DOD meeting recruiting goals, but

May 12, the Department of Defense announced that "all services met or exceeded recruiting goals for the month of April and have surpassed goals for fiscal year 2008 to date."

I've got to wonder if they are acheiving these goals at the price of a decline in quality. For instance, 13 percent of the Army's new recruits (or more than 10,000) received so-called "moral waivers" in 2008, according to the US.A Today. This was up from the previous years stats as reported in July 2007 by the Boston Globe and marks a rate double of that in 2004. In another trend, the percentage of high school graduates among Army recruits was 79% last year, compared with 91% in 2001. And even that number is posibly distorted, if the Army is using the Two Tier Attrition Screen (TTAS) reported in "Army Signs More Dropouts" by Tom Philpott on November 22, 2006 at Military.com.

the Army announced last month that 81 percent of its non-prior service recruits for 2006 were high school graduates. That was disturbingly below the 90 percent Department of Defense standard for every service. But the proportion of high school graduates would have been reported as 74.3 percent if the Army had to count the 5900 TTAS enlistees high school dropouts. The number instead is ignored.

Philpott added that preliminary findings presented in report for the Army Research Institute by researchers Mark C. Young and Leonard A. White show that:

Non-high school graduates... are “relatively inexpensive to recruit and some…do make very good soldiers.” They project that TTAS could save the Army $100 million a year by lowering recruiting costs an average of $10,000 per recruit for up to 10,000 recruits a year.

For more critique of military statistics, see the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information.

Sichuan earthquake buries 900 students

The BBC report

You may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year

...if you live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act, according to CNN.

Pangea Day

In 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won the TED Prize (acceptance speech) was granted $100,000. Her wish was to create a day in which the world came together through film. Pangea Day grew out of that wish. Starting at 18:00 GMT today, folks in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro were linked for a live broadcast of 24 short films selected from an international competition, as well as live music and speakers such as Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova.

Today's Washington Post story by Michael Mosk, "McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer," was actually scooped Ken Olsen, a reporter for the Vancouver Columbian, whose by a 2003 Alicia Patterson Foundation article was "Secret Landswaps Taxpayers Help Finance."

According to Olsen, in 2000, the General Accounting Office

recommended the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service abandon their land exchange programs, concluding they were irrevocably broken. The agencies instead should auction acreage they want to get rid of and buy what is worthy of public ownership.

I'd wager that not many people read of this particular deal until the Post covered it. Mosk provides documents for readers weigh the evidence for themselves. While McCain's office stresses that SunCor was not involved until after the land swap, that does not mean that SunCor and the landowner and political supporter Ruskin have not profited.

I've observed similar deals here, such as the 1986 Virginia Tech land swap in which a Tech employee engineered a trade of his agricultural land for 247 acres at tje omtersectopm pf 460 and Peppers Ferry Road, which soon became a shopping center. It seems such swaps almost always involve the taxpayer losing title over public land more attractive for commercial development without adequate compensation. As Betts of SunCor said, his company was not

really interested in spending a lot of time on it until we knew if the legislation would pass.

And although they are not land swaps, per se, McCains maneuvering also brings to Montgomery County's condemnation of land in Nellie's Cave for a road on a planning commsion recommendation voted on by landowner Joe Draper so that a developer Joe Draper, which enabled him to build an upscale subdivision. And of course, recently, there is outgoing Blacksburg mayorRoger Hedgepeth's 2006 race to get the rugby field next to Margaret Beek Elementary School rezoned commercial for a bait and switch. What was suposed to be a lifestyle center and housing now will be used for what appears will be a Wal-Mart store just 4 miles form another one right down from said intersection of the Tech land swap.

*

Interesting visitor of the day: Someone from Silver Spring, MD, spent over 25 minutes reading 3 pages, after finding my blog on a Google search of "critique warner lieberman & climate change science." The out-click was to the FOE fact sheet. Someone from Puerto Rico searched Google for "linares v. jackson" found my post, about tenant rights or the lack thereof under HUD.
Someone came form NewsTrust and read not only the featured piece on lcimate change, but also my piece yesterday on the FEC. But what I'm most thrilled about is the person from Boulder yesterday, who spent almost 20 minutes reading 22 pages, having searched Google for "inez, ky" martin county coal mine."

Bush Ousts Republican Who Stood up to McCain on Campaign Finance Rules

Late May 6, as the world concentrated on the results of the Democratic primary, White House chief of Staff Joshua Bolten sent a letter in response to a suggestion from Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that Mr. Bush restart the nominating process for the Federal Elections Commision.

Reid has long proposed holding separate, simple majority votes on each nominee because of Democratic opposition to von Spakovsky. In submitting a slate including one new Democrat and two new Republicans, Mr. Bush ditched Federal Elections Commision Chairman David Mason, who had informed John McCain that he needed to await a quorum for the commission's approval before withdrawing from federal campaign financing and to explain the terms of a loan he obtained before his victory in the primaries.

At the same time, Mr. Bush stayed the course with his renonimation of Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official, whom Democrats oppose for his leadership in voter ID measures in Georgia. Von Spakovsky failed to win approval for his first nomination, but recieved a recess-appointment which expired at the end of 2007. Mr. Bush resubmitted his name and had previously refused to submit other nominees, thus leaving the commission unable to conduct business during this election year, since it lacked a quorum.

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said,

We would accept a vote on the entire package or up or down votes on each
nomination.

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) , however, has been unwilling to allow an up-or down vote and has blamed Democrats for

the bottleneck created by the Democrats' opposition to one
well-qualified nominee.

In addition to not being able to handle Mr. McCain's case, the FEC has been unable to hand out money, which may have affected the timing of Democrat John Edwards's departure from the race. The FEC also has been unable to issue regulations on candidate air travel or on lobbyist fundraisers and joint advertising by national parties and federal candidates.

Besides von Spakovsky, Mr. Bush's other nominees are:

• Democrat Cynthia Bauerly, a lawyer who serves as Charles Schumer (D-NY) legislative director
• Republican Caroline Hunter, a former White House official current serving on the Election Assistance Commission, and
• Republican Donald McGahn, once served as an attorney for former majority leader Tom DeLay and as counsel for the National Republican Congressional Campaign.

At Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's request, current commissioner, Democrat Ellen Weintraub, will remain on the commission. Democrat Steven Walther, like von Spakovsky, still awaits confirmation. Democrat Robert Lenhard withdrew from the nomination process during the impasse.

*

I last wrote about the Federal Elections Commission in January on the 31st in Just why did John Edwards drop out of the race yesterday? and on the 9th in Latest Nomination Dispute Stalls FEC. In looking at the current coverage of the nominations, some reporters seem to have buried the news. AP's Jim Kuhnhenn, in "Bush makes nominations to FEC, seeks to break deadlock, " leads off with

President Bush sent the Senate a new slate of Federal Election Commission nominees Tuesday, an attempt to break a Senate confirmation deadlock that was greeted coolly by the Democratic leader.

Only in the fifth paragraph, does he write,

Bush also withdrew the nomination of current FEC Chairman David Mason, who had clashed in the past with like Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

He does include the reaction of Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

By abandoning Mr. Mason and instead sticking by Mr. von Spakovsky, the White House has abandoned experience and independence for partisan loyalty," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "That is the White House's choice. It is a regrettable one. Nonetheless, we will work towards the confirmation of the remaining nominees and expect to defeat Mr. von Spakovsky.

Okay, you might argue, Kuhnhenn's a wire reporter with other stories to file. But how about the Michael Luo at the New York Times, whose "Amid Partisan Standoff, Bush Submits 3 Nominees to Election Commission" starts with

President Bush on Tuesday submitted three new nominees to the Federal Election Commission, a move that could help end a political impasse that has left the agency paralyzed in the midst of a heated presidential campaign.

Luo waits until the sixth paragraph before writing,

But Mr. Bush declined to renominate David Mason, the current Republican chairman of the commission, a move that drew sharp criticism on Tuesday from Democrats and campaign finance watchdogs.

Interestingly, the editorial wrtiers at the Times caught the significance, albeit a day later in "Crippled Election Commission."

*

Compare the American coverage the Brits in the May 7 Financial Times story, "McCain critic loses role at FEC," by Stephanie Kirchgaessner. The difference is so startling that I've reprinted it in full below, hoping that it is fair use, as this is for educational puroses from which I derive no profit.

The Bush administration has sidelined a federal official who raised legal
questions about whether John McCain, Republican senator, could raise private
funds in his presidential bid.

The White House late on Tuesday nominated Donald McGahn, who once served as an attorney for former majority leader Tom DeLay, to replace David Mason, a fellow Republican, as the chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
Mr Mason raised hackles in some Republican circles early this year when, in response to a query by Mr McCain’s campaign, he questioned the legality of a decision by the campaign to withdraw from the public financing system during the Republican primary.

The move to replace Mr Mason drew scrutiny from Democrats and public advocates who yesterday accused the administration of throwing Mr Mason “under a bus” in order to protect the presumptive Republican nominee for the White House.

“President Bush’s dumping of Mason can only be viewed as a bald-faced
and brazen attempt to wrongly manipulate an important enforcement decision
by the nation’s campaign finance enforcement agency,” said Fred Wertheimer,
president of Democracy 21, a non-profit group that tracks money in politics.

Ken Gross, an attorney at Skadden Arps in Washington, said Mr Mason, having ruffled feathers over issues involving Mr McCain’s presidential funding, had become a “victim” of the political machinations between the White House and Democrats in the Senate. The White House said it would not comment on how personnel decisions were made but that the president “appreciated” Mr Mason’s service.

The nomination was part of an effort by the White House to end a congressional impasse that has brought the campaign finance watchdog to a standstill. Since December the FEC, a six-member bipartisan agency, has lacked a quorum that would allow it to issue advisory opinions on campaign finance issues or to initiate investigations into candidates who may be violating campaign finance rules.

The congressional stand-off is centred on the stalled nomination of the Republican
Hans von Spakovsky, a former attorney at the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, whose nomination Democrats have vowed to reject.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader, said the White House had accommodated a request by Democratic majority leader Harry Reid by offering enough nominees for a full slate at the FEC.

As I write this at 7:50 on May 8, a google news search show 148 stories. Tomorrow, if I have time I'll analyze the resst of the coverage.

Cap and trade: "inefficent and ineffective"

Logo of the United Nation's Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples, which held its seventh session: Climate change, bio-cultural diversity and livelihoods: the stewardship role of indigenous peoples and new challenges from April 21 to 2 May, 2008 in NYC.

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There are human costs to climate change, especially among indigenous peoples, as noted by the United Nations:

Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, owing to their dependence upon, and close relationship with the environment and its resources. Climate change exacerbates the difficulties already faced by vulnerable indigenous communities, including political and economic marginalization, loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination and unemployment.

Cap and trade strategies to decrease global warming set a maximum for carbon emissions; those that are able to reduce emissions at a low cost sell their extra permits to companies who would rather not make reductions themselves. Often, at least in the experience of the European Union, the permits are bought from companies operating in the undeveloped world.

British researchers such as Larry Lohman at Corner House and Kevin Smith of Transnational Institute, have criticized that system. Smith wrote in the March/April 2008 Resurgence Magazine,

So when the Dutch FACE Foundation plants trees in Kibale national park in Uganda to offset consumer flights, it ignores the fact that the land has been the site of violent evictions in the recent past and is still hotly contested by the people who once lived there. When companies buy carbon credits in the EU Emissions Trading scheme, the cheapness of the supposed emissions reductions is all that is important. But, any offsetting in Southern countries to justify emissions in Northern countries completely bypasses the issue of the extreme disparity in the levels of per capita carbon consumption and assumes that emissions reductions in the South can be treated like another colonial commodity to be extracted and traded.

But cap and trade has deleterious effects on those in the developed world, too. Consider how the policy, if enacted, will prolong our dependence on fossil fuels. And, as a group of environmental and social justice leaders wrote the Sierra Club in January , 2007,

...carbon credits are being generated almost exclusively by local polluters, while communities preserving local forests or defending their lands against oil exploitation, mountaintop removal or coal-fired power plants receive no such credits for their efforts. It is big polluters, after all, who tend to be in the best position to hire carbon consultants, liaise with officials and pay money to get projects registered with the UN carbon market. Worldwide, many communities interviewed were shocked and dismayed to learn that their local corporate bad citizens were getting extra cash from the carbon market.

*
Presidential candidates Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain all support cap and trade. Resources for the Future prepared a chart in January of this year that compares the major congressional proposals. All the Senate bills embrace cap and trade. The House has several carbon tax measures which instead would tax all emissions, providing an incentive to reduce emissions.

Over the weekend, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, two Oakland, CA EPA attorneys, speaking as private citizens, sent an open letter to every member of Congress indicating that the cap and trade approach, such as espoused in the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191), would be “inherently inferior to a carbon tax.”

The Wall Street Journal Environmental Capital blog noted yesterday,

But if the muzzle is strapped on, it apparently can also be removed–like when a chance arises to criticize the climate-change bills in Congress that the administration dislikes.

I'm not sure that the Bush Administration favors a carbon tax. November 29 2006, Presidents of 22 Local Unions representing over 10,000 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental engineers, environmental scientists, environmental protection specialists and support staff sent a joint letter to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works urging Congress to take immediate action against global warming. The letter also called for an end to censorship of scientists and other specialists on topics of climate change and the effects of air pollution.

In December 2007, the EPA's chief went against the recommendations of his staff to veto state action to directly regulate greenhouse gases from auto emissions and is delaying development of any federal approach to the problem, apart from voluntary incentives.

Williams and Zabel say the agency’s inability to verify greenhouse gas emissions or effectively police a cap-and-trade market makes for an “inefficient and ineffective strategy” for combating global warming. While tracking may be possible in the industrial sector, “there are many other sectors of the economy from which it will be difficult or impossible to insure accurate reporting.”

• The determination of the initial cap is “extremely contentious and has resulted in a cap that was significantly inflated above actual emissions”; and EPA is not equipped to enforce market protections that ensure “true reductions, not just paper credits” as exist now in many carbon offset schemes.
• The cap-and-trade market will confer “tremendous financial incentives to understate actual emissions and overstate the amount of emission reductions or carbon sequestration offsets.”
• There has been an absence of any technological innovations that have resulted from U.S. emission trading programs, yet technological innovation is seen as the consensus path for long-term greenhouse gas reductions.
  

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has sketched out how to protect low and moderate income consumers under either plan. Supporters of S. 2191, following the lead of Environmental Defense, argue that market forces will curb emissions. I wrote about environmental groups' critique of the bill on February 13, as well as the Congressional Budget Office report favoring a carbon tax on February 15. They argue that cap and trade amounts to a huge giveaway to polluters with questionable results. Some opponents of the bill, such as James Inhofe (R-OK) argued:

Less than half of all published scientists endorse the global warming theory....[and this measure will] cost the average taxpayer something like 10 times the largest tax increase we have experienced in this country.

In the coming days, I will be covering the bills in Congress, But first tomorrow, I want to tell you about when the World Bank looked at the human costs of its energy investments.

Are We Alone?

"Science Radio for Thinking People" broadcast fromAbSciCon 2008:

• Diana Valencia - Planetary physicist at Harvard University
• Charley Lineweaver - Cosmologist at the Australian National University
• David Deamer - Research scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz
• Baruch Blumberg - Scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Institute, Nobel Prize winner, and Trustee at the SETI Institute
• Matthew Kenworthy - Astronomer at the University of Arizona
• Eric Korpela - Research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley
• Richard Muller - Physicist, University of California, Berkeley
• Kathryn Denning - Anthropologist at York University

This photo taken by Watson Davis of the Science Service shows Clarence Darrow, right, questioning William Jennings Bryant during the Scopes Monkey Trial. Marcel C. LaFollette, a scholar and Smithsonian volunteer, found the picture in the Smithsonian's archives. James Glen Stovall (email), Professor of Journalism at the University of Tennessee has a writeup of the discovery and of the trial at his site JPROF.

Carl Bunin (email) publishes a newsletter, "This week in history. Today, in 1925

Biology teacher John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Dayton, Tennessee, high school in violation of state law. Working in a public school, he was prohibited by statute “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School Professor Doug Linder (email) conducts a Seminar in Famous Trials with a website featuring cases from Aristotle to Moussaoui. His Scopes site includes a wealth of materials.

Trouble in River City

The map from Black Box Voting shows the ratio of the number of purges to the
current voter list.

Bev Harris, the founder of Black Box Voting, reports that Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, while bragging about the increased registrations, has failed to mention a document which shows that 1,134,427 voter registrations have been cancelled prior to May 6th's Democratic primary--that's 26 percent of the current statewide list. And oddly, just two northwestern Indiana counties purged almost a quarter of these voters. Lake County, home of Gary Indiana deleted 137,164 voters and neighboring Porter County, another 124,958 voters. Harris comments that

Lake County has been referred to as "the second most liberal county in America." Lake County also has one of the heaviest concentrations of African-American voters that you'll find anywhere in the USA.

Nearby Porter County, the home of Valparaiso, is 95% white and went
solidly for Bush in the 2004 election. It's also got a lot of college
students.

She explains the shortcomings in the information available:

It would be nice to have the original quantities, it would make for a
cleaner number, but this is not available on the Secretary of State's
Web site, so I haven't got a tidier statistic for you, wish I did. I also
wish the time period for these purges was clearly indicated, but it is
not indicated -- nor can it be derived -- from available information
at Indiana's official election Web site...The dang Indiana information doesn't break voter registrations out by party which makes crunching the primary numbers a little harder.

In addition, the Microvote Infinity voting machine has been decertified, but anyone who already bought them can used them, although there have been lawsuits in Pennsylvania for machines that didn't work, and in two Tennessee locales where candidates have asked to redo
elections due to anomalies such as vote totals which changed overnight.

She says that Microvote's insurance company has declined to cover the firm, because the insurance company alleged that Microvote was selling defective products. A judge ruled against the insurance company, saying the product wasn't defective, it just didn't work.

Indiana is also using ES&S paperless iVotronic touch-screens, the ones that
lost 18,000 votes in Sarasota County Florida. Dan Rather showed footage of the touch-screens being manufactured in a sweat shop in the Philippines. Their quality control test was to shake the machine and if it didn't rattle, it passed the test.

She also maintains that the National Election Pool is

paying elections officials (through their associations or otherwise) to call and fax them the results off the voting machine poll tape.In fact, the National Election Pool (used to be Voter News Service) is getting this stuff BEFORE the election officials and way before the secretary of state. The first number they quote is the adjusted exit poll number, and it comes from asking people about who they voted for. The point here is, when what you thought was "exit polls" suddenly changes, that is the impact of those called-in poll tape results. Yep. That's the voting machines talking, and when they say something different than the people answering the exit pollers' questions, we should be looking at the programming on the machine, not the exit pollers, for answers.

Her organization is providing a tool kit on how to do records requests. There will also be a forum to file information from Indiana and North Carolina.

Some reading for Saturday

Before I set out for a dinner party at our house in Newport, I thought I'd noted my most interesting visitor today was someone at the U.S. House of Representatives who searched at google on "walker gao medicare social security" and then spent over 7 minutes at 3:30 this afternoon reading my March piece on Walker leaving the GAO (plus two other pages.) The outclick was to one of my favorite groups of economists, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Saturdays, I round up the lineup for NewsTrust. Here what the community and I found starting last night. The featured topic was U.S. Economy, hence the emphasis in these stories from the US:

• For Democrats, Instincts Differ on Economics-- New York Times
• Pentagon's Accounting Mess --Portfolio (Special Report)
• The Question of Hillary Clinton's Guilt-By-Association Tactics --Huffington Post (Blog Post)
• For Bush in Last Year, It's the Principle --Washington Post (News Analysis)
• Bush Defends His Economic Record
• Mission Accomplished: A political farce--Seattle Post Intelligencer (Editorial)
• Bush says rebate checks will boost ailing economy --Reuters
• Consumers may get break on credit cards --Miami Herald
• Manias, Panics, Crashes, and the Devil Take the Hindmost --Seeking Alpha (Review)
• After Hiatus, States Set Wave of Executions --New York Times
• 10 ways to blow your tax rebate --San Francisco Chronicle (Opinion)
• The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash --Forex Trading Education
• Bush ignoring home front: Democrats --Baltimore Sun (Opinion)
• Obama May Levy $15 Billion Tax on Oil Company Profit --Bloomberg
• How Much Did Rumsfeld Know? --Time (Special Report)
• As Gas Costs Soar, Buyers Flock to Small Cars
• Is the Worst Over for Wall Street? -- NPR Radio

Other U.S. Politics

• Obama Lead in NC Shrinks; He and Clinton Remain Deadlocked in Indiana
  Zogby (Poll)
• This Week in God--The Carpetbagger Report (Blog Post)
• Loyal to the Bitterness --Wall Street Journal (Opinion)
• Mccain: Iraq War Was for Oil? --MSNBC
• Investigative Project Releases Gov't Memos Curtailing Speech in War on Terror --Investigative Project (Special Report)
• The most influential US political pundits: 10-1 --Daily Telegraph (Special Report)
• Peter Birkenhead: Barack Obama: The Audacity Of Being Human --Huffington Post
• Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality --Too Much (Opinion)
• Superdelegates and the Rules of the Game – HuffPost
• Clinton's gas problem --West Virginia Blue (Blog Post)
• Questioner Dragged Out Of McCain Town Hall Talks To OffTheBus --
  Huffington Post (Blog Post)
• Defection of key Clinton ally tilts balance to Obama--The Independent (News Report)
• McCain Moves to 6-Point Lead Over Obama --Gallup (Poll)
• DNC coffers dry amid flood of Dem cash--The Politico (News Report)

Other Business Stories:

• Radiohead Figures Out How To Sell 99-cent Song for $4.95 to 2,250 People
  Portfolio
• Source says Murdoch won't match offer for Newsday Newsday
• Higher Offer by Microsoft Brings Yahoo to Table --New York Times)

Other Sci-Tech

• Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence --New York Times
• Exercise Your Brain, or Else You'll ... Uh ... --New York Times

World:

• Palestinian Recruits Hit Streets Unprepared --Washington Post
• Bush admits he approved torture --Seattle Post Intelligencer (Opinion)
• Ticker tape still ain't spaghetti --Seattle Post Intelligencer
• Food Price Crisis --Global Pulse / LinkTV (News Analysis)
• For women around the world, life is getting worse--The Independent (Opinion)
• Tsvangirai 'fails' to secure outright win over Mugabe --The Independent
• US plan to protect right whale from shipping blocked by Cheney --The Independent
• Labour suffers big council losses --BBC News (News Analysis)
• Pakistani judges to be reinstated on May 12: Sharif –Reuters
• Al-Jazeera cameraman freed from Guantanamo after 6 years --Associated Press
• Cameraman held at Guantanamo freed --Seattle Post Intelligencer
• House prices down by 0.9%, says Halifax --The Guardian

New Bill Stafford Book from Graywolf: Another World Instead

How did I miss it? April 1, Gray Wolf published a new book of William Stafford's poetry, Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947

The May 5 Oregonian will publish Sean Patrick Hill's review. It's a staff pick by Powell's in Portland, where Stafford lived for many years.


My most interesting visitor for May 4 came from Hong Kong, reading 6 pages for almost 8 minutes, having come from Sacred Heart University's research librarian, Patrick Gavin's entry which cited me on January 29.

Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?

Gotta run but here's something to ponder from Steve Pizzo:

Index of Posts for April 2008

Mr. McCain goes to Inez (KY) and tells women what we need
Guerrillas in the Garden
Bush Accuses Dems in Congress of Economic Inaction
New York Political Leaders on Sean Ben Murder Acquittal
Making a Killing from Hunger
Food Aid in Gaza Suspended Due to Fuel Shortage
Report: 60% of EPA's staff scientists say they have suffered political interference
The Pennsylvania Primary: Polls, Exit Polls, Live Blogging and What's Next
Artivist Film Festival: Merging Art and Activism
Fact Check: Clinton & Obama TV ads mislead about lobbyists and PAC contributions
NYT: "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand"
Green Gadgets
States to Resume Death Penalty: Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection
Comcast and AT&T et.al. snub FCC broadband hearing
Anne Enright
Senate Commerce to hold mark up on Dorgan's Cross Ownership Bill April 24
World Bank on the Food Price Crisis
Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, Ashcroft approved torture
KBR medic complicit in rape of colleague by soldier
Claudia Emerson
US Consultants help bust UK labor unions
Check out The Belmont Club: History and Hisotry in the Making
Zimbabwe tumult continues as Barry Bearak of the NYT freed
Speculation on Drugs and Torture
California Health Care Workers Press SEIU
Seton Hall's Center for Social Justice Sues
WHO concerned about Gaza patients dying while awaiting
McCain's economic advisors
On the Road Again

Mr. McCain goes to Inez (KY) and tells us what women need

Bruce Dill's photograph of Lilly Ledbetter for Robert Barnes's 2/20/07 WaPo story, "A Hearing Without Being Heard: As Justices Take Case, Plaintiff Finds It Has Little to Do With Her Anymore."
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As economists and pollsters talked about a recession and as consumers, facing increased gas and food prices, worried about the security of their jobs, April was a good month to remember the wage gap. Women are averaging 77 cents for every dollar men earn for comparable work.

April 22, in addition to being Earth Day, was Equal Pay Day, calling attention to when women’s wages catch up to men’s wages from the previous year. If you doubt the pay gap still exists, just ask Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s plant in Gadsden, Ala., who found out that after a 19-year career she was making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor.

Ledbetter's case gained prominence April 23, when the press covered Senator John McCain's stop in Inez, KY on his "It's Time for Action" tour, as he sought to emphasize his attention to the powerless in our country. In this rural eastern Kentucky town, where poverty is worse among women than men, McCain addressed Ms. Ledbetter's case and George Miller's (D-CA) H.R. 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007, which had passed the House by a vote of 225-199 July 31, 2007, along almost entirely partisan lines. McCain suggested what women need is not more legal redress for discrimination, that education and training will suffice.

*

I know about Inez, KY from covering the largest environmental disaster in the southeast--Massey Energy's Martin County Coal Sludge Spill--and from covering the work of federal mine inspector, Jack Spadaro, who refused to sign onto a Bush administration whitewash and got locked out of his own office on the orders of Secretary of Labor Elaine Cho.

What I had not remembered about Inez was Lyndon Johnson's visit to launch the War on Poverty which McCain reminded us of on his stop there. McCain had launched the tour April 21 in Selma Alabama, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge site of "Bloody Sunday, March 6, 1965. That 1965 assault on marchers contributed to the federal Voting Rights Act's passage, following upon the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Bill Moyers, who was Johnson's press secretary, reports that on the evening of signing the 1964 measure, Johnson said, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come."

Steve Holland of Reuters UK reported,

McCain was driven through the mountains to that wood frame house Johnson visited but now it was padlocked with the front porch fenced off, a "No Trespassing" sign posted and car parked in a driveway with a blanket covering a broken window.

John McCain had come to Inez not to praise Johnson, but to (re)bury him in this the centennial year of his birth. At a news conference at the old Martin County Court House, McCain told reporters, according to AP writer Libby Quaid,

I wouldn't be back here today if government had fulfilled the promise that Lyndon Johnson made 44 years ago.

*

The main thrust of Quaid's story was not Inez at all (her dateline was New Orleans). Instead, she emphasized McCain's failure to return to the Senate to cast his vote on H.R. 2831. The measure would have reverted suits against employers to the prior clock, which allowed court consideration not just within six months of the original discrimination, but at the time of any discriminatory paycheck.

After threatened presidential veto, on the evening of Wednesday, April 23, there were 56 votes in the Senate to move the measure forward, 4 short of the 60 votes are needed to stop a filibuster. (Actually there may have been 57, as Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) spoke in favor of cloture but voted against it--I'm thinking for some kind of procedural reason which would allow him to bring the matter up again.

Republicans voting to stop a possible filibuster were were Coleman (MN), Collins (ME), Smith (OR), Snowe (ME), Specter (R), Sununu (NH) . Coleman had been targeted by People for the American Way in web and radio ads.

For years, Lilly Ledbetter was paid far less than the men in her factory for doing the same work — and she proved it in court. But when the company appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, a new justice nominated by George W. Bush and supported by Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman wrote the opinion that denied her equal pay.

Tell Norm Coleman we need judges who will protect workers — not take our rights away.

Reid had delayed the vote to give McCain's Democratic rivals, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama time to return to Washington to support the measure. As a result, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) argued,

A vote to proceed to the Ledbetter bill is a vote to proceed away from the veterans bill. This is really highly ironic because my side was taking a pounding Monday and Tuesday for allegedly holding up, if you will, the veterans bill. Of course, that was not the case. We have ended up, in order to accommodate the schedules of those who are frequently not here--and understandably not here because they are running for President--we had the Senate, in effect, not in session until 5 o'clock this afternoon. While Americans are waiting for Congress to do something about the economy, jobs, and gas prices, our friends on the other side decided to close shop in order to accommodate the uncertainties of the campaign trail. Finding solutions for the concerns of all our constituents should be our top priority, not just accommodating the travel schedules of two of our Members.

Reid responded,

Their schedules were very difficult recently. They could be here at 6 o'clock. So I made the suggestion, which I thought was reasonable--we haven't been able to legislate on the veterans bill since last Thursday; how about doing it on Wednesday, until 5 o'clock. That would be 6 hours more than we have done since last Thursday. There was a refusal to allow us to do that. To have my friend, the Republican leader, come here and say we haven't done anything today because we had a vote scheduled at their convenience--he didn't use the names, but Senators CLINTON and OBAMA--that is absolutely without any foundation. I have trouble understanding how my friend would have the gall to stand on the floor and make the comment he did, but he did.

*

Opponents said there needs to a restraint on law suits. Proponents said that discrimination laws need to be enforceable and that the Supreme Court had erred in its 5-4 decision May 29, 2007 giving workers only 180 days to file a discrimination suit.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote,

The Court’s insistence on immediate contest overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination. Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time. Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials. Small initial discrepancies may not be seen as meet for a federal case, particularly when the employee, trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment, is averse to making waves.

Ledbetter told the House in her House testimony in a hearing June 12, 2007 before Miller's Committee on Education and Labor,

according to the Court, if you don’t figure things out right away, the company can treat you like a second-class citizen for the rest of your career. That isn’t right. The truth is, Goodyear continues to treat me like a second-class worker to this day because my pension and social security is based on the amount I earned while working there. Goodyear gets to keep my extra pension as a reward for breaking the law.

When Ledbetter sued she maintained that earlier decisions by supervisors kept her from making more. She told the House,

The plant manager flat out said that women shouldn’t be working in a tire factory because women just made trouble. One of my supervisors asked me to go down to a local hotel with him and promised if I did, I would get good evaluations. He said if I didn’t, I would get put at the bottom of the list. I didn’t say anything at first because I wanted to try to work it out and fit in without making waves. But it got so bad that I finally complained to the company. The manager I complained to refused to do anything to protect me and instead told me I was just being a troublemaker. So I complained to the EEOC. The company worked out a deal with the EEOC so that supervisor would no longer manage me. But after that, the company treated me badly. They tried to isolate me. People refused to talk to me. They left me out of important management meetings so I sometimes didn’t know what was going on, which made it harder to do my job. So I got a taste of what happens when you try to complain about discrimination.

On behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, Neal D. Mollen argued against Ledbetter, in supporting the Supreme Court, saying that the new law, in restoring the paycheck provision would have

frustrated Congress’ design for attempting to resolve such matters, at least in the first instance, without litigation.

*
Senate Republicans did not need McCain's vote to kill the bill. But although McCain left no legislative footprints, Quaid quotes him:

I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.....This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.

So what's a woman to do? I'd have liked to have known Mr. McCain's suggestion for Ledbetter and the rest of us. He told folks in Inez, women

need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else...And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them....It's a vicious cycle that's affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least.

Actually, women do mine coal.

Between 1974 and 1980, almost 2,400 women were hired as underground coal workers in the East. ...In the mid 1980's when the underground coal mining industry started to decline, many women lost their mining jobs because of the rule, “last hired, first fired.”

Actually mining employment continues to decline, as mountaintop removal uses far fewer miners as conventional methods. Jack Spadaro, who I mentioned ast the outset of this article has told me that the ratio is one MTR job for 200 conventional jobs and the coal companies would still make tremendous profits hiring the 200.

Actually the higher education rate for women already exceeds that for men. Jonathan Rauch wrote in the January 15, 2008 libertarian Reason magazine,

According to projections by the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2017 half again as many women as men will earn bachelor's degrees. In the early 1990s, six women graduated from college for every five men who did so; today, the ratio is about 4-to-3. A decade from now, it will be 3-to-2—and rising, on current trends.

But those are as they say, "inconvenient truths."

Or, as Gail Collins pointed out in Sunday's New York Times,

Was McCain saying that it’s less important to give working women the right to sue for equal pay than to give them help taking care of their families? There have been many attempts to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to protect more workers who need to stay home to take care of a sick kid or an ailing parent. “We’ve never gotten his support on any of that agenda,” said Debra Ness, the president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

We also have yet to hear a McCain policy address on how working mothers are supposed to find quality child care. If it comes, I suspect the women trying to support their kids on $20,000 a year are going to learn they’re in line for some whopping big income-tax deductions.

Let them eat dinner mints.

Guerillas in the Garden

My friend Jason pointed out a book by Richard Reynolds. There's a nice article by stringer Alexandra Topping in the 6/22/06 WaPo, "Guerrillas in the Garden: Neglected London Plots Beautified on the Sly."

The library is closing. I'll finish tomorrow.

Bush Accuses Dems in Congress for Economic Inaction

This is a tough time for our economy. Across our country many Americans are understandably anxious about issues affecting their pocketbook, from gas and food prices to mortgage and tuition bills. They're looking to their elected leaders in Congress for action. Unfortunately, on many of these issues all they're getting is delay.

Americans are concerned about energy prices, and I can understand why. I think the last time I visited with you it was like -- I said it was like a tax increase on the working people. The past 18 months, gas prices have gone up by $1.40 per gallon. Electricity prices for small business and families are rising, as well.

I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems. Yet time after time, Congress chose to block them. One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand. Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.

They repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR. The Department of Energy estimates that ANWR could allow America to produce about a million additional barrels of oil every day, which translates to about 27 millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel every day. That would be about a 20-percent increase of oil -- crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices. And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked.

Another reason for high gas prices is the lack of refining capacity. It's been more than 30 years since America built its last new refinery. Yet in this area, too, Congress has repeatedly blocked efforts to expand capacity and build more refineries.
As electricity prices rise, Congress continues to block provisions needed to increase domestic electricity production by expanding the use of clean, safe nuclear power. Instead, many of the same people in Congress who complain about high energy costs support legislation that would make energy even more expensive for our consumers and small businesses.
Congress is considering bills to raise taxes on domestic energy production, impose new and costly mandates on producers, and demand dramatic emissions cuts that would shut down coal plants, and increase reliance on expensive natural gas. That would drive up prices even further. The cost of these actions would be passed on to consumers in the form of even higher prices at the pump and even bigger electric bills.

Instead of increasing costs and increasing new roadblocks to domestic energy production, Congress needs to clear away obstacles to more affordable, more reliable energy here at home.
Americans are concerned about rising food prices. Unfortunately, Congress is considering a massive, bloated farm bill that would do little to solve the problem. The bill Congress is now considering would fail to eliminate subsidy payments to multi-millionaire farmers. America's farm economy is thriving, the value of farmland is skyrocketing, and this is the right time to reform our nation's farm policies by reducing unnecessary subsidies. It's not the time to ask American families who are already paying more in the check-out line to pay more in subsidies for wealthy farmers. Congress can reform our farm programs, and should, by passing a fiscally responsible bill that treats our farmers fairly, and does not impose new burdens on American taxpayers.

Americans are concerned about making their mortgage payments and keeping their homes, and I don't blame them. Last year I called on Congress to pass legislation that would help address problems in the housing market. This includes critical legislation that would modernize the Federal Housing Administration, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and allow state housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance sub-prime loans. Yet they failed to send a single one of these proposals to my desk. Americans should not have to wait any longer for their elected officials to pass legislation to help more families stay in their homes.
Americans are concerned about the availability of student loans. The recent credit crunch makes it uncertain that some students will be able to get the loans they need. My administration is taking action through the Department of Education's "lender of last resort" program, which works to arrange loans for students who are unable to secure one from a lender on their own. In other words, we're helping. Congress needs to do more by passing a bill that would temporarily give the federal government greater authority to buy federal student loans. This authority would safeguard student loans without permanently expanding the government's role in their financing.
In all these issues, the American people are looking to their leaders to come together and act responsibly. I don't think this is too much to ask even in an election year. My administration will reach out to Congress. We will work to find areas of agreement so that we can deal with the economic pressures that our American taxpayers and American families are feeling. I ask Congress to do its part by sending me sensible and effective bills that I can sign, instead of issuing or sending bills that simply look like political statements. We can work together. We can help Americans weather this difficult period. We can keep our country moving forward.

New York Political Leaders on Sean Bell Murder Acquittal

Sean Bell, died at the age of 23 in a hail of 50 police bullets on the morning of what would have been his wedding day in November 2006. He and two of his friends who were also shot, but survived, all were unarmed. On Friday a judge acquitted three undercover police detectives of all charges in the shooting death.

Congressman Gregory W. Meeks, Charles Rangel, Towns, Clarke And Cheeks Kilpatrick,
New York State Senate Minority Leader Malcolm A. Smith And Southeast Queens Elected Officials Joint Statement On The Sean Bell Verdict on April 25

A year and a half ago, three police officers fired a total of 50 bullets at three unarmed and innocent young men, killing Sean Bell and severely wounding Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield. This incident occurred in the morning of what was supposed to be Sean Bell's wedding day. The past seventeen months have been extremely difficult for Nicole Paultre Bell, Sean Bell's fiancee, his daughters, and his parents, William and Valerie Bell.

It appeared that the evidence presented by the prosecution during a six week trial was compelling and conclusive. Yet, the verdict rendered by Judge Arthur Cooperman this morning acquitted all three officers of all charges.

We do not accept that this is the end of this case. We have joined with the families and their attorneys in filing a compliant with the U.S. Department of Justice requesting an investigation of violations of the civil rights of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield. Indeed, this afternoon the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it's Civil Rights Division, the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York Field Division will conduct an independent review of the facts and circumstances surrounding the Nov. 25, 2006, shooting of Sean Bell and two of his friends.

Although we understand and share the frustration that many New Yorkers are feeling at this moment, we caution against giving into that frustration. Instead, we urge all who are disappointed with the decision to channel their energy into monitoring this review and utilizing their right to peaceful assembly to seek a redress of their grievances over today's decision.

In the near future the Tri-Level Legislative Taskforce, formed in the wake of the Bell shooting and which held city-wide public hearings on the excessive use of police force, will release its final recommendation.

We must all remain committed to creating a justice system that is fair to all and building police-community relations that respect the lives and well-being of all.

Making a Killing from Hunger

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=39

Food Aid in Gaza Suspended Due to Fuel Shortage

Ironically, a check of Google news shows only two sources reprinted with a byline AP Writer Ibrahim Barzak's April 24 Story, "UN stops distributing food aid in Gaza Strip; cites fuel cutoff by Israel." One was the Canadian Broadcasting system, the other Fox News. Democracy Now published a summary without a byline.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The United Nations has stopped distributing food to Palestinian refugees in Gaza because of the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory.

Adnan Abu Hasna of the UN Relief Works Agency says the UN is taking the action because there is no fuel for its vehicles. He says all regular food operations have stopped and 700,000 Palestinians won't be getting basic food packets as a result.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory last summer in a battle with Fatah, it's western-backed rival.

Israeli authorities have shipped fuel for Gaza's power plant, but continues a ban on gasoline and diesel fuel....

There is some fuel stored in Gaza but a local strike by distributors means it is not reaching the public.

Palestinian distributors have been refusing to pick up about one million litres of fuel that Israel pumped earlier this month into the Palestinian side of a border fuel depot. They say the quantity is insufficient.

On Wednesday, UNRWA director John Ging acknowledged the "complicated fuel situation," but said Israel "must provide enough fuel for daily needs."

In Israel and the Occupied Territories, the UN has been forced to suspend aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency says it’s run out of fuel because of Israel’s blockade. The UN delivers aid to two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.4 million people. The top UN official in Gaza, John Ging, said Israel had ignored the agency’s warnings.

While the Canadian version, posted at 1:55 says that

There was no immediate Israeli comment about the UNRWA move.

The Fox version, which has not time stamp includes this information:

Col. Nir Press of the Israeli military liaison unit with Gaza said Israel agreed to allow fuel shipments for the U.N. agency to keep its vehicles on the road, but Hamas stopped the delivery.

"We don't control the internal situation in Gaza between Hamas and UNWRA," he said. "I hope the Hamas will allow UNWRA access to the fuel we have supplied."

Press said Hamas is creating an artificial crisis. "It serves their propaganda purposes and creates a false pretense of a humanitarian crisis that doesn't exist," he told reporters in a group telephone interview.

The reporter has been excoriated by CAMERA since 2003 and by Palestine Media Watch in 2003 and by Omri Ceren, in 2007. The failure of the CBC to update the story makes me wonder how much of this criticism is fair and how much to blame on the MSM's failure to print the whole story. But I would have to do more research to be able to answer that question.