April 03, 2004

James from Hobson's Choice is back in the comments, as usual making me think about economics issues.

This is the sort of problem, IMO, that outsourcing is distracting us from: for decades we've allowed huge regions of the nation to fester so that it's virtually impossible to locate new businesses there. Most African American communities suffer from a famine of public services, making it necessary for determined job seekers to commute vast distances and hide where they're from.

But for a long time the telecommunications / information technology (TCIT) sector was flourishing, so many conservative economists argued that globalization was merely restructuring the American economy to export services in TCIT while importing manufactured items. The loss of TCIT jobs is inducing panic because the American public perceives--correctly, IMO--that for SOME reason, nothing is going to replace those lost TCIT jobs.

What neither understood was that the reason America was losing its ability to compete in more and more fields was the inadequate public goods.

You know, I didn't always have the vocabulary for the discussion, but I've always felt I could live with rampant unrestrained market capitalism if the public goods were handled correctly. Which, of course, leads to a discussion of just what "public goods" are.

In fact, what the hell, here's the results I got from Google when I searched up that last link. And if you're REAL lazy, here's how the Economist.com's Research Tool defines public goods:

PUBLIC GOODS

Things that can be consumed by everybody in a society, or nobody at all. They have three characteristics. They are:
• non-rival – one person consuming them does not stop another person consuming them;
• non-excludable – if one person can consume them, it is impossible to stop another person consuming them;
• non-rejectable – people cannot choose not to consume them even if they want to.
Examples include clean air, a national defence system and the judiciary. The combination of non-rivalry and non-excludability means that it can be hard to get people to pay to consume them, so they might not be provided at all if left to MARKET FORCES. Thus public goods are regarded as an example of MARKET FAILURE, and in most countries they are provided at least in part by GOVERNMENT and paid for through compulsory TAXATION. (See also GLOBAL PUBLIC GOODS.)

For myself, and here's the socialist streak that constantly battles the libertarian one, I'd like to add a category of public goods: that, the lack of which, would place ANY citizen at an irreversible disadvantage.

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Foreign DIspatches:

New Scientist - Ostrich Beads Indicate Early Symbolic Thought

I've long held that the notion of a uniquely European "creative explosion" in the Upper Paleolithic was an absurdity, an artifact arising from the fact that most of those who'd bothered to look for evidence from the period happened to be Europeans looking on their home-ground. Earlier finds from South Africa dating back to c. 77,000 BC had already begun to cast doubt on the old story, but this latest news makes it even less plausible than before that modern human creativity post-dated the dispersal out of Africa 50,000 years ago.

In the article Abiola links to, a scientist casts aspersions on the importance of this find, to which aspersiona Abiola replies:

Paul Pettitt is simply splitting hairs; what difference is there between saying something is symbolic as opposed to decorative? Is it even meaningful to speak of a thing being decorative without carrying symbolic meaning? I rather doubt it.

However one chooses to parse this find, the bottom line is that it is evidence of behavior that is simply unheard of amongst earlier species of men; to date, not a single item of a decorative nature, or even one made of anything other than stone, has been found that could be unambigously attributed to Neandertals, H. Erectus or any other archaic populations. These ostrich egg beads, ochre pencils and carved bone tools are indisputably hallmarks of a modern sensibility.

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All the President's Suckers
Flip-flopping is the last stage of trusting Bush.

…What do all these flip-floppers have in common? Not subject matter: DiIulio worked on social policy, O'Neill on economics, Clarke on national security. Not party: Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt are Democrats; O'Neill is a Republican; Clarke worked for President Reagan and both Bushes as well as for President Clinton. The only thing they have in common is that they all cooperated with this administration before deciding they'd been conned. Flip-flopping, it turns out, is the final stage of trusting George W. Bush.

…Once you vote with Bush, serve in his cabinet, or spin for him in a classified briefing, you're trapped. If you change your mind, he'll dredge up your friendly vote or testimony and use it to discredit you. That's what he's doing now to all the politicians at home and abroad who fell for his exaggerations about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "In Iraq, my administration looked at the intelligence information, and we saw a threat," he tells audiences. "Members of Congress looked at the intelligence information, and they saw a threat. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence information, and it saw a threat." It's too late to admit that Bush is wrong and that you were fooled. You're on record agreeing with him. He doesn't even look dishonest when he rebukes you, because, unlike the people who run his administration's scams, he can't tell the difference between what he promised and what he delivered.

Maybe the White House will get away with this chicanery. Maybe people will believe its spin that flip-flopping is Kerry's idiosyncrasy, not the Bush administration's design. Or maybe some of the folks who voted for Bush last time around will decide they were conned and throw him out. Flip-floppers, every one of them.

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Preaching Diversity
Minority Pastors Help Expand Horizons of White Churches
By Phuong Ly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page A01

Whenever he closed his eyes and listened, the Rev. Gerard A. Green Jr. was reminded that he was a black pastor leading a predominantly white church.

No one said "Amen" aloud during the sermons. The choir sang without clapping. And after the services, there were whispers among the parishioners of Epworth United Methodist Church in Gaithersburg: Why did their new pastor need to raise his voice and gesture to make his points?

Racial diversity is still a struggling novelty in most houses of God. Just 8 percent of Christian churches in the United States are multiracial, defined as one ethnic group making up no more than 80 percent of the membership, according to a 2002 study.

But increasingly, faith leaders are prodding churches to better reflect and appeal to the country's changing demographics -- and they are doing it from the top, placing minority pastors in white congregations.

In the past few years, the United Methodist Church has made cross-racial appointments a priority, held forums on the issue and commissioned a study on how such congregations can be successful. Presbyterian officials have asked recruiting committees to bring in minority candidates when a church is interviewing for a new pastor. Seminaries are offering classes on how to minister in a multiracial society.

Fueling the trend is the fact that more minorities, particularly blacks and Asians, are entering the ministry. Minority students make up about 25 percent of the enrollment at seminaries accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, compared with 6 percent in 1977.

For Green, who is serving the same community where he attended segregated schools as a child, integrating congregations is necessary to fulfill God's call, however difficult the challenge.

Many families left the church when Green became associate pastor in 1992, and a few others trickled out when he was made senior pastor in 1996. But others -- some of them minorities -- have joined, citing Green as one of the reasons, and kept the membership steady at about 1,000 parishioners.

"By doing this, we are representing the kingdom of God," said Green, 53. "We're not there yet. We're still working on the communication and feeling comfortable with each other. But the fact that we're in proximity to each other means that we're in that crucible where we can start to work things through."

Race has long defined many U.S. churches. In the 1700s and 1800s, blacks walked out of the Methodist faith to protest racial discrimination and formed their own denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Southern Baptists, the country's largest Protestant denomination, barred black congregants until the 1960s. Evangelist Billy Graham and slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. have been widely quoted as saying that 11 o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.

In Catholic parishes, multiracial congregations are more common, because membership is largely determined by geography. Protestants, with more choices of where to attend services, still tend to associate with people of their own ethnic group, even as churches have tried mergers or joint worship services to increase diversity.

But changes clearly are occurring in ministerial leadership. Not only are there more black and Asian ministers in white churches, but some are becoming national and regional church leaders. Bishop Felton Edwin May, an African American, heads the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, the area's largest church organization, with more than 700 congregations.

The conference is considered a leader in cross-racial appointments. About 40 of its pastors had such assignments in 1999, and the number has stayed roughly the same because of turnover, said the Rev. HiRho Park, chairwoman of the conference's Commission on Race and Religion, who compiled the statistics as part of her doctoral dissertation.

Although the results of such appointments have been mixed, academic experts say the effort at least helps start a dialogue on race and culture.

"Certainly the more nonwhite pastors, the greater the interest in multiracial churches," said Michael Emerson, a Rice University sociologist who directed the Congregations Project, the 2002 national study of race and churches funded by the Lilly Endowment. "This is an issue they're going to want to talk about."

For some Asian American pastors -- who make up the fastest-growing ethnic group in seminaries -- serving a non-Asian church has been a necessity rather than a choice.

Park, a Korean immigrant, explained that many Asian immigrant churches are so traditional that they prefer to have older men as clergy. Others require language skills that many second-generation Asian Americans don't have. As a result, more than half of the Asian clergy members in the United States serve in non-Asian or multiracial congregations, compared with the 8 percent of black and white clergy members who minister outside their racial group, according to the Congregations Project.

Park said of Asian ministers who serve white congregations: "We feel this is our special call. This is our choice and our response to God."

Park, who served two predominantly white churches in the 1990s, said acceptance from the parishioners came slowly. Their biggest complaints were about her heavy accent and sometimes hesitant English. Her reaction was to not be offended and to provide transcripts with her sermon.

Eventually, some members praised her, saying: "Wow. You have a different accent, and it makes me listen more carefully. It helps me focus," Park recalled.

Park said that churches need to talk more openly about why integration is theologically necessary and that support from bishops and lay leaders is crucial.

The Rev. William C. Teng, moderator of the National Capital Presbytery, said he thinks more congregations are willing to try cross-racial appointments. Three years ago , Teng, a Chinese American, became the first nonwhite pastor at Heritage Presbyterian Church, a nearly all-white congregation in Fairfax County's Alexandria area.

The 250-member church has parishioners who work in international business and the military and are used to being with people of diverse backgrounds, Teng said. These days, "most people are much more mindful that they need to be more inclusive," he said.

But some academic experts say the biggest danger in cross-racial appointments is that they will fail so badly that a backlash against diversity may result. Many appointments have not been successful. At United Methodist forums on race, pastors have expressed loneliness and frustration.

The Rev. Dellyne "Dell" Hinton, an African American pastor who has spent the past seven years in predominantly white churches, compares the work to being a missionary. Hinton said that at a church in Harford County, Md., a parishioner who phoned to request a clergy visit used a racial slur.

Hinton said there were some successes. She and the parishioners learned about each others' different worship styles -- she learned to keep her sermons under 20 minutes; they responded to her preaching with more body movement and expression.

Still, the two churches that she has served as associate pastor have remained largely white. She said she is the only person of color most of her parishioners know. "This has been a long and difficult journey, and I'm tired," said Hinton, an associate pastor at Catonsville United Methodist Church.

At Epworth church in Gaithersburg, where the appointment of Green appears to have led to a more open and multicultural congregation, parishioners are starting to wonder whether the changes will survive when he eventually moves to another church. Terry Utterback, a district lay leader who has attended Epworth for 25 years, said that the changes in the church have been dramatic but that more work needs to be done. Participation in most social activities and committees is still overwhelmingly white.

Attendance at the worship service has gone from about 95 percent white to about 70 percent white. Many of the new members who are Indian, African and African American decided to come back for a second look after seeing a minority pastor.

"It's not something that happened overnight," Utterback said. "We are so pleased with the way it is now that we don't want it to go back to the way it was. To us that's not acceptable. But we'll just have to wait and see."

On a recent Sunday, Green baptized four young children. At the end of the service, the children's relatives surrounded them, snapping pictures. Green, the only nonwhite on the stage, excused himself and ran to a back room.

He grabbed his camera so he could take his own photos of the moment. They were his family, too.

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Quote of note:

The Pew poll found a statistical link between Gibson's movie and belief that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. But the correlation is not simply that a relatively large proportion of those who have seen the movie -- 36 percent -- hold Jews responsible. That view is also somewhat more common among those who plan to see the movie -- 29 percent -- than in the general public.

Thus, researchers said, it is unclear whether the movie and its attendant publicity are causing a change in attitudes, reflecting a change, or both.

Ideas About Christ's Death Surveyed
Growing Minority: Jews Responsible

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A03

The percentage of Americans who say Jews were responsible for Christ's death is rising, particularly among blacks and young people, according to a nationwide poll taken since the release of Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ."

The poll released yesterday by the Pew Research Center in Washington is the first statistical evidence that the movie's box-office success may be associated with an increase in anti-Jewish feeling, although social scientists cautioned that cause and effect are not clear.

In the March 17 to 21 telephone survey of 1,703 randomly selected adults, 26 percent said Jews were responsible for Christ's death, up from 19 percent in an ABC News poll that asked the same question in 1997.

The increase was especially pronounced among two groups. The portion of people younger than 30 who say Jews were responsible for killing Jesus has approximately tripled, from 10 percent in 1997 to 34 percent today. The portion of African Americans who hold that view has doubled, from 21 percent to 42 percent.

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Noticed your excellent post about Rwanda today. Other bloggers are talking about darkening their sites on Tuesday, the day the genocide started ten years ago, as a show of support and mourning for the people of Rwanda. Ten years on, and no high level diplomats have felt the necessity to visit the country for their memorial ceremonies.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4738424

Once again, in a way, the world is turning it's back on this small country.

If you like the idea, replace your main page with html that displays a black frame, and maybe a short explanation of why your page is dark, maybe a link to a page explaining the history of the genocide.

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/rwanda/

If you can't do that, maybe just mention the anniversary. And spread the word. It's a small gesture, but it would be nice and right for the blogsphere to make a statement.

JimmyT

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Having a severe case of diarrhea of fingers, I doubt going silent for the day. We get to talk Rwanda anyway, thought, and I get to repeat the link Tuesday.

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NOTE: The links have been changed to point to the release version.

MTClient is a Windows-based desktop blogging client designed for Movable Type weblogs. It has several advantages over the web interface for entering posts:

Intuitive, easy-to-use interface is close enough to the web interface as to be immediately familiar

Manually entered and autodiscovered trackbacks and web service pings work as expected.

Easy text and paragraph markup. Add bold, links, blockquotes, and paragraph alignment quickly and easily.

Support for Movable Type all entry fields including:

• Title
• Body
• Extended Entry
• Excerpt
• Keywords
• Multiple categories
• Comment Status
• Send TrackBack pings
• Edit entry date

Spell checking (including the title)

Edit previously-published entries

Remembers last used category, text filter, allow comments and allow trackback settings for each blog account

Offline operation

Save posts on your hard drive

Manage multiple blogs on multiple sites

It correctly converts between the high ASCII characters that choke most other desktop clients and HTML entities. In fact, it has a pop-up (Ctrl-Alt-E) that pastes Latin-1 entities into a message for you

MTClient can be downloaded as an installation file. The installation file creates an uninstall. Installation of the zip file can be done by simply extracting it into a directory, and uninstallation can be done by deleting it.

Potential issues

• You cannot have two users post to the same weblog using the same installation. Multiple installs are possible, though.
• Dropped search and replace due to time constraints.

1.60 - added: Spell checking configuration
added: Minimize to tray option
added: Hide extended text and/or Movable Type-specific fields at startup
added: Img tag formatting dialog can be called from the File Upload dialog
changed: default toolbar setup
changed: the Insert Table Cell and Insert Item commands have no hot key until I create an acceptable rational assignment pattern
changed: Tagged text remains selected to ease application of multiple tags
changed: Bold and Italic commans use <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i>
fixed: Font and line spacing change when text is dropped from rich text and HTML aware programs
fixed: Controls flowed uncontrollably when editor form was resized
fixed: File upload form mangled manually entered destination directories

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Protecting Civil Servants
Using career employees at the US Treasury to calculate the potential costs of John Kerry's tax plan was an unfair use of presidential power.
The Bush administration should not have allowed civil servants to be used for such a political purpose, even for simple number-crunching.

The request for the analysis actually came from House majority leader Tom Delay. Both Mr. Delay and the political appointees at Treasury should have known that the better and normal place to have such work done is the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The two political parties regularly use staff experts on the committee to find holes in each other's proposals.

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Please, feel free to remove him.

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Conservative Takes on Moderate G.O.P. Senator in Pennsylvania
By JAMES DAO

LANCASTER, Pa., March 29 — Representative Patrick J. Toomey, Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, has been ripping his opponent for being a "Ted Kennedy" liberal, too fond of taxes and spending, too close to activist judges and trial lawyers, too supportive of abortion rights and the United Nations.

Never mind that his opponent, Senator Arlen Specter, is a four-term Republican who has been endorsed by the nation's conservative-in-chief, President Bush. Party cleansing, not party unity, is Mr. Toomey's goal.

"The problem we've got is a handful of Republican senators who never really bought into the idea of the Republican Party in the first place," Mr. Toomey told a group of gray-suited businessmen in this conservative city. "I represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party."

Generously financed by an antitax group, the Club for Growth, Mr. Toomey is giving Mr. Specter his toughest primary since he won election 24 years ago. Mr. Toomey has closed to within 13 points or less, recent polls show, with less than a month left before primary day on April 27.

But while a Specter defeat would be a momentous event in Pennsylvania politics, the race is capturing national attention for another reason. Mr. Specter, 74, is the elder statesman of a dwindling band of centrist Republicans in Congress. In taking him on, Mr. Toomey, 42, and his conservative backers are hoping to send a message to all Republican moderates: turn right or face costly challenges.

"If we beat Specter, we won't have any trouble with wayward Republicans anymore," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, which has spent nearly $1 million on advertisements criticizing Mr. Specter. The club's members have contributed about $800,000 to Mr. Toomey's campaign.

"It serves notice to Chafee, Snowe, Voinovich and others who have been problem children that they will be next," Mr. Moore said, referring to three moderate Republican senators: Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.

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With Cheney now known to be delusional (insisting there's still a change WMDs will be found, etc) his being in charge of the transition was, in hindsight, probably a bad idea.

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The Clinton-Bush Transition Seemed to Be Tidy. Was It?
By TODD S. PURDUM

ASHINGTON, April 2 — Aside from deaths in office, it was among the shortest presidential transitions in American history: the five and a half weeks from the Supreme Court's ruling in the disputed election of 2000 to George W. Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001. And yet it was considered among the smoothest.

The transition was led by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, himself White House chief of staff to Gerald R. Ford. The new defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was also filling a post he had held under Mr. Ford. Other top officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had served in similar arenas in the first Bush administration, and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, was staying on from the Clinton years.

It was a team that was right up to speed.

Or was it?

"There are a lot of changes in eight years, both on the surface and more subtle changes, in whatever areas you want to talk about, and certainly in national security," said Charles O. Jones, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who is an expert on presidential transitions.

"It's possible that previous experience, which we normally think of as an advantage, can also kind of lock you out of attention to all of what has changed during that time, simply because you weren't a part of it," Mr. Jones said. "That isn't to say they ignored it. It's just to say that all the subtleties involved are not something that you're up to speed on, necessarily."

That was the essence of the politically explosive accusations last week by the former counterterrorism coordinator for the Clinton and Bush administrations, Richard A. Clarke: that the Bush team had viewed terrorism as important, but not urgent. In addition, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that the deputy director of central intelligence, John E. McLaughlin, had "felt a great tension" involving "the new administration's need to understand these issues and his sense that this was a matter of great urgency."

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Analysis lowers Kerry's health plan cost

A new analysis reduces the estimated cost of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's health care plan by more than one-quarter by accounting for savings the government might achieve from a more efficient system of medical care.

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Though the whole article was swiped, I want to bring this in particular to the fore:

"You can see the price action. It smells like a leak and walks like a leak. It happened two minutes before the release. . . . You could see the euro was selling off against the dollar," said Monica Fan, chief currency strategist for Europe at Royal Bank of Canada.

The large price moves began in the fixed income market, traders said. "It started in the fixed income market and then spilled over into forex. Not just one or two trades. The whole market was involved," said one senior dealer at a major European bank in New York.

Possibility of data leak probed
By Andrea Hopkins, Reuters, 4/3/2004

WASHINGTON -- The US Labor Department and market regulators said yesterday they were looking into a possible leak of employment data because of significant moves in financial markets before official release of the report.

Though the Labor Department stressed it did not believe a leak had occurred, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they were reviewing market activity around the time of release of the closely watched March payrolls report.

Some analysts are convinced the surprisingly robust jobs report was leaked before its official 8:30 a.m. embargo, causing unusually large price movements in financial markets about two minutes before the official release time.

Bond, currency, and stock futures markets all showed moves greater than the usual volatility often seen ahead of the release of closely watched economic data.

The report said that US nonfarm payrolls climbed a steep 308,000 in March -- the biggest gain since April 2000 and well above the 103,000 rise expected by Wall Street.

A spokesman at the US Labor Department said it was not unusual for markets to move just before data are released as traders place last-minute bets on the numbers. "We're reviewing our procedures and reviewing today's lockup. We have no indication . . . that there was indeed a leak," said the spokesman, Bob Zachariasiewicz.

Many market players, however, believe the data began to leak into the market a few minutes before the official release time.

"You can see the price action. It smells like a leak and walks like a leak. It happened two minutes before the release. . . . You could see the euro was selling off against the dollar," said Monica Fan, chief currency strategist for Europe at Royal Bank of Canada.

The large price moves began in the fixed income market, traders said. "It started in the fixed income market and then spilled over into forex. Not just one or two trades. The whole market was involved," said one senior dealer at a major European bank in New York.

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Probe eyes key concept of physics

It took more than 44 years to build, was canceled seven times, and is considered by some scientists to be the most technically difficult mission NASA has ever undertaken.

Yesterday, the space agency announced that Gravity Probe B is finally ready for launch on April 17. Its goal is to help prove one of the most confounding concepts in physics: the strange twist in space-time predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Despite the modest name, Gravity Probe B carries a payload of superlatives. It has taken longer to finish than any other project at NASA. It is armed with some of the most precise instruments ever built. And in a space agency known for its delays and cost overruns, the $700 million project remains singular in its ballooning schedule and budget, some observers say.

"Gravity Probe B has been 5 years away from launch for the 25 years I've been involved in space programs," said Keith Cowing, editor of Nasawatch.com, a group that monitors NASA.

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Democrats pinning high expectations on an Illinois senator

CHICAGO -- Go back one month, and Barack Obama seemed destined to be an also-ran in a messy Democratic primary for a US Senate seat in Illinois. He had little money, no name recognition, and no support from this city's Democratic machine.

Yet Obama won, big.

The state senator from Chicago's South Side is no longer a quiet stranger in political circles. Obama, 42, is suddenly a darling of the party -- someone who could tip the balance of power in the US Senate as an early favorite in the general election race. If he wins, he will become the third black member of the US Senate since Reconstruction.

With a deep-pocketed Republican, Jack Ryan, as his opponent, victory is no cinch for Obama. But these are heady times. On the night of the primary victory, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Martin Luther King Jr. "and the martyrs" were smiling on Obama. Pundits compared his win to the day in 1983 when Harold Washington became Chicago's first black mayor. Obama seemed to step into history.

But if he is anything, it is modest, according to those who work with him. They say voters should not expect a fiery leader who pounds his fists, but rather, a measured collaborator similar to the late Paul Simon, who represented Illinois in the Senate from 1985 to 1997.

"He knows why he's in public life," said David Axelrod, a political consultant who works for Obama.

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US companies resolute on Iraq mission

Despite the killing of four American workers in Fallujah this week and his own experiences with rocket explosions in Baghdad, Gary Gaumer would go back to Iraq. "I'd do it next week," said Gaumer, a 57-year-old assistant professor at Simmons College in Boston who worked as a consultant in Baghdad in January to help Iraqis redesign their health care system.

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Federal agents search 2 Big Dig companies
US investigating use of sham firms
By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff, 4/3/2004

Federal agents searched the offices of two Big Dig subcontractors Thursday as part of a nationwide probe into large construction firms setting up sham firms with women or minority executives, in order to obtain lucrative public works contracts, federal and industry officials said yesterday.

About two-dozen federal agents executed search warrants at two North Shore firms, PT Corp. and Testa Corp., the officials said.

From 2001 until last summer, PT Corp. of Lynnfield, a state-certified woman-owned business, had been in charge of dismantling the 1.5-mile elevated Central Artery. But the firm fell behind schedule and was replaced by Testa Corp., a major player in the demolition field.

PT Corp.'s chief executive is listed by the state as Pamela J. O'Brien. She is the sister of Steven Testa, who runs Testa Corp.

The prime contractor overseeing the subcontract is Modern Continental Construction Co. Inc. of Cambridge, one of the nation's largest construction firms and the company that has performed more Big Dig work than any other.

Like many federal construction projects, the Big Dig requires a certain percentage of contracts to go to minority- or women-owned firms, such as PT Corp.

It was not known, however, exactly what aspect of the contract are being examined by the federal investigators from the US Department of Transportation 's office of inspector general; the US Department of Labor's office of labor, racketeering, and fraud investigations; and the Internal Revenue Service.

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Smear Without Fear
By PAUL KRUGMAN

A funny thing happened to David Letterman this week. Actually, it only started out funny. And the unfunny ending fits into a disturbing pattern.

On Monday, Mr. Letterman ran a video clip of a boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. It was harmless stuff; a White House that thinks it's cute to have Mr. Bush make jokes about missing W.M.D. should be able to handle a little ribbing about boring speeches.

CNN ran the Letterman clip on Tuesday, just before a commercial. Then the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan came back to inform viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later in the day, another anchor amended that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video.

On his Tuesday night show, Mr. Letterman was not amused: "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape."

But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)

In short, CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar?

On Tuesday, I mentioned remarks by CNN's Wolf Blitzer; here's a fuller quote, just to remove any ambiguity: "What administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically, that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting there are some weird aspects in his life."

Stung by my column, Mr. Blitzer sought to justify his words, saying that his statement was actually a question, and also saying that "I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today." Silly me: I "alleged" that Mr. Blitzer said something because he actually said it, and described "so-called unnamed" officials as unnamed because he didn't name them.

Mr. Blitzer now says he was talking about remarks made on his own program by a National Security Council spokesman, Jim Wilkinson. But Mr. Wilkinson's remarks are hard to construe as raising questions about Mr. Clarke's personal life.

Instead, Mr. Wilkinson seems to have questioned Mr. Clarke's sanity, saying: "He sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden, and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of `X-Files' stuff." Really?

On Page 246 of "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke bemoans the way the invasion of Iraq, in his view, played right into the hands of Al Qaeda: "Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed. . . . It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush." That's not " `X-Files' stuff": it's a literary device, meant to emphasize just how ill conceived our policy is. Mr. Blitzer should be telling Mr. Wilkinson to apologize, not rerunning those comments in his own defense.

Look, I understand why major news organizations must act respectfully toward government officials. But officials shouldn't be sure - as Mr. Wilkinson obviously was - that they can make wild accusations without any fear that they will be challenged on the spot or held accountable later.

And administration officials shouldn't be able to spread stories without making themselves accountable. If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false. But if unnamed "administration officials" spread rumors about administration critics, reporters have an obligation to check the facts before giving those rumors national exposure. And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from "the White House," then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity.

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April 02, 2004

TV Shows Take On Bush, and Pull Few Punches
By JIM RUTENBERG

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 31 — Galvanized politically in ways they have not been since the early 1990's, Hollywood's more liberal producers and writers are increasingly expressing their displeasure with President Bush with not only their wallets, but also their scripts.

In recent weeks, characters in prime time have progressed beyond the typical Hollywood knocks against Washington politicians to calling out the president directly or questioning his policies, including the decision to go to war in Iraq, the support of the antiterrorism law and the backing of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

On the NBC show "Whoopi," the hotelier played by Whoopi Goldberg delivered an anti-Bush screed when the president, played by a lookalike, appeared at her establishment to use the facilities. "I can't believe he's in there doing to my bathroom what he's done to the economy!" she said.

One of the wise-cracking detectives on the NBC show "Law & Order," played by Jesse L. Martin, referred to the president as the "dude that lied to us." The character went on to say, "I don't see any weapons of mass destruction, do you?" His cantankerous partner, played by Jerry Orbach, retorted that Saddam Hussein did have such weapons because the president's "daddy" sold them to a certain someone "who used to live in Baghdad."

But the season finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO arguably best conveyed the growing sentiment. On that episode, the main character, played by the comedian Larry David, backed out of a dalliance sanctioned by his wife after noticing that his prospective paramour had lovingly displayed a picture of Mr. Bush on her dresser.

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George Bush's credibility
A matter of trust

Apr 1st 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

Evidence is growing that the Bush administration has misled the public. But most voters, so far, are inclined to forgive

GEORGE BUSH ran for president in 2000 promising to raise the tone of debate in Washington. He was not saying merely that he wouldn't have sex with interns. He was talking about basic honesty, promising to look facts in the face, not to spin (too much), not to make policy by opinion polls, and to give an honest accounting of his actions. He reiterated that position last month in an interview: “The American people [will] assess whether or not I made good calls...And the American people need to know they've got a president who sees the world the way it is.”

Yet the administration's reaction to accusations by Richard Clarke, its former counter-terrorism co-ordinator, raises doubts not only over its judgments but, still more, over whether and how the administration accounts for its decisions. When set in the context of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the ballooning budget deficit, this reaction raises profound questions about the administration's credibility, honesty and competence.

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(stolen from Pandagon as well)

That will have to do until I find a picture I can fit into the sidebar.

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Democratic office target of crimes
Hard drive stolen; window smashed

Emily Bittner
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 2, 2004 12:00 AM

SCOTTSDALE - Scottsdale Democratic Party officials feel targeted after a computer hard drive with donors' information and mailing list was stolen last month and the office was vandalized Wednesday.

"The fact that we've had two in the last three weeks is very, very suspicious," said Leon Chusid, District 8 treasurer, headquartered at 8350 E. McDonald Drive. "And it's also very terrifying."

The only thing taken in the first incident was a computer's hard drive with information about precinct committee members, mailing lists and fund-raising.

The computer monitor and keyboard were left behind and there were no signs of forced entry in the burglary, said Detective Sam Bailey, a spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department.

The information on the computer was protected with a password, but officials are still worried.

"Someone who really knows computers can always break a pass code," Chusid said. "They got what was important to them."

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Clarence Page has a recent editorial in which he reflects on the National Urban League's recent State of Black America report. I need to jump straight to the end:

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said something about how the true test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time without losing your mind. The challenge for us African-Americans is to hold in our minds the reality of our progress, while not letting it go to our head so much that we forget those left behind.

We have seen, for example, the value of education and responsible adult guidance in helping young people gain the tools they need to escape poverty. We have vastly increased our presence in government jobs more than any other area, the Urban League report points out. We need to use those positions, as well as our new positions in the private sector, to form a new leadership for a new black liberation movement.

This new movement needs to make demands not only of "the system" but also of ourselves to make the improvements in our schools, housing, job opportunities, youth motivation and family supports so that the black American outlook won't have to look so bleak.

This sounds quite reasonable. I believe it to be the Official Moderate Response To Black America's Problems for this decade.

Unfortunately it confuses working on the symptoms with working on the disease. Let me show you why, from the same editorial:

More than 40 percent of the black respondents to an Urban League poll felt "very little" or "no improvement" had been made in economic and social mobility since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed 40 years ago.

[two elided paragraphs]

…And blacks are not the only racial group to feel this thorny pessimism, according to the Urban League poll. Some 35 percent of Hispanics and 32 percent of Asians gave similarly pessimistic responses.

Plus, a similarly large minority of non-white respondents responded grimly to questions about improvement in race relations, housing integration and access to decent jobs over the past four decades.

My observation is that this perception is obviously not something particular to Black folks, so solutions particular to Black folks aren't a solution at all.

Another bit of evidence:

A closer look at census data in the 1990s revealed that the fastest growing sector of black Americans were those making $50,000 or more per year. Unfortunately, The Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, found a tripling between 1980 and 1995 of the black "underclass," defined as those who were welfare dependent, high school dropouts, chronically unemployed and regularly in and out of jail.

As black households in the highest and lowest income group grew, so did the gap between black haves and have-nots.

Again a national…a worldwide phenomenon.

Let's say the Black community addresses this successfully, independent of the mainstream. Doesn't that mean the entire Black community winds up on one side or the other of that gap? I'll leave the speculation as to which side to you, gentle reader.

If the gap between haves and have-nots in the Black community is a problem, the same phenomenon in the mainstream is a problem as well, isn't it? Why isn't THAT being addressed? I assure you Black folks would line up around the corner to get behind a solution that was real and fair and included everyone. Instead what we're basically getting is, "The problem isn't the problem. The problem is the way you react to the problem." As Chaos Lord I can get with that, but it ain't many Chaos Lords in the mix.

Addressing the true, universal nature of the problem is the only approach to solving it…at least without undue finger-pointing and name-calling.

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Quote of note:

A new boss is nice--an African-American new boss is even more welcome--but real diversity is needed throughout the department and not just at the top.

A black boss is not enough to end racism
Dawn Turner Trice
April 2, 2004

When James Joyce took over as Chicago fire commissioner four years ago, he did so at a time when racial tensions were pretty high in the department.

Among the culprits: the infamous home video of a station house retirement party in which drunken firefighters exposed themselves and shouted racial epithets. Racial sensitivity training, among other things, followed. And so did a report, commissioned by the city.

Nothing has had substantive and lasting effect.

On Thursday, Joyce, 61, announced his retirement at a time when the Fire Department's racial tensions continue to rise. In recent months, the department has had to deal with racial slurs made by unknown individuals that have been broadcast over Fire Department radios. There was the discovery of an independent firefighters' Web site spewing racist language. And a black fire battalion chief was sent a death threat.

With Mayor Richard Daley's appointment of Cortez Trotter, an African-American, to head the department, the hope is that somehow he will be able to make a difference.

In making the announcement, Daley said Trotter's appointment as the city's first black fire chief isn't meant to be a symbol or send a message about diversity.

But how can it not be and do just that?

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How a former madam learned the tricks of running a legit business
John Koopman
Friday, April 2, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Marlene Baldwin knows business.

She learned from the best business minds in the country. Chief executive officers. Business owners. The rich and famous.

And not at any snobby East Coast business school. We're talking up close and personal. Whispered in the ear, in some cases.

So it comes as no surprise that Baldwin has been named California Businessman of the Year by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Surprise would better describe the reaction by the Republicans when they found out how Baldwin came to know so much about business.

Fifteen years as the most famous brothel madam in San Francisco.

"Really?" said Carl Forti, a representative of the committee's Business Advisory Council. "We did not know that, I'm sure."

In fairness to the Republicans, the Businessman of the Year award is not really about success in, or knowledge of, business. Forti said hundreds of people get the award every year. It has to do with contributing to Republican causes, or Republican candidates.

There are no background checks.

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U.S. Won't Alert Parents, Doctors on Mercury in Flu Shots for Kids
By Myron Levin
Times Staff Writer

April 2, 2004

Hundreds of thousands of infants and toddlers who get flu shots starting this fall could be exposed to a mercury-laced preservative that has been all but eliminated from other pediatric vaccines because of health concerns.

Saying there is no proof of harm from exposure to the preservative thimerosal, officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed that they won't advise parents and doctors to choose a mercury-free version of the flu vaccine.

This year, flu shots are being added to the government's "recommend" list of vaccines that should be given to all young children. The CDC's decision on thimerosal, made despite pleas from parent activist groups and some experts, appears to be at odds with recent federal warnings about exposure to mercury, a potent neurotoxin, and with the government's successful effort to have it removed from other childhood vaccines.

The mercury-free flu vaccine will be more expensive — by about $4 per shot — and is somewhat harder to make in large quantities than the alternative. If the CDC were to warn parents, demand for thimerosal-free shots would rise, possibly squeezing supplies. Some experts said a shortage could lead to some children not being immunized against a known risk, flu, in order to avoid the theoretical risk of thimerosal.

"The available scientific evidence has not shown thimerosal-containing vaccines to be harmful," the CDC said.

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(I don't know if the little tiny stuff at the bottom is legible to everyone in this reduced-size-and-palette version)

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Tyco Judge Declares Mistrial
By Carrie Johnson and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 2, 2004; 1:44 PM

After 12 days of sometimes tumultuous jury deliberation, a mistrial was declared this afternoon in the trial of two Tyco International executives charged with looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Michael J. Obus, who declared the mistrial in the case of former Tyco Chairman Dennis Kozlowski and former chief financial officer Mark Swartz, acted after a juror identified by name last weekend in several news stories reported that she had received some form of external communication, wire services said.

Steve Kaufman, Kozlowski's attorney, said, "We are disappointed because of events that occurred outside of the courtroom that this case did not reach a verdict." He declined to elaborate.

The judge's action came after a six-month trial and jury deliberations described at one point in a note from the jury as "poisonous," revolving around a holdout jury member who attracted widespread publicity, visits from reporters and, most recently, the reported external communication.

Referring to the juror, Obus said today that "there has been no finding that this juror has done anything wrong . . . A great disservice may have been done to her and her family."

Prosecutors said they would seek a new trial as soon as possible.

The Tyco case, along with the Enron and MCI accounting scandals, had become emblematic of the corporate excesses, fraud and bookkeeping shenanigans that had accompanied the stock market bubble of the late 1990s.

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Elated By Jobs Growth, Bush Speaks in West Virginia
By Pete Yost
The Associated Press
Friday, April 2, 2004; 1:06 PM

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Buoyed by the strongest monthly job growth in four years, President Bush told several hundred applauding supporters Friday that the economy is growing and people are finding work.

"Today the statistics show that we added 308,000 jobs for the month of March," Bush said at Marshall University.[P6: so in March, the jobs nationwide were approximately 1/7th of the jobs lost in the single state Bush was speaking to. Pitiful.]

The president, who led a discussion on job retraining, appeared in a state where Democratic officials have blamed him for the loss of more than 2 million jobs during the past three and a half years.

The Labor Department said the nation's unemployment rate had edged up from 5.6 to 5.7 percent in March but that the economy had experienced a big jump in jobs. White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the jobs report "a powerful confirmation that our economy is growing stronger." [P6: The economy is growing stronger, when the unemployment rate INCREASED in the face of these 308G new jobs. Pitiful.]

The president and Democrat John Kerry are tied among likely voters in West Virginia, according to a recent poll by the American Research Group of Manchester, N.H. Voter registration in the state favors Democrats over Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin.

Across the street from the president's motorcade as he prepared to leave were several hundred protesters, some of them carrying Kerry signs. One sign read, "Where are the jobs?"

"There's more we need to do," but "the policies are working," said Bush, who was making his seventh appearance in the battleground state since becoming president. In 2000, Bush won the state. It also was Bush's second appearance on the college campus in the past week-and-a-half to promote his "Jobs for the 21st Century" program.

Reacting to the jobs report, Kerry said in a statement: "After three years of punishing job losses, the one-month job creation announced today is welcome news for America's workers. I hope it continues. But for too many families, living through the worst job recovery since the Great Depression has been, and continues to be, far too painful."

Among Bush's proposals is $250 million in grants for community colleges that partner with employers seeking higher-skilled workers.[P6: To solve whose problem? The employers of those who are out of work? Or just the political one…after all, there are lots of higher-skilled workers who are unemployed, so why would an employer spend money training someone (or even just wait for them to be ready) instead of hiring someone who already has the skills? Pitiful.]

The president said the country needs to match job training with the jobs that are available.

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Yes, it bothers me when this sort of typical capitalist-anthropoid behavior crops up in insititutions like Southern University. Doesn't surprise me much, but definitely bothers me.

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Southern U. Says Hundreds Altered Grades
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A03

The chancellor of the nation's largest historically black university said yesterday that 541 past and current students paid a worker in the registrar's office to alter their grades in a practice that dates back nine years.

Southern University Chancellor Edward R. Jackson said the school, in Baton Rouge, La., could revoke the degrees of hundreds of former students whose grades were changed and expel others still attending classes.

"We will not tolerate any unethical and/or illegal activities at Southern University," Jackson said at a news conference, according to a report by the Associated Press. "If we find it, we will stop it."

The grade changing, which appears to have begun in 1995, came to light last year when a student who was enrolled in a graduate program claimed to have credentials proving she had earned a bachelor's degree.

A search of records showed no evidence that the student had graduated. An investigation subsequently revealed that unauthorized computer entries were placed in students' performance records.

The entries were traced to a code used by a worker in the registrar's office and there was evidence of tampering with paper documents as well, according to the Associated Press. Southern turned over part of its findings to East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Doug Moreau about a month ago.

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Metro Chief Predicts Transit 'Death Spiral' Without Extra Funds

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 2, 2004; Page B01

Budget disputes in Maryland and Virginia and on Capitol Hill threaten to push the region's transit system into a "death spiral" littered with broken-down trains, overcrowded buses, frozen escalators and crumbling parking lots, Metro's top manager said yesterday.

"We're talking about a systemic service meltdown condition as early as three years from now," Metro Chief Executive Richard A. White told his board of directors. "It's reliability falling, ridership loss, road congestion increasing and air quality decreasing. It's a death spiral."

The 27-year-old transit system needs $1.5 billion over the next six years for maintenance, the purchase of enough rail cars to run eight-car trains and prevent jampacked conditions, and to buy 185 additional buses to alleviate crowding on popular routes. The first down payment of $34 million is due in October, when Metro must order 50 of 120 new rail cars.

Without the money, the rail system will grind to a halt, said White, who conjured up memories of the 1999 Cherry Blossom mutiny, when passengers fed up with a rash of breakdowns refused to get off a broken-down train, and the Red Line shutdown two weeks ago that dumped thousands of riders onto city streets. "These are examples of the kinds of things people can expect to see on a more regular basis," he said.

Metro has been struggling to pay its operating costs and is planning to raise fares for the second consecutive year. The $1.5 billion sought by Metro has nothing to do with the regular operating budget -- it is needed for new equipment, White said.

But the federal, state and local governments that fund Metro are paralyzed by their own budget fights, leaving transit officials panicked about how they will afford the trains, buses and maintenance equipment to keep the system running.

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WASA Violated Lead Law, EPA Says
Public Alert, Testing Called Inadequate

By David Nakamura and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A01

The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority violated federal law by failing to properly notify city residents of high lead levels in the drinking water and to adequately protect public health, regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.

In a letter to WASA General Manager Jerry N. Johnson, the EPA alleged that the agency failed to follow six requirements of the federal Lead and Copper Rule, which governs lead in drinking water.

The EPA cited WASA's failure to use federally mandated language in brochures and public service announcements and to undertake more water tests at homes where lead service pipes were replaced last year.

The EPA's letter represents the first official declaration by the federal government that local officials acted improperly. Jon M. Capacasa, water protection director in the EPA's Region III office in Philadelphia, which oversees the District, said the letter represents the initial findings of an audit the EPA started when the lead problem was revealed two months ago.

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Quote of note:

Kerry, while largely undefined in the eyes of many voters, is tapping into anti-Bush fervor sweeping the Democratic Party to compete financially with the president early on. In the first three months of this year, Kerry, with more than $40 million, came close to matching Bush. Bush will report raising more than $50 million in the past three months, according to a campaign aide who demanded anonymity to discuss internal figures. All of the Democratic presidential candidates combined raised almost as much as the president in 2003.

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Kerry Funds Signal Hope for Party
Donations Set Record, But GOP Is Still Ahead

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 2, 2004; 12:21 PM

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) announced today that his presidential campaign has raised more than $50 million in the first three months of this year, smashing Democratic Party records and signaling a party-wide fundraising resurgence for Democrats, according to top party officials.

Kerry, recovering from shoulder surgery in Boston, reported that he followed a trail blazed by former rival Howard Dean to net better than $26 million from the Internet alone, which is emerging as the Democrats' most powerful fundraising mechanism for the presidential election.

It appears Kerry is not draining money from fellow Democrats, as some party officials feared: The Democratic National Committee broke its previous record by raising $27 million, while the House and Senate campaign committees, which both topped $11 million, also set all-time highs last quarter. Several Democrats credited anti-Bush energy, rather than excitement about Kerry, for the turnaround.

President Bush, who recently hit his reelection campaign's $170 million fundraising goal, maintains a commanding early money advantage. The Bush team has used this money for a huge television advertising campaign in swing states designed to define Kerry as a waffling, tax-raising liberal.

But the unexpected fundraising surge shows Democrats are far more competitive financially against Bush and suggests the pool of Democratic money runs much deeper than officials from both parties originally projected, GOP and Democratic strategists say. The Kerry campaign initially projected it would raise $80 million this year, then Kerry fundraisers said in interviews last month it could top $100 million in 2004 alone.

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>> HARD NEWS <<
like Louis Theroux

Thanks be to the radically distributed nature of teh Intahweb, instead of (say) two or three weak jokes being enforced on us by the goliath media conglomerate juntahs, we can now suffer billions of April Fool japes, merrily filling up your inbox, clogging your RSS feed, and archiving and indexing themselves for eternity - to the point where the whole tradition has moved from "an excuse for funny jokes" to "day of the tedious lies". The funniest ones remain the self-reflexive fools: Google Mail *chortle*, Freeserve renaming itself Wanadoo *snurk*... and, for us, this wording on a recent Dreamweaver Upgrade FAQ:

"Q. Is there any new functionality in this update? A. This update does not add any new functionality to Dreamweaver MX 2004. We wanted to offer the updater to our users for free and, to comply with US accounting rules, we couldn't include any additional functionality and not charge for it."

Excellent prank on the already jittery Free Software Movement, Macromedia. In America, you legally can't provide features *without* charging money? Told you we should have fought the TANSTAAFL* Act of 2003 while we had the chance, comrades!

TANSTAAFL = There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

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April 01, 2004

PAMBAZUKA NEWS 150: SPECIAL ISSUE ON RWANDA
A Weekly Electronic Newsletter For Social Justice In Africa
To view online, go to http://www.pambazuka.org/

1. Highlights from this issue

APPROACHING THE HEART OF A RAGING FIRE
Firoze Manji, Fahamu
This 150th issue of Pambazuka News is dedicated to the international mobilisation on Remembering Rwanda. This marks the 10th anniversary of a human catastrophe of gigantic proportions that led to the massacre of nearly a million people in Rwanda in the space of a few months. It was an event that was made all the more shameful for the criminal negligence of the international community, in Africa and beyond, to intervene - despite their full knowledge of what was happening. 1994 marked a tragedy that unfolded in Rwanda whose repercussions continue to be felt throughout the Great Lakes Region.

The focus on Rwanda is important not only as an act of solidarity with the survivors of the genocide. It should also be a reminder of the unfolding tragedy in the Great Lakes, particularly in the DRC, when many millions more have been and are being massacred.

Rwanda has been, as Mahmood Mamdani says in 'When Victims Become Killers', the "epicentre of the wider crisis in the African Great Lakes. Tied together by the thread of a common colonial legacy - one that politicized indigeneity as a basis for rights - the region has little choice but to address the Rwandan dilemma, if only to address its own dilemma. ... [This] will require a regional approach through a regional agenda that approaches the centre as firefighters would approach the heart of a raging fire, from outside in."

With the recent establishment of the Pan African Parliament there exists the potential mechanism for fighting the raging fires that consume both DRC and Burundi. But will there be a sufficient political will to engage?

This issue of Pambazuka News takes a different format from usual. We have a series of editorials from a number of international experts and activists, and provide resource materials for those wishing to learn more about Rwanda and what is being done for the anniversary of the genocide being commemorated this month.

EDITORIAL CONTENTS LIST
1. WHY WE MUST NEVER FORGET THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE

Why should the world bother to remember the Rwandan genocide? Isn't it something we should rather seek to forget? GERALD CAPLAN outlines the powerful case for why the genocide should not be forgotten at any cost, looking at the collective responsibility of humanity and the complicity of the West in turning a blind eye to the 100 days of massacre that took place in 1994.

2. TOWARDS JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION IN RWANDA: TAKING STOCK

"How can I forgive, when my livelihood was destroyed and I cannot even pay for the schooling of my children," asks a widowed Rwandan woman taking part in a reconciliation workshop. EUGENIA ZORBAS looks at the progress towards
reconciliation in Rwanda, examining the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, gacaca courts, issues of collective memory and the dangers of victor's justice.

3. SAFE SANCTUARY?: THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN GENOCIDE

Traditionally seen as places of sanctuary during times of turmoil, churches became the scene of some of the most haunting massacres of the Rwandan genocide. CAMILLE KARANGWA charts the complicity of the church in the time period up to and including the 100 days of killings in 1994 and concludes that it would be foolish not to acknowledge serious failings.

4. CHILDREN OF RWANDA: THE LEGACY OF GENOCIDE, THE FUTURE OF RWANDA

In the language and logic of genocide, exterminating the "big rats" also meant exterminating the "little rats". SARA RAKITA examines the legacy of the genocide for Rwanda's children and concludes that more can and must be done to help them.

5. A SEAT IN THE GRASS

LULEKA MANGQUKU, a South African woman, catches a bus through Rwanda, attends a gacaca trial and contemplates the aftermath of genocide. Drawing parallels with South Africa's 10 years of democracy celebrations, she asks the question: "Will confessions and finger-pointing in open-air tribunals enable Rwandans, the most Roman Catholic of Africans, to forgive 'until seventy times seven?'"

6. WHY? HOW? SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS IN THE DIASPORA

Watching the genocide from their TV sets in the West, members of the African Diaspora demanded answers to the why and the how of what was taking place. But there can be no answers to this unspeakable horror, says VINCENT GASANA, and the best that can be done is to understand the circumstances surrounding the genocide.

7. WHY DOES GENOCIDE 'HAPPEN'?

The immediate terror of genocide gives the impression that it is an inexplicable mass crime of passion sparked by a single event, such as the shooting down of the plane that killed the Rwandan head of state in 1994. Nothing could be further from the truth, states ROTIMI SANKORE. Genocide has clear economic, social and political indicators that are identifiable long before the killing starts. The challenge is therefore to rid the world of the injustices on which genocide is built.

8. MIRRORING RWANDA'S CHALLENGES: THE REFUGEE STORY

Millions of people scattered across the African continent and the world in the aftermath of the genocide. Meeting the needs of those returning has been a huge challenge that is not yet resolved. SARAH ERLICHMAN explains how the welfare of Rwanda's refugees is integrally linked to the political and social-economic future of the country.

9. FIVE DECADES OF FLEEING AND RETURNING PEOPLE

A decade after the genocide, the problem of Rwanda's refugees persists. But while refugees may remain reluctant to return home because of apprehension about unity and reconciliation, economic problems and scarce land, the construction of a healthy society in the country of a thousand hills will depend on a resolution of the refugee crisis, writes VOLKER SCHIMMEL.

10. NEUTRALISING THE VOICES OF HATE: BROADCASTING AND GENOCIDE

Silencing the voices of hate does not involve draconian hate speech laws or international military action. Rather, argues RICHARD CARVER, the Rwandan experience shows that the solution to hate speech is to entrench freedom of expression.

11. TEN LESSONS TO PREVENT GENOCIDE

In the ten years since the Rwandan genocide leaders of national governments and international institutions have acknowledged the shame of having failed to stop the slaughter of the Tutsi population. At the 2004 Stockholm International Forum, "Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities," many renewed their commitment to halting any future genocide. Honouring that pledge will require not just greater political will than seen in the past but also developing a strategy built on the lessons of 1994. ALISON DES FORGES provides ten lessons for preventing genocide.

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Especially when they go on for months.

Quote of note:

It's the nature of the TV beast to copy something first and then twist and exaggerate the concept to keep an ever-jaded public interested. That's probably why Fox came up with the dual-cruel ideas of no looking in the mirror for three months and then, once you do, joining a beauty pageant just to crush your newfound, surgically enhanced self-esteem.

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Think TV is sick now? Give it time
Tim Goodman
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Whenever a reality television series is so repulsive in its premise or execution that normally wise people believe that we, as a society, have hit bottom, there's only one thing to say in response if you know anything at all about television: Wait for it. Something far worse is around the corner.

You will be tested on this theory when Fox -- who else? -- unveils "The Swan" in one week. It is a reality series that takes women described as "ugly ducklings" and puts them under the cosmetic-surgery knife, fixes their teeth, lets them see a shrink, makes them work out, styles their hair, does their makeup and generally turns them into, you guessed it, swans.

Now, this is well-trod territory on television. Back when makeovers were quaint -- new hair, a better dress, some nice shoes -- the idea was surely hatched to take it up a notch. And so we did until ABC aired "Extreme Makeover, " and conventional wisdom at the time suggested that we'd hit bottom and covered ourselves in muck. Viewers of "Extreme Makeover" thought it was either extremely uplifting or extremely horrifying. If you fall into the latter camp, you might be particularly offended by Fox's little twist on this trend: The ugly ducklings who have had their faces rearranged by a plastic surgeon don't get to look in a mirror for three months.

Once they complete this "transformation process" -- where they go from ugly and useless, crazy and badly coiffed to swanlike -- they get to look in the mirror at "the reveal." Then, before they can fully grasp their Snow White moment, they are entered into a beauty contest. Yep. You're pretty now, but wait until you've seen what we've done to the others!

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Police chief suspended, sued over alleged paddling of teen for speeding ticket
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

(03-31) 09:38 PST WARREN, Ohio (AP) --

A part-time police chief has been suspended after a lawsuit accused him of assaulting a teenager by paddling the boy as part of a crime diversion program for a speeding ticket.

Carol Woolf of Vienna said she initially agreed to let her 16-year-old son be paddled, then refused to have him return for 14 more sessions because of the welts he suffered.

"This child is traumatized," Woolf said.

James Martin was suspended as part-time police chief of Fowler Township and also as a full-time police officer in nearby Howland Township, pending investigations by state officials and the FBI. No charges have been filed.

Howland Township disciplined the officer more than a decade ago after he admitted paddling about 20 juveniles. The townships are suburbs of Warren, about 70 miles southeast of Cleveland.

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Governor took harassment course
Schwarzenegger, top staff trained in preventing sexual misconduct
Lynda Gledhill, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was dogged during his campaign by allegations of sexual misconduct, said Tuesday in an interview that he voluntarily participated in a sexual harassment prevention course along with his senior staff after taking office.

"We all went through that a long time ago," Schwarzenegger said. "Absolutely. We all did."

The governor and his staff participated Jan. 27 in a two-hour course conducted by a deputy attorney general who is an expert in employment and discrimination law, Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson said.

Before taking office in November, Schwarzenegger aides said he had not decided if he would take training, which is optional for statewide elected officials such as the governor, secretary of state and attorney general.

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Ex-cop's sister accuses Burge
Former police official bragged about torturing suspects, lawyers told
By Steve Mills
Tribune staff reporter

April 1, 2004

Former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and a former homicide detective bragged about beating and other forms of torture they allegedly used against murder suspects at a South Side police station, the detective's sister has told lawyers for a former Death Row inmate.

"They began to boast about power and what really happens in a police station," Ellen Pryweller, sister of former Detective Robert Dwyer, said in a sworn videotaped statement given to attorneys representing Madison Hobley.

"When they get them in a police station, they give them hell," she added. "...They beat the [expletive] out of them. They throw them against walls. They burn them against radiators. They smother them. They poke them with objects. They did something to one guy's testicles."

Pryweller, whose videotaped statement was given to the Tribune by Hobley's lawyers, said she was present in 1987 while her brother and Burge talked about the alleged torture, with her brother saying, "I can make anybody confess to anything."

Hobley was sentenced to death for setting a January 1987 fire in a South Side apartment building that killed seven people, including his wife and infant son. He was pardoned in January 2003 and has sued the Police Department, Burge, Dwyer and other detectives, saying he was tortured into making a false confession.

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Quote of note:

No matter how much GOP leaders like to deny it, tax cuts cost the government as well. "When you cut taxes, the economy grows and revenues to the government grow," declared House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). "I'm not interested in something that would negate our philosophy." But what about the fact that despite several years of tax cuts, federal revenues are at their lowest ebb since the Depression? Extending tax cuts for the wealthy will only worsen matters, adding at least $1.2 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. What's more, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the administration's claims that it will halve the deficit in the next five years are wrong.

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Credit Card Budgeting

April 1, 2004

Like a consumer taking out new credit cards to pay for old debt, the House Republican leadership refuses to restrain its spending and tax-cut frenzy. The latest sign came Tuesday when the House refused to follow the lead of the Senate and narrowly voted down a motion that would insist that tax cuts and spending increases be matched by offsetting tax increases or spending cuts.

In the 1990s, these so-called pay-as-you-go rules ensured that the billions in deficits disappeared. Republican lawmakers, who believed that fiscal discipline was necessary, cooperated with President Clinton to bring the deficit under control. Without such rules, Congress will succumb to long-term fiscal irresponsibility that could end up driving the deficit even higher than the current projected $521 billion for 2005.

Already, pork-barrel spending is reaching a new high. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, which releases its annual "Pig Book" next week, Congress is spending money on a record 10,672 projects this year. Some of the more outlandish projects range from $100,000 to restore a historic Coca-Cola building in Macon, Ga., to $4.3 million for a Geographic Information Center for Excellence at West Virginia University. Oh, and don't forget $293,000 for hoop barns in Iowa.

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Bush's Surrender

By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 1, 2004; Page A31

…At a time when the American people -- and the world -- desperately need reassurance that the government was not asleep at the switch, Bush has clenched his jaw and said nothing that would ease those concerns. Instead, he has arranged that when he answers the commission's questions in a yet-to-be-scheduled private session, he will not face it alone. He and Vice President Cheney will appear together. It will be interesting to learn who furnishes most of the answers.

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Whoever it is has priceless timing.

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It's become apparent to me that more than one significant person in the hierarchy recognizes the danger their leadership represents.

Quote of note:

In the speech prepared for Sept. 11, Rice intended to point out that the United States had spent $11 billion on counterterrorism, about twice as much as it spent on missile defense, during the previous year, although the speech did not point out that that was when President Bill Clinton was still in office.

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Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn't on Terrorism
Rice Speech Cited Missile Defense
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 1, 2004; Page A01

On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.

The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.

The speech was postponed in the chaos of the day, part of which Rice spent in a bunker. It mentioned terrorism, but did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States.

The text also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration's policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat -- long-range missiles.

"We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway," according to excerpts of the speech provided to The Washington Post. "[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open?"

The text of Rice's Sept. 11 speech, which was never delivered, broadly reflects Bush administration foreign policy pronouncements during the eight months leading to the attacks, according to a review of speeches, news conferences and media appearances. Although the administration did address terrorism, it devoted far more attention to pushing missile defense, a controversial idea both at home and abroad, the review shows.

Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism rated lower on the list of priorities, as outlined by officials in their own public statements on policy.

The question of whether the administration was properly focused on the terrorist threat before Sept. 11 is central to a building political storm in Washington, as a commission investigating the attacks prepares to take public testimony from Rice. Last week, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, Richard A. Clarke, accused the administration of failing to take seriously enough the danger from al Qaeda -- a charge the White House strenuously disputes.

The White House declined to release the complete text of Rice's speech, since it was not given. The White House did confirm the accuracy of excerpts given to The Post, and former U.S. officials provided a detailed summary of the speech.

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GOP Complaint Cites Pro-Democratic Groups
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 1, 2004; Page A09

The Bush campaign and the Republican Party filed charges yesterday with the Federal Election Commission accusing the Kerry campaign and seven "independent" organizations of conducting a criminal conspiracy to inject large amounts of "soft money" into the 2004 election.

The Bush campaign, which this month has spent an unprecedented $41.8 million on television ads, many of them attacking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), has become increasingly frustrated by the ability of Kerry and such "independent" groups as MoveOn.org and the Media Fund to counter with nearly $20 million in ads.

In a separate rule-making process expected to take months, the FEC is addressing many of the issues raised by the Bush-RNC complaint. The complaint filed yesterday is designed to force a much quicker decision on the legality of the activities of the Kerry campaign and allied groups. A ruling against the Democrats would cut off a major source of campaign support for Kerry.

In an unusual move for a party traditionally opposed to campaign finance laws and government regulation, the GOP has turned increasingly to the federal regulatory system, especially the FEC, to restrict, if not silence, Kerry allies.

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Numb Nation
When What Once Shocked Elicits Only a Shrug, Haul Out the Sledgehammer

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 1, 2004; Page C01

Maybe we should have been tipped off by the detached heads.

In Jack Kelley's amazing eyewitness account in USA Today of a suicide bombing in Israel, he described three men thrown into the air. When they hit the ground, "their heads separated from their bodies and rolled down the street."

This is a movie script detail. You can imagine it perfectly because you've seen it before, while eating popcorn. As the heads bound along, they preferentially face the viewer. In Kelley's first draft, a couple of the heads were still blinking their eyes. (Picture a movie producer reading that in the script: "Beeeyootiful," he says.)

It didn't happen, of course. No adults were decapitated in the bombing, USA Today learned when investigating Kelley's work. The paper has come to the stunning conclusion that its star reporter was a serial fabricator. The Kelley case will inevitably be viewed as an example of something seriously wrong with American journalism. But it's also a small symptom of a broader, more chronic disease in popular culture: the Sledgehammer Effect.

American society hasn't been dumbed down so much as numbed down. To make a big impact, to be heard above the chatter and static of an information-saturated society -- and to write a newspaper story that jumps off a page already full of violence, rage and tragedy -- a person has to crank the volume, intensify the rhetoric, get more heads and body parts flying.

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March 31, 2004

I was just looking at this book, Mind Wide Open.

And I pictured actually running across someone with grooves etched in their head like that. Kind of grossed me out.

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Do you think your average capital-L Libertarian would find the USofA acceptable just as it is, if he and any 15 families of his choosing were allowed to live tax free etc.?

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Air America Radio RealPlayer stream

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No witticisms for this one. Sorry.

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Freedom Rider at The Black Commentator

Black New York: Out of Work and Off the Radar Screen

It is rare for every publication in New York City to give equal attention to the same news story. A report issued recently by the Community Service Society of New York accomplished that rare feat. The think tank and social service agency issued a report, "A Crisis of Black Male Employment: Unemployment and Joblessness in New York City, 2003." The data generated headlines in the New York Times and the New York Amsterdam News because it revealed the sobering information that only 51.8 percent of black males in New York City between the ages of 16 and 64 are working.

The realization that the recession had such a terrible impact on one group was stunning news. The data confirmed what black New Yorkers see in their neighborhoods: large numbers of men who are obviously not working. Report author Mark Levitan says that the response reflected a grim satisfaction that there is data to back up what so many see every day. Over and over Mr. Levitan was told, "Finally somebody put a number on something we've known all along."

Behind those figures are devastated lives and devastated neighborhoods. The negative impact of a nearly 50% rate of joblessness cannot be over emphasized.

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Sun Desktop Shines on Wal-Mart with Discount Boxes
By Peter Galli
March 30, 2004

MENLO PARK—Sun Microsystems Inc. got its wish: its Microsoft Windows alternative Java Desktop System is now available preloaded, on Microtel Computer Systems Inc. hardware, and available for sale at discount retailer Wal-Mart.

"We now have an active relationship with Microtel," Jonathan Schwartz, the executive vice president of Sun's software group, told reporters at a software day at its campus here.

"Sun is a technology provider and our Java Desktop System is now preloaded on Microtel hardware and available for sale at Wal-Mart for under $300 a system. The Microtel SYSWM8001 PC, with an AMD [Advanced Micro Devices Inc.] Duron 1.6GHz chip and no floppy drive can be bought for $298 from Wal-Mart now," he said.

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Quote of note:

"I totally understand and respect his will to keep himself out of the political fray," said Eli Pariser, executive director of the political action committee. "But the things that he's revealing have real political consequences because they demonstrate that Bush mismanaged his core election issue."

Pariser said the group had a right to quote Clarke under the 1st Amendment. "Generally speaking, you can quote public figures in an ad or wherever you like," he said.

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Clarke Protests Anti-Bush Ad
By Nick Anderson
Times Staff Writer

3:11 PM PST, March 31, 2004

WASHINGTON — The former White House counterterrorism chief who has heaped criticism on President Bush's response to terrorist threats today protested the use of his voice and words in an anti-Bush television commercial.

Richard A. Clarke, who has given interviews on national television and to other media and authored a book critical of the president, apparently decided that a political advertisement was over the line.

The Associated Press quoted Clarke as saying that he wanted the ad, which quotes him directly, to be pulled from CNN, Fox News Channel and other news outlets. The ad was sponsored by a political action committee of MoveOn.org, a group opposed to Bush's reelection. The ad began airing Tuesday and is scheduled to run through Friday.

"I just don't want to be used," Clarke told AP. "I don't want to be part of what looks like a political TV ad. I'm trying hard to make this not a partisan thing, but a discussion of how we stop terrorism from happening in the future, keep this on a policy issue. I don't want this to become any more emotional or personal than it has already."

Efforts to reach Clarke this afternoon were unsuccessful.

The ad, which shows Bush walking at the White House, quotes from a recent interview Clarke gave the CBS news show "60 Minutes."

"Frankly, I find it outrageous that a president is running for reelection on the grounds that he'd done such great things on terrorism," Clarke is quoted as saying in the ad. "He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11."

The ad's sponsor rebuffed Clarke's request to pull it.

"I totally understand and respect his will to keep himself out of the political fray," said Eli Pariser, executive director of the political action committee. "But the things that he's revealing have real political consequences because they demonstrate that Bush mismanaged his core election issue."

Pariser said the group had a right to quote Clarke under the 1st Amendment. "Generally speaking, you can quote public figures in an ad or wherever you like," he said.

Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt declined comment. The campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, did not immediately respond to phone calls.

Republicans have charged that MoveOn is coordinating its TV ads with the Kerry campaign. The Democrat's aides and the leader of the liberal group deny the charge.

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I find this amazing. But maybe I'm easily amazed.

OPEC Production Cut Could Send Gas Prices Higher By John Burgess Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, March 31, 2004; 5:12 PM

BERLIN, March 31 -- The OPEC countries agreed Wednesday to proceed with a 4 percent cut in oil production beginning Thursday, turning aside criticism from industrial countries that any resulting price rise will harm the world economy.

With oil prices emerging as an election year issue, the White House called the move disappointing and said that administration officials were "actively engaged" with OPEC governments about it.

Oil ministers from the 11 member states, meeting in Vienna, upheld a February decision to cut production by 2.5 million barrels a day on grounds of avoiding a price-deflating build-up of oil supplies in world markets. But some oil industry analysts said any price rises could be blunted by drops in demand as warmer weather arrives and by continued cheating on official quotas as member countries try to maximize their incomes while prices remain near 13-year highs.

Following news of the decision, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that "producers should not take steps that harm American consumers and our economy." President Bush has not called OPEC leaders about the issue, McClellan said, but officials in his administration are in touch.

And what is the administration's reaction to this?

As gasoline prices have risen to record levels, John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, has increasingly been citing oil in his campaign appearances. On Tuesday, he said that Bush had "done nothing with OPEC to reduce the gas prices." Bush criticized Democrats as planning higher gas taxes.

Bush criticized Democrats as planning higher gas taxes.

That about says it all for this administration.

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Recount Challenged in Texas Democratic House Race
Incumbent Rodriguez Questions Discovery of 300 Uncounted Ballots

SAN ANTONIO -- Challenger Henry Cuellar took a 197-vote lead over U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez in a Democratic primary recount, and the incumbent planned to file a lawsuit over the discovery of uncounted ballots that suddenly turned up in one county.

Cuellar, a Laredo lawyer and businessman, had trailed Rodriguez by 126 votes on primary night in the solidly Democratic district with more than 48,000 votes cast. He asked for the recount last week.

The recount, which started Tuesday, turned up more than 300 uncounted ballots in a ballot box in Zapata County, and Democratic officials said Webb County's recount showed 115 more votes than there were ballots cast.

"It stinks to high heaven, to be honest with you," said John Puder, a top adviser to three-term incumbent Rodriguez.

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I wasn't feeling creative today for various reasons, so I've been focusing on tuning things. The major focus has been the link forum, which is still raw but has the basic appearance and functionality in place. I need to decide how to structure things in each major category, and the layout may change a bit from moment to moment and the URL will change from a subdirectory to a subdomain, but basically there it is.

Later: The subdomain is up, so whatever it's going to be, the linked address is where it will take place.

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We don't need no water, let the mother fucker burn March 30, 2004 There is a school of thought, regrettably common among some Americans, that there are two equally valid positions to every argument, and selecting a third position somewhere in the middle makes you a moderate.

This is, quite obviously, complete and utter horseshit.

I withdraw my statement about the inappropriateness of Uppity-Negro.com being A Maitreya Buddha Fansite.

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It's another example of this administration's tendency to get itself into untenable positions.

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Of Privilege and Politics



The delay in Condoleezza Rice's testifying before the 9/11 panel points up how the president has repeatedly abused his executive privilege.

…The regularity with which Ms. Rice has popped up on television talk shows has become a running joke. It's hard to claim the need to protect your privacy when you're spending as much time doing television interviews as Ms. Rice has recently. She has been leading the administration's attack on Richard Clarke, the former presidential adviser who has criticized Mr. Bush's record on terrorism.

While Bush administration officials have accused Mr. Clarke of lying to promote a book, the White House has worked to unseal Congressional testimony by Mr. Clarke that had been delivered with the same understanding of confidentiality that Ms. Rice claimed. And when the 9/11 commissioners attempted to fulfill their mandate from Congress by trying to resolve the differences between Ms. Rice's version of reality and Mr. Clarke's, the president balked at allowing her to testify as Mr. Clarke did, under oath.[P6: emphasis added]

Yesterday, Mr. Bush's lawyer told the commission that Ms. Rice would testify. And after months of unacceptable delay, the lawyer said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would also talk to the entire commission in private, not under oath. But the panel had to pay a price: it agreed, at the administration's insistence, that after Ms. Rice testifies, it will not call her back or ask any other White House official to testify in public.

The White House's initial refusal to allow Ms. Rice to testify and its cynical use of a confidential adviser as a public accuser would have been bad enough. But they fit an unpleasant pattern. This president has repeatedly abused his executive privilege while seeking to hide behind it, starting when Mr. Cheney invoked that privilege to gather business executives in secret to draft the administration's energy policy.[P6: emphasis added]

President Bush may be right in holding that this battle has harmed his important, but limited, right to executive privilege. If so, the wounds were self-inflicted.

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Defying Bush, Senate Increases Child Care Funds for the Poor



By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, March 30 — Over strenuous objections from the White House, the Senate voted on Tuesday for a significant increase in money to provide child care to welfare recipients and other low-income families.

The vote, 78 to 20, expressed broad bipartisan support for a proposal to add $6 billion to child care programs over the next five years, on top of a $1 billion increase that was already included in a sweeping welfare bill. The federal government now earmarks $4.8 billion a year for such child care assistance.

The Bush administration objected to the increase in child care money, saying it was not needed.

But President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress favor the overall bill, which would renew the 1996 welfare law and impose stricter work requirements on welfare recipients.

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Reason to Run? Nader Argues He Has Plenty



By TODD S. PURDUM

WASHINGTON, March 30 — Ralph Nader knows all the arguments against him. He can recite, word for importuning word, the letters from old friends urging him not to run for president — "all individually written, all stunningly similar" — and he does so with the theatrical relish of a man whose public life has been one long, unyielding argument with the world.

"Here's how it started," he said, his soft voice taking on mock oratorical tones over dinner with a group of aides in Charlotte, N.C., last week: "For years, I've thought of you as one of our heroes." He rolled his eyes. "The achievements you've attained are monumental, in consumer, environmental, etc., etc." He paused for effect. "But this time, I must express my profound disappointment at indications that you are going to run."

"And the more I got of these," Mr. Nader said, "the more I realized that we are confronting a virus, a liberal virus. And the characteristic of a virus is when it takes hold of the individual, it's the same virus, individual letters all written in uncannily the same sequence. Here's another characteristic of the virus: Not one I can recall ever said, 'What are your arguments for running?' "

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That's just a sign of failing mental health. Of course we all asked about his arguments for running. We just phrased it differently, i.e., "What the HELL is on your mind?"

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Joke's on them



US election: Humour is the new weapon in the US presidential contest, writes Matthew Wells.

Wednesday March 31, 2004

A new front in the bitter presidential election battle opens today with the launch of Air America, the radio network that promises a liberal alternative to the rightwing talk show hosts who dominate the daytime airwaves.
Al Franken, the doyen of political satire on the left, will be going directly up against the broadcasting colossus Rush Limbaugh. Initially, it will not be a contest at all, as the new network will be heard only in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, while Limbaugh's long-established sarcastic tirades against the "liberal elite" are disseminated from coast to coast.

The buzz surrounding Air America's launch - together with the heavy coverage devoted to the shock-jock Howard Stern's recent conversion to the anti-Bush cause - is a clear sign that the entire political establishment is more aware than ever of the role that satire and comedy will play in this year's race for the White House.

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When asked why they'd never contacted the Earth before, the Vulcan ambassador said, "You are one of the few worlds we know of that has its orbital weapons pointed at itself."

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Is Space the Next Battlefield?



The U.S. military, warning of a space "Pearl Harbor," is making the first tentative moves to place weapons in space. Is the peaceful exploration of the skies going to be lost as a result?

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March 30, 2004

Date: 2004-03-29

Holy See Addresses U.N. Commission on Racism

"Keeps Returning to Poison Human Relations"

GENEVA, MARCH 29, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of an address delivered March 22 by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva, during the 60th session of the Human Rights Commission on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination. The session started March 15 and ends April 23.

1. The wound of racism keeps returning to poison human relations. The forms taken by contemporary manifestations of racism are evident in spontaneous, officially tolerated or sometimes institutionalized behavior. In recent events intolerance, based on the idea of group superiority on the basis of the group's origin or attributed characteristics, provokes new violence and death, ethnic cleansing, refugee flows and untold misery. Racist behavior and self-affirmation become occasionally the cover for undemocratic hold on power and for a rationalized justification for corruption.

It is not difficult to notice from the information networks that practically in all continents, with the increased mobility of people, immigrants, especially if in an irregular situation, find themselves exposed to attacks and forced marginalization as a result of prejudice, even when their presence is needed for economic and even demographic reasons.

While race defines a human group in terms of immutable and hereditary traits, racist prejudice, which feeds racist behavior, can be applied by extension, with equally negative effects, to all persons whose ethnic origin, language, religion or customs make them appear different. In this way the right to full participation in society is denied to a variety of groups often set apart by the additional burden of great poverty.

2. The fight against racism remains therefore a contemporary commitment. Major positive steps have already been taken in recent decades in the effort to contain and eliminate prejudice and discrimination. The cornerstone remains the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with its principles of equality without distinction of any kind such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

These principles were further elaborated in other major instruments like the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), and the Declaration and Program of Action of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban from 31 August to 8 September 2001.

3. The challenge now facing us is to implement the growing body of directives protecting human rights and aiming in particular at the elimination of every form of racism and related intolerance. To keep the political will focused on this major concern, the Working Groups established as a follow-up of the Durban Conference continue the search for concrete ways and means to achieve the objectives that the international community has set for itself in this regard. International instruments, national legislation, active forces of civil society, educational and religious institutions, as well as non-governmental organizations, by converging on the same goal in a comprehensive way, can defeat any persistent form of racism or at least contain their nefarious consequences.

4. The achievement of these objectives has to begin from an attitude of acceptance of the "other" and of a genuine appreciation of the multiplicity of gifts that human groups and cultures contribute to the whole of the human family. This necessary positive outlook can come only from deep convictions to make the art of living together in peace and mutual respect a reality. A strategic tool in this regard is education, especially human rights education, that must go beyond the external expressions of a culture and reach out to the value system and the spiritual belief that sustain the identity of a people.

Dialogue at this level will go a long way to eliminate the walls built by prejudice and historical circumstances. All major religions strive to inculcate this inner rooting of tolerant behavior and at the same time they provide encouragement to teach by example first of all. Together with education the role of the media is essential in forming a public opinion that is sensitive and respectful of the other. Care should be taken that selectivity of information may not lead to prejudice, both in the case of historical analysis and analysis of present political and ideological situations. On the other hand, a very positive service is provided by the media when they highlight successful best practices against racism.

5. In the search for adequate measures to protect people from racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, inter alia, the Durban Declaration and Program of Action recognizes "the necessity for special measures or positive actions for the victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in order to promote their full integration into society." Those measures "should aim at correcting the conditions that impair the enjoyment of rights and the introduction of special measures to encourage equal participation of all racial and cultural, linguistic and religious groups in all sectors of society and to bring all onto an equal footing" (No. 108). Such a victim oriented approach calls for access to some mechanism of complaint and redress that will effectively respond also to the just expectations of the poorer and more marginalized people.

6. The consequences of racism, obvious in some extreme cases of open conflict and forced exile, are probably not sufficiently calculated for the more ordinary circumstances like in work situations where the lack of equality of treatment and opportunity affects negatively productivity. In this as in other cases, a vicious circle develops as racism leads to vulnerability and marginalization and these conditions in turn are utilized to reinforce prejudice and racism.

7. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the struggle against racism and all forms of intolerance stands a chance of success when human dignity and equality are recognized as the true foundation of social relations. The equal dignity of every person and of every human community provide a launching pad into the future that can stimulate the creativity of the international community to continue devising all practical measures necessary to achieve such a noble goal of eliminating all forms of racism and related intolerance and of promoting fair and inclusive society.

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Sharpton May Lose Federal Campaign Funds

By SHARON THEIMER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
Al Sharpton's cash-strapped presidential campaign may soon lose the government money it started getting earlier this month.

The Federal Election Commission voted Monday to suspend public financing for the New York Democrat's campaign. The FEC found that Sharpton exceeded the program's $50,000 limit on contributions by candidates to their own campaigns.

Sharpton has 20 days to respond before the commission suspends his monthly matching funds. The taxpayer-financed program offers a monthly government match of up to $250 for each private donation, up to total grants of about $18.6 million.

Most candidates accepting public financing received their first grants in January after showing they had met the program's requirements, which include raising $5,000 in each of 20 states in donations of $250 or less from individuals.

The FEC found Sharpton eligible March 11 and provided an initial $100,000 grant. If the commission finds Sharpton had already spent more than $50,000 of his own money on the campaign when he applied for the government funds, it could order him to pay back the $100,000.

Sharpton contends that the FEC should only impose the $50,000 limit for any personal money he put into the campaign starting March 11, the day the commission voted to give him the government money, and not the date when he applied for the public funds in January.

Sharpton had raised about $643,000 as March began, including at least $159,000 in loans. Sharpton spent all he raised and then some, starting this month about $634,000 in debt.

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COMMENTARY
Bush Puts a 'Cancer on the Presidency'
Watergate insider calls this White House 'scary.'
Robert Scheer

March 30, 2004

"Worse Than Watergate," the title of a new book by John Dean, Richard Nixon's White House counsel, is a depressingly accurate measure of the chicanery of the Bush/Cheney cabal. According to Dean, who began his political life at the age of 29 as the Republican counsel on the House Judiciary Committee before being recruited by Nixon, "This administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." And when it comes to lies and cover-up, the Bush crowd makes the Nixon administration look like amateurs. As Dean writes, they "have created the most secretive presidency of my lifetime … far worse than during Watergate."

Dean knows what he's talking about. He was the one who dared tell Nixon in 1973 that the web of lies surrounding the Watergate break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters had formed "a cancer on the presidency." When Dean went public about that conversation, the Nixon White House smeared him as a liar. Fortunately, the conversation had been taped, and Dean was vindicated.

The dark side of the current White House was on full display last week when top officials of the Bush administration took to the airwaves to destroy the credibility of a man who had honorably served presidents Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes.

The character assassination of Richard Clarke, the former White House anti-terrorism chief, was far more worrisome than Nixon's smears of Dean because it concerned not petty crime in pursuit of partisan political ambition but rather the attempt to deceive the nation and the world as to the causes of the 9/11 assault upon our national security — and to justify an unnecessary war in Iraq.

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In Reversal, Rice to Testify Before 9/11 Panel
From Associated Press

7:21 AM PST, March 30, 2004

WASHINGTON — National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will be allowed to testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an administration official said today.

The official said the decision is conditioned on the Bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent, said the official speaking on condition of anonymity. It appeared the administration already had such assurances verbally in private and is confident it will get them in writing.

White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales has sent a letter to the commission stating that Rice is prepared to testify publicly as long as the administration receives assurances from the panel that this is not precedent setting, the official said.

Congressional leaders, the official added, have already stated that this would not be a new precedent.

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I saw this when it was announced and like an idiot I forgot to write it up.

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via Slashdot
Posted by
timothy
on Tuesday March 30, @05:02AM

from the no-need-for-windows dept.

Douglas Hunter writes "Africa Source 2004 has wrapped up and the last of the stragglers have packed their bags and headed home. Africa Source 2004 was a gathering of pan-African Free and Open Source software developers held in Okahandja, Namibia. Organized by Tactical Tech, All Africa and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Africa Source was a mixture of structured and semi-structured discussions with loads of good 'ole hacking thrown in to boot. With workshops ranging from i18n to wireless hacks to running a MOSIX cluster, there were plenty of hands-on sessions for folks to attend. The first ever Kiswahili spell checker was developed and released during the conference, a testament to the activity of those involved.

For more information about Africa Source 2004, visit one of the blogs."

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More Changes Made To 'No Child' Rules
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A02

The Bush administration yesterday unveiled the latest of several modifications to its controversial education initiative but failed to satisfy a chorus of teachers, school superintendents and state legislators who say the law is unworkable in its present form.

The latest change to the No Child Left Behind law relaxes previously rigid rates of student participation in standardized tests that thousands of schools were unable to meet, causing them to be put on federal watch lists. Previous changes have eased rules governing testing requirements for severely disabled children and students with limited knowledge of English, as well as teacher qualification requirements.

"We are listening to parents and educators and making adjustments," Secretary of Education Roderick R. Paige said yesterday. "But we are not willing to sidestep or ignore the heart of No Child Left Behind -- making sure that all children count."

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I while back I made note of the difference between statutory law and procedural law. Statutory law sets the standard we must adhere to. Procedural law sets the method of enforcement. I raised the issue in connection with race-blinding law, which is only applied to the procedural side of the law (it already being part of the statutory aspect) and as such actually prevents enforcement of the statutes…you can't prevent or respond to that which you're not allowed to keep track of.

Since it worked SO well in attacking civil rights policy, it appears it's been decided to apply a similar technique to taxation policy. I think Greenspan plays the role of "sell-out negro".

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Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says
President's Agency Oversight Board Calls for an Additional $530 Million

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page E01

President Bush's 2005 budget request for the Internal Revenue Service would seriously shortchange the agency's tax collection activities, leaving a half-million delinquent tax accounts uncollected, 15 million service calls unanswered and nearly 46,000 audits unscheduled, according to the president's own IRS oversight board.

A strongly worded special report, to be released today, says Bush's $10.7 billion budget for the IRS falls at least $230 million short of the agency's immediate needs and fails to match the administration's tough talk on tax law enforcement. The president requested a 4.6 percent boost to the IRS's budget, but the board says much of that will be swallowed by pay increases and other costs unconnected to tax collection.

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Cheney, Kerry Trade Barbs Over Tax Cut Proposal By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A04

Vice President Cheney charged yesterday that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) is hiding the extent of his plans for raising taxes, but Democrats retorted that the White House is trying to divert attention from a stagnant job market. Preparing for the monthly employment report that will come out Friday, President Bush plans to spend much of the week talking about economic issues. Kerry promised last week to introduce an economic program designed to create 10 million jobs by 2009, and the White House is fighting back by trying to impugn his credibility.

I'm seriously trying to remember the last time the Bushistas 'fought back' by any means other than impugning someone's credibility. They can only keep doing it because of Conservative credulousness.

Cheney, speaking before a friendly crowd of 300 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Kerry is not to be believed when he says that during his first 100 days, he would preserve the Bush tax cuts for most Americans and propose tax credits to help middle-class families while rolling back the Bush tax cuts for those who make more than $200,000 a year. "To get a clearer picture of what the first hundred days of a Kerry administration would look like, we can start by reviewing his last 7,000 days in Washington," Cheney said. He said Kerry "will speak out against higher taxes when it suits the political moment, but is one of the most reliable pro-tax votes in the United States Senate."

I selected this quote to emphasize the particular audience Luthor Cheney is talking to. It's the only group to which the above statement can be spun into anything resembling an approach to the idea of a statement that reminds on of something that may one day approximate a model whose output can be interpreted in a way that approaches the truth. Dick has made a lot of progress on the honesty front. We should congratulate him.

Cheney repeated Bush's assertion that Kerry has voted at least 350 times for higher taxes, a figure that includes votes against tax cuts. "He says that he will keep some of those tax cuts -- never mind that he opposed each one of them at the time," Cheney said. "He has given the usual assurances that in those first hundred days he's planning, only the wealthiest Americans can expect higher taxes." A Kerry campaign statement said Cheney had "cherry-picked a handful of votes that were part of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which John Kerry opposed because they primarily benefited the wealthy and contributed to record deficits."

Again the blind stupidity of saying a vote against a particular tax cut is a vote in favor of a tax increase. I find it equal parts remarkable and disturbing that an entire political campaign can so strongly depend on the miseducation of the American public. Kinda puts NCLB in a whole new light. Ah, for the days when the Quadrivium was taught. Politics, unfortunately, comes from the worldview of folks stuck on stupid in the Trivium. People who think grammar, rhetoric and logic are the highest intellectual skills.

The Bush-Cheney campaign released a radio ad in which a Boston-area law enforcement officer says Kerry "likes to raise taxes -- it's what he's done before and you know he'll do it again." The officer also jokes about Kerry's accent, reminding voters that he is from Massachusetts, with its liberal connotation.

How about a counter-ad: "Dick Cheney likes to trade with known outlaw regimes -- it's what he's done before and you know he'll do it again." We can also joke about his bald head and squinty eyes, reminding people he looks like Lex Luthor, with its super-villain connotations.

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March 29, 2004

The full answer General Powell gave Mr. Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: Back with the secretary of State. Mr. Secretary, a group called the Center for American Progress has posed this question: If, as the administration claims, the White House did make terrorism a priority, why did Vice President Cheney wait five months to establish a terrorism task force which then never met?

Sec. POWELL: We were working the problem all along. It was being worked within the Department of State as I responded to the threat levels and as we prepared a diplomatic strategy to put more pressure on the Afghanistan regime and the regime in Pakistan. Mr. Rumsfeld was doing things to secure his forces around the world in response to the Cole. I was taking action to protect our embassies in response to our two embassies being blown up in 1998. There were a lot of actions under way and ongoing. The deputies were meeting on a regular basis. And it all came together when we had this NSPD ready on the 4th of September. But before the 4th of September, there were a lot of things that were taking place with respect to the task force. I--I--I can't answer the specific question. I'm not familiar with the--with the document…

But had they just continued to the next question(s - you'll see the reason for the 's' in a minute):

SCHIEFFER: The vice president says that the--that Mr. Clarke was out of the loop. How could the anti-terrorism chief be out of the loop?

…and it's a very good question indeed…the tape would have been chock full of hilarity, if just a bit too big for downloading.

Sec. POWELL: I think the--the c--the context in which Vice President Cheney said that was that there was a new loop that was in place and that it was the director of Central Intelligence who was speaking to the president every morning and giving him his intelligence information, and not just a book being sent in, as had been the case, I believe, i--under the Clinton administration. SCHIEFFER: But would... Sec. POWELL: So the--there was a--there was a--there was a--a loop now that included the direct input of intelligence information, to include threat inter--intelligence information, to the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States. And everything that the president saw every morning, the vice president saw, I saw, Condi saw and Don Rumsfeld saw. SCHIEFFER: But why would... Sec. POWELL: We all saw it.

Yeah, Colin, float like a butterfly, sting like…a…butterfly?

SCHIEFFER: Why would you not want the man who is supposed to be heading the antiterrorism efforts to know about that? Sec. POWELL: I'm not... SCHIEFFER: Why would there be a new loop?

Now THAT had to sting.

Sec. POWELL: I--I--I have no idea what he--what he claims not to know. I mean, he was doing his job. And this is where the inf--this... Ms. TUMULTY: Well, that was the vice president who claimed... Sec. POWELL: Well... Ms. TUMULTY: ...that he did not know this stuff. Sec. POWELL: Well, it--you--then I'll--I'll let--I think I've explained what the vice president had in mind[P6:I think it patently obvious he did not], but I'm sure he--he'd be willing to--to expand on what I've said[P6:I think it patently obvious he WILL not]. But--but--but here's the thing. He [P6:He? Cheney?]said that Mr. Clarke was--was not part of this system yet. Mr. Clarke was the key action officer, the key staff person in this, and he was making statements, providing testimony, giving background brief--briefings. And if you look through 2002, the documents that have been made reference to, he was essentially being complimentary about the work that he was doing as part of the Bush administration and that the Bush administration was doing. And that's where I think there are some contradictions and inconsistencies that I hope will be explained as the commission finishes its work.

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I just got some bidnizz to handle. Back later.

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Yesterday I got one of the emails from the Center for American Progress that nailed Dr. Rice's butt to the wall over her 60 minutes interview. I didn't post about it because I'd already said what i was going to say…plus it was kinda harsh.

Today they sent out their standard daily Progress Report, and there was a little bragging at the top. Seems they've been sending "Unanswered Questions of the Week" to the Sunday talk shows, and they got one asked of Gen. Powell on "CBS NEWS' FACE THE NATION."

I called it "CBS NEWS' FACE THE NATION" because that how they want to be credited for quotes from the transcript. ("Transcript?" "Yup. Transcript. In PDF, no less.")

CAP has a video clip of the question being asked and "Powell's answer," and THAT'S in quotes because it's really obvious they snatched a tiny piece of what he was saying. So, being me, I have to go read the thing to get the full context.

You should read it too. There was much better stuff to nail the General on, but it wouldn't have brought to light that fact that CAP's question was asked.

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OVER-THE-COUNTER PERIL
A Dose of Denial
How drug makers sought to keep popular cold and diet remedies on store shelves after their own study linked them to strokes.
By Kevin Sack and Alicia Mundy

March 28, 2004

Tracy Patton had just arrived at a community theater rehearsal in August 2000 when she felt such a searing explosion in the back of her head that it knocked her to her knees.

At the hospital in Louisville, Ky., doctors said Patton, then 37, had suffered a catastrophic stroke, and they predicted she wouldn't survive the night.

Patton defied the odds. But nearly four years later, she is so overwhelmed by simple tasks that she must post a "personal hygiene checklist" in her bathroom to remind herself to brush her teeth and flush the toilet.

At 15, Tricia Newenham was full of promise when she suffered her stroke in October 2000 while hanging out in her bedroom with a cousin. A Down East Mainer from a family of woodsmen and lobstermen, she had been named her middle school's student of the year and was on track to become the first Newenham to attend college.

She spent a month in a coma, and emerged totally blind and profoundly mentally impaired. When reminiscing about her former self, about her prom dates and nights at the movies, she dissolves into inconsolable sobbing, condemned to remember just enough of what her life was like then to understand how much less it is now.

Only hours before these devastating strokes, each victim had washed down a seemingly innocuous over-the-counter cold medicine, one of billions of doses consumed annually nationwide. The medicines contained phenylpropanolamine, or PPA, the active ingredient in scores of popular nonprescription decongestants and diet aids until November 2000, when the Food and Drug Administration declared PPA unsafe and asked drug companies to stop selling it.

By then, the drug industry had spent more than two decades fending off growing evidence of a possible link between PPA and hemorrhagic stroke. But Patton and Newenham were among hundreds of PPA consumers who suffered attacks after a landmark study -- sponsored by the drug industry itself -- concluded in October 1999 that the use of PPA was associated with an increased risk of that deadliest form of stroke.

Recently obtained internal company documents show that rather than alerting the public during cold season, drug makers launched a yearlong campaign to keep the results quiet and stall government regulation. By the time the FDA acted, 13 months and hundreds of strokes later, the companies had reformulated their brand names with little interruption in sales. The market for PPA has been estimated at $500 million to $1 billion annually.

In the interim, Americans continued to purchase PPA products right off the shelf and assume they were safe.

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To Raise Taxes, Some Pin Hopes on State Ballot Box
Stymied by lawmakers, activists backing more funding for health and schools push initiatives.
By Evan Halper
Times Staff Writer

March 29, 2004

SACRAMENTO — Frustrated by state lawmakers who refuse to consider new taxes, advocates for spending more money on education and healthcare are taking a cue from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by appealing directly to California voters.

Dismissing concerns that it might be bad policy to budget at the ballot box, activists are promoting at least three proposed tax increases that appear headed for the electorate:
• A tax on millionaires to pay for expanded mental health services.
• A hike in corporate property taxes to hire more teachers, pay them more and establish universal free preschool.
• A surcharge on telephone bills to support emergency room services.
"Voters are smart enough to do the math and recognize if an extra dollar or two on their phone bills can keep emergency rooms open, it's probably a good value," said Kelly Hayes-Raitt, spokeswoman for the Coalition to Preserve Emergency Care.

But it's not just people outside state government who are behind this approach. Some key Democrats in the Assembly and the Senate — including members of budget committees — support the measures.

"It's not the perfect way to do this," said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), a leader of the mental health campaign. "But for all the talk there has been in the Legislature over the last few years about trying to raise taxes, it hasn't exactly happened."

Education boosters say it's a matter of priorities. With every budget item under scrutiny this year, schools need a boost, said supporters of the corporate property tax increase.

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Revolution From Below
Monday, March 29, 2004; Page A22

THE BEAUTY OF federalism is that when national politicians fail to resolve a problem, local politicians get a chance. That is happening in phase two of the drug wars -- the battle to force down the price of some prescription drugs. Methods proposed in the first, national phase -- importing drugs from Canada or introducing federal purchasing for Medicare -- have been problematic, and they have not won approval from Congress. Now the battle has moved to the state and local level. In Wisconsin, government Web sites direct residents to Canadian drug exporters; in Maine, courts and legislators are arguing over a bill designed to force prices down.

Unexpectedly, the D.C. Council joined the revolution when it passed, on March 2, the AccessRx Act, one of the first bills to combine several methods of cost cutting used elsewhere. If signed by the mayor, the new law, written by council members David A. Catania (R-At Large) and Sandy Allen (D-Ward 8) would use "manufacturer rebates, pharmacy discounts and aggregate purchasing" (and, possibly, Canadian purchasing) to bring down the prices of drugs bought for publicly funded pharmaceutical programs such as Medicaid and the D.C. Health Care Alliance. In effect, any savings would subsidize drug purchases for the low-income elderly and the uninsured. As in Maine, the products of drug companies that refuse to participate could be excluded from the list of drugs available to those using publicly funded health plans.

There is more: The law also would require pharmacy benefits managers -- those who buy drugs from manufacturers and sell them to insurance companies -- to make their relationships with both buyers and sellers more transparent. Mr. Catania points out that a series of lawsuits against these intermediaries, four of whom control the vast majority of the market, have recently alleged that they pocket rebates, inflate drug prices and pay kickbacks to insurers. In addition, the law would require drug companies to provide "full disclosure of prescription drug marketing costs," including advertising to the public, to doctors and to others.

The drug industry is shrugging this last point off on the grounds that similar requirements have been passed and complied with elsewhere. But industry representatives are worried that they will be forced to sell their drugs for less or risk having them taken off lists recommended to doctors. Pointing out that implementation of AccessRx will be delayed by bureaucracy and lawsuits, the industry's trade association proposes instead to set up a special D.C. Web site and a toll-free number to promote the more than 250 discounts drug companies already offer to lower-income patients and to help explain the new Medicare benefits.

This proves how important such local legislation can be, even if it is never implemented. Drug industry spokesmen admit that they wouldn't be making their offer of help if not for the D.C. Council's law. If AccessRx also manages to draw public and insurance industry attention to the shadier practices of pharmaceutical benefit managers and industry advertisers, that's positive too.

Still, the industry's offer needs to be taken with a grain of salt: Some of the complicating lawsuits, after all, would most likely be filed by the same drug companies that say they are so worried about them. And in the end the District government does have the right to make some decisions about drug provision based on price. That principle is essentially what lies behind all the talk of "rebates" and "discounts" in this law. The drug industry would be wise not to challenge it too vigorously.

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California was the test case, folks.

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Grocery Workers Try to Keep the Good Life
Middle Class Could Be Out of Reach Under New Safeway, Giant Contract
By Michael Barbaro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 29, 2004; Page A01

Six months after graduating from the District's Mackin High School in 1969, Glennis T. Mitchiner took a part-time job at a Safeway store in Northwest, bagging groceries to help pay his college bills.

Mitchiner realized that his full-time colleagues at Safeway were earning as much as many of the graduates at his college. So he quit school to work full time at Safeway, a job that provided the middle-class life a college degree had promised. He and his wife, who works at a Virginia computer software company, each earn about $45,000 a year, own a two-bedroom house, two Toyota sedans and send their daughter to a $3,000-a-year parochial school.

"I realized it from the get-go," Mitchiner said of his job. "This was a good deal."

But what Mitchiner, now 53 and a cashier, views as a good deal, Safeway and unionized grocery stores across the country regard as a financial burden. Tomorrow, 18,000 Washington area workers at Safeway and Giant Food are to vote on a new jointly negotiated four-year contract that is expected to call for lower wages for new workers and reductions in health benefits, which the companies say they need to remain competitive with nonunion retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. If it is rejected, employees may vote to strike, disrupting business at 350 Giant and Safeway stores in the Washington area.

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Not.

The fact that this thing was just added to Downloads.com today and there have been over 900 downloads of it already dims my hopes that humanity has the native intelligence to survive.

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Ultra Spiritual Protection 1.0 new

An advanced radionics and electronic magic program that protects you against black magic, sorcery, sortilegies, and psychic attacks. Based in powerful rituals of ceremonial magic and the properties of Sun divinities, and taking profit of the occult power of the computers. It comes with two modes: normal protection mode and extreme protection mode. Make your computer protect you now while you are making your normal life. Are you in a period of bad luck, in a short time a lot of illnesses have taken you or your family, things go wrong suddenly? Do you suspect some person is making black magic over you or your family? Well, probably you are being attacked magickly or psychicly; Ultra Spiritual Protection is the solution to your problem. It will give you full spiritual protection and with the continued use of the program, a psychic wall of unpenetrability will be built around you.

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In Setback for Chirac, French Veer Left in Regional Vote
By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: March 29, 2004

While many French voters support Mr. Chirac's foreign policies…the unpopularity of Mr. Chirac's domestic economic program has become a dominant issue here and was the major theme in the elections, which were effectively a midterm referendum on his administration.

Teachers, hospital workers, scientists and firefighters have all taken to the streets in recent months to protest changes that are meant to make the French work harder and get less in retirement.

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You have noooooooo idea how tempted I am to get this book. Only the first book in the series tempted me as much.

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In 12th Book of Best-Selling Series, Jesus Returns
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Like Christian booksellers across the country, Bob Fillingane is doing everything he can to prepare the way for "Glorious Appearing," the climactic installment in the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic thrillers that goes on sale tomorrow.

Mr. Fillingane, owner of Lemstone Books in Hattiesburg, Miss., has arranged television, radio and newspaper advertisements and even a marquee over the front of his local mall, and next week he will hold a book signing by the authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, on a Bible Belt bus tour from Spartanburg, S.C., to Plano, Tex.

Not that "Glorious Appearing" needs his help, Mr. Fillingane said.

"I really believe that there is a blessing on this series from the Lord," he said. "Just like with the 'Passion' movie, it is all part of the warning we get before Christ returns." He added, "Many people have asked me, Do you think they will finish the series before Christ comes?"

Over the last nine years, the "Left Behind" series, which is based on Dr. LaHaye's literal, bloody interpretation of the Book of Revelation, has become one of the biggest surprise hits in American popular culture. The first 11 novels have sold more than 40 million copies. The authors have unseated John Grisham as the best-selling novelists for adults and, in some places where evangelical Christians are common, the books rival the Harry Potter series in sales. Along the way, the "Left Behind" books have drawn sharp criticism for elements like their emphasis on the conversion of Jews and their focus on the brutal rule of the Antichrist, who happens to head the United Nations.

"Glorious Appearing" is the most anticipated and potentially most controversial "Left Behind" novel yet: it is the installment in which Jesus himself finally returns.

"There is not going to be anything bigger than that," said Chuck Wallington, president of the Christian Supply store in Spartanburg. He said he expected 1,000 buyers to turn up tomorrow for a book signing.

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The Christian Taliban (28 Mar 04)
STEPHEN PIZZO
AlterNet

During the Taliban rule of Afghanistan the world got a good look at what happens when religious zealots gain control of a government. Television images of women being beaten forced to wear burkas and banned from schools and the workplace helped build strong public support for the President's decision to invade Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.

But even as President George W. Bush denounced the brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul, he was quietly laying the foundations for his own fundamentalist regime at home.

For the first time far right Christian fundamentalists had one of their own in the White House and the opportunity to begin rolling back decades of health and family planning programs they saw as un-Christian, if not downright sinful.

Since 2001 dozens of far-right Christian fundamentalists have been quietly installed in key positions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration and on commissions and advisory committees where they have made serious progress. Three years later this administration has established one of the most rigid sexual health agendas in the Western world.

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CARICOM Rejects Interim Haitian Government
Mar 28, 2004

The interim President of Haiti, Boniface Alexandre, left and the new Prime Minister of Haiti, Gerard Latortue

Leaders of the 15-nation Caribbean Community have rejected Haiti's interim government.

CARICOM made the move Saturday in response to interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's reference last week to Haitian rebels as "freedom fighters." The organization said "no action should be taken to legitimize the rebel forces."

Caricom also repeated calls for a U.N. investigation into the departure of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Last week, Mr. Latortue suspended Haiti's participation in CARICOM and recalled Haiti's ambassador to Jamaica to protest Mr. Aristide's arrival in Jamaica.

Nearly a month ago, Mr. Aristide resigned and flew to the Central African Republic, where he stayed in temporary exile until heading to Jamaica. He says the United States removed him from power in what amounted to a coup d'etat. The United States has strongly denied the charges.

Meanwhile, Haitian police collected a handful of weapons from Aristide loyalists in Port-au-Prince's Saline neighborhood Saturday. Only a few dozen weapons have been turned in by Aristide supporters and opponents, despite urgings from a multinational force sent to keep the peace.

On Friday, Haiti's justice minister said he would bar 37 members of Mr. Aristide's former government from leaving the country to ensure they are available for probes into alleged crimes committed by the government. Among the officials barred from leaving Haiti are former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, ex-Police Chief Jocelyn Pierre, and former Central Bank head Venel Joseph.

Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.

Copyright 2004 - The Epoch Times

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Simputer for poor goes on sale

A cheap handheld computer designed by Indian scientists has been launched after a delay of nearly three years.

The team first came up with the idea for the Simputer in 2001 to help India's poor join the internet age.

But development of the computer was hampered by lack of investment and by little interest in the idea from computer manufacturers.

The Simputer was officially launched on Friday and the basic model costs around $240.

Cheap and accessible

The Simputer is the first computer to be designed and manufactured in India.

It was developed by scientists and engineers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore who were looking for a way of taking the internet revolution to India's rural masses.

Only nine in every 1,000 Indians own a computer, mainly because the machines are simply too expensive. The Simputer was designed to provide cheap and accessible computing on the go.
But it had a troubled time moving out of the development labs and into commercial production.

In the end, the government-owned Bharat Electronics agreed to manufacture the handheld.

The device goes on sale in April and the backers of the project hope to sell 50,000 in the first year.

Branded as the Amida Simputer, the handheld comes in three versions. The basic model has a monochrome screen, a 206Mhz processor and 64MB of memory. It also has an internal microphone, speakers and a battery that lasts for six hours

People can use the Simputer to surf the net, send e-mails or organise their finances, using a stylus to write on screen. It also comes with software to let users type notes and letters in Hindi and Kannada.

In order to keep costs down, the computer uses the Linux operating system.

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African award for Michael Jackson

Troubled pop star Michael Jackson is expected to travel to Washington on Thursday to receive an award for his humanitarian work in Africa.

The singer, who is facing trial in the US over allegations of child abuse, is being honoured by the African Ambassadors' Spouses Association.

Jackson's donations to Africa have helped build hospitals and schools and develop child immunisation programmes.

The 45-year-old is currently on $3m (£1.6m) bail. He denies all charges.

Jackson's humanitarian efforts include the foundation of two charities, Heal The World in 1992 and Heal The Kids in 2000.

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Are we seeing a pattern?

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DR Congo alert after 'coup bid'

DR Congo security forces remain on high alert after gunmen attacked military bases in the capital, Kinshasa, on Sunday morning.

A government spokesman told AFP news agency that the attacks were an attempt to destabilise the country.

But he said it was "too early to say" whether it was an attempted coup.

The authorities have arrested at least 15 suspected attackers - said to be members of the former guard of the country's late ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko.

Some 18 others are believed to be still on the run.

A special cabinet meeting has been called to discuss the attacks, in which two government soldiers were killed and several injured.

The country's president, Joseph Kabila, called for vigilance and said the armed forces had received "precise instructions" to protect the population.

On national television late on Sunday, Mr Kabila appealed for calm and asked Congolese to "go about their daily business" and said he would appreciate the support of the population in finding hidden weapons stashes in Kinshasa.

Accusations and denials

One officer said some of the assailants came overnight from Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Congo Republic across the Congo river.

More than 3,000 members of the former guard are currently housed in Brazzaville.
The authorities have since closed the border, but have not made official accusations.

The information minister of the Congo Republic, Alain Akouala, flatly denied that any of the attackers came from his country.

"Our country has nothing to do with what just happened in Kinshasa," he said.

He added that Congo-Brazzaville had bolstered security along the river to prevent the attackers from trying to cross the border.

Challenges ahead

DR Congo - formerly known as Zaire - is emerging from five years of war in which it is thought more than three million people died.

President Joseph Kabila heads a power-sharing government under peace deals that ended the fighting in December 2002.

The transitional government is supposed to make way for a democratically elected government to be chosen in June 2005.

The BBC's Arnaud Zajtman in Kinshasa says this is the first time since beginning of the war that fighting has broken out in the heart of the capital.

The power-sharing government now has more challenges ahead, he says.

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March 28, 2004

I decided to catch the end of that thread at Brad DeLong's where everyone disagreed with him (not gonna relink, it's three posts down). Well, some folks showed up to argue the other side. Among them was Abiola Laponte, a Conservative Black man. He was here briefly, taking exception to my posts about Haiti.

Abiola went for the mathematical explanation as I did, with a little condescension added, but hey that's the Internet…one tends to get as good as they give, you know? And I personally would have explained why the mathematical view holds little sway with your typical mortal that has to pay rent.

But some asshole had to go call him "nigger."

Glenn once had a epiphany (sorry, dawg, I ain't looking up the specific post) wherein he realized that the word "nigger," translated from Redneck to English, means "Get back in your place."

The place of an intelligent Black man people speaking his their mind is WHEREVER THE FUCK THEY WANT IT TO BE.

I don't care if he was arguing a view similar to mine. If it were on the block, I'd hold him while Abiola smacked him. Then we'd go have coffee or a beer.

And I'd explain to him where he's wrong.

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Thank you, Professor Kim (who, by the way, does a lot more quality writing than humor referral)

"USA Today Scandal A Threat To White Privilege, Mediocrity"

My Caucasians, oh my Caucasians, what doth the future hold?

A pasty white, middle-class, middle-aged brother has been exposed by USA Today as a monumental fabricator and plagiarist, making the work of Jayson Blair look like a Sunday School picnic. The malpractice of foreign correspondent Jack Kelley, which he denies before a mountain of damning evidence, threatens to focus suspicion on the work of white, middle-aged journalists everywhere.

For decades, we white journalists have rolled the rock up the mountain of Caucasian privilege. You know, my white brothers, of what I speak: the privilege to sit in the newsroom on our scrawny white asses, avoid eye contact with our editors, promise to "get to that assignment" when we have a chance, and (these days) slip out for a venti double mocha nonfat latte -- in short, the privilege to sidestep any challenge to our deeply ingrained right to mediocrity. No, we shall not be moved. 'Cause we own the place.

Until now, that is.

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Then Cobb posts a cartoon.

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I have just witnessed the first thread at Brad Delong's joint in which he got not a single agreement in the comments.

Not. One.

What I think he meant was, if wages change and the GNP (and by extension all economic factors except wages) remains the same, then total wages has also remained the same, so mathematical necessity means wage change on the high salary range was offset by wage changes on the low end of the scale. What he said was:

But--holding real GDP constant--a decline in the wages of high-skill workers is a rise in the wages of low-skill workers (and a rise in profits). Isn't there a chance that the yuppies facing competition from Bangalore will be a highly positive development, pushing U.S. wage levels together and raising the real wages of those at the bottom?

…and the crowd said, "Yes. A snowball's chance in…"

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In the end, Colin Powell's public career will survive this debacle. I'm not sure about Condoleeza Rice, but I lean toward expecting her to fade out of the limelight entirely when the Bushista are forced to bail.

General Powell will be able to do the good soldier thing. Black folks will remember he spoke in favor of the idea of affirmative action programs. They'll remember he was The Good Soldier that had to get pulled in line periodically; he followed marching orders precisely but tended to wander out of line when left on his own. Clarke's defense against charges of disloyalty to Bush will be used in Powell's defense against charges of disloyalty to Black folks (charges that are already being made in some circles):

• It's not a lie, it's politics
• When you work for the president and he orders you to emphasize the positive, you do it

And in the end Black folks will accept him back into the fold, because we always do. We're suckers like that. That is the crucial point because I have NO doubt Colin Powell is a Republican and he will always be seen by the party as a possible means to access the Black vote, fools that they are.

Dr. Rice, on the other hand, was practically forced to admit the campus she was provost of had affirmative action programs, and that (though she felt there were "better" ways of attaining diversity than attending to the very things that define diversity) if there were no other way after trying every other way she might consider a tailored, tightly focused experimental program that took race into account as one of many factors. Her relentless, unflagging loyalty to the Bushista regime and the letter of the Republican platform has convinced people her concern for Black folks is about on a par with other loyal Republicans'. And a LOT of people…self primary among them…were offended by her equating the Iraq invasion with the civil rights movement. That was the gesture by which she put herself in the "tool used to manipulate Black folks" box and nailed down the lid.

Said box is the coffin in which her public career will be buried, because if she can't gin up the Black vote for them (not that anyone can), no future administration will have any use for her. These statements by Richard Clarke are just the handles by which the pallbearers will carry her out.

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Uppity-Negro.com is now A Maitreya Buddha Fansite.

This is inappropriate.

Maitreya, being Unborn, is not yet Buddha except in the sense that we all are, in which case you're your own fan and it's rude to brag like that. Then again, he is Uppity and all…

(I need to find something to pick on Jason about. It'll be hard because he's not posting as much as he did when he was on hiatus…)

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Army Spouses Expect Reenlistment Problems

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page A01

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- Patty B. Morgan's husband was fighting in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, and she was caring for two children by herself. Their lease was expiring and they had committed to buying a house across town, so she was going through with the move anyway.

One hot morning last July, as she was about to drive boxes to the new place, she walked outside, infant car seat in hand, and opened the garage door -- to find that her green Jeep had been stolen.

A few days later, she was told that her husband wouldn't be home by Labor Day, as she had expected, but would serve in Iraq six months more, for a total of a year.

"It was a hell of a week," Morgan said in her throaty voice.

Morgan's experience is part of a significant change in Army life brought about by the post-9/11 world: The extended, or repeated, deployments that have characterized the Army since then have intensified the burdens traditionally borne by military families. And most of the spouses who have remained behind are wondering how long the Army can keep it up.

This change is reflected in a recent poll conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, and in dozens of supplemental interviews. The poll, the first nongovernmental survey of military spouses conducted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, included more than 1,000 spouses living on or near the 10 heaviest-deploying Army bases.

While most of them said they have coped well, three-quarters said they believe the Army is likely to encounter personnel problems as soldiers and their families tire of the pace and leave for civilian lives.

Lt. Gen. Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's personnel chief, said in an interview that, overall, The Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll results seemed to reflect those of the service's internal surveys.

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Bush's Efforts to Offset Clarke Stymied
Republicans Say Administration Struggling for Momentum After Ex-Aide's Assertions

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page A23

CRAWFORD, Tex., March 27 -- President Bush's intense efforts to neutralize the revelations of former national security official Richard A. Clarke have yet to succeed, leaving White House officials struggling to regain political momentum after a tumultuous week, according to interviews with Republicans both inside and outside the administration.

One Bush aide, who refused to be identified because the administration limits who may speak on the record[P6:Really? They do? Gee…I wonder why…], acknowledged that the White House had underestimated the political and media firestorm that Clarke would ignite. Beginning with interviews in connection with his new book and continuing with Capitol Hill testimony, Clarke said he had watched Bush repeatedly ignore warnings about al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001, then diverted resources from the broader war on terrorism for an attack on Iraq.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who rode in Bush's limousine during a presidential visit to Phoenix on Friday, said the Clarke counterattack was "the most vigorous offensive I've ever seen from the administration on any issue.

"These attacks go to the heart of the strength of the president, and they felt it had to be put down and put down quickly," McCain said. "Whether they'll succeed or not is unclear."

Bush officials said they had hoped to use his public events during these weeks to overhaul his economic message and raise public awareness about indications of a burgeoning recovery. Instead, the White House has been consumed by defending Bush's handling of the war on terrorism, the bedrock on which he planned to build his case for reelection.

Polling has shown that Clarke's assertions have resonated as more than mere Beltway sniping and that voters are beginning to question the president's handling of terrorism.

A Newsweek poll released Saturday found that public approval of Bush's handling of terrorism and homeland security had eroded, with his approval rating on those issues dropping to 57 percent from 65 percent just over a month ago. It was 70 percent two months ago. However, 65 percent said Clarke's testimony had not affected their opinion of Bush.

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Also in the Humor category, Richard Perle on Late Edition actually had the balls to say Clarke doesn't understand terrorism.

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Looking at the treatment Clarke has received, what tone do you think it has been changed to?

And they can't do it differently. If they try to address the substance of Clarke's statements they are doomed.

Judy Woodward just asked if the Lewinski scandal interfered with Clinton's ability to act more strongly against terrorism? Clarke said yes, it was a factor.

Frist is starting to look pretty bad too. he's claiming Clarke had no right to apologize for the nation…but Clarke apologized for himself.

And he just indicted the media for not covering the 40 (forty!) Clinton speeches mentioning terrorism or the five exclusively dedicated to terrorism! Proper!

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Woodward’s other two books, The Choice (1996) on the presidential election, and Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom (2000), were national bestsellers for months. His newest book, Plan of Attack, a follow-up to Bush at War, deals with the Iraq War and the ongoing war on terrorism.

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Jay Leno:

This week George Bush admitted he pre-war intelligence wasn't what it's supposed to be. But we knew that when we elected him!

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On Meet the Press, he was tremendous. If I was any more impressed I might turn gay.

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Quote of not:

"Let's be as generous as possible," said one Republican strategist, who said he did not want to be quoted by name in criticizing the White House. "If voters believe Clarke, than Bush's greatest strength — his response to terrorism — is significantly eroded. This Clarke stuff is significantly bad for Bush."

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9/11 Panel Provokes a Discussion the White House Hoped to Avoid
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, March 27 — In the summer of 2001, according to witnesses interviewed by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 hijackings, President Bush was told repeatedly of terror warnings pouring into American intelligence agencies, mostly about threats overseas.

The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who briefed Mr. Bush on threats almost daily, "was around town literally pounding on desks saying that something is happening, this is an unprecedented level of threat information," said Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, who was quoted in a Congressional report last year.

But even as the warnings spiked in June and July that year, there appeared to be little sense of alarm at the White House, officials of the Central Intelligence Agency told the commission. It was not until Sept. 4 that Mr. Bush's national security team approved a plan intended to eradicate Al Qaeda and not until Sept. 10 that Mr. Tenet was told to put the plan into effect.

Now, nearly two and half years later, the issue of whether Mr. Bush and his advisers failed to respond adequately to the threat of terror before Sept. 11, 2001, has become the focus of intense scrutiny and debate in Washington.

The White House had long hoped to avoid just such a discussion of Mr. Bush's actions before the hijackings, fearing it would draw attention to the first months of his presidency rather than the period after Sept. 11 when he took military action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The White House had opposed the creation of the independent commission and for many months cooperated reluctantly with the panel.

White House fears were realized this week when Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, depicted the first months of the Bush presidency as a time of indecision and inaction on terrorism. Many of the preliminary findings of the commission supported the picture Mr. Clarke outlined in his new book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," published by Free Press.

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Policy issues aside, the Bushistas made some serious blunders here, first of all by stonewalling the investigation and secondly by holding onto Clarke's book for three months. The combination indicates to me they knew Clarke would be trouble so they tried to hold the book off until the commission's time expired. The smart play would have been to get the inevitable investigation over with while your approval ratings were strong enough that challenging your spin would be difficult. And let's face it…American politics is the original Short Attention Span Theater. If all this had come out this time last year it would be over with already.

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Pay More Attention to the Economy
By BOB DOLE
John Kerry and the Democrats are going to have to convince voters that the economy is not doing as well as it is.
[P6: Bob, we figured that out already. Sheesh, no wonder you lost...]

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A Long, Long Muddle

George Bush's vision of the nation's future will undoubtedly be one focus of the presidential campaign. We suggest the debate start with the question of whether Mr. Bush actually has one.

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Quote of note:

Quite poetically, what Heye collected as artifacts of a fading culture are about to be displayed instead as evidence of tribal resilience across 10,000 years in the Western Hemisphere. There now are about two million Indians in the United States, an eightfold rebound from the low point of tribal decimation after the Indian wars.

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The American Tribes Prepare Their National Showcase
By FRANCIS X. CLINES

WASHINGTON

The word Potomac means "where the goods are brought in" and it dates from the local Indian tribe rudely displaced here centuries ago by colonial whites intent on a New World. The word seems perfect for the whiff of irony and history in the air this month as the last of 800,000 Indian artifacts — priceless goods, in fact — were trucked in from New York City to become the bedrock treasure of the new National Museum of the American Indian.

Even incomplete, the museum stands as a modernistic cynosure, defiantly staring down its immediate neighbor, the gleaming white Capitol, where so many treaty promises to American Indians were written and broken. The museum marks a grand turning point in that history, a sacred federal site ceded to Indian management and broadcasting a message of hardy survival, not tribal extinction, to throngs of tourists.

The museum — a 10-story, cantilevered edifice suggesting a mesa with a cascading brook, indigenous landscaping (from corn bed to marshland), and a cladding of desert-toned Kasota limestone — opens in September and is likely to be the last Smithsonian attraction built on the National Mall. It will offer a kaleidoscopic sampling of stories from hundreds of tribes that were consulted from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

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Mad cool.

Now where's my Slavery Museum?

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LATER: Deb at Debwire answers!

Right here and here, with more here.

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Plan to Battle AIDS Worldwide Is Falling Short
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Three years after the United Nations declared a worldwide offensive against AIDS and 14 months after President Bush promised $15 billion for AIDS treatment in poor countries, shortages of money and battles over patents have kept antiretroviral drugs from reaching more than 90 percent of the poor people who need them.

Progress in distributing the drugs, which have sharply cut the death rate in the United States and other Western countries, has been excruciatingly slow despite steep drops in their prices.

As a result, only about 300,000 people in the world's poorest nations are getting the drugs, of six million who need them, according to the World Health Organization.

Experts, advocacy groups and health officials agree that the delays, compounded by inadequate medical facilities and training in very poor countries, are likely to persist unless spending is stepped up sharply.

Early this month, Stephen Lewis, the special United Nations envoy for AIDS in Africa, conceded that the W.H.O.'s ambitious plan to have three million people in treatment by 2005 — announced on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day — was already collapsing from a lack of money. Donations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are now about $1.6 billion a year, barely 20 percent of what Secretary General Kofi Annan said was needed when he created the fund in 2001.

Saying that global contributions come to a tiny fraction of what is being spent on military operations and building civilian institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Lewis added that if the W.H.O. program failed, "there are no excuses left, no rationalizations to hide behind, no murky slanders to justify indifference — there will only be the mass graves of the betrayed."

While Mr. Bush promised in his 2003 State of the Union address to spend $15 billion over five years on AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, his budget requests have fallen far short of that goal. For the most recent donation to the Global Fund, he requested only $200 million, although Congress authorized $550 million.

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I'm reading the NY Times in my RSS reader and the following three unconnected headlines came up:

Official Is Said to Recommend Sharon Charge

Israel's state prosecutor will recommend that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted on charges of taking bribes from a real estate developer, Israeli media reported.

Democrats in the Senate Issue Threat to Block Court Nominees

The Democrats are retaliating against President Bush for installing two judges while Congress was on vacation.

North Korea Rejects U.S. Demand to Scrap Its Nuclear Programs

The rejection today raised doubts about whether the fitful negotiations are making even limited progress.

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…don't tell me about it. I will talk shit about you, ruin your good name and make you the focus of one post a day for a solid week.

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More than that, the reason I don't understand why the Republican Party seems to think they can attract Black voters without a change in their platform as significant as their change from "The Party of Lincoln" to "The Party of the Southern Startegy."

Ezra at Pandagon

Just to riff off of Jesse's post noting Novak's accusation that Clarke is a racist, the GOP just doesn't get it. They don't get to use civil rights against us. I know they figure that it should be a transferrable issue and they should get to play the race card, but they're just wrong. They try it every so often and not only doesn't it work, it just makes them look whiny.

or, more precisely:

For many conservatives, the riddle's answer is obvious: Black politicians are out of touch. But, if black politicians were really so dismissive of the views of their constituents, they'd no longer be in office. For decades now, conservatives have touted polls showing that African-Americans hold conservative views on gay rights, abortion, the death penalty and school vouchers. And yet I can't think of a single election in which any of those issues has hurt a liberal black politician among black voters.

To suggest that black politicians don't represent their constituents because blacks tell pollsters they dislike gay marriage is like saying Republicans don't represent their constituents because many GOP voters say they prefer education spending to cutting taxes. If politicians keep behaving a certain way, and getting elected, it's a good bet they are getting signals from their constituents that the polls aren't picking up.

One thing the polls don't pick up is black suspicion of the Republican Party. When pollsters ask blacks about gay marriage, they're asking in a relative vacuum. But, when the issue is raised in a state legislature or in a political campaign, its partisan implications are glaringly obvious. And the very fact that the GOP is leading the anti-gay-marriage movement de-legitimizes the issue for black politicians and black voters.

As State Rep. Tyrone Brooks, head of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, explained to The New York Times, "This is not about your personal beliefs. It's about a political ballgame the Republicans kicked off." The Reverend Walter Fauntroy, a black former delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia, actually supports a federal anti-gay-marriage amendment. Yet, when he went on National Public Radio this February to debate the issue, he prefaced his comments by announcing, "I'm annoyed to have to discuss this issue in an election year, because it's yet another sideshow being used by radical right-wing fiscal and social conservatives to divert attention from the critical issues."

In other words, Republicans hope gay marriage will change blacks' views of the GOP. But those views are so negative that the reverse happens - African-Americans transfer their hostility to the GOP to whatever issue the GOP happens to be supporting. This dynamic isn't confined to gay marriage. Polling shows that many blacks support school vouchers. And yet in 2002, when black Democrat Cory Booker ran for mayor of Newark, incumbent Sharpe James cited his flirtation with vouchers as evidence that he was a closet Republican. Which is one reason Booker overwhelmingly lost the city's black vote.

In fact, in my particular case the Republican Party has convince me that any gesture they claim to be making toward minorities is actually a gesture toward moderate white folks.

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This is a link from Negrophile that I didn't actually follow to the original article.

The day he moved into his residence hall as a freshman, Christopher Loving heard the whispers.

"There's a black guy on the floor," his hall-mates kept saying. "Somebody go talk to him."

Now, the fact that these folks felt like someone should talk to the brother is either good news (they felt they should welcome the guy who is obviously alone) or bad news (the wanted to feel him out to see how much of a threat he'd be). I lean toward it being good news.

But damn. There's a lot that this brings to mind, but right now all I can say is, just damn.

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No, no, no, Oliver. Black English Month is June. You're WAY early.

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