Prometheus 6

A Cry for Leadership on Civil Rights By Mary Frances Berry Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A27 In 1980, when I was appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by President Jimmy Carter, the glass of equal opportunity was half full. Today it's teeming with new and intractable challenges that keep it half empty. In the early days of my tenure, the unemployment rate for blacks was twice that of whites, and the black youth jobless rates -- teetering at 60 percent -- compelled Carter to start a youth unemployment initiative. There was much talk of how awful urban K-12 education was. The uneasiness surrounding the Supreme Court's Bakke ruling on higher education was balanced by the more hopeful Weber decision leaving in place affirmative action in employment. Fear persisted about the clock being turned back by creeping prejudice and erosion of the reforms of recent decades. But blacks were becoming admirals and generals, and they were visible in the service academies. An African American middle class was becoming reality. By the time President Ronald Reagan took office, however, there was an atmosphere in this country in which civil rights could be branded as a special interest. I joined the chorus that declared resolutely that civil rights were in fact in the national interest. The battles intensified at the commission, punctuated by fights, firings and court-ordered reinstatements. With Reagan and the supposedly kinder, gentler Bush I administration came an assault on "racial quotas," as well as cuts in the budget for civil rights enforcement. Some insisted that sex and race discrimination -- if they even existed -- had nothing to do with the economic plight of women or racial minorities. Comparable worth was regarded by such people as a loony idea. But voices persisted, perhaps in the background, to insist otherwise. By the time President Bill Clinton took office, affirmative action was almost on its deathbed -- labeled "reverse discrimination" against white men. Clinton threw in a lifeboat called "mend it, don't end it." Meanwhile, family and medical leave were coupled with an end to welfare as we know it, giving disadvantaged women dead-end jobs that trapped them and their children in poverty. The black unemployment rate went down in the economic boom. Highlighting the major problem of health care disparities, Clinton talked the talk about ending invidious discrimination in every area of American life. Racial profiling against blacks and Latinos was in the national spotlight. African American incarceration rates soared, making the United States the world leader in imprisonment. Thanks largely to the "war on drugs" and draconian sentencing, more young black men were enrolled in the prison system than in institutions of higher education. Enter the years of Bush II with a wave of voting rights complaints that led us to the Florida election battle of 2000. Despite the detractors, our recommendations on the civil rights commission contributed to the national debate on election reform. The Help America Vote Act -- a good try in its conception but lacking sorely in implementation -- attempted to deal with the problem. During President Bush's first term, we witnessed a retreat on environmental justice, accelerated racial profiling of the traditional targets and expanded targeting of other people of color who "look Arab." And in the post-Sept. 11 world, civil liberties and freedoms were compressed in a chilling quest for national security. A new surge in unemployment among black youth and high Latino dropout rates have gotten only passing attention. At the same time, opposition to affirmative action, and nominations of judges with a stunted vision of equal opportunity, have fostered loud and heated controversies as the administration draws its battle lines. Today's half-full glass has led to new conversations never considered two decades ago: New Americans bring before us the realities of life for Latinos, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and the attending issues of immigration rights and English as a second language in our public schools. Diversity is evident in appointments to positions never before held by women, blacks or other people of color. So too is the certainty that there is no policy victory in merely putting diverse faces in high places. Today the nation is crying out for presidential leadership on intractable issues of race, opportunity and rights. A watchdog is still needed: that is the job the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has done. The president can either squander or seize the moment. His stiff resolve to quiet critics and defeat those he believes may pose a threat to his notion of liberty and justice -- both here and abroad -- can only distance us from the values he has pledged to protect. The writer, outgoing chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Stepping Up to the Plate for the City By Colbert I. King Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A27 "Thanks for that stupid woman that you call council member to vote against the baseball stadium. Do you really think that that dumbass jungle monkey and her socialist ways is going to win? Why are you people full of envy for upstarting and growing a community that needs something like this? No wonder so many of you kill each other, none of you don't have brains and feed off like animals. Nice job socialists!!!!" -- e-mail to D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp at 8:26 a.m. on Dec. 15. Linda Cropp has come under heavy attack. She's been described as a double-crossing, treacherous demagogue because she had the temerity to question the cost of building a taxpayer-subsidized baseball stadium. Her eleventh-hour proposal to require half the cost of the stadium to be funded with private financing, which was backed overwhelmingly by her council colleagues, has sent the yahoos off the deep end.

A Tenuous Hold on the Middle Class African Americans On Shifting Ground By Alec Klein Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A01 Ground Gained and Lost If it looks tough from Cobb's perspective today, the past century has told a story of progress for blacks and other minorities. The first two World Wars created new opportunities for factory jobs in the North, and blacks migrated by the millions from the Jim Crow South, creating the backbone of a nascent middle class, with relatively secure jobs and benefits. Coupled with the desegregation of colleges and universities and the increasing influence of black communities in urban centers like Washington, African Americans began to find firmer economic ground. Immigrant groups, particularly Hispanics, have also been absorbed into that generally rising economy. Since 1967, the earliest year for which statistics are available, median household income for blacks has increased by nearly 47 percent, to $29,645 in 2003. That's much faster than the 31 percent growth rate for white households during that time. But the median for black households is still $16,000 less than for white ones, a point reinforced by a study released this week by two Duke University professors who found that African Americans in the baby boom generation have not closed the income gap. Hispanics have made gains, too, with household median income rising to $32,997 in 2003, up 13 percent since 1972, the earliest year for which Census has tabulated data for that minority group. Asians have a household median income of $55,699, although their rate of growth, at 12 percent since 1987, the earliest year available, has not been as dramatic as it has been for blacks. Within the trend, however, there are some troubling footnotes. The unemployment rate for blacks remains nearly double the national rate of less than 6 percent. In addition, two of the job categories that have historically helped boost black income -- manufacturing and the public sector -- are stagnating, or worse. Public-sector jobs opened up to blacks in greater numbers in the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but cuts in government spending throughout the United States in recent years have limited growth. Black employment in such jobs rose 66 percent from 1983 to 1995 but has been essentially flat since then. The number of manufacturing jobs, meanwhile, has been sliding for a quarter-century, falling by 10 percent between 1992 and 2002 alone. Blacks lost ground at an even quicker pace: Over that same 10 years, the number of African Americans in manufacturing declined by 18 percent. As a result, African Americans have turned to the service sector -- spanning such professions as data processing and advertising and lower-level jobs such as housekeeping -- like much of the rest of the workforce, only more so. The number of African Americans working in the service sector has nearly doubled in the past 20 years and now makes up about 43 percent of the black workforce, a percentage larger than for the economy as a whole. But many of those jobs have been characterized in recent years by anemic wage growth and eroding benefits. On a percentage basis, far fewer blacks than whites are covered by employer-sponsored health care -- 52 percent compared with 71 percent -- and less than 40 percent of blacks are covered by private pension plans, compared with more than 46 percent for whites. The lack of benefits is also partly due to the fact that blacks have been opening their own businesses in record numbers, and many of those small enterprises don't offer health insurance and pensions. The number of black-owned businesses jumped 33 percent to 823,499 in 1997 from 621,000 in 1992, according to the latest census figures. Black businesses still make up only about 4 percent of the national total, but their growth rate was more than four times the increase for all U.S. firms over that period. Encouraging as a sign of entrepreneurship, that trend has also presented some hard truths about what it takes to get by, as Cobb testifies.

It's about time this was settled. Taking your kid because someone else is foul was just…foul. And my sister does foster care so I know there have been improvements. Anyway… City Settles Suit Over Separating Abused Mothers From Children By LESLIE KAUFMAN The city settled a long-running class-action lawsuit by victims of domestic violence yesterday, essentially conceding that children could not be placed in foster care just because their mothers had been abused. The settlement was no surprise as it came just months after the state's highest court had ruled that the city could not remove children in cases where the sole problem in a family was domestic violence. Both parties to the lawsuit and the judge agreed not only that removals were not the right answer, but also that the city's practice had reformed so much in the years since the suit was brought that court relief was no longer really necessary. "The city has come a long way since we first filed the lawsuit," said Carolyn A. Kubitschek, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "We think they are serious about attempts to change practices. They said they could do it without a court order, and so we said, 'Let's try.' "

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The United States has pledged to defend Taiwan if the mainland attacks, and China would risk derailing its trade-dependent economic growth if it launched an attack. "This is a step the people have been demanding for many years," says Yu Keli, a Taiwan expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "There can be no ambiguity that China will fight Taiwanese independence no matter what."

China's Army May Respond if Taiwan Fully Secedes By JOSEPH KAHN BEIJING, Dec. 17 - The Communist Party-controlled legislature has indicated that it is preparing to enact a law against secession, possibly mandating military action if Taiwan were to declare independence. A draft law forbidding secession by any part of China, announced Friday by the New China News Agency, suggests that President Hu Jintao is seeking to eliminate any lingering doubts that the Chinese military would attack Taiwan if the island formally severed ties with the mainland. China's top leaders have said consistently that they would wage war against Taiwan if it were to declare itself an independent state, so the passage of such a law basically reiterates existing policy. But outlawing secession may be an attempt to counter skepticism in Taiwan that China would really start a war it might not win.

In Congo War, Even Peacekeepers Add to Horror By MARC LACEY BUNIA, Congo, Dec. 16 - In the corner of the tent where she says a soldier forced himself on her, Helen, a frail fifth grader with big eyes and skinny legs, remembers seeing a blue helmet. The United Nations peacekeeper who tore off her clothes had used a cup of milk to lure her close, she said in her high-pitched voice, fidgeting as she spoke. It was her favorite drink, she said, but one her family could rarely afford. "I was so happy," she said. After she gulped it down, the foreign soldier pulled Helen, a 12-year-old, into bed, she said. About an hour later, he gave her a dollar, put a finger to his lips and pushed her out of his tent, she said. In this same eastern outpost, another United Nations peacekeeper, unable to communicate with a 13-year-old Swahili-speaking girl who walked past him, held up a cookie and gestured for her to draw near. As the girl, Solange, who recounted the incident with tears in her eyes the other day, reached for the cookie, the soldier reached for her. She, too, said she was raped. The United Nations said recently that it had uncovered 150 allegations of sexual abuse committed by United Nations peacekeepers stationed in Congo, many of them here in Bunia where the population has already suffered horrendous atrocities committed by local fighters. The raping of women and girls is an all-too-common tactic in the war raging in Congo's eastern jungles involving numerous militia groups. In Bunia, a program run by Unicef has treated 2,000 victims of sexual violence in recent months. But it is not just the militia members who have been preying on the women. So, too, local women say, have some of the soldiers brought in to keep the peace.

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In less than 12 hours, Pfizer said that it had found increased risk of heart problems for people taking Celebrex, a painkiller that is one of the world's best-selling medicines. AstraZeneca reported that a trial of Iressa, a lung cancer drug approved in the United States last year, showed that the drug did not prolong lives. And Eli Lilly warned doctors that Strattera, its drug to treat attention deficit disorder, usually in children, had caused severe liver injury in at least two patients.

Pricey Drug Trials Turn Up Few New Blockbusters By ALEX BERENSON The worldwide drug industry is ailing. Three major drug companies - Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly - each disclosed serious problems with important medicines yesterday, throwing a spotlight on the fact that the $500 billion drug industry is stumbling badly in its core business of finding new medicines. The decline in drug research and development has been an open secret among analysts and scientists for years. But drug company executives have insisted that their industry is fundamentally healthy and their expensive research efforts will pay off. They have tried, meanwhile, to offset their weakness in creating profitable new drugs by pursuing aggressive campaigns to market existing drugs to doctors and patients, impose big price increases and make efforts to extend patents on existing medicines. Those tactics have protected their profits but irritated consumers and governments that pay for drugs, causing a political reaction in the United States and Europe. After yesterday's news, the intensity of that reaction seems likely to increase.

From Economics Explained : Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going:

The whole market system is built on the assumption that individuals are rational as well as acquisitive—that marketers will have at least roughly accurate information about the market.

In common conversation people assume "marketers" means sellers but here it means "people that participate in the market," and so includes buyers too.

Without correct or adequate information marketers obviously cannot make correct decisions. But typically many marketers do not have adequate information. Consumers guide themselves by hearsay, by causal information picked up in random sampling, or by their susceptibility to advertising.…Even professional buys, such as industrial purchasing agents, cannot know every price of every product, including all substitutes.

Universal possession of the knowledge of every price of every product, including all substitutes by marketers that are by definition rational are the requirement for correct operation of "the market." We're not even close.

Rather than wait for tomorrow morning's dose of "wisdom" from This Week, Meet the Press et. al., I thought I'd check a media pundit panel that has no melodrama: Washington Week on PBS. The streaming video from last night's show is available now. The full transcripts will be available Monday afternoon.

One Charged With Killing Mom, Taking Baby By MARGARET STAFFORD Associated Press Writer Published December 18, 2004, 2:44 AM CST …Several pregnant women have been killed in recent years by attackers who then removed their fetuses, in some cases to pass the children off as their own. In the most recent case, a 21-year-old woman was shot to death in Oklahoma in December 2003, allegedly by another woman who pretended the 6-month-old fetus was her child. The fetus died and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Baby found in Kansas might be missing girl Police: Woman charged with kidnapping leading to death (CNN) -- Authorities believe an infant girl found at the home of a Kansas woman is the same baby taken from her mother's womb Thursday after the mother was killed in Missouri. Lisa Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kansas, confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, and then "removing the fetus," according to an FBI affidavit filed Friday. Stinnett was killed at about 3 p.m. Thursday (4 p.m. ET) in her house in Skidmore in northwest Missouri. Montgomery, whom authorities say had a miscarriage earlier this year, was arrested and charged with kidnapping resulting in death. If convicted, Montgomery could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison or the death penalty, and a maximum $250,000 fine. Authorities said they believe Stinnett was strangled with a rope or other type of line. The baby was taken from her body, possibly with a knife, said Sheriff Ben Espey of Nodaway County, Missouri. An autopsy was under way Friday.

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"The safest thing is probably taking something like Tylenol," a nonprescription painkiller, he said.

Pfizer says Celebrex increases heart risks FROM STAFFAND WIRE REPORTS Pfizer Inc. said it found an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes for patients taking high dosages of its top-selling arthritis painkiller Celebrex -- the same problem that led to the withdrawal of its one-time competitor, Vioxx. The company said it has no plans to remove Celebrex from the market, but the disclosure on Friday sent Pfizer's shares tumbling because of fears that it could cripple sales of what had been the most-prescribed drug for treating arthritis. Acting U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford said the government is advising physicians to consider prescribing drugs other than Celebrex to their patients. "We're leaving open all regulatory decisions as we move forward. But we do not have a decision on the fate of the product," Crawford said during a news briefing. "We do have great concern about this product (Celebrex) and the class of products." Still, at least one Brevard County physician cautioned against labeling Celebrex a "bad drug," until further studies have been done and the heart risks have been clearly sorted out. "People don't need to panic over Celebrex," said Dr. Roderick Salach, a local rheumatologist on staff at three area hospitals. "Before stopping the drug, patients should be evaluated individually in terms of their cardiovascular risks." But, Salach said, patients at high risk for either heart attacks or stroke, "to be safe, should probably avoid all cox-2 inhibitors" for now -- the class of drugs that includes both Celebrex and Vioxx.

We really talk like this. It's sick. Her:

Okay, so recently I asked a bunch of people what they think their flaws and strengths are in writing, and I have noticed something (which I always knew, actually, but this time for some reason I thought about it more.) Specifically, I have noticed that the good, talented writers tend to have these very long lists of bitches about their own work and much shorter lists of things they actually like, whereas the crappy writers tend to have the reverse. Further, the good writers tend to have deeper concerns: they write about how bad their characterization, dialogue, plotting, structure, etc is, whereas the notsogreat writers tend to say things like "I use too many commas" or "I'm weak on my research." Now, what I'm wondering is this: Is it that the better writers are better because they perceive their own flaws whereas the others are kinda clueless? Or is it that the better writers perceive their own flaws because they're better, whereas the others don't have the skill to recognize the flaws? And what about talent? Does having a natural talent for writing tend to make you notice your own flaws more than someone who doesn't have that instinct? At the moment, I'm tending toward the latter (they see the flaws because they're better) and "yes, it does." I'm thinking that people who are less talented don't have a knack for noticing the problems in their writing, therefore they cannot improve because they don't see what's wrong to begin with?

Me:

Here's the deal. If you are aware of things like theme and rhythm of the voice in your head when you read (that's poetry concerns, but you get the drift) you will hone them and learn and get better at it as you focus on it. Like any skill, right? Now, some folks do have an easier time with perceiving patterns in specific materials. But if a person can be taught to recognize the patterns and convinced of their importance suddenly they are a talented beginner. But conferring talent on someone is hard because you have to do it backward-they have to be convinced the patterns are important before they can learn to recognize them. And the person who sees into the material directly has a huge head start...but if they slop off they can be surpassed.

I'll tell you what it's like. 'Cause I'm no racist. People just assume I'm a racist and I'm tired of it. Shit. Man I never think about race, who has the damn time? Yeah, I know there's racists out there. I saw that thing about the Klan march on TV, I'm not saying there ain't no racists, I ain't stupid. But I ain't nothin like that. Nobody I know is like that. Those guys are an embarrassment. But me and my friends, we don't have that kind of trouble anywhere we go. Unless there's black people around. Every time I saw something racial come up there was a black person involved. I'm not judging anyone, I'm just saying what I've seen.Really. Like,you always get all tight. You just feel racism is there, like a shadow in the corner of your eye. You look out for things like that, you don't want to get caught up in some racial shit because you know they're going to say it's you. And it ain't. And when those guys with the hoodies and the droopy pants come around, it's like you feel it, like mist rising from the ground around the feet of some monster in an old black and white movie, and when they pass the you feel loose again…you just know, like you know the guys in the suits are probably okay. And that shows it ain't about race. So don't try to make it about race. Everybody needs to just get over it anyway.

Finding Homosexual Threads in Lincoln's Legend By DINITIA SMITH Was Abraham Lincoln a gay American? The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C. A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away. In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, Mr. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all. The author, who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America's greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man. But his book has not stopped the debate. During the 10 years of his research, Mr. Tripp shared his findings with other scholars. Many, including the Harvard professor emeritus David Herbert Donald, who is considered the definitive biographer of Lincoln, disagreed with him. Last year, in his book "We Are Lincoln Men," Mr. Donald mentioned Mr. Tripp's research and disputed his findings. Mr. Tripp was the author of "The Homosexual Matrix," a 1975 book that disputed the Freudian notion of homosexuality as a personality disorder. In this new book, he says that early biographers of Lincoln, including Carl Sandburg, sensed Lincoln's homosexuality. In the preface to the original multi-volume edition of his acclaimed 1926 biography, Sandburg wrote: "Month by month in stacks and bundles of fact and legend, I found invisible companionships that surprised me. Perhaps a few of these presences lurk and murmur in this book." Sandburg also wrote that Lincoln and Joshua Speed had "streaks of lavender, spots soft as May violets." Mr. Tripp said that references to Lincoln's possible homosexuality were cut in the 1954 abridged version of the biography. Mr. Tripp maintains that other writers, including Ida Tarbell and Margaret Leech, also found evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality but shied away from defining it as such or omitted crucial details. Mr. Tripp cites Lincoln's extreme privacy and accounts by those who knew him well. "He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me," his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, told Lincoln's law partner William Herndon. In addition, Lincoln was terrified of marriage to Mary Todd and once broke off their relationship. They eventually had four children.

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As Presley's only child, Lisa Marie is the sole heir to the estate, most of which is now to become part of a publicly traded company that will be called CKX Inc. The agreement will pay her $53 million in cash and absolve her of $25 million in debts owed by the estate. She also is to get shares in the new company expected to be worth more than $20 million.

Lisa Marie Presley Selling Elvis Estate By WOODY BAIRD Associated Press Writer MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Lisa Marie Presley is keeping Graceland but selling the bulk of the Elvis estate, including rights to her father's name and image, in a deal worth approximately $100 million. Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. announced an agreement Thursday to sell 85 percent of its assets to businessman Robert F.X. Sillerman, founder of music and sports promoter SFX Entertainment. The Presley estate brought in almost $45 million last year. Sillerman said more aggressive marketing, supported by capital raised through a new publicly traded company, can make Elvis an even bigger earner. Presley occupies a unique place in American pop culture, and "I don't think there's much likelihood his influence is going to wane anytime in my lifetime," Sillerman said by telephone from New York, where he runs the Sillerman Companies.

Doesn't this sound familiar?

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GOP to sue over 573 found Wash. ballots By Rebecca Cook, Associated Press Writer | December 16, 2004 SEATTLE --Republicans prepared a lawsuit Thursday to try to prevent King County from including 573 newly discovered ballots in a hand recount that could erase their gubernatorial candidate's razor-thin margin of victory. The GOP expected to file a motion Friday in Pierce County Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against King County officials. A judge was tentatively scheduled to hear the motion the same day. Election officials in King County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Seattle, want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes that election workers mistakenly rejected. Republicans want those ballots to stay rejected -- or at the very least, they want King County to investigate further before adding them to the mix. "If King County moves forward we will never know the truth about those ballots," said Republican State Party Chairman Chris Vance. "We want to get some answers about these very suspicious ballots."

Corruption costs Nigeria 40 percent of oil wealth, official says 100,000 barrels said to be stolen each day By Reuters | December 17, 2004 ABUJA, Nigeria -- Corruption and mismanagement swallow about 40 percent of Nigeria's $20 billion annual oil income, anti-graft chief Nuhu Ribadu said yesterday. Industry sources say at least 100,000 barrels, or 4 percent, of national oil exports are stolen every day in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest exporter. Despite its oil riches, 70 percent of the West African country's population live below the poverty line because of corruption and economic mismanagement. Ribadu said the amount of oil wealth illegally siphoned off is down from about 70 percent two years ago, due to new controls on central government finances. But the Nigerian regions, which control about half of the nation's revenue, have failed to keep up with the pace of central reform, he told Reuters in an interview. "At the federal level there has been a big improvement. The very big guys who steal now are the state governors," he said. "Things have improved. About 70 percent used to go to waste and corruption, but the number now is maybe 40 percent," said Ribadu, a key member of a small but powerful group of technocrats who have managed the economy since last year.

Award limits eyed in suits involving FDA-approved drugs By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff | December 17, 2004 Republican congressional leaders, emboldened by President Bush's pledge to overhaul medical liability, are expected to introduce legislation early next year that would prevent consumers from winning hefty damage awards from pharmaceutical companies if they are hurt by drugs and medical devices that have FDA approval. The proposed legislation could cap medical malpractice awards at $250,000 per injured party, a change consumer advocates and trial lawyers say would effectively end such lawsuits.

The very programs that established our military superiority are threatened by the invasion of Iraq and the mismanagement of its aftermath. Quote of note:

Four years after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pledged to transform the military into a leaner, high-tech force, officers familiar with Pentagon planning say the defense chief's vision of smaller, more capable ground forces is being confounded by reality. The Iraq war, combined with the war on terrorism, is requiring many more ground forces than anticipated. More than half of the active Army has been deployed overseas in the past three years, while 90,000 Army National Guard troops have been called to duty. As a result, generals, admirals, and top defense officials are coming to grips with what they see as the need to dramatically ''rebalance" the military and refocus on manpower, which steadily declined after the fall of the Soviet Union, at the expense of some costly hardware.[P6:But not, of course the missile defense system that no one with high school level physics understanding believes in.]

Arms reductions, troop increase eyed War's toll prompts shift in priorities By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | December 17, 2004 WASHINGTON -- To meet a pressing need for more ground troops, the US armed forces have begun eyeing some of the most dramatic cuts in high-tech weapons since the end of the Cold War, according to defense officials and consultants. The Iraq war's grinding toll has led to a vast reassessment across all the branches of the military as they prepare to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the Pentagon's priorities in 2005, according to interviews with Pentagon officials who asked not to be identified and private defense specialists. One Army study described by Pentagon officials has concluded that the active-duty force of 500,000 needs to grow by as much as 30 percent. This year the Army was forced to borrow from the Navy and Air Force to pay its bills, according to officials. The Navy and Air Force, facing their own financial pressures amid burgeoning federal budget deficits, are considering deep weapons cuts. The sea service is talking about cutting its fleet of aircraft carriers by a quarter, from 12 to nine, according to a Navy official who was briefed on internal planning for the review. Meanwhile, the Air Force is grappling with ways to slash its planned purchases of more than 2,500 fighter planes by up to a third, according to two accounts of a preliminary briefing.

7:16 am EST, don't pay any attention to the timestamp on this post. And CNN's web site is dragging ass so I link this madness via Scotland.

Foetus Stolen from Murdered Woman's Body US police are hunting the killer of an eight months pregnant woman whose unborn child was cut from her body and abducted. Doctors have said the baby may well have survived the attack in Skidmore, Missouri. “Someone was wanting a baby awful bad,” said Sheriff Bill Espey. The 23-year-old victim, who was found inside her home by her mother, was probably strangled, said police. Sheriff Espey said there were no visible signs of a struggle and no indication of forced entry into her home. He said the victim had been married for a little more than a year and was pregnant with her first child. The victim’s husband was not a suspect. “I believe there is a live eight-month-old foetus out there we need to find,” said the sheriff.

Buying Into Failure By PAUL KRUGMAN As the Bush administration tries to persuade America to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k), we can learn a lot from other countries that have already gone down that road. Information about other countries' experience with privatization isn't hard to find. For example, the Century Foundation, at www.tcf.org, provides a wide range of links. Yet, aside from giving the Cato Institute and other organizations promoting Social Security privatization the space to present upbeat tales from Chile, the U.S. news media have provided their readers and viewers with little information about international experience. In particular, the public hasn't been let in on two open secrets: Privatization dissipates a large fraction of workers' contributions on fees to investment companies. It leaves many retirees in poverty.

The Drug Lobby Scores Again As ever, postelection herds of politicians are migrating from the public sector to the promised land of Washington lobbying, led this year by Representative Billy Tauzin, an architect of the people's new Medicare drug law who is becoming the pharmaceutical industry's chief lobbyist at a rumored salary of $2 million a year. The eye-popping transition is quite permissible under current laws, which facilitate something dubbed Washington's revolving door. In truth, the process is closer to osmosis, with the "wall" between the public and private sectors serving as a semipermeable membrane in the body politic. Thomas Scully, who helped steer the drug subsidy bill to passage as the administration's Medicare expert and overzealous public information censor, preceded Mr. Tauzin as a lobbyist for drug companies, leaving his government post in late 2003. The path is well worn. Remember Senator Zell Miller, the maverick Democrat fulminating for the people in a turncoat stint at the Republican convention? He may have to modulate his rants now in addressing corporate clients as a newly minted consultant on government. Joining him is Powell Moore, the assistant secretary of defense who dealt with Congress on big-ticket items and knows its power points well. There's not room on this page to list all the politicians and staff members moving from serving in the government to the richer world of influencing it.

Lapses Feared in 2000 Vetting of Kerik By KEVIN FLYNN and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM In the days since Bernard B. Kerik withdrew his nomination as homeland security secretary late last week, the city's Department of Investigation has grown increasingly concerned about possible lapses in the background check it conducted on him before he was appointed New York's 40th police commissioner in 2000. The agency said in a statement yesterday that it has been unable to find any evidence that Mr. Kerik had filled out a background form, as usually required, before his appointment to the post by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Officials are also interviewing employees and searching for records that might explain why a body of uncomplimentary information the agency had learned about Mr. Kerik was apparently never considered by City Hall before his appointment in August 2000.

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In particular, Mr. Bush never mentioned the near certainty that without raising taxes, which he has ruled out, any plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security and improve its financial condition would include a reduction in the guaranteed retirement benefit.

Bush Says Social Security Plan Would Reassure Markets By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

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Okay, I shouldn't interrupt here but I need to say I don't give a fuck what the financial markets "think" about this one. The financial markets don't have to retire. Okay, carry on.

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - President Bush said on Thursday that addressing the long-term problems in Social Security would reassure the financial markets, offering a rationale to offset criticism that his plan to add personal investment accounts to the retirement system would require up to $2 trillion in new government borrowing. On the second day of a White House conference on economic issues, Mr. Bush continued to lay the groundwork for a strong effort by the White House and its allies to overhaul Social Security and pursue an economic agenda next year that also includes re-examining the tax code, limiting lawsuit awards and reining in the growth in government spending. "What I'm saying is we're going to submit a tough budget," Mr. Bush said, setting the stage for a new budget that holds down the growth of domestic spending. "And I look forward to working with Congress on the tough budget." As he did throughout his re-election campaign, Mr. Bush largely avoided talking about the specific steps to assure the long-term solvency of Social Security. Social Security trustees estimate that if no changes are made, the system will start running short of money to pay full benefits to retirees in 38 years.

Quote of note:

But Ms. Jaques is not any random single mother. She is the Iowa state director of a conservative advocacy group, FreedomWorks, whose founders are Jack F. Kemp, the former vice-presidential nominee, and Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader. Ms. Jaques also spent much of the past two years as a spokeswoman in Iowa for a group called For Our Grandchildren, which is mounting a nationwide campaign for private savings accounts. Her path to the stage was engineered by another advocate for private accounts, Leanne Abdnor, who previously organized a business coalition in Washington called the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security.

Clamor Grows in the Privatization Debate By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - Introduced as a "single mom" from Iowa, Sandra Jaques was cool and confident as she praised President Bush's plan to partly replace Social Security with private savings accounts. "I have a daughter at home. Her name is Wynter," said Ms. Jaques, sitting a few feet from President Bush at the White House economic conference on Thursday. "I want to make sure that she has Social Security when she retires as well." Mr. Bush chimed in a moment later. "One of my visions of personal savings accounts is that Sandy will be able to pass her account on to Wynter as part of Wynter's capacity to retire as well." The exchange was an example of how Mr. Bush promotes his agenda with testimonials from "regular folks," in the words of Joshua B. Bolten, the White House budget director, who introduced Ms. Jaques. But Ms. Jaques is not any random single mother. She is the Iowa state director of a conservative advocacy group, FreedomWorks, whose founders are Jack F. Kemp, the former vice-presidential nominee, and Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader. Ms. Jaques also spent much of the past two years as a spokeswoman in Iowa for a group called For Our Grandchildren, which is mounting a nationwide campaign for private savings accounts. Her path to the stage was engineered by another advocate for private accounts, Leanne Abdnor, who previously organized a business coalition in Washington called the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. "Sandy is the perfect person to explain the benefits of this for women," said Ms. Abdnor, who has founded another group, Women for a Social Security Choice. Ms. Abdnor said she had raised start-up money from friends, whom she would not identify. She said the group would wage a publicity campaign to counter groups that oppose private accounts.

Kremlin Reasserts Hold on Russia's Oil and Gas By ERIN E. ARVEDLUND and SIMON ROMERO MOSCOW, Dec. 16 - On Sunday, Russia plans to auction the jewel of what used to be its most profitable, high-profile and well-run private company: the oil giant Yukos. And if the auction takes place, the winner most likely will be a financially opaque, government-run natural gas behemoth, Gazprom. Practically overnight, Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, would create an energy company that not only controls about 20 percent of the nation's oil exports but also has some of the world's largest energy reserves. A Kremlin campaign that unfolded over the last year will have succeeded in dismembering the country's foremost private oil company, and it will send a signal to Russia's business elite that the state is back in business, literally.

Remember, Greenspan convinced us all to prepay into the Social Security fund in order to GUARANTEE its solvency at the projected payout rates years ago. That was back when we were idealistic, I suppose. Quote of note:

In particular, Mr. Bush never mentioned the near certainty that without raising taxes, which he has ruled out, any plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security and improve its financial condition would include a reduction in the guaranteed retirement benefit.

Bush Says Social Security Plan Would Reassure Markets By RICHARD W. STEVENSON WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - President Bush said on Thursday that addressing the long-term problems in Social Security would reassure the financial markets, offering a rationale to offset criticism that his plan to add personal investment accounts to the retirement system would require up to $2 trillion in new government borrowing. On the second day of a White House conference on economic issues, Mr. Bush continued to lay the groundwork for a strong effort by the White House and its allies to overhaul Social Security and pursue an economic agenda next year that also includes re-examining the tax code, limiting lawsuit awards and reining in the growth in government spending. "What I'm saying is we're going to submit a tough budget," Mr. Bush said, setting the stage for a new budget that holds down the growth of domestic spending. "And I look forward to working with Congress on the tough budget." As he did throughout his re-election campaign, Mr. Bush largely avoided talking about the specific steps to assure the long-term solvency of Social Security. Social Security trustees estimate that if no changes are made, the system will start running short of money to pay full benefits to retirees in 38 years. In particular, Mr. Bush never mentioned the near certainty that without raising taxes, which he has ruled out, any plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security and improve its financial condition would include a reduction in the guaranteed retirement benefit.

3 Years After Enron, Resistance to New Rules Grows By FLOYD NORRIS …the rulemaking effort has slowed, and Mr. Donaldson's plan to pass a rule this week was stalled as opponents gained one more delay in an effort to rouse opposition. A Republican commissioner, Paul S. Atkins, was critical of the proposal, saying the commission should get out of the way and let competition among markets benefit everyone. He did not address how to avoid having such competition benefit brokers rather than their customers. The S.E.C. is seeking more public comment. The issue that is arousing passion is called a trade-through rule. It is supposed to assure that if an investor offers to buy a share for $25, no stock will be sold for less than that until his order is filled. To Mr. Donaldson, there is a need to protect investors who place such orders and provide liquidity to the markets. It appears that Mr. Donaldson and the two Democratic commission members, including Mr. Goldschmid, are ready to pass such a rule and extend it to all markets that offer very fast execution of orders. The big remaining question is whether it will apply only to orders at the best price in each market, or to orders below that price as well. That extension could cause unintended consequences, and there may be a case for not moving that far at the beginning. Action, however, is needed.

Quote of note:

Over the last 30 years, General Blum said, the Guard has counted on these soldiers with prior military service for about half of its recruits. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many of these soldiers have been hesitant to join the Guard because of the increasing likelihood that America's citizen-soldiers will be activated and sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for up to 12 months. Indeed, many of the active-duty soldiers the Army would like to enlist in the Reserves have recently fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, and some have no inclination to do so again.

Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment By ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - In the latest signs of strains on the military from the war in Iraq, the Army National Guard announced on Thursday that it had fallen 30 percent below its recruiting goals in the last two months and would offer new incentives, including enlistment bonuses of up to $15,000. In addition, the head of the National Guard Bureau, Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, said on Thursday that he needed $20 billion to replace arms and equipment destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan or left there for other Army and Air Guard units to use, so that returning reservists will have enough equipment to deal with emergencies at home. The sharp decline in recruiting is significant because National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers now make up nearly 40 percent of the 148,000 troops in Iraq, and are a vital source for filling the ranks, particularly those who perform essential support tasks, like truck drivers and military police.

Quote of note:

The NRO's request marks the latest in a series of high-profile federal inquiries related to leaks of classified or sensitive information, including an ongoing probe into whether Bush administration officials illegally identified a covert CIA operative to reporters in the summer of 2003.

Justice Reviews Request for Probe Of Satellite Reports By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A03 The National Reconnaissance Office has asked the Justice Department to consider opening a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a highly classified satellite program that has prompted criticism in Congress because of escalating costs, two administration officials said yesterday. The Justice Department and the FBI are reviewing the request to determine whether classified information was leaked and whether there is enough evidence to support a criminal probe, officials said. The request from the NRO, which manages spy satellite programs, comes after reports in The Washington Post and other publications about a stealth satellite program under debate in Congress. The Post on Saturday reported details of the program and said its cost has ballooned from $5 billion to $9.5 billion. The New York Times published an article on the program Sunday. The request for a Justice Department review was first reported by the Associated Press. The satellite project was debated in closed hearings on Capitol Hill, but some lawmakers took the unusual step of complaining publicly about the program's relevance and cost, without identifying the program or describing it in any detail. Four Democratic senators refused to sign "conference sheets" related to the 2005 intelligence authorization bill, reportedly to protest the program.

They knew when the mock warhead would be launched They knew from where it would be launched. They knew what its trajectory would be. And the interceptor failed to launch. Because of "some kind of anomaly" (which means, "how da fuk I know?") sigh… U.S. Missile Defense Test Fails Latest Setback in Pacific Fuels Doubts About System's Future By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A05 The Bush administration's effort to build a system for defending the country against ballistic missile attack suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when an interceptor missile failed to launch during the first flight test of the system in two years. Pentagon officials could not immediately explain the reason for the failure. They said some kind of anomaly prompted the automatic shutdown of the launch sequence just 23 seconds before the interceptor was due to take off from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. Plans had called for the interceptor to soar into space and knock down a mock warhead fired from Kodiak Island in Alaska about 16 minutes earlier.

Lott Joins Republican Critics of Rumsfeld He Cites Armor, Manpower in Iraq By Jim VandeHei and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, December 17, 2004; Page A04 Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) joined a growing chorus of Republicans sharply criticizing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld because of the Pentagon chief's failure to call for more troops in Iraq and to properly equip troops serving there. Speaking to a local chamber of commerce Wednesday in Mississippi, Lott said: "I am not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld. I don't think he listens to his uniformed officers." Lott said Rumsfeld should not be forced to resign immediately but "I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so."

Presidential Medals of Failure By Richard Cohen Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A37 Where's Kerik? This is the question I asked myself as, one by one, the pictures of the latest Presidential Medal of Freedom awardees flashed by on my computer screen. First came George Tenet, the former CIA director and the man who had assured President Bush that it was a "slam-dunk" that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then came L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy of Iraq, who disbanded the Iraqi army and ousted Baathists from government jobs, therefore contributing mightily to the current chaos in that country. Finally came retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the plan whereby the United States sent too few troops to Iraq.

I saw this headline;

Bush to Fill New Intelligence Entity Ranks

and my first thought was, "With what?"

Lawsuit Reform a Bush Priority President Seeks to Limit Class-Action, Malpractice Cases By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A06 President Bush yesterday demanded congressional action on legislation to rein in class-action, asbestos and medical malpractice lawsuits, telling a White House economic conference he would make changing the civil tort system a "priority issue."

And why are we just hearing about this 2002 survey now? Because the press was too busy kissing the administration's ass as we were lied into an elective war, you say? Obviously there's a lot of grond to be made up.

Many FDA Scientists Had Drug Concerns, 2002 Survey Shows By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A01 Almost one-fifth of the Food and Drug Administration scientists surveyed two years ago as part of an official review said they had been pressured to recommend approval of a new drug despite reservations about its safety, effectiveness or quality.

…to create a category on your blog called "Assholes so deep there's an echo when you talk to them"? Huh? Did you? Previous incarnation of The Niggerati Network has a category called "Bizarro World." I should set that up and tag all Bush's shots across the bough in the class war with it.

This shouldn't even go in the economics category. Bush Says Social Security Accounts to Ease Deficits (Update5) Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush said creating private retirement accounts under Social Security will signal to Wall Street that the U.S. government is confronting long-term budget deficits. "We'll send a message to the financial markets that we recognize we have an issue with short-term deficits and long-term deficits with unfunded liabilities," Bush told an economic conference in Washington. The 69-year-old retirement program will begin paying more in benefits than it receives in tax dollars in 2018, according to the program's trustees.

Someone paid $26,500.00 own a digital island. Isn't that just, like, an account on a Linux server and some data? Are people actually losing their fucking minds?

Type Two: The salesman

BRIAN WESBURY: The tort reform issue... the whole idea about creating more growth in the economy is that we always need to lower risk and increase rewards in the economy and that's the way you encourage more entrepreneurial activity.

Risk is tied to reward isn't it? This is a fantasy, not an economic plan.

And to lower risk and raise rewards you have to attack a number of things. Number one: Taxes are a punishment to those who are successful very often. So what we have to do is move to lower after tax - or, excuse me higher after tax returns. And I think that's what the tax cut last year did.

Interesting. Taxes aren't the means of funding collective needs and obligation. They are punishment to the wealthy. I wonder if this is the guy who wrote that "Lucky Duckies" tripe in the Wall Street Journal.

We need to lower risks for investors, part of that is fighting the war on terror and making the world a safer place.

WHAT THE FUCK??

But another part of that is reforming the tort system, the litigious society we have because there are so many risks to businesses in this country coming from the legal sector, which raises costs and lowers returns and I think that becomes an important part of making sure this economy stays strong for the long run.

So we are lowering the risk of getting sued if you screw up.

---

Type One: the mathematician:

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, I would say this, that we have set up a system in which litigation plays a role in correcting bad behavior for businesses because the cost of their errors are not borne by the company itself. So if you think of tobacco and what damage that did to our economy in terms of needless people-- needless numbers of people dying from tuberculosis, from lung cancer, et cetera. So if you think about that and then look at the recent withdrawal of an arthritis pain reliever, because the company understood that they were going to face litigation, meaning that we wouldn't have needless doubts in that case, but tax reform has to be fair. We heard that word before about making it fairer. The economy has worked the way the president wanted it and that is that the returns of all of the growth in the economy has been to capital income, not to American workers. To shift the tax burden further on to the American worker means that we are putting even more burden on the American worker.

That other stuff wasn't the only nonsense spouted by our economic salesman Brian Wesbury.

And then one last point about that and it is that these systems are in trouble; the Social Security system is under funded by $10 trillion. Taxes have to go up to pay for it or benefits have to be cut to make it work. Something has to be done. And what the president is trying to do is say look, let's not raise taxes. Let's not cut benefits, let's find a third way, a way through this hole that allows people to build ownership, build a stake in the economy, to build a cushion for their future, and so that we don't have to change the system as it exists for those people that are in retirement or very close to it but gives the youth of America a way to build assets, a way to become owners and a way to become more personally responsible in the future.

Can we kill this "personally responsible" incantation? What the hell has it to do with the discussion? Mr. Wesbury is as full of it as those who want to claim the output of pharmaceutical companies' opportunity cost calculations are to be added in when accounting for the cost of developing a new drug…and for the same reason. Right now, Social Security is not in debt. At all.

THE GREENSPAN BAIT-AND-SWITCH:
In 1983, as chairman of the bipartisan Social Security commission, Greenspan said that the way to ensure that Social Security remains on sound financial footing in the future is to make baby boomers pay their benefits in advance. That is why, to this day, people pay more in Social Security taxes than is paid to beneficiaries – 50 percent more in 2004. But, in large part to make up the shortfall caused by the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, this money (more than $1.8 trillion) has been used to finance other aspects of government. In other words, Social Security has been transformed from a retirement program to a regressive income redistribution program. Lower- and middle-class workers are not paying for their retirement benefits in advance, they are paying for tax cuts for those making more than $300,000. For more, read this American Progress column by Harry J. Holzer.

There seems to be a limit to Wesbury's mendacity though. He says you must raise taxes or cut benefits, but BUSH says math doesn't matter. Nowhere does he say he believes Bush's third way exists. And when Mr. Spriggs applies a corrective dose of reality:

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, it is not going to achieve the goal. We've already seen his economic stimulus in place for these four years. We still have fewer people employed today than when he took office and when he gets sworn in in January, we will have fewer people than when he got sworn in, in January four years ago. So the direction in which he has put the tax cuts have not been the stimulus the economy needed, not from the perspective of the American worker. But in the case of Social Security, again, what you see is now the president has created this own problem himself. His tax cuts have made permanent are far bigger than the problem that we face in Social Security. If we just said we are not going to make the tax cut to the top 1 percent of the country permanent, that solves the whole Social Security program as it is currently conceived. You could say you are going to keep the benefits. You are going to keep everything the way it is, just say we are not going to make permanent that top 1 percent, so he has created his own problem. He exacerbates it because if you want to privatize, you are going to take money out of the system, which exacerbates the need to have money put into the system. And many people who talk about privatization of course really don't put together how are you going to not cut benefits if you are not going to raise taxes? It doesn't solve itself simply through privatization. And you can't really privatize the risk of a disability and the insurance program which are integral to the program. And it is a family-based program. It is not an individual program at the moment.

Wesbury's response is basically, "You lost so shut up."

BRIAN WESBURY: Right. Right. Well, I personally think that's a real good idea. Let me go back one step here and just remind Mr. Spriggs that the election is over, the president won. The debate on the tax cut is done. People do not want higher taxes. That's not going to happen. In fact, we are going to be debating making these tax cuts permanent and tax reform in the future.... GWEN IFILL: Excuse me. Were you advocating higher taxes, Mr. Spriggs? WILLIAM SPRIGGS: I was saying that we shouldn't make a tax cut permanent which is not necessarily higher taxes. GWEN IFILL: We don't want to really re-debate that issue. We should get back to legal reform -- BRIAN WESBURY: That's my whole point. It's over.

Notice this statement:

The debate on the tax cut is done.

and this one

In fact, we are going to be debating making these tax cuts permanent and tax reform in the future....

were made without so much as a breath taken in between.

When Bush says young people must be allowed to divert some money into private accounts, will the employer contribution follow? Dollars to doughnuts the employer contribution will be based solely on the part of the employee's contribution that goes into the Social Security fund.

The discussion of Class War Strategies on The NewsHour feature an economist and a salesman posing as an economist.

William Spriggs is an economist and senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute here in Washington. And Brian Wesbury is the chief economist at Griffin, Kubik, Stephens and Thompson, an investment bank in Chicago.

Long term readers know I refer to these professions as Type One and Type Two Economists, respectively. And they know I have no respect for Type Two economics pronouncements, and that I love folks that come to the same conclusions I have.

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, I think there are some things that we would like to see people have greater ownership of. We certainly want to see home ownership increase in this country. But there are a lot of things that the government does today, which are in place because the market is not a good allocator of resources or because what the government is really doing is serving as an insurer; and in that role the government does best when we include everyone, and that's best done as a government program. So the president talked about health insurance as an example. And we see from our current system of health insurance that that doesn't work when you make it an ownership society, because if I want to sell you health insurance, then I want to have the low risk population. I'd love to sell health insurance to a work force that's 20 something and very healthy. I don't want to sell insurance to people who are low income, more likely to be ill, and we see that there are gaps in who has health insurance because of that.

The thing you must remember is, the market is a system that determines the allocation of goods and services exclusively on the basis of wealth. People would like to think wealth is based on the value one produces, but being born in a position to inherit wealth, or to get wealth by maintaining the entropy puts the lie to that thought.

BRIAN WESBURY: Well, I think the ownership society is a very good thing. We have to remember that the more people have a skin in the game, have a stake in society, have assets built up over time, the less difficulty society will have withstanding bad times.

Bullshit, of course. Or, more precisely, salesmanship. Every person in the country already has a stake in society. We live here, we depend on society for survival the same way an antelope depends on the savannah. You also should keep in mind what it means to own something. It doesn't mean you can use something so much as that you can prevent others from using it.

And I believe what this does is it allows the government's spending to be put toward a use that will build assets and build ownership and build personal responsibility over time

Two things: the government doing what it is allowed to do rather than what it contracted to do is the problem, and "personal responsibility" means "your grief is your problem, regardless of its cause."

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, I think Social Security is a key example. And again the example of what happens in an insurance system like health insurance where we see that's just falling apart; it doesn't work. In the case of Social Security, we know that if you let individuals assess the risk of the economy and then start saving, when they think things are going to go bad, we get the behavior we don't want. We get reinforcing and exacerbating business cycles so people will think that the economy is more risky when it starts to turn down. They'll save more and we learned from the Great Depression, that's not a good thing.

Not all of us learned, apparently.

So we socialize these risks. And in the case of Social Security, what we're doing is we are insuring everybody from the three things which will happen to you as a worker. You may, God forbid, become disabled and can't continue to support your family. You may die young and your family again needs some support or God willing, you'll live a long life and you'll need to retire because you are not competitive in the labor market. And so by having it universal, you have a risk pool which ensures that the program will hold together to ensure against those risks. When people talk about the retirement program, that's not what Social Security is. It really is an insurance against these downturns.

Hey, didn't say something like that the other day?

Blogcritics has a post titled Am I racist? that I almost missed (but caught yesterday). I want to share my reaction in the comments.

Mr. Saxton:

You know P6, that by painting all white people with such a broad stroke of the brush with statements such as the above, about their reactions to black people (guilt/defense)that you're being a bit of a racist yourself for pre-supposing & pre-judging people.

Nonsense. I'm not pre-supposing or pre-judging, I'm pre-paring. The broad brush is applying a base to the canvas on which details are applied. Liberal guilt came as the first response to seeing on TV how truly fucked Black folks were under the Dixiecrat regime (and yes, the North had the same issues, but differently manifest--like a different tone being used for the base). Our current political state is wholly a reaction of Conservative Anger (remember Angry White Men? all the rage against being constrained in [collective] your choice of terms used to refer to folks?) Now we are all reacting to the reactions. Mr. Manning:

You know, threads like this get interesting because some people get so touchy about the topic of race/racism that you begin to wonder if they've got something to hide.

I think you'll find I'm neither touchy nor hiding anything. Search for posts and comments I've made on Blogcritics.

But for all the talk about how we're all homo sapiens and need to get past our racist tendencies, this statement should be directed at everyone.

White folks are doing fine telling Black folks we are racist. You don't need my help there. Similarly, I consider long term solutions because short term reactions don't work, even though that's all that gets discussed in our instant gratification culture.

It's not just whites who are guilty of harboring racist thoughts, so why do those who get their knickers in a twist about it pretend otherwise?

Long term, white folks geting[sic] correct has the greatest impact because (collective) white folks have all the social and cultural power in the USofA. Always has...as proven by the FACT that the "Conservative revolution" took exactly ONE election to change the entire direction of the country. It's a figure-ground thing. Black folks' racism is figure, white folks' racism is ground. White folks' racism is the texture on the canvas that the paint of Black folks' racism clings to.

Let's see how they come back.

…after which I'll get to that discussion on Bush's class war that was had on PBS' The NewsHour yesterday. The transcript is up and the Type 2 Economist is as absurd as I remember.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon read it. I'll read Pandagon. That's enough. I just went to the dentist yesterday and need no more pain for a while. Did you know there are teeth with roots that extend into your eyeballs?

Sheelzebub, she-demon extraordinaire, admires the handiwork of a distant relative

Well, I must say, this is wonderful news. There's nothing like a bunch of rabid ideologues to make things interesting during this silly, namby-pamby season of fake cheer and pseudo-goodwill.

Emboldened by their Election Day successes, some Christian conservatives around the country are trying to put more Christ into Christmas this season. In Terrebonne Parish, La., an organization is petitioning to add "Merry Christmas" to the red-lighted "Season's Greetings" sign on the main government building and is selling yard signs that read, "We believe in God. Merry Christmas." And a Raleigh, N.C., church recently paid $7,600 for a full-page newspaper ad urging Christians to spend their money only with merchants who include the greeting "Merry Christmas" in ads and displays.

This is, of course, fantastic. Hey, the more they tell people to buy things, the better to attain our New Manifest Destiny, where we expand our great nation by using all of our old stuff to reclaim land. I mean, sheesh, here I was breaking a sweat at first. Good Lord, you hear "Christian" and you think "Jesus" and then you think, "Oh, that pinko hippie who gave to the poor and showed mercy and all that crap." You know. That guy--the one who, if he was alive today, would dither on and on and on about poverty and injustice and violence and war. I have to tell you, it's a good thing that Jesus dude is dead--if he were alive today, he'd be as festive as a dead cactus.

Steve Gilliard got email from a pro-life Democrat that Democratic activists should think through.

Anyway a couple of thoughts. I think one of the major messes involving the abortion debate in the United States is that its interpretation is pretty much unique. The rights-based interpretation of abortion is pretty much ahistorical - I know, for example, that Susan B. Anthony expected one of the signs of women's liberation would be the elimination of abortion. That women would no longer be so far backed into a corner that abortion would be considered an option. Similarly, it's unique to the U.S. and Canada. In Europe it's viewed as more of a health and biology issue - France has considerably tighter abortion laws than the united States. Actually, on paper, pretty much every western european country has tighter abortion laws than the united states; also considerably lower abortion rates. I'd argue that one of the holes we're in in the U.S., and the reason that abortion is not a 'settled issue' the way it is in Europe is only partly due to pro-life militancy, it's also because of a marked unwillingness on the pro-choice side to discuss the issue. Since Roe, U.S. abortion policy has been pretty much static with one side desperately trying to pack the courts and the other side desperately trying to prevent it. I haven't found anyone on the pro-choice side who views abortion as a celebratory act, but rather as a necessary choice - to eliminate the specter of back alleys and coat hangers. However, what the GOP does is focus on the corner cases of the issue - and the Democrats end up reacting in fear and ending up defending more and more indefensible cases. Partial Birth was really more vote-whoring than anything else, and also exhibit A in why the GOP doesn't care about abortion past getting votes - they had the ability to do something substantive, and this was their choice. Same thing with this anaesthesia measure they're pushing next. It's real goal is to put democrats on the defensive.

keto at The Colorblind Society caught my attention this morning, but not in a nice way:

And in a newer story, a drag queen has been dropped from hosting a drag queen show in Atlanta. Relevance? This act, called Shirley Q. Liquor is a new fusion: blackface and drag. The performer, a white and gay man, plays a character which is "an uneducated southern black woman on welfare with 19 children".

I think this person is trying to get a job with the RNC.

Courtesy of Ed Brown at Vision Circle I see an open letter to Black Conservatives in BlackElectorate.com. The quoted section is on point. I need to get to the rest of it. And Lester Spence of the same domain reminded me about the Applied Research Center, a crew I've been really remiss about checking in with since, oh, August or so. They have a report about charitable foundations giving short shrift to research focusing on minority issues. You can buy the book or register to download the pdf which, being cheap as hell, I shall do but I shall also subscribe to Color Lines because they present articles like this one. There's a whole bag of feminist sites that I should ping over this one. I wrote about ARC for Open Source Politics a while back. Maybe I'll repost it here.

I'm shifting the websurfing order a bit today. I may get around to scanning the newspapers but I'm starting the day by seeing who caught what that I missed. And the longest discussion in the history of Prometheus 6 will branch. A couple of comments about a trackback to the discussion were interesting enough that I'd like to pursue them separately. And I'm considering how to divide my efforts between the N-Net and here. News vs. editorial? Events vs. analysis? I've found comment spammers looking for mt-comments.cgi were still capable of disrupting things a bit. Crapfloods can still work out to a DOS attack (in fact, when I was setting up my draconian defense measures a while back I found the reason my previous shared hosting provider kept telling me I was maxing out the CPU--some idiot was crapflooding the Niggerati Network via The Anonymizer. I blocked the whole damn service). I was tempted to redirect every request for mt-[fill in the blank].cgi back to the requesting IP but realized that would be a good way to piss off the Google algorithms (is there any way to clean up a database the size of Google's when there's like 16 domain names per human on the planet? The mind googles boggles at even estimating the effort). Instead I decided to send 410s (tells the requesting system the resource is gone forever). mod_rewrite is your friend. Well, mine, anyway. Okay, it's my acquaintance that I'm looking forward to knowing better.

I just saw a discussion on The 0w3n3rship Society between a Type 1 Economist and a Type 2 Economist on PBS' The Newshour (Bush's plan is so full of shit they couldn't find a real economist to argue his side, so they got a salesman). aaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh I. Can't. WAIT for transcript.

And I'm not happy right now. So after I point you to Solo's take on the Ricki Lake Larry Elder Show I'm out for the night.

All the components of my genetic heritage, to my knowledge, developed in warm climates. The coldest damn day of the year in NYC and I have to go out there.

Quote of note:

Immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to receive advice from their doctors about diet and exercise, according to the study. The researchers weren't sure why that was the case, said Dr. Christina Wee, a Harvard doctor who co-authored the study. But Wee said that immigrants tend to be healthier on average than native-born Americans because the energy it takes to immigrate discourages the weak and the sick from making the move. In many countries, people also tend to exercise more as part of daily life and to eat foods lower in fat and higher in fiber.

American lifestyle fattens immigrants By JACOB GOLDSTEIN The American dream is fattening. The longer immigrants stay in the United States, the more likely they are to become obese, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Fewer than one in 10 newly arrived immigrants is obese. But among those who have been here for at least 15 years, the rate leaps to nearly one in five, roughly the same as the rate for native-born Americans, the study found. ''This is a real problem in terms of what happens to people when they come to our country,'' said Dr. Robert Schwartz, chairman of family medicine and community health at the University of Miami. ``It's an indictment of our culture -- our fast-food, high-carbohydrate, little-exercise environment.''

Fortunately I've been bitching about this almost daily. Concise summary of note:

Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that although the outlines of Bush's plan were becoming clear, the package was not desirable. "Under these changes, Social Security would be neither social nor provide security," he said. "This would be a piece of a program to expose people to more and more risk…. There are millions of Americans who have no desire and no ability to gamble on the financial markets, and they shouldn't be pushed to."

Accidental-accuracy-from-an-osteocephalic of note:

But administration officials and some analysts say it is a mistake to view Social Security reform only from the perspective of its effect on federal finances. "It's the classic conundrum of what do you look at," said William W. Beach, head of data analysis at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Do you look at the trust fund or do you look at the worker's portfolio? I argue that you want to look at the outcome for the worker first, and the trust funds second. Others see it differently."

Why the osteocephalic is right:

Lee Price, the Economic Policy Institute's research director, said some people, such as those who retired when the stock market was down, would suffer through no fault of their own. "For the vast bulk of the population," said Brookings Institution economist Peter R. Orszag, "Social Security is the critical foundation upon which one should be building a comfortable retirement. You should be taking risks on top of this core foundation, not within it."

Investments to Kick Off Social Security Discussion Critics prepare to block Bush proposal to shift payroll taxes into private accounts. By Warren Vieth and Joel Havemann Times Staff Writers December 15, 2004 WASHINGTON — It will be months before President Bush and members of Congress agree on how to restructure Social Security, if they come to terms at all. But the rough contours of what Bush has in mind have begun to emerge, and battle lines are forming. The president and his aides will present their initial thoughts during a two-day economic conference that begins today a few blocks from the White House. Administration critics were already voicing their opposition Tuesday to the apparent direction of Bush's plans. Bush has said he wants to shore up the finances of the Social Security program and allow workers to shift some of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts, but he has not endorsed a specific proposal. Some analysts expect him merely to state basic principles and leave Congress with the task of restructuring the program, which faces cash shortfalls as baby boomers begin retiring and benefit payouts exceed payroll tax collections.

This doesn't even rise to the level of stupidity. It's pure blindness. Quote of note:

But healthcare experts say enacting what they call an "individual mandate" would be challenging. Requiring all Californians to carry their own insurance would have to involve some sort of subsidies for those too poor to pay the premiums — a difficult task for a state deep in debt. It could also have seismic reverberations in the insurance market, possibly encouraging some businesses to stop providing health insurance, experts say. Ensuring that everyone takes out insurance and guaranteeing that the very ill are able to obtain coverage could be difficult, they say.

Mandatory Health Insurance Is Urged Requiring all in the state to carry coverage would address healthcare crisis, backers argue. Critics say subsidies for the poor would be needed. By Jordan Rau Times Staff Writer December 15, 2004 SACRAMENTO — The concept of requiring all Californians to carry their own health insurance is gaining momentum in the Capitol, as some lawmakers and healthcare advocates see it as a politically viable way to deal with the state's 5.3 million uninsured. With the November defeat of Proposition 72 halting efforts to require employers to provide healthcare coverage, the concept looks likely to be part of next year's legislative debate. But it faces huge hurdles over how to make it financially feasible for the poor and enforce it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has spoken supportively of the notion in recent months, and that has spurred the California Medical Assn., as well as some lawmakers, to draft their own plans. "We have too many people that are uninsured in this state," Schwarzenegger said in October at the Panetta Institute in Monterey. "We have to really address this once and for all, and figure out a way of how we do it, like with car insurance, where we make it law that people carry insurance and that they are really insured, because it's unfair to so many people when you have people using the hospitals for emergency, and then creating a huge cost." But healthcare experts say enacting what they call an "individual mandate" would be challenging. Requiring all Californians to carry their own insurance would have to involve some sort of subsidies for those too poor to pay the premiums — a difficult task for a state deep in debt. It could also have seismic reverberations in the insurance market, possibly encouraging some businesses to stop providing health insurance, experts say. Ensuring that everyone takes out insurance and guaranteeing that the very ill are able to obtain coverage could be difficult, they say. "An individual mandate has to be backed up by extremely generous subsidies," said E. Richard Brown, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "You are pushing people into the individual market, which is a very expensive way to cover people." The medical association, one of the Capitol's most influential players, is devising an individual health insurance mandate that would combine a high deductible with preventive services, such as mammograms, prenatal care and annual exams to catch illnesses before they become overwhelming. Experts view that approach as the only way to create a mandate that is affordable, though it would require subsidies for the poor.

Quote of note:

"I'm a single mother with four kids," said Tajuana Green, 47. "How can they just put all our families out on the street?" Green acknowledged there are gang members in the building, and added, "You got to get along, try to be nice." But she said that does not mean that she and her neighbors are criminals. Some civil liberties advocates also questioned the city's rationale for giving as much as $5,000 in relocation money to some tenants but not others. "That's appalling," said Catherine Lhamon, staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "If residents in that apartment complex are not being charged with criminal activity, there is no basis for distinguishing relocation expenses for some residents and not others."

The article says the gang that this is all in reaction to had been running the apartment complex for 20 years. That's crazy, and just like the feds just took down John Gotti when they decided to, this could have been addressed 19 years ago. SHOULD have been addressed 19 years ago. I selected the particular quote to emphasize to show it's still being badly handled.

The apartment owners also protested the evictions. John Dudley of Sadley Properties, which owns two of the three buildings, said that the city and the Police Department gave them little support as they grappled with the gang. …At the urging of Councilwoman Jan Perry, city officials negotiated with the property owners for two years to rid the complex of crime. But for the last nine months, the city attorney's office has been building a case. In September, the office filed a public nuisance lawsuit in Superior Court.

Minor sympathy for the building's owners. If you've been negotiating with them for two years it's hard to say you only had months. And we're not talking nuisance abatement. We're talking nine people, including two children, shot to death since 2002. But no one moved on it for 18 years. Without government support, the residents had two choices: move (which I suspect isn't easy in L.A.'s housing market) or shoot back…a move I'm convinced would bring the government down on them faster than on the criminals because the residents are easier to find. Anyway… Judge OKs South L.A. Apartment Evictions City officials sought the removal of all tenants from a complex called gang 'headquarters.' By Jessica Garrison and Zeke Minaya Times Staff Writers December 15, 2004 For the first time, a Los Angeles judge, acting at the request of city officials, has ordered the eviction of all tenants from a gang-ridden apartment complex on the grounds that it is a public nuisance. Gang members have made the 24 units with peeling paint and sagging balconies their headquarters for 20 years, terrorizing neighbors, dealing drugs and, since June 2002, shooting nine people, including two children, city officials charged Tuesday. "This building has been a headquarters of death," said Los Angeles Assistant Police Chief George Gascon, standing with a seized assault rifle in front of television cameras near the three apartment buildings in South Los Angeles. City officials held their news conference half a block from the apartments at 69th and Main streets, saying it would be safer.

And it you don't think those conditions would return if the New Deal was rolled back, consider that profitable corporations lay off workers to enhance their stock price. We already allow restaurants to deduct tips from their waitstaff's already minimum wage salary. We already have a youth wage that can be paid to anyone under 20 years old for the first 90 days of employment. Now tell me that if you get broke enough you won't let your 13 year old take a job that lasts 90 days. And take it again 90 days later. And tell me corporations won't see that and respond accordingly.

Quote of note:

As it is, the two-tier system is breeding discord between experienced workers and new hires who aren't happy about being paid less to perform the same tasks. Turnover among new hires is unusually high, union officials said, and some new employees are chafing at paying union dues that average nearly $50 a month. The stores dispute that there is a turnover problem.

See a parallel? Supermarkets Still Feel Pain of Long Strike and Lockout By James F. Peltz and Melinda Fulmer Times Staff Writers December 15, 2004 Nearly 10 months after the end of the bitter Southern California grocery strike and lockout, the three companies and the union that waged the longest labor standoff in U.S. supermarket history are still in turmoil. Profits at Albertsons Inc., Safeway Inc.'s Vons and Pavilions stores and Kroger Co.'s Ralphs are being pinched by the price cuts they've made to woo shoppers alienated by the 4 1/2 -month dispute. The stocks of all three companies have fallen since a new contract was signed in February. The chains maintain that they'll rebound, largely because the two-tier contract allows them to give new hires significantly lower wages and benefits than veteran workers. Safeway, for one, doesn't want to wait for attrition to realize the payoff. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company plans to offer buyouts to roughly one-third of the 22,000 people who work at its 293 Vons and Pavilions stores in Southern and Central California to hasten their replacement with new hires. People familiar with the buyout program said Safeway was prepared to spend up to $50 million on it. So if 1,000 workers accepted, they would receive $50,000 each. "They want to get rid of the old-timers and bring in a new class of citizens," said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, which represents 4,266 Vons and Pavilions employees in the Los Angeles area.

Quote of note:

At issue in the balloting are thousands of "empty ovals" — ballots in which a voter wrote in Frye's name but failed to fill in the small oval next to the write-in line. Election officials had declined to count those ballots, and a Superior Court judge last month upheld their decision, saying that state election law required that ovals be filled in for a write-in to count.

Ballot Review Favors Frye Counting San Diego's disputed votes shows write-in candidate would have beaten the incumbent mayor, already sworn in. By Tony Perry Times Staff Writer December 15, 2004 SAN DIEGO — The hotly disputed race for mayor here took a sharp turn Tuesday as a review of disputed ballots showed that Councilwoman Donna Frye would have beaten incumbent Mayor Dick Murphy if all votes had been counted. Tuesday's review looked at ballots that had not been counted in the official tally. It was conducted at the request of The Times, four other news organizations and two pro-Frye voters. The results threw the politics of the state's second-largest city into confusion more than a month after the Nov. 2 election. The disputed election comes at a high-stakes time for San Diego. Whoever is mayor will face a deep financial crisis and a federal investigation of city officials. Both stem from the city's failure to properly fund its employee pension plans. As the candidates and their lawyers and advisors plotted their next moves, Republican and Democratic political consultants and activists said the ballot review had severely weakened Murphy's position. Just a week ago, Murphy, a Republican, was sworn in after being certified as the winner with a margin of 2,108 votes over Frye, a Democrat who was a write-in candidate. The ballot review Tuesday uncovered at least 4,854 additional, uncounted votes for Frye. That total will probably grow today as thousands more absentee ballots are surveyed. In all, 455,694 votes were cast. "Dick Murphy is now the phony mayor," said Scott Barnett, former executive director of the San Diego County Taxpayers Assn. and a Republican. "He already had only about a third of the vote; now there's an incredible cloud over him."

Quote of note:

"Heads up," an assistant special agent in charge of the Navy's investigative field office in the Middle East wrote to his superiors in a 6 a.m. e-mail June 14, pleading for more investigators. "Case load is exploding, high visibility cases are on the rise," he warned. "We have scrubbed all of our personnel and have no other trained personnel available to deploy."

Details of Marines Mistreating Prisoners in Iraq Are Revealed By Richard A. Serrano Times Staff Writer December 15, 2004 WASHINGTON — Marines in Iraq conducted mock executions of juvenile prisoners last year, burned and tortured other detainees with electrical shocks, and warned a Navy corpsman they would kill him if he treated any injured Iraqis, according to military documents made public Tuesday. [P6: A LOT of emphasis added] The latest revelations of prisoner abuse cases, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against the government, involved previously unknown incidents in which 11 Marines were punished for abusing detainees. Military officials indicated that they had investigated 13 other cases, but deemed them unsubstantiated. Four investigations are pending. Military superiors handed down sentences of up to a year in confinement after finding Marines guilty of offenses ranging from assault to "cruelty and mistreatment," the documents show. The new documents are the latest in a series of reports, e-mails and other records that the ACLU has obtained to bolster its contention that the abuse of prisoners goes far beyond the handful of soldiers charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The photographs of naked Iraqi prisoners being tortured by American troops at the prison shocked the world in April. The scandal involved abuse by reservists and members of the Army and National Guard; the latest cases elaborated for the first time on numerous allegations of abuse by Marines. The mistreatment occurred as early as May 2003, months before the first allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib were recorded. And the most recent case involving prisoner abuse by the Marines occurred in June, two months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU in New York, placed responsibility for the abuse on the Pentagon. "This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order," he said. Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said he could not comment on the latest cases because he was unfamiliar with them.

I'm pointing out (okay, traffic whoring) a post on The Niggerati Network about three upcoming PBS specials you must see. And I also want to say I'm not sure how it worked out this way but cnulan, who has been posting on politics and such at Vision Circle, is posting on Christianity at the N-Net. The kind of post I read and find nothing I can add to. You might want to check it out.

New Homeless Initiative To Raise Bottle Deposit To 12 Cents WASHINGTON, DC—A bipartisan Congressional initiative passed Monday promises that relief, in the form of a national, 12-cent bottle-and-can refund, will soon come to the nation's estimated 600,000 homeless. "We can no longer ignore the problem of homelessness in our country," Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) said. "Under the new program, all aluminum and glass beverage containers will be required to carry a minimum refund value of 12 cents, boosting homeless citizens' incomes and endowing them with a sense of pride in their work." Citing the track records of local deposit plans, the Subcommittee on Human Resources drew up a proposal that would tap into the nation's existing infrastructure to minimize the homeless epidemic without creating budgetary hurdles. Dubbed the Shelter And Recycling Initiative (SARI), it is the first nation-wide, federally mandated bottle-deposit program. It is also the first government program designed to lift the burden of homelessness from the taxpayers' shoulders. "For homeless can-collectors in my home state of Michigan, the plan represents a 20-percent raise," Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) said. "For those in states like California, New York, and Iowa, it represents a whopping 140 percent wage increase. Everyone wins: The homeless enjoy a higher standard of living, and we taxpayers enjoy cleaner streets, free of cans and bottles!" Under the plan, an additional 50,000 bottle-and-can redemption machines will be placed in front of the nation's grocery stores to cut down on the amount of time homeless people spend in line. "This is the best way to help the homeless help themselves," Camp said. "Think of how good they'll feel about themselves when they can march right up to that refund machine, deposit their grocery basket full of bottles and cans, roll on over to the register, and pay for their Dinty Moore stew with money they've earned." According to Camp, if the homeless can't "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" after the return-rate increase, then "there is no helping them."

The Onion, of course. Really bitter satire. But really deserved.

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Nigeria Chosen To Host 2008 Genocides ABUJA, NIGERIA—At a celebratory press conference Monday, President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that Nigeria's troubled but oil-rich city of Warri has been chosen to host the 2008 Genocides. "Nigeria is excited for this chance to follow in the footsteps of Somalia, Rwanda, and Sudan," Obasanjo said. "Much work remains to be done, but all of the building blocks are in place. Nigeria has many contentious ethnic groups, a volatile economy, and a dependence on food imports. We are well on our way to making 2008 a genocidal year to remember in Nigeria!" Obasanjo acknowledged that many people considered Nigeria, a relatively stable West African nation, an unlikely candidate to host the Genocides. "With a multi-party government transitioning from military to civilian rule, Nigeria is not a shoo-in to host the Genocides," Obasanjo said. "But last week's municipal election—with ballot shortages and multiple accusations of vote tampering—showed the world that Nigeria is, indeed, geared up for the unimaginable." Oni Radhiya, a spokesman from the 2004 Genocide Board, said September's crippling polio outbreak may have helped Nigeria beat out the competition. "Sudan was a fantastic host this year—the 2004 Genocides have really raised the bar," Radhiya said. "For 2008, many of us on the committee had our eyes on Tajikistan. The country's ongoing ethnic and religious strife made it a strong contender. But there was some concern that the conflict was as likely to simmer down as it was to boil over." Radhiya added that Iraq was ruled out because the country is unlikely to exist three and a half years from now.

Judge Suspended For Wearing Blackface To Party POSTED: 6:52 am EST December 14, 2004 NEW ORLEANS -- The Louisiana Supreme Court has given a judge a six-month suspension for wearing blackface makeup, handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit to a Halloween party. Judge Timothy Ellender will lose all of his pay during the suspension. That totals more than $50,000. Ellender, who is white, said the costumes worn by him and his wife were meant as a joke. She dressed as a policewoman. And the party's host, Ellender's brother-in-law, was dressed as Buckwheat. The justices agreed Ellender did not mean to insult blacks. Still, they ordered him to take a sociology course to get "a greater understanding of racial sensitivity."

He probably didn't mean to insult Black folks. He meant to amuse white folks…and is that any better? He'd have never worn the costume in front of Black folks, so he knows.

Public Hospital Claims Major Drug Manufacturers Overcharging Disabled and Homeless for Drugs Report showing an estimated $500 million per year in excess drug prices spurs suit July 13, 2004 Montgomery, Ala.-An Alabama public health hospital today filed a class-action lawsuit against some of the nation's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers including Merck (NYSE:MRK), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), claiming the drug manufacturers have been systematically overcharging public hospitals and community health centers for drugs by as much as $500 million per year. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Alabama, Central Alabama Comprehensive Healthcare Inc., an organization that provides care for the indigent, claims major drug manufacturers have charged prices far above the maximum allowed by a 1992 law designed to provide more healthcare access to the homeless, the disabled, children, and the poor. The 1992 law requires drug companies to charge public hospitals and community health centers a price lower than prices paid by any other public or private purchaser. Although drug companies are required to give public hospitals the best price, they have steadfastly refused to disclose how they calculate prices, the suit notes. The suit seeks to represent all public hospitals and community health centers nationwide that were allegedly overcharged by the drug companies. "In our view, the defendants have been hiding the truth from the government and the hospitals for years," said Steve Berman, the attorney representing the public hospitals and community health centers. "We intend to prove that these drug companies have boosted their bottom line on the backs of the poor and disadvantaged." The suit cites a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services that shows more than 97 percent of public hospitals paid prices above the legal limit for drugs during September 2002. According to the report: * 31 percent of the items purchased by public hospitals and community health centers exceeded the maximum price allowed. * 53 percent of the drugs sampled exceeded the maximum price at least once. * Public hospitals overpaid an estimated $41.1 million. "It's shocking to think about the number of people that didn't receive basic healthcare services because of budget shortfalls caused by this scheme," said Berman. According the suit, the government organizations in charge of ensuring that hospitals are not overcharged suffer from inadequate funding for proper day-to-day oversight, much less investigation and prosecution of these alleged overcharges. The suit asks the courts for a full accounting to determine the extent of the overcharging by drug companies, injunctive relief to prevent further overcharging, and relief from past overcharges.

Quote of note:

One of the parents bringing suit, Tammy Kitzmiller, expressed concern that the school board would mandate the teaching of “something that isn’t accepted as science.”

ACLU sues over ‘intelligent design’ in Pa. Suit challenges policy on teaching alternative to evolution theory The Associated Press Updated: 4:43 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2004 HARRISBURG, Pa. - Eight families have sued a school district that is requiring students to learn about alternatives to the theory of evolution, claiming the curriculum violates the separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the lawsuit was the first to challenge whether public schools should teach “intelligent design,” which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power. The two organizations are representing the parents in the federal lawsuit. The Dover Area School District voted 6-3 on Oct. 18 to include intelligent design in the ninth-grade science curriculum, in what is believed to be the first such requirement in the country.

Quote of note:

Before relinquishing authority to the current Iraqi interim government, the occupation authority spent $20 billion from the development fund, $11.1 billion of which were estimated to have come from oil sales. The United Nations' oil-for-food program is undergoing a separate series of investigations by the United Nations itself and five Congressional committees, all seeking to uncover corrupt practices and officials who allowed more than $20 billion in proceeds to be diverted to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

U.N. Audit Faults U.S. on Handling of Postwar Iraqi Oil Sales By WARREN HOGE NITED NATIONS, Dec. 14 - An audit board set up by the Security Council to monitor oil sales in Iraq during the period that the United States-led occupation authority ran the country reported today that there had been widespread irregularities, including financial mismanagement, a failure to curb smuggling and an overdependence on no-bid contracts. The watchdog panel, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, cited three main concerns: the absence of metering to keep track of how much oil was being pumped from Iraqi fields, the resort to noncompetitive bidding procedures for many contracts, and the use of barter transactions with countries in the immediate region. Among the noncompetititve contracts paid for with Iraqi oil money, the board noted in particular those awarded to a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company, the Houston-based military and oil services conglomerate, whose chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was Vice President Dick Cheney. The company's operations in Iraq, involving work for more than $10 billion, have been dogged by charges of preferential treatment, overbilling, cost overruns and waste. The board said that its efforts to conduct separate audits of the sole-source contracts had been delayed by an unwillingness of the United States Defense Department to produce requested documents on time.

I know we have a healthy Libertarian contingent here. This is likely to annoy you even more than the Conservatives, but I must. I really would like you all to go beyond theory and consider the way things manifested when the government was as small as Libertarians desire. The situation is nicely summed up by the first sentence of a paragraph in a New York Times editorial:

In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired.

This is not an opinion. This is historical fact. And it did not change until required by law. And it you don't think those conditions would return if the New Deal was rolled back, consider that profitable corporations lay off workers to enhance their stock price. We already allow restaurants to deduct tips from their waitstaff's already minimum wage salary. We already have a youth wage that can be paid to anyone under 20 years old for the first 90 days of employment. Now tell me that if you get broke enough you won't let your 13 year old take a job that lasts 90 days. And take it again 90 days later. And tell me corporations won't see that and respond accordingly. You need to consider the fact that you are only in a position to complain about these laws because the laws exist. You need to look at what actually happened in the Great Depression. Absolute capitalism failed. You need to understand the G.I. Bill was passed, not because we thought soldiers earned it by the mere act of donning fatigues but because after our major wars there were huge numbers of unemployed armed white men wandering the landscape who had just had their aversion to killing trained out of them. By the way, here's the rest of that paragraph from the Times:

This is not an agenda the public would be likely to sign onto today if it were debated in an election. But conservatives, who like to complain about activist liberal judges, could achieve their anti-New Deal agenda through judicial activism on the right. Judges could use the so-called Constitution-in-Exile to declare laws on workplace safety, environmental protection and civil rights unconstitutional.

And because doing so would enhance their economic position, they will if they can. All I ask is that you remember a bit of history and a bit of human nature as you consider what to support.

What's New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal By ADAM COHEN Published: December 14, 2004 …We take for granted today the idea that Congress can adopt a national minimum wage or require safety standards in factories. That's because the Supreme Court, in modern times, has always held that it can. But the court once had a far more limited view of Congress's power. In the early 1900's, justices routinely struck down laws protecting workers and discouraging child labor. …But that may be about to change. The attacks on the post-1937 view of the Constitution are becoming more mainstream among Republicans. One of President Bush's nominees to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Janice Rogers Brown, has called the "revolution of 1937" a disaster. …Some leading conservatives want the court to overturn Wickard and replace it with a pair of decisions from the 1800's that one brief filed in the case said would return "Commerce Clause jurisprudence to its settled limits prior to the New Deal." That would be a bold move, but the court has already been heading down this path. In recent years, it has struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and a crucial part of the Violence Against Women Act for exceeding Congress's power. If the Supreme Court drifts rightward in the next four years, as seems likely, it could not only roll back Congress's Commerce Clause powers, but also revive other dangerous doctrines. Before 1937, the court invoked "liberty of contract" to strike down a Nebraska law regulating the weight of bread loaves, which kept buyers from being cheated, and a New York law setting a maximum 10-hour workday. Randy Barnett, the law professor who represented the medical marijuana users, argues in a new book that minimum wage laws infringe on "the fundamental natural right of freedom of contract." In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired. This is not an agenda the public would be likely to sign onto today if it were debated in an election. But conservatives, who like to complain about activist liberal judges, could achieve their anti-New Deal agenda through judicial activism on the right. Judges could use the so-called Constitution-in-Exile to declare laws on workplace safety, environmental protection and civil rights unconstitutional. …The court will not return to the pre-1937 Constitution in a single case, but it seems likely to keep whittling away Congressional power and federally protected rights. If it does, what President Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1936 - after two key New Deal programs were struck down - will again be true: "It was not the wage earners who cheered when these laws were declared invalid."

A Watchdog Muted The United States Commission on Civil Rights cannot legislate or regulate. What it can do is hold hearings and make a terrible racket if the government is not enforcing the laws of the land forbidding discrimination in voting, employment and housing. The panel is a watchdog, exactly as President Dwight Eisenhower intended when he persuaded Congress to establish it in 1957. Mostly it has been run on a part-time basis by academics like the first chairman, John Hannah, then president of Michigan State; the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who was president of Notre Dame; and, most recently, by Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. The panel helped created momentum for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 and for the creation of civilian review boards to ease tensions between the police and minorities in the 1970's. Watchdogs occasionally bite, of course. While some presidents have tolerated this, others have not - including President Bush, who has now appointed Gerald Reynolds, a conservative African-American lawyer, to succeed Ms. Berry as commissioner. An equal-opportunity critic, Ms. Berry has harangued presidents of both parties for nearly 25 years. What finally did her in, apparently, was a 166-page report criticizing Mr. Bush's leadership on civil rights that appeared in draft form on the commission's Web site before the election. It was ultimately rejected by the commission's conservative majority, but Ms. Berry sent it to the White House anyway with a plea to Mr. Bush to "embrace the core freedoms and values enshrined in our civil rights laws." Mr. Bush is unlikely to get such lectures from Mr. Reynolds, an energy company lawyer who briefly ran the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department. Mr. Reynolds has described affirmative action as a "big lie," is generally opposed to preferential treatment for members of minorities and has said the civil rights groups overstate the problem of discrimination. This approach may make for warmer relations with the White House, but it hardly seems likely to keep the commission on the leading edge of the struggle for civil rights.

Most G.O.P. Plans to Remake Social Security Involve Deep Cuts to Tomorrow's Retirees By EDMUND L. ANDREWS Published: December 14, 2004 WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - As President Bush gears up for a major public push to overhaul Social Security, he has focused almost all his rhetorical energy on the need to let people divert some of their taxes to private retirement accounts. But nearly every leading Republican proposal on Capitol Hill acknowledges that private accounts by themselves do little to solve the system's projected shortfall of at least $3.5 trillion. Instead, those proposals rely on deep cuts in benefits to future retirees.

Quote of note:

The authority's director of labor relations, Gary J. Dellaverson, defended the practice, saying overtime can be cheaper than hiring additional officers. "What you want to avoid through the use of overtime is surplus," he said.

Can be cheaper…but it certainly isn't in this case. M.T.A. Spent $15 Million on Officers' Overtime By SEWELL CHAN he Metropolitan Transportation Authority paid a third of its police officers more than $100,000 last year, and in some cases officers doubled and even tripled their base salaries by working overtime, according to the authority's payroll records. At the top of the list of 212 officers whose compensation totaled more than $100,000 in 2003 was Lt. Francis P. Zaino, who made $204,859 on a base salary of $86,705. Another lieutenant, Thomas G. Nutter, was paid $199,037, more than double his base salary of $85,708. By that measure, Officer John Wu did even better. He was paid $196,234, more than three times his $61,102 base. All three earned more than the official in charge of daily operations for the subways, Michael A. Lombardi, a senior vice president at New York City Transit. His total compensation last year was $181,796. The authority's extensive use of overtime shifts is not just a one-time expense; it can add significantly to the authority's pension costs for years to come. Police pensions are based on a formula that takes into account total pay, including overtime, in the last five years of service. Officers are eligible for pensions after 20 years. Lieutenant Zaino has 24 years on the force, while Lieutenant Nutter and Officer Wu joined the force in 1985 and can retire next year with pensions that factor in their 2003 overtime. The amount of police overtime - $15.1 million last year - has raised concerns about the oversight of spending by the authority, whose board is expected to vote on Thursday to raise subway, bus and commuter rail fares for the second time in less than two years. Both Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, have called for tighter controls and greater efficiency in spending by the transit system.

Quote of note:

Two other Republicans have pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy in the phone-jamming operation: Chuck McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican party; and Allen Raymond, a former colleague of Tobin's who operated GOP Marketplace, a telemarketing service in Alexandria, Va. They are scheduled to be sentenced in February and March.

Former Bush campaign official indicted for phone-jamming By Katharine Webster, Associated Press Writer | December 14, 2004 CONCORD, N.H. --The former New England chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign pleaded innocent in federal court to charges he helped jam Democrats' get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002. James Tobin, 44, of Bangor, Maine, faces two criminal counts each of conspiring to make harassing telephone calls and aiding and abetting telephone harassment. The operation also involved a ride-to-the-polls phone line set up by the nonpartisan Manchester firefighters' union. Tobin, who was northeast political director of the Republican Senatorial Committee at the time, was indicted Dec. 1 after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted. Tobin is free on personal recognizance and prosecutors agreed he did not pose a flight risk or a danger to the public. But U.S. Magistrate Judge James Muirhead on Monday ordered him to surrender his passport and any weapons and said he should report to pre-trial services, just like any other criminal defendant. Muirhead threatened to jail Tobin if he gets so much as a speeding ticket before his trial begins Feb. 1. "He's no different than a street hooker in Manchester," Muirhead said. "If he's guilty, then I find his crime as offensive as any other crime." Disrupting the electoral process is an "outrage against the constitution," Muirhead said.

High court restricts pollution lawsuits Says firms can't sue unless US orders cleanups By Gina Holland, Associated Press | December 14, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday put restrictions on companies that want to voluntarily clean up their polluted land and sue former owners to share the costs. The court ruled, 7 to 2, against a company that in 1981 bought land in Texas that had been used for aircraft engine maintenance businesses and then went to court to recover some of the $5 million it spent cleaning up pollution there. The justices said the company improperly tried to use the Superfund law to sue because the government had not demanded that the cleanup be done. The court, however, left open the possibility that another part of the Superfund law could permit such lawsuits. ''There's no question this ruling will significantly diminish the incentive people have to do voluntary cleanup," said Richard Lazarus, a Georgetown University law school professor and environmental lawyer.

Calif. governor eyes dramatic shift in power By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times | December 14, 2004 SACRAMENTO -- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose ambitious plans to overhaul state bureaucracy face opposition in the Legislature, is considering a change that would make it far more difficult for lawmakers to reject his ideas. If successful, the move would amount to a dramatic shift in power toward the Republican governor, helping him surmount resistance in a Legislature controlled by Democrats. Currently, Schwarzenegger's call for revamping government can be rejected by the Legislature through a simple majority vote of either the Senate or Assembly. Under the change that the governor's aides have privately discussed, a two-thirds' vote of both houses would be needed to scuttle a proposed government shake-up. "It'd make it an awful lot harder for the Legislature to turn down a plan," said William Houck, cochairman of a commission that advised Schwarzenegger on government restructuring.

Waveflux is cracking on a CNN poll question: Would you pass the vetting process? Let's see: a couple of late tax returns, paid. Two busts for smoking a joint in public as a youth: one fine, one dismissal. Nasty tendency to expose lies… I think that last one would sink me.

No one is trying to force you to speak ebonics. Your two threads are interesting. But your commenter who says he can't find sentence structure in ebonics is full of it. And this is a fact: language develops from the ground up. It's the reason new words are added to the dictionary regularly, the reason the meanings of phrases slip ("stink" originally had pleasant connotations). It's hard to say someone is not speaking correctly when everyone (including you, Oliver) understands what they're saying. Furthermore, if you read the original historical documents, you'll find "proper English" is very, very new. The American nation, society and economy were created by people who couldn't spell worth a damn. The "proper English" you extol is a trade language, like Swahili. It should be taught as such. And like any other skill it adds to your marketability. But "proper English"…like Chinese…has no more significance than that.

Quote of note:

"He was then jumped upon, hit in the head and beaten. From there, he was dragged to a nearby apartment, which was actually the apartment of a co-defendant. Inside the apartment, he was beaten. He was stabbed in the area of the chest with a knife. Lit cigarettes were put on him, and there was racial slurs written on his back," Beland said. The suspects allegedly yelled that Parks was a disgrace to his race. They allegedly pulled him into a car, where the racial slurs continued, and threw him out of the vehicle.

White Man Beaten For Dating Black Woman Date: Monday, December 13, 2004 By: Associated Press BOSTON -- A Norwood, Mass., man is accused of stabbing a man, stoning him and leaving him to be run over by a train because he dated a black woman, officials alleged Thursday. Dimitri Long, 28, shielded his face from the camera as he appeared in Norfolk Superior Court. "The charges are assault with intent to murder, mayhem, and civil rights violations. The dangerous weapons used were a lit cigarette and a knife," Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland said. Officials alleged that Long was angry that Joseph Parks, a white male in his 20s, had once dated a black woman. In September, Long and two other people, including Long's girlfriend, confronted the victim after smashing the windows to his house.

1 in 10 bird species faces extinction by 2100 Computer forecast says 15 percent will be on the brink The Associated Press Updated: 5:12 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004 WASHINGTON - About 10 percent of all bird species face extinction by the end of the century and another 15 percent are on the brink, according to researchers who say such extinctions would have a widespread impact on the environment, agriculture and human society. “Important ecosystem processes, particularly decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal, will likely decline as a result” of the loss of bird species, said Cagan H. Sekercioglu of the Stanford University Center for Conservation Biology. The forecast of Sekercioglu and colleagues, published online Monday by Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, comes a month after the World Conservation Union reported a continuing loss of species, including an estimate that 12 percent of birds are threatened with extinction.

NIH researcher seekswhistleblower protection Fishbein reported concerns about AIDS research The Associated Press Updated: 3:39 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004 WASHINGTON - The expert hired by the National Institutes of Health last year to improve its research practices after problems in an AIDS drug study surfaced is seeking whistleblower protection after disagreements with management have left him on the verge of being fired. Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, a 10-year expert on safe drug research practices in the private sector before joining NIH in summer 2003, has met with congressional investigators and provided extensive information about problems in NIH research. NIH officials declined to discuss Fishbein, citing personnel privacy, except to say the move to fire him is based on his performance. Fishbein, who is represented by the National Whistleblower Center, was told earlier this year he is being fired before he completes his two-year employment probation after a series of disputes with NIH managers over safety concerns in various AIDS research projects, according to his lawyer. In one instance, Fishbein refused to discipline an employee for reporting safety concerns to the Food and Drug Administration, and another time he was overruled when he objected to restarting problematic research, documents show. Attorney Stephen M. Kohn, who represents Fishbein, said NIH officials have a built-in conflict because they both fund the research and monitor safety. “He found a system that was broken,” Kohn said. “There’s a tension at NIH. A tension between those doctors who want to push the clinical results, that want to publish, that want to take credit for major breakthroughs, and other doctors and professionals who want to adhere to the quality standards.”

I just heard on NBC Nightly News that McCain said he has "no confidence" in Rumsfeld. Hoo hah.

White Houseknew Kerik had ‘colorful past’ Official says conduct was seen as ‘not disqualifying’ NBC News and news services Updated: 2:07 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004 WASHINGTON - Bush administration lawyers who vetted former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik before President Bush named him to head the Homeland Security Department knew he had a “colorful past” but concluded that his long record of public service would outweigh questions about his conduct, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Monday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the lawyers were aware that Kerik had been questioned in a civil lawsuit involving questions about an alleged extramarital affair with a corrections employee; the failure to properly report financial gifts on disclosure forms; and an arrest warrant issued after he failed to pay condo fees. “The lawyers looked at all these issues,” said the official. "We believed they were not disqualifying."

I'm starting to feel they just want to clear the continent of human inhabitants. Quote of note:

The documents show Tramont and other NIH officials dismissed the problems with the nevirapine research in Uganda as overblown and were slow to report safety concerns to the Food and Drug Administration. NIH’s nevirapine research in Uganda was so riddled with sloppy record keeping that NIH investigators couldn’t be sure from patient records which mothers got the drug. Instead, they had to use blood samples to confirm doses, the documents show.

Officials warned of concerns about AIDS drug But U.S. sent medication to Africa anyway, documents show The Associated Press Updated: 5:33 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004 WASHINGTON - Weeks before President Bush announced a plan to protect African babies from AIDS, top U.S. health officials were warned that research on the key drug was flawed and may have underreported thousands of severe reactions including deaths, government documents show. The 2002 warnings about the drug, nevirapine, were serious enough to suspend testing for more than a year, let Uganda’s government know of the dangers and prompt the drug’s maker to pull its request for permission to use the medicine to protect newborns in the United States. But the National Institutes of Health, the government’s premiere health research agency, chose not to inform the White House as it scrambled to keep its experts’ concerns from scuttling the use of nevirapine in Africa as a cheap solution, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. “Everyone recognized the enormity that this decision could have on the worldwide use of nevirapine to interrupt mother-baby transmission,” NIH’s AIDS research chief, Dr. Edmund Tramont, reported March 14, 2002, to his boss, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Mammon’s Speech to the Republican National Convention Thanks everyone. You’re a perfectly awful audience filled with greedy sons of b------ who love denying health care, decimating education, destroying the environment, starting wars for oil profits and sending millions of new people into poverty, and I love you all very much. But while I have been following your exploits with great joy, I bet most of you have never even heard of me. Sure, you’ve heard of my lazy ass cousin Satan, even though he f----- up the only two assignments he got in the Bible. First, Job then Jesus, both times falling on his big fat face. Still he has a better publicist than I do, so while he wouldn’t need any introduction, I have to tell you who I am: I am the evil one in charge of greed, possessiveness, love of money. And I’ve come all the way from Hell to tell you that I couldn’t be happier with what your party has done for this country. I’m sure that some of you Bible thumpers remember Jesus’ warnings about me that “you cannot worship both God and Mammon.” But you have proven him wrong by showing that it’s possible to pretend to do the former while really doing the latter. Let’s be honest, Jesus never said, "Blessed are the rich, for they shall receive huge tax cuts to make themselves richer." Or "love thy enemies, unless of course they have huge oil reserves, then go kick their asses." No, Jesus was too focused (please excuse my language) on pointless ideals like love, forgiveness and helping the poor and destitute. Alas, the early church actually took his message seriously, putting all their wealth together and dividing it out according to need. F------ Commies. Face it, your party follows Jesus about as well as Fox news follows their slogan of “fair and balanced.” But I’m not here to chastise you but to honor you. You cannot take seriously the directives of idealists like Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, or Mohammed, or you will wind up in the same place as they did, out in the streets begging for food. That’s why it’s time to give this devil his due. Or to put it in modern lingo, you are my peeps, and you need to step up and give me my props. I know that many of you here are smart enough to see where your loyalties truly lie, but for those of you who think you are a good Christian because you donate a fiftieth of your new tax cut to a homeless shelter, just consider how many programs for the poor were eliminated to give you that tax cut in the first place. Jesus, being the unreasonable man that he was, wouldn’t even let that rich young ruler off the hook when he said he gave half of his earnings to the poor; no Jesus wanted him to give it all away. How many of you are willing to do that? And also keep in mind that both homosexuality and abortion were common practices in Jesus’ time and he never said one word about either one. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut about anything else that bothered him, so in these cases too, your main concerns don’t jive with those of your supposed leader. My directives, on the other hand, are perfectly in line with your party’s concerns and actions. First, you must do anything to stay in power. Lie, cheat and above all, distract Americans from the issues that truly matter. What does it profit you to keep your soul if you lose the rest of the world? But look who I’m telling this to, after all, your swift boat ad campaign proves your awareness that money and lies will get you much further in this society than honesty and courage. I’m still smiling over that one. Our man not only dodged the war but also managed to dodge dodging the war, and yet we put their man on the defensive by suggesting he only deserved two rather than three purple hearts. This leads me to my second directive, keep the public dumb as rocks, so they continue to fall for stuff like this. Push testing over critical thinking, continue to cut money from schools under the guise of “no child left behind,” and make certain that teachers are too busy with extra students (or having to work a second job) to give their kids any individual attention. And finally, find any excuse to make more money, especially if it involves starting another war. Every time another young man or woman dies so that Haliburton’s profits can go up, I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Certainly others have twisted Jesus’s words around in similar, admirable ways, but what makes you so unique is the way you act as though you were not only influenced by him but may actually be him. How you managed to get away with this is impressive even to Satan, and he is the king of deceit. After all, Jesus was born into a poor family with little power, influence, opportunity and yet managed to rise up through his own study, faith, and wisdom to create a following of over a billion people. Though we support you, we all know where you would be without your family’s influence and wealth, certainly not at the White House but perhaps at White Castle flipping burgers. Don’t worry; most people do not have our level of discernment. And to make certain that they never do, or even possess the tiny amount of critical thinking needed to see through your web of lies, you’ve set up a school system based entirely on standardized testing. What better way to keep individuality at bay, to get the public to trust authority so much they don’t even see the most blatant contradictions? So please, keep up the good work and continue to do all this in the name of God and Jesus. It doubles their pain when they not only see greed, war, and lies, but also hear of it being done in their name. Don’t worry, before too long you can come stay with us down there, where your true loyalties can come out in the open. And then we will have all of eternity to get to know you better. I see my time is almost up, but though I have to leave my physical form for now, I know that most of you will carry me with you in your hearts. Before long you will be able to smash all your false idols and proudly proclaim your allegiance to me. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a good publicist, please e-mail me at [email protected]. Thanks, you’ve been a great audience, and I am sure I will see many of you very soon. September 2004 From Randy Fallows

Man, I though Steve was tough on Kerik. But if people follow Josh Marshall's coverage, Kerik should just leave town. MINUTES LATER: I changed my mind. Steve is still the harshest.

The Dems were going to give him a pass for one simple reason: unvarnished, naked greed. They want more money for their cities. But no one knew all this shit existed in his background. Oh, the papers had an idea, but only Ray Kelly knew much of this was out there. What? The PD leaked this? Come on, Kelly wouldn't piss on Kerik if he was on fire, as opposed to Giuliani, who he would toss another gallon of gas on. You don't think IAB had a thick assed file on him and his friends, collected in secret, if nowhere else? The contempt Kelly felt was visible and his silence was clear. Why? Because Kerik was on the fucking pad. That's why. You don't think the FBI mentioned to Kelly all of Kerik's mob friends? You don't think he wondered about the Taser deal? Kelly thought Kerik had used the PC's office to enrich himself and was using his former status on 9/11 to get even richer. The next set of questions should follow the way Giuliani raised money after 9/11. Giuliani Partners was formed in the wake of that, and he loaded that charity with his friends. No one questioned why the mayor needed a personal charity. Now, since the cloak of 9/11 is finally being lifted, it's time for some hard questions about Kerik and his patron.

Nichelle of Nichelle Newsletter dropped this link to a MediaWeek story on declining Black TV viewership and its financial impact on the U-People Network. Only you have to go to The Niggerati Network to get it.

I was going to let Steve Gilliard handle the final fisking of Kerik. But courtesy of my boy Bruce C (mailing list folk) I find this and I can't resist.

Now his double affair laid bare BY RUSS BUETTNER DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Monday, December 13th, 2004 Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park City apartment for the passionate liaisons, the Daily News has learned. The first relationship, spanning nearly a decade, was with city Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero; the second, and more startling, was with famed publishing titan Judith Regan.

"stunningly attractive"? I guess you had to be there…

His affair with Regan, the stunningly attractive head of her own book publishing company, lasted for almost a year. Dramatically, each woman learned of the existence of the other after Pinero discovered a love note left by Regan in the apartment. The revelations about Kerik's private life come as repercussions over his suitability to be nominated for the post of secretary of homeland security. Kerik, 49, married with two children from his current marriage, withdrew his name from consideration in a sudden and unexpected call to the White House on Friday night.

Quote of note:

Private schools say quality is in the eye of the ultimate beholder: The parents. If they don't like a school, they will place their child elsewhere.

There goes the entire basis of the No Child Left Behind testing regime. Yeah, it's the same article I was talking about last post.

Pre-K bill pits private vs. public concerns for care
A new pre-K program was designed to appease private and religious day-care centers, but Miami-Dade and Broward fear public programs could be harmed.
BY GARY FINEOUT AND MARC CAPUTO The loose regulations benefit private and religious schools and day-care centers, and they expose the roots of the battle over pre-K: money, and who gets it once the state begins to pay for the $300 million to $400 million voluntary program for more than 150,000 4-year-olds in the fall.

To my mind this is a straight transfer of public funds into private pockets.Let's take the lower figure, $300 million. Is there a REASON this can't be used to fix the public school system that's not purely philosophical? And private schools will still be charging tuition, right?

To ensure public school districts in urban counties don't create their own large, pre-K programs that would make it hard for private institutions to compete, the legislation says any school district not meeting the class caps "in each classroom" is not eligible for state pre-K money. South Florida school districts have met class-size reductions but have complied by lowering the average class size over the entire county rather than in each class.

They had two years to work this out. It makes no sense to lower average class size as described. Some are significantly below the maximum student to teacher ratio and some significantly above. Why they'd do that isn't clear.

The tilt in favor of private schools in the bill, however, goes beyond just the class cap. The bill would allow: • The use of religion in pre-K education. There are few limits on what kind of curriculum should be offered, other than it should have some focus on early literacy. • Providers to deny admission to any 4-year-old based on religion. Unlike Bush's initial voucher program passed in 1999, this legislation does not include a requirement that admission be "religion-neutral." • An 18-1 student-to-teacher ratio. Opposed by Bush, this staffing ratio falls more closely into line with varying accrediting standards some private providers use. • A three-hour average day of instruction in the year-round program, mirroring what many private schools now offer. Public schools offer six hours. • Private schools to avoid a requirement that all the program's schools have teachers with higher-education degrees by 2010. The degree requirement is now considered an "aspirational goal." • The state's Labor Department, not the Department of Education, to have day-to-day control over the pre-K program.

They are coming for your kids.

To win public school support, the program ensures that public schools will offer a more intensive summer school program. Exact details on program costs will be determined during the spring legislative session in March.

Give up now and we'll decide who to thank you when we get around to it.

Ellen McKinley, founder of the faith-based Child Development Education Alliance, said she thought the bill was a done deal. She said she liked it because it "leveled the playing field" for public and private providers and the three-hour instruction limit was preferable to four hours. With a state subsidy for four hours, she said, it would be easier for public schools to tap local tax money and produce a six-hour program. That would make it almost impossible for private providers to compete with districts such as Miami-Dade and Broward that already offer pre-K to thousands of kids.

"Leveled the playing field." Affirmative action for religious schools. Why do they need such support if they are of such high quality?

McKinley said she was opposed to requiring advanced degrees for full-time instructors in six years. "We're going to ask experienced teachers to take time away from their families, and I don't know if that's a good idea," she said.

Oh, it's never a good idea for pre-K teachers to have knowledge. They might accidentally teach the kids something. This "families" thing is as full of it as "retiring to spend more time with my family"

IN THE COURTS Religious schools face another threat: Lawsuits. A suit filed by a coalition that included the state's teachers union and the NAACP contends the voucher law violates the state's ban on financially aiding sectarian institutions. Bush has lost the case in every venue and is appealing to the state Supreme Court. Fred Menachem, who helped run the amendment campaign on behalf of its creator, outgoing Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, says he's prepared to sue over the pre-K legislation. He points out that the petition signed by voters to put the measure on the ballot said the program would have "appropriate staffing ratios, teacher qualifications and professional development" standards.

And yet you're fighting the class size restrictions and oppose the requirement for an advanced degree, prefer a three hour subsidy over a four hour one so the public school side is hampered, will discriminate based on a child's religion. And the Department of Labor, rather than the Department of Education will run it. You. Suck.

"I will find a team of lawyers to take the case," he said. "This is not about business. This is not about politics."

Neither is it about education. It's about money, and indoctrination.

This is too deep for a single post.

Republican lawmakers have long favored private schools. They created the nation's largest private school voucher program, which helped turn the classroom into an extension of the marketplace or even, critics say, a house of worship. But the bill's proponents say lawmakers aren't out to benefit private secular and religious schools. They're just looking for a simple and cost-effective way out of a vexing supply-and-demand problem voters laid in their lap: Where do you put all the kids?

You know why there's a problem putting the kids somewhere?

Morris points out that many public schools are at or over capacity statewide as they implement a constitutional amendment calling for class-size reductions. Voters approved class caps in 2002, the same year they opted for the pre-K amendment calling for a "high quality" program.

And this is the same sort of protectionism free market-types claim distort the economy. You can distort the eductaion process the exact same way.

…To ensure public school districts in urban counties don't create their own large, pre-K programs that would make it hard for private institutions to compete, the legislation says any school district not meeting the class caps "in each classroom" is not eligible for state pre-K money.

Oh, no. I'm not done yet. Pre-K bill pits private vs. public concerns for care A new pre-K program was designed to appease private and religious day-care centers, but Miami-Dade and Broward fear public programs could be harmed. BY GARY FINEOUT AND MARC CAPUTO TALLAHASSEE - Before the ink dries on a law creating a statewide pre-kindergarten program, it will bear the hallmark of a Republican-led Legislature that would rather tighten public purse strings than regulate private and religious schools. The voter-mandated pre-K program, the centerpiece of this week's special lawmaking session, likely won't meet the number of instruction hours or qualified teachers called for by early-childhood development advocates. The proposal, expected to pass with few changes, doesn't bar religious discrimination, either. The loose regulations benefit private and religious schools and day-care centers, and they expose the roots of the battle over pre-K: money, and who gets it once the state begins to pay for the $300 million to $400 million voluntary program for more than 150,000 4-year-olds in the fall. Skeptical of education bureaucracies, Republican lawmakers have long favored private schools. They created the nation's largest private school voucher program, which helped turn the classroom into an extension of the marketplace or even, critics say, a house of worship. But the bill's proponents say lawmakers aren't out to benefit private secular and religious schools. They're just looking for a simple and cost-effective way out of a vexing supply-and-demand problem voters laid in their lap: Where do you put all the kids? "There's not a chance they can do this without us. There's definitely not room in the public school system. We're the extra supply. We're the extra space. We're the ones who do this," said Daniel Morris, president of the Florida Association for Child Care Management, a largely secular group of 1,800 members and one of the most influential voices in the Legislation. "This is about parental choice," Morris added. "That means private, faith-based and public schools." CLASS CAPS Morris points out that many public schools are at or over capacity statewide as they implement a constitutional amendment calling for class-size reductions. Voters approved class caps in 2002, the same year they opted for the pre-K amendment calling for a "high quality" program. South Florida Democratic leaders placed both measures on the ballot. Republicans, led by Gov. Jeb Bush, supported pre-K but decried the class-size amendment, which Bush now seeks to repeal. To ensure public school districts in urban counties don't create their own large, pre-K programs that would make it hard for private institutions to compete, the legislation says any school district not meeting the class caps "in each classroom" is not eligible for state pre-K money. South Florida school districts have met class-size reductions but have complied by lowering the average class size over the entire county rather than in each class. Sen. Lisa Carlton, an Osprey Republican and prime architect of the bill, said school districts unable to reduce class sizes now shouldn't be offering pre-K.

BILL'S PROVISIONS

The tilt in favor of private schools in the bill, however, goes beyond just the class cap. The bill would allow: • The use of religion in pre-K education. There are few limits on what kind of curriculum should be offered, other than it should have some focus on early literacy. • Providers to deny admission to any 4-year-old based on religion. Unlike Bush's initial voucher program passed in 1999, this legislation does not include a requirement that admission be "religion-neutral." • An 18-1 student-to-teacher ratio. Opposed by Bush, this staffing ratio falls more closely into line with varying accrediting standards some private providers use. • A three-hour average day of instruction in the year-round program, mirroring what many private schools now offer. Public schools offer six hours. • Private schools to avoid a requirement that all the program's schools have teachers with higher-education degrees by 2010. The degree requirement is now considered an "aspirational goal." • The state's Labor Department, not the Department of Education, to have day-to-day control over the pre-K program. To win public school support, the program ensures that public schools will offer a more intensive summer school program. Exact details on program costs will be determined during the spring legislative session in March. The bill is the second try by the Legislature. Bush vetoed an earlier incarnation this year, saying it wasn't "high quality." Bush favors this legislation. Senate President Tom Lee, cautioning against "over-building" the new program, said lawmakers have struggled to address Bush's concerns while balancing the interests of public and private child-care providers. But early-childhood development advocates, and Democratic lawmakers, complain the legislation is not what voters intended. "It's less than quality. And it's certainly less than high quality," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, who has criticized the state's voucher programs because officials have had trouble tracking the flow of money. Private schools say quality is in the eye of the ultimate beholder: The parents. If they don't like a school, they will place their child elsewhere. Faith-based providers say such choice -- which includes religious preference -- is crucial. They howled last spring when the Senate wanted to bar religious instruction in pre-K. That provision is now history, said Larry Keough, legislative advocate for Florida Catholic schools, which favors more restrictions than other religious providers. "That's one of the things we said was essential for us," Keough said. Ellen McKinley, founder of the faith-based Child Development Education Alliance, said she thought the bill was a done deal. She said she liked it because it "leveled the playing field" for public and private providers and the three-hour instruction limit was preferable to four hours. With a state subsidy for four hours, she said, it would be easier for public schools to tap local tax money and produce a six-hour program. That would make it almost impossible for private providers to compete with districts such as Miami-Dade and Broward that already offer pre-K to thousands of kids. McKinley said she was opposed to requiring advanced degrees for full-time instructors in six years. "We're going to ask experienced teachers to take time away from their families, and I don't know if that's a good idea," she said. IN THE COURTS Religious schools face another threat: Lawsuits. A suit filed by a coalition that included the state's teachers union and the NAACP contends the voucher law violates the state's ban on financially aiding sectarian institutions. Bush has lost the case in every venue and is appealing to the state Supreme Court. Fred Menachem, who helped run the amendment campaign on behalf of its creator, outgoing Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, says he's prepared to sue over the pre-K legislation. He points out that the petition signed by voters to put the measure on the ballot said the program would have "appropriate staffing ratios, teacher qualifications and professional development" standards. "I will find a team of lawyers to take the case," he said. "This is not about business. This is not about politics."

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Under Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, armed forces personnel are prohibited from "unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal."

Military Appeals Court Reverses Heterosexual Sodomy Conviction By JOHN FILES WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - A military appeals court has overturned the conviction of a soldier for heterosexual sodomy in a decision that legal scholars and advocates for gay rights say may have broader implications for gays serving in the armed forces. The decision, issued late last month by the United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals, was based in part on the Supreme Court opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared last year that the Texas sodomy statute violated the right to privacy. The case before the Army court involved a male Army specialist who admitted that he had engaged in consensual oral sex in a barracks room with a female civilian whom he had met at a nightclub. But those seeking to abolish the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and some legal experts, say the ruling is also applicable to private gay sex - thus cracking the foundation of the military's rationale for requiring gays to serve in silence.

A number of Democratic writers have said they need to work on the local and state level to build the backing necessary to maintain a credible national posture. They're right. It's what Conservatives did, and it took them 30 years. And it's what the Religious Right intends to do. I say let them Certain localities will locally legislate themselves right out of the modern world. These Christian Lysenkos have no idea what they're doing to themselves. Anyway… Christian Conservatives Press Issues in Statehouses By NEELA BANERJEE Energized by electoral victories last month that they say reflect wide support for more traditional social values, conservative Christian advocates across the country are pushing ahead state and local initiatives on thorny issues, including same-sex marriage, public education and abortion. "I think people are becoming emboldened," said Michael D. Bowman, director of state legislative relations at Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian advocacy group based in Washington. "On legislative efforts, they're getting more gutsy, and on certain issues, they may introduce legislation that they normally may not have done." It is on the state level "where most family issues are decided," Mr. Bowman said. And it is there that local advocacy groups hope to build quickly on the momentum from the election when legislatures convene in the new year. In Texas, conservative Christians are backing an amendment to prevent human cloning, a measure that would also block the kind of cloning used in embryonic stem-cell research. In Georgia, advocacy groups hope to win approval this year of two measures limiting abortion, after redistricting helped Republicans take control of the state legislature. In Kansas, conservatives have won a majority on the State Board of Education, which is expected to introduce changes this spring to the high school science curriculum challenging the theory of evolution. And in Maryland, some black churches have joined with a white Republican state delegate to push for a ban on same-sex marriage.

Senator Adds to Calls for Steroid Tests in Baseball Senator Byron L. Dorgan joins Senator John McCain in vocally pressuring the Major League Baseball Players Association to accept such changes without hesitation.

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Although people close to the president say he likes and respects Mr. Giuliani, they say the president has long been leery of him as a man who could not be counted on for the loyalty demanded by Mr. Bush. And while the breakdown of Mr. Kerik's nomination is not lethal to Mr. Giuliani's relationship with the White House, the friends and officials say, it will hardly burnish his credentials with the president. "It hurts him politically, so therefore by extension it's going to hurt him with the White House," said a Republican close to the administration who has worked for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Giuliani and who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the situation. "Nobody at the White House is saying to themselves, 'Damn that Rudy Giuliani.' It's more, 'Well, he got his licks.' "

Strain Is Seen in Giuliani Ties With President By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ERIC LIPTON Published: December 13, 2004 ASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had a Christmas dinner at the White House on Sunday night, and he attended with an important goal in mind: to apologize to his host for pushing Bernard B. Kerik as homeland security secretary and then watching as Mr. Kerik's nomination collapsed in legal problems and embarrassed the president of the United States. That embarrassment has put a new strain on a mutually beneficial relationship that has always been more complicated than mere friendship. "I feel very bad," Mr. Giuliani said in a telephone interview on Sunday afternoon, adding that he felt somewhat responsible for the nomination of Mr. Kerik, who withdrew his name on Friday because he had failed to pay taxes for a nanny who was in the country illegally. "Even though there was never a conversation about it, I realize that one of the reasons they did it was because of my confidence in Bernie over the years," he said. "And I feel like maybe I should have involved myself more in it."

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The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.

Gee. Ya think? Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say. Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations. Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War. The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations.

Though given its timeliness as regards an ongoing conversation in the comments I could understand the accusation… After you read the article though, just to balance things out, you might want to consider this as-worthy-as-it-is-lengthy commentary. Then come back for mine.

'Acting White' Myth, The By PAUL TOUGH When Bill Cosby spoke out publicly in May against dysfunction and irresponsibility in black families, he identified one pervasive symptom: ''boys attacking other boys because the boys are studying and they say, 'You're acting white.''' This idea isn't new; it was first proposed formally in the mid-80's by John Ogbu, a Nigerian professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and it has since become almost a truism: when smart black kids try hard and do well, they are picked on by their less successful peers for ''acting white.'' The only problem with this theory, according to a research paper released in October, is that for the most part, it isn't true. Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and William Darity Jr., an economist at Duke and U.N.C., coordinated an 18-month ethnographic study at 11 schools in North Carolina. What they found was that black students basically have the same attitudes about achievement as their white counterparts do: they want to succeed, understand that doing well in school has important consequences in later life and feel better about themselves the better they do. So where does the idea of the burden of ''acting white'' come from? One explanation the authors offer will make sense to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie: there's an ''oppositional peer culture'' in every high school -- the stoners and the jocks making fun of the nerds and the student-government types. When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis. More insidiously, the authors say, the idea that failing black kids pull down successful black kids can be used as an excuse by administrators to conceal or justify discrimination in the public-education system. The one school where the researchers did find anxiety about ''acting white'' was the one in which black students were drastically underrepresented in the gifted-and-talented classes. And significantly, at this particular school, the notion of the burden of ''acting white'' was most pervasive not among the black students interviewed by the researchers, but among their teachers and administrators, who told researchers that blacks are ''averse to success'' and ''don't place a high value on education.''

Did you read the commentary I linked to? Because the only thing I'm going to say about it is my perceptions differ in detail but overall it models the situation well. My gut says he's emphasized the third meaning of "acting white" too much. But that may be me…I've never been told I act white. I've been offered the opportunity—literally told I could live the good life, "you don't have to hang out with the bebops." But in high school there were exactly two things about me that annoyed the crew: that they never saw me study but never saw me fail a test, and that when we got caught they got in MORE trouble for corrupting me. Little personal history: they threw me out of kindergarten for reading out loud. Blame my sister…she taught me to read. Weird story. But she was five years older than me and taught me with her textbooks because we didn't have a lot of other books. So when I hit kindergarten I was reading at a fifth grade level. I didn't read a fiction book until I was in the fifth grade (Huckleberry Finn). Before that I read books with titles like "Ions and You." Swear to God, that was a real book. Herbert S. Zim was my fucking hero. If being smart or knowledgeable or whatever you want to call it was going to get anyone told they "act white" I should have caught it. What I got instead was my share of the Boones Farm Apple Wine, in the park at Stapleton projects. See, I'm not sure anyone knew I was smart until after we were friends. As a kid I was just a kid. I knew the kids in the neighborhood, played, fought, normal kid stuff with normal kids. Then I went to school and found all these books. But when I went outside afterward I played, I fought, normal kid stuff. There was a turning point. The teachers at one school had the practice of using me as a flail against the other kids - "I'll ask Earl, I bet he knows the answer." That shit wears thin on a class full of ten year olds really fast. And the toughest kid in the class, who had decided I was okay, pulled me aside and said…this is a quote…"Stop answering questions all the time. Don't you know nobody will like you?" And he wasn't specifying Black kids. NObody. And the teachers noticed I stopped volunteering and pulled me aside to ask what was wrong. I told them what was explained to me. I was asked who told me that but young does not equal stooopit. I was then told to ignore them they don't matter your education is more important than your friends and I wasn't having that. I made a deal with the teachers: They can call on me if no one else has the answer, and I'll volunteer once in a while. Because I wanted friends. But I learned the primary rule of being social is allowing yourself to be taught things that are flat wrong. On occasion. Nothing deadly. That and respecting what a person feels is their area of expertise. And I kept being me and I kept respecting my people. I hang with them when we do common things. It got to be the first thing anyone wanted to know is what weird-ass book I got with me today. Had friends, had enemies. Had people I really wanted to meet and never did. And no one ever said "you think you're white."

Economist Day-Pass I'm a subscriber, so I wouldn't have known this otherwise: via Razib comes word that the Economist now has a day-pass system similar to that utilized by Salon, which means that now you cheapskates out there no longer have an excuse not to read the world's best newsmagazine.

Laundromats, actually. I once bought underwear to avoid doing laundry for three more days.

Last night I got forwarded a link to an article about the first national Black summit on AIDS. A couple of days back Coretta Scott King wrote an editorial titled Blacks must tackle AIDS on road toward social equity If you're all Victorian you may not want to read my post about it at The Niggerati Network. But you need to read the two articles linked above. In fact, let me point up some documentation on what Black folks face, medically. Think of this as a continuation of the Racism is a public health issue post from the other day.

Self-Care Among Chronically Ill African Americans: Culture, Health Disparities, and Health Insurance Status Gay Becker, PhD, Rahima Jan Gates, PhD and Edwina Newsom Results. Physicians were 23% more verbally dominant and engaged in 33% less patient-centered communication with African American patients than with White patients. Furthermore, both African American patients and their physicians exhibited lower levels of positive affect than White patients and their physicians did. Conclusions. Patient–physician communication during medical visits differs among African American versus White patients. Interventions that increase physicians’ patient-centeredness and awareness of affective cues with African Americans patients and that activate African American patients to participate in their health care are important strategies for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health care.

Racial Differences in Cardiac Catheterization as a Function of Patients’ Beliefs Nancy R. Kressin, PhD, Bei-Hung Chang, ScD, Jeff Whittle, MD, MPH, Eric D. Peterson, MD, MPH, Jack A. Clark, PhD, Amy K. Rosen, PhD, Michelle Orner, MPH, Tracie C. Collins, MD, MPH, Linda G. Alley, PhD, RN and Laura A. Petersen, MD, MPH Results. There were few demographic differences between White and African American patients in our sample. African Americans were less likely than Whites to undergo cardiac catheterization. African Americans were more likely than Whites to indicate a strong reliance on religion and to report racial and social class discrimination and were less likely to indicate a generalized trust in people but did not differ from White patients on numerous other attitudes about health and health care. Neither sociodemographic or clinical characteristics nor patients’ beliefs explained the observed disparities, but physicians’ assessments of the procedure’s importance and patients’ likelihood of coronary disease seemed to account for differences not otherwise explained. Conclusions. Patients’ preferences are not the likely source of racial disparities in the use of cardiac catheterization among veterans using VA care, but physicians’ assessments warrant further attention.

Endometrial Cancer: Socioeconomic Status and Racial/Ethnic Differences in Stage at Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival Terri Madison, PhD, MPH, David Schottenfeld, MD, MSc, Sherman A. James, PhD, Ann G. Schwartz, PhD, MPH and Stephen B. Gruber, MD, PhD, MPH Results. Multivariate analyses showed that either race/ethnicity or income, but not both, was associated with advanced-stage disease. Age, stage at diagnosis, and income were independent predictors of hysterectomy. African American ethnicity, increased age, aggressive histology, poor tumor grade, and advanced-stage disease were associated with increased risk for death; higher income and hysterectomy were associated with decreased risk for death. Conclusions. Lower income was associated with advanced-stage disease, lower likelihood of receiving a hysterectomy, and lower rates of survival. Earlier diagnosis and removal of barriers to optimal treatment among lower-socioeconomic status women will diminish racial/ethnic differences in endometrial cancer survival.

Experiences of Racism Among African American Parents and the Mental Health of Their Preschool-Aged Children Margaret O'Brien Caughy, ScD, Patricia J. O'Campo, PhD and Carles Muntaner, MD, PhD Results. Parents who denied experiences of racism also reported higher rates of behavior problems among their preschool-aged children. For families living in neighborhoods characterized by fear of victimization, parents who actively coped with racism experiences by confronting the person involved or taking some sort of action in response to racism reported lower rates of anxiety and depression for their preschool-aged children. Conclusions. Experiences of and responses to racism among African American parents have important effects on the well-being of their young children.

Self-Reported Experiences of Racial Discrimination and Black–White Differences in Preterm and Low-Birthweight Deliveries: The CARDIA Study Sarah Mustillo, PhD, Nancy Krieger, PhD, Erica P. Gunderson, PhD, Stephen Sidney, MD, Heather McCreath, PhD and Catarina I. Kiefe, MD, PhD Results. Among Black women, 50% of those with preterm deliveries and 61% of those with low-birthweight infants reported having experienced racial discrimination in at least 3 situations; among White women, the corresponding percentages were 5% and 0%. The unadjusted odds ratio for preterm delivery among Black versus White women was 2.54 (95% confidence interval [CI]=1.33, 4.85), but this value decreased to 1.88 (95% CI=0.85, 4.12) after adjustment for experiences of racial discrimination and to 1.11 (95% CI=0.51, 2.41) after additional adjustment for alcohol and tobacco use, depression, education, and income. The corresponding odds ratios for low birthweight were 4.24 (95% CI=1.31, 13.67), 2.11 (95% CI=0.75, 5.93), and 2.43 (95% CI=0.79, 7.42). Conclusions. Self-reported experiences of racial discrimination were associated with preterm and low-birthweight deliveries, and such experiences may contribute to Black–White disparities in perinatal outcomes.

I'm right pleased Tavis Smiley and Darrell Green spoke out on cheating being universal, not just in sports. Darrell Green said the reason he's not in the NFL today is, he'd be given a position but no authority. Sounds like my reason for not being Republican.

On Kerik: Bernie was rejected because he wasn't honest with George. It doesn't seem Giuliani will take a reputation hit for pushing Kerik (really hard). Sen. Collins: comes on to validate the White House "vetting process." Rep. Harmon is trying to do that "reach out" thing by suggesting a Republican sheriff from Cali for DHD leader. Sen. Durban on Humvees: He's seriously breaking down the shortfalls in armor and equipment in Iraq. Sen. Durban on secret satellites: Big-ass waste of money. And we're counting on leaks to find out there's a problem.

With 25 Citizen Warriors in an Improvised War By JOHN F. BURNS Published: December 12, 2004 …Rooted in civilian life, these hometown warriors carry a heavier burden in Iraq than in any other American conflict of the last half-century. And Pentagon projections suggest that the proportion of reservists and guardsmen in Iraq could rise to 50 percent, particularly if the troop level of 150,000 planned for the Jan. 30 elections remains in effect afterward. When scheduled troop rotations are completed early in 2005, the force in Iraq for the balance of the year will be composed of 6 brigades of reservists and guardsmen, and 11 brigades of active-duty soldiers. And many active-duty units have reservists performing support functions. So in the 21st century, as it was at America's beginnings in 1775, it is the volunteer next door - the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker - who bears arms for his or her country, as much as the professional soldier. This presence, in turn, has helped to highlight the Pentagon's miscues in providing the troops at the front with the best available equipment, especially equipment that lowers the risk of serious injury and death. While statistics are hard to come by, anecdotal evidence gathered by reporters in the field suggests that the old complaint of reservists - that they are often the last to get up-to-date equipment - still has some validity, even though Pentagon officials tend to deny it.

Homeland Security Department Experiments With New Tool to Track Financial Crime By ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The Department of Homeland Security has begun experimenting with a wide-ranging computer database that allows investigators to match financial transactions against a list of some 250,000 people and firms with suspected ties to terrorist financing, drug trafficking, money laundering and other financial crimes. The program, developed by a British company and used in recent test runs at the Department of Homeland Security, gives investigators what amounts to an enormous global watch list to track possible financial crimes at American border crossings, banks and other financial institutions. "This is something that's shown promise," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. While the program is still in its trial stage, Mr. Boyd said, "it's interesting technology, and it would give us another tool in the box, but there's been no decision made on whether to put it into operation or not." He stressed that the software had not been used as part of any criminal investigations or other operations. David Leppan, chief executive of World-Check, the British company that has provided the database to American officials, said the recent test runs had produced a number of promising hits on people with suspected criminal ties overseas who had entered the United States with more than $10,000 in cash or made other financial transactions in this country that were reported to the government.

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that logic is as flawed as a perpetual motion machine. If it were true, the government could erase Social Security's entire projected deficit by selling bonds at 3 percent and buying stocks that yield 7 percent.

Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON OF all the arguments being made to replace part of Social Security with private retirement accounts, few are more seductive and more misleading than the prospect of earning higher returns. Get ready to hear a lot about this next week, when President Bush is host for a two-day economic conference that is expected to focus sharply on Social Security. Under the current system, investment returns from Social Security are "abysmal," Mr. Bush said in one recent speech, because the trust fund is allowed to hold only low-yielding Treasury bonds. Letting working people invest some of their Social Security money in the stock market would allow them to earn higher returns, giving them more money at retirement than they would have if they let the government do everything for them, the logic goes. It sounds like a no-lose proposition. According to the Social Security Administration, Treasury bonds can be expected to yield a real annual rate of return of about 3 percent. Equities, by contrast, can be expected to earn 6.5 percent. That assumption is crucial to arguments that personal accounts can reduce Social Security's long-term shortfall - which the government estimates to be at least $3.5 trillion. Most of the proposals to overhaul Social Security call for steep reductions in future benefits that would be offset by the higher returns people would presumably earn on their investments. Stephen Goss, the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, has endorsed the assumption of higher returns. In evaluating the major proposals for putting some payroll taxes into personal investment accounts, Mr. Goss estimated that even people who hedged their risk by mixing stocks and bonds could expect an average return of 4.45 percent. But that logic is as flawed as a perpetual motion machine. If it were true, the government could erase Social Security's entire projected deficit by selling bonds at 3 percent and buying stocks that yield 7 percent. Why doesn't the government do just that? Because higher returns are inseparable from higher risk. No risk, no reward. And if the goal is to enhance security, if people are to have a solid reason to expect a particular level of wealth at retirement, the risks have to be relatively low. "The entire argument is absurd," said William C. Dudley, chief United States economist at Goldman Sachs. "These returns weren't free. You are getting these returns precisely because you are taking on risk."

How Consultants Can Retire on Your Pension By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH NINE years ago, William Keith Phillips, a top stockbroker at Paine Webber, met with the trustees of the Chattanooga Pension Fund in Tennessee to pitch his services as a consultant. He gave them an intriguing, if unusual, choice. They could pay for his investment advice directly, as pension funds often do, or they could save money by agreeing to allocate a portion of its trading commissions to cover his fees. Under a commission arrangement, Mr. Phillips told the trustees, the fund would be less likely to incur out-of-pocket expenses, leaving more money to invest for its 1,600 beneficiaries. Seven and a half years later, Chattanooga's pension trustees discovered just how expensive that money-saving plan had been. According to an arbitration proceeding they filed against Mr. Phillips, the agreement cost the fund $20 million in losses, undisclosed commissions and fees. And since 2001, Chattanooga has had to raise nearly $3.7 million from taxpayers to keep the $180 million fund fiscally sound. The Chattanooga trustees fired Mr. Phillips in 2003 and, last October, filed arbitration proceedings against him, UBS Wealth Management USA, formerly the Paine Webber Group, and his new firm, Morgan Stanley. The case, which is pending, accuses the consultant of, among other things, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. The commission arrangement was central to the problem because it put Mr. Phillips's interests ahead of his client's, the fund said in its complaint. "The very important and in many ways unique relationship that a pension fund board has with its consultant is based on trust," said David R. Eichenthal, finance officer and chairman of the general pension plan for the city of Chattanooga. "To the extent that Phillips breached that trust, we thought it was important for the pension fund to do everything possible to hold him accountable for the results." Pension experts say the Chattanooga case is hardly rare among retirement funds. The Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned enough about conflicts of interest among consultants who advise pension funds on asset allocation, selection of money managers and other investment matters that it is conducting an industrywide inquiry. The results of the S.E.C.'s investigation are expected soon, and enforcement actions may follow. Aubrey Harwell, a lawyer for Mr. Phillips, declined to make him available for this article. Mr. Harwell said: "No. 1, these are allegations and not proven facts. And No. 2, the performance during the days that Keith Phillips was consulting were well beyond the benchmarks." Details of the commission arrangement, he added, were fully disclosed to the pension fund. But this is not the first time a pension client has sued Mr. Phillips. In 2000, the Metro Nashville Pension Plan filed an arbitration based on similar accusations. That arbitration was settled two years later, with UBS paying $10.3 million to the pension fund.

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It is unclear why White House lawyers could not uncover a warrant that Newsweek discovered after a few days of research

I don't believe they tried. I don't believe they felt it necessary.

Joseph Tacopina, Kerik's lawyer, said his client was not aware of the warrant,

Oh, yeah, that explains it all. If I had a warrant out there and applied for a foot messenger position they'd find that warrant in minutes. Anyway… White House Puts Blame on Kerik Nominee Initially Denied Having Hired an Illegal Immigrant, Officials Say By Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A01 White House officials yesterday blamed Bernard B. Kerik for repeatedly failing to disclose potential legal problems to administration lawyers vetting his nomination to be homeland security secretary, as President Bush prepared to quickly name a replacement and try to put the controversy over the former New York police commissioner's background behind him. Kerik, who withdrew his own nomination Friday and apologized yesterday for embarrassing Bush, was asked numerous times by White House lawyers if he had employed an illegal immigrant or failed to pay taxes on domestic help, the sources said. Kerik was told he would humiliate his family, himself and the president if he lied on either account, the officials said. He responded with firm denials. After digging deeper, however, Kerik said he discovered last week that he might have a problem on both accounts and withdrew his name. In the vetting process, which was conducted by the office of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, Kerik also never mentioned that a New Jersey judge had issued a warrant for his arrest in 1998 over a civil dispute over unpaid bills, the sources said. The existence of the dispute was first reported by Newsweek Friday night.

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The unusually frank comments were made in a conference session that was supposed to have been closed to the news media. But delegates' words were inadvertently piped to reporters in a nearby media center.

Arabs Reject U.S. Push for Reform At Morocco Conference, Officials Say Support for Israel Hinders Progress By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A16 RABAT, Morocco, Dec. 11 -- Senior Arab officials attending an international conference to promote democracy in the Middle East emphatically rejected on Saturday the Bush administration's assertion that greater democracy in the region would help end terrorism. They argued that the administration's strong support of Israel made it difficult to undertake political reform or to stop extremists driven by hatred of U.S. policies. "Let us face it," said the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal. "We perceive no clashes of civilization or competing value systems. The real bone of contention is the longest conflict in modern history." The unusually frank comments were made in a conference session that was supposed to have been closed to the news media. But delegates' words were inadvertently piped to reporters in a nearby media center. President Bush has said that establishing greater democracy in the Middle East would be a central goal of his second term. But after Arab backlash to the idea, the conference -- officially known as the "Forum for the Future" -- was watered down to focus mostly on economic liberalization. The tough comments from Arab leaders further illustrate how the initiative may be undermined by the Bush administration's other policies.

Oh. That's WHY you want to get rid of him. Nevermind. IAEA Leader's Phone Tapped U.S. Pores Over Transcripts to Try to Oust Nuclear Chief By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A01 The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials. But the diplomatic offensive will not be easy. The administration has failed to come up with a candidate willing to oppose ElBaradei, who has run the agency since 1997, and there is disagreement among some senior officials over how hard to push for his removal, and what the diplomatic costs of a public campaign against him could be. Although eavesdropping, even on allies, is considered a well-worn tool of national security and diplomacy, the efforts against ElBaradei demonstrate the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is now taking a cautious approach on Iran. The intercepted calls have not produced any evidence of nefarious conduct by ElBaradei, according to three officials who have read them. But some within the administration believe they show ElBaradei lacks impartiality because he tried to help Iran navigate a diplomatic crisis over its nuclear programs. Others argue the transcripts demonstrate nothing more than standard telephone diplomacy.

Quote of note:

On Friday, Kerik was again at work trying to keep information about himself quiet. Tacopina was in contact with at least one TV news organization in a bid to keep it from airing an interview with another ex-jail supervisor, sources said. The interview contained other allegations against Kerik, some of which have already been in print, the sources said.

All of which catches the White House by surprise. Be honest. What, beside the invasion of Iraq, has not caught the White House by surprise?

Kerik, lawyer tried to conceal claims BY DAN JANISON AND GRAHAM RAYMAN STAFF WRITER December 11, 2004 In the 48 hours before his withdrawal as nominee for the nation's top security post, Bernard Kerik and his lawyer scrambled to keep damaging assertions about his past out of the public spotlight. A week after President George W. Bush announced the former city police commissioner as his choice for Homeland Security secretary, an array of charges and questions about Kerik's past were coming to a boil, threatening his crafted image as an American legend and portending a rougher Senate confirmation process than first predicted. On Thursday, the day before he took his name from contention, Kerik, 49, was forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with a subordinate. The case, which involves Kerik's use of authority when he was city correction commissioner between 1998 and 2000 was brought against the city by a former deputy warden. Plaintiff Eric DeRavin III contends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero. About halfway through Pinero's deposition on Tuesday, attorneys for the city began to raise the issue of having the depositions sealed, particularly the parts that concerned Kerik and Pinero's relationship, lawyers in the case said. On Wednesday, the lawyers requested and received a special hearing before Federal Magistrate Kevin Nathaniel Fox, where they requested that both transcripts be sealed. DeRavin's attorney, Gregory Lisi, argued against the sealing, calling it a First Amendment issue.

Sorry, pal. Not that simple. And via email we find he's the kind of guy that the mob put in charge of private sanitation companies in New York.

Kerik has ethical and legal problems. His job history shows management experience putting him somewhere between mediocre and criminally incompetant. His sole reason for being known is his having a job at the time of 9-11. Which means he's also successfully exploited that position. He has actively marketed his "presence" and 9-11 links as such. He served in NY and helped enforce policies under Guiliani where "suspicion" was good enough for cops to do practically anything. (Read: racial profiling...) And, typical of a prison warden with mediocre credential and blind loyalty to a man like Guiliani (who has several court decisions against him on the first ammendment alone)....... there's Diallo. Kerik's was perhaps the final indignity in the Diallo event. After everyone else turned a blind eye, Kerik excused the cops from any disciplinary measures. This is a man with low reasoning, low ethics and low job performance. His primary qualification in getting the NY job was loyalty. The same can be said in this national position. He's not even qualified and he's blindly loyal. Having a blindly loyal thug over Homeland Security is bothersome. But beyond rhetoric - my understanding is his rise was due to loyalty, not job performance. Many others were skipped over for his assignment under Guiliani. Same for this position. If his formative years were as prison warden and under Guiliani - that's a big problem. He is coordinating multiple agencies from all over the country and determining action. I want a good manager and someone who realizes why several cops emptying their guns into an unarmed man is bad. BTW - he's pulling out because he hired an undocumented immigrant and evaded employment taxes. But the focus will be on his nanny and immigration for that.