Prometheus 6   

Privatizing the military II

The money quote: Doug Brooks is president of the International Peace Operations Association, a nonprofit organization of private companies seeking to improve international peacekeeping efforts through greater privatization. He is a specialist on African security issues.

By Doug Brooks, 10/19/2003

THE US MILITARY has a long tradition of utilizing the private sector for military support. Even George Washington's army included private contractors who endured many of the same hardships and risks as the soldiers they served.

Today's military is more effective than ever, but more than two centuries after Washington, it still uses the private sector to support its operations with training, technical expertise, and logistical support. Other countries recognize the cost savings and capabilities benefits of outsourcing their military support requirements and are following the American example. The military services industry is evolving as well, now offering services in nontraditional areas such as enhancing United Nations peacekeeping, where the potential humanitarian benefits are astonishing.

The occupation efforts in Iraq have become a display case for outsourced military services.

In general, the contractors fall into three categories:

Support companies providing services such as logistics, supply, unexploded weapons disposal, or transportation. The vast majority of military service contracts fall into this category. Kellogg Brown & Root is the largest such company in Iraq, supporting the US military with everything from mail delivery to construction services.

Security companies providing defensive protection, such as bodyguards or security for industrial sites. Usually these companies rely on a handful of ex-military personnel from Western armies to train a much larger number of locals. In Iraq, for example, Erinys is using British and South Africans to train some 6,500 Iraqis to protect the oil pipeline running from Iraq to Turkey - a frequent guerrilla target.

Strategic service companies providing military training or direct military services for governments or multinational organizations. Two experienced companies, MPRI and Vinnell, are training the new Iraqi army, both in martial skill and in the proper role of the military in a democratic society.

These companies select their employees largely from the ample ranks of retired military personnel who bring with them useful knowledge and a sturdy willingness to endure risk. The employees are well aware of what they are getting into: Attacks in Iraq have killed several contractors alongside the US soldiers they have been supporting.

Some analysts predicted that this level of insecurity would cause the civilian companies to break their contracts and flee, leaving the military exposed without critical support services. But there has been no mass exodus of companies. More to the point: No one has published a single verifiable instance of a military service company missing or abandoning a contract. In conversations, Kellogg Brown & Root employees admitted that the threat level has indeed limited movement and thus the company's flexibility in addressing the US military's evolving needs. But despite the fact that two of their employees have been killed while carrying out their duties, they emphasize that Kellogg Brown & Root is ``in it for the long haul.''

More recently, we are seeing private security companies assuming many hazardous guard duties previously done by US military personnel. Museums do not need to be guarded by Abrams tanks when an Iraqi security guard working for a contractor can do the same job for less than one-50th of what it costs to maintain an American soldier. Hiring local guards gives Iraqis a stake in a successful future for their country. They use their pay to support their families and stimulate the economy. Perhaps most significantly, every guard means one less potential guerrilla.

But while Iraq may dominate the international pages of America's media, the greatest promise from private military services is in ending wars that rarely make the news.

Too often, the UN is blamed for failed peacekeeping operations, especially in Africa. This is unfair; the blame belongs at our own feet. Western militaries are the best trained and best equipped in the world, yet their governments are loath to contribute them to international peace operations.

The UN is forced to rely on soldiers from the world's poorest countries, who have far less training or equipment and lack critical military capabilities. As a result, UN peacekeepers in these ``Westernless'' operations have often been tragically ineffective and overwhelmed in places like Sierra Leone, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Without credible force, painstakingly crafted peace agreements fall apart in the face of recalcitrant warlords who profit from continued chaos.

Private military companies bring their valuable capabilities - helicopter services, aerial surveillance, logistics support - along with a willingness to sustain UN operations the West has abandoned. In some cases these services even involve armed peacekeepers, but always under legitimate international mandates and always under the same rules of engagement as normal peacekeepers.

With more than 3 million civilian deaths in Congo's conflict alone, disparaging this willing resource without offering an alternative is positively ruthless. The UN is finding military service companies to be as indispensable as George Washington did more than two centuries ago.

Doug Brooks is president of the International Peace Operations Association, a nonprofit organization of private companies seeking to improve international peacekeeping efforts through greater privatization. He is a specialist on African security issues.

Privatizing the military I

Money quote: Indeed, the ratio of private contractors to US military personnel in the Gulf is roughly 1 to 10. Overall, the private military industry is actually our largest ally in the ``coalition of the willing'' (or perhaps we should rename it the ``coalition of billing''). For example, Global Risk Managment of the United Kingdom has 1,100 personnel in Iraq, including 500 Nepalese Gurkha troops and 500 Fijian soldiers, ranking it sixth among troop donors.

By P.W. Singer, 10/19/2003

THE IRAQ WAR has been a stunning revelation of trends that could shape the next decades of global politics and conflict - from the revolution in military technologies to the challenges presented by stability operations. However, one underexplored current is the extent to which warfare itself is being privatized.

Breaking out of the ``guns for hire'' mold of traditional mercenaries, corporations now sell the sort of services that soldiers used to provide. These worldwide businesses range from small firms that supply teams of commandos for hire to large corporations that run military supply chains. This huge, new ``privatized military industry'' has operated in more than 50 countries, from Albania to Zambia. But its largest client is the US taxpayer: Over the last decade our government has signed more than 3,000 contracts with private military firms.

Iraq is not just the biggest US military commitment in generations, it is also the biggest market for private military services - ever. Before the war, private firms helped with the invasion's training and planning. During the war, private military employees handled everything from feeding and housing US troops to maintaining our most sophisticated weapons systems, like the B-2 stealth bomber or the Global Hawk UAV.

Private firms now play an even more stunning variety of roles in the Iraq occupation. One example is the controversial Dyncorp firm, a Virginia-based company whose employees were implicated in sex crimes in the Balkans; they are now training the post-Saddam police force. Other firms are training the new Iraqi army and paramilitary forces and guarding critical facilities.

Indeed, the ratio of private contractors to US military personnel in the Gulf is roughly 1 to 10. Overall, the private military industry is actually our largest ally in the ``coalition of the willing'' (or perhaps we should rename it the ``coalition of billing''). For example, Global Risk Managment of the United Kingdom has 1,100 personnel in Iraq, including 500 Nepalese Gurkha troops and 500 Fijian soldiers, ranking it sixth among troop donors.

The expansion of this private military industry has its positive aspects, such as specialization or the promise of cost savings through competition. More important, it has arisen in a time when there is a gap between the supply and demand for professional forces. In lieu of calling up more reserves, private assistance has helped our nation meet unprecedented new global commitments.

But privatization also comes with risks. In particular are poor accounting and accountability, a now common thread in the conduct of both business and our government. The absence of oversight may make Iraq the ``Big Dig'' of the private military industry - a profit bonanza for the firms, but a loss on the public policy ledger.

A myriad of questions surround our dealings with the industry. For example, the Pentagon does not even know how many private military employees, or foreign subcontractors, it has working for it. Likewise, there is no requirement to reveal the number of private military casualties (at least five killed in Iraq by unofficial media accounts) or, in turn, the number of Iraqis killed by their employees.

This lack of accounting also means that we don't know the number of contractors who have either declined to deploy or left Iraq because of their security concerns.

This last problem raises an important concern. Contractors who did not deliver - because of issues ranging from staffing difficulties to higher than expected insurance premiums - left American troops with less support than they enjoyed in past wars. When our soldiers were still eating field rations and lacked running water, months after the president's infamous aircraft carrier landing, the blame fell on an overreliance on contractors. Contractors are not within the chain of command and thus cannot be ordered into combat zones.

The same problems cross over into the Enron-like attitude toward financial costs. While one of the rationales for outsourcing military functions is cost savings, the evidence is either absent or limited. Even as we set greater goals for future outsourcing, we do not know if we are actually saving money.

However, we do know that contracts have often been awarded with limited or no free-market competition, and frequently to politically connected firms. For example, the US Army logistics contract was expanded to employ Halliburton to run the oil services part of Iraqi reconstruction - without competitive bid. So far, more than $1 billion in added revenue has gone to Vice President Cheney's old firm, in which he has continuing financial interests.

Better standards and accounting must be used in our military outsourcing decisions. Two core questions must always be asked: First, is it in our best national security and public interest to privatize? Second, how can we ensure that privatization will save money? Unfortunately, our CEO-filled defense leadership has forgotten Economics 101. It has outsourced first and not even bothered to ask questions later.

In sum, we have a distortion of the free market that would shock Adam Smith, an interface between business and government that would awe the Founding Fathers, and a shift in the military-industrial complex that must have President Eisenhower rolling in his grave. Without change, this is a recipe for bad policy, and bad business.

P.W. Singer is national security fellow at The Brookings Institution and author of ``Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Private Military Industry.''

Let's get this No Child Left Behind crap out of the way

Student Test Scores Jump
Nearly 80% of California schools meet Academic Performance Index goals, twice as many as last year. Still, many pupils continue to lag.
By Duke Helfand and Cara Mia DiMassa
Times Staff Writers

October 25, 2003

California high schools, which had been the weak link in efforts to raise achievement levels, showed significant signs of improvement this year on state tests, according to results released Friday.

More than two-thirds of high school campuses met test score goals set by the state, twice as many schools as last year, the new statistics showed.

Teachers and administrators attributed the improved results on the state's Academic Performance Index to an intense focus on California's academic standards in English and math, which spell out the skills and material students are supposed to know at each grade level. For the first time, those standards accounted this year for most questions on annual standardized tests.

Experts also pointed to students' growing familiarity with the 5-year-old mainly multiple-choice exams, noting that schools regularly give practice tests to get students comfortable with the format.

Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction, said that such "teaching to the test" makes sense now that all schools are aware of what students need to learn. "If you are teaching to the standards, you are simultaneously teaching to the test," O'Connell said.

And how much of THIS tax cut goes to the middle class?

House Leaders Are Pushing to Cut Corporate Taxes
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 -- House Republican leaders are nearing agreement on a bill to give nearly $60 billion in additional tax breaks to corporations, brushing aside Democratic complaints that the measure would deepen the federal budget deficit.

According to a draft circulated among Republican lawyers, the bill, which is expected to come up for a vote next week at the House Ways and Means Committee, would gradually reduce the corporate tax rate for most companies from 35 to 32 percent.

It would also relax or abolish a number of longstanding tax regulations on foreign profits of American multinationals, a move that Congressional tax analysts say could save companies more than $40 billion in taxes over the next decade.

The intended beneficiaries are companies that manufacture products in the United States and small businesses. But the definition of manufacturing includes movies, software, oil and gas refining and engineering services. That means the beneficiaries would also include Time Warner, Disney, Microsoft and giant engineering companies like Bechtel and Fluor.

The proposals are in the latest draft of a bill to replace a tax break for American exporters that the World Trade Organization has declared an illegal trade subsidy. The European Union has threatened to retaliate with up to $4 billion a year in tariffs on American products if the United States fails to repeal the old break.

But the original issue has become a magnet for lobbying from competing business groups, all looking to either protect their existing tax breaks or obtain some new ones.

Welcome to the club

Only Ari Fleischer ever surpassed Rummy's ability to put off questions. The problem Republicans have is, they never even asked any until now.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 -- Last Friday, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and his top Democratic colleague sent a private letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that questioned the propriety of comments made by a top Pentagon general, William G. Boykin.

Mr. Rumsfeld not only did not respond, but on Tuesday, after the chairman, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, made the letter public, the defense secretary said he knew nothing about it. "It may be somewhere around the building," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on Capitol Hill, "but I am not aware of it."

The episode was described this week by senior Republican Congressional officials as emblematic of what some now openly call the high-handedness and lack of respect shown by Mr. Rumsfeld, whose steps and missteps in the past month have drawn increasing Republican ire.

On issues that include General Boykin (who has likened the war against Islamic militants to a battle against Satan) and his own views about the war on terrorism (and the gap between Mr. Rumsfeld's glossy public assessments and the more roughly hewn private views that leaked out this week), senior Republicans have joined Democrats in openly complaining that the Pentagon has left them in the dark and vulnerable on critical and sensitive political issues.

Better than expected

Then again, rising money is the Republican's greatest skill.

Filed at 9:56 a.m. ET

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Nudged by the United States, donors came through Friday with pledges big and small for Iraq but were falling short of the estimated $56 billion needed to rebuild the country.

While the pledges were greater than expected, many were in the form of loans or debt relief for a nation already burdened with an estimated $120 billion in debt run up during Saddam Hussein's rule.

Law 'n' Order

This essay explains my understanding the attitudes one can take toward laws in general. I think the reasoning in it has bearing on the comments to this post.

I wrote it in 1995. I wrote a lot in 1995.

There's a channel on my local cable system on which various colleges and universities present distance learning programs. One morning I was flipping around the channels and came across Business Law 1 from Regis University. It was the first class of the course, and the teachers did a brief overview of why law should be studied relative to business, or at all.

What an enlightening discussion.

Key things I got out of it:

1. Law is important because we are affected by it at every point
2. Getting to understand how the law works can change it from an adversary to a force with which you can enhance your business
3. When studying law, the answer you get isn't as important as the analysis you do, because the results of applying legal principals depends on the actual events you apply them to
4. Law consists of two parts. . . the part that defines rights and obligations, and the part that tell how to invoke the first part (statuatory and procedural)
5. Law and ethics do not coincide, and law is enforcable while ethics are not

The reasons these were key statements to me is:

1- This one is obvious

2, 3- These points indicate that folks are actually being instructed in creative interpretation of the law. . . it was said "when the facts change, the law changes" on the program. What that means is that, since folks are being taught to interpret the law in the best possible way for their business, we couldn't expect anything from affirmative action laws other than what we got. . . a twisting of the intent into whatever cost the companies least to implement. . . In other words, quotas rather than a real analysis of job requirements and elimination of bias. It means we can't expect anything from civil rights legislation other than what we got. . . a twisting of the laws intended to insure minorities are protected from the tyranny of the majority into assurances for the majority that the minority will never have anything they don't.

4- The law can state you have rights, but that does you no good (literally!) if you don't know the method of invoking the law.

5- The law is not going to make sure that the morally correct thing as you see it will happen. At best, it will make sure that the legal thing will happen. . . but since "when the facts change, the law changes," there's no way to know what that is in the final analysis.

More thoughts: a major complaint Black folks have is "as soon as you learn the rules, they change them." Yes, because Black people knowing the rules is a new fact, and when the facts change, the law changes.

We black folks tend to think of law as absolute. . . it's equally binding on everyone. As you can see, though, to the mainstream society the law is NOT absolute. What is actually absolute is the attitude you take toward the law.

I'm sorry, but I must

I just a little while ago got a visitor who was searhing for:

"articles on why don,t we fall into to space"

Things I'm going to do

Sometime in the next month I'm going to buy some spell-checking components for Delphi because I'm getting really pissed at these attempts at desktop clients for Movable Type.

I had begun work on such a client when I was on Blogger, then I ran across wBloggar, which is a wonderful thing for sites that use the Blogger API. But it almost always times out when I post with the published status, especially if there are trackbacks involved. Plus it doesn't deal in all the fields Movable Type uses.

SharpMT has no spell checker and opens a browser to edit posts, which sort of defeats the purpose. And last time I tried the current beta it doesn't just allow you to save your drafts to a file, it DEMANDS it, even if you're posting to publish.

Zempt is close, but it uses the cross platform GUI library whose edit fields don't act quite like Windows--like pressing the home key takes you to the beginning of a paragraph rather than the beginning of a line. I understand why, but it's annoying. And it don't convert high ASCII to HTML entities, and so posts will choke more frequently than I care to put up with anymore.

And I ain't linking to any of 'em in this post because I don't want to hear it.

My programming stuff, with a five year exception, has been for research and self edification rather than employment. And about once a year I write something useful and strictly tailored for me. Looks like this is my end of year project.

Conservative clarity

Sebastian Holsclaw is EXACTLY the type of conservative I want to see gain more exposure. That he's a regular at Calpudit and got a link from him on launching his new blog is a good start, and I meant to check him out then. But a quote on Cobb lifted my eyebrow and made me check him out just now.

I suspect Holsclaw will be my conservative Safranski (who, BTW, has forced me to use Blogstreet to create an RSS feed) because when I read stuff like this:

…I see someone I can engage honestly. Not being in denial gets you huge respect from me.

The name game

I have a problem with my last name, which is that people insist on misspelling it. I have handed people a business card and they will misspell it while looking at the damn card.

Baldilocks has a different problem with her last name—being African, and therefore unfamiliar-sounding to most, it strikes many people as being Chinese. This can fuck up people's mind rather badly.

Most people are polite and ask the origin straight out. Then, there are some that are just plain rude. Here's an example of the latter that occurred when I worked for United Airlines.

You idiot

Justice for Justice Brown
Debra J. Saunders
Thursday, October 23, 2003
�2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

BE CLEAR why the Congressional Black Caucus and other so-called civil-rights groups oppose California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown's appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It is not because Brown wrote a decision that upheld Proposition 209, the voter-approved initiative that ended racial and gender preferences in California state hiring, contracting and admissions. It's not because she was on the losing side of a 4-3 California Supreme Court ruling that overturned a law requiring parental consent for a minor's abortion.

What really gets under caucus members' thin skins is that Janice Rogers Brown is a black conservative.

If a white candidate held those same positions, do you think the "so-called" civil rights organizations would oppose that candidate's nomination?

Of course they would.

I just LOVE it when Conservatives play the race card.

Nice try, Mr. Friedman

Free Advice to G.O.P.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Republicans seem to think they don't have to think when it comes to Iraq. They only have to applaud the president and whack the press for not reporting more good news from Baghdad � and everything will be fine. Well, think again.

I've often pointed out the good we have done in Iraq and unabashedly hoped for more. No regrets. But some recent trends leave me worried. Unfortunately, there are few Democrats to press my worries on the administration. Most Democrats either opposed the war (a perfectly legitimate position) or supported it and are now trying to disown it. That means the only serious opposition can come from Republicans, so they'd better get focused � because there is nothing about the Bush team's performance in Iraq up to now that justifies a free pass. If Republicans don't get serious on Iraq, they will wake up a year from now and find all their candidates facing the same question: "How did your party lose Iraq?"

If I were a Republican senator, here's what I'd tell the Bush team:

� What in God's name are you doing forcing Iraqis to accept Turkish peacekeeping troops? Are you nuts? Not only will Turkish troops in Iraq alienate the Kurds, our best friends, but they will rile the Shiites and Sunnis as well. Honor is hugely important in Iraqi society, and bringing in Turkish soldiers � Iraq's former colonizers � to order around Iraqis would be a disaster. "If we bring in the Turks, it will bring back bad memories," notes Yitzhak Nakash, a Brandeis University professor and author of one of the best Iraq books, "The Shi'is of Iraq." "Worse, a Turkish presence in Iraq will only prompt the Iranians, Syrians and Saudis to try to increase their influence. That is no recipe for a stable country."

It's time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq's Army � which didn't even fight us � and declare: "We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we're inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis."

� Attacks on our forces are getting more deadly, not less. Besides those killed, we've had 900 wounded or maimed. We need to take this much more seriously. We're not facing some ragtag insurrection. We're facing an enemy with a command and control center who is cleverly picking off our troops and those Iraqi leaders and foreigners cooperating with us. Either we put in the troops needed to finish the war, and project our authority, or we get the Iraqi Army to do the job � but pretending that we're just "mopping up" is a dangerous illusion.

� The neocons need a neo-Baath. I'm glad we banned the Baath Party, but the ban was not done right. It needed to be accompanied by a clear process for people who simply joined the Baath to secure government jobs, like school directors, to recant and be rehabilitated. Just tossing these people out has purged thousands of technocrats, weakened the secular middle class and left a power vacuum filled by religious groups. Also, Iraq needs a party that can express the aspirations of Iraq's Sunni minority and give them a stake in the new state. Right now, the Sunni mainstream in Iraq isn't sure how it fits into any new order, so the worst elements are opposing us and the best are apprehensively sitting on the fence.

� "There is now a struggle for power emerging within the Shiite community," says Mr. Nakash, "between those clerics and secular leaders who are ready to give the Americans a chance and a grass-roots leadership that wants to challenge both the Americans and the traditional Shia hierarchy. This grass-roots leadership is seeking control of mosques, followers, religious authority and income from religious taxes. Iraq is rapidly moving toward the politics of militias and arms. This trend has to be stopped."

Bottom line: We still haven't established a moderate political center in Iraq ready to openly embrace the progressive U.S. agenda for Iraq and openly defend it. That center is potentially there, but because, so far, we have failed to provide a secure enough environment, or a framework for Iraqis to have the national dialogue they need to build a better Iraq, it has not emerged. We need to fix this situation fast. Instead of applauding without thinking, Republicans should be telling that to the president.

Facts on the ground

River at Baghdad Burning:

Demonstrations in Baghdad...
Thousands were demonstrating today- I think near the Ministry of Oil (though someone said it was somewhere else). There were even women demonstarting because a female has been detained for refusing to have her bag checked by the troops... The troops began firing into the air and fighting suddenly broke out between the mob and some troops... we still don't know what's happening.

What's this about?

Civilization...
I heard some more details about the demonstration today� The whole situation was outrageous and people are still talking about it.

Ever since the occupation, employees of the Ministry of Oil are being searched by troops- and lately, dogs. The employees have been fed up� the ministry itself is a virtual fortress now with concrete, barbed wire and troops. The employees stand around for hours at a time, waiting to be checked and let inside. Iraqis have gotten accustomed to the 'security checks'. The checks are worse on the females than they are on the males because we have to watch our handbags rummaged through and sometimes personal items pulled out and examined while dozens of people stand by, watching.

Today, one of the women who work at the ministry, Amal, objected when the troops brought forward a dog to sniff her bag. She was carrying a Quran inside of it and to even handle a Quran, a Muslim has to be 'clean' or under 'widhu'. 'Widhu' is the process of cleansing oneself for prayer or to read from the Quran. We simply wash the face, neck, arms up to the elbows and feet with clean water and say a few brief 'prayers'. Muslims carry around small Qurans for protection and we've been doing it more often since the war- it gives many people a sense of security. It doesn't not mean the person is a 'fundamentalist' or 'extremist'.

As soon as Amal protested about letting the dog sniff her bag because of the Quran inside, the soldier grabbed the Quran, threw it out of the bag and proceeded to check it. The lady was horrified and the dozens of employees who were waiting to be checked moved forward in a rage at having the Quran thrown to the ground. Amal was put in hand-cuffs and taken away and the raging mob was greeted with the butts of rifles.

The Iraqi Police arrived to try to intervene, and found the mob had increased in number because it had turned from a security check into a demonstration. One of the stations showed police officers tearing off their "IP" badge- a black arm badge to identify them as Iraqi Police and shouting at the camera, "We don't want the badge- we signed up to help the people, not see our Quran thrown to the ground�"

Some journalists say that journalists' cameras were confiscated by the troops�

This is horrible. It made my blood boil just hearing about it- I can't imagine what the people who were witnessing it felt. You do not touch the Quran. Why is it so hard to understand that some things are sacred to people?!

How would the troops feel if Iraqis began flinging around Holy Bibles or Torahs and burning crosses?! They would be horrified and angry because you do not touch a person's faith�

But that's where the difference is: the majority of Iraqis have a deep respect for other cultures and religions� and that's what civilization is. It's not mobile phones, computers, skyscrapers and McDonalds; It's having enough security in your own faith and culture to allow people the sanctity of theirs�

Bookies for Bush

Once at Arm's Length, Wall Street Is Bush's Biggest Donor
By GLEN JUSTICE

This article was reported by Glen Justice, Patrick McGeehan and Landon Thomas Jr. and written by Mr. Justice.

A day after a chilly reception at the United Nations last month, President Bush received a warmer greeting from a New York group that he had been keeping at arm's length: about a dozen leaders of the biggest firms on Wall Street.

That private meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria, to discuss the economy, is just one illustration of how the president and Wall Street seem to have grown on each other.

…A study to be released today shows that the financial community has surpassed all other groups, including lawyers and lobbyists, as the top industry among Mr. Bush's elite fund-raisers. The list of those generating $100,000 and $200,000 now includes chief executives like Henry M. Paulson of Goldman Sachs, John J. Mack of Credit Suisse First Boston and Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, whose firm has already raised twice the amount for Mr. Bush's re-election that it did during the entire 2000 campaign cycle.

"It's really a question of policy, that's what's driving this," said Marc Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association, which represents more than 650 securities firms. "It's a pro-investor policy."

What are the odds that there's an actual patriot in the White House somewhere?

What are the odds that the leaker of the Rummy memo is connected to the party or parties that leaked to the world of the existance of the Plame leakers?

Fred "Rerun" Berry

Just say no

California Judicial Nominee Questioned Sharply
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

1:28 PM PDT, October 22, 2003

WASHINGTON -- California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals here, ran into skeptical questioning from Senate Democrats today for speeches in which she referred to the New Deal era as "the triumph of our socialist revolution" and disputed whether the Bill of Rights applied to the States.

Three years ago, Brown described herself in another speech as a "true conservative" who believes that "where the government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates....The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she found Brown's pronouncements troubling.

"Your speeches are extraordinarily intemperate for a sitting justice," Feinstein told Brown. "Is that the real you?"

Feinstein and the minority Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they would be reluctant to approve her nomination to a federal appeals court in which judges determine the fate of many government rules and regulations.

Answering with a soft-spoken calm, Brown, 54, said she tried to be provocative at times, especially when speaking to groups of young conservatives. But the views she expressed were hers, she added.

"I don't have a speechwriter. I do these myself. And it speaks for itself," she said of her catalog of speeches.

The state justice also sought to assure liberal-leaning senators that her conservative views would not shape her rulings as a judge.[P6: How is that possible?]

I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for this guy

Ferry Captain May Lose Job Over His Refusal to Talk
By RANDY KENNEDY and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

City officials said yesterday that they were preparing to fire the captain of the Staten Island ferry that crashed into a pier last week, killing 10 passengers, because of his refusal to talk to investigators. The officials also said they would begin a series of new safety measures on the ferries today to ensure that no pilot is ever left alone at the wheel.

Iris Weinshall, the city's transportation commissioner, said her agency was "drawing up charges as we speak" to dismiss Capt. Michael J. Gansas, 38, whose whereabouts in the minutes before the boat crashed with an assistant at the wheel remain unclear. Captain Gansas did not arrive for an interview on Tuesday with the National Transportation Safety Board, leading the agency to issue a subpoena. The captain, citing medical problems, again refused to be interviewed yesterday, and did not appear at a scheduled interview on Staten Island with a lawyer from the city's Transportation Department.

Later, both Ms. Weinshall and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg angrily criticized the captain's conduct in the aftermath of the Oct. 15 crash.

"It's an outrage that somebody who can give us information to perhaps find out how we can improve service refuses to talk, and a person like that has no business working for this city," Mr. Bloomberg said.

I wonder if Boykin will apologize six or seven times

The way they're handling this reminds me of the way they handled Trent Lott's comments. But this article makes it clear Rummy's as much a target as Boykin.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- President Bush said on Wednesday that he disagreed with comments by a top Pentagon general who had cast the war on terrorism in religious terms, but the Defense Department said the officer would not be reassigned.

The comments by Mr. Bush were his first in public about Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting. General Boykin has likened the battle against Islamic militants to a Christian struggle against Satan and said at evangelical gatherings that a militant Muslim militia leader in Somalia worshiped an "idol" and not "a real God."

Mr. Bush, speaking before a group of moderate Muslims during a stopover in Bali, Indonesia, said the general's comments "didn't reflect my opinion," adding, "Look, it just doesn't reflect what the government thinks."

The president's remarks came as some Congressional Republicans had begun to suggest that General Boykin move aside temporarily or even resign. "The political reality up here is that no one thinks Boykin will survive," said a senior Congressional Republican official.

Calls for the general's temporary reassignment have come from, among others, Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee. But according to the Pentagon's spokesman, Larry DiRita, "nobody's thinking about asking him to step aside."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on Tuesday that General Boykin had requested an internal investigation, and that he had agreed. But Mr. Rumsfeld declined to criticize the general's comments.

The defense secretary was scheduled to meet behind closed doors later on Wednesday with senators from both parties for a regular meeting on Iraq, and Congressional officials said they expected the issue of General Boykin to be addressed.

Two Republican Congressional officials said they believed that Mr. Rumsfeld had made a mistake in refusing to criticize General Boykin, and that he had allowed personal loyalty to get in the way of political wisdom.

One senior Republican official said anger had redoubled concern about Mr. Rumsfeld that has until now focused on the secretary's reluctance to accept responsibility for setbacks in Iraq.

Another said the sense was that Mr. Rumsfeld was increasingly becoming a problem for the administration.

General Boykin, a highly decorated officer who was confirmed by the Senate in June as a deputy under secretary of defense, came under criticism last week, after NBC News and The Los Angeles Times reported details of his comments during several speeches before Christian evangelical churches.

On Friday, the Pentagon released a written statement in which the general said he wanted to apologize "to those who have been offended by my statements."

But he made clear in a written statement that he had no intention of resigning, and that he believed that at least some of his remarks had been taken out of context.

Religious leaders from many denominations have said General Boykin's words run the danger of inflaming anti-American sentiment across the Islamic world.

Most Democratic senators show some sense

Class-Action Legislation Fails in Senate
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Senate Democrats effectively killed a measure on Wednesday that would push certain class-action lawsuits out of state courts and into the federal judiciary, handing President Bush and the Republican leadership a significant defeat.

The bill failed on a procedural motion by just one vote when the Republican leadership got 59 of the 60 votes needed to block a Democratic filibuster.

"We just witnessed a missed opportunity to address a critically and vitally important issue," Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, said after the vote. He said he was "clearly disappointed" by the outcome, but vowed to try to reach a compromise.

President Bush has made changes in tort law a big feature of his agenda in Congress, and it is a staple of his speeches. Business groups had aggressively lobbied for the class-action legislation, which would remove most class-action suits with at least 100 plaintiffs and at least $5 million at stake from state courts and relocate them in the federal courts. Legal experts say federal courts offer a more favorable climate to corporations. The House had already approved a version of the bill.

The bill would also cover "mass tort" suits involving personal injury, like those filed by women who believe they have been harmed by silicone breast implants. The mass tort provision had been stripped from the bill when it was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Republican leaders restored it before they brought the bill to the floor.

"Mass tort is something most of our colleagues didn't bargain for, but it's in this bill," Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said during the debate. He added, "This legislation is killing a housefly with a shotgun."

…The vote was a cliff-hanger; Republicans knew going in that they had 57 votes. Business lobbyists waited nervously in the reception room outside the Senate chamber to learn the outcome, as did lobbyists for trial lawyers and consumer groups.

Eight Democrats and one independent, Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont, joined 50 Republicans in voting to allow the bill to move forward; Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama was the only Republican to favor blocking the bill.

Several Democrats who were lobbied hard by business leaders, including Charles E. Schumer of New York, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, voted against the bill.

Mrs. Landrieu cast the final vote against the bill, and complained afterward that Senate Republicans were unwilling to make certain concessions to win her vote. Among other things, Mrs. Landrieu wanted the mass tort provision stripped from the bill, and she wanted a provision that would allow unclaimed settlement coupons to be donated to charity, not claimed by the lawyers or the defendants, as is now the case.

"They knew my vote was important. I knew my vote was important," she said, adding, "I wanted to go last, because I wanted to send a signal that the Landrieu vote would not have been that difficult to get."

Restartin' Stuff

In the "Best Of" box to the right is The Reparations Series, which links to a series of posts on, of course, reparations for Black folks. I took the original posts and the HaloScan comments and cobbled together some permanent pages. I also imported the posts, but of course they're buried under the posts that accrue like barnacles around here.

Well, a couple of folks have located the imported versions. A trackback to this post and a comment to this one have been made, and since the topic is one of my favorite cans of worms I'm thinking about whether or not to revisit it. Seriously, it was covered pretty well last time, by myself and the commenters. I'll answer the commenter later, cuz I got stuff ta do right now.

Good for a chuckle

The Truth Is � Don�t Jump Onto a Moving Truck
Howard Dean Decides to Have Some Fun � But it Backfires
By Marc. J. Ambinder
ABCNEWS.com
Oct. 20� Like other candidates, former Vt. Gov. Howard Dean can be a bundle of energy on the campaign trail; he often leads his staff, and not the other way around.

But today in New Hampshire, his exuberance, and the lack of a ubiquitous, protective Secret Service detail, got the best of him, at least for a minute. According to one staffer's recounting of the story, Dean "just disappeared into thin air."

The former governor had arrived a few minutes before he was scheduled to speak to an organizing conference at St. Anselm College near Manchester. He was chatting along the side of the entrance road with a throng of college students, all Dean supporters, when a large red box truck began a slow turn into the parking lot.

By Dean's own recounting, he saw the truck slow down, and "decided to have a little fun." As the truck swung by, Dean hopped onto a running board on its rear.

"I thought the guy was going to pull up 5 feet and I was going to get off and say, 'Ha ha ha,' " he said. A playful prank for the benefit of a friendly crowd.

The Joke�s on Dean
But then the truck took off. It accelerated to about 20 miles per hour, and zoomed out around the corner.

Speaking of Google

I've been getting hella hits from Google, so I looked into it. If you search on "Prometheus," my old URL at earthlink.net is the third listing; right behind http://www.prometheus.com/, which is now Blackboard and sells distance learning software, and Prometheus Books.

This site is number eight, and is listed like this:

Prometheus 6
Prometheus 6. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is
the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same.

Open Source (and in particular, phpMyAdmin) rocks!

Mysterious system outages yesterday left my server temporarily ina time warp; specifically, the system date was 9/10/2004. I posted stuff and changed the date, and some folks may have caught me before I caught it, but that's okay.

What wasn't okay is that comments posted with that date as well. Which didn't bother me until today, when I realized it screwed my Live Comment Threads box.

Enter Google, and from there phpMyAdmin. Schweet. Me and SQL get along pretty well. A quick update statement and a quick rebuild of the index page and VIOLA!

I still don't care about the individual pages. If someone adds a comment, they'll rebuild and if not, then who cares?

I deleted phpMyAdmin thought. All that power is tempting and I could screw things royally.

Civil disobedience re: electronic voting

Kerim at Keywords, a blog I'm finding quite good, gives notice of the Electronic Civil Disobedience taking place at Swarthmore College. You can, and should, give the students a hand, as it can help in a whole bag of ways:

Check the excerpts and see if you don't feel you should send that email.

Excerpts from the Diebold Documents

�Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed.� [source]

�I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations.� [source]

�I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in place, the Global [Election Management System] working environment will continue to be a chaotic mess. Global management has and will be doing the best to keep their jobs at the expense of employees. Unrealistic goals will be placed on current employees, they will fail to achieve them. If Diebold wants to keep things the same for the time being, this will only compound an already dysfunctional company. Due to the lack of leadership, vision, and self-preserving nature of the current management, the future growth of this company will continue to stagnate until change comes.� [source]

�[T]he bugzilla historic data recovery process is complete. Some bugs were irrecoverably lost and they will have to be re-found and re-submitted, but overall the loss was relatively minor.� [source]

�28 of 114 or about 1 in 4 precincts called in this AM with either memory card issues "please re-insert", units that wouldn't take ballots - even after recycling power, or units that needed to be recycled. We reburned 7 memory cards, 4 of which we didn't need to, but they were far enough away that we didn't know what we'd find when we got there (bad rover communication).� [source]

�If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.� [source]

�I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".� [source]

�[...] while reading some of Paranoid Bev�s scribbling.� [source]

�Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better.� [source] (emphasis added)

�4K Smart cards which had never been previously programmed are being recognized by the Card Manager as manager cards. When a virgin card from CardLogix is inserted into a Spyrus (have tried CM-0-2-9 and CM-1-1-1) the prompt "Upgrade Mgr Card?" is displayed. Pressing the ENTER key creates a valid manager card. This happens in Admin mode and Election mode.� [source

More peace in the works for Africa

Powell: Sudanese Commit to Reaching Deal

Wednesday October 22, 2003 12:01 PM
By ANDREW ENGLAND
Associated Press Writer

NAIVASHA, Kenya (AP)- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that the Sudanese government and rebels fighting a 20-year civil war have committed themselves to reaching a comprehensive peace deal by the end of December.

Powell, who was flanked by Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and rebel leader John Garang, promised that the United States would help implement a final agreement.

…The announcement came a day after the secretary of state promised to review U.S. sanctions in Sudan if the parties reached a deal to end the conflict that has left more than 2 million people dead, mainly through war-induced famine.

Garang, who leads the Sudan People's Liberation Army, or SPLA, and Taha said they were committed to peace but difficult issues still needed to be resolved.

NAACP Press Release

NAACP SUES GEORGIA COURT FOR DENYING THE POOR ADEQUATE LEGAL COUNSEL

The Ben Hill and Crisp County, Georgia Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), allege that the indigent defense system of the Cordele Judicial Circuit Court, comprising of Ben Hill, Crisp, Dooly and Wilcox counties, systematically denies the right to counsel for indigent people accused of crimes. The counties are near the city of Albany in southern Georgia. The NAACP joins the case, originally filed in March 2003, by the Southern Center for Human Rights and numerous individual plaintiffs that challenges the Cordele Judicial Circuit's indigent defense system.

NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume said: "The time is ripe to assail roughshod tactics in local courtrooms across America. In an era when communities of color have become harvest for the prison industry rather than pools of future college students, we must challenge any deprivation of civil and constitutional rights that leads to the incarceration of racial minorities."

Mfume continued: "We are in an unfortunate time when African Americans are imprisoned eight times as often as whites. Latinos are imprisoned at rates two to three times as often as whites. Many of these individuals are the victims of under funded, overworked, court-appointed criminal defense lawyers who quickly negotiate plea bargains. The Cordele Judicial Circuit must put an end to assembly-line justice."

Between 1985 and 2000, state spending on corrections nationwide was nearly double that of higher education spending. In total, states increased spending on higher education 24 percent, compared with 166 percent on corrections.

Dennis Courtland Hayes, NAACP General Counsel, said: "Surely some of the money that is spent warehousing individuals who were denied their constitutional right to counsel within the Cordele Judicial Circuit would be better spent establishing a fully funded, staffed and effective public defender's office. Our challenge comes less than two years after the United States Supreme Court decided Alabama v. Shelton, and 40 years after its Gideon v. Wainright ruling that made clear poor people accused of crimes have a fundamental and constitutional right to counsel. Nevertheless, we see these decisions by the nation's highest court repeatedly violated in the Cordele Judicial Circuit."

Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation�s oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its half-million adult and youth members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

Okay, THIS one I get

The more things change…

A 'Strong Performance'?

Wednesday, October 22, 2003; Page A28

THE BUSH administration says it now recognizes that the U.S. toleration of corrupt Arab autocracies in exchange for their oil wealth and military cooperation was a mistake -- that the lack of freedom in those countries engendered its own threat to U.S. security, in the form of terrorist movements such as al Qaeda. Yet the administration is repeating the mistake in the Caucasus and Central Asia. A string of former Soviet republics there are ruled by dictators who crush opponents by force while seeking favor from the United States with offers of energy supplies and help with Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it claims to be promoting democracy, the administration has mostly swallowed the old bargain, reaping short-term gains while storing up long-term problems.

Strikes me as kind of an empty gesture

U.N. Assembly Calls for Halt Of Israel Wall
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 22, 2003; Page A08

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 21 -- The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution Tuesday demanding that Israel halt construction of a barrier intended to cut it off from the West Bank and dismantle the portion already built.

The barrier, which Israel argues is needed as protection from suicide bombers, has come under stiff criticism because it dips into the West Bank and cuts through Palestinian villages.

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, unlike those adopted by the Security Council. But the votes of the 191-member assembly are considered a gauge of world opinion.

After hours of haggling over the text of the resolution, the assembly voted 144 in favor and four opposed, including the United States. There were 12 abstentions.

In return for support from the European Union, the Palestinians and other Arab and Islamic nations agreed to drop a second resolution that would have asked the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, for an advisory opinion on the barrier's legality.

The resolution's backers also agreed to add a condemnation of Palestinian suicide bombings, "extra-judicial killings" by the Israelis, and the Oct. 16 bomb attack on a U.S. diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip that killed three American security officers.

The resolution says that the barrier violates the Armistice Line of 1949 and demands that Israel halt construction and dismantle the part it has completed.

Truth as strange as fiction

The Onion's Lead story this week is Muscleman Put In Charge Of World's Fifth Largest Economy. And it doesn't look like they cracked a single joke.

They didn't have to.

Another Volokhian speaks

("Volokhian"—sounds like a race you'd meet on the Andromeda TV show. I like it.)

Mr. Bernstein:

Feh.

When they run the bake sale such that it has the intent and effect of affirmative action programs, then you can morally defend them.

So let them sell their baked goods at reduced price to those who, rightly or wrongly, they feel are unable to afford them at full price for reasons outside the purchasers' control. That would accurately reflect the intent of affirmative action programs. And I don't care what cause they ascribe to the purchasers' inability to raise the cash.

With that in place, let them set up any other conditions they wish, in a conscious attempt to skew the sales such that people who can readily afford the baked goods, and have the means to get them—at the bake sale, at the bakery, the supermarket six miles away, anywhere they want—wind up underserved somehow.

As I said, Feh.

All I need now it some nonsense by Tyler Cowen to be posted there and my day will be complete.

Thank you very much, Phelps

My friend went all the way to Australia to find something capable of annoying me, and in the process insured my remaining a carnivore.

October 21, 2003 - 10:41AM

American animal rights protesters, one dressed in a sheep's costume, staged a noisy demonstration outside the Australian embassy in Washington DC to condemn Australia's treatment of sheep on the MV Cormo Express.

Chanting "Australia tortures animals. Stop live exports", about 30 members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were involved in the demonstration.

American PETA director Bruce Friedrich compared Australia's treatment of sheep to the human slave trade from Africa to America between the 17th and 19th centuries.

"The level of abuse the Australian government is supporting would shock the conscience of any compassionate person," Friedrich said.

"This ship of horrors brings shame on all of Australia. The live export trade is the moral equivalent of the African slave trade and it has to be eliminated."

Look. Leave the widerness alone. Don't club baby seals and don't drive mountain sheep to extinction. But those mutton factories are fucking crops, and I'm about as likely to worry about their fate as I am an ear of corn. And frankly, that goes for farm-bred mink as well.

If you PETA members REALLY want to get some publicity, stand in front of me while you compare my ancestors to fucking sub-anthropoid animals.The surgery required to get my foot out your ass will rival the separation of those join-at-the-head twins in complexity.

Whut??

I just saw the most amazingly…sane post on Tacitus, titled Conservative Socialism.

I bow slightly in the general direction of Fabuis.

Let me explain, Eugene

Mr. Volokh notes one of The BlackCommentator's rather harsh cartoons accompanying a press release from People for the American Way and the NAACP denouncing the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the Court of Appeals.

Let me drop some knowledge, help bridge the cultural divide.

First, the cartoon:

The thing driving the image is the line at the bottom of the cartoon: a "Clarence-like conservative."

Take a look at Justice Brown's face. Compare it to Uncle Clarence's face. They are the same. The artist is, in fact, mocking her own well-known personal characteristics. He's just doing it symbolically. And by the way, that hair she's sporting belongs to Don King, the poster boy for opportunism.

Reality check

IMF admits it is failing Africa
By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa analyst

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has admitted that one of its key African initiatives is in trouble.
In a working paper published in Washington, two of the IMF's researchers show that its programme to relieve some of Africa's poorest countries of their debt burden may not produce a sustainable economic situation.

The IMF's initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries was launched in 1996.

Its aim was simple: to cut the mountain of debts that countries had run up, reducing them to more manageable levels.

At the same time, the programme encouraged states to increase their spending on the poor - on badly needed policies aimed at building schools and paying teachers.

Spending shortfalls

This study looks at the performance of 12 African countries - all of which were heavily indebted before the programme got under way.

These include Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana and Cameroon - countries chosen to represent a variety of economic conditions.

The problem highlighted by the study is that half the countries sampled are estimated to be unable to raise enough revenue to pay for the spending programmes the IMF is calling for.

"As countries made progress in macroeconomic stabilisation they are now 'allowed' to increase their expenditure to address poverty reduction needs," says the report by Annalisa Fedelino and Alina Kudina.

It gives Tanzania as an example. The country is projected to increase its expenditure level by more than 4% of GDP, to above 22% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in 2002/3 relative to the previous fiscal year.

"However, based on our framework, this may result in the country's swinging back into unsustainable debt levels," the report continues.

"Unless HIPCs improve their primary fiscal positions or grant financing is sustained at current, or possibly higher, levels, debt sustainability in HIPCs may prove elusive in the long term," it says.

The authors warn that the countries concerned are likely to move back into unsustainable levels of debt.

Only raising taxes or getting more foreign aid will allow Africa's poorest nations to escape this fate.

Lieberman's Woes

Inside Joe Lieberman's Kamikaze Campaign
Day of the Spoiler
by Rick Perlstein
October 22 - 28, 2003

The listbot at meetup.com, the commercial site whose clever software facilitates face-to-face gatherings between Web surfers of like interest, sent me a forlorn little e-mail the other day.

"Congratulations on a successful National Lieberman in 2004 Meetup last week! See photos from every city," it read, giving a link. Click HREF="http://www.lieberman2004.meetup.com/photos"> lieberman2004.meetup.com/photos yourself, and you'll see the pathos: There
ain't no photos.

That's not surprising. In Chicago, where I live, there wasn't any meetup. Not enough supporters RSVP'ed to trigger the software's automated threshold. Meetup.com, in fact, has registered only 332 Joseph Lieberman fans in the entire United States of America, four in Chicago. An undercover reporter from The Village Voice…uh, me…represents one quarter of the total.

It could be considered comic, this abyss at the Lieberman grassroots. It could be, that is, if Lieberman showed any signs of going away. Instead, he's been ramping up: launching a splashy new tax plan; publishing a dowloadable campaign book, Leading With Integrity: A Fresh Start for America, and an accompanying website; kicking off a campaign tour…all just this past week. And that's not funny. Because it's not too early to predict that if the Democrats lose the presidential election next November, Lieberman will be the one to blame. That will certainly be so if he ends up becoming the nominee…in which
case the Democratic Party will be left without an activist base. ("I'll vote for Joe Lieberman absentee from whatever country I move to if he wins the nomination," as one friend of mine puts it.[P6: ]) Perversely, it might even be worse for the Democratic Party if he fails.

Evil plans for world dominion by dark masters of eeeeeee-vil

Cobb has an interesting post up wherein, after meandering around a bit he says:

and

That's surprisingly patronizing coming from a usually thoughtful man.

Maybe I take it personally because I got a big-ol' Chomsky-sized secret plot motivating the political side of my conversations (of which P6 is just the written part). And I'm not backing up off it, because it's not even secret anymore. Grover Norquist has spoken of it. Karl Rove has spoken of it. Tom DeLay has spoken of it. Congress executes it with every bill that passes favors to CCC (Corporate Campaign Contributors), and every meeting with groups having the same initials. And the whole Republican Party, with dishearteningly rare exceptions, not only drinks the Kool-Aid but asks for seconds.

I'm simply not the type of person to make gutteral noises. I've been as corporate as Cobb, and as independantly employed. I've been broke, on welfare. I've raised a family and therefore had to take that realistic look at the world to understand how a broke Black man can move up, can see past the hostile racism of some and the guilty racism of others to the people who live beneath the attitudes…as well as how to recognize people whose lives and minds aren't constrained by such attitudes. I am by NO means anti-capitalism.

But I am anti-Capitalist.

I see is a class of people whose root morality is Capitalism, to whom that which is profitable is by definition good, and all the other repercussions are dealt with in the aftermath. These folks aren't classic evil, but the results of their actions can be…and in their current collaboration with the neocons, it is.

I don't have to assume evil motivations. I don't deal in the motivations of other because I can't see them. But I can see the results. When Cobb says:

…he's right—and those with the whip handle should be all the more mindful of it.

Relax, Glenn

It's a good question, but do you really WANT to see a Black baby that ugly?

With apologies to Ben Sargent

The original is bigger, but I didn't want you to miss the point.

LATER: I guess I should have mentioned I added the "zoom" view of the book the guy is holding. I resize and resample the cartoons I post here because I be sweating the load time dial-up users have to endure. Plus I'm really not trying to deprive the artists of eyeball and the concommitant ad revenue. That's also why I don't give links to the printable view of articles.

Basically my intent is, if somebody gonna get sued, it ain't gonna be me.

This is a bizarre way of thinking

Unfortunately it's kind of typical.

The Washington Post has an article about the rising tuition at the University System of Maryland.

Look at the expected "benefits" of higher tuition costs, at least in Mr. Hug's view. Less reliant on state government, okay. Not like you have a lot of choice there anyway. But paying for a huge infusion of student financial aid is a strange way of justifying the creation of the need for a huge infusion of student financial aid.

But the killer to me is the last one. You increase the prestige of the schools by making it more expensive…not but immproving facilities or hiring the best professors or anything like that. Merely making it more expensive will make it more prestigious.

This is probably true--the fact is, Harvard graduates aren't learning a lot that's different than, say, Brooklyn College graduates. Maybe a social gesture or two. Still, this comes pretty close to acknowledging that "highly selective" schools select on basedon economics as much as anything else.

Bleech

Somebody read David Brook's editorial and tell me what it says. I can't take reading that crap anymore.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance

I'm just going to reproduce the intro on Slashdot:

Nature vs Nurture

More on the impact one's economic circumstances has on health, but this time it's emotional health.

The notion that poverty and mental illness are intertwined is nothing new, as past research has demonstrated time and time again. But finding evidence that one begets the other has often proved difficult.

Now new research that coincided with the opening of an Indian casino may have come a step closer to identifying a link by suggesting that lifting children out of poverty can diminish some psychiatric symptoms, though others seem unaffected.

A study published in last week's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association looked at children before and after their families rose above the poverty level. Rates of deviant and aggressive behaviors, the study noted, declined as incomes rose.

"This comes closer to pointing to a causal relationship than we can usually get," said Dr. E. Jane Costello, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Duke who was the lead author. "Moving families out of poverty led to a reduction in children's behavioral symptoms."

The study took place over eight years in rural North Carolina and tracked 1,420 children ages 9 to 13, 25 percent of them from a Cherokee reservation. Tests for psychiatric symptoms were given at the start of the study and repeated each year.

When the study began, 68 percent of the children were from families living below the federally defined poverty line. On average, the poorer children exhibited more behaviors associated with psychiatric problems than those who did not live in poverty. But midway through the study, the opening of a local casino offered researchers a chance to analyze the effects of quick rises in income.

Just over 14 percent of the American Indian children rose above the poverty level when the casino started distributing a percentage of its profits to tribal families. The payment, given to people over age 18 and put into a trust fund for those younger, has increased slightly each year, reaching about $6,000 per person by 2001.

"This is unique because it's a situation where everybody got the extra money," Dr. Costello said. "You can't take a bunch of babies and randomly assign them to grow up in comfort or poverty. So this is about as close to a natural experiment as you can get."

When the researchers conducted their tests soon after, they noticed that the rate of psychiatric symptoms among the children who had risen from poverty was dropping. As time went on, the children were less inclined to stubbornness, temper tantrums, stealing, bullying and vandalism -- all symptoms of conduct and oppositional defiant disorders.

After four years, the rate of such behaviors had dropped to the same levels found among children whose families had never been poor. Children whose families broke the poverty threshold had a 40 percent decrease in behavioral symptoms. But the payments had no effect on children whose families had been unable to rise from poverty or on the children whose families had not been poor to begin with.

The researchers also found that symptoms of anxiety and depression, although more common in poor children, remained the same despite moving out of poverty.

The deciding factor appeared to be the amount of time parents had to supervise their children. Parents who moved out of poverty reported having more time to spend with their children. In the other groups, the amount of time the parents had on their hands was not much different.

"What this shows very nicely is that an economic shift can allow for more time and better parenting," said Dr. Nancy Adler, professor of medical psychology at the University of California at San Francisco.

In children, acting out is often a result of frustration that can stem from feeling ignored or not getting enough validation from the parents, said Dr. Arline Geronimus, a professor of public health at the University of Michigan.

As a result, behaviors associated with frustration would be the first to change when parents had more attention to devote to their children. "Anxiety and depression, on the other hand, are a little more extreme and might not be as susceptible to change," Dr. Geronimus added.

Recent research suggests that anxiety disorders and depression run in families and probably reflect a mix of genetic and environmental causes.

The study highlights the role that adult supervision may have on mental health in children, but another factor, Dr. Geronimus said, may be the psychological benefits that the casino payments produce.

The Indian families were much more likely to be poor than their non-Indian neighbors at the start of the study. After the payments, though, a higher proportion of Indian families moved out of poverty.

"There's the possibility that this improved the general outlook of the families -- that the whole community has more than before," Dr. Geronimus said. "In addition to the material resources, there might have been some psychological benefits."

Those psychological benefits may also be a byproduct of the jobs that the casino has generated, said James Sanders, director of an adolescent drug and alcohol treatment center on the reservation.

"The jobs give people the chance to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get out of poverty," said Mr. Sanders, whose son took part in the study. "That carries over into less juvenile crime, less domestic violence and an overall better living experience for the families."

But one question that lingers is why the economic change had a significant effect on only a small proportion of the children. All of the families that received the payment were given the same amount of money, but only 14 percent moved out of poverty while 53 percent remained poor.

The answer could be related to the number of siblings in each family. A $6,000 payment could be a huge help to a poor family with one child, for example, "but that money might not go as far for a family with multiple children," Dr. Adler said.

In 2002, the average poverty threshold for a family of three was $14,348.

Though some questions remain, the study ultimately suggests that poverty puts stress on families, which can increase the likelihood that children will develop behavioral problems. That, said Dr. Geronimus, speaks to the notion that welfare policy is heading in the wrong direction.

"Parents on welfare are increasingly required to work more and more hours while spending less time with their families," she said. "These findings suggest the opposite: parents value having more time to spend with their kids, not less, and their kids respond favorably to that."

Can we hook one of these up for politicians?

Ethics 101: A Course About the Pitfalls
By GINA KOLATA

RICHMOND, Va. -- To the uninitiated, ethics in science can sound as straightforward as the West Point honor code: a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do. Just substitute "scientist" for "cadet," and that should be it.

But the 50 or so graduate students taking Dr. Francis L. Macrina's ethics course at Virginia Commonwealth University are getting quite a different view of research ethics, one that asks troubling questions about professional relationships and how to draw moral lines in the sand if their own careers are at stake.

It is a view that reflects a growing realization among researchers that the real ethics issues in science are not so much the scandals that rock the field periodically -- charges of outright fabrications, invented data, theft of another's research. Instead, they say, they worry about more insidious problems that can corrupt science from within and push promising researchers who are uninformed about the rules out the door.

Well, if they would just die, that would solve everything

Are Those Leaving Welfare Better Off Now? Yes and No
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

…Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for families and children in the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said he agreed with numerous estimates that 10 percent to 15 percent of all those who have left welfare since the overhaul legislation passed in 1996 had become significantly worse off financially. There are 2.4 million fewer American families on the federal welfare rolls than in 1996, when there were 4.4 million.

More than half have left welfare for work, although many who left for jobs did not keep them. Others have gone off welfare voluntarily, possibly because they chafed under the new rules or turned to other sources of support. And roughly a third have been forced out because they failed to comply with stricter state requirements or reached the five-year lifetime limit on federal benefits, although some of these become employed eventually.

While there is broad agreement that some families are worse off as a result, there is extensive debate over exactly why, and what should be done about it. "We are concerned about these families," said Dr. Horn, who is spearheading the Bush administration's current effort to amend the 1996 welfare law in order to stiffen work requirements and encourage marriage.

But, he added, not enough is known about the families. "There is no hard evidence that I know of that such families are less able to work, and we know a small percentage simply choose not to engage in welfare-to-work," he said.

…Dr. Horn said the evidence of poorer families was no reason to soften the federal rules, like the 60-month limit on aid, or penalties for those who do not comply with increased obligations to seek work or receive training. "I am firmly against wholesale loosening of requirements and moving us toward the old program," he said.

But many urban-policy researchers and advocates for the poor -- most of whom opposed the 1996 overhaul -- argue that the deepening poverty among former welfare recipients reflects flaws in the legislation that were entirely predictable and need to be corrected.

How can we make folks understand this?

from Kicking Ass:

But given the slim chance of success, this seemed to be little more than a political ploy designed to (a) make it look like Bush was doing something to create jobs and (b) shift the blame for America's job losses to somewhere other than 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

And as USA Today reports today, China and Japan both rejected Bush's request to increase the value of their currencies.

It was quite a risk for Bush to make successful diplomacy a prerequisite of his economic policies, given the rate at which he squandered the world's goodwill after the September 11 attacks. But now that he's failed with tax cuts for the rich and pleading with other countries to help, maybe he'll hand over the economic reins to people who can do the job?

Wasn't there a group that recently created the longest economic expansion in America's history? Oh, right: Democrats.

Beating the Bush

MB at Wampum has some observations and some advice. After listing a large fraction of the multiple reasons Dubya's home needs to be repossessed, she notes:

There's also a pretty probably breakdown of the way the electoral votes will go as well as a pairing of the Democratic candidates and the soft spots in their constituencies.

A reality check of this type is always welcome, as is the pointer to Patrica Nielsen Hayden's discussion of how to get at the electoral votes in the swing states. She picked three examples from said discussion, one of which

I've been trying to explain to Black folks for years, which is why, though least applicable to this Presidential campaign, it's the one I chose to swipe.

Meanwhile, if you're not in a swing state you still shouldn't get complacent (unless you're a Bush supporter. If so, relax--you've got it in the bag!). You Middle America types should study Alabama, and draw parallels to your own states' situations. They exist, and paying close attention may well make you want to move (as in relocate) before it's too late&heiilp;but you should move (as in get active) before it's too late. And us high-income producing states can take a page from the Republican's playbook by pointing out that for all our suffering we STILL aren't getting back as much as we give the Feds…and that the only way to fix that is to fix the economy so the Middle Americans aren't so needy.

I guess it's just me

Last week's "The Boondocks" speculated on the possibility that Condoleessa Rice might be nicer if she just had someone to love. I thought the thang was funny, but the Washington Post refused to run it. And Aaron at Uppity-Negro found a discussion of McGruder's thoughts behind the series:

…which leaves me feeling ignorant because it never occurred to me. This, and a recent conversation with my daughter about the speculation in Harry Potter fandom that two of the characters in the latest volume of the saga are gay (Sirius Black and somebody else), which thought also never entered my mind, made me realize something about myself.

I don't seem to speculate on folks' sexuality at all. I mean, I see who's hot and all that and I'm interested or not. And you find out people's orientation when you hang with them. But I don't hit on women unless I get some sort of subtle encouragement and that sort of establishes all the gender information I feel I need be concerned with. And if I'm not hanging with you I REALLY have no business up in your business.

That's how I feel, anyway.

Once I've established how I'm going to relate to a person I'm just not interested in knowing (or bother by knowing) about their sexuality. And I suspect that makes me pretty weird.

Inequality = illness

Kerim at Keywords has a post that ties in nicely to the one last week about racism correlating with high blood pressure in Black folks and the NY Times Magazine article I blogged about on how people who live in poverty suffer from health problems that you would expect of the elderly.

He's got a link to a good article that discusses the problem, which is good because the Times Magazine article will vanish behind the toll wall soon.

My favorite reason

via To The Barricades!

36 Reasons To Vote For Bush and Republicans In 2004

…You don't know how much $1 trillion is. (Answer: It's $1,000,000,000,000 or a million million dollars. $1 trillion dollars could pay for 25 million jobs that would pay $40,000 for a year. $1 trillion could employ all of the 9 million unemployed for the next three years.[P6: ] The United States could probably purchase peacefully all of North Korea for $1 trillion dollars.)

Get 'em while they're hot

Libertarians take note

Alabama's going to look a lot like Iraq if attitudes don't change. Except they won't have an invasion to blame. Or a U.S. government whose prestige depends on their survival.

Alabama has asked for it. And like Schwartzenegger, the most hostile act one can direct toward them is to let them have their way.

…One message Alabama voters needed to hear more clearly was that rejecting higher taxes costs more in the long run. Saving $10,000 by denying medicine to a poor, H.I.V.-positive woman is no bargain if she ends up in a state hospital with full-blown AIDS needing $100,000 in care. Tutoring high school students in danger of failing is cheap compared with paying for welfare -- or prison.

Alabama voters also need to realize that by entrenching their state at the bottom of the national rankings in taxes and government services, they are putting themselves on the margins of the new, global economy, and sabotaging their future tax base. Businesses looking for low taxes and cheap government will pass right over Alabama and head for Mexico. And companies that want well-educated, skilled workers, the companies Alabama needs to attract, will not locate in a state where high school students do not graduate, TB cases are not tracked and the restaurants may be hazardous.

The nation is facing precisely the same issues as Alabama. The Bush administration has tried to delude the public into thinking we can fight a war, rebuild Iraq, fix our schools, get prescription drug benefits and still enjoy the largest tax cut in history. But the deficit cannot grow forever. Eventually, we will have to pay more or, as "starve the beast" proponents hope, do with much less.

Last month, Alabama voted for fewer social services, less education, and a shoddier legal system -- to become, that is, more like a third-world nation. But low as taxes are, the state will never be better at being an underdeveloped country than actual underdeveloped countries are. Alabama's best chance, and the nation's, is to invest in its people and civic institutions, the things that set America apart.

Governor Riley's setback last month is being hailed by national antitax forces as a great victory. But if Alabama heads into next year without additional revenues, students may have to learn without textbooks, prisoners may be released early, and people may start dying of preventable diseases. We should all pay attention, because if the "starve the beast" crowd continues to prevail in Washington, as goes Alabama so may go the nation.

The 21st Century Depression

Locked Out at a Young Age
By BOB HERBERT

CHICAGO

With the nation at war, the wretched state of millions of young people in America's urban centers is getting even less attention than usual.

While the U.S. is trying to figure out how to pay for its incursion into Iraq, millions of teenagers and young adults, especially in the inner cities, are drifting aimlessly from one day to the next. They're out of school, out of work and, as I've said before in this column, all but out of hope.

The latest data coming out of Chicago, which is roughly representative of conditions in other major urban areas, is depressing. The city's dropout rate is reportedly at an all-time high. And 22 percent of all Chicago residents between the ages of 16 and 24 are both out of school and out of work.

The term being used to describe these youngsters who have nothing very constructive to do with their time is "disconnected youth." Many of them are leading the kinds of haunted lives that recall the Great Depression. They hustle, doing what they can -- much of it illegal -- to get along. Some are homeless.

Of Chicagoans who are 20 to 24 years old, more than 26 percent are out of work and out of school. When the statistics are refined to focus on young blacks and Hispanics, they only get worse.

An incredible 45 percent of black men in Chicago aged 20 to 24 are out of work and out of school. That is not a condition that should be ignored.

Whose life is it anyway

Iraq Banks on Investors in Bid to Privatize
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

October 20, 2003

…The newly appointed Iraqi industry minister plans to lease the Baghdad plant and 17 others to investors in hopes of nudging Iraq's quasi-socialist economy toward a free market.

The question now is, does anybody want them?

That's just one of many challenges facing U.S. officials as they move to privatize the Iraqi economy, a process seen as crucial to rebuilding the country. Other obstacles include a budding labor movement, newly unfettered foreign competition, a lack of security and, most recently, an emerging power struggle between U.S. and Iraqi officials over how best to proceed.

…Already, the privatization program, which U.S. officials began mapping out before the invasion, is taking longer than many in Washington hoped. Thomas C. Foley, a big fund-raiser for President Bush who heads Iraq's private-sector development, now predicts that the transition may take three to five years. "It's going to take a long time to convert these assets," Foley said.

That timetable is disappointing news for the U.S.-led coalition, which was betting that the private sector would take the lead in reconstructing Iraq. Over the next three years, state-owned business will need at least $1 billion in subsidies just to pay workers and stay afloat, not counting needed repairs or reinvestment, according to the country's 2004 budget. U.S. officials are eager to shift those costs to investors.

…This month, Mohammed Tawfik Raheem, the new minister of industry and minerals, ran a full-page newspaper ad listing 18 state-owned firms that he intends to lease to investors for five to 10 years, a test run for privatization. Bids are due Nov. 11.

But Raheem opposes further steps toward actual sales of companies until a new Iraqi government is elected. "I won't talk about privatization because we don't have a law," he said. "We are not selling the companies."

Asked if one of Foley's mandates is to privatize the state-owned firms, Raheem said, "That's not his job. It's the Iraqis' job. We own the factories. If they are going to be privatized, it will be the decision of the owner, not someone who is an advisor."

Foley, a banker with the former Citicorp who went on to found a leveraged-buyout firm, insists there will be no fire sale and Iraqis ultimately will call the shots. But he suggested that Raheem lacks the authority to launch his leasing program, which took Foley somewhat by surprise when he saw the newspaper ad.

"It's not clear whether he has the power to implement that," Foley said. He also noted that some of the conditions of the program are likely to be unacceptable to investors, such as a ban on laying off workers.

(Foley later clarified by e-mail that other senior coalition advisors had helped develop the leasing program, which he said would not interfere with his efforts.)

Hypocrisies abound

Congress flexes muscle on state laws
Federal interference with local legislation called 'troubling trend'

By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times, 10/20/2003

WASHINGTON -- California passes a tough financial privacy law, and Washington, D.C., moves to scuttle it.

California officials propose strict antipollution standards for certain engines, and a congressional committee moves to block the new rules.

California Governor Gray Davis signs into law a measure allowing illegal immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses, and within days legislation is introduced in Congress to deny federal funds to the state unless it repeals the law.

When it comes to California, the Republican-controlled Congress has abandoned its natural tendency to support states' rights. Congressional Republicans are moving on a variety of fronts to rein in state actions they believe go too far, leaving Democrats to complain about federal interference with state business.

"If anybody had told me that I would be on the floor of Congress arguing states' rights . . . I would have told them they are crazy," Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said during a recent House debate.

She was objecting to a House-passed measure intended to protect consumers from identity theft but would nullify tougher state laws, including a provision of a new California law that would prohibit companies from sharing customers' personal financial information with affiliates if a consumer objects.

"This is part of a very troubling trend by Congress to use its authority to preempt state laws that go further than federal law in protecting consumers and the environment," University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky said. "Congress acting to preempt state laws is not new. But the repeated efforts to preempt more progressive state legislation is new."

Michael Bird, federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said the number of measures seeking to "render the states helpless" was on the rise. "You have more organized interests that are seeking one-stop resolution to their perceived problems," he said.

It's not that Congress is necessarily picking on California. Laws in other states, dealing with issues such as e-mail spam, predatory lending, and securities fraud, could be preempted by pending federal legislation. State officials also have objected to a provision of the pending energy bill that would allow federal officials to override state decisions in placing power-transmission lines.

California's laws have drawn special attention because the nation's most populous state is regarded as a trendsetter.

During the recent congressional debate over financial privacy legislation, for example, Representative Michael G. Oxley, Republican of Ohio, said that if California could impose its own rules on financial institutions, other states might follow suit and "ultimately, it becomes California setting national standards."

Congressional Republicans deny their actions violate a core principle of support for states' rights.

"States' rights doesn't mean the right to hurt other states," said Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, who has put into a spending bill a measure that would block California from imposing tougher pollution rules on engines used in lawn mowers. He contends the rule would prove costly to engine manufacturers. The measure cleared a committee and awaits the full Senate's approval.

Responded Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California: "It would be a major mistake for the federal government to step in and tell states that they cannot protect their citizens from air pollution."

African Americans used to feel this way too

Slaying leaves Eritreans at a loss
Promising student's unsolved killing on the West Side leaves a void in the community of African immigrants
By Manya A. Brachear
Tribune staff reporter

October 19, 2003

As he sat in the parked car on an August night talking with friends in the faint glow of the dome light, a promising future was laid out before 19-year-old Filmon Tesfai.

It was a future that shone all the brighter given his past. As a baby, he was a refugee in Sudan who fled war in Eritrea with his parents. Now he was a high school graduate headed for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship.

When a navy blue Chevrolet Caprice pulled up next to his car on Chicago's West Side, Tesfai nodded hello. The passengers stared, then fired. Nine shots later, Tesfai collapsed into a friend's lap. He was pronounced dead within half an hour.

The Aug. 18 slaying--still unsolved--devastated not only Tesfai's family, but an entire immigrant community.

Just as Tesfai's parents imagined their children would pursue education and prosper in the United States, the Eritreans of Chicago pin much of their hope on their youth--the first generation to go to college.

Last month, the community held a town meeting at Truman College on the North Side, where many Eritreans live, to ask police not to abandon the search for Tesfai's killers. Another month went by before the family gathered for a wedding. His parents hid and cried so as not to upset the bride and groom. On Friday, his mother, Maaza Ogbasyen, finally returned to work.

"It's getting worse," said Tesfai's father, Zerai. "My son died. The killers are still alive. If they arrested them it would be a good thing for me."

Anghesom Atsbaha, a history professor at Truman and a leader in the Eritrean community, said an arrest would bring closure.

"This community has always been one of the most loyal to the law of the land," he said. "This is not going to be another number, another statistic. ... Our criminal justice system's responsibility is to restore hope."

Po' thang

'Caucasian Club' stresses student
By Danielle Samaniego
STAFF WRITER

OAKLEY - Freedom High School freshman Lisa McClelland, whose drive for a Caucasian Club on campus put a national spotlight on the school and the issue, is considering transferring because she says she's being harassed.

"Some people would say things like 'We already have a club like that, it's called the KKK, you racist ...'" said the 15-year-old. "I'd walk into the auditorium and people would start whispering."

Students who transfer out of one school to attend alternative programs like La Paloma or Independence high schools are considered students of the alternative campus only, which would prevent Lisa from establishing her club at Freedom High, according to school policy.

If that happens, Lisa said one of her friends might continue efforts to organize a Caucasian Club at Freedom High.

The school resumed classes this week following a two-week fall intercession. Lisa has not returned because she said she doesn't want to deal with the glares and critical comments. She said she hopes her club will break down racial barriers while embracing European-American heritage.

Assuming the chile is to young to be as cynical as I, then her club was poorly named.

That's because the biggest cheaters are their friends

Crackdown on Tax Cheats Not Working, Panel Says
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

On Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee will hold hearings on tax shelters that, committee aides said, will feature testimony that tax cheating continues unabated and that the numerous crackdowns announced over the past two years by the Internal Revenue Service have had almost no impact.

The committee's leaders, Senators Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, have been frustrated by their inability to get Congress to finance a serious assault on tax cheats, aides said yesterday. This hearing, which will feature a witness hidden behind a screen with his voice altered, is intended, in part, as a well-aimed kick in that direction.

In the aftermath of corporate scandals that emerged two years ago, Congress enacted changes and increased by a third the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement budget, but it did not pass any laws to attack abusive tax shelters or finance a serious hunt for tax cheats.

A consultant's report, prepared for the I.R.S., but kept secret by the agency until now, is expected to show that corporate tax cheating in 2000 cost the government $14 billion to $18 billion.

I'm just sayin'

Beating Expectations

Our hypercapitalist society likes to turn everything into a piece of financial news. Consider this past week. Intel, Howard Dean and "Kill Bill" all posted numbers that surpassed expectations. I.B.M., Joseph Lieberman and "Intolerable Cruelty" fell short.

Intel said it earned $1.7 billion last quarter, while Dr. Dean raised $14.8 million for his presidential campaign, far more than any other Democrat. "Kill Bill," the new Quentin Tarantino movie, grossed $22.7 million in its opening weekend.

Only recently have people been required to knowingly cite box office receipts to sound conversant with entertainment news. But money often seems the sole arbiter of credibility in our society.

Sports fans must also immerse themselves in financial detail. Plenty of football fans who pay scant attention to their finances know that teams are allowed to amortize a player's signing bonus over the life of his contract for salary cap purposes, but if the player is a bust, it all gets counted if and when he is cut. Ask a San Diego Chargers fan.

The key lesson to remember here is that figures alone do not matter. It's how they compare to expectations. What makes Senator Lieberman's $3.6 million haul last quarter seem meager is his high name recognition from 2000. I.B.M.'s earnings were solid, but just that. Likewise, the $62 million opening weekend box office this summer for "The Hulk" looked shabby only when compared with Hollywood's outsized expectations. Miramax wisely dampened expectations for Mr. Tarantino's film.

Sabotaging others' success by taking already high expectations and raising the bar a notch is an especially dodgy part of the expectations game. The only sour note to the Dean campaign's impressive fund-raising report, for instance, was that it fell short of what on Wall Street would be known as a "whisper number" of $15 million.

The bottom line? Everything has a bottom line, but if you play the game right, you can move it.

Gore/Clark '04

Come January, I'm going to stop saying that so if I'm wrong no one will remember by the time the convention comes aroung.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- Two prominent Democratic presidential candidates, Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, have decided to bypass Iowa's presidential caucuses, angering some party leaders there and signaling what could be a very different nomination battle next year.

Mr. Lieberman's advisers said on Sunday that they would pull out all but one of his 17 staff members in Iowa and send them to states considered more receptive to his appeal, like Arizona. General Clark's aides said he would maintain a minimal presence in the state, which has the nation's earliest presidential selection contest. Last week, the general hired the former Iowa coordinator for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who quit the race two weeks ago, and dispatched her to other states.

…Still, the absence of General Clark and Mr. Lieberman could plant an asterisk alongside the results of the caucuses on Jan. 19. Even Iowa Democratic leaders, eager to maximize their quadrennial exercise of influence, say it could diminish the state's role in choosing the a nominee.

That could prove to be a complication for Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, who are hoping for an unencumbered victory in Iowa as an anchor for their nomination strategies.

Say "Uncle," Sam

I always figured the it to be in EVERY other nation's best interest to let the USofA, the most powerful nation, break itself on Iraq, one of the least. Yielding being shown the only way not to break is almost as good to them. And now the world know the limits of the USofA's power. I doubt that was the intent. Giving up a chunk of economic control is probably pretty painful, ego-wise, to the neocons. Still, if they fully control how "the New Iraq" is structured, long term it will pay off.

BANGKOK, Oct. 19 -- Under pressure from potential donors, the Bush administration will allow a new agency to determine how to spend billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance for Iraq, administration and international aid officials say.

The new agency, to be independent of the American occupation, will be run by the World Bank and the United Nations. They are to announce the change at a donor conference in Madrid later this week.

The change effectively establishes some of the international control over Iraq that the United States opposed in the drafting of the United Nations Security Council resolution that passed on Thursday. That resolution referred to two previously established agencies devised to ensure that all aid would be monitored and audited.

But diplomats say other countries were unwilling to make donations because they saw the United States as an occupying power controlling Iraq's reconstruction and self-rule.

Say it loud

It's official: California Democrats have no clue

Well, it'll be official if they go for this.

I don't believe him. I think he's expecting Arnold to fail, and is positioning himself…with some pretty clear forethought…to run for Governor afterward.

Stark contrast indeed. Such a total conversion smacks of opportunism.

With this, he positions himself with most of those who voted for Arnold. No politics as usual. Hoping for a brighter future. Can-do attitude. I really believed him, just like you. But I was always keeping my eye on him. And now I feel SOOO betrayed…

GHOD I feel cynical this weekend. I don't even blame Lockyer for making such a choice. In fact, it reflects the sort of long-term planning California needs.

I must be missing something of significance here

Bush Rules Out Non-Aggression Pact With North Korea
By REUTERS

Filed at 8:19 a.m. ET

BANGKOK (Reuters) - In a shift aimed at jumpstarting stalled North Korean nuclear talks, President Bush said Sunday he was willing to give North Korea security assurances in exchange for it abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

Bush ruled out a formal non-aggression pact with Pyongyang, which North Korea has set as a condition for giving up its nuclear weapons program, but he acknowledged the United States was exploring a possible compromise with key allies China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

``We think there's an opportunity to move the process forward and we're going to discuss it with our partners,'' Bush said on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Thai capital.

``We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking. That's off the table,'' he said.

A disasterous lack of choice

There is so much I want to say about this. I've known many, many people who had to make similar choices; people with school aged children who needed two incomes to get by, single parents…

If, as the authorities suggest, this was arson, she may have been able to save her children or may have been caught in the flames herself, who knows? But she shouldn't have the grief of loss compounded by accusations of wrongdoing because she made the best choice she could.

Last Sunday, as her night shift neared, Kim Brathwaite faced a hard choice. Her baby sitter had not shown up, and to miss work might end her new position as assistant manager at a McDonald's in downtown Brooklyn.

So she left her two children, 9 and 1, alone, trying to stay in touch by phone.

It turned out to be a disastrous decision. Someone, it seems, deliberately set fire to her apartment. Her children died. And within hours, Ms. Brathwaite was under arrest, charged with recklessly endangering her children.

The investigation is continuing, and an arrest in the arson may soon overshadow the criminal charges against Ms. Brathwaite, who is not a suspect in the fire, investigators say. But she is now facing up to 16 years in prison for a decision that, surveys and interviews with experts suggest, cuts uncomfortably close to some choices made every day by American families.

Nationwide, parents themselves report leaving more than 3 million children under 13 -- some as young as 5 -- to care for themselves for at least a few hours a week on a regular basis, according to a recent study by Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C., that analyzed census information and other data.

And so the Brooklyn case highlights a much broader debate, one with few fixed legal guideposts. For state statutes typically set no age under 18 when a child is legally considered old enough to stay home alone. Thus parents are left with many case-by-case judgments, and prosecutors with vast discretion when something goes wrong.

Remember those X-Ray Specs in the back of the comics?

Well, here they are.