The consensus seems to be that those borders have stuck because the alternative - a fractured map of Africa with thousands of tiny states, constantly at war - is even worse. [P6: That was not the only alternative, just the only other one Europe could exploit.]

Quote of note:

The booklet warns the migrant that if he decides to use the services of a smuggler, he should not hand his children over to him, not carry packages or drive a vehicle for him, as they may contain drugs, and not trust his assurances.

There is better advice that may save your life, the men said.

"Never hire a coyote on the border," said Mr. Castillo, a thickly built man with whiskers and gold teeth, referring to the smugglers who guide illegal migrants into the United States. Have a friend recommend a contractor while you are in your hometown, he advised. "This way, if anything happens to you, your family knows his family."

The Everymigrant's Guide to Crossing the Border Illegally
By CHARLIE LeDUFF and J. EMILIO FLORES

Quote of note:

The problems Iowa faces are the very solutions it chose two and three generations ago. The state's demographic dilemma wasn't caused by bad weather or high income taxes or the lack of a body of water larger than Rathbun Lake - an Army Corps of Engineers reservoir sometimes known as "Iowa's ocean." It was caused by the state's wholehearted, uncritical embrace of industrial agriculture, which has depopulated the countryside, destroyed the economic and social texture of small towns, and made certain that ordinary Iowans are defenseless against the pollution of factory farming.

These days, all the entry-level jobs in agriculture - the state's biggest industry - happen to be down at the local slaughterhouse, and most of those jobs were filled by the governor's incentive, a few years ago, to bring 100,000 immigrant workers into the state.

Keeping Iowa's Young Folks at Home After They've Seen Minnesota

New White House Estimate Lifts Drug Benefit Cost to $720 Billion

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The Bush administration offered a new estimate of the cost of the Medicare drug benefit on Tuesday, saying it would cost $720 billion in the next 10 years.

That is much more than the $400 billion Congress assumed when it passed legislation creating the benefit in late 2003.

But administration officials said the numbers were not comparable. The original estimate was for the years 2004 to 2013. The new estimate covers the period from 2006, when the drug benefit becomes available, to 2015. [P6: They're right...estimates that include years prior to the program actually beginning are worthless so the numbers are NOT comparable.]

Proof our priorities are shot to hell. And I LOVE the closing line of the article...really relevant, know what I mean?

Va. Bill Sets Fine for Low-Riding Pants
Wednesday, February 9, 2005

(02-09) 04:05 PST Richmond, VA (AP) --Virginians who wear their pants so low their underwear shows may want to think about investing in a stronger belt.

The state's House of Delegates passed a bill Tuesday authorizing a $50 fine for anyone who displays his or her underpants in a "lewd or indecent manner."

Del. Lionell Spruill Sr., a Democrat who opposed the bill, had pleaded with his colleagues to remember their own youthful fashion follies.

During an extended monologue Monday, he talked about how they dressed or wore their hair in their teens. On Tuesday, he said the measure was an unconstitutional attack on young blacks that would force parents to take off work to accompany their children to court just for making a fashion statement.

"This is a foolish bill, Mr. Speaker, because it will hurt so many," Spruill said before the measure was approved 60-34. It now goes to the state Senate.

The bill's sponsor, Del. Algie T. Howell, has said constituents were offended by the exposed underwear. He did not speak on the floor Tuesday.

Spruill and Howell, also a Democrat, are both black.

Quote of note:

Alongside previously proposed cuts to Section 8 housing assistance, these reductions send a stark message to the country's poor, its elderly and its urban youth: You're no longer our problem.

Bush's Budget Transforms the War on Poverty Into a War on the Poor
By Eric Garcetti
Eric Garcetti, who represents the 13th District on the Los Angeles City Council, chairs the city's Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee.
February 9, 2005

President Bush refers to himself as a wartime president, and he has shown resolve not to back down on the battlefield. But the budget he released this week waves a flag of surrender in another war, the 40-year "war on poverty."

The Enrons of Tomorrow -- Count Me In

... It's winter now. I'm cold, but I'm not mad anymore. A lot can happen in six months. A girl can mellow, can't she? George W. Bush turned me around. I'm not reading these new transcripts as a consumer who was rate-raped and left for dead in the cold and dark. I don't see con-artists-in-training apprenticed to master con artists. No, with the Bush plan to privatize Social Security, I'm reading them as a potential stockholder! Enron isn't them anymore   Enron could be me! Try it yourself.

This week, a witness testified in court that Bernard J. Ebbers, the top dog at WorldCom Inc., faked accounting records to get the kind of profit that Wall Street expected him to get, which is why WorldCom went into an $11-billion belly-up bankruptcy. Six months ago, I would have despised Ebbers as a crook who had earned a confirmed booking at a Graybar Hotel. But now, as someone whose retirement nest egg could have been bound up with WorldCom's fortunes, I realize that this is just a guy who was looking out for folks like me and getting a public dunking for it.

See? Bush is right; an ownership society changes everything.

Quote of note:

Much of the meal break controversy hinges on a single phrase. What does the law mean when it says that a company must "provide an employee a meal period"? Early opinion letters from a commission that monitors wage and hour laws said that meant that employers were responsible for ensuring that workers took their required breaks.

Rice said that interpretation — the basis of hundreds of lawsuits — went too far. He said he looked up the word "provide" in a number of dictionaries and never found an element of responsibility. Under the proposed regulations, an employer would satisfy the law if he or she "makes the meal period available to the employee and affords the opportunity to take it." The worker could opt to waive it.

Big-Ticket Drive Supports Gov.'s Agenda
Invitations are handed out for 'an evening with Schwarzenegger,' with dinners up to $100,000.
By Robert Salladay and Peter Nicholas
Times Staff Writers

February 9, 2005

SACRAMENTO   For $100,000, you can sit at the head table with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hobnob at a reception beforehand and pose for pictures with the Republican governor.

But there is a limit to what your money can buy at one of several fundraisers: Only two guests per photo, please.

Billed as "An Evening with Governor Schwarzenegger," invitations to four upcoming events were handed out Tuesday to lobbyists and business interests in Sacramento. They showed that proximity to the Republican governor comes in four varieties: $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000.

The private meetings with some of California's prominent business interests are scheduled to continue through April   gala dinners at the Sheraton Grand in Sacramento to the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco   as the governor pushes his agenda for changing state government.

I've been thinking about putting together a reading list for the study of white folks. I'm not talking about that weak crap that tries to teach white folks to see their advantaged position...a totally useless field of study for Black folks. No, I want books that explain how white folks act on a day-to-day basis. I've decided this online volume should be in the mix...

Psychology of Intelligence Analysis
Author's Preface

This volume pulls together and republishes, with some editing, updating, and additions, articles written during 1978-86 for internal use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. Four of the articles also appeared in the Intelligence Community journal Studies in Intelligence during that time frame. The information is relatively timeless and still relevant to the never-ending quest for better analysis.

The articles are based on reviewing cognitive psychology literature concerning how people process information to make judgments on incomplete and ambiguous information. I selected the experiments and findings that seem most relevant to intelligence analysis and most in need of communication to intelligence analysts. I then translated the technical reports into language that intelligence analysts can understand and interpreted the relevance of these findings to the problems intelligence analysts face.

The result is a compromise that may not be wholly satisfactory to either research psychologists or intelligence analysts. Cognitive psychologists and decision analysts may complain of oversimplification, while the non-psychologist reader may have to absorb some new terminology. Unfortunately, mental processes are so complex that discussion of them does require some specialized vocabulary. Intelligence analysts who have read and thought seriously about the nature of their craft should have no difficulty with this book. Those who are plowing virgin ground may require serious effort.

...I just can't decide whether it should be among the first or among the last to be suggested.

via The Colorblind Society

Quote of note:

"White people are calling, and it's primarily white men," said Cindy Weese, YWCA executive director. "A common theme with all the callers - they've been offended by the commercial." Some have called the ads racist, while others insist racism does not exist in Montana.

Racism ads stir debate, YWCA says
By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian

Does racism exist in Montana? It's a question being raised in the first of a series of YWCA-sponsored radio and television ads airing statewide.

The TV ad: "Think racism no longer exists? Think again. If you're Native American, Asian American, Latin American or African American, you know that racism hasn't gone away."

There's "Earth Mother of Us All," which buys into the idea of black women as uniquely nurturing, patient, forgiving, supportive, long-suffering -- the notion that the black woman was put on Earth to atone for the sins of all the rest of us. (A subset image is "Nubian Queen.")

You know, I don't know a man that wouldn't benefit from having the right woman assume this position relative to him. And back when such discussions were of personal concern I didn't know any woman that was unwilling to assume that position relative to the right man.

I came by that last conclusion by asking women I knew about it. Women I worked with, women I hung out with. Conflating everyone's answers, it seems women want some sign of good judgment before they run around submitting to a guy's will. Also seems a major sign of good judgment is the ability to see when someone else (i.e., her) has equal or greater expertise in a field.

Hot Air in Motown

President Bush heads to Detroit, MI, today as part of his aggressive marketing campaign to sell his deeply flawed —  and very expensive —  Social Security plan. Don't hold your breath waiting for the president to flesh out more details, however; the Detroit Free Press reports "the traditional question and answer period after the speech has been dropped for Bush's visit." (There may be good reason for this: as the New York Times wrote this weekend, when it comes to the Bush plan, "The more we learn, the worse it gets.") Don't believe his hype. Here are the basics to keep in mind when listening to his sales pitch.

PRESIDENT BUSH EXPLAINS IT ALL: Confused about how President Bush's Social Security privatization proposal works? Here is his explanation: "Because the   all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those   changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be   or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled." (Thanks to Atrios.)

The Washington Post does another puff piece on Condi, Nobody's Archetype, that plays the race card in subtle, almost acceptable fashion. I say almost acceptable because the archetypes they list are female archetypes, not Black female...which is to say that they are valid observations and Condi does indeed step out of them. But the "Black" adjective strikes me as somewhat gratuitous when applied to a partisan of the color-blind Party of Lincoln.

Eugene Robinson, the author of the piece, hit four major sexist stereotypes.

There's "Angry Black Woman," personified by Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, the famous-for-being-famous contestant on Donald Trump's "The Apprentice."

This would be any assertive woman in a competitive hierarchy.

Quote of note:

"When you do something that is extremely harmful to both yourself and others, it's not a privacy issue — it's a matter of exercising some personal responsibility for your behavior," Climes said in the statement. "Michigan businesses, taxpayers and co-workers of smokers have the right to protect themselves from the horrendous damage caused by the self-destructive behavior of a small percentage of employees."

Where There's Smoke, It Wouldn't Lead to Firing
Michigan firm bans all nicotine use by workers. A state lawmaker wants to snuff out such rules.
By P.J. Huffstutter
Times Staff Writer

February 8, 2005

CHICAGO   A Michigan state lawmaker said Monday that he planned to introduce a bill to bar companies from firing employees for smoking on their own time.

'91 Memo Warned of Mercury in Shots
By Myron Levin
Times Staff Writer

February 8, 2005

A memo from Merck & Co. shows that, nearly a decade before the first public disclosure, senior executives were concerned that infants were getting an elevated dose of mercury in vaccinations containing a widely used sterilizing agent.

The March 1991 memo, obtained by The Times, said that 6-month-old children who received their shots on schedule would get a mercury dose up to 87 times higher than guidelines for the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish.

"When viewed in this way, the mercury load appears rather large," said the memo from Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, an internationally renowned vaccinologist. It was written to the president of Merck's vaccine division.

Quote of note:

Even with California Republicans confined to minority status in both the legislative and congressional delegations, many members would rather keep the existing lines than gamble on a plan that could plunk them in unfriendly districts where they would have trouble getting reelected.

GOP Fears a Redistricting Backfire
Schwarzenegger plan is seen as jeopardizing control of Congress.
By Peter Nicholas
Times Staff Writer

February 8, 2005

SACRAMENTO   Worried about losing clout in Congress, influential Republicans in Washington are telling Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that he should drop his effort to redraw congressional voting districts in time for next year's elections and limit his focus to reshaping the state Legislature.

Each Side to Call Truce in Middle East
At summit today, Palestinians are to declare an end to their uprising. Israel is to halt military activities in Gaza and the West Bank.
By Ken Ellingwood
Times Staff Writer

February 8, 2005

JERUSALEM   Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to declare simultaneous cease-fires during today's summit in Egypt, a breakthrough that could end a bloody, four-year uprising and ease the way for more far-reaching steps toward peace.

An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the two sides would not sign a truce but their actions would have the same effect. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is to announce an end to the uprising that began in September 2000, and Israel will halt its military activities if the Palestinian leadership makes good on its promise to crack down on armed militants, said the Sharon aide, Raanan Gissin.

...I'll be watching the way comments are used.

Any link entered in the comments in any way (including via trackback) get the rel="nofollow" thing automatically without exception, so the site is of no use to comment spammers. Still, I got one of them. And I always watch conversations that start up in two-week-old posts. Add in one seriously juvenile bit of spew and the thought of allowing only registered folk to comment arises.

We got the Shirley Chisolm documentary, about her run for the Presidency, tonight on Channel 13 in New York.

"The Church in the Southern Black Community" collects autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials. These texts present a collected history of the way Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life. Coverage begins with white churches' conversion efforts, especially in the post-Revolutionary period, and depicts the tensions and contradictions between the egalitarian potential of evangelical Christianity and the realities of slavery. It focuses, through slave narratives and observations by other African American authors, on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival.

So we know now Bush's private accounts will do exactly nothing to address any problem Social Security might have. This brings several questions and suggestions to mind.

1. If we are really concerned about Social Security, shouldn't we drop all discussion of private accounts until the economic issues are resolved?
2. Are George W. Bush's economic advisors so unknowledgeable that they didn't know private accounts wouldn't reduce Social Security's unfunded liabilities?
3. When did George W. Bush find out his suggestion would have no impact on the stability of Social Security?
4. When did George W. Bush's economic advisors find out his suggestion would have no impact on the stability of Social Security?
5. Did George W. Bush talk to his economic advisors before going public with his suggestion?

It seems Bush and Co. are either too unknowledgeable to make good decisions (and you were warned, remember) or they knew the impact of their privatization plan would be nothing like what they claimed (and there is precedent for this possibility as well).

Same day I see the puff piece on Condi's (hey, the title is for serious discussions) love of football, Zenpundit speculates on a presidential run.

Might as well run Alan Keyes.

She'd get the Republican version of the Dean treatment at best. It will be discussed so folks can feel all warm and multiculturally color-blind. But as the primaries progressed they'd realize she "can't win." All those racist Democrats would crawl out of the woodwork to vote against her, you see.

Or worse, everyone would mouth the right words all the way up to election day, like they did in New York when David Dinkins first ran against Rudolph Giuliani. And great hordes of Southerners would just not vote.

from Diminished By Discrimination We Scarcely See

Discrimination isn't a thunderbolt, it isn't an abrupt slap in the face. It's the slow drumbeat of being underappreciated, feeling uncomfortable and encountering roadblocks along the path to success. These subtle distinctions help make women feel out of place.

I'd been told, from graduate school on, that I'd have no trouble getting ahead: I was a woman, people would come after me. When they didn't, I subliminally absorbed the idea that I wasn't good enough. But was it possible that all the women getting physics and astronomy degrees from top institutions weren't good enough? I saw precious few being hired into faculty jobs.

When I told my thesis adviser I was pregnant, he said, "So, you want to have it all!" I smiled but later thought, Wait a minute, isn't that what all you guys have? Why is it "all" for me and "normal" for you?

But feeling out of place over and over again eventually soaks in; it did for me. About a decade ago, frustrated and alienated, I approached the director of my institution to ask about special management training for women: Maybe there were tips that would help me navigate the foreign waters in which I found myself. He didn't seem to understand. I said, "You know, it's like being the red fish in the sea of blue fish -- I want to understand the blue-fish rules." "Oh," he answered. "Maybe it's not your lack of training, Meg, maybe it's just your difficult personality."

They were "good," even "very good" but the men were always better. Some of this was caused by letters of recommendation. Every woman was always compared to other women, as if every woman scientist is female first and a scientist second. Also, women's letters were somehow more pedestrian -- the candidate "works hard" and she "has a nice personality," "gets along well with others." Once you see the patterns, you realize that these evaluations reflect people's expectations more than reality.

Team Rice, Playing Away
Will State's Head Coach Miss Her First Kickoff?
By Dale Russakoff

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 6, 2005; Page D01

Condoleezza Rice's first overseas trip as secretary of state may coincide with a moment of historic opportunity in the Middle East, but the timing couldn't be worse for her inner football fanatic. Since the dawn of the Super Bowl, when Rice was 12, she never has missed a kickoff. For 38 Super Bowl Sundays, she was in the stands or glued to a television, most of them beside her father and football mentor, the late John W. Rice.

But Super Bowl XXXIX will find the new secretary of state in Jerusalem, where it will be 1:30 a.m. Monday at kickoff time. "Unless she can find an all-night sports bar in the West Bank, she may have to miss it," laments Carmen Policy, a close friend and former president of Rice's favorite team, the Cleveland Browns.

Quote of note:

Tax increases -- more accurately, undoing the reckless tax cuts that account for a good portion of the current constraints -- are, unfortunately, off the political table.

That is unacceptable.

Were I arguing the Democratic case I'd remind folks we're at war, and we all much make sacrifices in such times. The middle and lower class are sacrificing their lives and their childrens' lives, their financial well-being...I would go so far as to say their critical intelligence but I don't think that would fly. But we know what the lower and middle classes are sacrificing.

What sacrifice is being offered by the wealthy?

Because they own so much of the USofA they benefit more from its safety and should be willing to pay for that protection.

U.S. HIV Cases Soaring Among Black Women
Social Factors Make Group Vulnerable
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A01

...That development, epidemiologists say, is attributable to socioeconomic and demographic conditions specific to many African American communities. Black neighborhoods, they say, are more likely to be plagued by joblessness, poverty, drug use and a high ratio of women to men, a significant portion of whom cycle in and out of a prison system where the rate of HIV infection is estimated to be as much as 10 times higher than in the general population.

For black women, the result has been devastating, said Debra Fraser-Howze, founding president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

"We should be very afraid," she said. "We should be afraid and we should be planning. What are we going to do when these women get sick? Most of these women don't even know they're HIV-positive. What are we going to do with these children? When women get sick, there is no one left to take care of the family."

Quote of note:

Four or five other members of the 105th who were spectators received counseling, Johnson said.

I can't imaging what girlie had under her shirt that made four or five people need counceling.

Actually, it's the same reason.

Anyway...

The Right's Attack on Public Pensions
By Phil Angelides
Phil Angelides is treasurer of the state of California.

February 7, 2005

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says getting rid of public pension plans for California's state and local government workers is about helping to balance the budget. Peel back the budget wrapping on his plan, though, and you will find the governor's real agenda: the California prong of a national attack on the pension funds that have stood up for corporate reform and the interests of ordinary families and investors hurt by the recent wave of corporate scandal.

The governor has proposed privatizing government pension plans and replacing them with individual 401(k)-style private accounts. His proposal strikes at the power of public pension funds, which have used their financial clout to protect the retirement savings of 2 million Californians   teachers, police officers and other public servants.

Rumsfeld's Nuclear Genie
February 7, 2005

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush declared that he will contain the budget deficit and pursue peaceful diplomacy to end the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's insistence on reviving a wasteful and dangerous nuclear program undermines both goals.

Last year, at the urging of Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water, Congress slashed all funding for Rumsfeld's pet project   studying how to build a nuclear weapon capable of penetrating hardened underground targets. Ever since, administration hawks have been howling that the United States would be imperiled without the "bunker buster" weapons.

Quote of note:

Nationwide, prescription pills have become a societal force. Adults and children rely on them for a growing list of afflictions, including anxiety, depression, even shyness, for which few alternatives were available a generation ago. Nearly half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug.

Meanwhile, direct-to-consumer drug marketing that touts new and expanded uses has become widespread. Adults and children alike are exposed to print, television and radio ads promising happier, more fulfilled lives. For young people, experts say, all these factors appear to have blurred the line between the benefits and dangers of the medications.

Their drugs of choice
Teens are turning to Vicodin, Ritalin and other easily obtained prescription pills.
By Daniel Costello
Times Staff Writer

February 7, 2005

Ryan Smith remembers the night, during his junior year of high school, when a friend gave him his first Vicodin. "It felt so incredible. I remember thinking, 'I am going to do this for the rest of my life,' " he says.

Quote of note:

Some board members now are questioning the decision to equip classrooms with the costly Waterford computers. With $50 million, the district could have built three new elementary schools, kept primary grade class sizes at 20 students for a year or refurbished all middle and high school science labs.

Reading Program Didn't Boost Skills
L.A. Unified's nearly $50-million Waterford computer system comes into question.
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer

February 7, 2005

The Los Angeles Unified School District spent nearly $50 million on a computer reading program that failed to improve student reading skills and in some cases hindered achievement because schools did not use it properly, according to records and interviews.

It seems impossible for them to unscrew their lips enough to let the truth pass through.

Bush's Deficit Plan Is All in the Math
The budget strategy to halve the shortfall by 2009 relies on how and what things are counted.
By Joel Havemann
Times Staff Writer

February 7, 2005

WASHINGTON   The budget President Bush will present to Congress today will show the federal deficit cut in half by the time he leaves office in four years.

At least technically it will.

... It is the 2004 deficit that Bush is promising to cut in half, but he's not starting with the actual 2004 deficit of $412 billion.

Instead, his benchmark is the projected $521-billion deficit that his Office of Management and Budget estimated a year ago, when the fiscal year was four months old. Using half of that figure, Bush's goal is to reach a deficit of $260.5 billion.

If Bush were to start with the actual 2004 figure, his goal would be a deficit of $206 billion   $54.5 billion more.

There are more twists. Bush proposes to cut the deficit in half not in dollars but as a share of the economy. If the economy grows, as is projected, then the deficit will decline as a share of the economy even if it does not shrink by a single dollar.

The 2004 deficit was 4.5% of the economy. So in fiscal 2009 it must be 2.2% or less. That is exactly the average share of the last 43 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Finally, the budget that the president will send to Congress will, like his past budgets, omit some major deficit-raising items.

Bush's budget axe to fall on poor
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday February 7, 2005
The Guardian

President Bush is proposing to reduce spending on public health and social welfare in the US to help pay for tax cuts and the war in Iraq, according to early reports of today's White House budget.

In an attempt to keep government spending under control at a time of record deficits, Mr Bush's proposals to Congress will include cuts in public housing subsidies, in health projects aimed at diseases related to poverty, and in food stamps, which help America's poorest buy groceries.

I wonder if the White House sent out a list of issues Rumsfeld must be asked about. I believe Meet the Press not only asked about the same issues, they asked about them in the same order.

Senator McCain ended his interview, which was filled with not-quite-answers about hi sposition on the Social Security thing, with the expected "What's your alternative?"

In my opinion the alternative is reverse the tax cut on the top 1% (or less!) of income earners.

And I like what Congressman Pelosi did in her interview. She would not be driven off her policy positions, and she didn't let herself become the focus...all without being evasive.

Rumsfeld was Rumsfeld.

Quote of note:

When asked what would happen to the people who would not have enough income to avoid poverty, the administration official said, "I'm not sure if I'm understanding your question."

Read the Fine Print

The more we learn, the worse it gets.

Last Wednesday, as President Bush prepped for his State of the Union address, a White House official gave reporters a background briefing on some of the details of Mr. Bush's Social Security privatization plan. Almost point for point, whatever the president said that sounded good sounded bad when the details were filled in.

If Profits Grow, How Can the Market Sink?
By MARK HULBERT

Published: February 6, 2005

...The reason that the overall market usually fails to react more favorably to rapidly rising earnings is not that earnings growth is bearish itself. The problem, the professors say, is that such growth usually leads to higher interest rates. When rates rise, the net present value of future earnings, cash flow and dividends automatically falls, and this generally causes the market to decline.

The professors say the Federal Reserve is unlikely to feel pressure to raise rates when just one company reports better-than-expected earnings. So the company's profit growth can be expected to translate into a higher stock price. But the Fed will certainly feel that pressure when aggregate market earnings rise quickly.

Business Files Its Objections to State's Hunt for Back Taxes
By Evan Halper and Marc Lifsher
Times Staff Writers

February 6, 2005

SACRAMENTO   Business groups are pushing to scale back a new state law that imposes stiff penalties on taxpayers who do not pay all they owe.

The law parallels an aggressive move by tax officials to collect back taxes from tens of thousands of delinquent California residents and businesses. Under its terms, tougher penalties than any the state has ever imposed will apply to tax dodgers who do not come clean during a two-month amnesty that ends March 31.

Supporters of the program say scaling it back would cost the state too much. The face-off highlights a deep split in Sacramento over how aggressively the state should go after suspected tax cheats.

Corporations and anti-tax groups are promoting emergency legislation to narrow the scope of the law and soften   if not eliminate   some of the fines. The administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in discussions with the business groups about backing the legislation or asking tax officials to make some businesses exempt from penalties.