July 17, 2004

Fred Clark at Slacktivist has a very nicely done post titled The Abominable Shellfish - Why some Christians hate gays but love bacon that points out it's a shallow interpretation of the New Testament that has folks "abominating" gay people.

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I went to take Slate Magazine's Red/Blue Test.

About half way through the questions I realized I didn't care enough about the answer to finish the questions.

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Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises
By EDUARDO PORTER

The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.

"There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is still back at the same level as at the end of the recession in November 2001.

Even though the economy has been adding hundreds of thousands of jobs almost every month this year, stagnant wages could put a dent in the prospects for economic growth, some economists say. If incomes continue to lag behind the increase in prices, it may hinder the ability of ordinary workers to spend money at a healthy clip, undermining one of the pillars of the expansion so far.

…On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers - nonmanagement workers ranging from nurses and teachers to hamburger flippers and assembly-line workers - fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest decline since the depths of recession in mid-1991, came after a 0.8 percent fall in real hourly earnings in May.

Coming on top of a 12-minute drop in the average workweek, the decline in the hourly rate last month cut deeply into workers’ pay. In June, production workers took home $525.84 a week, on average. After accounting for inflation, this is about $8 less than they were pocketing last January. And it is the lowest level of weekly pay since October 2001.

On its own, the decline in workers’ wages is unlikely to derail the recovery. Though they account for some 80 percent of the work force, they contribute much less to spending. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a research firm, noted that households in the bottom half of the income distribution account only one-third of consumer spending, while those in the top half account for two-thirds.

Nonetheless, coming after the bonanza of the second half of the 1990’s, the first period of sustained real wage growth since the 1970’s, the current slide in earnings is a big blow for the lower middle class. Moreover, the absence of lower income households could also weigh on overall economic growth ­ putting a lid on the mass market and skewing consumption toward high-end products.

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Iraq Amnesty Excludes Killers of Americans - Envoy
Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:15 AM ET

By Dean Yates
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A planned amnesty for Iraqi insurgents will not include those who have killed Americans, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad said on Saturday.

"I'm not aware of any provision in the draft for amnesty for those who might have killed Americans," John Negroponte told a group of foreign reporters at a lunch.

"My understanding is that there may have been at one point some language that was ambiguous and lent itself to the interpretation that somehow amnesty would be granted to people who had sought to harm coalition forces. My understanding is that ambiguity is no longer in the draft."

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Quote of note:

These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?

The obvious answer, sadly, is yes.

In fact, they're looking forward to it.

Jesus and Jihad
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

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Quote of note:

The city was also a center for mixed-race people, thanks to generations of encounters between Charleston's white elite and the legions of slaves who were needed to sustain the opulent Charlestonian lifestyle. (The historian Joel Williamson wrote that the city was "half white and half Negro, and its Negro half was more white than black.") Charleston's wealthy free people of color were often eager slave owners, and many of them shared with whites a derisive attitude toward the darker black masses.

…This reality of a socially complex, mixed-race South — with whites and blacks closely related by blood and mutually complicit in slavery — disappeared from public view as the country adopted simplistic formulations of the racial past.

The mutual complicity is limited: slave owners were a low percentage of the white community and a vanishingly small fraction of the Black community. And simplistic formulations are necessary for rhetorical purposes…clear thought is the greatest enemy of any party position.

But let's sum up a bit. Who established the racial rhetoric in this country? Who is really in denial about the total absence of the "racial purity" neo-Confederates and their ilk defend?

Wasn't me…

Anyway…

Strom Thurmond Continued: The Known World of Ms. Washington-Williams
By BRENT STAPLES

If newspapers reach the afterlife, then Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina is having a fitful time in that great Senate chamber in the sky. Mr. Thurmond, who died last year at the age of 100, spent half of the 20th century fending off the rumor that he had fathered a child of Carrie Butler, a black maid who worked in his family's home during the 1920's. He had been dead less than a year when Ms. Butler's daughter, a retired teacher named Essie Mae Washington-Williams, came forward to claim him as her father, explaining that he had met secretly with her for decades while denying her existence in public.

As a young woman, Ms. Washington-Williams calculated that having a fraction of a father glimpsed in back rooms was preferable to having no father at all. But since his death, she has laid claim to the Thurmond legacy in a very public way, not least of all by having her name inscribed alongside the names of the senator's other children on the Thurmond memorial outside the South Carolina Statehouse. Along the way, she has consciously transformed her family's story into a penetrating lesson on the history of race in the early South.

White patriarchs who trafficked in racism by day and sired black children at night are an archetype in the history of the South, where white and black families have always been more closely related by blood than many whites cared to admit. The final public outing of Mr. Thurmond was viewed with amusement in black communities across the country.

But amusement turned to perplexity recently when Ms. Washington-Williams announced that she would embrace her white heritage by applying for membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a historically white group founded in the 19th century to memorialize Southern valor in the war to preserve slavery.

Ms. Washington-Williams said through her lawyer that she was not condoning slavery but was exploring her heritage in a way that she hoped would produce a richer dialogue about race. As a former teacher, she clearly recognizes the instructional value of her family's story. By showing that families who appear to be white at one time can appear to be black at another, she is underscoring the fact that race is a more elastic concept than most contemporary Americans understand.

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Quote of note:

"Parental choice in the abstract sounds great, but in the practical application if your child ends up in a school that is now grossly overcrowded, that's not so great for the child either," said Assemblyman Steven Sanders, a Manhattan Democrat who is chairman of the Education Committee.

Oh, hell, here's another. I'm feeling generous.

That list classified as failing 43 additional schools that receive federal poverty money and therefore fall under the transfer provision of the law. The list brought the total number of failing schools in the city to 497, or more than 40 percent. Because the federal government judges schools not only on how they fare overall but also on the performance of different segments of the school population, the list of failing schools includes schools with good reputations.

New York City Will Limit Chance to Leave Failing Schools
By ELISSA GOOTMAN

New York City, which last year allowed every child who wished to transfer out of a failing school to do so, will drastically reduce the number of students allowed to move this year, education officials said yesterday.

The decision comes after a year in which some principals complained that an influx of students transferring under a new federal law, No Child Left Behind, had overcrowded and undermined the city's more successful schools and run up millions of dollars in busing and other expenses.

Last year, city officials said, more than 7,000 students transferred to better schools. Next year, however, the city will probably allow fewer than 1,000 transfers, with priority going to poor children with low test scores.

The schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, said in a statement yesterday that "this year's plan to implement the transfer provisions of No Child Left Behind will provide increased educational opportunities for students in struggling schools, while ensuring that the transfer process does not destabilize other schools within the system.''

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China's Growth Rate Cools, Stirring Hopes of Soft Landing
By REUTERS

BEIJING, July 16 (Reuters) - China's economy grew at a 9.6 percent pace in the April through June period, a weaker pace than expected, data showed Friday, suggesting that Beijing may be achieving a soft landing for the economy.

The number was a slackening from the 9.8 percent pace in the first quarter of the year. It was also below the 10.7 percent median expectation of eight economists. Relatively strong year-on- year growth had been expected, partly as a result of a rebound after the respiratory illness SARS curbed the economy last year.

Several economists said the new figures indicated that the worryingly fast growth of earlier quarters would gradually ease to sustainable rates without a destructive drop.

John Cairns, an analyst with IDEAglobal in Singapore, said, "It's been a very positive slowdown: not too aggressive and not too little." China's economy has grown at a torrid pace in the last decade as it evolves toward a version of market capitalism. [P6: emphasis added]

The nation's leaders have tried to cool such unsustainable growth without raising interest rates. Higher rates would make it harder for ailing state enterprises to repay their large debts.

Instead, China has turned to administrative measures like increasing bank reserve requirements and limiting investment in red-hot sectors like property and automobiles.

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U.N. Report Denounces Rwanda
Support for Congo Rebels Is Called Violation of Sanctions

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 17, 2004; Page A16

UNITED NATIONS, July 16 -- The Rwandan military is backing a rebel group that has battled Congolese forces and U.N. peacekeepers in eastern Congo, a flagrant violation of U.N. sanctions and the terms of a fragile peace accord, an unpublished U.N. report says.

The 49-page report, which was prepared by a panel of four U.N. sanctions experts, also charges that Rwandan troops forcibly entered a U.N.-controlled refugee camp in Cyangugu, Rwanda, rounded up 30 young men and pressed them to join the Congolese rebels. They were released after officials from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees protested, according to the report, scheduled for release on Tuesday.

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…to Warp Resident.

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Bush Speech on Human Trafficking Targets Castro
Remarks at Official Event Are Tailored for Cuban Exiles in Florida and Religious Conservatives
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 17, 2004; Page A02

TAMPA, July 16 -- President Bush on Friday furthered his effort to raise the importance of cultural issues in the campaign, tailoring a speech here on sex trafficking to appeal to Florida's Cuban exiles and to religious conservatives.

Bush's speech was officially a nonpolitical appearance at a Justice Department conference on trafficking in forced labor[P6: Yeah, right.]. But he cast his message in religious and moral terms and added an extended criticism of Fidel Castro -- appealing to two important constituencies in this fiercely contested state.

…Bush has been working to elevate social issues in the presidential race, focusing attention on a more hospitable subject than the economy and the Iraq war, two favorite themes of Democratic opponent John F. Kerry. Bush's Saturday radio address, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, will feature "a changing-the-culture message that really focuses on strengthening families." The Bush campaign launched television ads emphasizing his antiabortion message on Thursday, a day after Bush's push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage failed in the Senate.

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Pay for It

WHEN CONGRESS passed a $350 billion tax bill last year, lawmakers managed to cram the measure into that preset spending ceiling by scheduling the most popular tax breaks to expire at the end of this year. That gimmick made the cost of the 10-year bill look lower, though no one believed that the cuts would be allowed to evaporate. And, of course, they won't. The House has already approved extensions, and the Senate is expected to take up the issue next week.

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July 16, 2004

Nevada First to Use Electronic Voting with Printers
Fri Jul 16, 2004 02:37 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nevada on Friday said it would be the first U.S. state to use voting machines that will leave a paper trail, the first large-scale response to concerns that a paperless system could lead to ballot fraud.
Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller said he hoped his state would set an example by using touch-screen voting machines equipped with printers and avoid a repeat of the 2000 presidential election debacle.

The disputed 2000 election led many states to move from punch cards to electronic voting systems. But computer experts have warned that some of the systems are vulnerable to hacking, fraud and malfunctions.

President Bush won the White House over Democrat Al Gore after weeks of post-election court battles over whether votes were uncounted because of "hanging chads" and holes that were pushed but not punched.

Heller said he had decertified punch-card voting machines in Nevada in favor of touch-screen machines. He said a paper receipt also adds to voter confidence.

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Bush Legacy Hinges on Success in Iraq - Powell
Fri Jul 16, 2004 06:56 PM ET
By Saul Hudson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's legacy hangs on overcoming the insurgency in Iraq and creating a democracy there, his top foreign policy adviser said on Friday.

Bush, who is campaigning for reelection as a resolute war president, has fallen in the polls largely due to rising casualties and mounting evidence that Iraq was not a military threat before the first preemptive U.S. war.

"I think the president's reputation certainly rides on this, as does mine, as do all of my colleagues here in government," Secretary of State Colin Powell said. "Iraq is top dead center in terms of our legacy."

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Professor Kim hooked me into the audio of an interview with Norman Kelley about his new book: The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics.

How good is the interview? I'm doing the tabbed browsing thing and half way through the long interview and closed the window by accident. I will listen to the whole interview again, and this is my last post of the evening, just to make sure I don't screw up again.

He busts EVERYbody. I think my favorite statement is about how the Black intellectual class developed over the last forty years are performers, and (paraphrase) the most useless set of negros the Black community has ever produced. And don't get happy because he's including Steele, Williams and crew in the mix with Sharpton and Jackson.

He says progressive Black politics has collapsed. He's right.

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via Ezra at Pandagon
Bush Refines His Position on a Measure Banning Gay Marriage
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

…By hedging his position, if only a bit, Mr. Bush may have insulated himself somewhat from the sting of the defeat the proposed amendment suffered in the Senate on Wednesday. But the way in which the proposal went down with a whimper - short of a simple majority, much less the two-thirds of the Senate needed for approval - raised questions about whether the White House had fundamentally misjudged the nation's attitude on the issue. And the vote left even some of Mr. Bush's own advisers wondering if his backing of the amendment did not hurt him politically more than it helped by further stoking opposition to him from the left.

"It's a net loss for Republicans politically," said one prominent Republican in Washington who works closely with the White House. "It does nothing for our base, because they're grumpy about not having it, and it energized a significant portion of their base. I guarantee you that the gay community will give twice as much money and work harder for Kerry now, not so much because they care about marriage per se, but because this effort plays to their fears that we're homophobic."

While polling has generally found that most Americans are opposed to gay marriage, it has also shown that few people see the issue, or the proposal for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being only between a man and a woman, as being a priority for the country. Polls and focus groups have repeatedly found that the subject barely registers with voters, if it registers at all, at a time when most people are primarily concerned with Iraq, terrorism and jobs.

But wading into the issue was in keeping with the White House's overriding political priority, keeping Mr. Bush's base happy and energized, even at the risk of alienating moderate and swing voters who might see it as anti-gay.

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Paige, nation's first black education chief, blasts NAACP
By the Associated Press
Friday, July 16, 2004
By BEN FELLER
AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Rod Paige, the nation's first black education secretary, condemned NAACP leaders Thursday for saying some black groups are fronts for white conservatives.

"You do not own, and you are not the arbiters of, African-American authenticity,'' said Paige, who rose from segregated Mississippi to become President Bush's education chief.

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And I guess you do, and are, huh Ron?

He didn't say you weren't Black. He said you're sellouts. Keep it straight.

And it's not just Bond and Mfume calling you all out. It's the other 98.5% of the black communities that don't take your silly ass seriously.

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Throwing Away The Crutches

What have Republicans/conservatives done for black Americans? I hear that question constantly when I disclose that I am a conservative Republican. Often I will provide the usual facts that seem to be missing from the historical lexicon these days: freed the slaves, were 90%+ in the majority in the votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, something about the question sets steel to my nerves and I’ve been meaning to articulate the reasons for it here for some time now.

Implied in the question is that a political party must “do something” for blacks. Not merely the usual “something” that a government entity does for all of its constituents, e.g. provide utilities, regulate commerce, etc., but something special.

That word ‘special’ has taken on a new meaning in recent years and I think that it applies to the special items that liberals/leftists believe that the government should provide for the ‘special’ people, the “congenitally retarded” folk.

Yes, we ‘special’ people--with ‘special’ needs--require special handling: special education and special employment. You can’t expect black people to live up to the standards of ‘normal’ people. Like paraplegics or the blind or the deaf or those afflicted with Down’s syndrome, singular accommodations must be made for the great handicap of being born with black skin. To liberals/leftists, black people are a crippled class that can never be made whole just as long as they can never be made not-black. What’s this notion called?

And if anyone tries to treat us as full, competent adults, the liberals/leftists will scream in righteous anger and protest about the unfairness of it all. And if some of us ‘handicapped’ verbally express the desire to be treated like full, competent adults and act in a manner that demonstrates that desire, we are deemed as traitors by those who share the same racial makeup, but buy into the ‘handicap’ philosophy. Yes, we are “traitors,” because if some of us refuse to take advantage of the special needs offered and succeed anyway, the vast majority of America will begin to think that we don’t really require the “handicap slot.”

You have to go back 40 years to find something "Republicans" have done for Black folks. And "Republican" is in quotes because the party is as different now from what it was then as the NBA is now from what it was in 1965. Let's not even talk about going back to Reconstruction…especially since Republicans oversaw the rape of the Freedmens Bank.

All this empty crap sets steel to MY nerves. So I'm just going to repeat myself.

Black people have ALWAYS wanted integration, ALWAYS wanted to be full citizens, ALWAYS wanted to to the right thing.

Think. Why was the first executive order directing the government to act affirmatively to bring Black Americans into the economy issued? What was the order intended to accomplish?

It was intended to change the behavior of white Americans.

You see, at the time there were plenty of educated Black folks, college degreed janitors, because of racism. It certainly wasn't because Black folks didn't want the work. The order was intended to override white racism.

The response to the order was along the lines of, "I'd love to hire a niggra if I could find a qualified one." And when the underemployed college graduates stepped up, it because, "Oh, but he didn't got to THAT college like HE did. HE is more qualified that the niggra." And the niggra takes a lesser position because he's more qualified than any white person willing to take a job on that level.

Or the response was to just hire a colored person and show him as proof they were integrated.

Or the response was to drop someone into a slot totally unprepared and shake your head sadly when he fails.

Or a lawsuit, almost all of which were settled out of court, all such settlements saying there's no admission of guilt it's cheaper to buy you off.

And to set aside record numbers of civil rights complaints, so you can be rewarded with a federal judgeship…and who knows where that could take you…

And scapegoating.

And every time a Black person mentions there's still racism to be dealt with, he's reminded of how many Blacks are in the middle class, how much closer we've gotten to equal pay for equal work, like white people had a damn thing to do with it. Collectively, I mean. Some of y'all individually are da bomb. Most of you ain't bad and I really feel most of you mean no harm. But collectively "White People" have fought tooth and nail against leveling the playing field and everyone has been too fucking polite to just say it like that, to put the pattern together under everyone's nose.

And you want to know the truth, I'm tired of all the denial and all the weak-ass excuses folks make for it.

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I got a serious backlog.

I owe folks that teen pregnancy thing. The post earlier today that pointed out the improvement in the stats doesn't let me off the hook because I actually had something else in mind.

I also owe folks a discussion of domestic violence, at least as raised in the Cosby comments (don't hit your wife because you're broke).

And I owe James an explanation of what I feel the negative impact of Westernization is on Japan. I'm realizing we're discussing two things (he economics, me societal reactions) that interact intimately while being totally different issues.

The programming thing is important, though…

Oh, yeah, I owe ProperWinston the finger. But programming doesn't interfere with that…I only use five fingers between both hands while typing.

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The Center for American Progress posted an interview President Clinton on race issues today in three flavors: text, streaming Windows Media and downloadable MP3.

Let's be clear: one way to really annoy me is to call President Clinton "the first Black President." But also be clear his racial perspectives are in pretty close accord with those of the Black communities.

Patrick Berry emailed me the link with the subject "Clinton weighs in on Cosby Comments," so:

Q: The comedian Bill Cosby's recent remarks about personal responsibility in the African-American community have caused some controversy. Do you think such a discussion helps or hurts the broader discussion of race in America in its various complexities?

Silly question; indefinite question, actually. What controversy are we talking about? I only see one, and the conversation isn't addressing it directly. But I guess the question had to be asked.

President Clinton: Absolutely helps. It helps because it helps for two reasons. First of all because I think that whenever you're blaming other people for your problems - I know I've been there - whenever you're blaming other people for your problems, even if you're right, and in this case, non-blacks are responsible, or at least the history for a lot of the problems of the black community, you still have to be careful because it diverts your attention from what you can do to improve things. So what Cosby did was really good for the black community, because whether you agree with exactly how he said it or not, he said, okay, suppose we got a lot of problems that are other peoples' fault, what about what we can do to fulfill our responsibilities, so it was a big plus.

The second reason it was a plus is it is good politics because it removes an excuse from the members of the white community, who might not want to do more for black children, or for black economic development, who say, well they're not trying to help themselves. Cosby takes the excuse away. So it was good in two ways. Cosby did a service to black America and to all Americans by doing that, by focusing black Americans on what they can do for their future and reminding white Americans that most black people are doing the very best they can to do everything they can and therefore we all ought to be working to overcome these disparities.

This is so very much the right thing to say. But.

Dr. Cosby did shock a bunch of people, but the surprise wasn't that he thought it, it's that he said it. He's added nothing to the discussion on the Black side of the veil; that's why the responses to his second speech was so much more timely and precise. They were ready this time.

Meanwhile, on the white side of the veil, folks are watching to see Black people's reactions and THAT'S a problem…what was it President Clinton said:

I think that whenever you're blaming other people for your problems…it diverts your attention from what you can do to improve things.

This is a precise description of the attitude of each side of the veil from the perspective of the other side.

You want to know when we start making progress? When white people take George Carlin as seriously as Black people take Bill Cosby.

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Quote of note

An employer determined to defeat a union organizing effort need not worry about getting caught violating the law, given the typical response by the NLRB. The law fails to project to employers a serious expectation of compliance. Unfortunately for workers, U.S. labor law will not protect their right to organize until there are meaningful remedies to deter violations.

Weakness of Labor Law Remedies Undermines Workers' Rights

What would prevent a corporation from lying to shareholders about profits if its only punishment was to promise it wouldn't lie again? Sadly, when a company violates labor law, often the company's only punishment is to post a notice promising not to break the law again. With "remedies" like this, there is little to deter employers from violating labor law. In May 2004, the NLRB ordered just such a remedy, and if anything, it sent a message to nurses in Albany, NY, that the law does little to protect their rights.

It wasn't long after the nurses at Albany Medical Center began to organize a union that they began to experience the inadequacy of labor law. On January 10, 2003, the nurses filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to schedule an election so they could choose union representation with the New York State United Teachers, AFT. One week later, a senior manager at the hospital threatened to withhold a promised $2-an-hour raise if the nurses voted for the union. Not surprisingly, the nurses voted against forming a union. The union then filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the NLRB, alleging that manager's threat to take back the promised wage increase was illegal and had interfered with the nurses' freedom to organize.

On May 28, 2004, 456 days after the union election took place, the NLRB ruled the hospital violated section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act.1 The NLRB affirmed an Administrative Law Judge decision that the nurses "came away with the clear understanding that the wage increase would not be implemented if the Union were certified."

So what did the NLRB do? It implemented its standard remedy. The NLRB ordered the hospital to post a notice telling nurses that "we will not threaten that an announced $2-an-hour pay increase will have to be renegotiated or changed in any way if you select the Union as your collective-bargaining representative."

And that's it. The hospital broke the law—threatened to revoke an upcoming salary increase if the nurses voted for the union—and all it must do is post a notice promising not to violate the law in the future.

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Medical Class Warfare
By PAUL KRUGMAN

…Many Americans fear the loss of health insurance. Last week I described John Kerry's health plan. What's the Bush administration's plan?

First, it offers a tax credit for low- and middle-income families who don't have health coverage through employers. That credit helps them purchase health insurance. The credit would be $3,000 for a family of four with an income of $25,000; for an income of $40,000, it would fall to $1,714. Last year the average premium for families of four covered by employers was more than $9,000.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the tax credit would reduce the number of uninsured, 44 million people in 2002, by 1.8 million. So it wouldn't help a great majority of families unable to afford insurance. For comparison, an independent assessment of the Kerry plan by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University says that it would reduce the number of uninsured by 26.7 million.

The other main component of the Bush plan involves "health savings accounts." The prescription drug bill the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year had a number of provisions unrelated to Medicare. One of them allowed people who purchase insurance policies with high deductibles, generally at least $2,000 per family, to shelter income from taxes by setting up special accounts for medical expenses. This year, the administration proposed making the premiums linked to these accounts fully tax-deductible.

Although the 2005 budget presents that new deduction under the heading "Helping the uninsured," health savings accounts don't seem to have much to do with the needs of the families likely to find themselves without health insurance. For one thing, such families need more protection than a plan with a $2,000 deductible provides. Furthermore, the tax advantages of health savings accounts would be small for those families most at risk of losing health insurance, who are overwhelmingly in low tax brackets.

But for people whose income puts them in high tax brackets, these accounts are a very good deal; making the premiums deductible turns them into a great deal. In other words, health savings accounts will offer the already affluent, who don't have problems getting health insurance, yet another tax shelter. Meanwhile, health savings accounts, in the view of many experts, will actually increase the number of uninsured.

…Tax-free health savings accounts and premiums would provide healthier and wealthier employees an incentive to opt out, accepting higher paychecks instead, and would lead to higher insurance premiums for those who remain in traditional plans. This would cause some companies to stop providing health insurance, or raise employee contributions to a level some workers can't afford.

The difference couldn't be starker. Mr. Kerry offers a health care plan that would extend coverage to most of those now uninsured, paid for by rolling back tax cuts for those with incomes over $200,000. President Bush offers a tax credit that would extend coverage to fewer than 5 percent of the uninsured, plus a new tax break for the affluent that would actually increase the number of uninsured. As I said last week, I don't see how Mr. Bush can win this debate.

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Quote of note:

Saddam Hussein was indisputably a violent and vicious tyrant, but an unprovoked attack that antagonized the Muslim world and fractured the international community of peaceful nations was not the solution. There were, and are, equally brutal and potentially more dangerous dictators in power elsewhere. Saddam Hussein and his rotting army were not a threat even to the region, never mind to the United States.

Now that we are in Iraq, we must do everything possible to see that the country is stabilized before American forces are withdrawn. But that commitment should be based on honesty. Just as we cannot undo the invasion, we cannot pretend that it was a good idea — even if it had been well carried out.

Congress would never have given President Bush a blank check for military action if it had known that there was no real evidence that Iraq was likely to provide aid to terrorists or was capable of inflicting grave damage on our country or our allies. Many politicians who voted to authorize the war still refuse to admit that they made a mistake. But they did.

A Pause for Hindsight

Over the last few months, this page has repeatedly demanded that President Bush acknowledge the mistakes his administration made when it came to the war in Iraq, particularly its role in misleading the American people about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links with Al Qaeda. If we want Mr. Bush to be candid about his mistakes, we should be equally open about our own.

During the run-up to the war, The Times ran dozens of editorials on Iraq, and our insistence that any invasion be backed by "broad international support" became a kind of mantra. It was the administration's failure to get that kind of consensus that ultimately led us to oppose the war.

But we agreed with the president on one critical point: that Saddam Hussein was concealing a large weapons program that could pose a threat to the United States or its allies. We repeatedly urged the United Nations Security Council to join with Mr. Bush and force Iraq to disarm.

As we've noted in several editorials since the fall of Baghdad, we were wrong about the weapons. And we should have been more aggressive in helping our readers understand that there was always a possibility that no large stockpiles existed.

At the time, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding large quantities of chemical and biological weapons because we assumed that he would have behaved differently if he wasn't. If there were no weapons, we thought, Iraq would surely have cooperated fully with weapons inspectors to avoid the pain of years under an international embargo and, in the end, a war that it was certain to lose.

That was a reasonable theory, one almost universally accepted in Washington and widely credited by diplomats all around the world. But it was only a theory. American intelligence had not received any on-the-ground reports from Iraq since the Clinton administration resorted to punitive airstrikes in 1998 and the U.N. weapons inspectors were withdrawn. The weapons inspectors who returned in 2002 found Iraq's records far from transparent, and their job was never made easy. But they did not find any evidence of new weapons programs or stocks of prohibited old ones. When American intelligence agencies began providing them tips on where to look, they came up empty.

It may be that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of banned weapons under the assumption that he could restart his program at a later date. His cat-and-mouse game with the weapons inspectors may have been the result of paranoia, or an attempt to flaunt his toughness before the Iraqi people. But we're not blaming ourselves for failing to understand the thought process of an unpredictable dictator. Even if we had been aware before the war of the total bankruptcy of the American intelligence estimates on Iraq, we could not have argued with any certainty that there were no chemical and biological weapons.

But we do fault ourselves for failing to deconstruct the W.M.D. issue with the kind of thoroughness we directed at the question of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or even tax cuts in time of war. We did not listen carefully to the people who disagreed with us. Our certainty flowed from the fact that such an overwhelming majority of government officials, past and present, top intelligence officials and other experts were sure that the weapons were there. We had a groupthink of our own.

By the time the nation was on the brink of war, we did conclude that whatever the risk of Iraq's weaponry, it was outweighed by the damage that could be done by a pre-emptive strike against a Middle Eastern nation that was carried out in the face of wide international opposition. If we had known that there were probably no unconventional weapons, we would have argued earlier and harder that invading Iraq made no sense.

Saddam Hussein was indisputably a violent and vicious tyrant, but an unprovoked attack that antagonized the Muslim world and fractured the international community of peaceful nations was not the solution. There were, and are, equally brutal and potentially more dangerous dictators in power elsewhere. Saddam Hussein and his rotting army were not a threat even to the region, never mind to the United States.

Now that we are in Iraq, we must do everything possible to see that the country is stabilized before American forces are withdrawn. But that commitment should be based on honesty. Just as we cannot undo the invasion, we cannot pretend that it was a good idea — even if it had been well carried out.

Congress would never have given President Bush a blank check for military action if it had known that there was no real evidence that Iraq was likely to provide aid to terrorists or was capable of inflicting grave damage on our country or our allies. Many politicians who voted to authorize the war still refuse to admit that they made a mistake. But they did. And even though this page came down against the invasion, we regret now that we didn't do more to challenge the president's assumptions.

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Going thru the stuff I got out of storage I found a 15 year old notebook(!) and my Bulworth VCR tape.

Every Black person in the country should watch Bulworth. I'm watching it now before it falls apart.

LATER: The tape is half melted and the sound is truly screwed. I need a new copy.

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Hello, God? It's Me, Dubya
Lord? Bush here. I'm confused. Why won't you crush Kerry and smite the heathens? Hello?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Are you there, God? It's me, George W. Come in, Almighty. Do you read me?

It's about 8:00 pm and it's just after my last bubble bath of the day and here I am again, kneeling here in the Oval Office all by myself in my most favoritest PJs, the funny ones with the little M-1 tanks and baseball players all over them. I gots some problems, Lord.

Look, I've done everything you asked. I've been good. Haven't I?

I take the message to the people, don't I? I spout that evangelical born-again crap in pisswater Podunk conservative churches across this burned-out fear-drunk nation like I was emceeing a freakin' rodeo in Crawford. And they eat it up, Lord. They eat that stuff up. Hell, I even believe a lot of that fire-breathin' Second Comin' evildoer-hatin' stuff myself.

And looky here! Look how much dough I induce those evangelical suckers to cough up into the coffers of the GOP (that's God's Own Party -- just for you, Lord!). Doesn't that cut me a little slack fer when I skip over the part where Jesus says "Blessed are the peacemakers?"

Or when he says to turn the other cheek? Or love thy enemies? Or when the Bible says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control"? Or any of that other pointless pacifist hippie junk?

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U.S. Won't Turn Over Data for Iraq Audits
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A16

UNITED NATIONS, July 15 -- The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of the international auditing board said Thursday.

Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, the U.N. representative to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), said that the United States has repeatedly rebuffed his requests since March to turn over internal audits, including one that covered three contracts valued at $1.4 billion that were awarded to Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services firm. It has also failed to produced a list of other companies that have obtained contracts without having to compete.

The Security Council established the IAMB, which includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in May 2003 to ensure that Iraq's oil revenue would be managed responsibly during the U.S. occupation. The council extended its mandate in July so it could continue to monitor the use of Iraq's oil revenue after the United States transferred political authority to the Iraqis in June.

The dispute comes as the board released an initial audit by the accounting firm KPMG on Thursday that sharply criticized the U.S.-led coalition's management of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue. The audit also raised concerns about lax financial controls in some Iraqi ministries, citing poor bookkeeping and duplicate payments of salaries to government employees.

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To be read in connection with I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning .

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Why Hookers Love Republicans
At the GOP Convention, where scores of sex pros gear up to party with "moral" conservatives
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, July 16, 2004

"BoBo? It's Syndee. You ready, girl? The convention starts in an hour, and the senators are salivating!"

"Hi, Syn! Almost ready! Just finishing my makeup. Hey, which outfit you think I should wear tonight? My red, white, and blue glitter spandex halter with the peekaboo panties, or the red vinyl skirt with the Velcro tear-away crotch and the big picture of the M-1 tank on the butt?"

"Oooh, I'd go with the tank, Bo. This is the GOP convention, girl! These Republicans love their war, you know? It's all about big phallic missiles and manly howitzers and 'weapons of ass destruction.' Be sure to use that line, too -- they eat that stuff up. Hurry up! The cab's waiting!"

"Howitz-what? Hang on one more minute, Syn -- I wanna look my best. After all, I hear we got a lot of competition this week."

"Bo, there's so many strippers and hookers in town to play 'hide the WMD' with these conservatives, it would make Larry Flynt proud. They flew in from London, Seattle, L.A., all over, just for this, because demand is so high."

"Wow! Wait wait wait, I'm confused. Aren't the Republicans supposed to be the 'moral,' sex-hating, anti-women, Bible-quoting ones? I don't get it."

"Worst-kept secret in all of politics, Bo. It's a fact: Demand for sex workers is at an all-time high when the GOP convention's in town. Hell, there was even a New York Daily News article about it a while back. These Repubs are such a desperately horny, repressed bunch, they just can't get enough of paying for 'amoral' sex. So ironic. If Middle America only knew how this group is so fulla perverts and horndogs, they'd have a fit."

"I bet they already know, and just don't wanna 'fess up to it? I mean, I even heard that little Johnny Ashcroft has a secret fetish for tequila and handcuffs."

"So true! It's funny, people think the GOP convention must be all about square dancing and white-wine spritzers and bow ties and wistful Reaganomics. Ha! Remember, BoBo, this is the party of guns and corporate money and repressed homosexuality and big oil, misogyny and Xanax addictions and war war war. These GOP boys have some good issues. Deep-seated anxieties and fears and the most extensive secret gay-porn collections you've ever seen! Cut these boys loose among their own and it's like putting a priest in a schoolyard."

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Quote of note:

All that separates Wahu from the filth is a dirt floor, thin plank doors and a stubborn sense that even this place is a neighborhood.

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Squalor everywhere, but still this is a neighborhood
In huts of mud and tin, surrounded by filth and thugs, millions hang on in Africa's swelling slums.
By Davan Maharaj
Times Staff Writer

July 16, 2004

Plastic bags, knotted and sagging, soar across the slum late at night.

They bounce off tin roofs, splatter against mud walls patched with tin cans and tumble down the steep hillside, where they sprout every few feet like plastic weeds. In the morning, they are trampled into the ground.

After 33 years in this shantytown known as Deep Sea, Cecilia Wahu barely notices the bags anymore. They are called "flying toilets," and because no one here has a bathroom, everyone has thrown a few.

"My dream, before I die, is to live in a permanent house, not a shack," says Wahu, 66, who has rheumy eyes and is missing teeth. "It could be small, but it must have a nice kitchen, a real bed and its own toilet."

That is her dream. Her reality is an 8-by-8-foot mud hut.

Survival in Deep Sea is a matter of staying above an endless tide of mud and waste. All that separates Wahu from the filth is a dirt floor, thin plank doors and a stubborn sense that even this place is a neighborhood.

About 1,500 people are crammed into this treacherously steep four-acre warren. They live on less than a dollar a day, and this is the best shelter they can afford.

There is one water faucet, one toilet and no electricity. The homes are jumbles of tin, red-baked mud and sticks that barely keep from tumbling into the fetid Gitathuru River below.

Tropical rains eat away at the walls. Roving bands of thugs threaten to break down homes unless they are paid protection money. Wealthy neighbors across the river lobby the government to clear the hillside.

The future of Africa is bound up in such places.

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Darfur Peace Bid Stalls as Rebels, Govt Argue
Fri Jul 16, 2004 07:44 AM ET

By Tsegaye Tadesse
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An African Union (AU) bid to rescue Darfur's fragile peace process stumbled on its second day on Friday when rebels set Khartoum six conditions for negotiations and the government immediately rejected them.

The demands by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), rebel groups fighting for the past 18 months in the country's remote west, included disarming of Arab militias and access for an inquiry into genocide charges.

…"We are not going to engage in political dialogue until the Sudan government fulfills the conditions set by the SLM and JEM, although we will meet the AU officials separately for consultations," Ahmed Tugod Lissan of JEM told reporters.

The other conditions are bringing criminals who committed genocide or ethnic cleansing to justice, creating unimpeded humanitarian access for food aid, release of prisoners of war and detainees and a neutral venue for future talks.

The rebels say Addis Ababa is not a neutral venue because of the Ethiopian government's friendship with Khartoum.

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Study: Kids Fatter But Teen Pregnancies Down
Fri Jul 16, 2004 12:34 AM ET

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Violence and pregnancies among American teens have decreased in recent years but children are getting fatter, according to government figures released on Friday.

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This IS the sort of stuff Dr. Cosby will ultimately wish he'd seen before speaking out.

"The teen birth rate hit a record low," said Dr. Duane Alexander, Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.

"Our youth are less likely to commit violent crimes or be victims of violent crimes," he told reporters.

And there's this:

Children born in 1979, by the time they turned 15, had an arrest rate of about 1 arrest for every 122 children born that year for crimes such as rape, assault and robbery, said Lawrence Greenfeld, the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. Department of Justice.

But for children born in 1986, the violent crime arrest rate was half that, he said.

It's possible they just ran out of people to arrest.

Here's one of the things Dr. Cosby should have known:

"These data show that while in 1993, there were about 44 incidents of serious violence experienced per 1,000 youth age 12 to 17, by 2002, the rate had dropped to about 11 per 1,000," Greenfeld said.

He said the "dramatic" reduction in violence had been "especially true of black males age 14 to 17, for whom the rate of murder is well below half what it was in 1993."

…and here's another:

Teen pregnancies hit a record low, also, said Alexander, dropping from 25 births per 1,000 girls age 15 to 17 in 2001, to 23 in 2002.

"The drop in adolescent birth rate is one of the biggest success stories," he said "This drop is a continuation of a trend that began in 1991," he added.

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Medicare to Cover Obesity as a Disease, U.S. Says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a policy shift that could affect millions of Americans, obesity treatments may be covered under Medicare and Medicaid, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said on Thursday.

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Florida Faces Vote Chaos in 2004, Commission Hears
Thu Jul 15, 2004 04:23 PM ET

By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Florida faces another debacle in the upcoming presidential election on Nov. 2, with the possibility that thousands of people will be unjustly denied the right to vote, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights heard on Thursday.

In a hearing on the illegal disenfranchisement of alleged felons in Florida, commissioners accused state officials of "extraordinary negligence" in drawing up a list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls, most of them because they may once have committed a crime.

"They have engaged in negligence at best and something worse at worst," said Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the commission, an independent bipartisan body whose members are appointed by the President and Congress.

She said the commission would ask the Justice Department to investigate the matter.

"It does seems to me there is a smoking gun here," said commissioner Christopher Edley. "There has been extraordinary negligence in the way the felon purging process has been conducted. ... If it was intentional, this could be a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act."

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Quote of note (sort of…):

White House, Campaign Try to Squelch Cheney Speculation

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House and President Bush's re-election campaign scrambled on Thursday to put an end to speculation about whether Bush will drop Vice President Dick Cheney as his running mate.

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House Approves $19.4 Billion Foreign Aid Bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives approved a $19.4 billion foreign aid bill on Thursday that halves the funding requested by the Bush administration for a program to help the world's poor.

House Votes to Halt Some Foreign Aid Over Court

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to stop financial aid to countries that have not agreed to guarantee American soldiers immunity from the International Criminal Court.

House Votes to Block Aid for Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers cheered as the House of Representatives voted on Thursday to strip financial assistance for Saudi Arabia from a foreign aid bill because of criticism that the country has not been sufficiently cooperative in the U.S. war on terror.

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It seems in showing off my new site under development, in particular the binding of my "Best Of" stuff, has reopened a can of worms. There's only one worm in the can though, and its name is ProperWinston.

Well, its blog's name is ProperWinston.

Actually, I discovered the other day that AlphaPatriot blogrolled me in very complimentary fashion (which gesture I'll return when the new joint is done). I think there's like three progressive sites on his blogroll now; that may have caused the worm to turn as well.

I received this lovely missive:

Earl,

Why you are a Jew-hater.

[URL redacted in keeping with my policy of not linking to anyone I don't respect]

best,

Grant.

P.S. I don't expect you to respond (considering your banal attitude), but it would be nice.

This isn't Joe Taylor; I don't care enough to address his delusions. I'll link to the P6 posts that put the bug up his ass, though. It's in the Racism series, of course. Just keep in mind the links to his site aren't any good anymore…well, they never really were, but I mean his URL has changed since then.

Of course, this is all my fault. At the end of this post I invoked the invertebrate myself:

I also found an essay that strikes me as pretty representative. It's on a blog named Properwinston. If you'll scroll down to June 18th, you'll see a post that begins as follows:

People

That dirty little concept called "race" just won't leave the American public alone. On the same day, one can turn on the television to see images of African-Americans rioting in Michigan while opening up the newspaper to read about President Bush's federal ban on racial profi[l]ing. Both stories reveal, regardless of what the average American of European descent thinks, that a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become "white people in black skin." All decent Americans understand that African-Americans lag behind economically and socially because of their history: the combination of slavery and Jim Crow. Improvement has occured, but in relative terms the gap between African-Americans and the rest of society remains extraordinarily large. Yet, most Americans who aren't of African descent see the condition of African-Americans as either improving or equal to the rest of Americans. This means that most Americans of European descent puzzle at the outbreak of a race-riot.

I'll discuss this post in my next essay (whenever I write it…). I wanted anyone who's interested in what I'm writing to be familiar with it. For now, though, I'm just going to drop a hint: if you can't see a major problem with the line 'a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become "white people in black skin.",' it's going to be a long haul.

I document his response and respond to it here and here. The promised discussion of the post that caught my attention is here.

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July 15, 2004

Not to mention more proof that Log Cabin Republicans is a synonym for stupid.

The Log Cabin Republicans have condemned the outing campaign. "The fact that there were members of our community who instead of working to defeat the constitutional amendment were instead working to destroy the personal lives of individual congressional staffers played right into the hands of the evangelical right," said Chris Barron, Log Cabin's political director. "Jerry Falwell and company couldn't have asked for a better gift than a community divided against itself in the weeks leading up to the critical vote."

You don't want a community divided against itself?

STOP SUPPORTING PEOPLE WHO OBJECT YOU YOUR VERY EXISTANCE.

Trust me, that will go a LONG way toward uniting your crew.

via Steve Gilliard
The outing of Congress
Republicans hoped the federal marriage amendment would electrify their conservative base, but two gay activists countered by spreading fear and loathing on Capitol Hill.

By Mary Jacoby

July 15, 2004 | Michael Rogers, a Washington political activist, decided several weeks ago to launch an Internet campaign to publicize the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian members of Congress and their staffs, if they favored the federal marriage amendment. Drawing on a network of informants, he began posting on his Web site the names of gay congressional staffers who work for anti-gay members of Congress. "It's about exposing hypocrisy," Rogers told Salon, adding that he was prepared for some nasty hand-to-hand political combat.

On Wednesday, however, Rogers watched with amusement as the Senate rejected further action on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage by a vote of 50 to 48. Instead of staging a clear-cut drama to rally the GOP's conservative base, as White House political strategist Karl Rove had planned, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stumbled as he tried and failed to bring the controversial measure to a vote. Moderate Republicans made it clear that on a direct up-or-down vote, they would not help their leadership reach even close to the 67 votes needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution. To avoid a resounding and embarrassing defeat, Republicans wound up filibustering their own top-priority proposal, throwing up a procedural hurdle to a recorded vote on the amendment itself in a desperate attempt by the Senate GOP leadership and the White House to save face.

…For these driven political reasons, Rogers said, he will not be dropping what's become known around Washington as his "outing" campaign (although Rogers insists he is merely highlighting the sexual orientation of congressional aides who are already "out"). Now, Rogers said, he plans to turn his effort against hypocrisy on a new target: married heterosexual members of Congress who rail about the need to protect the institution of marriage while engaging in extramarital affairs.

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Some of you might be interested in the National Society for Hispanic Professionals though.

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Business Group Backs Raise in New York Minimum Wage
By MICHAEL COOPER

ALBANY, July 14 - Advocates of raising the state's minimum wage won support from a powerful, if unexpected, quarter on Wednesday when the Partnership for New York City, one of the city's leading business groups, urged the State Senate to pass a bill raising the minimum wage to $7.10 an hour from $5.15.

Until now, the calls for a higher minimum wage have largely come from labor unions, Democrats, the Roman Catholic Church and the Working Families Party. Several business groups have come out against a higher minimum wage, arguing that it would drive up employers' expenses and could cost the state jobs.

But the Partnership for New York City, an influential group of business leaders that was founded by David Rockefeller, has now decided to support a higher minimum wage. In a letter to Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader of the Republican-controlled Senate, the group noted that at the current minimum wage, a full-time worker earns only $10,712 a year, which is below the federal poverty level.

"Our decision is based on the fact that New York's competitive position in the world economy is driven, more than anything else, by the outstanding quality of our labor force,'' Kathryn S. Wylde, the president and chief executive officer of the partnership, wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

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I did not forget the plural in the title, btw.

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Bryant to Stay With Lakers
By CHRIS BROUSSARD

As he did several times last season in hitting buzzer-beating, game-winning shots, Kobe Bryant let the suspense build to a crescendo and then swooped in to save the Los Angeles Lakers.

With the Lakers fearing his defection to the Los Angeles Clippers, Bryant, this summer's most coveted free agent, announced today that he would remain with the club he has starred for since entering the National Basketball Association out of high school eight years ago.

Bryant's decision to accept the Lakers' seven-year $136.4 million contract offer enabled the franchise to avoid what would have been perhaps the most embarrassing dismantling of a team in N.B.A. history.

Over the last month, while awaiting word on Bryant's decision, the Lakers waved goodbye to Phil Jackson, the league's most successful coach, and traded away Shaquille O'Neal, the league's most dominant player. Speculation was widespread that the moves were made to accommodate Bryant, the 25-year-old swingman who longed to be the team's brightest star, even as Bryant flirted with the idea of joining the Clippers, the Denver Nuggets, the New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls.

"Kobe has informed us he's going to stay with the Lakers and sign a new contract," said John Black, Lakers spokesman.

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Putting together the Drupal books has been interesting because it's put a lot of my previous stuff in front of me again. September 2003 was pretty hot around here.

The number of broken links will be pretty high, though. I don't think I have many external links to worry about. It's the internal ones that will be troublesome.

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Take a look at how the Identity Blogging thread looks all nicely bound in an online book.

After that, check out the printer-friendly version, which comes automagically with the book formatting, and you'll get an idea of why I'm basing future versions of the site on Drupal. And that's not the limits of its use. The books are tree-structured, so (for instance) if I got permission from all the authors of the linked posts to import them I could hang them off my commentary posts. Makes for REALLY coherent reading.

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Suppose the police patrolled the campuses of the most competitive colleges in the country the same way they patrol minority communities. Looking for the same things, treating people the same way.

Would they find drug abuse? Theft and cheating? Rape? Public intoxication and lewdness?

Just popped in my head while reading this at The Black Commentator.

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The Ministry of Education is crushing Israel's dark-skinned students.
Eli Sa'adon

In the wake of news reports of an Ashdod principal's violence toward Ethiopian students, the Knesset held a discussion in which Education Minister Limor Livnat said the following: "Ministry of Education regulations do not allow Ethiopian students to constitute more than 50% of any school enrollment. The regulation is intended as a way of preventing the formation of cliques. The father of one student, whose application was rejected because the school had already reached its 50% quota of Ethiopians, petitioned the High Court of Justice. The Court ruled that we must not place any limitation on the number of [Ethiopian] school students, essentially legitimizing [open enrollment]… I have no way of coping with this. The Court decision is, in my view, truly mistaken and may very well lead to the formation of Ethiopian cliques at school. This, naturally, will do nothing to promote them, but will only restrict the ability to promote them".

The minister's words are just another attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the unsuccessful and racist treatment of Ethiopian immigrants. As the attorney for the parents and the child who filed their High Court petition, I would like to clarify the facts.

First, the court made no ruling as a result of the petition; it gave the Ministry of Education 45 days to respond. On the 46th day, the ministry announced that it was canceling the policy against which the petition was directed. It was clear to the ministry that the policy was invalid and discriminatory, and it was therefore not worth defending. But the key question is if the ministry's regulation that schools be allowed to enroll a maximum of 20-25% Ethiopian students (and not 50% as the minister claimed) is feasible, Isn't it horribly racist to set a policy making Ethiopian origin the only test for acceptance to a school?

The following story behind the petition shows how far the ministry has gone in defending its policy. Zahavit immigrated to Israel with her family 20 years ago, when she was 11. Natan immigrated with his family 19 years ago, when he was 19. A few years ago, they met and got married. Zahavit continued her studies, and today she is a registered nurse at a hospital. Natan continued his studies, and today he has a supervisory job in a factory. They had children and their future looked rosy. A story of successful Israeli immigration and absorption? Not by the Ministry of Education’s definition. When the parents came to enroll their son in first grade, it turned out he wasn't an Israeli like his friends. He was an "Ethiopian". An Ethiopian child cannot study in every school.

Ethiopian children are enrolled according to a quota set by the Ministry of Education. The child was rejected. The parents appealed, in vain, to the director-general of the ministry. This is the policy the minister finds so hard to give up and is trying to anchor with legal backing. The policy is based on the assumption that all Ethiopian children are "weak" and must therefore be viewed only from the standpoint of ethnic origin. This is an arrogant and racist view that is totally divorced from reality.

Rather than hold onto this discriminatory policy, we must distinguish between regular and "weak" students (who are eligible for support based on clear criteria), and not categorize them by ethnic origin or the color of their skin. Enrollment must be determined by encouraging students and their families and by ensuring that schools accept any student who applies. This policy, if followed and enforced, will ensure a natural distribution of "weak" students on the enrollment rosters. Any attempt to block a student from enrolling on the basis of ethnic origin or skin color is outright racism and cannot be tolerated, even if it is coated in flowery educational jargon.

The writer is an attorney.

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The interim Iraqi government (which I fully expect to survive the transition to a permanent government) is reminding me a lot of the Bush administration's first few months. They obviously had a developed idea of the offices and such they wanted to put in place, just a Bush and Co did. And they're executing their plans with little to no regard for its secondary and tertiary effects.

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Iraq PM Announces Formation of Spy Agency
Thu Jul 15, 2004 09:33 AM ET

By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's interim prime minister announced the formation of a domestic spy agency Thursday in a bid to uncover insurgents carrying out daily attacks on U.S.-led troops and Iraqi forces.

Speaking at a news conference, amid a surge in violence in Iraq, Iyad Allawi said he was forming the General Security Directorate, a domestic intelligence network, which would attempt to infiltrate and expose those behind the insurgency.

"We are determined to bring down all the hurdles that stand in the way of our democracy ... terrorism will be terminated, God willing," Allawi said.

For many Iraqis a new spy agency may have overtones of the Mukhabarat, Saddam Hussein's feared and powerful domestic intelligence agency which for decades kept tight tabs on the nation, but Allawi said it was for the good of the country.

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Is this the same man whose kidnappers were caught or killed at a gas station, and it was originally reported the body was in the trunk of their car?

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Experts Fail to Recover Body of U.S. Hostage in Saudi
Thu Jul 15, 2004 07:23 AM ET

By Sami Aboudi
RIYADH (Reuters) - A search by U.S. and Saudi authorities for the body of a beheaded American hostage is drawing to a close after experts failed to find his remains, the U.S. embassy said on Thursday.

Experts who had come to Saudi Arabia to help search for the body of engineer Paul Johnson, killed nearly a month ago, have left the country after collecting evidence which will be analyzed in Washington, spokeswoman Carole Kalin said.

A Saudi newspaper said on Thursday that Johnson's family were seeking a meeting with Saudi officials in Washington to push for the search to continue.

"It (the search) is drawing to a close certainly," Kalin told Reuters.

"Our experts who had come for that specific purpose have now departed. And there was significant evidence collected during the stay that is being examined. But we don't have the expectation that there will be a recovery of the body at this time," she added.

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Slim-Fast Sheds Whoopi Goldberg After Bush Riff
Wed Jul 14, 2004 10:00 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comedian Whoopi Goldberg will no longer appear in ads for diet aid maker Slim-Fast following her lewd riff on President Bush's name at a fund-raiser last week, the company said on Wednesday.

Florida-based Slim-Fast said it was "disappointed" in Goldberg's remarks at last Thursday's $7.5 million star-studded fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

"Ads featuring Ms. Goldberg will no longer be on the air," Slim-Fast General Manager Terry Olson said in a statement, adding that the company regrets that Goldberg's remarks offended some customers.

Republicans have expressed outrage over the fund-raiser for presumptive Democratic nominee John F. Kerry and his vice presidential running mate, John Edwards, in which entertainers lined up to skewer the president.

The New York Post said of Goldberg's appearance at the event: "Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia."

A spokesperson for Goldberg declined immediate comment.

Slim-Fast is a unit of Anglo-Dutch food-to-detergent group Unilever Plc .

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I'm having a bit of trouble actually saying something about this series. Being your typical spoiled, well-fed, rain never falls on me while I sleep American, the concept of living on a dollar per day has no real meaning to me. I'm not sure I can say the series really helps me gain a sense of the realities involved—I've been hungry, not just wanting food or being at the scheduled time to receive food but physically requiring food, as a result of diabetes denial in the past. But that was a result of my own inaction and denial…I can't imagine having that physical sensation for one's whole life.

Part three, titled For sale -- cheap: 'Dead white men's clothing' is, to me, further proof of my provinciality because it touches something I'm actually familiar with:

Insatiable demand from village shops and sprawling urban markets has turned the West's castoffs into an industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Clothing is only the most visible example. Polluting refrigerators and air conditioners, expired medicines and old mattresses also are routinely shipped and resold here. Used vehicles imported from Japan dot African roads. Antiquated secondhand computers power many African governments.

Mere survival has a long-term cost: The continent is losing the capacity to produce its own clothing. Although labor is cheap, Africans cannot make a shirt that costs as little as a used one. Every textile mill in Zambia has closed. Fewer than 40 of Nigeria's 200 mills remain. The vast majority of textile factories in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi are shuttered as well. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs.

"We are digging our own graves," says Chris Kirubi, a Kenyan industrialist who blamed secondhand clothing for the demise of his textile mill. "When you make your own clothes, you employ farmers to grow cotton, people to work in textile mills and more people to work in clothes factories. When you import secondhand clothes, you become a dumping ground."

The trade in hand-me-downs offers millions of Africans another means to endure their daily struggle with poverty. Shoppers get cheap clothes, and legions of vendors eke out a living one worn T-shirt at a time.

The used clothes most often start out in America. Charities such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army sell donated clothes by the pound to wholesale merchants, who grade them. The top grade usually ends up in vintage shops in the United States, Europe or Latin America. The lesser grade merchandise, much of which is faded or stained, is labeled Africa A and Africa B.

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man about Mrs. Paul's and you've got an economic stream for life."

In a way I find it disturbing that the picture of the economic activity in and around starvation gave me a clearer picture than the starvation itself did.

And now I have this disturbing images in my mind of Africa being digested.

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Pay attention to this:

Even in the good years, when the rains come to Ethiopia, subsistence farmers barely harvest enough maize, sweet potato and other crops to feed their families. Batire has never had the luxury of allowing her small clumps of false banana trees to fully mature, which would triple her yield. Instead, she shears the trees as soon as her family needs something to eat.

In the cruelest times, people eat sporadically, hoping that a day of searching by whole families can turn up more than morsels.

When everything is gone, the hungry seek handouts from the government or aid groups. But by then, disease often has gripped them. Severe protein deficiency brings on a condition known as kwashiorkor, which condemns its young victims to live their last days marked by telltale blue spots, their faces frozen in mournful expressions.

"If the diseases don't kill us, the drought is coming behind to finish the job," Batire says.

She already has seen half a dozen neighborhood children die this way. And many times, her own children have gone to bed hungry. On those nights, Batire sits trapped in the family's windowless, one-room mud hut — powerless to feed them yet unable to escape their cries for food.

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Trading tomorrow to eat today
In shriveled Ethiopia, the search for food is constant. Scraping together one meal often comes at the expense of providing for the next.
By Davan Maharaj
Times Staff Writer

July 12, 2004

FINCHAWA, Ethiopia -- Machete in hand, Batire Baramo steps out of her mud hut before dinnertime and begins whacking at the base of a struggling young tree.

A cornfield lies nearby, every stalk stunted and barren. A coffee bush wilts in a patch of earth so dry that each footstep kicks up a puff of gray dust.

Roots and stems from the false banana tree — so named because it never bears fruit — are all there is for dinner today. Batire will pound them into a pulpy mush that offers little real nutrition but at least will quiet the hunger of her husband and seven children. When those parts of the tree are gone, she will boil the bark. When the bark is gone, she will search for something else.

"This place is cursed," Batire says of the family's half-acre plot.

Life on less than a dollar a day, as most Africans live it, is the unending pursuit of sustenance. In the Horn of Africa, it is a search rarely satisfied.

Ethiopia is one of the five poorest countries in the world and the largest per-capita recipient of humanitarian aid. Nearly half the population of 67 million is malnourished. Every year, millions face starvation. For the very young, life often ends in a sad, blue death.

Behind the statistics lies a harsh reality that helps explain why hunger is such an intractable problem in Africa. When life is so consumed with survival, tomorrow is routinely traded away to fill stomachs today.

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July 14, 2004

I heard about this post from George and Aaron. I'm just gonna link to it real quietly. If you don't mind.

Why Lawd, Why?

…Dude: "Mmmpf...mmpf...mmpf."

Me (slowly getting pissed): "What!"

Dude: "You should behave like a black woman and not like these people."

Me: "Excuse me, what are you talking about?"

Dude: "When a black man asks you a question, you should act like a black woman and answer. You shouldn't be racist like these people."

Me: "What...are...you...talking...about?"

Dude: "You look like an angel from heaven and should learn to behave."

At this point I heard this tiny little voice in my head. It was a familiar voice...a voice from a person I thought was long gone.

Yes. Lashunda was coming back from beyond. Maybe she'd found a seat at the back of the plane. As her spirit took shape and bloomed through my veins, I felt myself, Rashunda, rising out of my body. I was transformed into a mere spectator, floating overhead, powerless to stop what was unfolding below. I watched as my neck and head started to move from side to side as the words came out:

Trust me, y'all, boy had it coming.

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Sometimes you work a project and you just KNOW there's no way to get all your big plans done. How you respond depend on if your an owner or just a participant.

Me, I've been working on some PHP and Drupal to the degree that all the posts on my MTClient support site have aged and fallen off the front page. Now, I have several good things installed and configured but one project must be put aside if I really intend to open a new site next month. See, Drupal has a module that lets you give registered users of your site their own blog, but the module was written by skilled programmers that don't blog.

I've worked out how to let folks specify a name for their blog other than "User's Blog." I think I've worked out how to let everyone specify their own stylesheets rather than just living with the themes the main site provides…but that's going to take a minute to implement.

So. For now, I've decided to settle on:

• I'll blog, of course
• Allowing registered users to submit posts folks can vote onto the front page
• Online "books" made from significant posts and series (which is cool because I can just attached the posts to a book rather than maintaining a separate page of links)
• Syndication of articles from other sites (I have some thoughts on sources, but I haven't even begin to firm up the list)

I've got the Racism and Reparations series nicely bound. I'll be working on binding the rest, and on a method of pagination rather than binding—the difference can be seen by comparing the Drupal books to the chapters posted on my Wordpress experiment.

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I could let this be my political statement of the day.

LATER: They got server overload. Try later because it's REALLY funny.

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Industry Deal Set on Allowing Limited DVD Copying
Wed Jul 14, 2004 12:18 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A group of media and technology companies including Microsoft Corp. and Walt Disney Co. have agreed in principle to allow consumers to make legal backup copies of next-generation video discs and share their content on portable devices. [P6: Why do I get the feeling some lawyers have figured out that once you allow recording and copying the shift in storage format isn't very significant?]

The group, which also includes International Business Machines Corp., Intel Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., will not have any technology to license until the end of the year. [P6: FUD. Vaporware. Typical.]

But the announcement, released late on Tuesday, marks a shift in the way the movie industry has reacted to the threat of online piracy of its films.

Current DVDs are protected by a system called CSS, for content scrambling system, which prevents copying. The computer and consumer electronics industry have pushed to allow less-encumbered sharing of media between TVs, computers, and portable players. [P6: Not to mention the fact that it didn't stop anyone from copying anything.]

The new alliance has named its yet-to-be-developed content protection technology "Advanced Access Content System." The system will be available to be licensed later this year.[P6: They've named the system before they developed it.]

Next-generation DVDs are expected to deliver superior video and audio, although technology and media companies have yet to reach a consensus on which of the competing DVD formats will prevail as the industry standard.

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I still think it's just as well Bush stays away from the NAACP. But that's because I want him to lose. Steve Gilliard, being more honorable than I, explains why it's stupid…and hence, right up l'il Georgie's alley.

Yes, Bush does own the NAACP a visit. Whether they like him or not. Regardless of what some white conservatives want to believe, the secular heart of the black community lies within the NAACP and Urban League. To not speak to the NAACP is a slap in the face to the entire black community. While I personally think the NAACP represents much of the worst of the bougie black mentality, that doesn't mean I don't get or like the obvious insult George Bush issued this week.

If you do not talk to the NAACP, you do not talk to black America. Conservative blacks have no traction and no respect within the wider black community. [P6: slight exception: it's Black Conservatives©, not conservative Blacks, who have no traction.]

What whites don't get is that while black social life is conservative, it is tempered with a measure of social justice.

…Bush misses the point. The NAACP can no more be divorced from the black church than heat from summer. The same people who support the black church support the NAACP. You cannot insult or demean one without doing the same to the other. You can't refuse to speak to the NAACP and then expect to go to black chruches and be received well. It can't happen. There is no workaround. Either you show proper respect towards the NAACP or you are insulting the entire community. The black church is the core of black social and political life, the NAACP is the secular heart of black America. They are extremely close to each other. Bush cannot work his evangelical movement contacts to reach black voters after this.

Insult the institution, insult the community

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I don't know if you like those long NY Times magazine articles. The ones that are 5-10 pages, the ones they leave up longer than your standard new article.

This weekend one was published in the Style section you should read for several reasons: first of all the writer, Coco Henson Scales, is a talented, pleasant, intelligent little hottie (I know her parents, leave me alone) as she would have to be to work at Hue. Secondly, after that article, she ain't going to be doing any similar work in the future.

Celebrities and models are my least favorite customers. They never want to pay and they demand constant attention. The models wear jeans or a jean skirt with heels and a white T-shirt. Drunken skeletons, they stand outside smoking and talking in foreign accents. They don't tip, but if they aren't here, the men who do won't stay, so we cater to models. I don't bother learning their names. I call them all darling.

One night Karim, the owner — a short, bald man with perfect posture, who has the habit of looking people in the eye a little longer than is comfortable — waves me over. "Star Jones is coming tonight," he says. "I want you to take care of her. Where will you put her?"

At Hue there are two floors — a bar at street level and, one flight down, restaurant seating, a lounge and an inner sanctum known as the suite because it has king-size beds for sitting or lying. I tell Karim I will give Star Jones one of the beds.

"Fine," he says, patting my head, which makes me both happy and uncomfortable; I don't want him to feel my tracks of fake hair. I dash upstairs to tell Kevin on the door that Star Jones is coming.

He shrugs. For an hour I run up and down the stairs to the front door, thinking she must have arrived. Then I see Kevin holding her at the door and hear her dressing him down.

"I do not like your attitude," she tells Kevin, who is well over 200 pounds and dressed in a black suit — a good-looking baby giant. Star is in full makeup with a long wavy wig. Short and chubby, she is with a tall man with curly hair, wearing gold MC Hammer-ish glasses. I recognize him as Al Scales Reynolds, a banker who is Star's fiancé (and no relation to me). He is wearing a diamond pinky ring.

"I'm sorry," I interrupt. "Please come inside."

"No!" says Star, backing up. "I don't think I want to. I don't like the way I've been treated."

Here we go, I think. Now someone else's ego is looking for a boost. "I'm sorry," I say. "It's his job to stop everyone at the door. Please come in, let me buy you a drink."

"He has a terrible attitude," Star says. "I am a guest, invited by Karim. I do not have to come here."

"No, you don't," I say. "But I'm so glad you did." I wince, thinking that sounds sarcastic. "He's sorry," I say. She and her fiancé step in cautiously, and I lead them down to the V.I.P. room. She laughs when she sees the beds, and the two of them climb onto one. He orders two Passion Cosmos — girly drinks, I think. I run to the bar and tell Liza, a server, that Star has just sat down in her section.

Liza sighs. "Is she paying?" she asks. I frown at such a silly question.

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July 13, 2004

If you don't want to wait for famous folks to come clean, read the comments here.

Hey, credit where due.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the conservative folks that leaped all over that 70% number to recant. And the fact that Dr. Cosby HAS cleaned it up shows the separation between him yelling at us and them yelling at us. It's not a race thing as much as an honor thing—honoring his own integrity as well as those he's talking about.

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COSBY ON TEEN PREGNANCY: 'Fatherhood' author clarifies stats on African American girls getting knocked up.

(Jul. 13, 2004) Comedian Bill Cosby wants to rectify a few of the data he cited in recent rants about the crisis of African American teen pregnancy.
He had previously said that 70% of all teen pregnancies are to African American girls. According to 1997 stats, African Americans make up about 27% of teen moms.

But considering that African Americans make up a smaller percentage of the US population, the rate of black teenage pregnancy is still through the roof.

Zeroing in on African-American teens aged 15-19, the pregnancy rate is almost double that of the white population. However, the data also points out that African Americans had the largest decline since 1991 of birth rates for this same group, falling 42% compared to the previous data. Cosby, however, doesn’t feel the decline translates to optimism.

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Just a random discovery: BIGUPRADIO, dancehall and roots versions. I'm not the biggest reggae fan, but they got a nice mix going now (I'm listening to the dancehall reggae station right now).

Though I have to admit I might not have mentioned it if it wasn't for General B's 20 Weed Commandments.

LATER: "Bad Mind No Work" by Sanchez is working too.
LATER still:Junior Kelly: "God Bless"
(hey, at least I won't forget where I put the names of these tracks.)

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Oooooooh. Doing it for you IS doing it for the USofA.

I understand perfectly.

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NATO Tussle Looms as Iraq Widens Security Requests
Tue Jul 13, 2004 11:22 AM ET
By John Chalmers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Iraq widened its requests for NATO support in its battle against insurgents Tuesday, raising the prospect of renewed tension in the alliance because of French opposition to an overt or collective security role.

NATO agreed at a summit in Turkey last month to help train the interim Iraqi government's security forces, but details were left vague after France and Germany resisted a U.S. push for the alliance to be a central agency for training inside the country.

Undaunted, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari appealed to the 26-nation alliance Tuesday to provide border security support, military equipment and protection for U.N. personnel as well as training for the army which is now being rebuilt.

"We need this training you promised us in Istanbul to be carried out as soon as possible. We need it, in fact we are in a race against time and it's a matter of urgency," Zebari told a news conference after meeting alliance ambassadors.

"We expect NATO really to look into other options for us also," he added, calling for assistance with border controls and with security for U.N. offices and U.N. personnel involved in running next year's elections.

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Average Manhattan Apartment Costs Over $1 Million
Tue Jul 13, 2004 03:58 PM ET

By Ilaina Jonas
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Who wants to be a millionaire?

Anyone who wants to buy a Manhattan apartment.

For the first time, the average price of a Manhattan apartment broke through the $1 million mark, as cheap money, a tight supply and an improving economy made most prospective buyers feel like paupers.

During the second quarter, the average sales price of a Manhattan apartment was $1,047,938 -- up 4.9 percent from the previous quarter and 20.9 percent above last year's average sales price, according to the quarterly Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan Market Overview report, released Tuesday.

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Kerry-Favored Industries See More Job Growth-Study
Tue Jul 13, 2004 02:30 PM ET

By Susan Kelly
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A victory by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in November would benefit industries that employ more people and stand to generate more jobs than a Bush re-election, according to an analysis by outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas.

For example, Kerry policies aimed at boosting home ownership, improving public schools and easing the shortage of nurses would create jobs for home builders, teachers and hospital workers.

Health care, education, government, home building and insurance are the sectors likely to get the biggest boost from Kerry initiatives, the study found. Those fields already employ more people and have added double the number of new jobs in the past six months than industries that would benefit more from Bush policies.

The top five Bush-favored industries -- automotive, financial services, timber, pharmaceutical and tobacco -- employ significantly fewer workers but have seen faster job growth in percentage terms over the past six months.

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Fox to Launch Reality Cable TV Channel in 2005
Reuters
Tuesday, July 13, 2004; 4:33 PM

LOS ANGELES - Fox Networks Group on Tuesday said it would launch a reality television cable network early next year, pushing back at rivals who have said Fox Broadcasting was stealing their ideas.

The Fox Reality Channel will debut in the first three months of 2005 with new and repeat performances from Fox, known for shows like "American Idol" and "The Simple Life," as well as outtakes and contestant interviews, foreign adaptations of popular concepts and shows from other production companies.

The network will also back up programs on the main Fox broadcast channel with extra material, it said.

The scrappy Fox broadcast network has yet to comment on criticism from rivals that it has stolen their ideas for new reality shows, mounting a boxing show after NBC decided to do so and debuting "Trading Spouses," a show about parents from different families switching places, ahead of "Wife Swap" on ABC, which first came up with the idea.

There are already two other reality cable channels, "Reality Central" and "Reality TV."

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And I'm basically on your side.

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Executive summary of Smart Money: Education and Economic Development

Strong economies compete on the basis of high value, not solely low cost. Yet in the United States, growing economic disparity hinders the nation's ability to provide the high-value-added products and services necessary to compete in a global marketplace. The economic problems associated with unequal growth – stagnant wage growth and depressed market demand – in turn exacerbate social problems, such as crime, drug abuse, gangs, reliance on transfer payments, and family break-ups.

The most forward-thinking approach to solving these problems and increasing competitiveness is to equip today's and tomorrow's citizens with the skills and attitudes for economic and civic success in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. Yet education funding has been losing ground over the past several years, at a time when the knowl-edge-based economy demands an increasingly higher set of skills and when growing numbers of public school students are minorities or new immigrants.

A compelling body of research links primary and secondary education to economic development and growth. This research recognizes people as a type of economic asset – “human capital” – and shows that increased investment in health, skills, and knowledge provides future returns to the economy through increases in labor productivity. Education increases workers' average earnings and productivity, and it also reduces the incidence of social problems such as drug abuse, crime, welfare dependency, and lack of access to medical care, all of which can weigh heavily on the economy.

Research confirms the value of investing in educational programs, curricula, technologies, skills, and infrastructure, particularly in the areas of:

Pre-school. Longitudinal studies calculate a significant return on investment for preschool education as well as net public-dollar savings due to the decreased likelihood for preschool participants to repeat grades, require remedial education, be incarcerated for crimes, and become dependent on welfare. Many states are moving toward offering subsidized preschool, particularly for at-risk children, but funding these programs remains a challenge.

Primary and secondary education. Research shows that a high-quality education increases the earnings of individuals and the economic health of their communities. Some believe, however, that increased public investment will not necessarily improve the quality of education offered. But recent studies show that education spending can have a direct, positive impact on the business climate and can improve the success of at-risk students, whose contributions to the economy are critical for achieving a high-value/high-wage economy in the 21st century. Such spending will have a greater chance of success if coupled with specific reforms, such as smaller class sizes, greater access to technology for at-risk students, support for teacher training and innovation, and improved accountability structures.

Community colleges. The rate of return on community college education is positive; those who attend community college earn significantly higher wages than those who stop at a high school diploma. Because of their low cost and lack of requirements for admission, community colleges have become the postsecondary organizations that many disadvantaged groups use to gain access to employment. Thus, community colleges are well-positioned to help bridge the educational, wage, race, and class divides in America.

Supporting this continuum of programs will require a financial commitment. Given the significant return on investment that a productive education and training infrastructure can bring, federal and state governments need to take a leading role and a long-term perspective. Such a long-term and forward-thinking perspective demands courageous reform of the current tax system. Specifically, states and localities need to consider these strategies:

curb the use of business incentive programs, which give businesses economic breaks but do not guarantee local job creation or economic growth;

halt the use of corporate tax-sheltering loopholes, which are eroding revenues generated by state corporate income taxes;

modernize state and local revenue systems to be more efficient, effective, customer-friendly, and accountable.
If the United States is to achieve a higher and more shared standard of living, U.S. firms must compete on the basis of new, higher-quality service and production approaches that utilize new technologies and a more skilled workforce. Economic developers call this the “high road.” Taking the high road will require that the nation develop a more seamless, well-endowed lifelong learning system; reform wasteful business incentive programs and redirect the resulting savings into education or other state priorities; and create and maintain a modernized, high-qual-ity revenue system.

States and localities must find ways to encourage more of their employment in high-value sectors and workplaces. A high-quality education and training continuum, while not alone sufficient, is a necessary condition for meeting this challenge.

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The Two Americas
Martha Paskoff,
Elizabeth Perl
The Century Foundation, 7/7/04

During the course of a campaign that ultimately landed John Edwards in the role of vice presidential nominee, his main theme was that the United States is economically divided between the haves and have-nots. Here's a line from his winter stump speech: "We really live in two Americas: one America for the powerful insiders and the privileged few, and another America for everybody else. And no one on the outside suffers more than 35 million men, women, and children who live in poverty. Millions work 40 hours a week, millions more work less because they can't find a job, and still the American dream is out of their reach. They aren't looking to their government for a handout, but some help up and out of despair and into the middle class."

One aspect of that economic divide that now seems likely to receive long overdue attention is concentrated poverty - neighborhoods in which at least 30 percent of the residents fall below the poverty line. Focusing on concentrated poverty is essential because it lies at the root of the chronic problems that continue to plague virtually all major cities: high unemployment and crime rates, bad schools, out-of-wedlock births, substance abuse, and so on. Even though the enormous costs of those problems radiate out to all taxpayers, at the national level politicians by and large have neglected to focus on developing a remotely coherent strategy for discussing, much less fighting, concentrated poverty.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, in collaboration with the Population Research Bureau, identified "severely distressed neighborhoods" by looking at labor force participation, education, and family composition, in addition to poverty rates. The foundation found that more than eighteen million Americans lived in severely distressed neighborhoods in 2000, up from 15.2 million in 1990. The study also found that children are more likely to live in severely distressed neighborhoods than adults—7.7 percent of all children live in severely distressed neighborhoods compared to 6.0 percent of adults. Black and Hispanic children are hit the hardest: an overwhelming 28 percent of all black children and 13 percent of all Hispanic children are growing up in severely distressed neighborhoods.

For children living in severely distressed neighborhoods, the outcomes can be dire. They are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, do poorly in school, and less likely to move into the workforce. Moreover, studies have documented the extent to which living in high poverty neighborhoods perpetuates problems that are associated to a lesser extent with low-incomes generally. For example, students attending schools in high poverty neighborhoods are far less likely to graduate or go on to college that children attending middle-class schools. According to 2000 census data, of those 25 years or older living in high poverty neighborhoods, 43 percent did not have a high school degree.

The debate over President Clinton's welfare reform law was the last time the nation focused on poverty. That legislation appears to have done more good than harm, on balance, but it didn't really attack the concentrations of poverty that lie at the heart of the problem. It is understandable that many Americans consider poverty and the problems connected to it to be intractable. But evidence is mounting that housing policies aimed at enabling low-income families to move to middle-income neighborhoods and public school choice plans that allow poor students to attend middle-class schools (see here and here) work.

One difference between Michael Harrington's 1962 book "The Other America," which helped to inspire the War on Poverty, and John Edwards' "Two Americas" is that Edwards recognizes that conservative policies have held back not only the poor but also the middle class. Another difference is that we now know a lot more about how the divide between the haves and the have-nots can actually be breached. What remains to be seen is whether we have the political will to succeed.

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Quote of note:

…nation-building has come to mostly mean the comprehensive occupation of collapsed or defeated states, the remaking of entire societies and sky-high, endless costs. Another approach, however, would feature peacekeeping, economic aid, technical assistance and support for elections that might, in some instances, make costly and frustrating military intervention less likely.

The Shaky State Of Nation-Building
Morton Abramowitz , Heather Hurlburt

No fewer than nine times over the past decade, Western powers have deployed noble rhetoric, soldiers and taxpayer dollars in the service of nation-building. And no fewer than nine times, they have, to one degree or another, failed to build stable, self-sustaining nations.

The litany consists of Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Liberia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The best one could say is that they are works in progress. The worst: Too many of them still can't function on their own and continue to pose threats to their own citizens as well as U.S. national interests. While genuine good -- both humanitarian and security-related -- has come of these efforts, the results have fallen far short of our professed objectives, consumed enormous resources and political capital, and left uncertainty about the U.S. and international commitment.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that our interest in taking over "problem nations" has far outpaced our ability or willingness to solve those nations' problems.

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Republican Leaders Use Accounting Gimmicks to Mislead Public on Education Financing

Monday, July 12, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC – A new analysis prepared for Representative George Miller (D-CA) by his staff on the House education committee explains how Republicans in Congress are using accounting gimmicks to mislead the public into believing that states are “flooded” with unspent funds for elementary and secondary education programs.

“The Republicans are trying to hide the fact that they and President Bush have shortchanged America’s schools by $27 billion by making the false argument that states have not yet spent the money that Congress has already provided,” said Miller, the senior Democrat on the committee.

“But, under the Republicans’ own faulty accounting logic, every single federal agency has unspent funds,” said Miller, who supplied a list of unobligated funds for five other key federal agencies. “The Department of Defense leads the way, with $52.2 billion in unspent funds at the end of 2003. Are Republican leaders suggesting that our soldiers in Iraq have too many resources?”

Officials in the Department of Education and Congressional Republicans know that states are allowed over two years to spend their federal education funds. States often use these funds to finance long-term projects, including test and curriculum development and professional development for teachers, principals and other staff.

Often the costs for these types of expenses are not billed for months, or even years, after the services are purchased. As a result, the states have “unexpended balances” of federal education money because they cannot draw down funds until the bills come due.

“The Administration and Committee Chairman Boehner are using nothing more than a bookkeeping gimmick to try to distract the public from their broken promises for education,” said Miller. “Counting these unexpended balances as available money is no different than counting all the money in your checkbook on payday as unobligated – money that you know you will need to pay the mortgage, rent, food, medical care, clothing and other real costs.

“Playing smoke and mirror accounting gimmicks will not help us achieve the main goals of education law: making sure every student is performing at grade level in a quality school, with a competent teacher,” Miller added.

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In the comments to yesterday's post on China trading its way to world influence, James of Hobson's Choice said:

I feel a little awkward because now, and for another decade, China is likely to perform impressively. I'm not excessively alarmed about the price of oil right now, although well-informed observers may disagree. But it's incorrect to assume that Japan is struggling now because it adopted a western model of economic growth; likewise South Korea or Taiwan. These countries adopted highly centralized growth models which have faltered as they hit their ceilings; China's is even more so.

So of course China will grow long enough to make me look like an idiot, and then hit the same sort of wall.

I said yesterday there's more than one way to be a capitalist, and that all those ways wield the full power of capitalism to change things. China's very controlled approach to capitalism indicates to me they see this too and are constructing a mode of capitalism that works with their intent. As a result I don't expect China to hit that wall.

Here's a thought experiment that will support that view. Imagine there are no trade embargoes against Cuba, starting today.

To assume a centrally directed economy…well, to assume another kind exists in the wild, but that's another post…to assume it must max out simply because it is centrally controlled is to history provides all likely examples. What we've seen is liberal philosophy supported by capitalist economy (USofA historically), capitalist philosophy supported by capitalist economy (USofA now), socialist philosophy supported by capitalist economy (Europe) and communist philosophy supported by socialist economy (Russia). One has failed for the most part…the one with the socialist economic model.

China, I believe, is crafting a communist philosophy supported by capitalist economy approach. You can react to communism as a moral failing if you like, but this has a good chance of success. It would have to be measured sanely differently…the US economy, being driven by consumerism, is measured in terms of income and expenditure. The US economy is like a bicycle…if it doesn't keep moving it will fall down.

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This Snapshot is a sneak preview of information compiled in the forthcoming EPI book?The State of Working America 2004/2005.
Snapshot for June 23, 2004.

Social expenditures and child poverty—the U.S. is a noticeable outlier

All advanced industrialized countries make an effort to reduce the number of children who live in poverty, but poverty remains a harsh reality for many children in every country. Child poverty is defined as children living in households where income is less than 50% of household median income within each country. Although children bear no responsibility for living in poverty, they are penalized not only in childhood but later in life if their health or education suffers from a lack of resources.?

All economies face the trade-off between how much money should be spent and what level of childhood poverty is acceptable. The data used in the figure below compare social economic expenditures and child poverty rates of the United States to that of 16 other rich, industrialized countries that, like the United States, belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The United States and these other countries face similar global conditions with respect to trade, investment, technology, the environment, and other factors that shape economic opportunities. Thus, this comparison provides a yardstick for gauging the commitment of the U.S. government to reducing child poverty and its lifelong effects.

click for full size graph

The figure clearly illustrates that those countries with higher social expenditures — as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP — have dramatically lower poverty rates among children. The blue line in the figure shows the correlation between expenditures and child poverty rates for all countries. Individually, the Nordic countries — Sweden, Norway, and Finland — stand out, with child poverty rates between 2.8% and 4.2%. The United States stands out as the country with the lowest expenditures and the highest child poverty rate — five times as much as the Nordics.

The paucity of social expenditures addressing high poverty rates in the United States is not due to a lack of resources — high per capita income and high productivity make it possible for the United States to afford much greater social welfare spending. Moreover, other OECD countries that spend more on both poverty reduction and family-friendly policies have done so while maintaining competitive rates of productivity and income growth.

Source: Author's analysis of OECD and Luxembourg Income Study data.

This Snapshot was written by EPI economist-Sylvia A. Allegretto.
Check out the archive for past Economic Snapshots.
Copyright © 2004 by The Economic Policy Institute. All rights reserved.

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Quote of note:

As one researcher observed, there is a sense of optimism in the responses, but also evidence of a continuing gulf between perceptions and realities about continuing discrimination and racism. Almost half of black respondents said they had experienced some form of discrimination in the month preceding the poll, while three-quarters of whites think blacks are treated "very fairly" or "somewhat fairly." While 61 percent of whites believe that blacks have equal job opportunities, just 12 percent of African-Americans concur -- a difference of opinion influenced, no doubt, by differences in economic status. Nationally, the median white household income is $55,318, compared with $35,500 among blacks and $40,000 among Hispanics.

Editorial: Racial attitudes/Poll signals hopeful changes
July 6, 2004

Race relations in America still need work but show signs of positive change. A majority of people in this nation say that working and living with people of other races is ideal -- even to the point of welcoming them into their own families.

That's a significant change compared with a generation or two ago and represents a welcome attitude shift. But there are also indications that many Americans are better at talking the racial acceptance talk than walking the walk.

Today, a slim majority -- 55 percent -- thinks that the state of race relations is either very or somewhat good and agrees with affirmative action, according to a telephone survey of 2,000 whites, African-Americans and Latinos conducted late last year by Gallup for AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). Results were released in connection with the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation case.

Significant progress has been made in two crucial areas: interracial relationships and where we live. About 70 percent of whites now say they approve of marriage between whites and blacks, up from just 4 percent in a 1958 Gallup poll. That open-mindedness extends across racial lines: 80 percent of blacks and 77 percent of Hispanics also said they generally approve of interracial couples.

On that particular issue, Minnesotans could be somewhat ahead of the national curve. Census data from both 1990 and 2000 show that this state has higher percentages of mixed marriages and mixed-race children than many other parts of the country.

Another indicator of changing attitudes is that a majority of white respondents (66 percent) said they would not object if their own child or grandchild chose a black spouse. Again, blacks (86 percent) and Hispanics (79 percent) were even more open to interracial possibilities. And when it comes to choosing neighbors, an inclusive, diversity-friendly spirit again prevails: Majorities among all groups said they would rather live in racially mixed neighborhoods than surround themselves with only members of their own group.

Yet, despite those encouraging signs, divisions between the races persist. While many say they want to be in integrated environments, core-city schools and some neighborhoods have become more segregated.

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Giving minorities a political primer
Program aims to make government accessible
By Alison O'Leary Murray, Globe Correspondent | July 8, 2004

Since immigrating to the United States from Colombia 16 years ago, Jany Finkelstein has sought ways to aid other minority residents.

She put aside pursuing a PhD to teach science, then scaled back that responsibility to become minority outreach coordinator at the Framingham Community Charter School.

Earlier this year, she took the next step, becoming one of the first 100 graduates of a new six-week training session, the Commonwealth Legislative Seminar, that aims to make state government accessible to a more diverse population.

Getting help from a government official was unthinkable to most people in her native country, Finkelstein said. Here, her primer on Beacon Hill has buttressed a conviction that education is the best way for immigrants and minorities to succeed.

"Perhaps [the seminar] reinforced to me the importance of educating minorities, whether on political issues or the education of their children," said Finkelstein, of Newton.

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Battle for civil rights, equal opportunity has just begun
By Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick

Together we celebrate the recent 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the culmination of a decades-long struggle against segregation and discrimination. The Civil Rights Act was signed at the White House, but as Martin Luther King understood, in truth, it “was ... written in the streets” of America. It was written by freedom fighters, who climbed aboard buses and marched into the blast of a fire hose and the bark of a dog without ever resorting to violence.

The children and grandchildren of the 1960s are now doctors and lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs, lawmakers and peacekeepers. They have gone from their parents’ workplaces at lunch counters to the Supreme Court, from the backseat of buses to the Space Shuttle. Yet as far as our country has come in breaking down barriers, we still have farther to go.

Unfortunately, the current administration does not share our vision of how we turn hope for an even brighter future into opportunity. Forty years after the civil rights movement, George W. Bush wants African-American families to quietly accept unemployment rates above the national average and health care that is not affordable or available.

Bush says this is the best economy of our lifetime. He and Vice President Dick Cheney say this is the best we can do. They have even called us pessimists for pointing out where we are failing middle-class families. Well, we believe the most pessimistic thing you can do is tell African-American families that we cannot do better. We can, and we will.

We have yet to truly fulfill our commitment to education. If President Bush had fully funded No Child Left Behind, Detroit’s schools could hire nearly another 4,000 teachers. College graduates will earn $900,000 more than high school graduates over a career, and college is one of the best paths to the middle class. But under Bush, we are squeezing our children into classrooms without enough teachers and expecting them to learn at their best.

Almost a half-century after the Supreme Court declared separate but equal to be unconstitutional, more African-American men are in prison than in college; they make up four percent of the university population, and more than 40 percent of the prison population. Yet President Bush still opposes efforts such as the University of Michigan’s admissions policy to encourage diversity among graduate and undergraduate students.

We have yet to truly fulfill our commitment to opportunity. Today, one in 10 African-Americans cannot find work, twice the rate for whites. The unemployment rate in Michigan has doubled in the last three years. And American workers in Michigan are competing against workers in other countries where employers do not recognize the right of workers to bargain collectively and where employers exploit workers and their basic human rights, sometimes resorting to violence and intimidation.

We can start creating opportunity by shutting down the loopholes that use your tax dollars to subsidize corporations sending jobs overseas. We can fight for labor and environment protections in every trade agreement.

And we have yet to truly fulfill our commitment to civil rights. Under President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has been effectively closed. George Bush has nominated some of the most radical, right-wing judges that our country has ever seen.

And while the Senate has finally passed comprehensive hate crimes legislation, President Bush has yet to support the legislation, let alone provide the leadership necessary to ensure that it becomes law.

President Lyndon Johnson once said discrimination was not a “Negro problem, or a Southern problem, or a Northern problem.” It was an American problem. And, like the civil rights movement, we require an American solution. This year we must renew our struggle for civil rights, and we must renew it by building a stronger America together.

As we remember the Civil Rights Act, let us commit ourselves to a new American solution, one firmly rooted in the true meaning of “equality.” Let us commit ourselves to overcoming the obstacles that we face and working together toward the Constitution’s promise of a more perfect union.

Sen. John Kerry is the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Detroit, represents Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. Send letters to [email protected].

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Except me, of course. But I've always been the difficult one.

Quote of note:

I agree that lower-income folks have to hold up their end of the deal. But those of us who are better off have to hold up our end of the deal too. We're talking about a lifeboat, not a seesaw. Both ends need to be lifted up. Anything less is a deal breaker.

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Cosby's `deal' to quell poverty cuts both ways

Published July 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- My 96-year-old grandma disagrees with me, but I think Bill Cosby was right when he recently complained--famously and emotionally, if not quite grammatically--that "the lower-economic people are not holding up their end of the deal."

Unfortunately, a lot of the people at the other end of the economic ladder are not holding up their end of the deal either. Some of them are running Congress.

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True or not, due to the way this war is being handled, a significant part of the world will find these allegations impossible to dismiss offhandedly. And in the Middle East, the part of the world whose opinions have the greatest impact on the outcome of this mess, will find it a most eminently speculation.

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Iran Leader Says U.S., Israel Behind Iraq Kidnaps
Tue Jul 13, 2004 03:20 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader said on Tuesday he believed the United States and Israel, rather than Muslims, were behind the kidnapping and killing of foreign nationals in Iraq.
"We seriously suspect the agents Americans and Israelis in conducting such horrendous terrorist moves," the official IRNA news agency quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying in a meeting with visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.

"(We) cannot believe that the people who kidnap Philippine nationals, for instance, or beheaded U.S. nationals are Muslims."

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Quote of note:

Declaring "there is no more serious threat to our economy than the threat of terrorist attacks on our soil," Snow highlighted the Treasury Department's role in tracking terror finances and said the Patriot Act had helped law enforcement officials and financial services providers share information. He said financial institutions now are registered with the U.S. Treasury and more data can be collected.

Snow: Terror Threat Hangs Over Economy
Tue Jul 13, 2004 12:29 AM ET

By Glenn Somerville
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - The risk of terror attacks is one of the key dangers the U.S. economy faces and requires vigilance against any bid to weaken measures for investigating suspicious money transactions, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said in remarks prepared for delivery on Tuesday.

In the first of an expected series of efforts to win renewal of key provisions of the Patriot Act, a centerpiece of the White House's war on terror and of President Bush's election campaign, Snow said terror groups cannot survive if their cash is choked off.

"Hatred fuels the terrorist agenda, cash makes it possible," Snow said in the speech prepared for delivery after a tour of a local film-coating plant. "The work to track and shut down the financial network of terror is, therefore, one of the most critical jobs of our government today."

Voter unease about the war in Iraq, and about provisions of the Patriot Act that gave the government broad new investigative powers to try to uncover potential threats, has become an issue in campaigning for November's presidential vote.

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British Military: iPods Pose Security Risk
Tue Jul 13, 2004 05:08 AM ET

By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Music fans, beware: Britain's Ministry of Defense has become the latest organization to add the iPod to its list of high-tech security risks.

The pocket-sized digital music player, which can store thousands of songs, is one of a series of banned gadgets that the military will no longer allow into most sections of its headquarters in the UK and abroad.

Devices with large storage capabilities -- most notably those with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) plug used to connect to a computer -- have been treated with greater suspicion of late by government agencies and corporations alike.

The fear is that the gadgets can be used to siphon information from a computer, turning a seemingly innocuous device into a handy tool for data thieves.

"With USB devices, if you plug it straight into the computer you can bypass passwords and get right on the system," RAF Wing Commander Peter D'Ardenne told Reuters.

"That's why we had to plug that gap," he said, adding that the policy was put into effect when the MoD switched to the USB-friendly Microsoft XP operating system over the past year.

In a survey of 200 mid-sized and large UK companies conducted by British security software firm Reflex Magnetics, 82 percent of respondents said they regard so-called mobile media devices like the iPod as a security threat.

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Bring the pain, yo.

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IBM Unveils eServer Computers Using Power 5 Chip
Tue Jul 13, 2004 03:44 AM ET

By Duncan Martell
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM Corp. unveiled on Monday powerful business computers using the company's latest microprocessor, the Power 5, and technology that lets each chip run as many as 10 servers.

The eServer line would allow customers to use fewer servers to perform business automation functions, part of a trend among technology customers to demand more performance and capacity from a smaller number of computers, IBM said.

"You do want to get as much bang for the buck as possible," said Charles King, an analyst with industry research firm Segeza Group. He noted that a server with one microprocessor running the Linux operating system would typically function at about 15 percent of total computing capacity.

Properly configured mainframe computers, however, ran constantly at about 75 percent of capacity, King said, adding that IBM adapted its virtualization technology for the eServer line from its mainframe computers.

The servers incorporate what IBM calls its virtualization engine, software that allows customers to run as many as 10 "virtual" computer servers per microprocessor. It announced that technology in April.

The latest eServer line, which will be available globally on August 31, uses from two to 16 Power 5 processors per server computer and uses as few as one-fourth the number of chips as comparable machines from rival vendors, Armonk, New York-based IBM said in a statement.

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July 12, 2004

GE Lobbyists Mold Tax Bill
Firm Saw Subsidy Repeal As Chance to Pay Less

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 13, 2004; Page A01

No company in the nation had more to lose than General Electric Co. when the World Trade Organization decreed in 2002 that U.S. tax laws violated international treaties. The multinational conglomerate was saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxes from the export subsidies that the United States had to discard.

But in a two-year campaign, fueled as much by brains as political brawn, GE has shaped the legislation that would replace the old export-promotion law in ways that would allow it to save as much, if not more, in taxes, according to both GE lobbyists and congressional aides. In pursuing its financial interest, the company may also have turned the U.S. corporate tax code away from domestic manufacturing and toward expansion of operations abroad.

"The bill is truly amazing," said Michael J. McIntyre, a tax law professor at Wayne State University and an expert on international corporate tax issues. "We had an incentive for exports that was illegal and had to be repealed. Now Congress takes the money saved by the repeal and uses it to reduce taxes on the income earned by U.S. companies in foreign countries, thereby making foreign investment more attractive than U.S. investment."

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Bush Insists He Has Made America Safer
Mon Jul 12, 2004 03:35 PM ET

By Steve Holland

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (Reuters) - Under fire for intelligence failures at home and abroad, President Bush tried on Monday to convince American voters he has made them safer since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and told them "we were right to go into Iraq."

Faced with polls that show many believe the terror threat against them has increased due to the Iraq war, Bush argued that wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and al Qaeda have made them safer, as has diplomacy that led Libya to surrender its weapons of mass destruction programs.

"Today because America has acted, and because America has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer," Bush told employees at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where components of Libya's nuclear program are being stored.

Bush's war against terrorism was supposed to be an easy sell on the campaign trail, and is an important plank of his re-election effort.

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You remember Hoop Dreams, right?

Byron Crawford has the text of a Washington Post article, something of a followup about the gentlemen.

Um, you'll find Byron's language colorful on occasion. Just so you know.

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African-Americans Unsure About Kerry, New Poll Says
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
July 12, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - African-American voters are not enthusiastic about Sen. John F. Kerry, according to a national poll commissioned by BAMPAC - Black America's Political Action Committee, a conservative-leaning group.

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And AngryDesi shouldn't have to write it.

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Because everyone's computer broke at the same time everyone needed to borrow money.

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Isabel Sanford of 'The Jeffersons' Dies
Isabel Sanford, 'Weezie' on 'The Jeffersons,' Dies in Los Angeles at Age 86

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES July 12, 2004 — Actress Isabel Sanford, best known as "Weezie," Louise Jefferson on the television sitcom "The Jeffersons," died of natural causes, her publicist said Monday. She was 86.

Sanford died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized since July 4, said Brad Lemack. Her daughter, Pamela Ruff, was at her side, he said.

Her health had waned after undergoing preventive surgery on a neck artery 10 months ago, Lemack said. He did not give a cause of death.

Sanford co-starred with Sherman Hemsley from 1975 to 1985 on CBS' "The Jeffersons," a spin-off of the popular series "All in the Family," in which she also appeared.

In 1981, Sanford became the first black woman to receive an Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on "The Jeffersons."

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Isn't it ironic that Florida decided not to use a list of felons to exclude from the voting rolls because it wouldn't specify even more people to remove from the voting rolls?

I don't think I'm being too cynical when I ask if this is the same list The Brennan Center for Justice said likely includes over 25,000 wrong names, or is it a different one?

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Quote of note:

MEETING TOMORROW – TELL THEM TO PRESERVE DEMOCRACY: The U.S. Election Assistance Commission tomorrow is holding a public meeting at 1:00pm at 1225 New York Ave, N.W., Suite 1100 in Washington, D.C. Go to the meeting and tell the Bush administration to preserve American democracy and back off its plan to hijack the election for its own political gain. If you're not in Washington, e-mail them at this address:  [email protected]

VOTING

Postponing the Election?

In a major exclusive, Newsweek reports the Bush administration is exploring legal justifications for postponing the November 2004 election in the event of a terrorist attack close to the election. In pushing for the authority to suspend democracy for the first time in America's history, the White House is seizing on the right-wing myth that the Spanish election was won by al Qaeda, instead of being lost by a government that lied to its people. And while the administration has trumpeted the prospect that al Qaeda might seek to disrupt the U.S. election, "counterterrorism officials concede they have no intelligence about any specific plots."

MEET BUSTER SOARIES – THE NEXT KATHARINE HARRIS?: Newsweek reports the plan to give the president authority to postpone the election is being pushed by DeForest "Buster" Soaries Jr. – the White House's recent appointee to the newly-formed U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Soaries wants the administration "to seek emergency legislation from Congress empowering his agency to make such a call." But while Soaries is using his agency to feign nonpartisanship, he is anything but. As a GOP candidate for Congress less than two years ago, he relied on major Republican big wigs to assist his campaign. In a New Jersey speech during the campaign, President Bush called out, "My friend Buster Soaries, thank you, Buster, for coming. I'm glad you're here."

PLAN IMMEDIATELY PANNED: The administration's power grab effort was immediately panned by lawmakers concerned that the White House is using the fear of terrorism for its own political gain. Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) said, "I think it's excessive based on what we know," pointing out that the administration's warnings about an imminent election threat have been "a bust" because they were based on old information. Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) said postponing the election "would be the ultimate surrender to terrorism for a democracy" and noted the proposal itself "just creates more fear."

JUST ANOTHER TROUBLING SIGN: The administration's effort to empower itself to postpone elections is just the latest troubling sign in the lead up to the election. Already, states have contracted Diebold to manufacture new voting machines – a company whose CEO wrote in a fundraising letter last August that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." And the voting machines themselves have severe problems. Meanwhile, the state of Florida flirted with using a "list of 48,000 ex-felons" that civil rights groups note "contains inaccuracies that could cause local election officials to wrongfully purge eligible voters."

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via Pinko Feminist Hellcat.

You are the Hermit card. The Hermit has chosen a
solitary spiritual path. He shines light on his
inner self and, by this means, gains wisdom.
The Hermit's home is the natural world and it
is by being in tune with that world that he
learns the laws of nature and learn how they
operate within himself. His path is a lonely
one as he lives in silence and has for
companionship only his own internal rhythms.
But those crossing his path are touched by his
light and wisdom. Though often alone, he
manages nevertheless to instruct those who meet
him and guides those who chose to follow him on
a path towards enlightenment. Image from The
Aleister Crowley Tarot deck.
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/thoth/


Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

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I checked Eschaton for the first time in a while.

It's spawning bloggers again?

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Quote of note:

But DeLay and his colleagues also face serious legal challenges: Texas law bars corporate financing of state legislature campaigns, and a Texas criminal prosecutor is in the 20th month of digging through records of the fundraising, looking at possible violations of at least three statutes. A parallel lawsuit, also in the midst of discovery, is seeking $1.5 million in damages from DeLay's aides and one of his political action committees -- Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) -- on behalf of four defeated Democratic lawmakers.

DeLay has not been named as a target of the investigation. The prosecutor has said he is focused on the activities of political action committees linked to DeLay and the redistricting effort. But officials in the prosecutor's office say anyone involved in raising, collecting or spending the corporate money, who also knew of its intended use in Texas elections, is vulnerable.

Documents unearthed in the probe make clear that DeLay was central to creating and overseeing the fundraising. What the prosecutors are still assessing is who knew about the day-to-day operations of TRMPAC and how its money was used to benefit Texas House candidates.

Several weeks ago, DeLay hired two criminal defense attorneys to represent him in the probe. He previously created a fund for corporate donors to help him pay legal bills related to allegations of improper fundraising, and is now considering extending its reach to include the fees for these attorneys.

DeLay's Corporate Fundraising Investigated
Money Was Directed to Texas GOP to Help State Redistricting Effort

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A01

In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.

DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.

The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.

DeLay's fundraising efforts helped produce a stunning political success. Republicans took control of the Texas House for the first time in 130 years, Texas congressional districts were redrawn to send more Republican lawmakers to Washington, and DeLay -- now the House majority leader -- is more likely to retain his powerful post after the November election, according to political experts.

But DeLay and his colleagues also face serious legal challenges: Texas law bars corporate financing of state legislature campaigns, and a Texas criminal prosecutor is in the 20th month of digging through records of the fundraising, looking at possible violations of at least three statutes. A parallel lawsuit, also in the midst of discovery, is seeking $1.5 million in damages from DeLay's aides and one of his political action committees -- Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) -- on behalf of four defeated Democratic lawmakers.

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Quote of note:

For his part, Dreier was philosophical. "I served in the minority for 14 years, and I certainly respect attempts by members of the minority to create division and attack those in leadership," he said. But he added, "I think you can be a street fighter and still be civil."

HA! I'd love S-Train and T-Steel's opinions on that last sentence.

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Democrats Fed Up With Yielding to GOP Rules
By Dan Morgan and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A15

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who leads Democrats in the House, and Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the Republican chairman of the powerful Rules Committee, are on friendly terms despite political differences.

Dreier was one of the few Republicans to attend a party for Pelosi after she was elected House minority leader in November 2002. "I was very proud that the first minority leader was from my state," he said.

But that didn't stop Pelosi from roughing up Dreier during a contretemps on the House floor June 25. Behind the attack was rising anger among House Democrats about Republican use of the procedural power of the Rules Committee to prevent or limit amendments and debate on key bills.

In that case, Pelosi was protesting Dreier's refusal to let the House debate a Democratic amendment that she said would have helped Californians "get the refunds they deserve after they were ripped off by Enron and others."

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Last Tuesday I noticed the US and Australia entered into an agreement to jointly develop an ABM system. I found it curious.

Now the other shoe has dropped in the form of a new trade agreement with some very interesting features.

Only in the last few weeks have lawmakers realized that the proposed Australia trade agreement — the Bush administration's first free trade agreement with a developed country — could have major implications for health policy and programs in the United States.

Interesting, no?

The agreement, negotiated with Australia by the Bush administration, would allow pharmaceutical companies to prevent imports of drugs to the United States and also to challenge decisions by Australia about what drugs should be covered by the country's health plan, the prices paid for them and how they can be used.

It represents the administration's model for strengthening the protection of expensive brand-name drugs in wealthy countries, where the biggest profits can be made.

In negotiating the pact, the United States, for the first time, challenged how a foreign industrialized country operates its national health program to provide inexpensive drugs to its own citizens. Americans without insurance pay some of the world's highest prices for brand-name prescription drugs, in part because the United States does not have such a plan.

We've heard the argument that the USofA pays a disproportionate amount of the cost of pharmaceutical. This is being called an attempt to share that burden. But American Capitalism has no concept of "enough."

Trade experts and the pharmaceutical industry offer no assurance that drug prices will fall in the United States if they rise abroad.

Just to let you know what Big Pharma gets out of this:

For years, drug companies have objected to Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, under which government officials decide which drugs to cover and how much to pay for them. Before the government decides whether to cover a drug, experts analyze its clinical benefits, safety and "cost-effectiveness," compared with other treatments.

The trade pact would allow drug companies to challenge decisions on coverage and payment.

Joseph M. Damond, an associate vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said Australia's drug benefit system amounted to an unfair trade practice.

"The solution is to get rid of these artificial price controls in other developed countries and create real marketplace incentives for innovation," Mr. Damond said.

…and what the Bushistas get out of it:

Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel's trade subcommittee, voted for the agreement, which could help industries in his state. But Mr. Levin said the trade pact would give a potent weapon to opponents of the drug-import bill, who could argue that "passing it would violate our international obligations."

Such violations could lead to trade sanctions costing the United States and its exporters millions of dollars.

And what does Australia get out of it? Since subjecting their ability to import American-made drugs to decisions made by the marketers will undoubtedly raise their own health care costs? I can but speculate, but it wouldn't surprise me if the AMB co-development treaty nets Australia enough economic activity to offset the hit from increased health care costs. On the books, anyway.

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That is, there's more than one way to be a capitalist, and that all those ways wield the full power of capitalism to change things.

China, I think, has been watching carefully what happens to those nations that uncritically jump headlong from their traditions into the "New World Order." From page 7 of Poverty in an Age of Globalization, a PDF file I found via the World Bank Group's Globalization site:

Role of Globalization. While trade integration does not appear to increase vulnerability, and foreign direct investment flows have been remarkably stable, integration with financial markets can increase the propensity to develop crises (figure 7). The increased susceptibility to and costs of crises are due to inadequacies in the domestic policy and institutional framework and larger and more volatile private capital flows. Although the increased prevalence of financial crises has not raised GDP volatility (with the exception of East Asia), it can have a large detrimental impact on the poor both through output declines and the socialization of large resolution costs (see figure 8). Beyond these aggregate effects, globalization can increase insecurity of particular groups, especially workers, in a more footloose and fast changing world.

China has seen what happened to the Russian economy. It's fared no better under European-style capitalism than it did under the previous imposed-from-above economic system, communism. Even Japan, the model for such head transplants, is dealing with the social, political and economic repercussions of flipping its economic model after World War II.

The pattern typically goes like this:

1. Huge direct foreign investment in third world country focuses economic activity into areas deemed most efficient by investors
2. Importation of foreign goods to suck the investment back out of the country
3. Third world country gets money-drunk
4. The inequalities between the nouveau rich local traders, the old school local leaders and the left out local citizens play hell with the society
5. Third world nation's economy is declared unstable
6. Direct foreign investment pulls back
7. Third world nation, now dependant of foreign trade, must make deep social and political changes which acknowledge the primacy of the European-American-Global Economy and Organization over their own
8. WE 0WN UR AZZ

It seems, in the process of watching all this, China has made an interesting discovery: the nature of the game makes China a part of it. It seems to me they've been dealing with the West at arms length, rebuffing requests to speed the opening of their markets yet continuing at their own pace to open the markets of their own selection, learning the ropes and landscape. China has realized that, at least now in its formative stages, the "New World Order" needs China's economic activity to be in the mix more than it needs to 0wn it. This makes China a player rather than a piece.

And local to Southeast Asia, the USofA is like this big, strong, well armed guy that comes around every couple of weeks for his cut, while China is like this wiry guy with a baseball bat that lives down the block.

Anyway…

China Trades Its Way to Power
By JASON T. SHAPLEN and JAMES LANEY

North Korea was high on the agenda for the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, during her trip to China, South Korea and Japan last week. But while the North's nuclear weapons program presents a difficult test, it masks a broader and far greater challenge for the Bush administration, one with significant implications for the United States, the region and the world.

At its heart, the challenge reflects China's emergence as a power broker in the region. The Bush administration can couch Beijing's new role in whatever politically advantageous language it wishes, but, ultimately, it comes down to this: China's influence is rapidly rising and America's is rapidly declining. While this realization may be unpleasant for Washington, the sooner administration officials accept this reality the faster they can deal with it. Unfortunately, they have virtually ignored East Asia, preoccupied as they are with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trade numbers help explain the transformation in Asia. Within six years, China's economy will be double that of Germany's, now the world's third largest. By 2020, it is expected to surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy. Japan already imports more from China than it does from the United States. And China has become the largest trading partner of South Korea, the world's 12th-largest economy. Clearly, the juggernaut has already begun.

Why are these statistics important? Because while Mao once claimed that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, today's leaders in China know it also grows from trade. Tokyo and Seoul know this, too. Aware that China is now vital to their economic well-being, they are no longer as willing as they once were to position themselves opposite Beijing, even if this means going against Washington. Put another way, while the Bush administration still thinks of the United States as the sole superpower in a unipolar world, Tokyo and Seoul do not share this view. To them, the United States and China are both powers to be reckoned with in a bipolar Asia.

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It's not exactly the Triangle Trade, but the motivation is the same: cheap labor for the jobs the Citizens of the Empire generally find beneath them in pay, status or both. The impact on Africa of losing these professionals at the current rate is devastating…spend any amount of time in a hospital and you'll know how vital nurses are. But instead of paying them properly and/or keeping the working conditions sane, it's much less expensive to import folks.

This is about England's happy practice of recruiting in Africa to cover their own nursing shortage, but the USofA participates in the harvest as well.

An Exodus of African Nurses Puts Infants and the Ill in Peril
By CELIA W. DUGGER

ILONGWE, Malawi — Six women suddenly went into the final, agonized minutes of childbirth. Hlalapi Kunkeyani was the only nurse. There were no doctors.

Panicky cries rent the fetid air of the ward, a cavernous space jammed with 20 women laboring in beds, on benches, even on the concrete floor. Mrs. Kunkeyani worked with intense concentration, her face glowing with sweat, but she was overwhelmed.

Four of the babies arrived in a rush without her to ease their passage into the world. She found one trapped between his mother's legs with the umbilical cord wrapped around his chest. The face of another was smeared with his mother's feces. Yet a third lay still on his mother's breast, desperate to breathe. The nurse swiftly suctioned his tiny mouth until at last he gulped a breath.

Mrs. Kunkeyani, 36, is the stalwart nurse in charge of this capital city's main labor ward, where 10 overworked nurse midwives deliver more than 10,000 babies a year. But soon, she will vanish from this impoverished nation, joining thousands of African nurses streaming away from their AIDS-haunted continent for rich countries, primarily Britain.

"My friends are telling me there's work there, there's money there," said Mrs. Kunkeyani, who will soon make in a day's overtime in Britain what she earns in a month in Malawi. "They're telling me I'm wasting my time here."

The nursing staffs of public health systems across the poor countries of Africa — grossly insufficient to begin with — are being battered by numerous factors that include attrition and AIDS. But none are creating greater anxiety in Africa than the growing flight of nurses discouraged by low pay and grueling conditions.

The result of the nursing crisis — the neglect of the sick — is starkly apparent here on the dilapidated wards of Lilongwe Central Hospital, where a single nurse often looks after 50 or more desperately ill people. What is equally visible is the boon to Britain, where Lilongwe Central's former nurses minister to the elderly in the carpeted lounges of nursing homes and to patients in hushed private hospital rooms.

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Dr. Cosby got cut this weekend. On the other hand, I wasn't really talking about him, anyway.

I just want to say though, I haven't forgotten the teen pregnancy and spousal abuse issues that were raised. I said I need to approach them separately, and I will.

In fact, I haven't forgotten a single issue raised.

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July 11, 2004

ANALYSIS
Schwarzenegger shows he's a mortal in politics
After early success, governor tripped up by state's budget
- Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Sunday, July 11, 2004

Sacramento -- For the first time, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't look like an unstoppable political force.

After scoring early successes that clearly established him as the dominant power in Sacramento, Schwarzenegger has stumbled in his effort to fix the state budget mess that helped propel him into office.

Government finance experts say his proposed budget borrows too much money, postpones difficult decisions and looks strikingly similar to Gov. Gray Davis' final budgets, which were derided by Senate President John Burton as "get-out-of-town-alive'' plans.

Some lawmakers and Capitol insiders say the political food fight that always accompanies budget season has shown the actor-turned-governor to be thin-skinned, and, after eight sure-footed months in office, exposed him as a beginner struggling to learn the ins and outs of statehouse deal-making.

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The Science of Lost Lust

July 11, 2004

…Prairie voles are among the nearly 5% of mammals that mate for life. Think mallard ducks and many humans. Meadow voles, a related species, are libertine swingers. Think dogs and many humans.

Male meadow voles do not wear wedding rings and frequently forage for sexual partners, any receptive vole partners. They will mate with multiple partners multiple times, even outside Hollywood.

Scientists at Emory University in Atlanta inserted a kind of loyalty gene from the brains of male prairie voles that were reliably going steady into the brains of 11 promiscuous meadow voles. This created a startling vole reversal. Suddenly, party voles became soul mates, staying at home, helping around the nest, cuddling, even cleaning. Really.

Researchers reason that the gene allows the swinger voles to learn to associate the pleasurable feelings of sex with one particular mate, while their less-educated meadow vole cousins associate the pleasurable feelings with any female vole. Obviously, humans, being superior beings who live by vows and oaths, have no need for a loyalty gene. Though much of the world outside that university laboratory was totally unaware of the ongoing difficulties and implications of vole infidelity, the new research remains fascinating. Someday it might actually help cure human afflictions like autism, which hinders the ability to bond and form relationships.

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I don't know why it didn't occur to me to consider the timing of this challenge to mandatory minimum sentences.

Anyway…

White-Collar Prison Terms Under Debate
Determining the length of punishment is far from an exact science, and the standards may be changing
By Jonathan Peterson
Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2004

In late May, a 38-year-old Houston accountant and lawyer named Jamie Olis said goodbye to his wife and baby daughter and moved into a 79-square-foot cell at the Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas.

It might be his home until 2028.

"I take no pleasure in sentencing you to 292 months," U.S. District Judge Simeon Lake told the Dynegy Inc. executive as he handed down the sternest penalty yet in the post-Enron crackdown on corporate crime. "But my job is to follow the law."

Yet what it means for judges to follow the law in punishing white-collar defendants has suddenly been tossed into limbo. A recent Supreme Court decision has cast doubt on the legality of the guidelines that determine federal sentences. That development could affect individuals convicted in the Justice Department's campaign against corporate fraud — a crackdown punctuated by last week's indictment of former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth L. Lay.

Under the guidelines, a judge's calculation of investors' financial losses has largely determined the length of punishment. Late last month, the Supreme Court appeared to torpedo that approach, ruling that the facts used in sentencing must be considered by juries — and not judges alone — and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

"That is a difficult standard, and unlikely to be met," said Kirby Behre, a former U.S. prosecutor and coauthor of a book on federal sentencing for business crimes.

The Supreme Court case involved a crime far different from the kind Olis was convicted of.

The justices overturned an extra three years in prison given to a Washington state man who had kidnapped his estranged wife and their son. The trial judge had determined that the kidnapper displayed "deliberate cruelty" and therefore deserved prison time beyond the maximum 53 months set by the state's sentencing guidelines.

But the Supreme Court said it was up to a jury to decide all aspects of a person's guilt — a finding that many lawyers and court watchers believe extends to federal white-collar cases as well.

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First of a six-part series in the LA Times.

When the push for survival is a full-time job
What is it like to live on less than a dollar a day? Hundreds of millions in sub-Saharan Africa know. Their work is an endless cycle of bartering, hawking and scrounging to get by until tomorrow.
By Davan Maharaj
Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2004

Every day is a fight for pennies.

At sunrise, Adolphe Mulinowa is out hauling 10-gallon cans of sand at a construction site. It takes him an hour to earn 5 cents. Then he hustles to a roadside with a few plastic bottles of pink gasoline, which he hawks alongside dozens of other street vendors.

"Patron! Boss man! Gas! Gas! Gas!" Mulinowa barks as a battered Peugeot shudders past, kicking a spray of loose rocks at his face.

The car does not stop. Mulinowa, a short man in his mid-30s with sad, reddened eyes, squats down again beside his bottles. It is a scene repeated many times in the four hours it takes to sell them. Mulinowa pockets an additional 40 cents. Then, as the sun goes down, he heads to his evening job hawking used shoes and live chickens. A few more pennies.

After a 12-hour day, he returns home to his wife and six children with his earnings: about 70 cents and a bag of cornmeal swinging from his hand.

"We beat the belly pains today," he says in a tired mumble. "Tomorrow, more hard work."

Up and down the teeming streets of Goma, there is no real work as it is known in the West. There is only what everyone here calls se debrouiller — French for getting by, or eking a living out of nothing.

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Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC and lackey to major broadcasting megaliths, has something he's calling a blog.

Here's something both progressive AND conservative folks can find laughable together.

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Lakers Agree to Deal O'Neal to Miami Heat
By Tim Brown
Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2004

The Lakers have agreed in principle to trade Shaquille O'Neal to the Miami Heat, apparently ending a triumphant and tumultuous eight-year run in which the team won three NBA championships, team and league sources said Saturday.

In exchange for O'Neal, one of the greatest players of his era, the Lakers will receive forwards Lamar Odom and Caron Butler, center Brian Grant and a future first-round draft pick, the sources said. None of the players coming from Miami has been an All-Star. The deal cannot become official until late Tuesday night, when the league's two-week moratorium on trades and signings is lifted.

O'Neal arrived as a free agent from the Orlando Magic in 1996, heralding the beginning of what many envisioned as a long-running championship dynasty, one pairing the game's most imposing big man with another new arrival, teenage rookie guard Kobe Bryant. Their dominance took hold in the 1999-2000 season with the arrival of Coach Phil Jackson and the first of three consecutive titles, even as the two superstars occasionally feuded. But it all fell apart last season amid open rancor between the two and felony rape charges against Bryant.

The Lakers didn't comment on the deal.

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Contract Workers Seek the American Dream in Iraq
Small-town firefighters and police, weary of struggling to make ends meet, accept the risks.
By Faye Fiore
Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2004

CONWAY, S.C. — At 8 o'clock on a recent morning, firefighter Darrin Grant finished his last shift at Station 18, collected his county paycheck and walked out to make more money than most people in the remote Carolina "Low Country" would ever dream possible.

In a few days, he will take up his new post as a firefighter on a U.S. military base somewhere in Iraq. His current $1,600 monthly take-home pay will balloon to $9,000. In one year, he and his wife can break free of the financial pressures that have been dogging them — an endless struggle to pay too many bills with too little money.

But to do that, and maybe save enough to buy their first house, Grant had to make a choice he never thought he'd face — risking his life in a dangerous but lucrative war zone instead of slowly losing his shirt in a backwater economy. He lies awake at night wondering how, at 39, his options came to this.

"My family will make out much better while I am doing this. In one way, this is a dream come true" said Grant, a three-year Horry County Fire/Rescue veteran with three children under the age of eight. "But it is also going to be very hard for the next 365 days."

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