The Pepsification of America
by Greg Palast

I couldn't make this up. This morning, the US Department of the Interior is turning over the Mall in front of the Washington Monument to Pepsi-Cola Corporation to promote their new "Pepsi Vanilla."

This has gotten the Washington Post's liberal columnists' knickers in a twist. But they don't know the half of it.

Beyond renting the Monument grounds to Pepsi, President Bush has agreed to re-name the looming recession, "The Pause That Refreshes."

Furthermore, as part of a larger "re-brand America" campaign, the National Institute for Health has announced that the fourth new food group in the 'nutrition pyramid' after dairy foods, meat and fiber will be, Fizzy Brown Stuff.

The Bush Administration has moved swiftly to respond to objections to the commercialization of the nation's heritage sites. The complaints, from Pepsi rival Coca Cola, will be addressed by re-naming the Bill of Rights. Attorney General John Ashcroft is expected to announce today that, "those ten outdated amendments will be called 'Bill of Rights Classic,' while the post-PATRIOT Act version will henceforth be called, 'New Rights Lite.'" A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft added that Anne Coulter will be renamed, simply, "Lite."

Putting the American in 'American Muslim'
By MUQTEDAR KHAN

WASHINGTON — Muslims in America. American Muslims. The difference between these two labels may seem a matter of semantics, but making the transition from the first to the second represents a profound, if somewhat silent, revolution that many of us in the Muslim community have been undergoing in the two years since Sept. 11.

On its face, this shift would seem to threaten the very core of Muslim identity and empowerment. After all, in the decade before the events of Sept. 11, Islam was one of the fastest-growing religions in North America. Mosques and Islamic schools were going up in every major city. Groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Muslim Alliance established chapters in nearly every area with a Muslim population.

Muslim leaders, once a frustrated and marginal group, found themselves being courted by politicians, the news media and foreign governments seeking their support and influence. Indeed, many Muslims believe it was their votes that made the difference in Florida, making them primarily responsible for placing President Bush in the White House.

At the time, the word that best summed up the Muslim sense of self was "fateh" — a conqueror. Many religious and community leaders were convinced that Islam would not only manifest itself in its truest form in this country, but would also make America — already a great power — into a great society. Some even proclaimed that one day America would be an Islamic state.

On Sept. 11, of course, that dream evaporated. Today, the civil rights environment has declined drastically with the passage of the USA Patriot Act and other antiterrorism measures. Both sources of Islam's growth — immigration and conversion — are now in jeopardy, and we continue to face hostility and prejudice in many corners of society. There is no more talk of making America an Islamic state. Any reminder of this pre-9/11 vision generates sheepish giggles and snorts from Muslim audiences.

Yet adjusting to the new political and social realities of life in the United States these past two years has also had unexpected and positive effects for many Muslims. We have been compelled to transform ourselves to connect more intimately with American mainstream society.

Today, many Muslims realize that it is not their Islamic identity but their American citizenship that is fragile. Before Sept. 11, Muslims in America focused primarily on changing United States policy toward Palestine, Kashmir and Iraq. Since Sept. 11, the attempt to reconstitute our identity as American Muslims is making domestic relations — and civil rights and interfaith relations — more important.

Back When Skin Color Was Destiny — Unless You Passed for White
By BRENT STAPLES

The New Yorker was trying not to speak ill of the dead when it described Anatole Broyard as the "famously prickly critic for the Times, a man who demanded so much from books that it seemed he could never be satisfied." From his early reviews for The Times in the 1960's up to his death in 1990, Mr. Broyard was often gratuitously cruel and clever at the author's expense.

The novelist Philip Roth was one of the favored few. Mr. Broyard praised him in the column "About Books" and seemed to see his life through Mr. Roth's work. When Mr. Broyard was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he compared his symptoms to those of Portnoy, Mr. Roth's fictional alter ego in "Portnoy's Complaint."

The comparison made perfect sense. Mr. Roth's great theme was his own struggle to preserve selfhood against the smothering pressures of ethnic identity. That, in a nutshell, was Mr. Broyard's life. He was a light-skinned black man born in New Orleans in 1920 into a family whose members sometimes passed as white to work at jobs from which black people were barred. The largest private employer of black labor at the time was the Pullman Company, which sought college-educated black men to work essentially as servants on train cars that accommodated white travelers only.

Anatole Broyard wanted to be a writer — and not just a "Negro writer" consigned to the back of the literary bus. He followed the trail blazed by tens of thousands of light-skinned black Americans. He methodically cut ties with his family (including a mother and two sisters) and took up life as a white man with a white wife in white Connecticut. By the late 1980's, he had been "white" for 40 years, with two adult children who were unaware that they were part of a large black family that included an aunt who lived an hour away in Manhattan.

For Many Chinese, America's Allure Is Fading
By DAVID W. CHEN

CHANGLE, China — His older brother was the pioneer, more than a decade ago. His son followed three years ago. As recently as last year, his daughter planned to join this exodus of thousands from Fujian Province who have gambled that the life of a smuggled immigrant in America would eclipse that of an impoverished native in China.

But she lost interest after her brother's experience.

"Life is much more difficult than he expected, so I regret sending him to America," said the father, Mr. Wang, who — like some others interviewed for this article — spoke on the condition that only his surname be used. "He is miserable. He says to me, `Why am I working so hard in America? I can get rich at home.' It's very different from the way it used to be."

…Today, the smuggling trade continues, though perhaps at a slower clip, people here say, costing $60,000 per head. But for the first time, many Fujianese feel less urgency about venturing abroad.

They have more options at home, with jobs available in small businesses, steel factories or construction sites. It is far more convenient and less troublesome, some people say, to make small money in the comfort of familiar surroundings, instead of relatively big money in the clutches of a lonely and inhospitable land.

Some smuggled Chinese are even leaving America as soon as they pay their debts, and without gaining permanent residency, because they want a less stressful life at home.

"America is no paradise," said one man surnamed Zheng, who returned to the village of Shengmei a few years ago. He described a seven-year odyssey that started in New York but took him to many other places. "It was the same routine every day for six or seven years," he droned. "Get up. Work for 16 hours. Go to bed. Get up again. I was a fool. A machine."

…Changle, a county of about 650,000 people, has changed, too. Several years ago, the county seat, also named Changle, was a dusty, lethargic town with bleak prospects, said Mr. Kwong, who collaborated on a documentary film about Fujianese emigrants in the mid-1990's. Now, it is a bustling city crowned by new high-rise apartments, stylish new stores and a new boulevard, North Shiyang Street.

Changle is full of people, like Zhou Xueqing, whose attitudes toward emigration have changed. More than a decade ago, her husband went to New York to work as a cook, and he sends home a few hundred dollars a month. But he is depressed, and his health is deteriorating.

His hard life deterred their son from going to America. He went to Shanghai instead. He now runs a mobile phone business and earns $12,000 a year, a good income there.

"The average person doesn't want to be smuggled into America anymore," said Ms. Zhou, who works at a new bedding store. "The economy is so terrible there."

Loury, in other words, was and is a first-rate technical economist with a mathematical bent who has ended up writing and speaking not about Euclidean spaces but about the political economy of race. This is partly because he is as good with words as he is with equations. It is partly because he cares deeply about social issues. But inevitably, it is also partly because he is one of only a handful of well-known African-Americans in his field. In the process he has become what, say, Arthur Koestler or George Orwell was in another time and place: one of those emblematic intellectuals whose career illustrates in microcosm the dilemmas, temptations, and betrayals of an era.

…Reading Loury's dissertation today, 22 years after he wrote it, is a depressing experience--precisely because the essays were so good and remain so relevant. In the first few pages, he stated the central dilemma of race policy in modern America. He was willing to give American society the benefit of the doubt, to assume that in the future, racism--direct economic discrimination--would no longer be a major force holding African-Americans back. But he argued that this probably would not be enough, and therein lay the dilemma.

…In a better world, Loury would have spent the last 22 years devising policies--working with other well-intentioned people to come as close as possible to squaring this circle, finding ways to eliminate the legacy of past racism with as little intrusion as possible on the colorblind ideal. But he has basically never been able to get off square one--because at no point over the past two decades has he been able to find allies who are even willing to accept the reality of the dilemma.

…He said what he thought. In so doing, he found himself labeled a "black conservative"--and thereby exposed to new and dangerous seductions. Let's face it: Any articulate minority intellectual who reliably espouses conservative positions is automatically offered a ticket to a very nice lifestyle. No more rejections from picky academic journals or grubbing for sabbatical time. Instead there are cushy fellowships at Hoover, guest editorials in the Wall Street Journal, and invited articles in Commentary--maybe even a regular column in Forbes--and a steady stream of invitations to plush conferences in nice places.

…But at some point Loury made the discovery that eventually confronts every honest intellectual who gets drawn into the political arena: The enemies of your enemies are not necessarily your friends. The Glenn Loury who wrote that 1976 thesis was not a conservative. He criticized the simplistic anti-racism of the liberal establishment because he wanted society to tackle the real problems, not because he wanted it to stand aside. His seeming allies on the right, however, turned out to be interested only in the critique, not in the next step. (According to Loury, "When I told one gathering of conservatives that their seeming hostility to every social program smacks of indifference to the poor, I was told that a surgeon cannot properly be said to have no concern for a terminally ill patient simply because he had moved on to the next case.") Loury found out that the apparent regard for his ideas by conservative intellectuals was entirely conditional. Any questioning of conservative orthodoxy was viewed as an act of betrayal, giving aid and comfort to the liberal enemy.

Early Years While many craft locals of the original American Federation of Labor would exclude blacks from membership, African Americans would become a growing part of the membership of the emerging industrial unions, making up 20% of the United Mine Workers by 1900. And, much as the United Farm Workers would become a vehicle for latino pride in the 1960s and 70s, one union in particular would become the emblem of black empowerment in the early part of this century, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, organized in 1925 and then led by A. Phillip Randolph.

Randolph is the most important civil rights leader most people have never heard of, despite being arguably more important to civil rights in the 20th century. The first black head of a labor union in the AFL, Randolph in many ways made the civil rights movement possible. He fought to desegregate defense factories in World War II, threatening to mount the first "March on Washington" during WWII. Roosevelt, fearing the political effects, agreed to establish the Fair Employment Practices Commission, the first major federal agency prosecuting discrimination in US industry. Randolph also fought with Truman to desegregate the US military. In 1963, it was Randolph who proposed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Blows to Israel Must Never Go Unanswered
By Martin Peretz

The nation's security depends upon exacting a tremendous price against those who attack it

Mutual Fund Misdeeds

Just when it looked as if there might be some hope of cleaning up the nation's financial markets, sullied by conflicts of interest and fraudulent investment advice at major banks and brokerage houses, along comes evidence that another segment of the securities business has been rigged in favor of big investors at the expense of the little guy. This time the villains are mutual funds, usually deemed a safe haven for unsophisticated investors. In his latest investigation of tawdry practices in the financial markets, Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, revealed this week that some mutual funds had been making secret, illegal deals that benefited big in-and-out traders at the expense of legions of long-term investors. The practices, he said, are almost certainly widespread.

Bush Offers Six-Point Plan for an Economic Recovery
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Sept. 4 — President Bush opened up a tough new campaign today to try to persuade the nation that his economic policies are working and to counter intensifying Democratic criticism that he has provided tax cuts for the rich while millions of working Americans have lost jobs.

At a time when the White House is worried about the effect of the uncertain economy on the president's re-election campaign, Mr. Bush went to a state he urgently wants to win in 2004 for his speech on the economy.

He offered what the White House billed as a six-point economic recovery plan: affordable health care, a national energy policy, opening overseas markets to American products, a limit on the awards paid to medical malpractice victims, a simplification of regulations on small business and an appeal to Congress to make his tax cuts permanent.

While this six-point plan was a restatement of ideas the president has pushed for months, it was the first time he had pulled the policies together in such detail under the central theme of economic recovery.

100,000 Could Lose Housing Subsidies, Advocates Warn
By DAVID FIRESTONE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — More than 100,000 low-income families could lose their rent subsidies next year under a spending bill passed today by a Senate committee and recently approved by the House, housing advocates said.

The advocates cited a new study by the Congressional Budget Office.

If the nonpartisan budget office's forecast of housing costs next year proves accurate, it could be the first time in the 30-year history of the federal housing voucher program that Congress has failed to renew all existing vouchers. Under the program, known as Section 8, the vouchers pay the difference between the market rent of an apartment and 30 percent of a household's income.

The program subsidizes more than two million families who generally earn less than $20,000 a year.

The House appropriated $11.7 billion for the vouchers this year. That would be enough to provide for 1.78 million vouchers under the House estimate of the average cost of a voucher, $6,575. But the budget office last week set a higher figure, $7,068, taking into account housing costs around the country. At that rate, the same sum of money would mean 114,000 fewer vouchers in the coming year. Because the law sets the voucher formula, any shortfall would result in fewer vouchers rather than small reductions in each voucher.

Industry Fights to Put Imprint on Drug Bill
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and GARDINER HARRIS

In the thick of the 2000 presidential campaign, executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of the nation's largest drug companies, received an urgent message: donate money to George W. Bush.

The message did not come from Republican campaign officials. It came from top Bristol-Myers executives, according to four executives who say they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. They said that they were urged to donate the maximum — $1,000 in their own name and $1,000 in their spouse's — and were warned that the company's chief executive would be notified if they failed to give.

Bristol-Myers said no one was forced to donate. [p6: they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. But they were'nt forced. Coersion? Extortion? This should be illegal.]But elsewhere in the drug industry, the message about the election was much the same. At some companies, officials circulated a videotape of Vice President Al Gore railing against the high price of prescription drugs. A torrent of contributions for Mr. Bush and other Republicans resulted. And the money kept flowing, right through the elections of 2002.

Those donations may soon pay off handsomely for the pharmaceutical business. Four years ago, a Democrat was in the White House and the industry was bitterly fighting a prescription drug proposal that it said would have led to price controls. Today, a Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to send a Republican president a measure with a central provision — the use of private health plans to deliver Medicare prescription drug benefits — that is tailor-made to the industry's specifications.

The story of how pharmaceutical manufacturers helped shape the Medicare drug benefit is, in part, that of a calculated decision by a lucrative industry to throw its financial weight behind one political party — with $50 million in campaign contributions over the last four years, the vast majority to Republicans. It is also the story of a dogged, mostly unseen campaign that included a small army of lobbyists in Washington and a network of industry-financed groups, which carried the drug makers' message to the public.

Throughout, the industry had a single goal: to defeat any legislation that would let Medicare negotiate steep discounts on the prices of medicines for its 40 million beneficiaries.

Layoffs Rose Sharply Last Month, Report Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:58 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The civilian unemployment rate improved marginally last month -- sliding down to 6.1 percent -- as companies slashed payrolls by 93,000. Friday's report sent mixed signals about the nation's overall economic health.

August was the seventh consecutive month of cuts in payrolls, a survey released by the Labor Department showed, indicating continuing weakness in the job market. But the overall seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 6.2 to 6.1 percent of the labor force, as reflected by a broader survey of U.S. households.

Last month's power blackout in the Northeast and Midwest caused significant disruptions in the economy, but Labor Department analysts say it was unlikely to have affected either of the monthly surveys.

The survey of businesses showed that job cuts were heavy again in manufacturing, a sector that has suffered the brunt of the economic downturn that began in March 2001. President Bush on Monday announced he was creating a new assistant secretary of Commerce position to focus on revitalizing that part of the economy.

Hiring in health care and construction helped offset losses in factories and other industries, such as information, professional and business services and government, Friday's report said.

Labor Department analysts believe the survey of businesses provides a more reliable picture of the jobs market than the household survey. The payroll report is based on a larger sample and estimates ``are regularly anchored to'' counts derived from employment insurance tax records, said Kathleen P. Utgoff, Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.

Last month, the number of people in the labor force remained largely unchanged, with just 10,000 giving up their job searches.[p6: just? ]

Passion works for Democrats

By Joan Vennochi, 9/4/2003

LEFT, RIGHT. Left, right. Left, right. Straddle. Reach to the left on health care. Tilt with the polls to the right on issues like reducing welfare and the federal deficit. But above all, be all things to all people whenever possible.

That political calculation worked for Bill Clinton, most notably in 1992 against George Bush, the elder. It worked for Clinton a second time, in 1996, although it really didn't take much in the way of strategy to defeat Bob Dole. Standing next to the aging Republican was sufficient.

Following in Clinton's political footsteps is tempting for Democrats. But it is not the way to beat George W. Bush in 2004

…If Bush stood for something in 2000 -- compassionate conservatism? -- he stands for even more -- or is it less? -- at this point in his presidency. And that is his strength and weakness in 2004. On the weakness side, the people who voted for cardboard in 2000 rather than for Bush, are outraged by the absolute certainty of what Bush now represents. They seek a candidate who can put a face and voice to their outrage.

…The Bill Clinton era is over and someone should explain that to Terry McAuliffe, who heads the Democratic National Committee. No candidate is going to get elected president in 2004 talking about video chips. Three million jobs disappeared during the Bush administration. The United States waged war with Iraq but does not know how to wage peace in that country. Civil rights, affirmative action, and choice are under attack.

There is plenty to be angry about, but anger alone will not win the White House. For the Democrats, passion with purpose is necessary, in the primary season and beyond. Straddling is an exercise in political futility.

Betraying the Sick in Africa

There is an old joke about a man who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan. For such chutzpah on a global scale, consider President Bush's overseas AIDS initiative. In his last State of the Union address, the president announced a new program to fight AIDS in Africa and pledged $15 billion over the next five years. But instead of using existing channels, Mr. Bush created a new bureaucracy. Now the White House and Congressional Republicans argue that since the bureaucracy is not ready, dying patients must wait.

The Senate is scheduled to vote soon on an appropriations bill that contains $2 billion for the AIDS initiative — only $500 million more than this year's spending. The House has approved even less. This is the White House's doing. It is twisting arms to get Congress to cut its own program. The House and Senate had authorized $3 billion for next year.

This undercutting of trumpeted compassion initiatives is a habit with the president because of his devotion to tax cuts for the wealthy. But officials are arguing that AIDS money cannot be spent wisely because the office of the AIDS coordinator — and Africa — is not ready.

Both assertions are nonsense. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is besieged with excellent vetted proposals from African nations desperate to fight AIDS. Multiple billions could be effectively spent on AIDS prevention and treatment and help for orphans. And countries that lack the ability to run good programs need money to build that capacity. But the Global Fund is too broke to help. If the administration cannot overcome its mysterious distaste for this organization, it could simply take some of the country proposals and finance them directly.

Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, is proposing to restore the full $3 billion. The Senate should adopt this amendment, then prevail upon the House. Several top Republicans, including President Bush and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, have recently been to Africa, where they hugged orphans and visited the dying. If they break America's promise on AIDS, they will be cynically using suffering Africans as nothing more than a photo opportunity.

U.S. Court Blocks Plan to Ease Rule on Media Owners
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — A federal appeals court issued a surprise order today blocking the Federal Communications Commission from imposing new rules that would make it easier for the nation's largest media conglomerates to add new markets and areas of business.

The decision came a day before the new rules, considered among the most significant efforts at deregulation adopted during the Bush administration, were scheduled to take effect. It followed two hours of oral arguments at an emergency hearing this morning by a three-judge panel in Philadelphia and was a sharp setback for the largest media companies and for the commission's chairman, Michael K. Powell.

Mr. Powell, the architect of the new rules, has emphasized that the commission was compelled to rewrite the old regulations because of a string of federal court decisions in cases brought in Washington by the media companies. Those decisions ordered the agency to reconsider some of the rules.

But today the appeals court voted unamimously to prevent media companies from moving forward with plans to take advantage of the new rules. The court also raised tough questions for the commission and its industry supporters about their efforts to reshape the regulatory landscape. The new regulations are already facing a challenge in Congress, where legislators have taken steps to repeal some of them.

Microsoft Delivers First Rights-Management Component
By Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch
RM client bits for a variety of Windows desktop releases are available for download.

Microsoft has made available for download the first of several components of its forthcoming stable of rights-management software.

The Redmond software maker posted to its download center on Tuesday its rights-management client. The client runs atop Windows and is designed to allow rights-management-aware applications—like Office 2003—to work with the forthcoming Windows Rights Management Services that will be layered on top of Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft unveiled its plans to build an end-to-end rights-management (RM) solution in February. Microsoft described its RM products as key to its security strategy. At that time, the company fielded a beta of its RM client.

The client software runs on top of Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP, and is designed to allow these desktop versions of Windows to access the forthcoming Rights Management Services server. The RM server component is the product code-named "Tungsten."

Microsoft has said it plans to require an RM client for each end user who will be creating or viewing rights-management-protected content.

Microsoft also is working on software called Rights Management Add-On for Internet Explorer that is designed to allow users to access RMS-protected documents without a full RM client present. That code went to beta in May.

the trope that has really caught on among elites is the notion that Bush is a liar. The New Republic and Paul Krugman trumpeted this charge early on, and now the Washington Monthly has chimed in, with one of the most fatuous and rigged pieces of lazy insta-journalism I've read in a while. (Bob Somerby gets it right, for once.) It's not just that I find the Monthly's (and Krugman's) charges silly. They conflate mis-statements, deliberate confusion, euphemism, ignorance and dishonesty in ways that make it hard for anyone to emerge a non-liar. It's more that when you start using the term "liar" promiscuously in public discourse, you make such discourse increasingly impossible. The term should be reserved only for a conscious and deliberate statement that you know is untrue as you speak or write it...

Census Shows Ranks of Poor Rose in 2002 by 1.3 Million
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 … The number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by more than 1.3 million last year, even though the economy technically edged out of recession during the same period, a Census Bureau report shows.

The spike in economic hardship hit individuals and families alike. The report indicated that the total percentage of people in poverty increased to 12.4 percent from 12.1 percent in 2001 and totaled 34.8 million. At the same time, the number of families living in poverty went up by more than 300,000 in 2002 to 7 million from 6.6 million in 2001.

The number of children in poverty rose by more than 600,000 during the same period to 12.2 million. The rate of increase in children under age 5 jumped a full percentage point to 19.8 percent living below the poverty line from 18.8 percent a year earlier.

"These numbers provide a moving picture of population changes," said Stephen Buckner, a spokesman for the Census Bureau. "It's more timely data that should allow decision makers to make more informed judgments."

The new data, some analysts say, may raise the level of scrutiny on a variety of federal programs like welfare reform and the recently enacted increases in child tax credits, which excluded about 6.5 million low-income working families with children.

Stuart Butler, an economist with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington policy institute, called the data "a fairly predictable product of the slowing economy."

"The issue is, what do you do to continue to strengthen the economy?" Mr. Butler said. "You take the necessary steps to encourage people to move back into the work force, plus making sure we don't do anything to weaken the welfare reforms put in place some years ago."

Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said, "Some people had drawn a Pollyanna-ish conclusion that somehow changes in the welfare system would insulate children from increases in poverty during economic slumps."

"These new data show that that assumption is flatly incorrect." Mr. Greenstein said. "It also underscores the mistake in federal tax policies that exclude the very families who are hurting the most."

Robert Rector of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, said welfare reform helped keep more single mothers in the labor force than in previous economic downturns, and therefore, out of poverty.
"So now coming out of the recession, in terms of child poverty, it's a very optimistic picture," Rector said. "In terms of the population overall, it looks like an ordinary recession."

Imam W.D. Mohammed, leader of American-born black Muslims, resigns
RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer
Monday, September 1, 2003
©2003 Associated Press

Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the black Muslim spiritual leader who over three decades transformed how American blacks practice the religion, has resigned as head of the American Society of Muslims.

Mohammed said he will continue to represent and guide black Muslims and direct his ministry, The Mosque Cares, but would no longer lead the society, the main organization representing his movement.

"I'm getting ready ... to do more, to be more productive and to contribute to the good life of the believers," Mohammed said Sunday at the start of his keynote speech at the society's annual convention.

Mohammed, who will turn 70 in October, on Saturday privately informed his movement's imams, or prayer leaders, that he would step down

My first byline, and I missed it

Democratic Underground published my piece, "A Twelve Lane Freeway to Mediocrity?" in June and I didn't even know it until today. I expected an email informing me if they published it, so I did not keep checking the site every day to be sure. I feel pretty stupid now, but proud of the article at the same time.

Amid cuts, students left with basics
By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 9/2/2003

Padlocked libraries. No after-school drama club. Fewer intriguing electives such as desktop publishing or the culture of Greece and Rome.

It's back-to-school week in Massachusetts without the frills -- and, some fear, without the fun.

"You're going to have a bunch of shortchanged kids out there," said Paul Schlichtman, a member of the Arlington School Committee.

The gloomiest fiscal picture in two decades is clouding this week's stampede back to the classroom for dozens of school districts statewide, as budget cuts exacted on paper become a reality. While schools try to shield core classes, electives are taking a hit, and so are school clubs that made the school day not only passable but enjoyable. "That's my worry," said Kathleen Donovan, Arlington's superintendent of schools. "I think it's as important to provide for the student that's going on to college as I think it is to provide for the student that's going to be a chef and support himself."

Classes kick off in many districts today, tomorrow, and Thursday. School administrators promise their teachers will soldier on, but they have nagging questions about the long-term effects of slimmed-down schools on this generation of children. Nationally, the back-to-school outlook is grim: Legislatures in 11 states, including Massachusetts, cut funding for K-12 education this fiscal year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

School study finds deep racial divide
Boston, other communities reflect impact of white flight

By Yvonne Abraham and Francie Latour, Globe Staff, 9/2/2003

Almost three decades after Boston's bruising school desegregation battles, nearly half of the white children in the city attend private schools and most minority children remain walled off from suburban school advantages, according to a report released yesterday.

The report, by the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the State University of New York at Albany, depicts a region with stark divisions between school districts. Students in Boston public schools are mostly black and Hispanic. Hispanic children are concentrated in schools in the blue-collar, satellite cities such as Lowell and Lawrence. And suburban schools are predominantly white.

"White children have almost entirely escaped the city of Boston, and those who remain in the city live in increasingly advantaged city neighborhoods; half of them attend private schools," it reads. "The vast majority of them live in the suburbs, and in the suburbs they grow up in neighborhoods and attend schools that are typically 90 percent white and remarkably affluent."

The report, sponsored by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, is part of a yearlong effort called the Metro Boston Equity Initiative, a study of segregation and inequality in the region. Researchers unveiled the findings as part of a weekend-long Harvard conference on race relations.

…According to the study, the white flight that followed busing in the 1970s continued through the 1990s. In 1990, 36.7 percent of Boston's children were white, but only 23.5 percent of the students enrolled in the public elementary schools were white. In 2000, 25.4 percent of the city's children were white, and they made up only 13.6 percent of Boston elementary school enrollments.

The white children who remain in Boston -- 30,000, or 3.2 percent of the entire region's population of white children -- live in neighborhoods where 85 percent of the children are white. Fully 44 percent of white children in Boston attend private schools.

By contrast, 46.8 percent of the region's black children live in Boston, and 22.5 percent of Hispanic children call the city home.

The picture in the suburbs is equally lopsided: 80 percent of the white under-18 population lives in the suburbs; only 21.4 percent of blacks in that age group and 24.1 percent of Hispanic youths and children live in the suburbs. Nationwide, by comparison, 40 percent of the black and Hispanic under-18 population lives in the suburbs, according to the report. The reasons for that are not just economic, said John R. Logan, an author of the study and director of the Mumford Center. Even when minority families become affluent, they tend to stay in neighborhoods with lower incomes and education levels, he said.

"Income is not the primary driver of the system here," he said. "There is very good evidence of discrimination in the housing market, and there is the historic legacy of a color line people hesitate to cross. It's asking a lot of a black family to be the only black family in a community."[p6: people who substitute EA (economic assistance) for Aa should take note]

But Mayor Thomas M. Menino took umbrage at the report: Seeing the Boston schools through a demographic lens does them an injustice, he said. The study says nothing about the quality of Boston's schools, which has improved enormously in recent years, he said.

"We can't continue to talk about black and white," he said. "Let's talk about achievement. The answer is to have quality schools, and when you have quality schools, there's no color. All parents want quality schools and that's what we have today in Boston."

Logan said it is not the racial disparities between school districts that allow for educational inequities but the economic differences that attend them.[p6: uh huh. and it is, of course, a coincidence that the economic differences attend the same groups that experience educational inequities]

Chinese Aide Says U.S. Is Obstacle in Korean Talks
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Sept. 1 - The Chinese official who played host to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program said today that the United States was the "main problem" in reaching a diplomatic solution to the crisis, echoing the North's bitter assessment about why the talks had ended in acrimony.

Asked about the obstacles that had arisen during the talks in Beijing last week, Wang Yi, a vice foreign minister who was China's chief delegate at the negotiations, replied, "America's policy toward the D.P.R.K. - that is the main problem we are facing." North Korea's formal name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Mr. Wang made the comment to reporters during a conference he was attending in Manila, and it was not immediately clear if he spoke for China's Foreign Ministry, which has sought to maintain a neutral position while urging both parties to continue negotiating.

But the remark may reflect frustration that the United States offered no concessions to North Korea during the talks, which were organized after extensive diplomacy by Chinese officials.

The Bush administration has maintained that North Korea must dismantle its nuclear program before discussions can begin on any benefits it might receive for doing so. North Korea says it is willing to give up its nuclear program, but only if the United States offers a nonaggression treaty first.

Concessions possible on N. Korea
Policy shift seen as way to defuse nuclear issue

By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 9/1/2003

WASHINGTON -- After more than two years of trying to isolate reclusive North Korea, the Bush administration is preparing to offer Pyongyang diplomatic relations, security guarantees, and other concessions if it agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, according to administration officials involved in internal deliberations.

The approach marks a major policy shift toward what President Bush has labeled a member of the "axis of evil." The Bush White House broke with the Clinton administration's carrot-and-stick approach, preferring to stand firm against North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whom it accused of violating a 1994 agreement to freeze Pyongyang's weapons program.

The administration, however, has little to show for the confrontational approach. North Korea pulled out of a global treaty governing atomic weapons earlier this year and is now threatening to conduct a nuclear test.

Bolstered by new talks last week, a consensus has emerged in Washington that the most effective way to defuse one of its most challenging foreign policy crises is to reemphasize the Clinton approach of possible rewards in return for North Korean cooperation, the officials said.

"Now [the administration] has learned the hard way that the solution to this is going to be negotiation," said a State Department official who asked not to be named. "The approach until now has been terribly inefficient and wasteful. We could have been here two years ago."

Bush Defends Tax Cuts and Announces Jobs Post
By DAVID E. SANGER

RICHFIELD, Ohio, Sept. 1 — Since the last time President Bush addressed a Labor Day picnic ? with carpenters in Pennsylvania ? the economy has lost 700,000 jobs, most of them in manufacturing.

…"Things are getting better," Mr. Bush told a subdued crowd here.

Orders for goods are coming back to the country's factories, the president said, and productivity is on the rise ? though he acknowledged that was one reason jobs were disappearing.

…Mr. Bush's only new announcement today, the traditional start of campaign season in election years, was the creation of an assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing, a step clearly intended to reinforce his commitment to bringing back blue-collar jobs.

Yet the creation of the position is the kind of action that Republicans, when they were out of office, used to criticize.

…Mr. Bush said that in creating the post, he would address head-on the loss of what he said were "thousands of manufacturing jobs" in recent years.

In fact, around 3 million jobs have been lost since Mr. Bush took office, about 2.5 million of them in manufacturing.

Mr. Bush never explicitly mentioned China, but when he said much of the job loss was "because production moved overseas," he appeared to be referring to China and other low-cost countries.

China has emerged in this campaign in essentially the same role that Japan played when the first President Bush entered his ill-fated re-election campaign in 1992

…Mr. Bush did not say what the duties of the new assistant secretary would be other than to focus "on the needs of manufacturers," nor did he say when he intended to nominate one.

China Seen Ready to Conciliate U.S. on Trade and Jobs
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Sept. 1 — China is preparing to reduce incentives for exporters, increase purchases of Treasury bonds and loosen controls on foreign currency holdings to blunt mounting pressure from the United States, where its growing trade surplus has come under heavy political scrutiny, Chinese officials and analysts say.

The steps are expected to be among concessions Chinese leaders offer Treasury Secretary John W. Snow on his visit to Beijing this week, although they fall well short of meeting Mr. Snow's demand that China begin allowing market forces to set the value of its currency, the yuan.

With Democratic presidential candidates, influential American manufacturers and even Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, pressing China to overhaul its currency system, officials here are eager to head off trade tensions. But they are also determined to maintain the current exchange rate, set at roughly 8.3 yuan to the dollar, for some time to come.

Another Friday Outrage
By PAUL KRUGMAN

When the E.P.A. makes our air dirtier, or the Interior Department opens a wilderness to mining companies, or the Labor Department strips workers of some more rights, the announcement always comes late on Friday ? when the news is most likely to be ignored on TV and nearly ignored by major newspapers.

Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC, announced settlements with energy companies accused of manipulating markets during the California energy crisis. Why on Friday? Because the settlements were a joke: the companies got away with only token payments. It was yet another demonstration of how electricity deregulation has gone wrong.

Most independent experts now believe that during 2000-2001, price manipulation by energy companies, mainly taking the form of "economic withholding" ? keeping capacity offline to drive up prices ? added billions of dollars to California's electricity bills. A March FERC report concluded that there had been extensive manipulation of prices in both the natural gas and electricity markets.

Using methods widely accepted among economists, the California Independent System Operator ? which operates the power grid ? estimated that withholding by electricity companies had cost the state $8.9 billion. This estimate doesn't include the continuing cost of long-term contracts the state signed, at inflated prices, to keep the lights on during the crisis.

Yet the charges energy companies agreed to added up to only a bit more than $1 million. That is, the average Californian was bilked of more than $250, but the state will receive compensation of about 3 cents.

…So what does this say about electricity deregulation?

There is a theoretical case for a deregulated electricity market. But making such a market work, it's now clear, requires at least three preconditions. First, it requires a robust transmission system, yet the recent blackout made it clear that we have now created a system in which nobody has clear responsibility for the transmission network. Second, it needs a watchdog agency with adequate powers to prevent and punish price manipulation; FERC doesn't have those powers. Third, that watchdog must not be an agent of the very companies it's supposed to be policing. Enough said.

I admire the virtues of free markets as much as anyone. But given what we've seen so far, any state government that lets the federal government prod it into deregulation is just plain crazy.

Colorblind America Is Still an Illusion
By J.P. Gownder

September 1, 2003

Colin Powell is not black. Nor is Halle Berry. Tiger Woods, with an Asian mother and mixed-race African American father, isn't black either.

At least, this is the reductionist assumption underlying Proposition 54, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, on the Oct. 7 ballot. The initiative would prohibit any government agency in California from collecting data on race, ethnicity, color or national origin.

Supporters argue that, among other things, there's no longer a rationale for collecting racial data because the number of mixed-race citizens is growing. They claim that "a remarkable blurring of racial lines" has rendered the concept of race meaningless. And they say that by asking Californians about their race, the government "sanctions racial classifications," forcing an increasingly multiracial populace into traditional categories of "hyphenated Americans." Yet neither race nor its effects will be dissipated by a ballot measure that seduces with a simple message of a "colorblind society."

A new deal for Labor Day

By Thomas A. Kochan, 9/1/2003

ON LABOR DAY, politicians usually applaud what workers do for the economy and society. This year speeches to this effect will ring hollow to the majority of American workers and their families. The reality is the American workforce resembles a pressure cooker about to blow.

Over the past decade workers and families have had to work longer hours only to be rewarded with stagnant or declining wages in the face of skyrocketing CEO pay, lost or dramatically diminished pensions, rising health insurance costs, and spreading job insecurity. Add to this the scandal induced breakdown in trust and confidence in corporations and their leaders, continued declines in union coverage and power, and a federal government busily reducing overtime coverage, quashing rules that would allow states to fund paid family leave, and unilaterally canceling thousands of federal workers' rights to join a union under the Orwellian guise that collective bargaining would be a threat to national security.

So maybe it is time for workers to say enough is enough. Instead of enduring more hollow rhetoric they might start demanding a new and better deal at work, one that gives them the tools to regain control of their economic destiny and restores trust and confidence in business and government.

Work in progress

FOR 9 MILLION Americans, today's Labor Day celebrations will be muted by the fact that they are unemployed. This amounts to 6.2 percent of the work force. The upturn that began almost two years ago is proving to be not just a jobless recovery but a job loss one: Nearly 1 million jobs have vanished since economists say the turnaround began in November 2001.

Home Alone
By BOB HERBERT

There was an interesting lead paragraph in an article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal last Thursday:

"The blackout of 2003 offers a simple but powerful lesson: Markets are a great way to organize economic activity, but they need adult supervision."

Gee. They've finally figured that out. The nuns I had in grammar school were onto this adult supervision notion decades ago. It seems to be just dawning on the power brokers of the 21st century. Maybe soon the voters will catch on. You need adults in charge.

…Imagine if we had done some things differently. If, for example, instead of squandering such staggering amounts of federal money on tax cuts and an ill-advised war, we had invested wisely in some of the nation's pressing needs. What if we had begun to refurbish our antiquated electrical grid, or developed creative new ways to replenish the stock of affordable housing, or really tackled the job of rebuilding and rejuvenating the public schools?

What if we had called in the best minds from coast to coast to begin a crash program, in good faith and with solid federal backing, to substantially reduce our dependence on foreign oil by changing our laws and habits, and developing safer, cleaner, less-expensive alternatives? This is exactly the kind of effort that the United States, with its can-do spirit and vast commercial, technological and intellectual resources, would be great at.

Imagine if we had begun a program to rebuild our aging infrastructure — the highways, bridges, tunnels and dams, the water and sewage facilities, the airports and transit systems. Imagine on this Labor Day 2003 the number of good jobs that could be generated with that kind of long-term effort.

All of these issues, if approached properly, are job creators, including the effort to reduce our energy dependence. The big hangup in the economic recovery we are supposed to be experiencing now is the continued joblessness and underemployment.

A fellow I ran into recently in San Jose, Calif., Andy Fortuna, said: "I've got a college degree and I'm washing cars. I'm working, but I'd like a good job. If the idea is for business to employ as few people as possible and keep their pay as low as possible — well, how's that good for me? Who speaks for me?"

Basically, because I believe the market is efficient, I believe that it will find the simplest and cheapest solution. In an unfettered world, the cheapest solution is the bullet. And it's because this is the default behavior of human beings, we have to have some other mechanism than the market to ensure this kind of crap doesn't happen. Businessmen shouldn't be required to have their own private military. And if your economic theory predicts a high probability (if not outright certainty) of private militaries. . . well, I think you're way off track and need to re-evaluate your solution.

And the point of the TAP article is that RoveCo has taken extraordinary actions in regard to civil rights. Amazing, extra constitutional actions. Justified on a state of "war" with a noun. Get that? A noun.

The DJ calls a woman who'd recently applied for a job, pretending to be from the drug testing company she'd submitted a urinalysis to. He said that they'd found high levels of "REO Speedwagon" in the sample after checking twice to make sure. (You can be snide about her not getting that it was a prank right there, but what followed was distinctly unfunny.)

She goes on to tell the DJ how much she needs this job, that it's such a good job, and that she's been unemployed for six months. She swears she's been clean. Then she starts begging him to change the results. She asks if he's married, and in the space of about a minute goes from offering lunch, to a night out for drinks, to saying she'll sleep with him.

In Besieged Iraq, Reality Pokes Ideology in the Eye

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON ? Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, a hard-liner who had pressed for five years to topple Saddam Hussein, admitted last week to mistakes in planning the war in Iraq. He said, for the first time, that the administration is considering placing American and British forces there under a United Nations flag, provided their leader is American.

Mr. Armitage declined to give details. "I don't think it helps to throw them out publicly right now," he said.

Too late. The deputy secretary's comments became part of a nascent chorus ? tentative but unmistakable ? of officials, lawmakers and others re-examining their preconceptions about Iraq and calling for a midcourse correction. Reality has poked ideology in the eye.

For conservatives, this has meant considering the idea that America can't go it alone and may have to appease allies who benefited from the war but failed to support it. It means acknowledging that Iraq is so badly broken it could well require a lengthy and extremely costly process of nation-building, a term that makes many on the right cringe.[p6: may? may??]

For liberals ? many of whom opposed the invasion ? it may mean admitting there can be no swift departure because the stakes have become too high. Leaving now would place Iraqis under violent usurpers, and set a precedent that could haunt Washington for years.[p6: may? may??]

To-Do List: 1) What Not to Tolerate. 2) What That Means.

By DAVID E. SANGER

…The most immediate challenge came on Thursday, when North Korea startled a six-nation conference in Beijing by openly threatening to make a formal declaration that it is now a nuclear-armed power, and to conduct a nuclear test that would put to rest any notions that it is bluffing. In public, the White House dismissed the statements as another unsubtle North Korean attempt at blackmail, with a spokesman noting the country's "long history of making inflammatory comments."

In private, Mr. Bush's national security aides were not so sanguine. While the North Koreans alternately blow hot and cold ? threatening to shoot off missiles and nukes one moment, then hinting at disarmament deals if the price is right ? they have backed up almost every public threat they have made in the past 12 months. They promised to throw international inspectors out of the country, then did it; they threatened to withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and then withdrew; they said they would make bomb-grade plutonium, and American intelligence agencies now believe they are producing it, if slowly.

So despite the administration's public line that there is no crisis afoot, almost everyone in the administration, which is deeply divided on North Korea strategy, says this is a race against time. "If they blow off a nuke test, this whole process of negotiation is over," one senior national security aide said on Friday. American officials have also told their allies that if talks drag fruitlessly past October, they will be ended for fear that Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is playing for time in which to reprocess plutonium.

The informal October deadline may offer a hint about what Mr. Bush means when he says he will not "tolerate" a North Korea gone nuclear. By then, the hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, who have never believed a negotiated solution is possible with the North, will be able to say that Mr. Bush tried diplomacy and that it failed. In fact, those arguing for a patient diplomatic approach appear to be losing ground: one of the State Department's more moderate North Korea hands, Charles Pritchard, resigned last week, after months of behind-the-scenes battling to get the administration to put serious incentives on the table for the North to think about.

Cuts Put Schools and Law to the Test
By SAM DILLON

OKLAHOMA CITY, Aug. 30 ? Angela Houston, the principal of Eisenhower Elementary School, spent this week hunkered down in her office here phoning unemployed teachers, trying to rebuild her staff after a dozen instructors lost their jobs in a state budget crisis last spring.

But even if Ms. Houston can hire teachers for all her classrooms, she worries about her school's morale. "The layoffs brought a big letdown," she said.

Dozens of other Oklahoma City schools were also reeling from the financial turmoil that forced the closing of seven schools and the dismissal of 600 teachers at the end of the last school year.

As children return to classrooms, many of the nation's 90,000 public schools are, as in Oklahoma City, feeling battered and worn down. Most states have reacted to declining tax revenues by trimming education spending, setting the stage for one of the most austere school years in memory.

In Alabama, where a budget crisis has left 38 of the state's 129 school systems on the verge of bankruptcy, Birmingham closed nine schools before the fall term began this month. Boston closed five schools and eliminated 1,000 jobs, including 400 teaching positions. Teachers lost jobs in cities like Toledo, Ohio; Norwich, Conn.; and Vista, Calif. In New Port Richey, Fla., school officials closed a popular 29-year-old science field trip center.

"School finances across the country are teetering on horrendous," said Michael Griffith, an analyst for the Education Commission of the States, a research group in Denver.

Many schools are raising revenues in new ways, charging students to participate in sports, plays, band or other activities that were once free. The Los Alamitos District in Orange County, Calif., is urging parents to make a $40 donation for each day a student misses classes, to compensate for state aid forfeited through the absence, David Hatton, a spokesman, said.

If austerity is challenging parents and educators at schools across America, the new term also appears likely to pose a critical test for the education law, called No Child Left Behind, which President Bush has made a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. Mr. Bush developed its central concept ? using standardized tests to hold schools accountable for student achievement ? as governor of Texas in the 1990's, when the economy was booming. Flush with tax revenues, Texas sent squads of experts to schools labeled as failing to help them sort out their educational program.

But the education law, which seeks to replicate Mr. Bush's Texas experiment nationally, is taking force in an economic downturn, and a fierce debate is under way about whether the federal government will provide enough help to schools the law identifies as failing, or simply pass the costs of the law on to the states.

"We believe the law is amply funded," Dan Langan, a Department of Education spokesman, said. "There's more money than ever before to achieve the intent of the law."[p6: note the statement is "amply" not "fully"]

But legislators in several states have introduced proposals for those states to opt out of the federal law if its costs are not fully financed by the federal government. By doing so, however, they would also lose all federal aid to low-income schools.

A Sag Harbor Sister-Fest
By LINDA LEE

SAG HARBOR, N.Y.

YOU could say that Morris Reid didn't so much give a party for Tracey L. Brown last weekend as take one ? from a client, a liquor conglomerate, eager to back a series of get-togethers. Such is the nature of Hamptons entertaining that the purpose is not just a fun night out but sometimes to promote an agenda ? in this case, putting certain brands into the hands of the right crowd. And this was the right crowd. Ms. Brown, a lawyer and author, is the daughter of Ronald H. Brown, commerce secretary under Bill Clinton, who died in 1996 in a plane crash in Croatia.

The party was held in the five-bedroom waterfront house belonging to Alma Brown, Ms. Brown's mother. It was built in 1998 in a neighborhood that is a home to many prominent African-Americans, including the lawyer Johnny Cochran; the lifestyle guru B. Smith; Earl Graves Jr., the founder of Black Enterprise magazine; and Susan Taylor, the editor of Essence magazine.

"In the Hamptons, the whites have their place, and this is ours ? we're not all P. Diddy," said Lisa Bonner, an entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles and once Ms. Brown's classmate at Boston College.