Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
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 As it should be |
Divided House Approves Expansion of Medicare
By ROBERT PEAR and ROBIN TONER
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - A divided House on Saturday approved the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation, narrowly passing legislation that would help millions of elderly people buy prescription drugs while giving private health plans a huge new role in the program.
Under heavy pressure from President Bush and Republican Congressional leaders, lawmakers backed the legislation by a vote of 220 to 215, sending it to the Senate, which is expected to act in the next few days. The vote, which ordinarily takes fifteen minutes to record, was kept open for an extraordinary three hours as Republicans struggled to switch votes and obtain a majority.
The vote came after a day of fast-paced developments on Capitol Hill, as opponents of the energy bill in the Senate blocked a final vote on the measure. Congress also struggled Friday to finish work on spending bills. Resolving one major issue snarling the spending measures, lawmakers said they had abandoned an effort to block new White House rules on overtime pay.
Mr. Bush immediately plunged into the Congressional debate upon his return from Britain on Friday afternoon. In a brief exchange with reporters after stepping off his helicopter, Mr. Bush urged lawmakers to accept the Medicare plan and, he blamed a "minority of senators" for holding up the energy measure.
"For the sake of our national security and economic security, the Senate's got to pass this bill," Mr. Bush said of the energy initiative.
Dana Blankenhorn at Moore's Lore:
Now I know why. The whole thing was a scam. This was not a publication, and it was not a think tank. It was a bunch of right-wing hacks for hire to anyone who would pay. They would provide cover for whatever lies the client wanted to spout, for a fee, and provide full deniability.
Tacitus had lunch with a credible associate and came away with the following:
Sebastian Holsclaw, who might see the things I see if he saw what I look at (taking psychology into account will prevent that from being a tautology) says:
…and I see this Arab stereotype in the back of my mind saying, "Will understanding the Americans' motivations really help us? I submit that it will only help us if we can live with their objectives. If their objectives include things like 'Convert everyone to Free Market Capitalism,' or 'Bring Democracy to the entire Middle East,' or 'destroy Palestine,' or 'Arrange for our people to buy more cyclical, fashion driven products,' I'm not sure that knowing the motivation will help because we can't accommodate the motivation.
Moral equivalence? No. Functional equivalence.
At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, we stopped thinking about what we actually do. Somewhere along the line, we started judging our actions by the "message" it "sends" rather than its direct impact. Somehow the construction and assignment of strawmen has become the accepted mode of political discourse.
What message does that send?
Source: American Diabetes Association
Publication date: 2003-11-20
Buckwheat 'controls diabetes'
BBC News
November 19, 2003
A type of herb called buckwheat may be beneficial in the management of diabetes, say researchers.
Extracts of the seed lowered blood glucose levels by up to 19% when it was fed to diabetic rats.
Scientists at the University of Manitoba in Canada say diabetics should consider including the grain in their diet, or taking dietary supplements.
The study, part funded by the food industry, is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
A food that could actively reduce blood glucose levels could be a real breakthrough.
Lead researcher Dr Carla Taylor said: "With diabetes on the rise, incorporation of buckwheat into the diet could help provide a safe, easy and inexpensive way to lower glucose levels and reduce the risk of complications associated with the disease, including heart, nerve and kidney problems.
"Buckwheat won't cure diabetes, but we'd like to evaluate its inclusion in food products as a management aid."
However, Dr Taylor said human studies were needed to determine how much buckwheat - in flour or extract form - must be eaten to obtain a beneficial effect on blood sugar levels.
The researchers focused on rats with Type 1 diabetes caused by a lack of the hormone insulin, which is needed to break down sugar in the blood.
The rats were given a single dose of buckwheat extract or a dummy preparation.
The researchers believe the key component of buckwheat is a compound called chiroinositol.
The compound, which is relatively high in buckwheat and rarely found in other foods, has been previously shown in animal and human studies to play a significant role in glucose metabolism and cell signalling.
Researchers do not know exactly how it works, but preliminary evidence suggest that it may make the cells more sensitive to insulin or may act as an insulin mimic.
Although the research concentrated on Type 1 diabetes, the researchers believe that buckwheat will have a similar glucose-lowering effect when given to rats with the Type 2 form of the condition.
Type 2 diabetes is more common and is caused by a failure of the body's cells to respond properly to insulin.
A spokesman for Diabetes UK said: "A healthy diet is a vital part of managing diabetes and a food that could actively reduce blood glucose levels could be a real breakthrough.
"However, we need to see if this will work for people and what amounts would be necessary to have an effect.
"The required doses could also have side effects. We look forward to seeing more research."
Publication date: 2003-11-20
� 2003, YellowBrix, Inc.
You've seen the link to the American Diabetes Association on the right there. I'm not an official advocate or anything but Denis Bustin of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Diabetes Research left a comment two days ago that I thought I'd put on the front page:
Over the past year, we have committed a significant clinical research effort to study diabetic blood from people in all stages of diabetes for the same potentially treatable defects. Currently the data is very encouraging as it indicates that the markers of disease and treatment will be very similar between the mouse and human with diabetes.
The Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Diabetes Research has secured approval to take this exciting potential therapy to human clinical trial. However, the greatest obstacle in our path is the lack of funds to carry on these clinical trials that we believe could mark a breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes and other diseases. We ask you to please consider becoming our partner in this innovative and promising research by making a charitable gift in support of our goal to cure type 1 diabetes. For further information or to inquire on creative ways to make a gift, please contact: (617) 724-6432 or email us at [email protected]. To make a gift online or read additional information on this study, please visit our website at www.massgeneral.org/diabetes.
Posted by Denis Bustin at November 18, 2003 08:57 PM
I also noticed that right now, Equal® (the artificial sweetener guys) are matching donations made through 12/31/2004 up to a maximum of $50,000.
And since diabetes is as big a deal in Native American circles as Black circles, I thought I'd mention they have a Diabetes and Native Americans page.
Poll Analysis: Presidential Hopefuls Face Deeply Divided Electorate
According to a new Los Angeles Times poll, the country is as divided as it was in the 2000 election when Republican George W. Bush barely beat Democratic candidate Al Gore.
By Susan Pinkus
Times Poll Director
November 20, 2003
According to a new Los Angeles Times poll, the country is as divided as it was in the 2000 election when Republican George W. Bush barely beat Democratic candidate Al Gore. The country is still divided along partisanship, gender and race lines and issues debating the moral and cultural values of the country. The poll also shows that President Bush, on one hand, is likeable with strong marks for his leadership ability and honesty. And on the other hand, it shows that Americans dislike his policies and a majority don�t think he cares about people like themselves, while favoring the rich.
Two things that will take center stage over the course of the presidential campaign will be the economy and the reconstruction of Iraq. The public is of two minds about the health of the nation�s economy. Americans feel the president has made the country weaker by his policies and the country is not as well off as before Bush took office, but they also feel that in the next six months, the economy will be getting better. The economy is more on the public�s mind than rooting out terrorism or even the ongoing fighting in Iraq. They believe the economy should be the highest priority that the Bush administration should be concentrating on. Also, the public believes the country is seriously off on the wrong track, a turnaround from where Americans thought the country was heading seven months ago when the question was asked. Perhaps because of this and the belief that the war in Iraq is not going as planned and not worth the cost of lives and the money being poured into that country, President Bush�s ratings, although still positive, have declined sharply. When asked if they were more likely to support Bush or the Democratic nominee in 2004, 38% of voters would vote for the president, while 42% of them would vote for a Democratic candidate.
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, November 20, 2003; Page A41
If Tom DeLay had half a brain (if pigs had wings), he would have cheered the news that Massachusetts may legalize gay marriages. The institution for which the House majority leader has such concern, traditional marriage, is both wobbly and wheezing -- the butt of cynical jokes, a gold mine for divorce lawyers and, even for the non-initiated, the triumph of hope over experience. Gays, bless 'em, may wind up saving marriage.
In ways that DeLay and his conservative cohorts seem not to recognize, marriage itself is on the rocks. Twenty percent of all first marriages don't make it past five years, and after a mere decade, one-third of all marriages are kaput. Married couples, once dominant in both life and sitcom TV, have gone from 80 percent of all households in the 1950s to 50 percent today. If you peek into the average home, the chances of finding a married couple with kids are just one in four. DeLay, don't delay, marriage needs help.
Now along come gay couples to rescue marriage from social and economic irrelevance, casting a queer eye on a straight institution. They seek it for pecuniary reasons -- issues such as estate taxes, etc. -- but also because they seem to be among the last romantics. (No shotgun marriages here.) The odd thing about the opposition to gay marriage is that if the opponents were not so blinded by bigotry and fear, they would see that gay men and lesbians provide the last, best argument for marriage: love and commitment.
There is scant reason for marriage anymore, which is why it has become a dicey proposition -- and why 86 million adults are unmarried. Women don't need men to support them or defend them from saber-toothed tigers -- and they can, I have read, even have babies on their own.
Men, of course, still need women, if only to bear children and to remind them that they are uncommunicative. (Is a marriage between two men a zone of total silence?) But single guys can adopt kids, and sex is readily available almost anywhere, or so I am told by various city magazines.
There is an analogy here -- I think. Just as gays are renowned for moving into urban areas that others have fled, for refurbishing whole neighborhoods and making them attractive, so they might rehabilitate and renew marriage. Of all people, they need it the least. They have already shattered convention with their lifestyles, and demolished our comfy and parochial notions of sexual categories -- heterosexual male, heterosexual female and nothing else. But when it comes to marriage of all things, some of them want to veer toward the traditional. They want commitment and love -- a universal truth in a manner that Jane Austen never envisaged.
Lawmakers Defy Bush on Media Rules
Negotiators Back Move to Stop FCC From Easing Ownership Limits
By Eric Pianin and Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 20, 2003; Page A01
House and Senate negotiators last night defied a White House veto threat and agreed to a provision that would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from loosening rules on ownership of multiple media outlets.
With little discussion, the lawmakers tentatively included the measure in a huge, evolving spending package needed to keep the government operating.
The decision is a setback for President Bush, who has strongly endorsed the rule change. The plan, drafted by FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, would have allowed a company to own television stations that could reach almost half the viewing public in a given area.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) are trying to use the $284 billion "omnibus spending" bill to reverse Congress's position on overtime, as Bush has urged them to do."The president said he would veto the bill over that . . . [and] the speaker doesn't think it's useful for us to send legislation to the president to veto," said John Feehery, Hastert's spokesman.
and
Yesterday's setback for Bush on the FCC matter was tempered by assurances from House and Senate GOP leaders that a provision to establish a D.C. school voucher program would be retained in the spending bill's final version, even though the Senate blocked it Sept. 30.
and
Last night, the negotiators agreed to kill an amendment by Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) that would have prevented California from imposing tight air-pollution controls on lawn mowers and other small engines. Environmentalists said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) had called some lawmakers to urge them to delete the Bond amendment.House leaders also will try to use the spending package to overturn a new federal meat-labeling requirement -- even though the House and Senate never agreed on the issue -- and to enact legislation helpful to tobacco growers that could not be passed on its own.
All Sides in Liberian Conflict Make Women Spoils of War
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
TOTOTA, Liberia � On that burning hot morning, peace had already been declared in this war-beaten country, West African peacekeepers were on the ground and President Charles G. Taylor had already left the country, ushering in what was widely seen as an end to strife.
Yet the lingering sound of gunfire sent Annie Joe running frightened through the woods and into a group of four or five men with AK-47's on their shoulders.
They demanded that she go with them. They kept her in a house all night and raped her, one after the other. In the morning they told her to go away. There was no use resisting. "When you want to fight, they say, `We kill you,' " she recalled.
Here as in other places, war made women the spoils of conquest, not unlike sacks of rice and four-wheel-drive vehicles. But what stands out is that in the succession of conflicts in Liberia since 1989, many women, and sometimes the same women, were raped by fighters from all sides.
They were raped when Mr. Taylor was a rebel leader fighting his way to the presidency. They were raped when the next band of rebels fought to oust him. They have been raped since Mr. Taylor's departure on Aug. 11, as his loyalists and enemies continue to fight in remote jungle outposts far from areas patrolled by 4,000 United Nations peacekeepers.
The scale of the problem is impossible to ascertain precisely in a country where everything has been destroyed. But anecdotal evidence suggests that 14 years of intermittent warfare crushed many traditional sanctions, unleashing conduct unthinkable in normal times.
Mothers and daughters were raped by the same men. Boys assaulted women old enough to be their mothers.
Rebuilding the social fabric is among the toughest challenges facing Liberia's transitional government. That government is made up of the very warring factions that are accused of atrocities, and it remains to be seen how it will respond to the competing demands of reconciliation and redress.
The chairman of the unity government, C. Gyude Bryant, has said nothing publicly about how war crimes will be punished, but some human rights advocates are calling on the United Nations mission here to support a commission of inquiry.
"In terms of justice, it's something that has to be addressed," said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher with the New York-based group Human Rights Watch. "It has happened on such a huge scale, and it has had such enormous repercussions for the society. I'm convinced that the level at which this has happened would constitute war crimes."
So far, the courts in this country have been hardly provided recourse. The stigma of rape still makes it a crime that most women here find too difficult to speak of.
Still, Mrs. Joe, 23, and a few other women gathered the courage to tell their stories one afternoon in a tarpaulin-and-grass tent that serves as a rape counseling center at a sprawling camp for displaced people. One woman, like Mrs. Joe, recalled being captured by armed men as she was fleeing fighting just north of here.
A third described how armed men had broken into her house, demanded money and then assaulted her while her baby lay on the floor, wailing. She still has no clue who they were, nor whom they were fighting for.
"Rebel, government, they are the same people!" she said. Her baby, a malnourished little boy, clung to her back.
In the capital, Monrovia, one mother, who wanted to be identified only by her village name, Ma Voph, screamed as she recounted how her daughter, Nannu, had been raped and killed on the morning of her 10th birthday.
On that Sunday morning in July, in a quiet residential section of Monrovia, she recalled how she had sung a chorus of "Happy Birthday," fixed Nannu a bowl of oats and let her indulge in a bottle of syrupy grape-flavored Fanta.
It was not even noon when men loyal to Mr. Taylor burst into her home. Terrified, Nannu clutched the end of her mother's blouse, yelling, "Mommy!"
One soldier, who called himself Black Dog, raped and killed Ma Voph's daughter. Another militiaman assaulted a 14-year-old girl whom the mother was raising.
Most of all, Ma Voph said, they took away her sense of herself. A stout, proud woman of 42, she described how she had pulled herself up from her village, cared for her siblings when their own mother died, opened a shop in the capital, bought a car, raised her own children and took in someone else's.
Then three men with guns wrecked it all. Delirious from grief, the woman whispered the same refrain again and again: "They used to call me Mother."
Over and over, she told Mariama Brown, the director of the Concerned Christian Community, the Liberian nonprofit group that runs rape counseling centers, that she would rather die than live.
"Where do I start from?" she wondered aloud. "Everything's gone."
If she killed herself now, Ms. Brown reminded her, she would pay a potentially dear price. Her 16-year-old son would only seek revenge. The cycle would never end.
"How many persons depend on calling you Mother?" Ms. Brown demanded. "You will be back on your feet. They will still call you Mother. You have to be the one now to stand up."
3 Blasts Hit Turkey's Commercial Capital; British Embassy Damaged
By REUTERS
STANBUL, Nov 20 (Reuters) - At least three people were killed in a blast near the Istanbul headquarters of HSBC Bank (HSBA.L) on Thursday, a security guard told Reuters at the scene.
The explosion was one of three to hit Turkey's commercial capital. Turkish television said there were many wounded in the three blasts.
"It sounds like it is pretty bad," said a British embassy spokesman. One of the explosions caused serious damage at the British consulate in Istanbul, the spokesman said.
On Saturday, two trucks packed with homemade explosives detonated outside of the Beit Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 people and wounding hundreds more.
An al Qaeda unit claimed responsibility for the attacks at the weekend and warned that the Islamist network was planning more attacks against the United States and its allies.
On Wednesday, Istanbul's governor identified two Turkish men he said were the synagogue suicide bombers and said their attacks resembled those of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The Buck House Stops Here
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON � President Bush thought he had at last found someplace even more sequestered from the real world than the Republican fund-raisers and conservative think tanks where he makes his carefully controlled "public" appearances.
Swaddled in the $8.5 million security blanket of reinforced concrete, wire mesh and 14,000 bobbies designed to protect him from the ungrateful citizens of our one � I mean, our closest � ally, Mr. Bush was a blithe spirit in his rented tails with his English cousins behind the high gates of Buckingham Palace.
Even sheltered in the bosom of the British royal family, however, Mr. Bush wasn't entirely safe.
Wearing a blue sash and a tiara with enough diamonds to pay for a year of the Iraqi occupation, the British queen gave the American president a bit of a poke, a light sideswipe with her handbag, as it were.
In her remarks honoring Mr. Bush at the state dinner last night, Queen Elizabeth unleashed a barrage of favorable references to the most dreaded words in the Bush-Cheney lexicon: "multilateral order," "trans-Atlantic partnership," "other allies" and "effective international institutions."
"At the very core of the new international and multilateral order, which emerged after the shared sacrifices of that last terrible world war, was a vital dynamic trans-Atlantic partnership working with other allies to create effective international institutions," she said. This, to a president who has never met an international institution he did not try to wreck and who's darting around like a fugitive in the land of the "special relationship," using Buck House as a safe house.
Her Majesty barely mentioned the pesky colonial mess in Iraq � where U.S. occupiers are also surrounded by razor wire, concrete barricades and armed guards � and spent more time praising the first President Bush's leadership than the second's.
Everything Mr. Bush did in London reinforced the idea that this was a trip made not so much to thank the British people for their friendship, but to send a message to the voters back home that he was at ease as a world leader.
You know, if BUsh changes course for the British after refusing to do so for Americans, you'd have to wonder about his loyalties.
LONDON � So I step off the plane in London and the British customs guy sees on my form that I'm a journalist and asks, "Is it true there are more police to protect your president in London than there are in Baghdad?" Then I pick up The Independent to read in the taxi and I see that London's left-wing mayor, Ken Livingstone, has denounced President Bush as "the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen." Then I check out The Guardian, which carried open letters to the president, one of which is from the famous playwright Harold Pinter, who says: "Dear President Bush, I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood."
No, Dorothy, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
We're in the U.K., our closest ally in the Iraq war � a country where Mr. Bush still has many supporters, but also a legion of detractors. But if this is how some of our best friends are talking, imagine how difficult it is going to be to win over America's more ambivalent allies � to widen support for the rebuilding of Iraq. To be sure, some people simply will never be winnable because they hate America above all else. (That may explain why you don't see any protesters here carrying signs saying, "Death to bin Laden," "Saddam: How many Iraqis did you kill today?" or "Mr. Bush: Thanks for believing in Arab democracy.")
But there is also a whole constituency in Europe and the Middle East who are upset with Mr. Bush because of what he does, not who he is. They can be won over, or at least neutralized, so their governments can be more supportive on Iraq. But it will require a policy lobotomy by the Bush team.
Tom Malinowski, from Human Rights Watch, perfectly described Mr. Bush's core problem: When you look at the muted reaction to the president's important speech on the need for democracy in the Arab world, you see that "President Bush has moral clarity, but no moral authority." He has a vision � without influence among the partners needed to get it moving. His is a beautifully carved table � with only one leg.
My boy Frank has started reading here. He's been in the Racism series. In reading Why We Don't Understand You, he responded to the embedded comments:
"Suppose we had a Black society's whose attitude about white folks was on a continuum that includes Black supremacy, that made you suspicious by continually overlooking a simple, obvious point that was critical in understanding you, and justified dening shared responsibility by consciously excluding relevant facts."
I am feeling kind of slow this morning but there is one thing I need spelled out to me in order to really understand this post:
Can you spell out the "simple obvious point that was obvious in understanding you"? I am just not quite putting it together in my head.
ibyx
In what you quote, there is no point specified. Think of a simple, critical point you think Black supremacists are missing.
Prometheus 6
Because the comments aren't active over there, Frank said by email:
Earl,In response to this sentence on your blog:
(Under the WHY WE DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU section)In what you quote, there is no point specified. Think of a simple, critical point you think Black supremacists are missing.
My response:
I will give you TWO:
1) The fact that "race" as an ism...will never be eradicated as long as we (AAs and those who fight on our behalf) continue to use the LANGUAGE of race....and fail to adequately challenge its usage (and the false presumptions it hides) by others.
2) That our destiny is SOLELY in our hands. The route we will take to redemption may be lengthened by injustice... but the ultimate destination, is COMPLETELY up to us.
I disagree.
As regards the first point, that is neither simple nor obvious. I can't think of an "ism" that has been eradicated by any means short of the death of the culture that created it. Plus, eradicating '"race" as an ism' isn't among the goals of whatever Black Supremacists are still around.
As regards the second point, that is patent nonsense. There's a huge difference between one's destination and one's destiny.
Dean calls for reversal of deregulation
Economic platform would underscore `new social contract'
By Jim VandeHei, Washington Post, 11/19/2003
HOUSTON -- After years of government deregulation of energy markets, telecommunications, the airlines, and other major industries, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is proposing a significant reversal: a comprehensive "reregulation" of US businesses.
The former Vermont governor said he would reverse the trend toward deregulation pursued by recent presidents -- including, in some respects, Bill Clinton -- to help restore faith in scandal-plagued US corporations and better protect US workers.
In an interview around midnight Monday on his campaign plane with a small group of reporters, Dean listed likely targets for what he dubbed as his "reregulation" campaign: utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options. Dean did not rule out "reregulating" the telecommunications industry, too.
He also said a Dean administration would mandate new workers' standards, a much broader right to unionize and new "transparency" requirements for corporations that go beyond the recently enacted Oxley-Sarbanes law.
"In order to make capitalism work for ordinary human beings, you have to have regulation," Dean said.
Look, people, free trade and all that, fine. And I really have no issue with capitalism as an economic system. But seriously, what's wrong with establishing a floor no one can fall beneath and letting all the competition take place above it? I'm not talking about guaranteed luxury, I'm talking guaranteed subsistance.
And now, without further interruption, we bring you the conclusion of the article.
In a speech here last night, one mile from the Enron headquarters, Dean sought to place this idea into a new and broader campaign context: a "new social contract for the 21st century" to restore public trust in corporations, national leaders, and US military might. Dean blamed President Bush for eroding the public's faith in these institutions with his policies over the past three years.
"At Enron, those at the top enriched themselves by deceiving everyone else and robbing ordinary people of the future they'd earned," Dean said. "The Bush administration is following their lead."
Dean has excited core Democratic voters with a relentless assault on corporations and the rich, and he is moving quickly to stake a position as the candidate with the boldest plans for tempering the influence and power of US businesses. If the economy continues to rebound, Democratic strategists say, Dean's proposal may offer a way for the party to frame the debate over jobs, income, and fairness.
Dean said that "reregulation" is a key tool for restoring trust. In doing so, he drew a sharp distinction with Bush, an outspoken advocate of free markets.
Dean also continued his clear break from Clinton's "New Democrat" philosophy of trying to appease both business and workers with centrist policies. Earlier in the campaign, Dean reversed his prior support for Clinton's free-trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, and China.
Virtually all Democratic candidates are making the fight against corporate influence a centerpiece of their campaigns. Every Democratic presidential candidate save Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut has come out strongly in opposition to the GOP deals on energy and Medicare, and criticized them as gifts to big Republican corporate campaign contributors. Yet Dean appears to getting the most traction on this front.
U.S. to Make New Push For U.N. Support in Iraq
U.S. officials hope approval of latest plans could spark new aid pledges.
And what IS the new plan?
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A21
TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 18 -- The house of Omar Khalil Ibrahim is a flattened jumble of broken bricks and roofing. Three of his neighbors' homes, still standing, are riddled with big holes made by tank shells that blasted through two or three walls. A dead cow lies rotting beside a broken shed.
The scene in central Iraq was the result of a U.S. military offensive aimed at taking the initiative away from anti-occupation guerrillas. It is using helicopter gunships, tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, as well as an occasional jet strike, unleashing 500-pound bombs and satellite-guided rockets.
One high-ranking commander described it as a "no-holds barred" operation. The targets are suspected hideaways, command centers and safe houses of the elusive guerrillas, U.S. officials said.
"We have to use these capabilities to take that fight to the enemy, and why not?" said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, which patrols western Iraq. "That's why we use them. They are the right systems."
For all the heavy and sophisticated armaments, the targets in Hawijat al-Ali, a rural hamlet near Tikrit, are small-scale. The houses are single-story structures set within walled rose gardens.
"We were surprised by all the big shooting," said Kafi Khalaf, Ibrahim's wife. "They spent a lot to get rid of our houses."
and say to myself, "Oh. You mean like the Chalabi inspired farce that you're trying to replace." I read stuff like:
and say to myself, "Whut? 'could go into Iraq'?" And we need a blessing to end the occupation, but didn't need one to begin it?
Few Signs of Infiltration by Foreign Fighters in Iraq
By JOEL BRINKLEY
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 18 � The commanding general of the United States Army division that patrols much of Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that his men had encountered only a handful of foreign fighters trying to sneak into the country to attack American and allied forces.
"I want to underscore that most of the attacks on our forces are by former regime loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreign forces," said the officer, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
His view was echoed by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which controls northern Iraq and parts of its borders with Syria, Turkey and Iran.
During a briefing on Monday for a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, he said that since May, his men had captured perhaps 20 foreign fighters trying to slip into the country from those three countries.
During a period in which border patrols have been intensified and new technology is being used, that number suggests only modest foreign incursions into Iraq, in contrast to estimates by the Bush administration.
In Washington late last month, officials estimated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at 1,000 to 3,000, and the White House has been suggesting that foreign fighters are continuing to enter the country and are behind many of the attacks, linking the war in Iraq to the global campaign against terror.[P6: emphasis added]
In a news conference on Oct. 28, President Bush said: "We are mindful of the fact that some might want to come into Iraq to attack and to create conditions of fear and chaos. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of a part of the world where terror has found recruits."
During a news briefing on Tuesday evening, General Swannack, who took over the region two months ago, said his men had captured 13 foreign guerrillas and killed 7 others. Ten days ago, Col. David A. Teeples, who is part of General Swannack's command, said only a small number of the foreigners were among the 500 to 600 people his forces had captured in attacks on coalition forces.
This is something you need to think about.
Look at the job growth figures for Mexico. Consider the quotes from today's NY Times:
"On balance, Nafta's been rough for rural Mexicans," said John J. Audley, who edited the report. "For the country, it's probably a wash. It takes more than just trade liberalization to improve the quality of life for poor people around the world."
The Carnegie findings strike a much more pessimistic note than those of a World Bank team that concluded in a draft report this year that the trade accord "has brought significant economic and social benefits to the Mexican economy."
The bank's economists argue that Mexico would have been worse off without the agreement as the country struggled to recover from a deep financial crisis in the mid-1990's and that the income gap between Mexico and the United States is smaller than it would have been otherwise.
Luis Serv�n, research manager for Latin America at the bank, said in an interview that he disagreed with the Carnegie report's contention that the trade agreement had hurt small subsistence farmers. He also said that the higher productivity Mexico had achieved in the Nafta years was ultimately the only route to higher wages there.
Well. We see how effectively higher productivity has increased the wages of the average American worker. Not to mention their job security.
That's not what they said? Oh.
Okay, since Mexico hasn't benefitted from NAFTA and the American people haven't benefitted from NAFTA, I'd like to know who has. Actually, since it's only rational to assume its proponents benefitted, what I want is a real accounting of the benefits and the distribution thereof.
I think I can figure it out if I ignore the descriptions being offered and consider the results.
Report Finds Few Benefits for Mexico in Nafta
By CELIA W. DUGGER
As the North American Free Trade Agreement nears its 10th anniversary, a study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concludes that the pact failed to generate substantial job growth in Mexico, hurt hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers there and had "minuscule" net effects on jobs in the United States.
The Carnegie Endowment, an independent, Washington-based research institute, issued its report on Tuesday to coincide with new trade negotiations aimed at the adoption of a Nafta-like pact for the entire Western Hemisphere. Trade ministers from 34 countries in the Americas are gathering now in Miami.
The report seeks to debunk both the fears of American labor that Nafta would lure large numbers of jobs to low-wage Mexico, as well as the hopes of the trade deal's proponents that it would lead to rising wages, as well as declines in income inequality and illegal immigration.
Though sorting out the exact causes is complicated, trends are clear. Real wages in Mexico are lower now than they were when the agreement was adopted despite higher productivity, income inequality is greater there and immigration has continued to soar.
"On balance, Nafta's been rough for rural Mexicans," said John J. Audley, who edited the report. "For the country, it's probably a wash. It takes more than just trade liberalization to improve the quality of life for poor people around the world."
The Carnegie findings strike a much more pessimistic note than those of a World Bank team that concluded in a draft report this year that the trade accord "has brought significant economic and social benefits to the Mexican economy."
The bank's economists argue that Mexico would have been worse off without the agreement as the country struggled to recover from a deep financial crisis in the mid-1990's and that the income gap between Mexico and the United States is smaller than it would have been otherwise.
Luis Serv�n, research manager for Latin America at the bank, said in an interview that he disagreed with the Carnegie report's contention that the trade agreement had hurt small subsistence farmers. He also said that the higher productivity Mexico had achieved in the Nafta years was ultimately the only route to higher wages there.
The intensity of the debate about the agreement's consequences is likely to grow with the approach of the pact's 10th anniversary in January as pro- and antiglobalization forces marshal arguments to influence negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas and for a new bilateral trade deal between the United States and Central America.
Carnegie's policy experts stop short of contending that Mexico would have been better off without the agreement. "Mexico would have been better off with a better Nafta," said Sandra Polaski, a senior associate at Carnegie who was director of economic research at the Nafta labor secretariat from 1996 to 1999.
The authors of the report say developing countries have much to learn from Mexico's mistakes in the Nafta deal.
Trade negotiators for Central and South American countries, they said, should bargain for more gradual tariff reductions on corn, rice and beans � the staples of subsistence farming � to give peasants time to adjust to tough competition from large, highly efficient and heavily subsidized American farmers.
Carnegie's researchers also say developing countries should push international donors and rich countries to finance transitional assistance for the retraining of workers and farmers displaced by global competition.
Developing countries should also seek greater leeway to promote the use of domestic suppliers in manufacturing over imported components � a step that would increase job creation, the authors say.
The Carnegie report argues that the growth in manufacturing resulting from the trade agreement was largely offset by lost employment among rural subsistence farmers, who were adversely affected by falling prices for their crops, especially corn � a problem intensified by the Mexican government's decision to lower tariff barriers to American-grown corn even more rapidly than the agreement required.
"This is a trade pact which opened the U.S. economy to Mexico very profoundly, including years when the United States experienced its best growth in decades," Ms. Polaski said. "Yet we can't see a clear net increase in jobs in Mexico. You'd expect strong growth. You wouldn't have expected to need a magnifying glass to find it."
The trade agreement also reinforced and magnified changes in Mexico's rural economy � brought on by a broad array of other policies � that are damaging the environment, according to Scott Vaughan, an economist who recently left Carnegie to head the environmental unit at the Organization of American States. For example, he contends that the agreement has accelerated the shift to large-scale, export-oriented farms that rely more heavily on water-polluting agro-chemicals and use more irrigated water compared with producers of similar crops for the Mexican market.
The government of the U.S.ofA. has a long standing tradition of suspending basic rights at time of war and, under judicial imperitive, restoring them afterward. Hopefully we're seeing the start of the rights restoration phase.
The Bush administration insists that it can hold American citizens in secret as long as it wants, without access to lawyers, simply by calling them "enemy combatants." A New York federal appeals court heard a challenge to that policy this week by the so-called dirty bomber, Jose Padilla. The administration's position makes a mockery of the Constitution and puts every American's liberty at risk. It is important that the court strike it down, and give Mr. Padilla the rights he has been denied.
Mr. Padilla is an American citizen who was taken into custody in Chicago in May 2002. The government suspects him of being part of a "dirty bomb" plot by Al Qaeda, but it has not charged him. Instead, it has labeled him an enemy combatant and locked him up in a naval brig in South Carolina. He has been held there nearly 18 months, with no indication of when he will be tried or released. He has not been allowed to meet with a lawyer, despite a lower court ruling that he should be.
Of all the post-Sept. 11 denials of civil liberties, the enemy combatant doctrine is among the worst. It gives the president untrammeled authority to lock up Americans merely by asserting that they are part of a terrorist plot. In its argument to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit this week, the government insisted that military-style rules like the enemy combatant doctrine now apply to American citizens, even on American soil, because Al Qaeda has "made the battlefield the United States."
What if, by some miracle, everyone 'fessed up to mistakes made about the surprisingly easy overthrow of Saddam and its unexpectedly bloody aftermath, and mistakes now being made in building democracy?
Me first.
"On more than one occasion I read a William Safire op-ed looking for signs of honesty."
Closest to my heart are the following gems:
And Safire would admit he doesn't actually believe the script the U.S. press executes on behalf of the Bushistas, but that doesn't matter.
And Safire would admit he included this facetiousness in hopes establishing a claim of even-handedness while never actually admitting a thing.
And Safire would admit this is the classic VRWC manuever, attempting to get promote another "story" in the Weekly Standard (that right-wing cross between the National Enquirer and soft porn) to ational prominence. And in a twofer, he's helping helping along the regime's plan to deal with the Valerie Plame leak scandal
And Safire would admit that not one of the "dismayed Americans who supported the Kurdish cause through thick and thin" is in a position to help the Kurds in any way beyond the rhetorical.
Of course, even if this great day of confession came to pass, Safire could in all honor remain silent and never make the admissions I'd like to see. Because these dishonesties weren't made by mistake.
I just heard on NBC News that the Massachusetts state Supreme Court has ruled gay marriages must receive the same recognition as hetrosexual marriage. The decision is based on the state's constitution which forbids the creation of second class citizens.
Those distant explosions you hear are the heads of a number of right wingers.
ADDENDUM
One of the reasons for GOPAC's success was that it flew under everyone's political radar. Back in the good old days when rational discource trumped marketing techniques, the weak rationales trumpeted by GOPAC grads could have been easily banished in the agora. Now that they've taken root, you have to come up with something that makes the True Believers in Conservative Rhetoric feel better about themselves than their current beliefs.
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 11/18/2003
WASHINGTON -- If you can't beat 'em, copy 'em.
With hopes of liberals winning back Congress someday, a new liberal political action committee has been studying the war plans of legendary conservative field marshal Newt Gingrich. PROPAC, as the group is called, aims to pour $2.6 million over the next year into recruiting and training left-leaning candidates at the grass-roots level -- the first step in a long-range project to fill the pipeline with a fresh supply of future winners.
According to executive director Gloria Totten, the name and idea are conscious echoes of Gingrich's GOPAC, the vehicle by which the Georgia Republican rose from congressional backbencher to speaker of the US House in 14 carefully plotted years leading up to 1994.
"We didn't take their entire playbook," Totten said last week. "But we did look at a myriad of things they did."
Totten, a former abortion rights activist, acknowledged that most liberals, including her, prefer to champion issues than to hatch campaign strategy. And rounding up candidates is often a last-minute chore performed one-handed, with the other hand daintily holding one's nose. Liberals have a distrust of politics and a fear that they might be pressured into unseemly compromises.
Laying the groundwork for PROPAC, "I spent the first six months giving my `get over it' speech," Totten said.
The effort will start this year in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Washington, Arizona, and either Michigan or Florida -- "presidential battleground states," Totten said. The group will target five additional states in the 2006 cycle and five more in 2008. Ultimately, it aims to elect enough local and statewide candidates to have a leftward impact on the redistricting battles of 2011.
Poor lack counsel: lawyers cite low pay
(By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff)
Eight-month-old Dwayne F. was swept into a pre-adoptive foster home after his mother suffered an epileptic seizure in court. It was not because she was ruled unfit, but because there was no lawyer willing to take her case for $39 an hour.
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page A25
So I have come up with my Leave No Teacher Behind Act. In its roughest form, it means forgiving all teachers their federal income tax. For a married teacher with two kids under the age of 14, that would mean an additional $4,300 a year in disposable income. If states and localities joined in, the pot would be even richer.
Would this by itself mean that we'd find only great teachers in the classroom? Of course not. Salaries would still not be great, and working conditions would not change at all. Schools might be dirty, dangerous places and parents inattentive, abusive and -- in too many cases -- not in the least supportive of their children. Still, it would be a start.
No magic bullet exists for what ails our schools. The problem is complex, and it is further complicated by politics, ideology and in some cases the recalcitrance of teacher unions. Yet everything we know about education alerts us to the critical importance of good teachers and principals. Ask someone who turned his life around and he will often name a teacher.
You may ask, why stop at teachers? Why not social workers, who are also severely underpaid and do work few people would even consider? Fine. It would be okay with me if they didn't have to pay taxes either. But we have to start somewhere, and the field of education is as good a place as any. I would, in short, treat education as Congress does some other American industries.
Glenn at Hi. I'm Black!:
It goes against my logical nature to assume that I'll ever be anything more than just a screenwriting hack. Shit, the odds say I have a better chance of drowning, dying in a car accident or killing myself than successfully selling my script. But I say fuck the odds. Why? Because the odds don't apply to me. The odds apply to normal people. The odds do not apply to those with great talent and conversely don't apply to those with zero talent.
I am not normal. And so now I wonder 5 years from now will I look back on these times with regret? Dread? Happiness?
Go, dawg. Go.
This is the attitude to have. "I am already what I've chosen to be. I'm just working out the details at this point."
Because you ARE what's you've chosen to be. Not what you SAY you are, but what your actions show you've chosen.
I believe I saw this in my pre-blogging days. It will come as no surprise to those who see mind as a emergent function of brain activity.
A brain scan that can apparently root out racists has been developed by scientists.
The technique was used on white volunteers shown photographs of black individuals.
In those with racist tendencies, a surge of activity was seen in part of the brain that controls thoughts and behaviour. Scientists believe this reflected volunteers' attempts to to curb their latent racism.
After interacting with real black individuals, the same group performed poorly in a task designed to test mental resources.
The American researchers concluded that harbouring racial prejudice, even unintentionally, stirred up an inner struggle that exhausted the brain.
via Baldilocks, who asks:
A legitimate question. It's possible for near identical world-level behavior to have different emotional roots in different people, so it's possible that minorities who hate mainstream folks to have different brain activity patterns than mainstream folks who hate mnorities. But I wouldn't really expect it.
A LITTLE LATER: George at Negrophile links to two mare articles that drop science on the topic. Reading all three articles was enough to surface an unpleasant recognition: that people who attempt to restraing racial impulses may be the ones most affected by this.
I guess Tech is the appropriate category, though Random Rant was a contender.
Blogrolling.com was hacked. I wouldn't have noticed right away, but SPN at http://Soulphoto.net hipped me to it.
Unfortunately, I had been too lazy to move my Blogrolling.com links to a template module like the other guys. And there was a whole bag of them, so it's going to take a while to reconstruct. If you have an RSS feed or a link I can pick up via the TTLB Ecosystem or Technorati I'll definitely find you.
I was strongly considering setting up a links blog and using that to handle my blogroll. This may accelerate that, though I have to weigh it against the other half completed projects I have going.
At any rate, it'll be a couple of days before I deal with this properly…by which I mean setting up a "disaster recovery" procedure for P6.
UPDATE: The list is back. However, you'll note (or not...) the statement about finding another blogrollong method remains.
Black dropout rate stirs anxiety
By Gayle Worland
Tribune staff reporter
November 17, 2003
With the wisdom he has collected over his 17 years, Zaceri Anderson knows that parents are the steppingstones to a child's education.
But in Anderson's case, with his mother ill and his father living out of state, it's his uncle who is helping him get through his junior year of high school.
"I'm just lucky that God sent him to me," Anderson said of Louis Benson, 63, an inventory inspector who is determined to see his nephew through South Shore Career Academy and on to college. "Without him, I would've given up."
Anderson is determined to escape a dismal statistic about his generation: In 2001-02 more than a fourth of African-American male students dropped out of Chicago's public high schools, according to an analysis of state data released last week.
The troubling numbers are what brought Anderson and his uncle--one in a sweat shirt and jeans, the other in a neat suit--together with 100 others Saturday in a South Side church to discuss how parents, schools and entire communities are failing their sons.
"For the magnitude of the problem that is facing the black community, there's almost no response to this from the black community," said Phillip Jackson, 53, executive director of the Black Star Project and the meeting's organizer. "We have a strong reason to be emotional about this because our children are being destroyed."
60 Years On, Again Battling an Abomination of PowerFred Korematsu opposed Japanese internment in the '40s. Now he's urging the Supreme Court not to make the same mistakes with today's detainees.
By Jonathan Turley
November 17, 2003
Largely unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of politics, a quiet and frail 82-year-old man made a symbolic return to Washington, D.C., this month.
His name is Fred Korematsu, and his name graces one of the most infamous decisions ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 1944 case of Korematsu vs. United States. With that decision, Korematsu was sent to internment camps to join 120,000 other Japanese Americans who were imprisoned solely because of their ethnicity.
Recently, Korematsu filed a brief before that same court on behalf of hundreds of Muslims being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For Korematsu and thousands of camp survivors, one of the darkest and most painful chapters of American history is repeating itself.
The Korematsu case has been largely taught in law schools as an abomination, a case in which the Supreme Court yielded to fear and pressure in sending tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children into camps.
Then came 9/11.
Soon, the Bush administration was relying on the arguments from the Korematsu case to assert the same authority exercised by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to put individuals into detention without trial or access to the courts.
The administration has further argued that the president may do with the Guantanamo detainees as he wishes, including executing them under his own set of rules and standards.
By locating the camp in Cuba, the president holds that his actions are no longer controlled by constitutional law. Despite the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a sealed, highly armed U.S. military base, the court has previously held that it is legally "foreign" territory under the control of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Of course, unlike World War II, there is no declared war against a nation-state. Rather, the president has declared war on terrorism, which is a category of crime. Under this interpretation, any president could declare such a war and claim wartime authority to indefinitely detain people and even execute them without access to the courts.
Korematsu has heard much of this before � 60 years ago.
http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/031117/0035000033_1.html
Dow Jones Business News
Microsoft Plans to Sell Music Over Web
Monday November 17, 12:35 am ET
In a move likely to send waves through the growing online music market,
Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) plans to introduce a
song-downloading service next year that will compete with similar
offerings from Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News) , Roxio Inc.
(NasdaqNM:ROXI - News)'s Napster and others, Monday's Wall Street Journal
reported.
A spokeswoman for the Redmond, Wash., software company confirmed that
Microsoft's MSN Web site will offer such a service in 2004, but declined
to provide further details. Microsoft executives previously have said the
company was considering selling music online; the company's latest
comments represent the most concrete statement yet of its intentions. A
person familiar with the matter says Microsoft has been in regular contact
with major music companies to discuss plans for a service.
Limbaugh Is Back on the Air, With Fans and Foes All Ears
By JACQUES STEINBERG
More than five weeks after he entered a residential treatment center for what he described as an addiction to prescription pain medication, Rush Limbaugh is to return to the airwaves today.
While his voice will be beamed into an atmosphere swirling with questions � not the least of which center on whether he acquired some of those drugs illegally � one point seems assured: Mr. Limbaugh, by far the biggest star in talk radio, is poised to draw one of the biggest audiences in his 15-year career in syndication.
Of those tuning into the program, which will be broadcast live on the East Coast beginning at noon, the most vocal are likely to be split into two camps. Some will be loyalists, many of them conservatives, who have expressed a willingness in recent weeks to forgive Mr. Limbaugh his transgressions.
Others, however, may be less familiar with his show � many of them the "feminazis" and other liberals Mr. Limbaugh says he loves to hate � who wonder how he might reconcile his own behavior with his past statements recommending jail time for drug users.
"I would expect that Limbaugh's listenership will be three to four times its normal size when he comes on the air," said Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, a trade journal, which estimates Mr. Limbaugh's weekly audience at more than 14.5 million. "Personally, he might be in the worst trench he's ever been in. But people are curious to hear what Rush's going to say, which puts him, professionally, at the peak of his career."
In One Oregon City, Jobless Residents Ask, 'What Recovery?'
By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: November 17, 2003
ALBANY, Ore., Nov. 14 � Gloria Hunt has heard the news, all about the nation's apparent economic recovery, about the thousands of new jobs, the upturn, the rosier outlook. Those upbeat bulletins, though, sound to Ms. Hunt like the good fortune of a distant cousin who struck it rich while the rest of the family was still dirt poor.
Economic growth has not made its way to this western Oregon city or to Ms. Hunt, 54, who has been laid off three times from three separate troubled industries � food processing, sheet metal production and a credit card company � since she moved here 14 years ago. Since her latest layoff, from a credit card company that filed for bankruptcy in March, Ms. Hunt has been looking for work for almost eight months.
"I've read the articles," said Ms. Hunt, who frequently attends the so-called networking sessions held twice a week at the local employment help center, which last Monday drew a record 34 jobless people. "But I haven't seen a whole lot of it here. It may be filtering down, but it's not visible at this point."
Ms. Hunt is one of thousands of jobless people in Linn County, where the unemployment rate has hovered between 8 and 10 percent for the last three years. Even as the Bush administration trumpets the national economic growth spurt of the last two months, the jobless rate here, across Oregon, in the rest of the Pacific Northwest and in several other regions has remained high, with economists saying recovery is months or even years away.
Improved Economy Doesn't Lead to Popping of Corks in Atlanta
By DAVID LEONHARDT
ATLANTA, Nov. 14 � This city, which boomed even more than the rest of the country in the 1990's and busted even harder when the century turned, may well be the epicenter of the economy's emerging recovery.
Every day, nearly around the clock at the airport here, dozens of workers in hulking trucks are moving enough dirt to build a two-mile-long, 70-foot-high hill for a new runway. Hotels are fuller than they were a year ago, state tax revenues are rising again and the Atlanta area added more than twice as many jobs to its economy during the 12 months that ended in September as any other metropolitan area, the Labor Department says.
For all of the encouraging signs, however, the economic mood here has remained decidedly measured. If anything, it seems far more similar to the anxiety of the last couple of years than the breathless optimism that filled the 90's, many workers, business executives and economists say.
"If you look back over the last couple years, this is the first time we've made it to October or November without seeing the economy turn down again," said James H. Reese, president of Randstad North America, which runs 28 temporary-help offices in the area. "But we're not ready to scream victory or wave the flag by any stretch of the imagination."
In this way, the city seems typical of much of the country, where economic growth is finally fast enough to create jobs but many people worry that the good news will be fleeting.
There are reasons for the caution. Many of the new jobs here are only temporary, and even many of the permanent ones pay less than those in the shrunken manufacturing and technology sectors did.
Personal income growth continues to trail inflation in Atlanta, according to Economy.com, a research company that follows regional trends. The bankruptcy rate has remained almost 35 percent higher this year than it was in 2000.
Maria Del Conte says she is thrilled with her temporary job as an administrative assistant at an engineering company north of the city, having lost two other jobs in the last two years. But Ms. Del Conte is still making about 25 percent less than she did before 2001, when she worked as a meeting planner for pharmaceutical companies.
"Because of the economy, there is no chance of becoming a permanent employee" in her new job, said Ms. Del Conte, who lives in Kennesaw, an Atlanta suburb, with her teenage daughter.
More Consumers Reach Out to Touch the Screen
By AMY HARMON
INDIANAPOLIS � Striding into the airport here one recent afternoon, Kimberly Ward did not so much as glance at the two ticket agents waiting at the counter. Like most of her fellow travelers, she instead claimed an automated check-in terminal, touched its screen a few times, and took the proferred boarding pass with a quick smile of thanks.
Ms. Ward, 37, pays for gas only at the pump. She shops at Marsh, a supermarket in her neighborhood that has machines that let customers scan, bag and pay for groceries themselves. Her favorite bank teller is her A.T.M.
Dealing with humans in such situations "just slows you down," she says. "This is a lot more convenient."
A new generation of self-service machines is slipping into the daily lives of many Americans. Rejected for decades as too complicated, the machines are being embraced by a public whose faith in technology has grown as its satisfaction with more traditional forms of customer service has diminished. Faced with the alternative � live people � it seems that many consumers now prefer the machines.
"The main thing is you don't want to deal with the cashiers and their attitudes," said Dexter Thomas, 37, bagging his own pizza rolls and Eggos in a self-checkout lane at Pathmark store in downtown Brooklyn this month. "That's why people come to this line."
Soon they may have little choice. Eager to save money on labor costs, businesses are stepping up the pace of automation. Nearly 13,000 self- checkout systems will have been installed in American retail stores like Kroger and Home Depot by the end of this year, more than double the number in 2001, according to the market research firm IDC. Delta Air Lines spent millions of dollars this year to line 81 airports with chest-high automated kiosks: 22 million of its passengers � 40 percent of the total � checked in by touch-screen this year, up from 350,000 in 2001.
Jury still out on e-voting
Touted as an antidote to the hanging chad, e-voting solution not proven, experts say
BY MICHAEL HARDY
Nov. 10, 2003
Legislation that could add voter-verified paper ballots to controversial touch-screen electronic voting machines remains stalled in a House committee, despite 61 cosponsors.
More and more election authorities are buying the machines, which are made by several companies. They are spurred by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). The law provides funding to replace outdated punch card and lever systems in an effort to avoid repeating the Florida chad controversy that kept the 2000 presidential election in limbo for weeks.
…The legislation, called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003, introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) in May, would require that the machines, generically called direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, print out a paper record of each vote so the voter can make sure it is correct. The printed ballot would be stored at the polling place and used if a manual recount or an audit of the results is needed.
Although the bill has attracted 61 cosponsors � all Democrats � it is still in the House Administration Committee. The bill has yet to attract any Republican support, according to Holt's staff.
…In July, the Johns Hopkins team fanned the flames with the results of their analysis of Diebold AccuVote-TS code, obtained from an unofficial Web site. Maryland officials, who were close to finalizing a $55 million purchase of machines to use statewide, asked Science Applications International Corp. to perform a second analysis.
SAIC officials confirmed that the Hopkins researchers had analyzed the code properly, but said that many of the risks could be avoided or minimized by not connecting the machines to a network and by implementing security protocols and processes for election officials and poll workers.
SAIC's report, dated Sept. 2, echoed Diebold's criticism. "While many of the statements made by Mr. Rubin were technically correct, it is clear that Mr. Rubin did not have a complete understanding of the state of Maryland's implementation of the system and the election process controls or environment, [which] reduce or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report," the SAIC report states.
Ultimately, Maryland officials completed the purchase, accepting 12 of SAIC's 17 recommendations. Diebold officials agreed to make three software changes to increase security but only for machines sold in Maryland.
No Home Runs in Energy Bill
Little Impact Expected for Imported Oil, Pollution, Power Grid
By Dan Morgan and Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 16, 2003; Page A10
The energy bill before Congress is a bulky tome of more than 1,000 pages, with thousands of provisions affecting every corner of the country.
But for all its size, industry officials and environmental activists of widely divergent viewpoints generally agree that it will have only a modest impact on the nation's most pressing energy problems, including its reliance on foreign energy supplies, an overburdened electricity grid and fuels that pollute the air and may alter the atmosphere.
For those who want to deal aggressively with the dangers of climate change and air polluted by auto exhausts, power plants and factories, the bill is a disappointment.
But for those who believe the United States needs to dramatically increase its domestic energy production in the interest of national security, the legislation also falls short.
Negotiators provided a wide range of tax incentives to promote wind power generators, energy-efficient homes and hybrid passenger cars running on gasoline and batteries, and Republicans say these and other conservation measures will produce or save enough electricity between now and 2020 to make it unnecessary to build 130 new 300-megawatt power plants.
Money would be authorized for powering government buildings with state-of-the-art photovoltaic cells, and the bill even sets aside $6.2 million to promote bicycles as a way to conserve energy. Incentives for developing new, energy-efficient traffic lights could save significant amounts of electricity.
But impressive as the conservation savings are, they amount to only about three months of U.S. energy consumption between now and 2020, according to a preliminary estimate by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
SAN FRANCISCO JAILS: Handling prisoners
Stripped of dignity
Lawsuits mount over jail's practices regarding strip searches, safety cells
Elizabeth Fernandez, Stephanie Salter, Chronicle Staff Writers
Sunday, November 16, 2003
The San Francisco Sheriff's Department for years has conducted inappropriate, abusive and sometimes illegal strip searches on people brought to its jails, a Chronicle investigation found.
After weeks of questioning by Chronicle reporters and facing multiple lawsuits that could result in multimillion-dollar judgments, Sheriff Michael Hennessey says he is changing the way the jail treats prisoners who are now being strip searched and placed in isolation cells.
In accounts going back to the mid-1990s, 14 men and women said they were wrongly subjected to humiliating strip searches. Many told the newspaper that they were dispatched to "safety cells'' designed for suicidal, self-mutilating or otherwise destructive prisoners. While in what jailers call "the hole,'' the former inmates said, they were denied clothing, blankets, sometimes even water - in violation of both state law and the jail's policies.
A confidential report from a branch of Hennessey's own department bolsters many of the people's accounts. The report, requested by Hennessey, warned more than a year ago that "we are out of compliance with state law'' in some policies and practices, and, "in some instances, Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment" of prisoners.
Democrat Wins Runoff Election in Louisiana
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 15 � Lt. Gov. Kathleen B. Blanco, a Democrat, defeated Piyush Jindal, the Republican whiz kid, to become the first woman elected governor of Louisiana in a runoff on Saturday.
With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Ms. Blanco finished with 52 percent of the vote, The Associated Press reported.
Ms. Blanco carried her native Cajun area and trounced Mr. Jindal in New Orleans, where he had the endorsement of the Democratic mayor. Ms. Blanco also held her own in Mr. Jindal's home city of Baton Rouge, while Mr. Jindal ran strong in the heavily Republican suburbs of New Orleans, The A.P. said.
"The people of Louisiana have spoken," Ms. Blanco said. "We have sent a new message out to the nation � that this is a new Louisiana."
Mr. Jindal maintained his sense of humor, and the first words of his concession speech were: "At least, the Tigers won tonight," a reference to the state university's football team.
Mr. Jindal also said that he was "disappointed but not discouraged." He urged businesses to come to the state and his campaign workers to keep working for Louisiana.
Until now, Louisiana had sent an uninterrupted line of white men to the governor's mansion. The only exception was P.B.S. Pinchback, a black Republican who served as acting governor during Reconstruction for 35 days.
No more links for free publicity from me after this post.
For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury
By STEPHANIE STROM
DALLAS � The last time Kevin Thornton had health insurance was three years ago, which was not much of a problem until he began having trouble swallowing.
"I broke down earlier this year and went in and talked to a doctor about it," said Mr. Thornton, who lives in Sherman, about 60 miles north of Dallas.
A barium X-ray cost him $130, and the radiologist another $70, expenses he charged to his credit cards. The doctor ordered other tests that Mr. Thornton simply could not afford.
"I was supposed to go back after the X-ray results came, but I decided just to live with it for a while," he said. "I may just be a walking time bomb."
Mr. Thornton, 41, left a stable job with good health coverage in 1998 for a higher salary at a dot-com company that went bust a few months later. Since then, he has worked on contract for various companies, including one that provided insurance until the project ended in 2000. "I failed to keep up the payments that would have been required to maintain my coverage," he said. "It was just too much money."
Mr. Thornton is one of more than 43 million people in the United States who lack health insurance, and their numbers are rapidly increasing because of ever soaring cost and job losses. Many states, including Texas, are also cutting back on subsidies for health care, further increasing the number of people with no coverage.
S.E.C.'s Oversight of Mutual Funds Is Said to Be Lax
By STEPHEN LABATON
The S.E.C. was captive to the industry when writing new regulations and was severely short of staff and money.
