Seton Hall’s Center for Social Justice Sues La Migra

According to Democracy Now, Seton Hall lawyers have filed the suit on behalf of ten plaintiffs saying federal immigration agents have illegally entered homes and made arrests in raids on undocumented immigrants. The suit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials of using deceit or raw force to gain unlawful entry and seize immigrant suspects. The tactics have been used by immigration officials in nationwide raids since May 2006.

WHO concerned about Gaza patients dying while awaiting treatment

Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN--editorially independent, but part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) reported April 1 on a World Health Ortganization (WHO) report which describing the cases of five patients who died while awaiting an Israeli permit to exit the enclave or after having been denied one. Also documented were the cases of an additional 27 patients unable to receive specialized care outside Gaza. Today's report was on how over half of the 85,000 Bedouin in the Negev desert live in 40-odd villages not recognised by Israel, which leaves them them without access water and other basic services.

McCain's economic advisors

The lucrative Bear Stearns guarantee in March was not the first time favor bestowed on the J.P. Morgan by the Federal Reserve Bank. Nine years prior to the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which effectively repealed the Glass-Steagall law separating regulation of commercial and investment banks,

In 1990, J.P. Morgan becomes the first bank to receive permission from the Federal Reserve to underwrite securities, so long as its underwriting business does not exceed the 10 percent limit.

One of McCain's economic advisers is none other that the bill's namesake, Phil Gramm, who as chairman of the Senate Finace Committee led the call for deregulation. The former Senator is
is a vice-chair of the UBS investment bank, which on April 1, announced continuing losses of billions of dollars because of sub-prime mortgage investments. Makes one wonder, huh?

But the Republicans were actually doing the Clinton Administration's bidding. Back in 1995, Treasury secretary told the House that the regulations

"conceivably impede safety and soundness by limiting revenue diversification." Rubin also said many legitimate concerns were addressed adequately outside the act, including the numerous steps taken to safeguard against risky and abusive bank transactions and to protect the deposit insurance fund.

As James A. Wilcox, Chief Economist, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, wrote with two co-authors in 2000,

How regulators will in practice coordinate their efforts so that the safety and soundness of the banking system is maintained efficiently remains to be seen.

Evidently, not at all, at least according to Robert Kuttner, who in "The Bubble Economy," argued in September 2007 that deregulation has turned the economy into a "casino" with repeated bail-outs.

Another McCain adviser: Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, forced to step down in 2005, who authorized spying efforts to uncover the source of boardroom leaks.

And, it's not like Barack Obama would bring back such regulations. As he said ,

The argument is not to go back to the regulatory framework of the 1930's because, as I said, the financial markets have changed substantially.

*
Today I headed backvia Roanoke to run some errands and then back to Blacksburg.

On the road again

Picked up my car

Car Woes

My trip back from Charlottesville aborted when I tried to start my car. Ended up staying another day in C'ville. Sue cooked a risotto from one of her new cookbooks.

My trip back from Charlottesville aborted when I tried to start my car. Ended up staying another day in C'ville. Sue cooked a risotto from one of her new cookbooks.

Virginia Arts of the Book Center lecture at VA Book

Johanna Drucker, Robertson Professor of Media Studies at UVa and advisor to Artists' Books Online, brought all sorts of examples from her collection to share with us. Then I went back to sue and robs and fixed dinner for them, Lily and Dora, a Waldorf salad with chicken on a bed of spinach with chocolate for dessert.

Marc Estrin at VA Festival of the Book

After doing the saturday lineup for NewsTrust and eating noodles at the Asian cafe on the mall, went again at the Village School to hear Marc Estrin read the bar mitzvah scene from The Lamentations of Julius Marantz. He was extradinairily entertaining, despite the fact that he told me he had never acted during his theater career, only directed. I had had the opportunity to finish the book, along with Golem Song, when I visited Marc and Donna this past summer in Burlington. Also appearing were:

• A.J. Jacobs's, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible;
• Adam Mansbach, The End of the Jews; and
• Peter Charles Melman, Landsman. Interestingly, he teaches at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, mom's alma mater.
  

Got to talk with Donna for a bit before Marc and Donna left to talk with his editor fred at Unbridled, as well as schmooze at a reception. Instead, I returned back to Rob and Sue's for a pot luck and sing along.

Heather McHugh at VA Festival of the Book

Photograph of Heather McHugh (email) from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she is a professor in the English Department.

McHugh read from her poems at UVa Harrison Institute / Small Special Collections and then attended the beginning of a reception at the Colonnade Club. Both locales are on the central grounds.

The Academy of American Poets has a recording of her reading "What He Thought" on April 21, 1992 at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise in NYC, along with a slightly diffent version of the text, as it was published in Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994).

*

Later in the evening, I got to hear Charles Wright reading along with Poet Laureate Charles Simic.

Va Festival of the Book on Evil and Sin

After a dinner of baked potatoes with all the fixings, Sue, foreign exchange student Dora, and I attended the event they had selected, "Evil and Sin," which Jacob Goodson moderated at the Village School on East High Street. The panel consisted of:

• Jennifer Geddes, editor of Evil After Postmodernism, a research associate professor of Religious Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at UVa and editor of The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture;
• Dr. Barbara Oakley, author of Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend, who is professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan; and
  
• John Portmann, author of A History of Sin: Its Evolution to Today and Beyond, and assistant professor of religious studies at UVa.
  

A bit dry and Oakley thinks her sister has evil genes. As Dora said, "What does that say about her?"

Va Festival of the Book on Digging Coal and Moving Mountains

Went the the Virginia Festival of the Book session Digging Coal and Moving Mountains at Gravity Lounge, moderated by David Bearinger.  The panel included:

Paul Kuczko, who produced Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields, along with my friend Jack Wright.  Kuczko is the Director of the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.


Penny Loeb, author of Moving Mountains: How One Woman and her Community Won Justice from Big Coal, was senior editor at U.S. News and World Report and an investigative reporter for Newsday. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.


Michael Shnayerson is the author of Coal River, a book about the environmental lawyers and advocates fighting to stop mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he has also written The Car That Could and The Killers Within.

Afterwards. Penny and I went out for coffee at the Mudhouse.

Enroute to Charlottesville for the Virginia Festival of the Book

I'll be staying with Rob and Sue, as in past years. Stopped by Trader Joe's on my way out of Springfield to buy them some goodies including artichoke and tomato spreads, Tofurkey italian sausage and asiago cheese.

Touring the Newseum w. th eMedia Bloggers Association

The photo is of Media Blogers Association Founder Bob Cox standing in front of the exhibit that features his photo, as pointed out by First Amendmentment Center Executive Director Gene Policinski.


Thank to my colleague Rory O'Connor, I received an invitation to a pre-opening tour of the Newseum. Here's coverage from another blogger, which I posted at Newstrust...

Split this Rock Sunday

After a meeting at Busboys and Poets to hear about DC Poets Against the War from Sarah Browning, Esther Iverem, Joseph Ross, and Melissa Tuckey and discussing how to continue the work of the festival, we reconvened at George Washington University at noon for a reading by Naomi Ayala subbing for Sharon Olds who was sick, followed by Galway Kinnell, who before getting to his own poems, read one by Walt Whitman and another by his friend Richard Bly, substituting Iraq for Vietnam.

Steve had gone to Easter service, so he joined us late and we walked in silence for the five blocks to Lafayette Park, across from the White House, where we compiled a Cento consisting of 12 words read by each poet.

Afterwards, Len, Steve and I got together for coffee and an impromtu reading, after we were joined by two others from the festival who I beckoned in as they walked by. Since the Starbucks was closing, we actually read part of our poems at a table outside.

I drove out to Springfield and visited Mom and spent the night. Carol was also visiting.

Split this Rock Coverage in WaPo ​

Photo by Susan Biddle shows Martín Espada (left) and Ethelbert Miller (center.)  Not sure of the woman on the right.


I'm exhausted, I'm exhilarated. Yesterday's Washington Post feature by David Montgomery, "Poets Adverse to War," in the Style section is worth checking out, for the photos alone, not to mention some of the quotations form the poets. I just wish the story had led off with that. But poets here are not accorded the same place in public life as they are in Europe and Latin America.

For instance, Martín Espada:  "People in this society are starved for meaning...In a time of war, the government divorces language from meaning. . . . They drain the blood from words. Poets can put the blood back into words...No change for the good ever happens without being imagined first. . . . That's where poets come in...What I do is an act of faith. I put words out into the atmosphere. They become part of what we breathe. Hopefully that has some impact. But we shouldn't try to quantify the impact of a poem like it's a package of beans....You don't fight the good fight just because you think you're going to win....You fight the good fight because it's the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome, which you can't predict anyhow. That's how I feel about the work that I do."

For more photos see Split This Rock's photo archives at Flickr.  For instance, here's Jill Brazel's photo of the silent march to the White House on the 5th Anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq:

Split This Rock Poetry Festival

Sonia Sanchez at Bus Boys and Poets, and Martin Espada, Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye (pictured above) and Alix Olson at Bell Multicultural High School. Quite the lineup. I walked over to the latter w. Steve, who lives in the city. Interestingly he was talking about a poet who's work impressed him and it turned out to be Diane Gilliam. Adrianne Rich could not attend but sent a letter and a poem. Sam Hammill had had a series of minor heart attacks, so likewise.

This one by Naomi Shihab Nye earned a standing ovation:

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If
anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the
gate immediately.

Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. "Help,"
said the flight service person. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her
the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this."

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. "Shu dow-a, shu- biduck
habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee?"

The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used – She
stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso
for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said "No, no, we’re fine,
you’ll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him."

We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her — SouthWest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found
out of course they had ten shared friends!

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I
know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions.

Soon after, she pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered
sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — out of her bag and was
offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament.
The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from
Laredo — we were all covered with the same
powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free (non-alcoholic beverages from huge
coolers and the two little girls for our flight--one African
American, one Mexican American — ran around serving us all Apple Juice and
Llemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands – had a
potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry
leaves. Ah, an old country traveling tradition: always carry a plant. Always
stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, "This is the
world I want to live in. The shared world."

Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped – was
apprehensive about any other person.

They took to the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

~




And this one by Martín Espada is the title poem from a collection of the same name:


Imagine the Angels of Bread

This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year
that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.

This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.

Sullivan on Obama

Sullivan has written more substantive pieces in terms of evidence, than March 18th's "The Testing of Obama," but he sums up the question eloquently and personally. His posts on the Obama/Wright dust-up include the full text of Wright's 1990 "Audacity To Hope" sermon and links to pieces pro and con Obama in the National Review and elsewhere. Why use the hypothetical comparison to Robertson? Perhaps Sullivan couldn't make MCain's real embrace of Hagee work, given it’s recent. Obama’s speech the next day fulfills Sullivan's description: someone "who offers all of us a chance to see sometimes authentic identity requires an element of contradiction, a bridging of the resentful, angry past and a more complex integrated future," but missteps include saying he would have quit the church, but Wright had resigned (). I also question Obama’s denied significance of his operatives’ pamphlet for organized labor regarding Edwards (). Sullivan’s bridge imagery works with Obama, but is ironic used against Clinton, whose husband used the same metaphor. Like Kaizar, I question Sullivan's description of Clinton "who believes in her heart that America is not ready and … assumes the need to disguise it and play cynical defense." Bill’s action regarding race in her campaign make wonder if he, on every level, wants her to succeed and recall how, despite Bob Dole's connections, Liddy dropped out for lack of funds. This points to two gaps: race AND gender. Clinton doesn’t talk as eloquently about the latter. Her character or her conundrum?

Washington Post and Andrew Sullivan on Obama and Rev. Wright

Today, Barack Obama addressed race in a speech at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Opponents try to use Obama's connection to Reverend Wright to derail his candidacy, pundits debate the effects of the excerpts broadcast and how Obama will try to stem the damage.

The Washington Post, instead made available a complete transcript of the speech, along with a video and adds two articles, all available from this link. The first article covers the speech and doesn't add much, other than to provide some specific examples of Wright's comments. The second with reactions from Wright's congregation and from other clergy, both Black and White, lacks any critics, although there have been plenty cited elsewhere. Some will find this speech a piece of great oratory, others an effort at damage control, but at least the Post gives readers the opportunity to draw our own conclusion. Our reactions may reflect more about us than about Obama. I come down on the oratory side, although I'm still discomfited by the statement quoted in the second story that Obama would have left the Church, except for the fact that Reverend Wright has retired.

In the speech, though, after first condemning the inflammatory nature of some of Wright's statements in sermons, Obama now takes the time to give a more nuanced reaction:

the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country...I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television sets and YouTube, if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way....

I won't quote more, as the library is closing and the who speech bears reading. Also interesting are Andrew Sullivan's multiple posts on the whole fracas and on the speech. For right now, you can scroll through and I'll try to put up an index later. Of especial interest is his verbatim transcript of Wright's "Audacity of Hope" sermon, which is nothing like the picture painted by the current sound bites.

Sunshine Week Starts

Poster for the Open the Government coalition's forum at the National Press Club Wednesday, March 19, 2008 1:00pm- 2:30pm, which you can view online, if you register here. See the bottom of this post for more information.

Besides being Saint Patty's day, March 17 is the kickoff for Sunshine Week ( although events started earlier in the month), during which journalists promote through their writing the idea of open government. There had been quite the media blarney over the signing on December 31 of the “Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National (OPEN) Government Act of 2007,” (first introduced and passed in the Senate in August 3, 2007 as Pat Leahey's (D-VT) S. 849, but held at the House desk an later re-introduced and passed unanimously December 14 as S. 2488 and passed by the House on a voice vote on December 18 (thus ironically hiding the voting record.)

But as Aftergood noted on January 2, 2008, while the amendment to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

makes several constructive procedural changes in the FOIA to encourage faster agency response times, to enable requesters to track the status of their requests, to expand the basis for fee waivers, and more.

One thing it does not do, however, is alter the criteria for secrecy and disclosure. Whatever records that a government agency was legally entitled to withhold before enactment of the “OPEN Government Act” can still be withheld now that the President has signed it.

Some of the misinterpretations in the mainstream media included a January 1 AP story which ran in the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.

The law … restores a presumption of a standard that orders government agencies to release information on request unless there is a finding that disclosure could do harm...The legislation is aimed at reversing an order by former Attorney General John Ashcroft after the 9/11 attacks in which he instructed agencies to lean against releasing information when there was uncertainty about how doing so would affect national security.

As Aftergood pointed out, the original House version of the OPEN Government Act establishing a “presumption of openness” was stripped prior to passage. This led toHenry Waxman (D-CA) statement on the House floor on December 18 that the final legislation

does not include a provision which I thought was a key one establishing a presumption that government records should be released to the public unless there is a good reason to keep them secret.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) applauded that

the provision repealing the so-called Ashcroft memorandum was eliminated…. The Ashcroft memorandum established that the administration would defend agency decisions to withhold records under a FOIA exemption if the decision was supported by a sound legal basis, replacing the pre-9/11 Janet Reno standard of always releasing information absent foreseeable harm...I think preservation of the Ashcroft policy is the right policy to adopt in the current environment.

AP added a correction finally on January 4, which only the Washington Post ran. And, as I reported in "Mr. Unitary Executive's FY 2009 Budget Bypasses Congress," and reported by Rebecca Carr in the Austin American-Statesman on February 4, since signing the bill, Bush has eliminated the FOIA ombudsman position at the National Archives which was central to the law.

Sharon Weinberger of Wired had no blarney extolling civic virtue today, when she instead, writes of her travails in trying to FOIA requests. And while nowhere near as detailed or cynical, The Houston Chronicle, taking to heart James Madison's statement that,

A popular government without popular knowledge or the means of acquiring it is but a prelude to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both.

calls out not only a local attorney general, but the Lone Star State's man in the White House in its editorial, "Sunshine Week: Americans are right to want transparent government and candidates' attention to official secrecy."

The Chronicle starts by noting an opinion poll by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University, also cited in more depth by Editor and Publisher, which found that 74 percent of those surveyed believe the federal government is somewhat or very secretive, up from 62 percent in 2006 and then continued,

In an era when the most powerful officials in the nation state that they have the right to conduct official business in secret, where it can't be known by the people they serve, the wonder is that the other 26 percent of those surveyed are not alarmed.

Most government secrecy is not to protect national security or ensure government integrity. Its purpose is to protect officials from public scrutiny, embarrassment or even prosecution.

The Bush administration contends that presidents can get good, candid advice only in confidence. This premise rests on the nonsensical assumption that the best advice presidents receive would be disadvantageous and humiliating to the president or the adviser if the public learned of it.

*
Pat Leahy is attempting to strengthen FOIA again, having introduced Open FOIA Act of 2008.
See Carr's March 12 entry for more information.

So here's the line-up for Government Secrecy: Censoring Your Right to Know

The Secret Executive -- What Can Congress and the Public Do?

• Ann Beeson, Director of U.S. Programs at the Open Society Institute and previously Associate Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
• Mickey Edwards, Director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership and former Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma (1977-92)
• John Podesta, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress, and former Clinton Chief of Staff
• Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org will moderate.

Citizen Self-Help: Finding the Information You Need

• Sheila Krumholz, Center for Responsive Politics/OpenSecrets.org
• David Moore, OpenCongress.org
• Sean Moulton, FedSpending.org
• Daniel X. O'Neil,EveryBlock
• Greg Elin, Sunlight Labs will moderate.

David Walker's move from GAO to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation

I'm as fiscally conservative as they come. So, I'd usually support someone who has warned us that

at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and on both sides of the political aisle, there are too few leaders who face the facts.

That someone is David Walker, who retired on Wednesday from the GAO. But something raised a flag as I read about Walker's departure in David S. Broder's March 16 Washington Post column, "New Task for a Budget Straight-Talker." Broder quotes Walker as saying that he is leaving to lead the Peter G. Peterson Foundation which will emphasize advocacy in the business community and among the young, because others already have done

a lot of the basic research and analysis [and] the people are ahead of the politicians...but they don't know what we need to do.

I looked up the website for the foundation. This portion of the mission statement caught my interest:

Unsustainable entitlement benefits. As 78 million baby boomers retire, America's unfunded entitlement promises (i.e., Medicare and Social Security) exceed three times the annual GDP of the country.

I'm not an economist, but the first thing that strikes me is that the foundation is conflating Medicare and Social Security. In the February 15 New York Time's account of the foundation's formation, "Tax Break Helps a Crusader for Deficit Discipline," author Landon Thomas Jr. completely omits Medicare in this description:

On Friday, Mr. Peterson will unveil the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and announce his plan to allocate his newfound billions to projects that will increase public awareness of fiscal imbalances, Social Security deficits and nuclear proliferation.

Also, it's interesting that Mr. Peterson favors the tax breaks for hedge funds, at least according to Landon:

And while he supports increased taxes on the wealthy (along with broad-based benefit reductions), he remains firm in his defense of the special provision for private equity partnerships despite the view of many on Wall Street, including the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, that the rate is too low.

"This is a fairness argument," said Mr. Peterson, who says that increasing the 15 percent rate for so-called carried interest, compared with ordinary tax rates of roughly double that, would force private equity companies overseas. "There are so many other partnerships, why pick on this high-growth sector?"

According to Landon, Peterson is considering using his considerable wealth to organize

a youthful equivalent to the powerful lobbying group for senior citizens, AARP. Another is working with HBO on a documentary film adaptation of his book "Running on Empty," in the hope that the American public wakes up to the dangers of deficits and entitlement spending as it did to global warming after Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth."

So, here are my questions:

• Are the figures cited in the mission statement true?
• If true, how much can be apportioned to each program?
• Are Medicare costs rising more quickly than inflation?
  
• How does the rate of increase compare with private health insurance?
• How much of the increase is caused by the prescription drug benefit?
• How much could growth be curbed by allowing negotiated prices currently banned?
• How much of public v.s. private insurance costs go to administration v.s payments for health care?
  
• Does this point to a problem that arguably could be addressed, at least in part, by single payer health care, ironically (for Mr. Peterson) creating a new "entitlement?"
• When did the language shift from benefit to entitlement?

I've written Robert Greenstein (email) , Executive Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, asking for his sense of things. If I hear back, I'll share his answers with you. I'm of a mind that there needs to be a reasoned, fact-filled response to the p.r. the foundation will soon be disseminating to business, but especially youth, on possible solutions. You've hear the word "class warfare." It seems to me that Mr. Peterson is about to invoke "age warfare" to promote his aims.

The foundation's only contact at this point is a NYC publicist, Robert Lawson of Rubenstein Communications (email), but I'll contact hime, too, and see if he will put me in touch with Mr. Walker.