Attacks against the homeless, just on a lark and for no reason at all, are nothing new (tragically), and I've discussed them before. But today there is a story out of Florida that brings this crime to a new low: ten year olds pushed into beating homeless man.
(CNN) -- Egged on by a 17-year-old, two 10-year-old boys joined in the attack of a homeless man, leaving him bruised and bloody Tuesday, Daytona Beach Police said.
The incident highlights an upswing in violent crime across the U.S. against the homeless.
In 2006, there were 142 attacks and 20 murders, several involving teenagers seeking a vicious thrill, according to the D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless.
The incident, which took place in Daytona Beach, Florida, may make history, said the non-profit's acting executive director Michael Stoops.
"If we're talking about 10-year-olds, that means we've hit an all-time low," said Stoops. "The youngest person to have ever been arrested for a crime like this is 13....
Daytona Police Sgt. Billy Walden said the teen and two boys were walking in their neighborhood around 9 p.m. when they saw 58-year-old John D'Amico. They began throwing rocks at the homeless man.
The 17-year-old, Jeremy Woods, punched D'Amico who then fell over a concrete wall. As he lay on the ground, one of the 10-year-olds - whose names are not being released - used parts of the concrete to bash D'Amico in the head, a police report shows.
D'Amico's eye was severely damaged in the attack. Woods and the two boys were charged with felony aggravated battery and are being held without bond at a juvenile detention center in Daytona Beach, Walden said.
There was one good piece of news in the story though. In one of several posts I've done on this topic, Kill some time, kill a man I wrote about the brutal January 2006 murder of Norris Gaynor who was beaten to death with baseball bats for 'sport'. In the story linked above, it says later on (after noting that apparently Florida has an unusually high number of these kinds of cases-- though as I wrote about the suspects in the Phoenix serial shooter cases random recreational violence, Arizona is hardly immune from this kind of stuff) that
One of those cases has garnered international attention and is expected to go to trial this fall after a surveillance camera captured two teens beating a homeless man with bats in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 12, 2006.
Prosecutors say 17-year-old skateboarder Tom Daugherty, 18-year-old Brian Hooks, a popular hockey team captain, and a [third] teen, Billy Ammons, a high school dropout, assaulted two more homeless men that night.
And that is a piece of good news, that they have caught and are prosecuting these monsters.
Murder is always a crime of unspeakable violence.
And there is no motive for murder that justifies the crime. However, the motives that there have been in the past, if wrong, could at least be understood as being motives for murder. Money, passion, jealousy, personal rivalry, revenge, rage, organized crime or gang feuds, turf battles, sadistic sexual desire, paranoia, misplaced patriotism, to send a message to someone else, even things like blind racial, ethnic or religious hatred, or homophobia, all of these motives, if inadequate for the crime, fit our frame of reference as motives for the ultimate crime.
But with the dehumanization of the homeless, we see more and more attacks, nearly always by juveniles, just for the heck of it. I don't understand it. In nearly all of these cases, the attackers have been white, and in nearly all of these cases they have come from middle or upper-middle class families. So why would they feel that they need to kill someone who has nothing?
It is no secret that some of the attackers have watched videos like 'bumfights,' a video in which 300,000 copies were distributed in which homeless people were paid to fight each other in front of a camera. Do they feel that these homeless people are only fodder for them to take out aggression on?
Or could it be perhaps that they have bought into the line that homeless people have earned their lot in life by themselves and are not deserving of any better fate?
That the homeless people are not as good as they are?
As I wrote in the Phoenix case (and which also appears to be true in the Gaynor case, and is true most of the time in these cases:
both suspects apparently came from families in which they never experienced poverty, and so apparently bought into the misconception of transients as all being that way by choice or because they were lazy.
And with that, can it be all that surprising that some disturbed people have taken homelessness as a license to murder human beings with no more compunction than most people might kill a garden pest?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Do we always want a lame duck?
Every now and then I post on a topic that I hope everyone will catch their partisan breath, step back for a moment and consider whether we should do it.
And so it is today. I believe that we should repeal the Twenty-second amendment, which prevents the President from serving for more than two terms.
What?!? Do I, a confirmed Bush-basher, want more of Bush?
Absolutely not. But if that was your reaction then you are guilty of the myopic view that I am trying to get you to see past, and you can go to the end of the line. For one thing, Jeb Bush was quietly assembling a campaign staff last year as he considered a bid to become the next link in the Bush dynasty, and wisely backed out of the race recognizing that America would dearly have loved to slap down George W. Bush at the polls (as happened by proxy last November), and if Jeb ran then he would certainly have been punished for the sins of his brother.
I know there are conservatives who occasionally stop by here. Is this some trick to bring back Bill Clinton?
Also no, and now you can go to the back of the line. It is true that Clinton, who left office with 60% plus approval ratings, would probably be a more viable candidate for a third term than George W. Bush, whose approval ratings can't seem to break out of the low to mid 30% range. However, I was never that big of a fan of Clinton or of the DLC, and frankly if people want to go back to the Clinton era then they already have a way to get there, by voting for Hillary.
My concern has more to do with the effect of a lame duck Presidency on the country. Traditionally, Presidents never served more than two terms (a Vice President who became President and served more than half of a term as President was considered to have served for a term.)
That tradition of not running again changed with Roosevelt. No, not Franklin, but Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was considered to have served two terms, acceding to the Presidency after an assassin shot William McKinley in 1901, then being elected in his own right in 1904. So after the election of 1908, Theodore Roosevelt left office on schedule and was succeeded by William Howard Taft.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt became unhappy with the return of the establishment leaders of the Republican party (he had been chosen VP in 1900 primarily as the hero of San Juan Hill, in an age when Vice Presidents were considered to be nearly useless, except to win votes for a ticket.) So being relatively young (he turned 54 that year) he unsuccessfully challenged Taft for the nomination, and then put together his own party to challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats. He lost, but he got 28% of the vote and actually beat Taft-- the only time in post-Civil war history that a third party candidate has finished ahead of the nominee of either of the two major parties. Clearly, while many voters did not want Roosevelt back, millions did and the 'third term' issue did not affect them.
Then in 1940, Franklin Roosevelt decided to run for a third term. Unlike his distant cousin he was successful. In 1940, Hitler's armies were marching unchecked all over Europe and the future looked bleak. Even people who may not have liked him voted for Roosevelt to serve a third term, prefering proven leadership to an inexperienced candidate like Wendell Wilkie as America and the world seemed headed, willingly or not, into one of its darkest hours. Roosevelt, his health failing but determined to see the war through, was also re-elected to a fourth term but died just weeks after his inauguration and approximately the same amount of time before the war ended.
In 1947 (with ratification occuring by 1951), Republicans pushed through the twenty-second amendment. As Roosevelt ally Elmer Davis said, the amendment was 'an act of retroactive vindictiveness.' Davis went on to say that 'they couldn't beat Roosevelt while he was alive, so they kick him when he's dead.'
At the very least, the amendment says that the voters are too stupid to vote out of office a President who hasn't been terribly effective (ask Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush about that). No one wants a 'dictator for life' in the White House, and I believe that the voters of America would not stand for it. As I mentioned earlier, 1940 was an extraordinarily dark time in history, so people voted for the leader they knew could lead.
What has the effect been? The first President who would have been eligible to run for a third term would have been Eisenhower. But in 1960, his health was already starting to fail him (though he lived until 1969) and he had been a somewhat reluctant President to begin with, so it is likely that he would not have run, Nixon would still have lost to Kennedy and history would not be significantly different.
The next time the amendment barred a President from seeking a third term, it was Ronald Reagan in 1988. And Reagan did make some comments to the effect that he would like to run again and was supported by conservative GOP representative Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan, who proposed legislation to repeal the amendment. But the legislation got nowhere. In any case, Vice President George H.W. Bush was seen as the heir to Reagan, and it seems likely that either man could have defeated Dukakis. History might not have been hugely different, though then again it might have since Reagan might not have turned his back on the Shiite insurgency and the Iraqi army officers who considered deposing Saddam Hussein in 1991 after the Gulf War. Another thought is that Muammar Khadafy's regime, which timed the Lockerbie attack for when Reagan was on his way out of office (revenge for Reagan's bombing of Tripoli) might not have done it at all-- to be blunt, Khadafy was more afraid of Reagan than he was of Bush (I know that some of my readers won't want to hear that, but a fact is a fact.)
The third President who the amendment applied to was Bill Clinton. It seems likely that after twelve years of Republicans the charismatic Clinton would have beaten the Republican nominee in 1992 (likely Bob Dole, four years early) even if Reagan did have a third term. By 1992 his health was deteriorating and he would certainly not have sought a fourth term. So history to that point would not have been appreciably different.
In 2000, it is true that Clinton had promised Al Gore that he would support him in a Presidential run after eight years, and while Clinton's approval ratings were very high, much of that was in reaction to disgust with the GOP overreaching and trying to impeach the President, ultimately for lying about sex. Clinton very well might, if he ran again in 2000, have been a stronger candidate than Gore and won a third term, but let's assume for the sake of argument that he did not and let Gore seek the Presidency in 2000. No historical difference, right? Wrong.
In the late 1990's, Clinton was the classic lame duck. The GOP Congress was launching investigation after investigation, and tying his ability to get anything done. He would not be on the ballot again (since he was legally prohibited from it) so they had no reason to hold back (except perhaps if they had read the real mood of the voters over the impeachment saga). More to the point, in 1998, Saddam Hussein saw how bogged down Clinton was and ordered the U.N. weapons inspectors to leave. Clinton spent four days bombing Iraq after that, but even that reaction was excoriated by Republicans as an attempt to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal. Note that it was Iraq's failure to comply with U.N. sanctions, especially his kicking out the inspectors, which George W. Bush later used to push through the AUMF and justify his ill-planned and ill-conceived war in Iraq. Also in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, on August 7, 1998, bombs blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa and killed hundreds. This fairly screamed for a response, and there was one-- an attempt to get bin Laden eleven days after the African embassy bombings. Unfortunately, bin Laden, who was notoriously late to meetings, started and ended on schedule that day and had departed before cruise missiles arrived at the camp where the meeting was held. And what was the reaction of the right? It was that the whole bin Laden threat was overblown and the bombing was an attempt to steal a headline from Monica (which would have been the case most days in 1998).
“"I think we fear that we may have a President that is desperately seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.”
Senator Dan Coats, R-IN August 19, 1998.
This comment, the day after bin Laden was saved only by virtue of his finishing his meeting ahead of schedule, must have been very comforting to him.
In other words, the lame duck status of the President had become not only a hindrance to his domestic agenda (which I have no problem with, then or now-- I've always felt that a strong Congress was preferable to a strong executive), but had also been a hindrance to his ability to conduct foreign policy-- and to the detriment of the United States.
What about the present? Well, there are a lot of congressional probes going on, about everything from pre-war intelligence to the firing of the U.S. attorneys. And I think that is great, we should delve in and find out what has been going on in this administration behind closed doors. Some of what we are learning about the disdain with which this White House has treated the law and the Constitution is downright scary, and it is time to reign it in. And such domestic priorities that the President pushed when he entered his second term in office in 2005 as Social Security privatization and making the Bush tax cuts permanent are either dead or on life support, just not a priority of this Congress.
Good.
But then look at the fact that the Iranians, knowing that we are overextended in Iraq, have been pulling the west's tail, doing things like openly flouting U.N. sanctions, pushing ahead with their nuclear program, not even trying that hard to cover up their involvement in Iraq, and now the incident involving the British sailors (note that Tony Blair is also on his way out), seem to similarly be taking advantage of a lame duck President.
Not so good.
I've made proposals about what we should do about Iran before (and it is not a military solution) but the fact is, I believe that in giving our enemies (and we do have some) four years of a President who they know for sure won't be on the ballot again we are making a mistake, because they know that they can pull exactly this kind of garbage late in the term and not get called on it (or at least get called by a guy whose power is waning). And if you are a foreign adversary, or even a trading partner and don't like who we have sitting at the negotiating table, well as it stands now you can just let the clock run out and start over with a new (and likely inexperienced) President. You know you can, because the U.S. law says so. It is an intrinsic weakness of democracy that it is at its weakest during the transition between leaders (maybe another reason for the timing of Lockerbie, as well as the timing of the pre-election October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole), but at least on an international scene is it wise to extend this period to virtually half the time a President is in office?
And if you want, then write the amendment in a way that 'grandfathers' it in-- just as the original 22nd amendment (passed in 1947 and ratified in 1951) exempted President Truman. Playing to the paranoia on both sides word it similarly to the original 22nd amendment and prevent Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from running again.
And so it is today. I believe that we should repeal the Twenty-second amendment, which prevents the President from serving for more than two terms.
What?!? Do I, a confirmed Bush-basher, want more of Bush?
Absolutely not. But if that was your reaction then you are guilty of the myopic view that I am trying to get you to see past, and you can go to the end of the line. For one thing, Jeb Bush was quietly assembling a campaign staff last year as he considered a bid to become the next link in the Bush dynasty, and wisely backed out of the race recognizing that America would dearly have loved to slap down George W. Bush at the polls (as happened by proxy last November), and if Jeb ran then he would certainly have been punished for the sins of his brother.
I know there are conservatives who occasionally stop by here. Is this some trick to bring back Bill Clinton?
Also no, and now you can go to the back of the line. It is true that Clinton, who left office with 60% plus approval ratings, would probably be a more viable candidate for a third term than George W. Bush, whose approval ratings can't seem to break out of the low to mid 30% range. However, I was never that big of a fan of Clinton or of the DLC, and frankly if people want to go back to the Clinton era then they already have a way to get there, by voting for Hillary.
My concern has more to do with the effect of a lame duck Presidency on the country. Traditionally, Presidents never served more than two terms (a Vice President who became President and served more than half of a term as President was considered to have served for a term.)
That tradition of not running again changed with Roosevelt. No, not Franklin, but Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was considered to have served two terms, acceding to the Presidency after an assassin shot William McKinley in 1901, then being elected in his own right in 1904. So after the election of 1908, Theodore Roosevelt left office on schedule and was succeeded by William Howard Taft.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt became unhappy with the return of the establishment leaders of the Republican party (he had been chosen VP in 1900 primarily as the hero of San Juan Hill, in an age when Vice Presidents were considered to be nearly useless, except to win votes for a ticket.) So being relatively young (he turned 54 that year) he unsuccessfully challenged Taft for the nomination, and then put together his own party to challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats. He lost, but he got 28% of the vote and actually beat Taft-- the only time in post-Civil war history that a third party candidate has finished ahead of the nominee of either of the two major parties. Clearly, while many voters did not want Roosevelt back, millions did and the 'third term' issue did not affect them.
Then in 1940, Franklin Roosevelt decided to run for a third term. Unlike his distant cousin he was successful. In 1940, Hitler's armies were marching unchecked all over Europe and the future looked bleak. Even people who may not have liked him voted for Roosevelt to serve a third term, prefering proven leadership to an inexperienced candidate like Wendell Wilkie as America and the world seemed headed, willingly or not, into one of its darkest hours. Roosevelt, his health failing but determined to see the war through, was also re-elected to a fourth term but died just weeks after his inauguration and approximately the same amount of time before the war ended.
In 1947 (with ratification occuring by 1951), Republicans pushed through the twenty-second amendment. As Roosevelt ally Elmer Davis said, the amendment was 'an act of retroactive vindictiveness.' Davis went on to say that 'they couldn't beat Roosevelt while he was alive, so they kick him when he's dead.'
At the very least, the amendment says that the voters are too stupid to vote out of office a President who hasn't been terribly effective (ask Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush about that). No one wants a 'dictator for life' in the White House, and I believe that the voters of America would not stand for it. As I mentioned earlier, 1940 was an extraordinarily dark time in history, so people voted for the leader they knew could lead.
What has the effect been? The first President who would have been eligible to run for a third term would have been Eisenhower. But in 1960, his health was already starting to fail him (though he lived until 1969) and he had been a somewhat reluctant President to begin with, so it is likely that he would not have run, Nixon would still have lost to Kennedy and history would not be significantly different.
The next time the amendment barred a President from seeking a third term, it was Ronald Reagan in 1988. And Reagan did make some comments to the effect that he would like to run again and was supported by conservative GOP representative Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan, who proposed legislation to repeal the amendment. But the legislation got nowhere. In any case, Vice President George H.W. Bush was seen as the heir to Reagan, and it seems likely that either man could have defeated Dukakis. History might not have been hugely different, though then again it might have since Reagan might not have turned his back on the Shiite insurgency and the Iraqi army officers who considered deposing Saddam Hussein in 1991 after the Gulf War. Another thought is that Muammar Khadafy's regime, which timed the Lockerbie attack for when Reagan was on his way out of office (revenge for Reagan's bombing of Tripoli) might not have done it at all-- to be blunt, Khadafy was more afraid of Reagan than he was of Bush (I know that some of my readers won't want to hear that, but a fact is a fact.)
The third President who the amendment applied to was Bill Clinton. It seems likely that after twelve years of Republicans the charismatic Clinton would have beaten the Republican nominee in 1992 (likely Bob Dole, four years early) even if Reagan did have a third term. By 1992 his health was deteriorating and he would certainly not have sought a fourth term. So history to that point would not have been appreciably different.
In 2000, it is true that Clinton had promised Al Gore that he would support him in a Presidential run after eight years, and while Clinton's approval ratings were very high, much of that was in reaction to disgust with the GOP overreaching and trying to impeach the President, ultimately for lying about sex. Clinton very well might, if he ran again in 2000, have been a stronger candidate than Gore and won a third term, but let's assume for the sake of argument that he did not and let Gore seek the Presidency in 2000. No historical difference, right? Wrong.
In the late 1990's, Clinton was the classic lame duck. The GOP Congress was launching investigation after investigation, and tying his ability to get anything done. He would not be on the ballot again (since he was legally prohibited from it) so they had no reason to hold back (except perhaps if they had read the real mood of the voters over the impeachment saga). More to the point, in 1998, Saddam Hussein saw how bogged down Clinton was and ordered the U.N. weapons inspectors to leave. Clinton spent four days bombing Iraq after that, but even that reaction was excoriated by Republicans as an attempt to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal. Note that it was Iraq's failure to comply with U.N. sanctions, especially his kicking out the inspectors, which George W. Bush later used to push through the AUMF and justify his ill-planned and ill-conceived war in Iraq. Also in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, on August 7, 1998, bombs blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa and killed hundreds. This fairly screamed for a response, and there was one-- an attempt to get bin Laden eleven days after the African embassy bombings. Unfortunately, bin Laden, who was notoriously late to meetings, started and ended on schedule that day and had departed before cruise missiles arrived at the camp where the meeting was held. And what was the reaction of the right? It was that the whole bin Laden threat was overblown and the bombing was an attempt to steal a headline from Monica (which would have been the case most days in 1998).
“"I think we fear that we may have a President that is desperately seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.”
Senator Dan Coats, R-IN August 19, 1998.
This comment, the day after bin Laden was saved only by virtue of his finishing his meeting ahead of schedule, must have been very comforting to him.
In other words, the lame duck status of the President had become not only a hindrance to his domestic agenda (which I have no problem with, then or now-- I've always felt that a strong Congress was preferable to a strong executive), but had also been a hindrance to his ability to conduct foreign policy-- and to the detriment of the United States.
What about the present? Well, there are a lot of congressional probes going on, about everything from pre-war intelligence to the firing of the U.S. attorneys. And I think that is great, we should delve in and find out what has been going on in this administration behind closed doors. Some of what we are learning about the disdain with which this White House has treated the law and the Constitution is downright scary, and it is time to reign it in. And such domestic priorities that the President pushed when he entered his second term in office in 2005 as Social Security privatization and making the Bush tax cuts permanent are either dead or on life support, just not a priority of this Congress.
Good.
But then look at the fact that the Iranians, knowing that we are overextended in Iraq, have been pulling the west's tail, doing things like openly flouting U.N. sanctions, pushing ahead with their nuclear program, not even trying that hard to cover up their involvement in Iraq, and now the incident involving the British sailors (note that Tony Blair is also on his way out), seem to similarly be taking advantage of a lame duck President.
Not so good.
I've made proposals about what we should do about Iran before (and it is not a military solution) but the fact is, I believe that in giving our enemies (and we do have some) four years of a President who they know for sure won't be on the ballot again we are making a mistake, because they know that they can pull exactly this kind of garbage late in the term and not get called on it (or at least get called by a guy whose power is waning). And if you are a foreign adversary, or even a trading partner and don't like who we have sitting at the negotiating table, well as it stands now you can just let the clock run out and start over with a new (and likely inexperienced) President. You know you can, because the U.S. law says so. It is an intrinsic weakness of democracy that it is at its weakest during the transition between leaders (maybe another reason for the timing of Lockerbie, as well as the timing of the pre-election October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole), but at least on an international scene is it wise to extend this period to virtually half the time a President is in office?
And if you want, then write the amendment in a way that 'grandfathers' it in-- just as the original 22nd amendment (passed in 1947 and ratified in 1951) exempted President Truman. Playing to the paranoia on both sides word it similarly to the original 22nd amendment and prevent Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from running again.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
The value of a local holiday
I've become convinced that a municipal holiday is a good thing for a town.
I've lived in towns that didn't have one, and it was like living in a city, with people not knowing their neighbors and having nothing in common.
Not so here though.
Today (March 24) is Joseph City Founder's Day. The holiday is to commemorate the pioneers who founded the town and their descendants. We are unusual in that we moved here without being related to anyone in the town (which means I can't use the old standby line that everyone else gets to use on their kids, "You can't go out with him! He's your cousin!") Even though we are related to no one, we really get to enjoy the holiday every year.
Every year on March 24, the town has a municipal holiday. It starts with an institution in the town, a group of guys going around town and 'firing the anvil' (blowing it into the air with gunpowder charges.) Well, if you aren't up by the time they come by your house with the anvil, you will be quick enough. Then there is a seven o'clock breakfast, a parade and games with the kids, and lunch at the firehouse (a $7 per plate barbeque cooked by the firefighters, which provides a good chunk of their budget every year). Throughout the day they have various other activities, plus this is the weekend every year when the high school puts on their annual musical. One highlight is the quilt show. Some of the ladies here are real talented quilters. And a good western gentleman will learn a few things about quilts and appreciate the talents of the ladies. Then at night there is a dance.
I've also gone with my kids to Snowflake to celebrate their version of founder's day (which is in late July). Even though the town is larger, it is much the same-- and what is best about it is that everyone gets to meet everyone else. This engenders a sense of community that is lacking in other places (sure there are national holidays which are celebrated in small towns, like the fourth of July-- and we celebrate that here too-- but somehow it isn't the same.)
I can say that communities I've lived in that had their own municipal holiday have almost uniformly been stronger, closer communities than those I've lived in which do not.
I've lived in towns that didn't have one, and it was like living in a city, with people not knowing their neighbors and having nothing in common.
Not so here though.
Today (March 24) is Joseph City Founder's Day. The holiday is to commemorate the pioneers who founded the town and their descendants. We are unusual in that we moved here without being related to anyone in the town (which means I can't use the old standby line that everyone else gets to use on their kids, "You can't go out with him! He's your cousin!") Even though we are related to no one, we really get to enjoy the holiday every year.
Every year on March 24, the town has a municipal holiday. It starts with an institution in the town, a group of guys going around town and 'firing the anvil' (blowing it into the air with gunpowder charges.) Well, if you aren't up by the time they come by your house with the anvil, you will be quick enough. Then there is a seven o'clock breakfast, a parade and games with the kids, and lunch at the firehouse (a $7 per plate barbeque cooked by the firefighters, which provides a good chunk of their budget every year). Throughout the day they have various other activities, plus this is the weekend every year when the high school puts on their annual musical. One highlight is the quilt show. Some of the ladies here are real talented quilters. And a good western gentleman will learn a few things about quilts and appreciate the talents of the ladies. Then at night there is a dance.
I've also gone with my kids to Snowflake to celebrate their version of founder's day (which is in late July). Even though the town is larger, it is much the same-- and what is best about it is that everyone gets to meet everyone else. This engenders a sense of community that is lacking in other places (sure there are national holidays which are celebrated in small towns, like the fourth of July-- and we celebrate that here too-- but somehow it isn't the same.)
I can say that communities I've lived in that had their own municipal holiday have almost uniformly been stronger, closer communities than those I've lived in which do not.
Friday, March 23, 2007
An example of how a conservative budget cut will create more of what conservatives say they are against
Conservatives should be happy.
Their fiscal solutions help create more social problems, which later create more budgetary problems they can rail against, so they can be happy because they always have something to complain about.
For example, there is a story out today about how because of a bill the GOP Congress passed in 2005 ostensibly to reduce the deficit (you know, the one they created with trillions in tax cuts), the price that college students will pay for birth control pills will double or triple to in excess of hundreds of dollars per year (for comparison, when I was in college I once paid $20 per month to live in a non-air conditioned converted boxcar during the summer, in desert heat-- and for many students their standard of living has not improved much since then.)
(AP) -- Millions of college students are suddenly facing sharply higher prices for birth control, prompting concerns among health officials that some will shift to less preferred contraceptives or stop using them altogether.
Prices for oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, are doubling and tripling at student health centers, the result of a complex change in the Medicaid rebate law that essentially ends an incentive for drug companies to provide deep discounts to colleges.
"It's a tremendous problem for our students because not every student has a platinum card," said Hugh Jessop, executive director of the health center at Indiana University....
At some schools women could see prices rise several hundred dollars per year.
About 39 percent of undergraduate women use oral contraceptives, according to an estimate by the American College Health Association based on survey data.
Many students could shift to generics but experts said they might still pay twice the previous rate.
Let's focus on what will happen. I'm not going to split hairs about numbers or who else might do what (though I suspect that the number of students who will therefore and only for this reason abstain from sex, which is what conservatives would probably want, is neglible.) While I suspect the following 'some' would be quite a large number, I'll just say, 'some' since any conservative who wanted to dispute it would have to argue the negation of 'some' (which is 'none') and would be in obvious denial as to the consequences of their 2005 budget cut that is now taking effect.
Here is what will happen to SOME of these adult college students: some of them will certainly quit taking the birth control pills due to the increased cost, and some of those will have unwanted pregnancies.
Some of those pregnancies will result in abortions. This will give conservatives cause to celebrate, because the number of abortions (largely due to sex education and contraception) is down 25% since the early 1990's. When these college women start having abortions maybe that trend will reverse itself and then conservatives will have something more to complain about.
Some of those who do not have abortions, will keep their child. Some of them will give up on their dreams of earning a degree, and instead of becoming an educated and likely productive member of society, will join the oversupply of low skill, non-college educated workers competing for a shrinking supply of low-wage jobs. The later children of those women will have a much worse standard of living growing up than the later children of them would be if they were born to a professional, college eduated mother. And some of them will end up on public assistance-- which I guess will please future conservatives very much (else why are they passing bills like this) because then they will have a whole new generation of 'welfare queens' they can complain about.
Yup, conservatism breeds the fuel for more conservatism. What a deal.
Their fiscal solutions help create more social problems, which later create more budgetary problems they can rail against, so they can be happy because they always have something to complain about.
For example, there is a story out today about how because of a bill the GOP Congress passed in 2005 ostensibly to reduce the deficit (you know, the one they created with trillions in tax cuts), the price that college students will pay for birth control pills will double or triple to in excess of hundreds of dollars per year (for comparison, when I was in college I once paid $20 per month to live in a non-air conditioned converted boxcar during the summer, in desert heat-- and for many students their standard of living has not improved much since then.)
(AP) -- Millions of college students are suddenly facing sharply higher prices for birth control, prompting concerns among health officials that some will shift to less preferred contraceptives or stop using them altogether.
Prices for oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, are doubling and tripling at student health centers, the result of a complex change in the Medicaid rebate law that essentially ends an incentive for drug companies to provide deep discounts to colleges.
"It's a tremendous problem for our students because not every student has a platinum card," said Hugh Jessop, executive director of the health center at Indiana University....
At some schools women could see prices rise several hundred dollars per year.
About 39 percent of undergraduate women use oral contraceptives, according to an estimate by the American College Health Association based on survey data.
Many students could shift to generics but experts said they might still pay twice the previous rate.
Let's focus on what will happen. I'm not going to split hairs about numbers or who else might do what (though I suspect that the number of students who will therefore and only for this reason abstain from sex, which is what conservatives would probably want, is neglible.) While I suspect the following 'some' would be quite a large number, I'll just say, 'some' since any conservative who wanted to dispute it would have to argue the negation of 'some' (which is 'none') and would be in obvious denial as to the consequences of their 2005 budget cut that is now taking effect.
Here is what will happen to SOME of these adult college students: some of them will certainly quit taking the birth control pills due to the increased cost, and some of those will have unwanted pregnancies.
Some of those pregnancies will result in abortions. This will give conservatives cause to celebrate, because the number of abortions (largely due to sex education and contraception) is down 25% since the early 1990's. When these college women start having abortions maybe that trend will reverse itself and then conservatives will have something more to complain about.
Some of those who do not have abortions, will keep their child. Some of them will give up on their dreams of earning a degree, and instead of becoming an educated and likely productive member of society, will join the oversupply of low skill, non-college educated workers competing for a shrinking supply of low-wage jobs. The later children of those women will have a much worse standard of living growing up than the later children of them would be if they were born to a professional, college eduated mother. And some of them will end up on public assistance-- which I guess will please future conservatives very much (else why are they passing bills like this) because then they will have a whole new generation of 'welfare queens' they can complain about.
Yup, conservatism breeds the fuel for more conservatism. What a deal.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Paul Charlton's fatal flaw-- he was too effective
It is out now, officially. The departure of Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton is a direct result of the concerns about the Renzi investigation. Recall that last year, Congressman Renzi was being investigated for corruption (the same charges that sent his congressional colleagues Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney to prison.) Once Paul Charlton started digging, it became clear that what appeared to be two different Renzi investigations were in fact two angles on a much larger and more complex investigation.
So in December, Paul Charlton abruptly resigned. I remembered then about how the Bush administration had previously called off an attack dog, when they had given a promotion to Noel Hillman, the Justice Department prosecutor who was working the Abramoff case, to the Federal bench in order to get him off of the case. So I figured that they had given Charlton an opportunity (since he was going to work for the law firm where his wife works.) Turns out I was wrong about the opportunity-- we now know that his resignation was requested, but we also now have confirmation it was to get him off of the Renzi case. That is provided by a memo which D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 16, shortly after he opened the Renzi investigation. In it he says that Charlton needs to go.
Paul Charlton, you see, is not an easy man to intimidate or get rid of. I've always respected him, and in fact I wrote at the time (in the second link in the last paragraph)
Charlton, though I know some people who don't like him, has always impressed me. Maybe it's because I remember his investigation into Valinda Jo Elliot after the Rodeo Chedeski fire had destroyed hundreds of homes; Elliott had started the Chedeski half as a signal fire after being lost in the woods following a vehicle breakdown. Elliott took her cell phone, and had reached some stupid person with a clerk mentality with the Bureau of Land Management; they figured out where she was and informed her that since she was over the line in the national forest she had to call the national forest headquarters. The HQ of course had long since been evacuated because of the nearby Rodeo fire and the national forest was closed, so Elliott got a recorded message. Then her cell ran out of power after having been put on hold for so long by automated machines between the two calls. Anyway, Charlton was the guy who was willing to go to Heber after the Chedeski fire and face an auditorium full of enraged people and tell them that he wasn't going to prosecute Valinda Jo Elliott (which was the right call by the way; if anyone should have been prosecuted it was the one person she actually talked to, the clerk with the ultimate 'that's not my department,' mentality even while talking to a desperate person in a life and death emergency.)
Heck, just last year the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office would serve as a national "Model Program." In other words, they thought he was the best of the best.
So Charlton, who had been recognized not long before as one of the Justice Department's most effective prosecutors, wasn't afraid to do his job then, and he wasn't going to be afraid to do it when it came to Rick Renzi.
So Alberto Gonzales, together with Karl Rove and who knows who else, determined that Charlton had to go. What is really interesting is that the Justice Department emails suddenly started naming him as one that needed to go. And simultaneously Rick Renzi hired former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods (and former A.G.'s are expensive) as his legal representative. Since then, he has retained attorney Patton Boggs and spent over $100,000 on legal bills (source Federal Elections Commission via Lofty Donkey. If there was nothing there, I doubt if all that would have happened. They knew they had a problem, and they knew the only way to solve it was to get rid of the same man they had just recently acknowledged as the best they had.
Of course since then-- there has been nothing new on the Renzi investigation. So it appears that calling Charlton off worked.
So in December, Paul Charlton abruptly resigned. I remembered then about how the Bush administration had previously called off an attack dog, when they had given a promotion to Noel Hillman, the Justice Department prosecutor who was working the Abramoff case, to the Federal bench in order to get him off of the case. So I figured that they had given Charlton an opportunity (since he was going to work for the law firm where his wife works.) Turns out I was wrong about the opportunity-- we now know that his resignation was requested, but we also now have confirmation it was to get him off of the Renzi case. That is provided by a memo which D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 16, shortly after he opened the Renzi investigation. In it he says that Charlton needs to go.
Paul Charlton, you see, is not an easy man to intimidate or get rid of. I've always respected him, and in fact I wrote at the time (in the second link in the last paragraph)
Charlton, though I know some people who don't like him, has always impressed me. Maybe it's because I remember his investigation into Valinda Jo Elliot after the Rodeo Chedeski fire had destroyed hundreds of homes; Elliott had started the Chedeski half as a signal fire after being lost in the woods following a vehicle breakdown. Elliott took her cell phone, and had reached some stupid person with a clerk mentality with the Bureau of Land Management; they figured out where she was and informed her that since she was over the line in the national forest she had to call the national forest headquarters. The HQ of course had long since been evacuated because of the nearby Rodeo fire and the national forest was closed, so Elliott got a recorded message. Then her cell ran out of power after having been put on hold for so long by automated machines between the two calls. Anyway, Charlton was the guy who was willing to go to Heber after the Chedeski fire and face an auditorium full of enraged people and tell them that he wasn't going to prosecute Valinda Jo Elliott (which was the right call by the way; if anyone should have been prosecuted it was the one person she actually talked to, the clerk with the ultimate 'that's not my department,' mentality even while talking to a desperate person in a life and death emergency.)
Heck, just last year the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office would serve as a national "Model Program." In other words, they thought he was the best of the best.
So Charlton, who had been recognized not long before as one of the Justice Department's most effective prosecutors, wasn't afraid to do his job then, and he wasn't going to be afraid to do it when it came to Rick Renzi.
So Alberto Gonzales, together with Karl Rove and who knows who else, determined that Charlton had to go. What is really interesting is that the Justice Department emails suddenly started naming him as one that needed to go. And simultaneously Rick Renzi hired former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods (and former A.G.'s are expensive) as his legal representative. Since then, he has retained attorney Patton Boggs and spent over $100,000 on legal bills (source Federal Elections Commission via Lofty Donkey. If there was nothing there, I doubt if all that would have happened. They knew they had a problem, and they knew the only way to solve it was to get rid of the same man they had just recently acknowledged as the best they had.
Of course since then-- there has been nothing new on the Renzi investigation. So it appears that calling Charlton off worked.
Answering some spurious claims.
I'd like to correct a few misconceptions I've heard on the right concerning the investigation into the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.
The first is that it is a mountain out of a molehill, and that the President has the right to fire them if he pleases. And that Clinton fired 93 U.S. Attorneys.
He does have that right. And it is true that when he took office, Bush did fire nearly all of the Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorneys and replaced them with his own. As did Clinton when he took office (so the Clinton attorney firings, like the first round of Bush firings, were not the same as what we see here-- midterm firings.) Midterm firings almost never happen-- less than thirty in the past twenty years-- and in every case there were some serious performance-related issues. This is what started the current controversy: Attorney General Gonzales told Congress (not when he was under oath) that all of these firings were due to performance issues. That turned out to be a lie-- and while lying when not under oath is certainly legal, it was not a good choice if the goal was to get Congress to quit investigating.
But two issues that have become much greater in their impact here: First, in the past all U.S. Attorneys have been appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. A secret clause in the Patriot Act got rid of that condition. So all of a sudden the President and Attorney General could appoint attorneys and bypass the Senate confirmation process-- and they appear to have abused that privilege for political reasons (exactly the sort of thing that people were most concerned about when the Patriot Act was passed.) Second, the fact that it appears that some of the attorneys, perhaps even most of them, were fired for reasons relating to corruption investigations. This includes David Iglesias, who was moving at what he considered the right pace for a corruption investigation invovling two Demcorats; Paul Charlton, fired from here in Arizona after he began finding things on Rick Renzi (note since Charlton has been gone, the Renzi investigation seems to have been shut down.) It includes Carol Lam, who put Duke Cunningham in prison.
So now the Bush white house is offering to have staff testify in front of Congress, without being under oath.
If you hadn't had the Gonzales lie the last time a White House official testified in front of Congress, then Congress might be willling to accept their offecr, but given what just happened, I doubt it. Lies not backed by an oath are free and easy, and this adminstration has a already shown it has propensity for lying.
Another claim that the right makes is that 'there is no crime or criminal investigation.
False, also. This case is direcly about whether the Justice Department fired the attorneys for their approach to investigations involving corruption. That is a crime. The attorneys were pulled off these cases for reaons relating to what they were investigating. That is obstruction of justice. As far as the attempted coverup of this is concerned, there could also be charges of misleading investigators, tampering with evidence and other crimes often associated with covering things up. We will see if there are any criminal charges forthcoming, but for the right to claim that 'there is no crime,' is at best premature and could very well be categorized along with such famous wrong quotes as 'We will bury you' (Nikita Khruschev) and about the 'unsinkable' ship (the owners and operators of the Titanic.)
The first is that it is a mountain out of a molehill, and that the President has the right to fire them if he pleases. And that Clinton fired 93 U.S. Attorneys.
He does have that right. And it is true that when he took office, Bush did fire nearly all of the Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorneys and replaced them with his own. As did Clinton when he took office (so the Clinton attorney firings, like the first round of Bush firings, were not the same as what we see here-- midterm firings.) Midterm firings almost never happen-- less than thirty in the past twenty years-- and in every case there were some serious performance-related issues. This is what started the current controversy: Attorney General Gonzales told Congress (not when he was under oath) that all of these firings were due to performance issues. That turned out to be a lie-- and while lying when not under oath is certainly legal, it was not a good choice if the goal was to get Congress to quit investigating.
But two issues that have become much greater in their impact here: First, in the past all U.S. Attorneys have been appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. A secret clause in the Patriot Act got rid of that condition. So all of a sudden the President and Attorney General could appoint attorneys and bypass the Senate confirmation process-- and they appear to have abused that privilege for political reasons (exactly the sort of thing that people were most concerned about when the Patriot Act was passed.) Second, the fact that it appears that some of the attorneys, perhaps even most of them, were fired for reasons relating to corruption investigations. This includes David Iglesias, who was moving at what he considered the right pace for a corruption investigation invovling two Demcorats; Paul Charlton, fired from here in Arizona after he began finding things on Rick Renzi (note since Charlton has been gone, the Renzi investigation seems to have been shut down.) It includes Carol Lam, who put Duke Cunningham in prison.
So now the Bush white house is offering to have staff testify in front of Congress, without being under oath.
If you hadn't had the Gonzales lie the last time a White House official testified in front of Congress, then Congress might be willling to accept their offecr, but given what just happened, I doubt it. Lies not backed by an oath are free and easy, and this adminstration has a already shown it has propensity for lying.
Another claim that the right makes is that 'there is no crime or criminal investigation.
False, also. This case is direcly about whether the Justice Department fired the attorneys for their approach to investigations involving corruption. That is a crime. The attorneys were pulled off these cases for reaons relating to what they were investigating. That is obstruction of justice. As far as the attempted coverup of this is concerned, there could also be charges of misleading investigators, tampering with evidence and other crimes often associated with covering things up. We will see if there are any criminal charges forthcoming, but for the right to claim that 'there is no crime,' is at best premature and could very well be categorized along with such famous wrong quotes as 'We will bury you' (Nikita Khruschev) and about the 'unsinkable' ship (the owners and operators of the Titanic.)
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
What is 'moral,' anyway?
About three years ago, a letter appeared in the Winslow mail, in which the writer pretended to be neutral, then asked people to figure out if they were Democrats or Republicans and couched the letter in strongly moralistic terms. In fact, the writer was not neutral at all, it happened that he was the Republican candidate for County Assessor (which he thankfully lost for in November). At the time I wrote back a letter. It was edited for length, and much of it was edited out (though luckily they left in the place where I called him on his disingenuity, proclaiming himself a neutral observer while in fact seeking elected office as a Republican.)
This week, there has been a bit of a controversy stirred up by General Pace, the chief of the army, as he condemned homosexuality as 'immoral.' He is of course entitled to any belief he wants, but to proclaim it publically is an insult to an estimated 65,000 gays in the military who are following the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy and in many cases are in the front lines, laying it all on the line on behalf of their country, and expecting leadership instead of personal condemnation from their leaders. There has also been other recent discussion of 'morality,' especially since Al Gore placed it front and center by describing climate change as a 'moral' issue.
So, I've decided to post here some of the parts of the letter I wrote that were edited out by the paper:
... a friend of mind pointed out his letter to the Winslow Mail. To begin with, it was disingenuous, with him purporting a veneer of impartiality in defining what Republicans and Democrats are for and against, ostensibly for the benefit of new or undecided voters. He did not even mention that he is running for public office as a Republican. Then he went on to define Democrats in a mostly negative light, focusing heavily on moral arguments.
So, as a Democrat, I would like to respond in context.
I am a Democrat because it is immoral that we deny or limit the care people (even children) can receive in hospitals, if they don’t have insurance.
It is immoral that we pay companies to ship jobs to Asia instead of helping small businesses create them in our communities.
It is immoral that we hold up ‘big box’ stores as models of job creation, when they pay little more than subsistence wages and frequently force businesses to close that pay people well enough to feed their families.
It is immoral that we send our young people to fight in a war half a world away, when we can’t tell them why we are there, how long we will be there, or how we plan to get out.
It is immoral to cut funds for our national parks, so that little will be left of some of them by the time our kids are old enough to inherit our national treasures.
It is immoral that we save a few dollars by knocking some people off of food stamps, yet spend many times that amount on corporate welfare while very few people say anything.
It is immoral that we block the importation of drugs from other countries, thereby supporting the drug companies in their selective gouging of Americans compared to Canadians and Europeans. Shouldn’t our government be protecting us from those who want to put the screws to us, instead of helping them do it?
It is immoral that we have homeless children in the richest country on earth and some claim they are there by ‘choice.’ Adults may choose to be homeless (although many didn’t), but how can a child choose to be homeless? This is a cop-out that some conservatives use to duck having to face that reality or spend a few dollars to do anything about it.
It is immoral that we hire degreed professionals to teach our kids in K-12 schools, yet pay them so poorly that it is unlikely that they will be able to send their own kids to the colleges that they went to.
It is immoral that we make things as difficult as we can on both documented and undocumented workers, while giving a slap on the wrist to the businesses that hire them.
It is immoral that we block research that could cure many diseases, when the blastocysts that could be used are tossed in the garbage every day.
It is immoral that we mandate tests like AIMS and fulfill other requirements of the NCLB act, and then ask local school districts to pick up the tab.
It is immoral that we work to cut the authority of governmental regulatory agencies designed to protect the health of workers and the public as an ‘unnecessary intrusion,’ but we allow the same government to massively increase their surveillance of the American public and the right to conduct secret trials, and then ‘trust’ their word that these powers will never be abused by either the current or any future administrations.
It is immoral that we give more duties to our police officers, but don’t fund them.
It is immoral that we build infrastructure in Iraq when many people here in Navajo county still don’t have electricity.
It is immoral that we say, ‘support the troops’ and then close VA hospitals and cut other veterans programs.
It is immoral that we give massive tax cuts to billionaires and then leave the debts for our young people to pay later on in life.
It is immoral that, despite having the technology available, we don’t raise vehicle fuel standards and instead have to depend for our security and livelihood on the political stability of a few slaveholding, misogynist, dictatorial feudal monarchies. George Washington is surely spinning in his grave.
This week, there has been a bit of a controversy stirred up by General Pace, the chief of the army, as he condemned homosexuality as 'immoral.' He is of course entitled to any belief he wants, but to proclaim it publically is an insult to an estimated 65,000 gays in the military who are following the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy and in many cases are in the front lines, laying it all on the line on behalf of their country, and expecting leadership instead of personal condemnation from their leaders. There has also been other recent discussion of 'morality,' especially since Al Gore placed it front and center by describing climate change as a 'moral' issue.
So, I've decided to post here some of the parts of the letter I wrote that were edited out by the paper:
... a friend of mind pointed out his letter to the Winslow Mail. To begin with, it was disingenuous, with him purporting a veneer of impartiality in defining what Republicans and Democrats are for and against, ostensibly for the benefit of new or undecided voters. He did not even mention that he is running for public office as a Republican. Then he went on to define Democrats in a mostly negative light, focusing heavily on moral arguments.
So, as a Democrat, I would like to respond in context.
I am a Democrat because it is immoral that we deny or limit the care people (even children) can receive in hospitals, if they don’t have insurance.
It is immoral that we pay companies to ship jobs to Asia instead of helping small businesses create them in our communities.
It is immoral that we hold up ‘big box’ stores as models of job creation, when they pay little more than subsistence wages and frequently force businesses to close that pay people well enough to feed their families.
It is immoral that we send our young people to fight in a war half a world away, when we can’t tell them why we are there, how long we will be there, or how we plan to get out.
It is immoral to cut funds for our national parks, so that little will be left of some of them by the time our kids are old enough to inherit our national treasures.
It is immoral that we save a few dollars by knocking some people off of food stamps, yet spend many times that amount on corporate welfare while very few people say anything.
It is immoral that we block the importation of drugs from other countries, thereby supporting the drug companies in their selective gouging of Americans compared to Canadians and Europeans. Shouldn’t our government be protecting us from those who want to put the screws to us, instead of helping them do it?
It is immoral that we have homeless children in the richest country on earth and some claim they are there by ‘choice.’ Adults may choose to be homeless (although many didn’t), but how can a child choose to be homeless? This is a cop-out that some conservatives use to duck having to face that reality or spend a few dollars to do anything about it.
It is immoral that we hire degreed professionals to teach our kids in K-12 schools, yet pay them so poorly that it is unlikely that they will be able to send their own kids to the colleges that they went to.
It is immoral that we make things as difficult as we can on both documented and undocumented workers, while giving a slap on the wrist to the businesses that hire them.
It is immoral that we block research that could cure many diseases, when the blastocysts that could be used are tossed in the garbage every day.
It is immoral that we mandate tests like AIMS and fulfill other requirements of the NCLB act, and then ask local school districts to pick up the tab.
It is immoral that we work to cut the authority of governmental regulatory agencies designed to protect the health of workers and the public as an ‘unnecessary intrusion,’ but we allow the same government to massively increase their surveillance of the American public and the right to conduct secret trials, and then ‘trust’ their word that these powers will never be abused by either the current or any future administrations.
It is immoral that we give more duties to our police officers, but don’t fund them.
It is immoral that we build infrastructure in Iraq when many people here in Navajo county still don’t have electricity.
It is immoral that we say, ‘support the troops’ and then close VA hospitals and cut other veterans programs.
It is immoral that we give massive tax cuts to billionaires and then leave the debts for our young people to pay later on in life.
It is immoral that, despite having the technology available, we don’t raise vehicle fuel standards and instead have to depend for our security and livelihood on the political stability of a few slaveholding, misogynist, dictatorial feudal monarchies. George Washington is surely spinning in his grave.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Media discovers-- schools pushing underperforming kids to drop out. I could have told them that last year.
Have you ever ran across an article that leaves you scratching your head, not because you doubt its truth, but because it seems like some research wonk in the media has just 'discovered' a situation that you've known about for years?
That just happened to me a few minutes ago. I was perusing CNN.com, and ran across this article on a high performing high school that is forcing low performing students to drop out because the school is rated on overall test performance.
And the case they cite might not even be considered completely one-sided, since the article makes it clear that the student they profiled (though there are others as well) was only pushed out of that school, not out of school altogether, and she may have contributed to her own academic deficiencies by absenteeism and disciplinary problems-- though it is only in the new world of conservative double speak where the way to solve a problem with a student playing hooky is to make them leave the school. However, I've known personally about more egregious cases than that. In my line of work, I've talked to a number of young people just in the past year or two who told me that they didn't finish school because after failing standardized tests the first time around they were advised by their high school advisors to drop out, and did so (though I'm happy to say that none of the students who told me this had gone to my own local high school-- if they had, I'd raise heck with the school board about it.) This is a disturbing new development-- I thought school counselors were supposed to encourage students to stay in school, not advise them to drop out and become quitters.
As far as absenteeism is concerned, all I know is that I've not met a truant officer for decades. Are there still any out there? My best guess is that the reason they've disappeared is probably some combination of legal requirements and regulations (probably, to be honest, imposed by liberals) and budget cuts (imposed by conservatives.) Maybe there still are some, and I just haven't met any (luckily my own kids have never required their services-- whatever problems they've had in school, unauthorized absence wasn't on the list.)
An even deeper level of this problem is that in some school districts it seems that students are flunked more often in specific grades, primarily because of the fear that they will perform poorly on standardized tests. For example, according to data collected by Walt Haney and his colleagues at Boston College, the number of ninth graders in 2000 nationwide exceeded by 13% the number of students who were in eighth grade nationwide in 1999 (source.) By 2000 (which is before the implementation of NCLB) a lot of states had already implemented standardized testing at the tenth grade level, and in many of them performance on these tests was already tied in various ways to school funding. So, apparently students were 'held back' at a much higher rate in the ninth grade than they were in the eighth or other grades so that they would have another year of being 'taught to the test' before they had to lay it on the line. Now, I have no problem with the concept of holding back a student if it is warranted by a failure to learn the material in the grade level in question (in this regard I disagree with the author of the source article), but that should apply to all grade levels, not just the grade before it is time to take the test.
One proposal I have heard and which I favor is to restructure high school similar to what we have in college-- there would no longer be formal grades, but students would have to complete a certain level of classes (including certain specific core courses). Students would be placed in classes based on similar background and abilities, rather than age; If necessary, students could be put into a course that came before the core curriculum course, while others might be able to jump into a course that is a year or two more advanced than their former eighth grade classmates. Four years might be an average time to spend in school, but some students might be able to do it in three years while others might need five or six (if beyond six years then we might consider a transition program into the community college where they could earn a diploma or equivalent while using the high school credits they had to that point accumulated and additional work at the community college.) The whole stigma/expectation associated with age and grade level would likely erode in this kind of environment. Why exactly is it more important that a tenth grader should be in an English class with other tenth graders rather than with other students (of whatever grade level) who have similar writing skills? In this environment completion of the core curriculum would show proof of knowlege so there would be no need for standardized testing, but if it was insisted there had to be then take it after the student has completed say a specific English class and a specific Math class, both of which are included in the core curriculum.
But whatever we do, it is absolutely an outrage that we have reached the point where students are being encouraged to leave school by those who should be most involved with helping them to stay in school. But the financial incentive for the schools is now to do exactly that.
That just happened to me a few minutes ago. I was perusing CNN.com, and ran across this article on a high performing high school that is forcing low performing students to drop out because the school is rated on overall test performance.
And the case they cite might not even be considered completely one-sided, since the article makes it clear that the student they profiled (though there are others as well) was only pushed out of that school, not out of school altogether, and she may have contributed to her own academic deficiencies by absenteeism and disciplinary problems-- though it is only in the new world of conservative double speak where the way to solve a problem with a student playing hooky is to make them leave the school. However, I've known personally about more egregious cases than that. In my line of work, I've talked to a number of young people just in the past year or two who told me that they didn't finish school because after failing standardized tests the first time around they were advised by their high school advisors to drop out, and did so (though I'm happy to say that none of the students who told me this had gone to my own local high school-- if they had, I'd raise heck with the school board about it.) This is a disturbing new development-- I thought school counselors were supposed to encourage students to stay in school, not advise them to drop out and become quitters.
As far as absenteeism is concerned, all I know is that I've not met a truant officer for decades. Are there still any out there? My best guess is that the reason they've disappeared is probably some combination of legal requirements and regulations (probably, to be honest, imposed by liberals) and budget cuts (imposed by conservatives.) Maybe there still are some, and I just haven't met any (luckily my own kids have never required their services-- whatever problems they've had in school, unauthorized absence wasn't on the list.)
An even deeper level of this problem is that in some school districts it seems that students are flunked more often in specific grades, primarily because of the fear that they will perform poorly on standardized tests. For example, according to data collected by Walt Haney and his colleagues at Boston College, the number of ninth graders in 2000 nationwide exceeded by 13% the number of students who were in eighth grade nationwide in 1999 (source.) By 2000 (which is before the implementation of NCLB) a lot of states had already implemented standardized testing at the tenth grade level, and in many of them performance on these tests was already tied in various ways to school funding. So, apparently students were 'held back' at a much higher rate in the ninth grade than they were in the eighth or other grades so that they would have another year of being 'taught to the test' before they had to lay it on the line. Now, I have no problem with the concept of holding back a student if it is warranted by a failure to learn the material in the grade level in question (in this regard I disagree with the author of the source article), but that should apply to all grade levels, not just the grade before it is time to take the test.
One proposal I have heard and which I favor is to restructure high school similar to what we have in college-- there would no longer be formal grades, but students would have to complete a certain level of classes (including certain specific core courses). Students would be placed in classes based on similar background and abilities, rather than age; If necessary, students could be put into a course that came before the core curriculum course, while others might be able to jump into a course that is a year or two more advanced than their former eighth grade classmates. Four years might be an average time to spend in school, but some students might be able to do it in three years while others might need five or six (if beyond six years then we might consider a transition program into the community college where they could earn a diploma or equivalent while using the high school credits they had to that point accumulated and additional work at the community college.) The whole stigma/expectation associated with age and grade level would likely erode in this kind of environment. Why exactly is it more important that a tenth grader should be in an English class with other tenth graders rather than with other students (of whatever grade level) who have similar writing skills? In this environment completion of the core curriculum would show proof of knowlege so there would be no need for standardized testing, but if it was insisted there had to be then take it after the student has completed say a specific English class and a specific Math class, both of which are included in the core curriculum.
But whatever we do, it is absolutely an outrage that we have reached the point where students are being encouraged to leave school by those who should be most involved with helping them to stay in school. But the financial incentive for the schools is now to do exactly that.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Terry Goddard is a great A.G. He's also a great guy.
This week I've been incredibly busy (which is why I have only put up one posting since last Saturday.)
The high point of the week politically was a reception in Winslow for our Attorney General, Terry Goddard. Like many other politicians, he was just elected to another four years this past November. Unlike many other politicians, now that he is out of campaign mode he is taking the opportunity to travel around the state and actually talk to people, both to let them know what his office is doing and to hear what their concerns are.
I've had quite a few opportunities to talk to Terry, and he is the same unflappable mixture of wit, class, charm and a good listener that he has always been.
What I'd like to do is pass on some of the things he is working on.
He is making fighting hard against both meth labs and the drug itself a top priority. Meth labs in a neighborhood are a hazard, not only to the occupants of the lab (which distressingly often includes the children of the meth cooks or of other residents of the domicile). The fumes from its production are toxic, and an explosion can start a fire which quickly consumes a trailer and everyone inside, and possibly spread from there. In the last legislature, Goddard and others pushed for a bill that would require stores to limit the amount of pseudoephedrine they sell at a single purchase and keep it under lock and key. The pharmaceutical industry worked behind the scenes to defeat it (Senator Barbara Leff will always have meth labs in your neighborhood as part of her resume). So since then, many cities and local jurisdictions have circumvented the legislature and passed the law themselves. Goddard met earlier on Tuesday with the Navajo county board of Supervisors and urged them to put together such a bill that would cover unincorporated areas of the county (and he was joined at the reception by supervisor Jesse Thompson.) But getting rid of meth labs is only a small part of the battle. After all, it is true that most meth here comes from Mexico and as long as there is a market, it will continue to come.
I noted in the post on my Grand Jury experience about how about half the cases we saw were drug cases, and the large majority of those involved methamphetamine. Meth is also very dangerous because people who get jacked up on meth don't just get mellow or go to sleep (like marijuana) or even get hyper but mainly a threat to themselves (like cocaine.) Meth users get paranoid, and imagining they are in danger try to 'protect' themselves, often by lethal violence. I was living in Moriarty, New Mexico in the mid 1990's, when not even a mile from my home there was a man who had been using meth that was driving on I-40 and when he imagined that his son was the devil, he stopped his van, cut off his son's head and threw it out onto the freeway and then drove on with the lifeless body in the van. That's what meth users do-- not just ordinary hallucinations, but hallucinations that often cause them to attack and murder other people. So the Attorney General found a hard-hitting program that he likes called, 'Montanameth' run by the state of Montana where they describe exactly to school age kids what meth is and what it can cause, and doesn't sugar-coat it at all. He is in the process of adapting it to Arizona so we can start whacking at the addiction rate here.
He also discussed his work on educating kids about on-line sex predators and on consumer fraud issues.
As I said before though, it was really nice to have a politician come to town AFTER the election and talk with people about what he is doing and what they think he should do.
The high point of the week politically was a reception in Winslow for our Attorney General, Terry Goddard. Like many other politicians, he was just elected to another four years this past November. Unlike many other politicians, now that he is out of campaign mode he is taking the opportunity to travel around the state and actually talk to people, both to let them know what his office is doing and to hear what their concerns are.
I've had quite a few opportunities to talk to Terry, and he is the same unflappable mixture of wit, class, charm and a good listener that he has always been.
What I'd like to do is pass on some of the things he is working on.
He is making fighting hard against both meth labs and the drug itself a top priority. Meth labs in a neighborhood are a hazard, not only to the occupants of the lab (which distressingly often includes the children of the meth cooks or of other residents of the domicile). The fumes from its production are toxic, and an explosion can start a fire which quickly consumes a trailer and everyone inside, and possibly spread from there. In the last legislature, Goddard and others pushed for a bill that would require stores to limit the amount of pseudoephedrine they sell at a single purchase and keep it under lock and key. The pharmaceutical industry worked behind the scenes to defeat it (Senator Barbara Leff will always have meth labs in your neighborhood as part of her resume). So since then, many cities and local jurisdictions have circumvented the legislature and passed the law themselves. Goddard met earlier on Tuesday with the Navajo county board of Supervisors and urged them to put together such a bill that would cover unincorporated areas of the county (and he was joined at the reception by supervisor Jesse Thompson.) But getting rid of meth labs is only a small part of the battle. After all, it is true that most meth here comes from Mexico and as long as there is a market, it will continue to come.
I noted in the post on my Grand Jury experience about how about half the cases we saw were drug cases, and the large majority of those involved methamphetamine. Meth is also very dangerous because people who get jacked up on meth don't just get mellow or go to sleep (like marijuana) or even get hyper but mainly a threat to themselves (like cocaine.) Meth users get paranoid, and imagining they are in danger try to 'protect' themselves, often by lethal violence. I was living in Moriarty, New Mexico in the mid 1990's, when not even a mile from my home there was a man who had been using meth that was driving on I-40 and when he imagined that his son was the devil, he stopped his van, cut off his son's head and threw it out onto the freeway and then drove on with the lifeless body in the van. That's what meth users do-- not just ordinary hallucinations, but hallucinations that often cause them to attack and murder other people. So the Attorney General found a hard-hitting program that he likes called, 'Montanameth' run by the state of Montana where they describe exactly to school age kids what meth is and what it can cause, and doesn't sugar-coat it at all. He is in the process of adapting it to Arizona so we can start whacking at the addiction rate here.
He also discussed his work on educating kids about on-line sex predators and on consumer fraud issues.
As I said before though, it was really nice to have a politician come to town AFTER the election and talk with people about what he is doing and what they think he should do.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Charlie Crist does the right thing, and for the right reason
Recently elected Governor Charlie Crist (R-Florida) has announced that he will restore voting rights to convicted felons who have paid their debt (meaning they have completed all sentencing including probation, paid any restitution and otherwise steered clear of the criminal justice system.)
TALLAHASSEE, FL (AP) -- Governor Charlie Crist says he will continue working to change the rules so that felons will have their voting rights automatically restored once they have paid their debt to society.This is one of the most revolutionary and far reaching proposals made by a governor in years. The removal of voting rights for ex-felons, those who have served their time and returned to society, is a direct descendent of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution. This document proudly listed a variety of ways Post Reconstruction whites would remove all political power form black citizens.
Crist announced that this campaign promise was a top reform priority.
This makes a lot of sense. Felons face, in addition to hurdles like difficulty getting a job and a home with a felony conviction on their record, a continuing stream of sanctions by society even when they have served their sentence and want to get on with their lives. Some of the sanctions make sense (for example denying the right to buy a gun to someone who has been convicted of a violent crime, because of the increased risk that they may use it in another crime). Sex offender registries make a lot of sense. Other sanctions do not. For example, restricting gun sales to non-violent criminals (I'm not sure that someone who has been convicted of embezzlement or selling marijuana is such a threat if they have a gun.) And chief among those which make no sense is preventing felons from voting. In Florida, because of prior felony convictions, 600,000 felons cannot vote, including over 31% of the state's adult African-American population (keep in mind that even being caught with any kind of drug paraphernalia can be considered a felony in many states.)
Further, even Crist's proposal will continue to deny voting to a few criminals:
the Times reported that there would be exclusions for those convicted of murder, rape, or major drug trafficking.
And I agree with that, for the most part. Murder, while it may result in less than a life sentence, is different from all other crimes in that there is no hope at all for the victim to recover. So a lifetime sanction may make sense. Rapists are generally required to register as sex offenders, so therefore they never do leave the criminal justice system completely-- so as the law is written they would not ever qualify. The most controversial provision has to do with drug trafficking. To me, the word 'major' suggests very large quantities of drugs, usually as part of a smuggling ring. But I don't know if that is the definition according to the proposal.
In fact, it seems Gov. Crist is doing it for the right reason. He is already taking heat for it in Florida. Further, there is no data on how felons intend to vote (this group has never been polled, for obvious reasons.)
TALLAHASSEE, FL (AP) -- Governor Charlie Crist says he will continue working to change the rules so that felons will have their voting rights automatically restored once they have paid their debt to society.This is one of the most revolutionary and far reaching proposals made by a governor in years. The removal of voting rights for ex-felons, those who have served their time and returned to society, is a direct descendent of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution. This document proudly listed a variety of ways Post Reconstruction whites would remove all political power form black citizens.
Crist announced that this campaign promise was a top reform priority.
This makes a lot of sense. Felons face, in addition to hurdles like difficulty getting a job and a home with a felony conviction on their record, a continuing stream of sanctions by society even when they have served their sentence and want to get on with their lives. Some of the sanctions make sense (for example denying the right to buy a gun to someone who has been convicted of a violent crime, because of the increased risk that they may use it in another crime). Sex offender registries make a lot of sense. Other sanctions do not. For example, restricting gun sales to non-violent criminals (I'm not sure that someone who has been convicted of embezzlement or selling marijuana is such a threat if they have a gun.) And chief among those which make no sense is preventing felons from voting. In Florida, because of prior felony convictions, 600,000 felons cannot vote, including over 31% of the state's adult African-American population (keep in mind that even being caught with any kind of drug paraphernalia can be considered a felony in many states.)
Further, even Crist's proposal will continue to deny voting to a few criminals:
the Times reported that there would be exclusions for those convicted of murder, rape, or major drug trafficking.
And I agree with that, for the most part. Murder, while it may result in less than a life sentence, is different from all other crimes in that there is no hope at all for the victim to recover. So a lifetime sanction may make sense. Rapists are generally required to register as sex offenders, so therefore they never do leave the criminal justice system completely-- so as the law is written they would not ever qualify. The most controversial provision has to do with drug trafficking. To me, the word 'major' suggests very large quantities of drugs, usually as part of a smuggling ring. But I don't know if that is the definition according to the proposal.
In fact, it seems Gov. Crist is doing it for the right reason. He is already taking heat for it in Florida. Further, there is no data on how felons intend to vote (this group has never been polled, for obvious reasons.)
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Rudy made sure they found the gold. Then he quit looking.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has jumped to the head of the GOP Presidential field, despite not having actually run for any office in nearly a decade (maybe that is why he is so popular).
His biggest plus, according to everyone was his exhibition of leadership on September 11. He got the second biggest accolades for heroism on that day. The biggest of course, were for the first responders, especially the New York Fire Department, which lost 343 of its members. Those who went into the buildings to help others get out of them.
So how are the Firefighters responding to Rudy today? Not well, it turns out. They drafted a letter listing very specific reasons they are not supporting him.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of the nation's largest firefighters' unions has accused Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, of committing "egregious acts" against firefighters who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In a letter to its members Friday, the International Association of Fire Fighters excoriated Giuliani for his November 2001 decision to cut back the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of some 300 fallen comrades.
The 280,000-member union accused him of carelessly expediting the cleanup process with a "scoop-and-dump" operation after the recovery of millions of dollars in gold, silver and other assets from the Bank of Nova Scotia that had been buried.
Now granted, by November of 2001, it was certain that no one else would be found alive in the rubble, but it is a fact that only a small portion of the rubble was really searched thoroughly through for remains (and the discovery of several sets of remains since then even in the industrial scale cleanup operation since shows that it would not have been all that hard to find most of them, at least). Don't the family of the real heroes even deserve that?
Well, no, apparently. It is clear that Rudy's biggest concern was to make sure that the gold and silver were found and recovered. After that, nothing else was left that was as important as the reserves of the Bank of Nova Scotia.
So this is a union, and they always back Democrats, right?
No again. It is true that they endorsed John Kerry in 2004 after the Bush administration's promises to fund first responders turned out to be more flourish than substance. But in the 1997 mayoral race, the last time Rudy Giuliani ran for office, he beat Ruth Messinger with their backing and their votes.
It seems that Rudy's leadership on September 11 is a bit overrated. The tragedy itself happened in the heart of the nation's biggest metropolitan area, where the infrastructure remained otherwise intact, and everyone who survived had a home to go back to so there were no refugees. In this regard it was far less of a test of leadership than, for example, Katrina which devastated an entire region, including homes, hospitals and shelters. So the real test of leadership came in the days, weeks and months after the September 11 attacks, and it is clear that once the gold was safely back in the Bank of Nova Scotia, Rudy Giuliani simply turned his back on the real heroes of the day.
His biggest plus, according to everyone was his exhibition of leadership on September 11. He got the second biggest accolades for heroism on that day. The biggest of course, were for the first responders, especially the New York Fire Department, which lost 343 of its members. Those who went into the buildings to help others get out of them.
So how are the Firefighters responding to Rudy today? Not well, it turns out. They drafted a letter listing very specific reasons they are not supporting him.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of the nation's largest firefighters' unions has accused Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, of committing "egregious acts" against firefighters who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In a letter to its members Friday, the International Association of Fire Fighters excoriated Giuliani for his November 2001 decision to cut back the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of some 300 fallen comrades.
The 280,000-member union accused him of carelessly expediting the cleanup process with a "scoop-and-dump" operation after the recovery of millions of dollars in gold, silver and other assets from the Bank of Nova Scotia that had been buried.
Now granted, by November of 2001, it was certain that no one else would be found alive in the rubble, but it is a fact that only a small portion of the rubble was really searched thoroughly through for remains (and the discovery of several sets of remains since then even in the industrial scale cleanup operation since shows that it would not have been all that hard to find most of them, at least). Don't the family of the real heroes even deserve that?
Well, no, apparently. It is clear that Rudy's biggest concern was to make sure that the gold and silver were found and recovered. After that, nothing else was left that was as important as the reserves of the Bank of Nova Scotia.
So this is a union, and they always back Democrats, right?
No again. It is true that they endorsed John Kerry in 2004 after the Bush administration's promises to fund first responders turned out to be more flourish than substance. But in the 1997 mayoral race, the last time Rudy Giuliani ran for office, he beat Ruth Messinger with their backing and their votes.
It seems that Rudy's leadership on September 11 is a bit overrated. The tragedy itself happened in the heart of the nation's biggest metropolitan area, where the infrastructure remained otherwise intact, and everyone who survived had a home to go back to so there were no refugees. In this regard it was far less of a test of leadership than, for example, Katrina which devastated an entire region, including homes, hospitals and shelters. So the real test of leadership came in the days, weeks and months after the September 11 attacks, and it is clear that once the gold was safely back in the Bank of Nova Scotia, Rudy Giuliani simply turned his back on the real heroes of the day.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Before Haggard, there was this Newt guy.
Ever wonder what Newt Gingrich was doing in 1998 after a long day of Clinton-bashing at the office, over the Lewinsky scandal?
Well, now we know. Newt was having a little extramarital affair of his own.
His excuse? He says that:
as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."
Just wondering if that at least includes Scooter Libby, or if he will find some other reality-bending excuse to be able to excuse Republicans for the same thing he is grilling a Democrat for.
Well, now we know. Newt was having a little extramarital affair of his own.
His excuse? He says that:
as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."
Just wondering if that at least includes Scooter Libby, or if he will find some other reality-bending excuse to be able to excuse Republicans for the same thing he is grilling a Democrat for.
Janet goes to Iraq-- and starts sounding like a neo-con.
I have to say I was very disappointed with Governor Napolitano's trip to Iraq.
I don't have a problem with her going, to visit Arizona National Guardsmen.
But her comments seem to mirror the kind of garbage we've heard coming out of Iraq for years, citing 'progress' and expressing support for the latest folly, the President's troop surge. In that regard, she might as well have been George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice or any of the other names we've heard spouting the line about how everything is going according to plan for the past four years (hint: if it had gone according to plan during the past four years, we'd be out of there by now.)
Politically, it is not hard to see where the Governor is going. In 2010, she will be term-limited out, and John McCain, who will be older than the hills by then and who will likely be weakened by a failed Presidential run (just look at how fast he is dropping in GOP primary polls) will be up for re-election. If McCain does not then retire, or even if he does, she would be all but guaranteed of the Democratic nomination to run for the Senate.
In terms of the Iraq war, McCain has taken a very hardline stance. So even if people are turned off by her pro-Iraq war stance, it's not like she has much ground to lose on the issue.
But it still bothers me. In four years, we have accomplished the objectives of Iran more than anything else, and I'm sure the Governor is smart enough to realize that.
I don't have a problem with her going, to visit Arizona National Guardsmen.
But her comments seem to mirror the kind of garbage we've heard coming out of Iraq for years, citing 'progress' and expressing support for the latest folly, the President's troop surge. In that regard, she might as well have been George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice or any of the other names we've heard spouting the line about how everything is going according to plan for the past four years (hint: if it had gone according to plan during the past four years, we'd be out of there by now.)
Politically, it is not hard to see where the Governor is going. In 2010, she will be term-limited out, and John McCain, who will be older than the hills by then and who will likely be weakened by a failed Presidential run (just look at how fast he is dropping in GOP primary polls) will be up for re-election. If McCain does not then retire, or even if he does, she would be all but guaranteed of the Democratic nomination to run for the Senate.
In terms of the Iraq war, McCain has taken a very hardline stance. So even if people are turned off by her pro-Iraq war stance, it's not like she has much ground to lose on the issue.
But it still bothers me. In four years, we have accomplished the objectives of Iran more than anything else, and I'm sure the Governor is smart enough to realize that.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Notice a pattern here?
We've been hearing over the past few days about how two members of New Mexico's congressional delegation called and pressured David Iglesias, the former Federal Prosecutor for that state, into speeding up a corruption investigation involving a Democrat and then had him fired by the Bush administration when he refused.
As I blogged in December, Paul Charlton, investigating corruption charges against Rick Renzi, was also leaving (though in contrast to that post it now turns out that he got a firm push out the door.)
Then they also fired Carol Lam, the prosecutor who sent former GOP Congressman Duke Cunninham to prison.
On the day when they got caught being petty and mean spirited by the Libby guillty verdict, here they do it again.
As I blogged in December, Paul Charlton, investigating corruption charges against Rick Renzi, was also leaving (though in contrast to that post it now turns out that he got a firm push out the door.)
Then they also fired Carol Lam, the prosecutor who sent former GOP Congressman Duke Cunninham to prison.
On the day when they got caught being petty and mean spirited by the Libby guillty verdict, here they do it again.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Open mouth, insert foot.
Today after visiting the town of Americus, Georgia to look at tornado damage, President Bush, apparently not willing to commit Federal assistance to the project, suggested that Habitat for Humanity could visit the town and repair some of the damage (of course repairing existing structures is not something that Habitat for Humanity does, for among other reasons that working on existing but damaged structures require engineering expertise that the volunteer organization does not have).
The mayor of Americus had to tell him that the organization is headquartered in Americus.
The mayor of Americus had to tell him that the organization is headquartered in Americus.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Hit piece on Al Gore actually leads to an opportunity to educate people.
In the recent firestorm of criticism from the right about Al Gore's utility bill, it seems that there are some inconvenient facts that have been ignored.
Begin with the credibility of the source, and their apparent willingness to lie in order to get a headline-- and more to the point, not just the credibility of this source but of right leaning sources who simply jumped on a press release from an organization they probably didn't know much about without checking their facts.
The press release from The Tennessee Center for Policy Research (a previously obscure right-wing attack group whose only known address is a P.O. Box in Nashville) stated that Gore's electricity bill was $1,359 per month on average, and stated that they got the figure from Nashville Electric Service. NES spokesperson Laurie Parker however responded that the company was never asked by the center, and never gave it, any information. Additionally, the figure was wrong; it turns out to be closer to $1,200. While $1,359 is in the ballpark and likely represents an educated guess (though a bit high) it certainly brings into question the veracity of any claim that might be made by an organization of people who apparently are willing to invent data in order to make their case. While the exposure of the made up data by Parker has since been reported in some media, it has gotten a lot less attention than did the original report. One has to wonder if this is the new 'journalistic standard' by those on the right (particularly since this report appeared, unquestioned, on any number of right wing blog sites.) And the truth is that Gore's energy bill is not out of line for someone at his income level (as I reported several months ago Gore has become very rich while not serving as President, working as an advisor to Google and in other capacities).
Additionally, the report is misleading since Al Gore does (as he has for several years now) pay for 'green' electricity, mostly from a program available in Tennessee. Where he can't do that he makes donations equal to what he uses specifically for electricity from renewable resources.
And that leads to the real hypocrisy-- the right, either by intent or by ignorance continues to propogate the 'freeze in the dark' view of green electricity and other use of natural resources. In other words, they argue that environmentally responsible energy means a reduction in lifestyle. They argue that to be 'green' means to use less, and that is all it means, and that if you are living with any modern uses of energy (be it electricity, a car or whatever) then you cannot be an environmentalist.
But this is absolutely false. Being 'green' means being cleaner and leaner-- but this does not have to mean any kind of a reduction in lifestyle. It is true that in terms of conservation, it means using less energy. But conservation means to reduce waste. Waste by definition is resources expended but not used. So, for example, if you turn off the television after your favorite show, keep your tires fully inflated in order to improve your gas mileage and reduce wear on the tire, turn down the thermostat when you are not at home, or caulk your windows so you will use less gas then you have conserved-- but it is hard to argue that any of these conservation measures impacts your lifestyle.
These of course are individual choices. Then there is societal environmentalism. This is environmentalism at the public policy level, and is more what a person like Al Gore is pushing. Even President Bush, after fighting it for a long time, reversed himself in January in his State of the Union address where he pushed for, among other measures, higher CAFE standards on automobiles. This means designing cars to use less fuel. The technology is already there, and in fact all other major industrialized countries (as well as China) have higher fuel standards on vehicles than the United States. If all cars were designed to have, say, five mpg better mileage, then the result would be less gasoline used resulting in less emissions, less demand resulting in lower fuel prices (so people would save on both ends-- by using less gas and paying less for what they used) and in the bargain less dependence by the United States' economy on the political stability of feudal monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait or feeding the regimes of people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez. Conservatives have long opposed these standards (and blocked their implementation in Congress) because of a desire by oil companies to keep prices higher and sell more product.
But it begs the question: If the car you buy in ten years is designed according to the higher standard and, for example, gets 30 mpg instead of 25 mpg, how exactly will that impose on your lifestyle choices? For that matter, if a practical electric or hydrogen vehicle is developed and put into large scale production how would having one, and say having to charge it periodically instead of pump gas, affect your lifestyle? It's hard to see how it would.
Electricity is another example. 'Green' electricity is not the same as no electricity. It means 1) electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric (all of which are in fact in practical use today in a number of places in America, despite claims by conservatives in past generations that they would never be practical) or 2) if fossil fuel is burned, then state of the art emissions technology. A smashing example of success had to do with the 'acid rain' battle of a generation ago. The discovery that nitric and sulfuric acid in power plant emissions was killing forests in North America and Europe led to the installation of technology that cut emissions of both of these pollutants way down. The result is healthier forests and cleaner air. Even statues and buildings are not being eroded by acid rain as they once were.
Again, how is breathing cleaner air an imposition on your lifestyle?
What about mass transit? In a rural area like where I live it may not be that practical (though there is a local taxi company and some communities on the reservation have at times had bus service). But in larger communities, an investment in mass transit makes a lot of sense. Not only does, for example, one bus use less gas and cause less congestion on the road than a dozen or more individual cars, but often the people who use the bus would otherwise be driving older cars-- which tend to be the most polluting, inefficient cars on the road. And a 'miniature' form of mass transit is the formation of car pools. Some municipalities actively encourage this, for example by designating special highway lanes or waiving tolls for carpools. If there are more buses, light rail, car pools or other forms of mass transit then it still won't affect you if you want to drive someplace all by yourself, but simply give you and everyone else a choice. So again, how is it an imposition on your lifestyle?
So Al Gore's use of electricity (like mine or yours) is no sin. If you waste electricty then, well, you will pay for it. But it is a sin not to press for policy initiatives that can, without causing anyone any real inconvenience, improve the health of the planet and of all of us.
Begin with the credibility of the source, and their apparent willingness to lie in order to get a headline-- and more to the point, not just the credibility of this source but of right leaning sources who simply jumped on a press release from an organization they probably didn't know much about without checking their facts.
The press release from The Tennessee Center for Policy Research (a previously obscure right-wing attack group whose only known address is a P.O. Box in Nashville) stated that Gore's electricity bill was $1,359 per month on average, and stated that they got the figure from Nashville Electric Service. NES spokesperson Laurie Parker however responded that the company was never asked by the center, and never gave it, any information. Additionally, the figure was wrong; it turns out to be closer to $1,200. While $1,359 is in the ballpark and likely represents an educated guess (though a bit high) it certainly brings into question the veracity of any claim that might be made by an organization of people who apparently are willing to invent data in order to make their case. While the exposure of the made up data by Parker has since been reported in some media, it has gotten a lot less attention than did the original report. One has to wonder if this is the new 'journalistic standard' by those on the right (particularly since this report appeared, unquestioned, on any number of right wing blog sites.) And the truth is that Gore's energy bill is not out of line for someone at his income level (as I reported several months ago Gore has become very rich while not serving as President, working as an advisor to Google and in other capacities).
Additionally, the report is misleading since Al Gore does (as he has for several years now) pay for 'green' electricity, mostly from a program available in Tennessee. Where he can't do that he makes donations equal to what he uses specifically for electricity from renewable resources.
And that leads to the real hypocrisy-- the right, either by intent or by ignorance continues to propogate the 'freeze in the dark' view of green electricity and other use of natural resources. In other words, they argue that environmentally responsible energy means a reduction in lifestyle. They argue that to be 'green' means to use less, and that is all it means, and that if you are living with any modern uses of energy (be it electricity, a car or whatever) then you cannot be an environmentalist.
But this is absolutely false. Being 'green' means being cleaner and leaner-- but this does not have to mean any kind of a reduction in lifestyle. It is true that in terms of conservation, it means using less energy. But conservation means to reduce waste. Waste by definition is resources expended but not used. So, for example, if you turn off the television after your favorite show, keep your tires fully inflated in order to improve your gas mileage and reduce wear on the tire, turn down the thermostat when you are not at home, or caulk your windows so you will use less gas then you have conserved-- but it is hard to argue that any of these conservation measures impacts your lifestyle.
These of course are individual choices. Then there is societal environmentalism. This is environmentalism at the public policy level, and is more what a person like Al Gore is pushing. Even President Bush, after fighting it for a long time, reversed himself in January in his State of the Union address where he pushed for, among other measures, higher CAFE standards on automobiles. This means designing cars to use less fuel. The technology is already there, and in fact all other major industrialized countries (as well as China) have higher fuel standards on vehicles than the United States. If all cars were designed to have, say, five mpg better mileage, then the result would be less gasoline used resulting in less emissions, less demand resulting in lower fuel prices (so people would save on both ends-- by using less gas and paying less for what they used) and in the bargain less dependence by the United States' economy on the political stability of feudal monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait or feeding the regimes of people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez. Conservatives have long opposed these standards (and blocked their implementation in Congress) because of a desire by oil companies to keep prices higher and sell more product.
But it begs the question: If the car you buy in ten years is designed according to the higher standard and, for example, gets 30 mpg instead of 25 mpg, how exactly will that impose on your lifestyle choices? For that matter, if a practical electric or hydrogen vehicle is developed and put into large scale production how would having one, and say having to charge it periodically instead of pump gas, affect your lifestyle? It's hard to see how it would.
Electricity is another example. 'Green' electricity is not the same as no electricity. It means 1) electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric (all of which are in fact in practical use today in a number of places in America, despite claims by conservatives in past generations that they would never be practical) or 2) if fossil fuel is burned, then state of the art emissions technology. A smashing example of success had to do with the 'acid rain' battle of a generation ago. The discovery that nitric and sulfuric acid in power plant emissions was killing forests in North America and Europe led to the installation of technology that cut emissions of both of these pollutants way down. The result is healthier forests and cleaner air. Even statues and buildings are not being eroded by acid rain as they once were.
Again, how is breathing cleaner air an imposition on your lifestyle?
What about mass transit? In a rural area like where I live it may not be that practical (though there is a local taxi company and some communities on the reservation have at times had bus service). But in larger communities, an investment in mass transit makes a lot of sense. Not only does, for example, one bus use less gas and cause less congestion on the road than a dozen or more individual cars, but often the people who use the bus would otherwise be driving older cars-- which tend to be the most polluting, inefficient cars on the road. And a 'miniature' form of mass transit is the formation of car pools. Some municipalities actively encourage this, for example by designating special highway lanes or waiving tolls for carpools. If there are more buses, light rail, car pools or other forms of mass transit then it still won't affect you if you want to drive someplace all by yourself, but simply give you and everyone else a choice. So again, how is it an imposition on your lifestyle?
So Al Gore's use of electricity (like mine or yours) is no sin. If you waste electricty then, well, you will pay for it. But it is a sin not to press for policy initiatives that can, without causing anyone any real inconvenience, improve the health of the planet and of all of us.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Death by no Insurance
Once again we see another disturbing example of why we need some kind of universal coverage:
A twelve year old boy dies of a toothache with insurance complications.
WASHINGTON - Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.
If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.
Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.
And because we as a society were unwilling to provide him with the $80 treatment, we are in the end left with a tab for a quarter of a million.
That's 'conservative fiscal management' for you.
A twelve year old boy dies of a toothache with insurance complications.
WASHINGTON - Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.
If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.
Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.
And because we as a society were unwilling to provide him with the $80 treatment, we are in the end left with a tab for a quarter of a million.
That's 'conservative fiscal management' for you.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Mexican truck decision
This week, while I was away on a series of (both political and non-political) meetings, the Bush administration went ahead and cleared the way by executive fiat for Mexican trucks to begin operating in the United States. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said, "This program will make trade with Mexico easier and keep our roads safe at the same time." The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) specifies that they will be allowed to do this, but it has not yet been fully implemented (though the Bush administration has tried before to do so) since there are some concern about safety.
And there still are. Presently, there are not enough truck inspectors to even inspect more than a fraction of the American trucks on the road (and up to a quarter of those they do inspect, fail that inspection and are taken out of service for safety reasons.) There has not been a significant increase in the number of inspectors for years, so it is hard to see how adding Mexican trucks to the thousands of American trucks that are on the road today will do anything but create that many more potential accidents (and sooner or later, more real accidents). Mexican drivers already are operating under laxer safety standards than in the United States (for example, not having to keep a truck log like they do here that will tell whether a driver has been operating the vehicle for too long at a stretch.) But to then try and inspect them with our understaffed force of inspectors is asking for the impossible. And the immigrant-bashing far right not objecting to this one really shows their hypocrisy since it is hard to imagine that undocumented workers won't think of hitching a ride on a (probably not inspected) truck.
I'm not necessarily against free trade agreements in general or NAFTA (which has already been signed and ratified, and which we should adhere to) specifically. I wrote about Free Trade issues in the context of the WTO agreement in 2005. I wrote that while they are not in and of themselves bad, what we should be doing (and haven't) is include and enforce standards relating to labor laws (including safety standards), anti-pollution standards and and anti-corruption standards that match our own. And I still believe that.
But it looks like maybe we need to seriously upgrade our own safety standards first.
And there still are. Presently, there are not enough truck inspectors to even inspect more than a fraction of the American trucks on the road (and up to a quarter of those they do inspect, fail that inspection and are taken out of service for safety reasons.) There has not been a significant increase in the number of inspectors for years, so it is hard to see how adding Mexican trucks to the thousands of American trucks that are on the road today will do anything but create that many more potential accidents (and sooner or later, more real accidents). Mexican drivers already are operating under laxer safety standards than in the United States (for example, not having to keep a truck log like they do here that will tell whether a driver has been operating the vehicle for too long at a stretch.) But to then try and inspect them with our understaffed force of inspectors is asking for the impossible. And the immigrant-bashing far right not objecting to this one really shows their hypocrisy since it is hard to imagine that undocumented workers won't think of hitching a ride on a (probably not inspected) truck.
I'm not necessarily against free trade agreements in general or NAFTA (which has already been signed and ratified, and which we should adhere to) specifically. I wrote about Free Trade issues in the context of the WTO agreement in 2005. I wrote that while they are not in and of themselves bad, what we should be doing (and haven't) is include and enforce standards relating to labor laws (including safety standards), anti-pollution standards and and anti-corruption standards that match our own. And I still believe that.
But it looks like maybe we need to seriously upgrade our own safety standards first.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Mr. Consistency
During the 2000 Presidential campaign, John McCain, while expressing opposition to abortion, said that if his daughter wanted an abortion, he would leave the decision up to her.
But now it is 2008, and he wants the votes of religious conservatives, so the man who wants to be in a position to appoint the next Supreme Court justice (maybe several) has said that he is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion.
In other words, he wants for himself and his family a different set of rules than for everyone else.
But now it is 2008, and he wants the votes of religious conservatives, so the man who wants to be in a position to appoint the next Supreme Court justice (maybe several) has said that he is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion.
In other words, he wants for himself and his family a different set of rules than for everyone else.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Consider why a terrorst wanted Republicans in power in Washington.
We've by now seen the news reports that a terrorist donated large amounts of money to the Republican Congressional Committee. The man, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari (who went by the alias 'Michael Mixon') has been indicted on, among other things, sending money to fund a terror training camp in Afghanistan.
But what is interesting is to look at the dates.
From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, www.politicalmoneyline.com and www.opensecrets.org.
Why would a supporter of terrorism in Afghanistan suddenly start supporting Republicans in April of 2002?
Well, that is almost exactly when the Bush administration and other Republicans started talking about shifting their focus away from Afghanistan to Iraq.
I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority...."
"I am truly not that concerned about him [in response to a question about bin Laden]."
Both quotes by George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
In other words, during the period in question, the Bush administration was specifically de-emphasizing the war in Afghanistan in order to change their focus to Iraq. Democrats (especially Al Gore, who in 2002 was considered likely to run again in 2004) were sharply critical and suggested pushing harder in Afghanistan.
I'm not suggesting that there was any quid pro quo with Mr. Alishtari's donations (which in the overall scheme of things probably did not make much difference). What I am suggesting is simply that a terrorist supporting other terrorists in Afghanistan saw that what the President and the GOP was doing was going to help his friends (those who attacked us on 9/11) and therefore did what he could to push the Republican agenda forward. The Republican party has claimed they had no idea who he was and I believe them. But they should heed the call to give back the money now that it is known.
And he was right, Bush policy has helped them.
But what is interesting is to look at the dates.
From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, www.politicalmoneyline.com and www.opensecrets.org.
Why would a supporter of terrorism in Afghanistan suddenly start supporting Republicans in April of 2002?
Well, that is almost exactly when the Bush administration and other Republicans started talking about shifting their focus away from Afghanistan to Iraq.
I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority...."
"I am truly not that concerned about him [in response to a question about bin Laden]."
Both quotes by George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
In other words, during the period in question, the Bush administration was specifically de-emphasizing the war in Afghanistan in order to change their focus to Iraq. Democrats (especially Al Gore, who in 2002 was considered likely to run again in 2004) were sharply critical and suggested pushing harder in Afghanistan.
I'm not suggesting that there was any quid pro quo with Mr. Alishtari's donations (which in the overall scheme of things probably did not make much difference). What I am suggesting is simply that a terrorist supporting other terrorists in Afghanistan saw that what the President and the GOP was doing was going to help his friends (those who attacked us on 9/11) and therefore did what he could to push the Republican agenda forward. The Republican party has claimed they had no idea who he was and I believe them. But they should heed the call to give back the money now that it is known.
And he was right, Bush policy has helped them.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
56 for. 34 against. 1 unable to vote. And 9 afraid to vote.
On the Senate vote to end the filibuster and move forward with the nonbinding resolution opposing the President's troop increase plan for Iraq, it failed to get the necessary 60 votes, failing 56-34.
Seven Republicans (Coleman (MN), Collins (ME), Hagel (NE), Smith (OR), Snowe (ME), Spectre (PA) and Warner (VA)) joined 49 Democrats in voting to move forward on the resolution. Democrat Tim Johnson of South Dakota is still recovering from emergency brain surgery and was unable to vote.
Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined 33 Republicans in voting against moving forward. I don't agree with this position, but at least they were all willing to stand up and be counted for what they believe in.
If you do the math, you will see that this means that nine Republicans did not vote on this at all. They in fact hold the key-- if even half of them had voted to move the resolution forward it would have, and if seven of them had voted with their party-mates then it would have clearly sent a message that the GOP could block such a resolution in the Senate and won't support it (since their own party leaders are pushing a plan that would also require sixty votes, not just to end debate, but to actually pass the resolution-- a very unusual requirement for a floor vote).
In other words, this is a resolution on a plan that will either result in a turning point in Iraq (if the President, against mine and a lot of other expectations turns out to be right) or a catastrophic increase in American casualties and more to the point, giving insurgents if they are still around next year the ammunition to claim they took our 'best shot' and still came through it (therefore making our failure worse). And these nine couldn't even muster the backbone to have a position.
Seven Republicans (Coleman (MN), Collins (ME), Hagel (NE), Smith (OR), Snowe (ME), Spectre (PA) and Warner (VA)) joined 49 Democrats in voting to move forward on the resolution. Democrat Tim Johnson of South Dakota is still recovering from emergency brain surgery and was unable to vote.
Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined 33 Republicans in voting against moving forward. I don't agree with this position, but at least they were all willing to stand up and be counted for what they believe in.
If you do the math, you will see that this means that nine Republicans did not vote on this at all. They in fact hold the key-- if even half of them had voted to move the resolution forward it would have, and if seven of them had voted with their party-mates then it would have clearly sent a message that the GOP could block such a resolution in the Senate and won't support it (since their own party leaders are pushing a plan that would also require sixty votes, not just to end debate, but to actually pass the resolution-- a very unusual requirement for a floor vote).
In other words, this is a resolution on a plan that will either result in a turning point in Iraq (if the President, against mine and a lot of other expectations turns out to be right) or a catastrophic increase in American casualties and more to the point, giving insurgents if they are still around next year the ammunition to claim they took our 'best shot' and still came through it (therefore making our failure worse). And these nine couldn't even muster the backbone to have a position.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Republicans claim living on the street is a 'choice.'
It's tough being homeless. Last week I reported on the dumping of a homeless paraplegic out onto the street with no wheelchair in Los Angeles by Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. Today another shocking story comes out of San Francisco. And this time it highlights the hazard that people on the edge of society often face simply because they are easy targets.
Homeless woman burned to death in revenge for reporting to the police that she had been beaten and robbed.
SAN FRANCISCO - Two women were accused of soaking a homeless, drug-addicted prostitute with gasoline and burning her to death after she reported that one of them had robbed her.
Leslie "Jill" May, 49, was abducted from the street and killed at Candlestick Park the day she told the police that Mia Sagote, 30, robbed and beat her over a debt May's boyfriend owed, authorities said.
May's boyfriend owed money. So she was robbed to pay the debt. That already makes the case that homeless people can be a target, even for situations they haven't created. But then when she told the police-- well, we see what kind of people target them in the first place.
The irony is contained in the last paragraph of the story:
After being selected for a city program that tries to find services and housing for the chronically homeless, she got a place to live in the fall.
"She was permanently housed," Amyes said. "She was happy. She was successful. They were little baby steps. The average American would say that's nothing ... but to live inside successfully for six months was huge."
So she was moving ahead with her life. Until it was brutally snuffed out. Like so many, many others that we don't hear about.
Homeless woman burned to death in revenge for reporting to the police that she had been beaten and robbed.
SAN FRANCISCO - Two women were accused of soaking a homeless, drug-addicted prostitute with gasoline and burning her to death after she reported that one of them had robbed her.
Leslie "Jill" May, 49, was abducted from the street and killed at Candlestick Park the day she told the police that Mia Sagote, 30, robbed and beat her over a debt May's boyfriend owed, authorities said.
May's boyfriend owed money. So she was robbed to pay the debt. That already makes the case that homeless people can be a target, even for situations they haven't created. But then when she told the police-- well, we see what kind of people target them in the first place.
The irony is contained in the last paragraph of the story:
After being selected for a city program that tries to find services and housing for the chronically homeless, she got a place to live in the fall.
"She was permanently housed," Amyes said. "She was happy. She was successful. They were little baby steps. The average American would say that's nothing ... but to live inside successfully for six months was huge."
So she was moving ahead with her life. Until it was brutally snuffed out. Like so many, many others that we don't hear about.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Will John McCain face a recall?
I've gotten a number of interesting posts in my mailbox from a discussion on Arizona blog net. It seems that a few people are punting around an idea to push a recall petition against John McCain because of his stance on the Iraq war.
One argument that has come up has to do with its legality. Because the Senate is a Federal, not a state office it may be that such a recall, even if successful would not cause his removal from office.
I also doubt that this will get very far. The number of signatures needed-- over 380,000-- is way too high a number to collect, especially since we will sooner or later have to be worrying about signatures just to get our candidates on the ballot for 2008. McCain is also still somewhat popular (among people who don't know him), and he did win re-election to the Senate in 2004 with over 70% of the vote.
Nevertheless it is interesting that this is even being bandied about. Just the fact that it is shows how angry people are over the Iraq war, and McCain's stubborn refusal to acknowlege the obvious.
One argument that has come up has to do with its legality. Because the Senate is a Federal, not a state office it may be that such a recall, even if successful would not cause his removal from office.
I also doubt that this will get very far. The number of signatures needed-- over 380,000-- is way too high a number to collect, especially since we will sooner or later have to be worrying about signatures just to get our candidates on the ballot for 2008. McCain is also still somewhat popular (among people who don't know him), and he did win re-election to the Senate in 2004 with over 70% of the vote.
Nevertheless it is interesting that this is even being bandied about. Just the fact that it is shows how angry people are over the Iraq war, and McCain's stubborn refusal to acknowlege the obvious.
Forty years in prison is a lot to pay for not knowing much about computers.
It's happened to a lot of people. It's happened to me.
I have gone to a website that had nothing pornographic about it, hit the wrong link and all of a sudden a barrage of pornographic pictures shows up on the screen. There is even a term for a link that does this. It is called a 'mouse trap.'.
Should a substitute teacher get forty years in prison because it happened to her?
WINDHAM, Conn. - Until recently, Julie Amero says, she lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn.
Now she is in the middle of a criminal case that hinges on the intricacies of both, and it could put her behind bars for up to 40 years.
She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer. She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers’ unseen spyware and adware programs.
Prosecutors dispute that. But her argument has made her a cause célèbre among some technology experts, who say what happened to her could happen to anyone.
“I’m scared,” said Amero, 40. “I’m just beside myself over something I didn’t do.”
It all began in October 2004. Amero was assigned to a class at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, a city of about 37,000 people about 40 miles east of Hartford.
Amero says that before her class started, a teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She says she used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hairstyles.
Amero says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she says, pornographic images began popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.
“I did everything I possibly could to keep them from seeing anything,” she says.
I've had to turn a computer off. It's the only way to stop this from happening.
But what really amazes me is how technologically obtuse the prosecutors and those who doubt her story seem to be.
What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware — an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene,” Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. “When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no ‘physical click’ is necessary.”...
Principal Scott Fain said the computer lacked the latest firewall protection because a vendor’s bill had gone unpaid. “I was shocked to see what made it through,” he said.
But Fain also said Amero was the only one to report such a problem: “We’ve never had a problem with pop-ups before or since.”
Uh, do you think the vendor's bill has since been paid? Of course he hasn't had the problem since then. And in any case, I've only had that problem once or twice, so it's not a common problem. But it does happen. And tossing someone in prison for up to forty years because she didn't know what a mousetrap is seems the height of idiocy.
I have gone to a website that had nothing pornographic about it, hit the wrong link and all of a sudden a barrage of pornographic pictures shows up on the screen. There is even a term for a link that does this. It is called a 'mouse trap.'.
Should a substitute teacher get forty years in prison because it happened to her?
WINDHAM, Conn. - Until recently, Julie Amero says, she lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn.
Now she is in the middle of a criminal case that hinges on the intricacies of both, and it could put her behind bars for up to 40 years.
She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer. She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers’ unseen spyware and adware programs.
Prosecutors dispute that. But her argument has made her a cause célèbre among some technology experts, who say what happened to her could happen to anyone.
“I’m scared,” said Amero, 40. “I’m just beside myself over something I didn’t do.”
It all began in October 2004. Amero was assigned to a class at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, a city of about 37,000 people about 40 miles east of Hartford.
Amero says that before her class started, a teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She says she used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hairstyles.
Amero says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she says, pornographic images began popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.
“I did everything I possibly could to keep them from seeing anything,” she says.
I've had to turn a computer off. It's the only way to stop this from happening.
But what really amazes me is how technologically obtuse the prosecutors and those who doubt her story seem to be.
What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware — an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene,” Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. “When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no ‘physical click’ is necessary.”...
Principal Scott Fain said the computer lacked the latest firewall protection because a vendor’s bill had gone unpaid. “I was shocked to see what made it through,” he said.
But Fain also said Amero was the only one to report such a problem: “We’ve never had a problem with pop-ups before or since.”
Uh, do you think the vendor's bill has since been paid? Of course he hasn't had the problem since then. And in any case, I've only had that problem once or twice, so it's not a common problem. But it does happen. And tossing someone in prison for up to forty years because she didn't know what a mousetrap is seems the height of idiocy.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Bush proposes to cut Veteran's Health care after this year.
Never unpredictable, our President has proposed, in his attempt to balance the budget while preserving his massive tax cuts and fighting the Iraq war, that we continue cutting veteran's healthcare. Of course his record on veteran's issues is already dismal, having closed several V.A. hospitals and made other cuts in veterans' health care. It has on the whole risen because of the Iraq and Afghan wars, but that is despite the best efforts of this administration to oppose that.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now — even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system....
The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA's patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.
All told, the VA expects to treat about 5.8 million patients next year, including 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House budget office, however, assumes that the veterans' medical services budget — up 83 percent since Bush took office and winning a big increase in Bush's proposed 2008 budget — can absorb a 2 percent cut the following year and remain essentially frozen for three years in a row after that
Yup, support the troops.
Sometimes I don't even have to comment on some things this administration does. They speak for themselves.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now — even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system....
The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA's patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.
All told, the VA expects to treat about 5.8 million patients next year, including 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House budget office, however, assumes that the veterans' medical services budget — up 83 percent since Bush took office and winning a big increase in Bush's proposed 2008 budget — can absorb a 2 percent cut the following year and remain essentially frozen for three years in a row after that
Yup, support the troops.
Sometimes I don't even have to comment on some things this administration does. They speak for themselves.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Paraplegic dumped in skid row by hospital. Without a wheelchair.
Sadly, this isn't the first time I've had to blog on Los Angeles hospitals' unique way of dealing with the homeless. In fact, in my second post on the topic, just this past October, I wrote about how this practice had become the target of a criminal investigation.
How would you like to be discharged from the hospital, still in pain or not completely well, and dropped off someplace where you did not come from, perhaps didn't know where you were, and among people who you did not know? If someone-- homeless or not-- requests to be taken downtown, then it is fine to take them there. But absent such a request, discharge from a hospital is just that-- they can walk out the front door.
We also know that some of the homeless dumped on skid row 'paid' their hospital bill another way-- apparently being abducted, murdered and their bodies 'donated' to UCLA medical center in the infamous UCLA cadaver scandal.
But a story out today makes even that nauseating turn of events seem like old news:
a homeless paraplegic was dumped on skid row by an L.A. hospital:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A hospital van dropped off a paraplegic man on Skid Row, allegedly leaving him crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag, police said.
Witnesses who said they saw the incident Thursday wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number, which helped detectives connect the vehicle to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.
Police said the incident was a case of "homeless dumping" and were questioning officials from the hospital.
Outrage is too mild a word for what I felt when I read this story. No matter how horrid some of these stories have gotten, it's always possible to think 'well, there is still something left they won't do.' Get a hint: NO, there is nothing they won't do. If they will even toss a paralyzed hospital patient out onto the street, then these goons will do anything. In fact, this should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
I know that hospitals lose a ton of money treating the indigent (welcome to America 2007, even as our President submits a budget that calls for another round of cuts in Medicaid) but if this is the best they can do, then there is indeed a strong argument for not just increasing Medicaid payments on behalf of the indigent, but in fact just plain nationalizing some hospitals (this one would be a prime candidate). Obviously the Presbyterian Church (which apparently has lent its name to the medical center) is incapable of running an institution that shows even the most minimal level of decency.
How would you like to be discharged from the hospital, still in pain or not completely well, and dropped off someplace where you did not come from, perhaps didn't know where you were, and among people who you did not know? If someone-- homeless or not-- requests to be taken downtown, then it is fine to take them there. But absent such a request, discharge from a hospital is just that-- they can walk out the front door.
We also know that some of the homeless dumped on skid row 'paid' their hospital bill another way-- apparently being abducted, murdered and their bodies 'donated' to UCLA medical center in the infamous UCLA cadaver scandal.
But a story out today makes even that nauseating turn of events seem like old news:
a homeless paraplegic was dumped on skid row by an L.A. hospital:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A hospital van dropped off a paraplegic man on Skid Row, allegedly leaving him crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag, police said.
Witnesses who said they saw the incident Thursday wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number, which helped detectives connect the vehicle to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.
Police said the incident was a case of "homeless dumping" and were questioning officials from the hospital.
Outrage is too mild a word for what I felt when I read this story. No matter how horrid some of these stories have gotten, it's always possible to think 'well, there is still something left they won't do.' Get a hint: NO, there is nothing they won't do. If they will even toss a paralyzed hospital patient out onto the street, then these goons will do anything. In fact, this should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
I know that hospitals lose a ton of money treating the indigent (welcome to America 2007, even as our President submits a budget that calls for another round of cuts in Medicaid) but if this is the best they can do, then there is indeed a strong argument for not just increasing Medicaid payments on behalf of the indigent, but in fact just plain nationalizing some hospitals (this one would be a prime candidate). Obviously the Presbyterian Church (which apparently has lent its name to the medical center) is incapable of running an institution that shows even the most minimal level of decency.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Taliban making a comeback while we are fixated on Iraq
While all the focus is (still) on Iraq, it seems like no one is paying attention to 'the forgotten war' in Afghanistan.
Like Iraq, the situation is deteriorating and has been for over four years. Like Iraq, we have seen poor leadership from this administration that has played into why we are stuck in such a bad situation. And like Iraq, our troops have become targets in an ongoing civil war.
There is a difference however. Lest we forget, those who actually did us harm on 9/11 were hiding out in Afghanistan, not Iraq. And unlike Iraq, which was simply a war of George Bush's choice, and which was therefore not supported widely within the international community, there was very little opposition from that community to our invading the Taliban-run country.
But Afghanistan has just never been a major concern for this administration. As former President Clinton astutely noted, there are more than seven times as many American troops in Iraq as there are in and around Afghanistan. The whole argument about 'fighting terrorists over there...' falls flat on its face when we see how little the war against al-Qaeda in the place where we know for a fact they are strongest fits into the priority scheme. In fact, we even have President Bush on record:
I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.
-- George W. Bush on March 13, 2002 (more than a year before the Iraq war, but when he was starting to ratchet up the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein).
Obviously he was telling the truth when he made that quote. Because Afghanistan has not been a priority at all. Well, maybe for a few short weeks during election season (as I wrote in a post entitled Terrorism and the Afghan War (written last year, exactly two months before the November election). The President had at the time been talking a lot more about the Afghan war and al-Qaeda than he had for-- well-- since the 2004 election:
I bet that by Christmas, Afghanistan will be relegated to the same second thought that it has been over the past few years.
I was right about that. Came Christmas, and it was. Fortunately, the Bush administration had gone to that well one too many times and the American people didn't buy it.
I believe two (not necessarily contradictory) things about Afghanistan. The first is that we actually have a real reason for being there and we should stay until the Taliban and bin Laden are gone. The second, on the other hand, is that we have already compromised our position in Afghanistan because of the focus on Iraq. If we are not ready to make fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda there our priority then getting out is a much better option than continuing to fight the war of attrition we see going on right now.
Continuing to send American troops to fight and die in Afghanistan while we send the resources they would need to Iraq is the worst of all worlds, and if that is the Bush administration's plan then we owe it to our troops to get them out of there.
Like Iraq, the situation is deteriorating and has been for over four years. Like Iraq, we have seen poor leadership from this administration that has played into why we are stuck in such a bad situation. And like Iraq, our troops have become targets in an ongoing civil war.
There is a difference however. Lest we forget, those who actually did us harm on 9/11 were hiding out in Afghanistan, not Iraq. And unlike Iraq, which was simply a war of George Bush's choice, and which was therefore not supported widely within the international community, there was very little opposition from that community to our invading the Taliban-run country.
But Afghanistan has just never been a major concern for this administration. As former President Clinton astutely noted, there are more than seven times as many American troops in Iraq as there are in and around Afghanistan. The whole argument about 'fighting terrorists over there...' falls flat on its face when we see how little the war against al-Qaeda in the place where we know for a fact they are strongest fits into the priority scheme. In fact, we even have President Bush on record:
I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.
-- George W. Bush on March 13, 2002 (more than a year before the Iraq war, but when he was starting to ratchet up the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein).
Obviously he was telling the truth when he made that quote. Because Afghanistan has not been a priority at all. Well, maybe for a few short weeks during election season (as I wrote in a post entitled Terrorism and the Afghan War (written last year, exactly two months before the November election). The President had at the time been talking a lot more about the Afghan war and al-Qaeda than he had for-- well-- since the 2004 election:
I bet that by Christmas, Afghanistan will be relegated to the same second thought that it has been over the past few years.
I was right about that. Came Christmas, and it was. Fortunately, the Bush administration had gone to that well one too many times and the American people didn't buy it.
I believe two (not necessarily contradictory) things about Afghanistan. The first is that we actually have a real reason for being there and we should stay until the Taliban and bin Laden are gone. The second, on the other hand, is that we have already compromised our position in Afghanistan because of the focus on Iraq. If we are not ready to make fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda there our priority then getting out is a much better option than continuing to fight the war of attrition we see going on right now.
Continuing to send American troops to fight and die in Afghanistan while we send the resources they would need to Iraq is the worst of all worlds, and if that is the Bush administration's plan then we owe it to our troops to get them out of there.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Texas considering the death penalty for child molesters
It seems that Texas, not happy with being the number one state in the country in executions is the latest state to propose the death penalty for some child molesters.
Now, I blogged last year on why the death penalty for child molesters was both a bad idea and a sterling example of political cowardice (which is linked here). In part, I wrote:
What could be more pleasing and more just, than to execute child molesters, right? Well, no actually. I know, it's tough to make any argument against doing something to a child molester, but I will make it here.
Begin with the gut reaction. Yes, what child molesters have done is horrible. And we have to protect our children ahead of any other consideration (one reason I recently added the Code Amber Alert ticker at the top of my screen). But is executing them the answer? It is true, after all, that child molesters are that way by nature, and that they can't be truly 'cured,' even if they want to be (there is ample scientific as well as criminal evidence to back that up.) However, let me make some points why executing them is not the answer.
Start with a bald fact that I have to state anyway and which overshadows the rest of the discussion: It won't hold up in court. That is pretty much conceded by nearly all legal scholars. No one has been executed for a crime other than murder in the U.S. since the Rosenbergs were executed for a 1950 conviction for treason, for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. No one has been executed for a sex crime in the U.S. since the early part of the last century (and then child molestation wasn't even an issue, and the people executed were invariably black men convicted rightly or wrongly or raping white women.) So the courts will virtually certainly strike this down as 'cruel and unusual punishment' not proportional to the crime, and what is really infuriating is that the politicians know it better than anyone, but they are doing this to be popular...
But more to the point here is that it is exactly the kind of 'red meat politics' that has gotten us into the mess we are in today.
I used to live in Texas (only for a year, but it was an educational year, with 'Shrub' running for re-election as governor in a state that seemed to have lost its collective mind. A prime example was the race for railroad commissioner that year. One of the candidates (who ultimately won the race), instead of commenting on anything that had to do with being railroad commissioner ran ads touting his support for the death penalty. Now, it's hard to see what the railroad commissioner would have to do with the death penalty anyway, unless maybe they were considering using 'tying to the tracks ahead of the train' as a method of execution (think Snidely Whiplash) but no matter, apparently it doesn't matter if you get an unqualified lunk in the office, as long as he is pro-death penalty.
And that's the way the death penalty is in Texas. It's a little like when the Dallas Cowboys win on Sunday. People may be falling behind in their bills, have a leak in the roof and Little Johnny may be getting F's on his report card, but if the Cowboys win on Sunday then it seems like everyone in Texas feels much better on Monday. True that the bills still have to be paid, the leak still has to be fixed and Johnny still has to get caught up in school, but people think that because the Cowboys have won, their life is better somehow. The same thing with the death penalty. Never mind that everyone on death row is safely behind bars and away from the general population, or that the murder rate in Texas (6.2 per 100,000 population in 2005) is higher than the national average or for that matter than any of the twelve states that have no death penalty, nor does it matter that the man executed may not even have been guilty, nor the fact that if everyone on death row were executed tomorrow the prison population would catch up to what it is now within two weeks, the fact that some miscreant has been sent to the next life makes people feel better the next day. They still can't pay their bills, the roof still leaks, Johnny is still failing, but doggone it, we sure showed that loser a thing or two.
What is worse though is the cynical politicians who demagogue this issue (and the death penalty for child molesters, though it will be thrown out in court, is a demagogue's dream-- and when the courts throw it out then they can demagogue some more about 'liberal judges' or some such tripe and still avoid having to tackle anything that matters) because they'd rather pass this kind of bill and then bash the courts than deal with the really hard issues (and in Texas, there are a lot of them that need dealt with).
It does make the rise of Shrub a little easier to understand though.
Now, I blogged last year on why the death penalty for child molesters was both a bad idea and a sterling example of political cowardice (which is linked here). In part, I wrote:
What could be more pleasing and more just, than to execute child molesters, right? Well, no actually. I know, it's tough to make any argument against doing something to a child molester, but I will make it here.
Begin with the gut reaction. Yes, what child molesters have done is horrible. And we have to protect our children ahead of any other consideration (one reason I recently added the Code Amber Alert ticker at the top of my screen). But is executing them the answer? It is true, after all, that child molesters are that way by nature, and that they can't be truly 'cured,' even if they want to be (there is ample scientific as well as criminal evidence to back that up.) However, let me make some points why executing them is not the answer.
Start with a bald fact that I have to state anyway and which overshadows the rest of the discussion: It won't hold up in court. That is pretty much conceded by nearly all legal scholars. No one has been executed for a crime other than murder in the U.S. since the Rosenbergs were executed for a 1950 conviction for treason, for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. No one has been executed for a sex crime in the U.S. since the early part of the last century (and then child molestation wasn't even an issue, and the people executed were invariably black men convicted rightly or wrongly or raping white women.) So the courts will virtually certainly strike this down as 'cruel and unusual punishment' not proportional to the crime, and what is really infuriating is that the politicians know it better than anyone, but they are doing this to be popular...
But more to the point here is that it is exactly the kind of 'red meat politics' that has gotten us into the mess we are in today.
I used to live in Texas (only for a year, but it was an educational year, with 'Shrub' running for re-election as governor in a state that seemed to have lost its collective mind. A prime example was the race for railroad commissioner that year. One of the candidates (who ultimately won the race), instead of commenting on anything that had to do with being railroad commissioner ran ads touting his support for the death penalty. Now, it's hard to see what the railroad commissioner would have to do with the death penalty anyway, unless maybe they were considering using 'tying to the tracks ahead of the train' as a method of execution (think Snidely Whiplash) but no matter, apparently it doesn't matter if you get an unqualified lunk in the office, as long as he is pro-death penalty.
And that's the way the death penalty is in Texas. It's a little like when the Dallas Cowboys win on Sunday. People may be falling behind in their bills, have a leak in the roof and Little Johnny may be getting F's on his report card, but if the Cowboys win on Sunday then it seems like everyone in Texas feels much better on Monday. True that the bills still have to be paid, the leak still has to be fixed and Johnny still has to get caught up in school, but people think that because the Cowboys have won, their life is better somehow. The same thing with the death penalty. Never mind that everyone on death row is safely behind bars and away from the general population, or that the murder rate in Texas (6.2 per 100,000 population in 2005) is higher than the national average or for that matter than any of the twelve states that have no death penalty, nor does it matter that the man executed may not even have been guilty, nor the fact that if everyone on death row were executed tomorrow the prison population would catch up to what it is now within two weeks, the fact that some miscreant has been sent to the next life makes people feel better the next day. They still can't pay their bills, the roof still leaks, Johnny is still failing, but doggone it, we sure showed that loser a thing or two.
What is worse though is the cynical politicians who demagogue this issue (and the death penalty for child molesters, though it will be thrown out in court, is a demagogue's dream-- and when the courts throw it out then they can demagogue some more about 'liberal judges' or some such tripe and still avoid having to tackle anything that matters) because they'd rather pass this kind of bill and then bash the courts than deal with the really hard issues (and in Texas, there are a lot of them that need dealt with).
It does make the rise of Shrub a little easier to understand though.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Rush is a racist, and nothing brings that out like the NFL
Today while discussing the Super Bowl, Rush Limbaugh went into a tirade about how the media wanted Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman to fail (which Grossman did, throwing a pair of late interceptions and adding two fumbles to make a strong case for why he should be Super Bowl MVP-- for the Colts.) It is true that last week the media kept asking whether Grossman might be the worst Super Bowl quarterback ever (which he also made a case for yesterday).
Rush then inserted two words that he used to explain why the media was (as he put it) 'rooting for Grossman to fail,' and those two words, almost inserted as an afterthought were 'white quarterback.' Of course words that people casually insert into a conversation often tell much more about who they really are and how they think than what they think through before they say.
His comment is in fact stupid on the face of it. Not only were the media simultaneously commenting on how superlatively good (white) Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning was (so that the notion that they root for white quarterbacks to fail is plainly absurd), but the reason for the negative questions about Rex was because we've seen the 'bad Rex' this year, and he has been really, really bad (as he showed the world last night). It was really a question of which Rex Grossman would show up-- he is inconsistent, and there is no way around it.
There was a racial angle on the game, to be sure, but it had nothing to do with the quarterback matchup-- the notion that black quarterbacks weren't as good as white quarterbacks was ended when Doug Williams and Washington won big almost twenty years ago. The racial angle yesterday was that two black coaches, Tony Dungy of Indianapolis and Lovie Smith of Chicago, both directed their clubs to the Super Bowl and Dungy became the first black coach to win a Super Bowl (which the NFL has done an outstanding job of ending racial hiring preferences across the league-- too bad that college football hasn't done the same).
What is really amazing is that this isn't the first time that Rush has talked about media coverage of a quarterback and added race into the equation. Recall that in 2003 he lost his job providing commentary on Monday Night Football by saying that Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb was 'overrated' because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed (again, that was over 15 years after Williams' performance in Super Bowl XXII had ended the race issue in regard to quarterbacks for anyone other than obdurate racists like Limbaugh shows himself to be).
Rush then inserted two words that he used to explain why the media was (as he put it) 'rooting for Grossman to fail,' and those two words, almost inserted as an afterthought were 'white quarterback.' Of course words that people casually insert into a conversation often tell much more about who they really are and how they think than what they think through before they say.
His comment is in fact stupid on the face of it. Not only were the media simultaneously commenting on how superlatively good (white) Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning was (so that the notion that they root for white quarterbacks to fail is plainly absurd), but the reason for the negative questions about Rex was because we've seen the 'bad Rex' this year, and he has been really, really bad (as he showed the world last night). It was really a question of which Rex Grossman would show up-- he is inconsistent, and there is no way around it.
There was a racial angle on the game, to be sure, but it had nothing to do with the quarterback matchup-- the notion that black quarterbacks weren't as good as white quarterbacks was ended when Doug Williams and Washington won big almost twenty years ago. The racial angle yesterday was that two black coaches, Tony Dungy of Indianapolis and Lovie Smith of Chicago, both directed their clubs to the Super Bowl and Dungy became the first black coach to win a Super Bowl (which the NFL has done an outstanding job of ending racial hiring preferences across the league-- too bad that college football hasn't done the same).
What is really amazing is that this isn't the first time that Rush has talked about media coverage of a quarterback and added race into the equation. Recall that in 2003 he lost his job providing commentary on Monday Night Football by saying that Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb was 'overrated' because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed (again, that was over 15 years after Williams' performance in Super Bowl XXII had ended the race issue in regard to quarterbacks for anyone other than obdurate racists like Limbaugh shows himself to be).
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Randy Pullen drives away GOP staff.
2006 was a bad year for the Republican party in Arizona. Arizona was one of three states west of the Mississippi river where the GOP lost multiple seats in Congress (the other two were Texas and Iowa). Governor Napolitano and Attorney General Goddard were re-elected by huge margins. Hardliner Len Munsil got absolutely crushed in the Governor's race. And in the legislature the GOP lost six house seats and one in the Senate. Symptomatic of their problems were their steadfast insistence on nominating hardliners. Anti-immigration hardliner Randy Graf lost big to Gabrielle Giffords in the race for an open seat in Congress, after Graf had beaten out two more moderate Republicans in the primary, and in house district 26 the hardline conservatives in the GOP kicked out two moderate Republicans in their primary in order to nominate two hardliners from what can be considered the 'nutbag right,' and ended up with two Democrats instead (here in Arizona legislative districts are represented by two house members and one senator).
One would think that given the disastrous performance of hardline candidates and their issues (even the gay marriage amendment failed here in Arizona) that some common sense would prevail in the party and that members of the GOP would realize that if they want to win in the next round of elections they need to nominate candidates who are more palatable to the voters.
One would think that, but one would be wrong.
Last week they picked ultra hard-liner Randy Pullen as their party chair. It seems as if they have it in their mind that the harder to the right they run, the better it will go for them. They seem to think that if they control the party apparatus of the party with the larger number of registered voters then they will run the state. Only they are wrong. Republicans are overall a diminishing minority in Arizona (the real growth has been among registered independents) and it is hard to see how candidates of the type that a Randy Pullen would support would be very appealing to most independents (or for that matter to a lot of moderate Republicans-- remember that Janet Napolitano got the votes of a third of all the Republicans who voted on election day-- so one out of three Republicans would prefer a competent Democrat to a hardliner like Munsil.)
And the staff at the state GOP is voting with their feet. the paid staff has resigned. They'd rather start sending out resumes than work for Randy Pullen.
It is hard to think of anything other than a guy with his foot on the accelerator thinking only of getting ahead, while the parts of the car are falling out behind him.
Should be an interesting election cycle.
One would think that given the disastrous performance of hardline candidates and their issues (even the gay marriage amendment failed here in Arizona) that some common sense would prevail in the party and that members of the GOP would realize that if they want to win in the next round of elections they need to nominate candidates who are more palatable to the voters.
One would think that, but one would be wrong.
Last week they picked ultra hard-liner Randy Pullen as their party chair. It seems as if they have it in their mind that the harder to the right they run, the better it will go for them. They seem to think that if they control the party apparatus of the party with the larger number of registered voters then they will run the state. Only they are wrong. Republicans are overall a diminishing minority in Arizona (the real growth has been among registered independents) and it is hard to see how candidates of the type that a Randy Pullen would support would be very appealing to most independents (or for that matter to a lot of moderate Republicans-- remember that Janet Napolitano got the votes of a third of all the Republicans who voted on election day-- so one out of three Republicans would prefer a competent Democrat to a hardliner like Munsil.)
And the staff at the state GOP is voting with their feet. the paid staff has resigned. They'd rather start sending out resumes than work for Randy Pullen.
It is hard to think of anything other than a guy with his foot on the accelerator thinking only of getting ahead, while the parts of the car are falling out behind him.
Should be an interesting election cycle.
There are very few things you can get for free anymore, and blogger is one of them. And I appreciate it.
But I've seen how some (mostly right leaning sites) have pitched a hissy fit over the latest round of glitches to hit blogger.
So let me post what I wrote on one of them (specifically Althouse:)
UH, HELLO!!!
This service is, like, FREE!!!
There is an old adage that you get what you pay for.
I expect that the people who complain about blogger are mostly the same kind of people (generally conservatives) who want something for nothing-- they rush to cut taxes but then they are the first ones in line to complain when police patrols get cut back, the school is a little slower about fixing a leak in the roof, or the city starts collecting trash once a week instead of twice a week.
As long as I'm paying nothing for the service, I appreciate whatever the folks at Google do to provide me with this FREE service and I don't complain about the glitches.
I wonder why righties always want to look a gift horse in the mouth?
So let me post what I wrote on one of them (specifically Althouse:)
UH, HELLO!!!
This service is, like, FREE!!!
There is an old adage that you get what you pay for.
I expect that the people who complain about blogger are mostly the same kind of people (generally conservatives) who want something for nothing-- they rush to cut taxes but then they are the first ones in line to complain when police patrols get cut back, the school is a little slower about fixing a leak in the roof, or the city starts collecting trash once a week instead of twice a week.
As long as I'm paying nothing for the service, I appreciate whatever the folks at Google do to provide me with this FREE service and I don't complain about the glitches.
I wonder why righties always want to look a gift horse in the mouth?
Molly Ivins leaves us with a last word:
Molly Ivins died yesterday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was sixty two.
I thought about a lot of things I could say about her. Her insightful columns were all at the same time funny, authoritative, thought-inspiring, fun to read and enjoyable. Certainly we on the left have lost a very articulate voice.
She has been very outspoken about a number of topics during the past few years, especially the Patriot Act. She has wondered openly why we are so afraid that we are willing to sacrifice basic freedoms for the perception of increased security. So I could have done something on that.
But instead I will post Ivins' last column, against the troop surge. In many ways it is classic Molly Ivins, but it also seems more humorless and direct than some of her ealier columns (of course it hard to make light of the horrible situation we now find ourselves in in Iraq, so she can be excused for not being more humorous here). She clearly died much before it was time. She says much in here that I agree with, and she as usual calls it like she sees it:
The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that WE simply cannot let it continue.
It is not a matter of whether we will lose or we are losing. We have lost. Gen. John P. Abizaid, until recently the senior commander in the Middle East, insists that the answer to our problems there is not military. "You have to internationalize the problem. You have to attack it diplomatically, geo-strategically," he said.
His assessment is supported by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who only recommend releasing forces with a clear definition of the goals for the additional troops.
Bush's call for a "surge" or "escalation" also goes against the Iraq Study Group. Talk is that the White House has planned to do anything but what the group suggested after months of investigation and proposals based on much broader strategic implications.
About the only politician out there besides Bush actively calling for a surge is Sen. John McCain. In a recent opinion piece, he wrote: "The presence of additional coalition forces would allow the Iraqi government to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own — impose its rule throughout the country. ... By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed." But with all due respect to the senator from Arizona, that ship has long since sailed.
A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country — we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls.
We know this is wrong. The people understand, the people have the right to make this decision, and the people have the obligation to make sure our will is implemented.
Congress must work for the people in the resolution of this fiasco. Ted Kennedy's proposal to control the money and tighten oversight is a welcome first step. And if Republicans want to continue to rubber-stamp this administration's idiotic "plans" and go against the will of the people, they should be thrown out as soon as possible, to join their recent colleagues.
Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." It's like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so stupid?
As The Washington Post's review notes, Chandrasekaran's book "methodically documents the baffling ineptitude that dominated U.S. attempts to influence Iraq's fiendish politics, rebuild the electrical grid, privatize the economy, run the oil industry, recruit expert staff or instill a modicum of normalcy to the lives of Iraqis."
We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"
I thought about a lot of things I could say about her. Her insightful columns were all at the same time funny, authoritative, thought-inspiring, fun to read and enjoyable. Certainly we on the left have lost a very articulate voice.
She has been very outspoken about a number of topics during the past few years, especially the Patriot Act. She has wondered openly why we are so afraid that we are willing to sacrifice basic freedoms for the perception of increased security. So I could have done something on that.
But instead I will post Ivins' last column, against the troop surge. In many ways it is classic Molly Ivins, but it also seems more humorless and direct than some of her ealier columns (of course it hard to make light of the horrible situation we now find ourselves in in Iraq, so she can be excused for not being more humorous here). She clearly died much before it was time. She says much in here that I agree with, and she as usual calls it like she sees it:
The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that WE simply cannot let it continue.
It is not a matter of whether we will lose or we are losing. We have lost. Gen. John P. Abizaid, until recently the senior commander in the Middle East, insists that the answer to our problems there is not military. "You have to internationalize the problem. You have to attack it diplomatically, geo-strategically," he said.
His assessment is supported by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who only recommend releasing forces with a clear definition of the goals for the additional troops.
Bush's call for a "surge" or "escalation" also goes against the Iraq Study Group. Talk is that the White House has planned to do anything but what the group suggested after months of investigation and proposals based on much broader strategic implications.
About the only politician out there besides Bush actively calling for a surge is Sen. John McCain. In a recent opinion piece, he wrote: "The presence of additional coalition forces would allow the Iraqi government to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own — impose its rule throughout the country. ... By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed." But with all due respect to the senator from Arizona, that ship has long since sailed.
A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country — we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls.
We know this is wrong. The people understand, the people have the right to make this decision, and the people have the obligation to make sure our will is implemented.
Congress must work for the people in the resolution of this fiasco. Ted Kennedy's proposal to control the money and tighten oversight is a welcome first step. And if Republicans want to continue to rubber-stamp this administration's idiotic "plans" and go against the will of the people, they should be thrown out as soon as possible, to join their recent colleagues.
Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." It's like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so stupid?
As The Washington Post's review notes, Chandrasekaran's book "methodically documents the baffling ineptitude that dominated U.S. attempts to influence Iraq's fiendish politics, rebuild the electrical grid, privatize the economy, run the oil industry, recruit expert staff or instill a modicum of normalcy to the lives of Iraqis."
We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"
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