Ecuador President Dissolves Supreme Court

By MONTE HAYES
The Associated Press
Saturday, April 16, 2005; 5:37 AM

QUITO, Ecuador - President Lucio Gutierrez declared a state of emergency in the capital city of this Andean Mountain country and dissolved a Supreme Court he and his allies had appointed last winter, saying the unpopular judges were the cause of three days of pot-banging street protests in Quito.

Although they had opposed the court that was stacked by Gutierrez, his political foes immediately labeled its summary dissolution an act of a dictator.

Speaking in a televised address to the nation Friday night with his military high command standing behind him, Gutierrez said he was using the powers granted him by the constitution to dismiss the justices. In explaining their dismissal, he said opposition to their appointments was causing the protests.

Congress's Willingness To Tackle Deficit in Doubt
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A06

In the same week that the House voted to permanently repeal the estate tax, 44 House Republicans broke with their leaders to demand that as much as $20 billion in Medicaid savings be stricken from the budget.

The twin moves raise new questions about Congress's willingness to tackle the budget deficit. And they came just as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are to convene their annual meetings this weekend. The Bush administration was to use the meetings to tell the world's finance ministers and central bankers that Washington is serious about its red ink.

The Quote of note:

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement that he was "deeply troubled" by Dr. Frist's participation. "Whatever one's views may be on this or any other issue," Mr. Foxman said, "playing the religious card is as unacceptable as playing the race card."

...is correct.

Frist Accused of Exploiting Religion Issue
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CARL HULSE

Democratic senators accused Senator Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader, of exploiting religion for partisan ends by taking part in a telecast portraying them as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's judicial nominations.

Quote of note:

This is not about a majority or even a significant number of Bush nominees; it's about a handful with fringe views or shaky qualifications. But Senator Frist is determined to get judges on the federal bench who are loyal to the Republican fringe and, he hopes, would accept a theocratic test on decisions.

Bill Frist's Religious War

Right-wing Christian groups and the Republican politicians they bankroll have done much since the last election to impose their particular religious views on all Americans. But nothing comes close to the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, over the selection of judges for federal courts.

City to Pay $150 a Person in G.O.P. Arrest Settlement
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: April 16, 2005

A legal dispute over the city's arrest and detainment methods during the National Republican Convention has been settled, with the city agreeing to pay $231,200 in legal fees and a small fine, and lawyers for the protesters dropping their case against the city.

The settlement was hammered out over the past five days between lawyers from the city and legal groups representing the protesters, including the Legal Aid Society and the National Lawyers Guild. It gives 108 plaintiffs $16,200, or $150 each, with the remaining $215,000 going for legal fees.

The agreement appeared to score a win for the protesters, who had pressed their case for months, saying the city held people too long on purpose so that they would not embarrass city leaders during the convention. The city has strongly denied those charges, saying that the circumstances were unusual and that most cases were processed on time.

Inquiry Finds Radio Host's Arrangement Raised Flags
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

WASHINGTON, April 15 - Officials at the Education Department expressed concerns about a contract with the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams last year, even bringing it to the attention of a White House policy adviser when it came up for renewal, according to an internal department report released on Friday.

The report, by the department's inspector general, found no evidence of unlawful or unethical behavior in connection with Mr. Williams's contract but criticized top department officials for "poor management decisions" and lax oversight.

Report on Schiavo Finds No Abuse
By BENEDICT CAREY

State investigators in Florida have found no clear evidence that Terri Schiavo was denied rehabilitation, neglected or otherwise abused, according to documents released yesterday by the state's Department of Children and Families.

The agency completed nine reports of abuse accusations made from 2001 to 2004, including neglect of hygiene, denial of dental care, poisoning and physical harm. The accusations, which have been widely reported, focus on Michael Schiavo, the husband of Terri. Ms. Schiavo died on March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed.

Quote of note:

Opponents also say that the new provision would undermine a muscular rule announced last month by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which sets new power-plant emissions for three major pollutants for the eastern half of the United States. One of those pollutants, nitrogen oxide, is cooked by sunlight into ozone, or smog.

Change to the Clean Air Act Is Built Into New Energy Bill

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, April 15 - Deep in the energy bill that was approved by a House committee this week, under a section titled "Miscellaneous," is a brief provision that could have major consequences for communities struggling to clean up their dirty air.

Quote of note:

In 1999 Dougherty was accused of making sexually inappropriate comments to female students, Bibb County Schools Superintendent Sharon Patterson said.

"There's a pattern now of judgment issues," Patterson said.

Teacher Resigns After Wearing Blackface
Friday, April 15, 2005
(04-15) 07:32 PDT Macon, Ga. (AP) --

A high school teacher who wore blackface at a student-faculty basketball game has resigned, saying "it was poor judgment and will never happen again."

Greg Dougherty said the school had offered to renew his contract for the fall, but he turned it down. The deal would have seen him suspended without pay and barred from school property and events for the rest of the current academic year.

Man Upset With Penile Surgery Mails Bomb
Friday, April 15, 2005
(04-15) 16:00 PDT Stevens, Pa. (AP) --

A man allegedly unhappy with penile-enlargement surgery he underwent mailed explosives to a Chicago plastic surgeon, according to a federal grand jury indictment.

Blake R. Steidler, 24, allegedly made an explosive device that included a model-rocket engine igniter inside a jewelry box, the federal indictment said.

Steidler drove to North Bloomfield, Ohio, on Feb. 10 and mailed the box, but then drive home to Lancaster County, called 911, and turned himself in, according to the indictment.

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But Trent Lott is back. Bill Bennett is back. Rush Limbaugh is back.

Quote of note:

"We felt grave concern," the letter added, "when the Republican leadership changed the ethics rules several weeks ago to require a bipartisan majority vote to even investigate a charge of ethical misconduct. We saw it as an obvious action to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay."

10 Ex-G.O.P. Lawmakers Attack Changes in Ethics Rules
By PHILIP SHENON and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, April 14 - Ten former members of Congress, all Republicans, joined in a letter to the House leadership on Thursday to say they believed that revisions in House ethics rules this year were an "obvious action to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay" from investigation. They said the changes needed to be reversed "to restore public confidence in the People's House."

Rosa Parks, OutKast settle lawsuit
By Jim Irwin
Associated Press Writer
April 15 2005

DETROIT -- Rosa Parks and rap duo OutKast have settled a lawsuit in which the civil rights pioneer accused the group of wrongly using her name in a song title, her guardian said Thursday.

OutKast, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and two of the company's units admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed to work on projects "to enlighten today's youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races," Parks' guardian Dennis Archer said in a statement.

Sony BMG attorney Joe Beck said Thursday evening that the defendants were pleased with the settlement.

"We think it will go a long way towards teaching a new generation about Rosa Parks and her accomplishments, and we appreciate Mrs. Parks' and her attorneys' acknowledgment of the First Amendment in protecting artistic freedom," he said from Los Angeles.

Frist Set to Use Religious Stage on Judicial Issue
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, April 14 - As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Quote of note:

It's as if we have an industrial-age presidency, catering to a pre-industrial ideological base, in a post-industrial era.

As if??

Bush Disarms, Unilaterally
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 15, 2005

...We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry. We have an administration that won't lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators. And we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism.

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon's budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million.

When the National Innovation Initiative, a bipartisan study by the country's leading technologists and industrialists about how to re-energize U.S. competitiveness, was unveiled last December, it was virtually ignored by the White House. Did you hear about it? Probably not, because the president preferred to focus all attention on privatizing Social Security.

Quote of note:

U.S. health care is so expensive that our government spends more on health care than the governments of other advanced countries, even though the private sector pays a far higher share of the bills than anywhere else.

What do we get for all that money? Not much.

Another quote of note:

A 2003 study published in Health Affairs (one of whose authors is my Princeton colleague Uwe Reinhardt) tried to resolve that puzzle by comparing a number of measures of health services across the advanced world. What the authors found was that the United States scores high on high-tech services - we have lots of M.R.I.'s - but on more prosaic measures, like the number of doctors' visits and number of days spent in hospitals, America is only average, or even below average. There's also direct evidence that identical procedures cost far more in the U.S. than in other advanced countries.

The authors concluded that Americans spend far more on health care than their counterparts abroad - but they don't actually receive more care. The title of their article? "It's the Prices, Stupid."

The Medical Money Pit
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Suppose they just say "no"?

U.S. Boosts Pressure on China to Float Currency
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page E01

The Bush administration yesterday stepped up its appeals for China to let its currency rise, as pressure mounted in Congress for tougher action on a host of Chinese practices that allegedly fuel the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit.

John B. Taylor, Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, urged China to let its currency, the yuan, rise according to market forces without further delay because it has taken enough preparatory measures to do so. "We have very much stressed that they can begin to have a flexible exchange rate right now," Taylor said.

Taylor's comments, which came at a briefing for reporters, ratcheted up the pressure a notch on Beijing to end its decade-long policy of keeping the Chinese yuan fixed at a rate of about 8.3 yuan per U.S. dollar. That policy has been attacked by many U.S. manufacturers, labor unions and economists as keeping the value of the yuan too low, thereby giving an unfair competitive edge to Chinese products in world markets. The issue was raised repeatedly at a congressional hearing yesterday during which lawmakers vented their frustration over the migration of U.S. jobs to China and the U.S. deficit with Beijing, which soared to $162 billion in 2004, about one-quarter of the total trade gap.

Bankruptcy Bill Passes; Bush Expected to Sign

The House gave final passage yesterday to legislation intended to make it harder for consumers to wipe out debt through bankruptcy, clearing the way for President Bush to sign the bill into law as he has promised to do.

Bankrupt and Swamped With Credit Offers
When Chapter 7 Filers Wipe Out Their Debts, Card Firms Jump
By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A01

Overwhelmed by more than $60,000 in debt, Lenya Garcia filed for bankruptcy protection last July. In January, her case was completed and her debts -- mostly on credit cards -- were dismissed. Less than a month later, a rash of new credit card offers began arriving in the mail.

Proof-Frist-is-an-amateur of note:

At least two GOP colleagues who are pressing him to seek the rule change -- George Allen (Va.) and Rick Santorum (Pa.) -- also are weighing presidential bids. Both of them are wooing key conservatives clamoring for the filibuster ban.

Frist Likely to Push for Ban on Filibusters
Failure Risks Conservatives' Ire; Success May Prompt Legislative Stalemate
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A04

...Some independent analysts say that Frist -- a comparative newcomer to politics who unexpectedly gained the majority leader's post in early 2003 -- has created his own dilemma, and his handling of it will be an sign of whether he has the skills to seriously vie for the White House.

Quote of note:

...A federal grand jury in Manhattan charged that David B. Chalmers Jr., founder of Houston-based Bayoil USA Inc. and Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited; Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen who lives in Houston; and John Irving, a British oil trader, funneled millions of dollars in kickbacks through a foreign front company to an Iraqi-controlled bank account in the United Arab Emirates. If convicted, the three men could each be sentenced to as long as 62 years in prison, $1 million in fines, and the seizure of at least $100 million in personal and corporate assets.

American Indicted In Iraq Oil Probe
By Colum Lynch and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A01

...um...make that health.

Quote of note:

U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell agreed with Nutraceutical that ephedra was wrongly being regulated by the FDA as a drug and not a food. She said a 1994 federal dietary supplement law places more restrictive rules on the FDA in determining whether to ban foods as opposed to drugs.

The judge said the law requires the FDA to prove that a dietary supplement is harmful, rather than requiring the manufacturer to prove it is safe, as is required with drugs.

Damn. I was right the first time.

Oh, I am so confused...

Judge Rules Against FDA Ban on Ephedra
Product More Food Than Drug, She Says

God, Alan Keyes is an ass...

In Contempt of Courts
by MAX BLUMENTHAL
Washington

Michael Schwartz must have thought I was just another attendee of the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference. I approached the chief of staff of Oklahoma's GOP Senator Tom Coburn outside the conference in downtown Washington last Thursday afternoon after he spoke there. Before I could introduce myself, he turned to me and another observer with a crooked smile and exclaimed, "I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!"

For two days, on April 7 and 8, conservative activists and top GOP staffers summoned the raw rage of the Christian right following the Terri Schiavo affair, and likened judges to communists, terrorists and murderers. The remedies they suggested for what they termed "judicial tyranny" ranged from the mass impeachment of judges to their physical elimination.

The speakers included embattled House majority leader Tom DeLay, conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly and failed Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes. Like a perform­ance artist, Keyes riled the crowd up, mixing animadversions on constitutional law with sudden, stentorian salvos against judges. "Ronald Reagan said the Soviet Union was the focus of evil during the cold war. I believe that the judiciary is the focus of evil in our society today," Keyes declared, slapping the lectern for emphasis.

via Qusan

Howard Beats Harvard at National Moot Court Competition

The Howard University Law School's moot court team took first place in the American Bar Association Mock Trial Competition, the first team representing a historically black college or university to do so.

Eighteen law schools, including two-time, reigning champion Harvard University, competed.

"It solidified the fact that although others think we are a third-tier law school, we are the best trial advocates," said Chris Stewart, a third-year law student and a team member.

"No mathematical equation can calculate our excellence in trial advocacy."

Panel backs neighborhood schools
But some in group favor status quo
By Megan Tench, Globe Staff | September 23, 2004

Boston has always had issues with busing and race. Fine, fine, fine. At least it's out in the open.

Here's my problems:

Busing the system's approximately 60,000 students cost more than $59 million last year. School officials have said they believe the system could save up to $10 million by 2010 if it starts reducing busing next school year.

I really don't know the answer to this question, but how many schools can you operate for $59,000,000.00?

It would be nice to think stopping the nuclear option and holding firm against the more extremist nominees would end the threat but this is the reality...the pool for future Supreme and Appeals court appointments have been stocked for years with conservative activists. It's not just Bush, he just happens to be the one in place when the plan came to fruition.

We've already seen the Supreme Court support the right of people to file disparate impact claims of age discrimination where racial discrimination claims of that type can only be filed by the Offoce of Civil Rights. The Supreme Court has also suggested a 25 year limit on affirmative action efforts...a sunset provision you can be sure will see no support for extension.

Since this planned judiciary can be expected to support any challenge to civil rights legislation that is brought before it, Black folks need to get prepared for a more hostile environment. This is a warning that's been heard before, but it's always couched in terms of resisting the change.

I'm telling you that, as far as Black folks are concerned, the change has taken place. I'm telling you your plans must assume you live in a Red state.

Anyway...

Conservatives near lock on US courts
Senators will consider new judicial nominees Thursday. GOP-appointed judges already control 10 of 13 appeals courts.
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Quote of note:

If the Bush tax cuts are made permanent by Congress, by 2010 billionaires and millionaires will be paying a smaller percentage of their income in federal taxes than those in the upper middle class, according to a calculation by Brian Roach, an economist at Tufts University, in Medford, Mass.

US already moving toward a flat tax
Bigger tax breaks for wealth produces a system in which the middle class pays about the same as the rich.
By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Billionaires are paying not much more taxes, proportionately, than those Americans who are merely prosperous.

HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate

I've done exactly two of these things.

Congress's Deepening Shadow World

When it comes to lobbying Congress, Washington is now a $3-billion-a-year company town. The influence industry is multiplying so fast that no one really knows how many lobbyists are at work these days. Ten years after a law was passed to register and track lobbyists, the Capitol staffs charged with the task are woefully short-handed and lack proper auditing and investigative powers, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.

It found the industry doubling in size in just the past six years. At the same time, government's revolving door has ratcheted up to warp speed: an estimated 240 former members of Congress and federal agency heads, as well as 2,000 other senior officials, are now lobbyists, earning salaries only fantasized about in their public service days to gain an entree for major corporations and interest groups.

I'm sure he's sincere. I am.

Hey, want to see the bridge I just bought?

DeLay Apologizes for Comments
Leader Wouldn't Say Whether He Wants Schiavo Judges Impeached

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A05

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) apologized yesterday for heated comments he made about possible retribution against federal judges for their handling of the Terri Schiavo case, but declined to say whether he favors impeaching those judges.

DeLay created a furor last month by saying that "the time will come" for federal judges who refused to restore the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube "to answer for their behavior," and by criticizing what he called an "arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary." President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top Republican leaders did not endorse those statements and said they support an independent federal judiciary.

Bankruptcy Reform Close to OK in Congress
By Marcy Gordon
The Associated Press
Thursday, April 14, 2005; 3:11 AM

Bankruptcy legislation that could make it impossible for thousands of people to wipe away their debts is nearing passage by Congress.

After eight years of failed efforts by banks and credit card companies, the biggest overhaul of bankruptcy laws in a quarter-century has been catapulted toward enactment by a Republican majority buttressed by the fall elections. The legislation, which garnered some Democratic votes, cleared the Senate last month 74-25.

The House was voting Thursday on the bill, which would require people with incomes above a certain level to pay credit-card charges, medical bills and other obligations under a court-ordered bankruptcy plan.

If all Washington thought he was finished, all Washington is stooopit.

Black folks (Republican flavors not withstanding) said all along he hadn't changed ("little bump" indeed) and that he hadn't really been punished. We knew he spoke and speaks for his constituency. And we know he remains an enemy, as do those that support him.

Lott Puts 'Little Bump' Behind Him
Ex-Senate Leader Rebuilds Power Base
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A01

LEAKESVILLE, Miss. -- Trent Lott is reminiscing with supporters at the Rocky Creek Catfish Cottage, recalling the goat barbecues and Jaycee meetings that marked his first House campaign 33 years ago. But the senator draws the biggest whoops when he mentions the "little bump in the road" he hit in December 2002, when his return to the position of Senate majority leader was scuttled by what some saw as nostalgic words about segregation.

All Washington thought he was finished. "But they don't know us as Mississippians," Lott chortles as heads nod around the dining room. "You get back up on it and you ride again."

Like I said yesterday, this sort of thing only becomes public when the fallout is too much to be disguised.

Quote of note:

Pressed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Curling and Kurt P. Sanford, head of LexisNexis's corporate and federal markets group, agreed that were it not for the California law, consumers might never have been informed about more recent breaches.

Consumers Not Told Of Security Breaches, Data Brokers Admit
Senators Push for Notification Law
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page E05

Executives of two major data brokers acknowledged to a Senate panel yesterday that their companies did not tell consumers about security breaches that occurred well before recent incidents exposed more than 400,000 people to possible identity theft.

You know, this "sunset provisions" bullshit has gotten really thick. Every time I hear "sunset provisions" it means "We're going to do this thing that's so fucked up we have to lie to you by claiming it's temporary."

House Passes Permanent Estate Tax Repeal
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A04

The House voted 272 to 162 yesterday to permanently repeal the estate tax, throwing the issue to the Senate where negotiations have begun on a deep and permanent estate tax cut that can pass this year, even if it falls short of full repeal.

The House vote pitted repeal proponents, who held that a tax on inheritances is fundamentally unfair, against Democrats, who questioned how Congress could support a tax cut largely for the affluent that would cost $290 billion over 10 years, in the face of record budget deficits.

Well, I did say there's a social element to this at the Brown Bloggers meetup...so I might as well get it out of the way.

You're stuck in  Fahrenheit 451 . Which book would you be?
There's a Mahayana Buddhist sutra that's something of a talisman to me...I've had a copy of it since I first ran across it some 20 years ago...the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra. I'd give you an Amazon link, but the good translation is out of print. Sounds weird but there you are.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Discounting the occasional female that was totally other than she presented herself and a couple of well-airbrushed centerfolds, no.

DeLay Likens GOP Contract to Magna Carta
- By JUAN-CARLOS RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
(04-13) 16:11 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

To House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Republican Party's "Contract With America" ranks right up there with the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights among the "great documents of freedom."

So says DeLay's Internet Web site. It describes that 1994 campaign treatise, credited with helping the GOP end four decades of House rule by Democrats, "a written commitment that presented to the people an agenda for the House of Representatives."

I read another one of those wonderful Heritage Foundation editorial yesterday. The Social Security Crisis Gets Personal by Stuart Butler.

I noticed a couple of things.

I noticed he would like to distract you with scary-sounding statistics.

As the Social Security system itself has aged, payroll taxes have grown relentlessly and the return on those taxes has fallen dramatically. When Social Security began, the payroll tax was just 2% of income. Now it's 12.4%. Today, the average male worker about to retire will typically get just a 1.27% return on his lifetime of taxes — less than he'd get from a savings account. That's bad enough, but the younger you are, the worse it will get. A 25-year-old worker can expect a return of minus-0.64% — he loses money.

George was at the first Brown Bloggers meetup,

and he recorded the whole thing.

I've hacked out my part of the conversation if you want to hear it. I'll get to everyone else's part

Possibly because corporations only go public with things like this when they're too big to disguise the repercussions.

Anyway...

Security Breach at LexisNexis Now Appears Larger
By HEATHER TIMMONS

LONDON, April 12 - Reed Elsevier, owner of the LexisNexis databases, said Tuesday that Social Security numbers, driver's license information and the addresses of 310,000 people may have been stolen, 10 times more than it originally reported last month.

The company said there were 59 separate instances in which unauthorized users "may have fraudulently acquired personal identifying information" through Seisint, a unit of LexisNexis. Seisint compiles information from government records and holds personal data about most American citizens. Its data is used by employers making hiring decisions, landlords choosing tenants and by debt collectors among others.

Quote of note:

So there you have it — publicly traded companies with strong anti-discriminatory codes of conduct are spending their money shoring up a bastion of gender discrimination, mainly because it's a playground for CEOs. Talk about a stupid move in the age of Sarbanes-Oxley. Where are the directors of these companies who take their fiduciary duties seriously? The NCWO and lawyers who have brought discrimination cases against Wall Street firms rightly point out that a CEO's membership at Augusta (not to mention his company sponsoring the tournament) is evidence of a corporate culture hostile to women.

Teed Off at Hootie and His Boys
ANDRÉS MARTINEZ
April 13, 2005

U.S. Trade Deficit Hits Record High
Rising oil prices and Chinese textile imports help widen the gap to $61 billion in February.
By Bill Sing
Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2005

Surging oil prices and Chinese textile imports helped boost the U.S. trade deficit to a record $61 billion in February, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, suggesting that economic growth this year wasn't as robust as previously believed.

The report calls for tougher curbs on Chinese clothing imports and for Beijing to stop undervaluing its currency, which critics say gives its exports an unfair advantage in global markets.

Some analysts said the deficit primarily reflected a strong U.S. economy as American consumers continued to gobble up foreign goods while consumers in the sluggish European and Japanese economies couldn't do much to reciprocate.

Quote of note:

Although the Caterpillar resolution is not expected to pass, supporters hope to get at least 6% of the vote; that would allow them to reintroduce it next year and continue their advocacy against the demolition of Palestinian homes.

Supporters of the shareholder resolution include two major Protestant denominations, the 3.6-million-member Presbyterian Church USA, and the 8.4-million-member United Methodist Church.

Jews Target Caterpillar Shareholder Effort
Divesting stock because of Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes is unfair, some leaders say.
By Teresa Watanabe
Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2005

Quote of note:

"My guess is today we're at the low ebb of a movement that comes and goes," said Vincent Coppola, author of "Dragons of God: A Journey Through Far-Right America." Rudolph, he said, "is sort of an artifact of another time. That doesn't mean the time won't come again."

It's the Wilderness Years for Militias
The movement was at its peak at the time of the Atlanta blast, for which Eric Rudolph is to plead guilty. What changed? Sept. 11, for starters.
By Ellen Barry
Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2005

ATLANTA   When a pipe bomb exploded at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, authorities immediately started looking for a right-wing extremist, a rural paramilitary group or a gang of skinheads.

Man Living in Closet Charged in Homicide
By COLIN FLY
Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. : A man was beaten to death after catching his wife's lover living in a closet in their home, police said Tuesday. Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey A. Freeman over the weekend.

"From time to time, you come across a case with very unique even bizarre circumstances," police spokesman Don Aaron said. "This one probably rates right up there with them."

Freeman's wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom home for about a month without her husband's knowledge, police said. On Sunday, her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him, authorities said.

After applying his world-famous insulation effect to Steven D. Levitt, Roland Fryer doesn't get co-author status on the book.

Quote of note:

The pharmacist who refuses emergency contraception is not just following his moral code, he's trumping the moral beliefs of the doctor and the patient.

''If you open the door to this, I don't see any place to draw a line," says Anita Allen, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of ''The New Ethics." If the pharmacist is officially sanctioned as the moral arbiter of the drugstore, does he then ask the customer whether the pills are for cramps or contraception? If he's parsing his conscience with each prescription, can he ask if the morning-after pill is for carelessness or rape? Can his conscience be the guide to second-guessing Ritalin as well as Viagra?

How much further do we want to expand the reach of the individual conscience? Does the person at the checkout counter have a right to refuse to sell condoms? Does the bus driver have a right to refuse to let off customers in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic?

Whose conscience rules?

China Builds a Smaller, Stronger Military
Modernization Could Alter Regional Balance of Power, Raising Stakes for U.S.

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page A01

BEIJING -- A top-to-bottom modernization is transforming the Chinese military, raising the stakes for U.S. forces long dominant in the Pacific.

Several programs to improve China's armed forces could soon produce a stronger nuclear deterrent against the United States, soldiers better trained to use high-technology weapons, and more effective cruise and anti-ship missiles for use in the waters around Taiwan, according to foreign specialists and U.S. officials.

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...What would happen if, instead of repealing the tax, Congress left it in place at a 45 percent rate, and only on fortunes that exceeded $3.5 million -- which would be $7 million for couples? That, by the way, is well below where the estate tax stood when President Bush took office and would eliminate more than 99 percent of estates from the tax. It reflects the substantial reduction that would take effect in 2009 under Bush's tax plan.

According to Goss, a tax at that level would cover one-quarter of the 75-year Social Security shortfall. The Congressional Budget Office has a more modest estimate of the shortfall. Applying Goss's numbers means that if CBO is right, the reformed estate tax would cover one-half of the Social Security shortfall.

The Paris Hilton Tax Cut
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page A21

Insult to my intelligence of note:

They say U.S. officials have been given assurances in every case that no one is tortured.

Man's Claims May Be a Look at Dark Side of War on Terror
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer
April 12, 2005

ULM, Germany   Khaled el-Masri says his strange and violent trip into the void began with a bus ride on New Year's Eve 2003.

When he returned to this city five months later, his friends didn't believe the odyssey he recounted. Masri said he was kidnapped in Macedonia, beaten by masked men, blindfolded, injected with drugs and flown to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and interrogated by U.S. intelligence agents. He said he was finally dumped in the mountains of Albania.

Every response, including this one:

To utterly destroy a man economically, convince him he has nothing to offer which is worth significant money, and offer him a bare existence without working.

...is something you can easily say has happened or is happening even now.

That's a whole lot of coincidences.

Lee Brown, ex-drug czar, ex-police commissioner of New York City was once asked if he felt there was a plot against young Black men. He said if there were it would look remarkably like what we're seeing.

The notion that race conveys responsibility is utterly bogus. Does anyone think I should move to a low rent trailer park to improve life for low income whites?

Race doesn't convey responsibility. It injects a pretty standard set of forces into our varied lives. It only makes sense for those who deal with those forces to see themselves as a constituency.

Would low income whites benefit from mingling with middle-to-upper class whites?

Unless black managerial and professional workers move back into the hood in droves, and, reinstall a stabilizing guardian syndrome within our social collective that provides moral, legal, educational and commercial impetus for the whole - the hood is for all intents and purposes, a collective lost cause incapable of bootstrapping itself out of its present plight.

Getting picky-particular with terminology, I think "support" is better than "impetus," only because I think folks are about to run into situations in which we need social maneuverability. Also I'm not prepared to predefine the direction future folk should take

This is by William Jelani Cobb, the editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader.

I've learned enough to know that life doesn't really care about your own individual sense of timing. Still the recent news that Harold Cruse, the critic, playwright, essayist, activist, professor and intellectual swordsman superior had passed away came as a shock.

I first encountered Cruse on the far wall of the "politics" section of Pyramid Bookstore in Washington, DC. His massive Crisis of The Negro Intellectual sat dominating the shelf, its stark black and white cover daring me to pick it up. This was back in the late 1980s when just discovered that entire canon of black writing - Yosef Ben-Jochanon's Black Man of The Nile, J.A. Rogers' From Superman to Man, John Henrik Clarke's African World Revolution and Cheikh Anta Diop's African Origins of Civilization - all of it was all new to me and I had set out to methodically devour every page of it. Cruse was not of that ilk - even though he and Clarke had been friends back in the 1950s and 60s. He

School closing list gets mixed reaction
Hunters Point fights for Malcolm X; De Avila is resigned
- Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, April 11, 2005

One school borders decrepit Hunters Point public housing projects. The other sits near the stately homes lining Buena Vista Park in the Upper Haight.

One thing Malcolm X and De Avila elementary schools have in common, however, is the grim fate of being placed on a shortlist for closure by the San Francisco Unified School District to help bridge a $10 million budget gap for the coming academic year.

But, like the contrast between the real estate the two schools occupy, the differences between how the two school communities are reacting to their potential demise couldn't be more different.

One is desperately fighting for its life, while the other doesn't much care if it survives. And, perhaps surprisingly, it is the Hunters Point school -- surrounded by dangerous, run-down public housing in the middle of violent gang turf -- that has families, teachers and its principal rallying to stay open.

"These children are our children, and they want to take that away," said Gina Bissell, a first-grade teacher at Malcolm X Academy Elementary School who has worked there for 18 years. "This community has been hurt so much -- they don't need this."

In the Haight, it's a far different story. A teacher at De Avila Elementary, who refused to be identified, said most members of the staff have long been ready to throw in the towel, in part because dwindling resources have made it more and more difficult to reach what has become a more and more challenging student population.

"It's really bad, and we're all really hoping that it closes," the De Avila teacher said.

What has this got to do with the right to bear arms?

The immunity bill, introduced by Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), would protect gun manufacturers and sellers from damage suits by victims of gun violence. It would even block injury suits from gun owners. That means gun owners can't sue if poorly made handguns explode in their hands or fire unintentionally. In many instances, the bill would shield gun dealers who allow criminals to buy a firearm, by severely weakening the ATF's ability to shut down unscrupulous dealers.

Sneaky little bastards, aren't they?

Quote of note:

But while the business associations convey support to the White House —  and funnel money to the Social Security campaign —  individual companies that make up the trade groups are for the most part declining to take a public position.

A Los Angeles Times telephone survey this monthof the 20 largest U.S. companies found only two willing to publicly support the president's proposal on Social Security.

Trade Groups Join Bush on Social Security
Though individual firms are wary, nearly 100 associations answer a White House battle cry.
By Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2005

WASHINGTON   Snow swirled outside the White House as presidential advisor Karl Rove strode into Room 450 of the Old Executive Office Building, just across from his West Wing office.

2 in GOP Take Aim at DeLay
House majority leader, facing questions over trips he took, is urged to 'lay out what he did.'
By Mary Curtius
Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2005

WASHINGTON   The near-solid wall of public support that Republicans have displayed for beleaguered House Majority Leader Tom DeLay began to crack Sunday, with a Senate leader saying the Texas Republican needed to "lay out what he did and why he did it" and a House member calling on him to step down from his leadership post.

DeLay, who last year was admonished three times by the House Permanent Select Committee on Ethics for his hardball political tactics, has been the subject of recent news reports involving trips he took that were indirectly funded by lobbyists or foreign agents   a violation of House rules.

DeLay's staff has said that the congressman knew only that the trips were paid for by nonprofit groups and that he had reported that on disclosure forms.

Wages Lagging Behind Prices
Inflation has outpaced the rise in salaries for the first time in 14 years. And workers are paying a bigger share of the cost of their healthcare.
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2005

For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut.

The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs.

The result is that people like Victor Romero are finding themselves falling behind.

The 49-year-old film-set laborer had to ditch his $1,100-a-month Hollywood apartment because his rent kept rising while his pay of $24.50 an hour stayed flat.

You can tell whether the respondent is Black or white by whether they suggest controlling the environment or controlling the individual.

I'll never get a statistically valid sampling, but I think there's enough to suggest it's true.

Amazon Expands Into Book Printing
By BOB TEDESCHI

SURE, Amazon.com can sell books. But can it make them?

The company itself raised that question, among others, last week when it purchased BookSurge, a book printing business based in Charleston, S.C., that specializes in so-called on-demand printing. BookSurge, which was privately held, is among a handful of companies spawned during the dot-com boom that rely on Internet technology to print a few books at a time, or even one at a time.

The services have been most popular with writers who are unable or unwilling to strike deals with publishing houses, and who do not want to spend thousands of dollars to complete a print run of, say, 2,000 books on a traditional offset press. Publishers, too, have used digital printing companies to satisfy small orders of obscure titles.

Look at all the help they're giving Demcrats.

In the Partisan Power Struggle, a New Underdog Tries Old Tricks
By ROBIN TONER and CARL HULSE
Published: April 11, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 10 - Newt Gingrich, the conservative firebrand who won control of Congress a decade ago by campaigning against an entrenched, arrogant and all-powerful Democratic majority, is once again an inspirational figure on Capitol Hill.

This time, his message is being carried by the Democrats.

The party's leaders are increasingly making the case that in 2005, it is Congressional Republicans who are drunk with power, overreaching on issues like Social Security and judicial nominations, ethically challenged, and profoundly out of touch with their constituents.

Promises, Promises: The Art of Selling Snake Oil
By PETER EDIDIN

PHILADELPHIA - Visitors to great museums of art are liable to be moved in any number of ways by what they see there, but almost never to laughter. This seems a pity; museums regard themselves as educational institutions, and the human condition, after all, is often as funny as it is noble or tragic.

A small exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art subverts high art's often relentless sobriety. "Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera and Books" is a funny and instructive look at four centuries of greed and folly, seen though artistic depictions of medical fraud.

With the truth.

To get effective reform, however, we'll need to shed some preconceptions - in particular, the ideologically driven belief that government is always the problem and market competition is always the solution.

The fact is that in health care, the private sector is often bloated and bureaucratic, while some government agencies - notably the Veterans Administration system - are lean and efficient. In health care, competition and personal choice can and do lead to higher costs and lower quality. The United States has the most privatized, competitive health system in the advanced world; it also has by far the highest costs, and close to the worst results.

Of course, we don't actually HAVE competition (except between corporate lawyers working out how to extend patent monopolies) or personal choice (hey, you're sick, feel me?).

How about a 60 day campaign to educate people about THIS problem?

SILENCE

That what I thought...

Ailing Health Care
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Libraries are important. An incredible amount of my privately-motivated education took place in dinky-ass public libraries on Staten Island...dinky, but they had stuff by Lin Yutang, Kant, Einstein, The Red Fair Book, Lewis Caroll (don't underestimate the boy - his Game of Logic and Mathematical Recreations of Lewis Carroll won't help you at all in your boolean algebra class but will help you get a near tactile understanding of logic and its application)...they had something on everything and would order the stuff they didn't have on hand if you asked.

You have no idea how much creativity has been sparked by this collectively owned reservoir of data...data no one (let me repeat...NO ONE) could predict would inspire a reader and that therefore no one (let me repeat...NO ONE) would buy for their kids.

Market forces would NEVER bring such an institution into existence. Losing large fragments of the library's catalog if like losing large chunks of you deep memory, th ememory you use to structure and interpret your current sensory experiences. And I just don't like the idea of them struggling.

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Over the last two decades, arts institutions in need of money have occasionally sought to part with valuable works to maintain their stated missions. For example, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center sold of one of Leonardo's Codex manuscripts to Bill Gates for $30.8 million in 1994.

But to art experts, the library's attempt to sell its important artworks so it can devote itself more fully to acquiring significant books seems a turning point for the institution.

New York Public Library to Sell Major Artworks to Raise Funds
By CAROL VOGEL

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In recent weeks, Mr. Ney, Mr. DeLay and other lawmakers have gone on the offensive against the suggestion that their actions on Capitol Hill were influenced by foreign travel or other gifts from Mr. Abramoff.

Why?

The e-mail message of June 7, 2002, is part of a mountain of evidence gathered in recent months by the Justice Department, the Interior Department and two Senate committees in influence-peddling and corruption investigations centered on Mr. Abramoff, a former college Republican campaigner turned B-movie producer turned $750-an-hour Washington super-lobbyist.

Inquiries of Top Lobbyist Shine Unwelcome Light in Congress
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: April 11, 2005

I.R.S. to Close Walk-In Centers as Agency Faces Tighter Budget
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: April 10, 2005

After widely publicized hearings seven years ago, Congress passed a law ordering the Internal Revenue Service to enhance services to taxpayers, improvements that were financed by cutting enforcement of the tax laws to make sure telephones were answered and forms were readily available. That era is now ending.

The I.R.S. will close up to 105 of its 367 walk-in centers, which dispense forms and advice, said Mark W. Everson, the agency's commissioner. Hours when the I.R.S. answers telephone calls will also be reduced, he said. After the current tax return filing season ends on Friday, people with simple tax returns will no longer be able to file using a touch-tone telephone. Last year 3.8 million taxpayers, most of them with low incomes, used this Tele-File system.

His Last Name Is Scheme
By DAVID MARGOLICK
Published: April 10, 2005

More than 80 years after Charles Ponzi's spectacular rise and fall, his name is still synonymous with ''swindle.'' And although it is invoked to describe a variety of brazen, gargantuan rip-offs, it really applies only to swindles of a certain kind, longer than a one-shot deal but inherently limited in duration, in which people are promised windfall profits from can't-miss investments -- to be paid, when they are paid at all, only out of money collected from subsequent dopes and dupes.

There is another particular subtlety to the classic Ponzi scheme: not just anyone can pull one off; doing so requires cleverness, charm and charisma. That all these the original Ponzi had aplenty is clear from ''Ponzi's Scheme,'' Mitchell Zuckoff's entertaining portrait of the dapper rogue who persuaded 30,000 people, Bostonians and others, many of them Italian immigrants like Ponzi himself, to entrust him with their hard-earned, pre-inflationary dollars.

The High Cost of Clutching Your Chest
By SAM ROBERTS

I NEVER wanted to die like Dr. Zhivago, at least not the way he did in my play-it-again-Sam memory of a middle-aged man with a neglected heart condition who dashes off a crowded bus and collapses, surrounded by strangers.

Which brings us to my wife's chest pains. And a morality tale that drove home the stark disconnect between the care that prudent medical professionals routinely recommend and what some insurance companies - apparently mine, anyway - seem willing, at least at first glance, to reimburse. This is not about a $15 co-payment.

We're talking expenses that might make the average person think twice before high-tailing it to a hospital for potentially lifesaving emergency care.

Quote of note:

For the United States and the rest of the world, the effects of the sudden awakening of the Asian giants could be profound. In the years ahead, it may mean more downward pressure on wages, the outsourcing of more jobs, greater competition for investment and higher prices for scarce resources.

Indeed, Beijing's overtures toward India, though clearly made with the economic opportunities in mind, are also being contemplated with a keen awareness of China's rivalry with the United States. Washington has also courted New Delhi, lately promising to help make it a major world power.

India and China Are Poised to Share Defining Moment
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and HOWARD W. FRENCH

Quote of note:

What few of us realize is that the United States has two income tax systems, separate and unequal.

One system is for wage earners. Congress requires that your employer report your pay so Internal Revenue Service computers can check up on your tax return. Banks report interest. Brokerages report dividends. You must provide a Social Security number for each child you claim as a dependent. Congress does not trust you.

The other system is for business owners, landlords and investors. Congress does not require such independent reporting, saying that would be a burden.

How rich get richer: all the rest pay more
IRS scrutinizes wage earners but takes investors at their word under separate, unequal system
- David Cay Johnston
Sunday, April 10, 2005

The War on Judges
April 10, 2005

Just when we'd think the ethically bloodied House majority leader, Tom DeLay, would try to lower his profile, he's intensifying a crusade (in every sense of the word) for congressional control over the judicial branch of government. If it were just DeLay, the effort wouldn't seem so serious. But he has powerful company in Congress.

"Judicial independence does not equal judicial supremacy," DeLay (R-Texas) said Thursday. Congress, instead of just complaining about federal courts that "run amok" in defending the right to abortion and banning school prayer, must set limits and "make sure the judges administer their responsibilities," he said, according to a report Friday in the New York Times.

Millions Said Going to Waste in Iraq Utilities
A coalition memo says water, sewage and power facilities rebuilt with U.S. funds are falling into disrepair. Iraqis say they need more money.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer
April 10, 2005

BAGHDAD   Iraqi officials have crippled scores of water, sewage and electrical plants refurbished with U.S. funds by failing to maintain and operate them properly, wasting millions of American taxpayer dollars in the process, according to interviews and documents.

Hardest hit has been the effort to rebuild the country's water and sewage systems, a multibillion-dollar task considered among the most crucial components of the effort to improve daily life for Iraqis. Of more than 40 such plants run by the Iraqis, not one is being operated properly, according to Bechtel Group Inc., the contractor at work on the project. The power grid faces similar problems. U.S. officials said the Iraqis' inability to properly operate overhauled electrical plants contributed to widespread power shortages this winter. None of the 19 electrical facilities that has undergone U.S.-funded repair work is being run correctly, a senior American advisor said.

An internal memo by coalition officials in Iraq obtained by The Times says that throughout the country, renovated plants "deteriorate quickly to an alarming state of disrepair and inoperability."

"There is no reason to believe that these initial experiences will not be repeated for the other water and sanitation projects currently underway throughout Iraq," the memo said. "This is the antithesis of our base strategy and a waste not only of taxpayer funds, but it deprives the most needy of safe drinking water and of streets free from raw sewerage."

It's been a rough week, and I've been slopping last few days. That pattern shall hold today.

This should not be missed, though. It's an article in Newsweek on Tom DeLay's problems you can whip out when people claim there's no "there" there.

With Friends Like These...
A lunchtime chat with a lobbyist close to Tom DeLay suggests he may be headed for hotter water.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

April 18 issue - Jack Abramoff was somber, bitter and feeling betrayed. Once a Washington superlobbyist, Abramoff is now the target of a Justice Department criminal probe of allegations that he defrauded American Indian tribes of tens of millions of dollars in fees. As stories of his alleged excess dribble out including the emergence of e-mails showing he derisively referred to his Native American clients as "monkeys" and "idiots" some of Abramoff's old friends have abandoned him and treated him like a pariah. They claim they knew nothing of his questionable lobbying tactics. So last week, glumly sitting at his corner table at Signatures, the tony downtown restaurant he owns that remains his last redoubt, Abramoff lashed out in frustration.

"Everybody is lying," Abramoff told a former colleague. There are e-mails and records that will implicate others, he said. He was noticeably caustic about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For years, nobody on Washington's K Street corridor was closer to DeLay than Abramoff. They were an unlikely duo. DeLay, a conservative Christian, and Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, traveled the world together and golfed the finest courses. Abramoff raised hundreds of thousands for DeLay's political causes and hired DeLay's aides, or kicked them business, when they left his employ. But now DeLay, too, has problems in part because of overseas trips allegedly paid for by Abramoff's clients. In response, DeLay and his aides have said repeatedly they were unaware of Abramoff's behind-the-scenes financing role. "Those S.O.B.s," Abramoff said last week about DeLay and his staffers, according to his luncheon companion. "DeLay knew everything. He knew all the details."

It is a Washington melodrama that has played out many times before. When political figures get into trouble and their worlds collapse, they look to save themselves by fingering others higher in the food chain. Will Abramoff attempt to bargain with federal prosecutors by offering up DeLay and does he really have the goods to do so? Abramoff has at times hinted he wanted to bargain possibly by naming members who sought campaign cash for legislative favors, says a source familiar with the probe. But Abramoff's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, says, "There have been no negotiations with the Justice Department." Lowell cryptically acknowledges that Abramoff has been "disappointed" and "hurt" by the public statements of some former friends, but insists his client is currently "not upset or angry with Tom DeLay." Still, if Abramoff's lunch-table claims are true, he could hand DeLay his worst troubles yet.