New student aid law a huge step forward.

Today President Bush signed a landmark piece of legislation that was sent to him by the Democratic Congress. The legislation, called the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, does what the Republican Congress failed to do: help financial aid keep up with the skyrocketing costs of college that have made it unaffordable for millions of would-be students.

The bill will expand the PELL program by $11.4 billion over the next five years and increase the maximum PELL grant from $4,310 in 2007 to $5,400 by 2012. While this is not everything that it could be (with many students even at state universities having to pay upwards of $25,000 annually for tuition, fees, books, room and board, and other expenses), it does represent a realization of how fast college costs have been increasing as state and federal budget cuts force college boards to increase tuition and fees by large amounts and on a yearly or almost yearly basis.

Beyond that, the bill does a lot of other things. For example, it allows active duty members of the military to defer their payments while they are in the service, and even for a year after they leave. It is amazing to me that with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this had not been attended to earlier, but I guess it takes a Democratic Congress to do more for our servicemen and servicewomen than just say nice things about them and wave a flag around. It also cuts the interest rate on Federally backed student loans in half, making repayment easier for students who leave college with a mountain of debt and then have to pay it back while they are just starting on their careers.

In fact, if those careers involve teaching, the bill goes even farther-- it gives students the option to actually have student debt forgiven if they teach for at least a few years after college. Local school districts are limited by their budgets and often cannot afford to compete for the best talent from universities because they can't pay as much as they could earn in the private sector. But this provision in the law amounts to a huge strengthening of the hand of school boards, as a teaching job will now be much more competitive with private sector jobs even though the school board may not have to spend a dime more than they would have. More to the point, this represents a real and concrete investment in education.

The President issued a terse signing statement in which he expressed his displeasure with certain aspects of the law (though he did sign it) but nevertheless it is a law today.

And don't let anyone lie to you-- this was a huge achievement by Congress with the reluctant agreement of the President. It is a very big step forward.

More thoughts on the Jeffs verdict, polygamy and child abuse.

I would like to clarify something regarding the last post I put up regarding the conviction of Warren Jeffs as an accessory to rape, as well as several others (notably the post I did on the Lost Boys of Colorado City and Hildale) in which I've been quite critical of Jeffs and the FLDS Church (which I will again mention has nothing at all to do with and has been completely disavowed by the mainline LDS Church, of which I am a member and which banned polygamy over a century ago.)

One of the jurors who served on the Jeffs jury (identified in today's Arizona Republic as Jerry Munk) summed it up best when asked about the defense argument that the victim, Elissa Walls, never cried rape or talked to her family members about her experience or feelings about it while it was happening.

"She was fourteen," Munk said. "She didn't have to say anything for a rape to occur."

Exactly. And I will even say that I think that Utah's law, which grants a three year near-age exemption in the case of underage children makes a heck of a lot of sense, especially when compared, for example, to the Georgia law that is responsible for Genarlow Wilson continuing to sit in prison and rot and then register as a sex offender for having consensual teenage sex with another student at the high school he went to.

I've always said that I don't care what goes on between consenting adults. My problem with FLDS is that they are responsible for a great deal of evil in the lives of their own children, forcing teenage girls to be raped and abandoning teenage boys to make their way in the world with practically no preparation or knowledge about how to survive in it.

Polygamists, including FLDS are free to practice their religion. But they can let their children wait until adulthood to be able to make adult decisions. To be honest, I've never thought that polygamy itself should be a crime (especially since it leads to many grey areas, with the worsening economy making it more and more common for more than two unrelated adults to live together, with or without any of them having a formal marriage; are they going to make it a crime only if some of them are having more than a monogamous relationship within the household? And how do they determine that?) For that matter, many people, including muslims (1/5 of the world's population) belong to religions which allow the practice of polygamy. If a muslim man with three wives were to come to America from someplace else, are his wives no longer married to him? According to our own laws, they can't all be, but likely he has a valid marriage certificate for each of them from whatever country they were married in.

This case is not, however, about freedom of religion. It's about a crime involving children. There are already legitimate examples of where laws do limit what churches can do. For example, if a church believed in human sacrifice the person who carried it out and those who helped them could still be held liable for murder (for example, Sara Maria Aldrete, who was the high priestess of a bizarre cult located in Matamoros, Mexico and who is known to have murdered several people in ritual sacrifices including a University of Texas student named Mark Kilroy who was kidnapped for the purpose.

However, I know of no doctrine within polygamous religions which mandate that children younger than eighteen must be married. They can wait until eighteen. At that, I would point out that eighteen is indeed an arbitrary number-- I've certainly known some fourteen year olds who probably knew more about sex and its consequences than a lot of older adults, and I've also known thirty year olds who are remarkably ignorant about it (likely that group also includes many FLDS-raised men, who were cast out as Lost Boys in order to unbalance the gender ratio for the benefit of polygamists, years ago with no social skills at all, having never been permitted to talk to a female other than their mothers and still survive just on the edges of society). But since there is no test for maturity, we as a society have set eighteen years old as the age at which we consider a person to be an adult. So at the very least, I hope that the FLDS realizes from yesterday's verdict that children at least must be protected and nurtured, and with that perhaps even educated so that they can make their own decisions or survive in the world outside of the confines of the border straddling community.

One can hope that, anyway. Though knowing what I do about FLDS (which is more than many people know) my belief is that they will consider it an act of persecution by the outside world and maybe even a step towards the apocalypse.

Bush suggests opposing junta in Myanmar, three years after his campaign broke the law to buy campaign wear from there

Today George Bush tried to shift the focus away from his botched job in Iraq and focused on the demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in Myanmar (formerly Burma) against the dictatorship there.

I would love to see the junta go, and there is no doubt that they are among the worst violators of human rights in the world, but it is interesting that the President should discover this now.

He certainly didn't care about it in 2004, when his campaign broke the law to purchase campaign gear from Burma!

The official merchandise Web site for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign has sold clothing made in Burma, whose goods were banned by Bush from the U.S. last year to punish its military dictatorship.

The merchandise sold on www.georgewbushstore.com includes a $49.95 fleece pullover, embroidered with the Bush-Cheney '04 logo and bearing a label stating it was made in Burma, now Myanmar. The jacket was sent to Newsday as part of an order that included a shirt made in Mexico and a hat not bearing a country-of-origin label.

Poor Bush. I'd call him a hypocrite for this, but I'm not sure that's the whole story. The truth is, he's accumulated so much crap by now that he can't even keep track of it all.

Warren Jeffs convicted.

Breaking news: The jury up in St. George has convicted FLDS leader Warren Jeffs of being an accessory to rape. Justice has been served in the case of Elissa Walls, who at the age of fourteen was forced into a marriage with her nineteen year old cousin by Warren Jeffs.

I don't expect that despite the conviction the FLDS will just disband and go away, and we have to keep in mind that it remains as it always has been, a very closed and tight-knit community. However, this is nevertheless a victory for justice, and it sends a clear message that whatever the polygamists do (and I've said many times that I don't care what kind of relationship consenting adults have, including polygamous ones), that children should be left alone and allowed to make their own decisions.

America's Hessians may also be involved in arms smuggling.

Hot on the heels of the alleged killings of over 20 Iraqi civilians by mercenaries employed by Blackwater USA, comes a new allegation, that Blackwater Hessians are involved in illicit arms sales. Specifically, the probe focuses on evidence that some mercenaries employed by Blackwater bought assault rifles and other weapons while they were home in America and sold them to willing buyers in Iraq-- which I'm sure it isn't hard to find some. The company itself has denied involvement and called claims that the company itself was involved in illegal arms sales 'baseless' but has pointedly not said the same about its employees, in light of a statement by State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard this week which seemed to confirm an ongoing investigation into arms smuggling by Blackwater employees.

Of course after a brief suspension following the shooting incident Blackwater was ordered back to work over the objections of the Iraqi government and is back to doing the same tasks it has done in the past-- tasks involving security and escorting of convoys, including military supply convoys and individuals that normally in past wars have been assigned to the military. And the truth is that our already overstrained military, overextended even farther by the 'surge' to a troop level that they cannot maintain permanently (hence the call for a troop reduction back to pre-surge levels by the Bush administration despite the failure of the Iraqi government to make any progress towards a political solution-- the stated objective of the 'surge.') Hence the reliance on mercenaries (most, but not all of the Blackwater employees are Americans, but there are also many foreign mercenaries, some former members of armies known to have committed large scale atrocities in the past.) Bill Berkowitz' expose in March of 2005 (a month before the infamous Fallujah incident involving the death of four Blackwater employees) focused on their recruiting efforts among the armies of the former apartheid regime in South Africa and the Pinochet regime in Chile-- both well schooled in human rights violations.

Well, is this latest news about gun-running surprising? When you hire mercenaries then you have to expect them to act like--- well, mercenaries.

When I first wrote abou Blackwater, back a couple of years ago, I wrote,

What has changed is that mercenaries today are no longer 'independent contractors' as they traditionally have been. Because they are now managed and formed into commando units by companies like Blackwater (as well as DynCorp and a few others), it is only necessary to contract with the company. Because rules of engagement for paramilitary forces are not well defined, our government has found them useful in missions that the traditional army might not be able to undertake for political reasons, for example, operations that carry a high risk of civilian casualties, military operations within the borders of the United States or against U.S. citizens, or operations in which it is foreseen that some of the traditional rules of engagement might not apply. If the mercenaries break some of the rules, there is either the benefit of deniability, or the ability to fire the 'security contractors' without admitting guilt.

And that may be the case here. Blackwater can in fact deny direct involvement in either the shooting incident or the arms smuggling, and fire the employees found to be directly responsible while setting the tone and officially following the same loose 'hands-off' policy that the Defense Department claimed to be following when the Abu Graib scandal broke.

Warren Jeffs Trial

I wrote last year upon the occasion of the arrest of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS polygamist cult,

So Warren Jeffs has presided over a community in which 13 year old girls are raped, and 13 year old boys are dumped on the street with nothing and told not to come back....

Over the past three years, under the leadership of Arizona authorities, primarily Attorney General Terry Goddard, along with authorities in Utah, progress has been made in gaining control over the group. The resources of the church (which includes all the polygamist homes-- none of the people who live in them actually own their building) have been ordered by a judge to be controlled by a group of outside trustees for the benefit of the community and individuals within it. Where crimes are discovered, they have been prosecuted, and in particular Jeffs will now be prosecuted.

And that will hopefully be the beginning of the end for this nightmare of what amounts to sexual slavery, or of exile, for the children of Colorado City and Hildale.

As I've said many times, I don't care what any consenting adult does with any other consenting adult, but in this case, there is much justice that needs to, and I hope will, be served in our court system.

Jeffs is specifically being tried in St. George for his role in forcing a then-fourteen year old girl to marry her cousin. Today his defense got their turn and tried to undermine the testimony of the victim (who is now 21 and has fled the church) by getting her to say she never cried 'rape.' In fact, her case is somewhat unusual in that she was actually her cousin's first wife, and her cousin was 19 at the time, while some young girls have had to marry men as old as in their sixties and become plural wives.

WHAT?! That's supposed to be a defense? How likely is it that a fourteen year old, who has been told by someone who she believes is a prophet of God (Jeffs) that she will be eternally damned if she does not go along with it, will scream 'rape' when she is being ravaged by someone who as far as she knows is her lawful husband? I'd like to ask whether any female children growing up in Colorado City or Hildale were ever advised to scream, 'rape' if they were married against their will.

Warren Jeffs is simply put a man who has done a great deal of harm to the young people in his community. Two years ago, I blogged on The Real Lost Boys: And it's Usually Not a Happy Ending about the young teenage men of Colorado City and Hildale who are dumped out into the world possessing rudimentary construction skills, zero social skills and in many cases have never read any book other than the Bible or the Book of Mormon. Many of them end up in prison, on drugs or dead, while others live on the fringes of society in small groups all over southern Utah looking for whatever work they can find.

And the Lost Boys continue to be an overlooked issue (though last year Jeffs and his associates settled a civil suit filed by six of them). However this trial is focused on what happened to the girls.

And that is just as ugly, if not uglier than what he has done to the boys. Young girls forced to marry, often to men old enough to be their father (and then being their fourth or fifth wife at that.) They are raped, and forced to obey, with the knowledge that they will be beaten if they do not (and with the always present admonition from Jeffs that damnation awaits them if they don't obey.) Then later they have to raise their own daughters to a similar fate, and pray that their sons are among the lucky few who get to stay.

I hope that this prosecution is successful. Deconstructing the web of lies, bondage and misery that is at the core of FLDS will take time, but a successful prosecution of Warren Jeffs will be a giant step in that direction.

I hope God has a sense of humor. Otherwise, I'd want to avoid Nebraska right now.

Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. He is claiming that God has made and fulfilled numerous terroristic threats, including "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like." Anyway, at least we know Senator Chambers has a pretty good onomatopoedic vocabulary.

He says he wants to make a point about frivolous lawsuits.

Yeah.

I wonder if God was also trying to send Senator Chambers a message Saturday when the Cornhuskers lost at home, 49-31 to number one Southern California.

President outfoxes us and gets us to 'stay the course.'

Last December I wrote a post called, Don't buy into George Bush's Iraq trap.

In it, I discussed what were then new plans for a so-called 'troop surge.' While I was wrong in predicting that the proposed troop surge would never even occur, it seems that I was right in my basic premise-- that it was all about framing the argument in a way that would allow the administration to 'stay the course.'

I wrote back then,

is shifting the frame of the debate. Instead of it being between 'stay the course' (his position) and 'withdraw' (the progressive position) which he would certainly lose, what he plans to do is try and get people debating the 'surge' (i.e. ratcheting up the war.) Those opposed are then debating against increasing troops, and as such are by default arguing only to not increase them (i.e. maintaining current levels-- 'staying the course.') He knows he doesn't have the votes in the new Congress to win, but what he is trying to do is play the Democrats for chumps, and get people to forget that we were talking about how to get out. Then he can lose the vote in Congress but still end up 'staying the course' (what he wants anyway). Only then that will become the the Democratic position (because it was in opposition to his 'new' position), and then if Iraq continues to deteriorate (as it will) and we continue to lose American troops (which we will) then it becomes the fault of Democrats.

In other words, he is trying to unload his lemon onto us.

If we fall for that, then we really are stupid. But unfortunately, based on what I've heard, there are some on the left who seem ready to take up this no-win debate.

Fast forward to today. The 'surge' is well underway, and this week the President announced that there will be a reduction of 30,000 troops by the middle of next year-- in other words back to the level they were at just before the 'surge'! Yup, you got it-- he is well on his way to maneuvering us into staying the course!!

Militarily, it could be argued that the surge has achieved some objectives, but then the same could be said of the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq as well. Politically the reconciliation which the surge was supposed to ensure still has not happened. If sectarian killings are down it is largely because so many predominantly Sunni or predominantly Shi'ite areas have been 'purified' (as Iraqis call it) and segregation created by driving out those minorities who did live there. On top of that, August showed an uptick in the number of civilian deaths. While this figure may to a degree reflect a series of bombings that killed 500 in one day in northern Iraq, it is clear that the surge has not stopped violence in Iraq, but at best has given it a brief respite. And even the most heralded 'success' in Iraq, the Sunni leaders in Anbar banding together to drive out al-Qaeda, was already happening before the 'surge' began and really has little to do with it.

But let's be clear what this was. It was a maneuver to buy a year for the President's failed policy so he could run out the clock on his mess, and it is no more or less than that.

Bush unifies the world, America-- against him.

Six years ago, nearly everyone in the world was united in support of the U.S. and President Bush. Six years ago he had 90% approval.

Today most people in the world are united again. And so are most of the American people. In opposition to the same President and his ruinous war in Iraq.

The only real claim that comes close to the elusive 'victory' they can point to after six months of the surge is that Sunni sheikhs in Anbar province have kicked out al-Qaeda. But that was already starting to happen before the surge, and the political reconciliation that was supposed to happen, has not happened.

Meanwhile, American deaths and maimed continue to pile up, and the cost of the war is rapidly approaching half a trillion dollars. I hope that when the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2010 that Democrats have the fortitude to respond to righties who claim it will be a 'tax increase' by simply saying, "all that the previous administration spent on Iraq was borrowed, and now it's time to pay the bill for it."

That line would even find a lot of supporters for returning to the Clinton tax rates.

See, isn't Bush a miracle worker? Everything he touches turns to garbage-- and it's something you can count on.

Liberal and conservative brains function differently.

A researcher in Chicago has come up with empirical, scientific evidence that the brains of liberals and conservatives operate differently. And in particular, it appears that liberals show more flexibility in their thinking.

Judy Peres
Chicago Tribune
Sept. 10, 2007 12:00 AM

CHICAGO - The differences between liberals and conservatives may run deeper than how they feel about welfare reform or the Iraq war: Researchers reported Sunday that their brains may actually work differently.

Psychologist David Amodio, a professor at New York University, found that the brain's anterior cingulate cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberal.

The region helps people shift gears when responses would be inappropriate, backing the notion that liberals are more flexible in their thinking.

In the study, 43 students registered their political attitudes from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. Then they completed a computer test called "Go/No-Go" while their brain activity was tracked.

Subjects were told to quickly press "Go" each time the letter M flashed, but not when a W was displayed.

Amodio said the "Go" stimulus came up 400 out of 500 times, so "they're sitting there getting in the habit of pressing this button. But 20 percent of the time, the 'No Go' stimulus comes up; it's unexpected."

Subjects who rated themselves more liberal had higher scores for accuracy, Amodio said. But, more important, they also showed stronger electrical activity when the "No Go" cues were presented, indicating that more neurons were firing.

So liberals show more flexibility in their thinking, and it is because more neurons are firing. Aside from proving the old adage that conservatives only know one way to accomplish anything, it seems to suggest that liberals' brains are working harder.

So next time you meet a conservative, don't judge him or her too harshly. Conservatism may not be a matter of choice. It may be that he or she is suffering from a mental condition that causes a slower, less adaptable mode of thinking, of which conservatism is only a symptom.

Hmmmm... Most synapses have some kind of a chemical stimulus. So maybe we can work on developing a 'liberal pill,' which if taken in the proper doses will cure the conservative of this debilitating condition and allow for more rational thinking.

THAT'S HOT! OK Paris, now sue me.

In my last post I said that there are some words (in particular the post was about the use of the 'n' word) that should never be used. In the last paragraph though I linked to a post I did last January opposing an attempt to make it illegal.

That is because however I may feel about the language, I don't believe that anyone has the right to wall off the lexicography. And that goes not only for reasons of my opposition to censorship based on the first amendment, but also the belief that no one should be able to wall off any commonly used phrase just to make a buck, or because they think they are so special that no one should be able to use it.

And that is where I find that I side with the Hallmark Greeting Card company, which is now being sued by Paris Hilton.

The issue is a card parodying Paris, in which they use her patented phrase, "That's hot." No, I don't mean just patented in the sense that say Donald Trump is associated with "You're fired" or the late Harry Caray was associated with, "Holy Cow." I mean, 'patented.' You see, Paris apparently took out a trademark last February on the phrase, "That's hot." Meaning that (at least as she sees it) if anyone (such as Hallmark) uses the phrase, particularly in the context of anything having to do with Paris, they either have to pay her or desist from using those words. I guess what with all that partying and her stint in jail, she doesn't have enough to do besides suing anyone who says, 'that's hot.'

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against trademarks, patents or copyrights. They are necessary and protect legitimate intellectual and business property rights. My only beef is frankly the cost-- I've personally invented at least two things which would likely be profitable, but not being already wealthy I decided that the (at least a few years ago) $7,000 patent fee and scads of paperwork wasn't worth it for things which I'd then need to find a marketer for before I could see if they sold. But as far as trademarks are concerned, they do protect legitimate businesses from people who would try to cash in on their names or products and in the process steal business, compete unfairly and possibly damage the reputation of the legitimate trademark holders. For example, to cite where Paris' fortune came from, if I ever decide to open a hotel, I cannot call it the 'Hilton Hotel,' because that name has been taken and Conrad Hilton* spent a lifetime building it into an internationally respected name, and his heirs and successors have continued to operate it in a way that speaks to certain standards and beliefs. I would simply have to choose some other name.

But a catchword, especially one that a lot of people use (honestly, does anyone think that Paris was the one to come up with the phrase, 'That's hot' or even the one to popularize it? I expect that people said, 'that's hot' a long time before Paris ever did) just isn't something that anyone can or should have the right to segregate away from the rest of the language into their own private little room.

It is hard to see how Paris can claim that she is being harmed by the Hallmark Company either. They are making fun of her in the card. Parody is recognized as a protected form of expression, and besides that-- well if I had a nickel for everytime someone has made Paris Hilton the butt of a joke...

Ironically, Hallmark, which does have a trademark, has proprietary rights to the card and the images and text on it (taken as a whole). But for Paris to claim that they should be paying her for saying, 'that's hot' in a card which is poking fun at her shows that whatever Paris claims to have learned about reality from jail, it is only a claim. Like Leona Helmsley, she still thinks that there are some things that she only has the right to. So Paris, I'm telling ya, 'That's hot!' Now sue me too.

*--As a matter of fact, I've eaten at the small cafe known as the Owl (whose owners have since built a monstrosity of a building by the same name in Albuquerque) in the hamlet of San Antonio, New Mexico where the bar was the very same bar that Conrad Hilton served drinks behind at the age of eight when he was working in his father's saloon. Before I met my wife, she lived in a house just a couple of hundred yards from that small hole-in-the-wall (but dang, the green chili cheeseburgers....) I honestly doubt if Paris Hilton has ever been there-- too small, too isolated, too out of the way. But maybe she should go there. I'm sure that in the many long hours that young Conrad served drinks to customers behind the bar (of course that would be illegal today, but in those days....) he learned a few things about hard work, integrity and customer service.

Comedian kicked off stage for using the 'n'-word.

Kudos to Earl Graves.

Black comedian Eddie Griffin started into a comedy routine in which he repeatedly used the n-word. So Graves, the Black Enterprise founder who was in charge of the show, cut the power to Griffin's mike and announced to the audience that the act was over.

Griffin was 10 minutes into a comedy routine peppered with the N-word, asking the audience "Why are some black leaders telling us to stop using the N-word?"

An unexpected punch line came when Griffin's microphone suddenly went dead and Black Enterprise founder and bossman Earl Graves appeared onstage, like the fabled executioner at Harlem's Apollo Theater, to declare Griffin's set over and done with.

"We at Black Enterprise will not allow our culture to go backwards," said Graves. "Black Enterprise stands for decency, black culture and dignity and we will pay Mr. Griffin all that we owe him - but we will not allow him to finish the show if that's the way he's going to talk."

The crowd went wild. Graves got a standing ovation.

Griffin, who apparently wasn't finished making an ass of himself, reportedly wandered back onstage, hurled an obscenity at his audience and vanished.

There is no excuse for anyone, anywhere to use the 'n'-word. It shouldn't be illegal (as I blogged on last January when a community in Texas tried to make it illegal, but using it-- for any reason-- should be unacceptable.

After burying one daughter, family will pay an arm and a leg for the other.

There is a tragic story out of Chloride, in the northwestern part of the state, today about two sisters, ages 10 and 13 who were riding an ATV and fell into a mine shaft, over 100 feet deep. After spending the night in the mine one girl was found dead while the other was transported to a Las Vegas hospital where she is recovering from serious injuries from the accident. It is likely that the mineshaft, which was obscured by brush, is about a hundred years old (when prospectors often dug mines and simply abandoned them when they either didn't find what they were looking for or it ran out.) There has never been a comprehensive map or attempt made to fence off (or at least mark) the locations of these hazards-in-waiting. So most probably, nobody can be held legally responsible for this accident.

Not much is known about this situation yet, but it is known that the girls' family live in a small trailer among several others-- in other words, they are not wealthy. I don't know if they are covered by a health insurance plan or not(*- in the comments a commenter indicates that they ARE NOT insured), but even if they are, this tragedy will certainly cost them thousands of dollars. If they are not, then they will likely have to go bankrupt and still be on the hook for enormous hospital costs. Forget any possibility of paying for college-- in falling down that mineshaft, the cost was quite likely the surviving girls' future. In any other developed country (and even most developing nations) her cost of treatment would be covered or at least affordable. But in America, if her parents had any college savings it will go to pay the bills.

Right now, a small business in the town I live in is collecting change, mostly in nickels and dimes to pay the hospital costs of one of their employees. She was involved in a horrible accident last month in which her father was fatally injured and her mother is still hospitalized. The woman who works at the small business herself suffered a broken back, was in the hospital for a couple fo weeks and faces months of rehab. And her health insurance is of the cheap variety (what her employer offers), so they won't pay much of it. The change jar has collected so far about $900 in small change, nickels and dimes. Maybe that will pay for one night of hospitalization. But while recovering herself, burying her father and doing everything she can for her mother, she will get bills arriving likely in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Several years ago, a family here had to sell their farm to pay for the cost of cancer treatment for the patriarch of the family (who died of the disease despite the treatment.)

That's the worst part about medical bills. Not only are they a financial nightmare, but they hit people when they are down.

We need universal coverage that sets a maximum limit on the potential cost, NOW!

UPDATE: A commenter who appears to know about the family personally indicates that (as noted above) they are uninsured, with both parents working-- which they will have to take time off to care for their surviving daughter (Casie Hicks). A neighbor will help pay for the funeral for the other daughter, but today funerals (though still expensive) cost much less hospital bills.

Democratic candidates stick with DNC plan on primaries.

What happens when the immovable object meets the irresistable force?

I don't know, but get ready for what could be a bumpy ride.

In the headlong rush to crowd into the front of the Presidential primary field, (in which nearly half the nation may follow the designated 'starters' of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and vote on the first party sanctioned date of February 5-- unofficially dubbed 'super-duper Tuesday'), several states are now jumping the gun. Florida, Michigan and Wyoming either have moved or plan to move their nominating primaries or caucuses into January, upstaging the four states which are now sanctioned by both parties as the first caucus, the first in the west, the first primary and the first in the south. The DNC has responded by saying they will refuse to seat delegates from states which jump the gun at the national convention.

In yesterday's Washington Post, Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 Presidential campaign and who now serves on the DNC's bylaws committee, lucidly spells out the party's reasoning that we must follow the rules at this point.

And it seems that in the struggle between the party and the states, the party is winning and the Presidential campaigns are getting the point, as the top six Democrats have now agreed to not participate in any states which jump the gun. I doubt if there will be much media attention on a race for a bunch of delegates which won't be seated at the convention and which is slugged out to the finish between Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.

There are to be sure both some benefits and risks that go with standing firm on the primary start date.

The biggest risk of course is the possibility of alienating voters and party activists in the states which are being punished in this way. In Florida, in particular, the issue of voter disenfranchisement among Democrats still rubs an especially raw wound. Florida has 27 electoral votes which in each of the last two elections provided the margin by which George W. Bush was elected to the White House. And in Florida, Democrats can point out that the bill which was pushed through the legislature and signed by Governor Charlie Crist was pushed by Republicans (though only one Democrat in the legislature actually voted against it.) In Michigan, which gave 17 electoral votes to Democrats in each of the last two elections, they don't even have that excuse; it was Democrats in the legislature and Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm which are pushing for an early primary. Certainly Florida and Michigan are important, large states and there is a risk of alienating voters in a key state which may cost us the November election. Wyoming is also talking about moving its primary to January 5, but the chance of a Democratic Presidential candidate being competitive there (unless perhaps Dave Freudenthal is on the ticket) is about as remote as the chance that when Dick Cheney leaves the White House he will retire to and actually live in the vacation home in Jackson Hole he bought while he was living in Texas in order to duck the requirement that the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates not be from the same state.

Right-leaning talk show hosts are already blasting the DNC for making this decision and 'dictating' to the states, although they seem to forget that pretty soon the RNC will have to make a similar decision (though with the enthusiasm that GOP candidates are already ginning up in states like Florida and Michigan it may be much harder to make them comply if the decision is to hold the line-- and nothing could make the RNC look weaker than to make a decision like this and have the candidates ignore it, especially with Democratic candidates falling in line with the DNC-- which is why I predict the RNC won't hold the line with the states.)

Another risk (though a minor one) is that Republicans competing in Florida and Michigan will steal all the headlines for a few days. I doubt if that will mean much in the overall scheme of things though.

The rewards are less tangible though clear enough. The biggest one is order. The primary system, already twisted and warped to the point that nominees will be chosen in a window of less than a month and have to then wait most of a year for the general election, was in danger of spiraling completely out of control. Standing firm was a choice the party had to make, and fortunately had the guts to make.

A second reward is that if the GOP doesn't similarly stand firm and the Republican primaries degenerate into a contest between states instead of between candidates, Democrats look like a stronger party with stronger leadership. I don't know whether that will translate into a lot of votes in November though since most swing voters choose between candidates, much more than between parties.

A third reward if the Democrats stand firm and the Republicans don't is that then while Democrats could take their lumps in Florida and Michigan, it's worth noting that Iowa (where the first caucus is almost as revered a tradition as Hawkeye football and voters consider they have a 'right' to it), New Hampshire (where the first primary is similarly revered) and Nevada have a total of 16 electoral votes that will be in play for both parties in November. South Carolina has eight, but if it goes Democratic in November then the election is already in the bag.

Either way, this decision by the DNC to stand firm against the states is dicey. But it is right, it is principled, and I'm glad they are doing it.

NFL should not suspend Michael Vick indefinitely.

Michael Vick has pleaded guilty and will soon be sentenced to prison. I hope he gets the full eighteen months that prosecutors are asking for. In fact, I personally would prefer he get longer than that in prison.

As a direct consequence of his guilty plea and sentencing, Michael Vick will lose millions of dollars, regardless of what decisions the NFL or the Atlanta Falcons make. Vick will lose at least two years during the prime of his athletic career, which is itself worth a small fortune. And no matter how good prison fitness facilities are, or how hard an athlete takes advantage of them, they are not even close to the level of the training facilities he won't be using at the Falcons camp or training room. He won't have coaches to work on his passing style. An athlete who spends much time in prison faces an inevitable erosion of skills; exhibit 1 is Mike Tyson, who was never again the feared and effective boxer he had been before his career took a detour through the clink after he was found guilty of raping a teenage beauty pageant contestant. Further, Vick will certainly not be asked to appear as a spokesman for Nike or others who have paid him lucrative commercial deals in the past; they'd probably sell more shoes if they hired Osama bin Laden as a spokesman than Michael Vick.

To which I'd say, GOOD. Michael Vick deserves to lose all the money he could have made if he hadn't thrown it all away on breeding, destroying and torturing animals.

However, despite how repelled I am at his crime, the decision by the NFL to suspend him indefinitely is WRONG. Commissioner Roger Goodell certainly has the right to suspend players for cause, but he has done so for periods of time. To suspend indefinitely a player implies that he won't be given an opportunity to earn a living through the league in the future.

My problem with this is twofold:

1. The criminal justice system was established for the purpose of affixing punishment. If we don't like the punishment affixed then it is incumbent on any of us to lobby for a change in the law (as in the case of Georgia law which was changed but is still being used as the basis for sentencing in the Genarlow Wilson case.) It is not up to any individual, institution or employer to usurp the justice system and decide how to hand it out.

2. We can progressively punish a person in many ways. But denying someone employment when they get out is stupid. If a felon gets out of prison (and most do, sooner or later) and wants to forsake crime and do something else, then isn't it stupid to force him (I use that word by intent because most felons are male) to go back into crime because it is the only thing he can make a living at? It's already hard enough for a felon to get a job. As I once wrote in a post entitled, The prison that follows prison,

For example, we say that convicted felons have the right to seek employment. However, we have for years cut the budgets for prison programs that seek to educate inmates about a trade (I have first hand knowledge of several educational institutions that suspended or ended their prison programs because of state or Federal budget cuts). We have also cut funding for job placement programs and halfway houses for prisoners. So, not surprisingly, when people who get out of a long term in prison with nothing to show on their resume other than a long stint in prison, have trouble getting a job, they often find that the easiest, and perhaps the only, way to earn a living wage, is through returning to a life of crime. This is called, 'recidivism.'

Now, I'm not going to stupidly sit here and say that if we funded more of these things, you wouldn't still have recidivism. Some people are habitual criminals and you could hand them a million dollars in cash and make them the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company, and the next day they would still be out running a con, knocking over a liquor store or beating someone up or raping or killing someone. People like that need to be in prison, and there is little anyone can do to change that. But I am saying that regardless of the success rate (or failure rate) of rehabilitation programs, we as a society have an obligation to TRY. Because except for lifers or people on death row, the rest of the prison population will sooner or later be out among the rest of us, either rehabilitated or not.

It's a fact that Michael Vick knows how to make a lot of money if he doesn't play football. He knows there is plenty of it in dogfighting. Do we really want to force him back to it in order to pay the bills?

Michael Vick is s disgusing human being but it is not up to the NFL or anyone else to usurp the authority of the criminal justice system and hand out their own punishments.

new scandal has GOP whining that the media goes softer on Democrats-- only that's hogwash

It seems that a lot of Republicans and talk show hosts are now angry about the latest scandal involving Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) who wants to withdraw a guilty plea he made following an arrest for allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a bathroom stall at the Minneapolis airport.

Many (though not all) Republicans in Washington are calling on Craig to resign from the Senate (though behind it seems to be a barely voiced but frequently alluded to fear that they may lose a Senate seat, even in Idaho, if Craig remains and runs for re-election next year) but then they always ask why the media (I guess meaning the corporate media) go 'softer' on Democrats accused of sex scandals.

I'd like to respond that that on several levels.

First, it hasn't been true. Start with the most obvious Democrat accused in sex scandals: Bill Clinton. The press reported until most people were nauseated on Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. During 1998, the Lewinsky scandal made headlines pretty much from January through the conclusion of the impeachment trial the following January. The problem for the GOP is that they took what could have been a minor 'gotcha' story and turned it into a story which in the end benefitted Clinton and Democrats by carrying it way too far and trying to impeach the President. And yeah, I know-- there are stories about Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broderick and probably some more, but I suspect the reason the media hasn't reported much about those is because most people have gotten the idea by now that Bill Clinton is a wandering husband with a zipper problem, and yet another story about it, especially after the impeachment trial would be like watching re-runs of a syndicated black and white TV show for the ninth time. (Yawwwwn.)

Beyond Clinton, it hasn't been true that the press brushes over Democratic sex scandals. Ask Gary Hart and Gary Condit about that. It's just recently, the guys involved in sex scandals have mostly been Republicans. The talk show hosts like to cite former Congressman Gerry Studds (D-MA), who in 1983 was censured for having sex with a male page. OK, fair enough. But did you know that on the very same day (July 20, 1983) that the house censured Studds, they also censured a Republican congressman for exactly the same thing (except that, as Indy Voter points out in the comments, the page was female)? Do you know his name? Probably not, if you listen to right wing talk radio. It was Daniel Crane, Republican of Illinois. But somehow the fact that this 1983 scandal is no longer making headlines (at least in terms of Studds, who incidentally left Congress a decade ago and died last year) is supposed to show media bias in terms of the current story involving Sen. Craig.

They also like to compare Studds to former congressman Mark Foley, who resigned last year after having sent sexually suggestive emails to male pages. But the fact is, Foley resigned the same day the story broke so we don't even know what if any action Dennis Hastert's Congress would have taken.

They also like to cite current Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, who was reprimanded by the house for his relationship with an adult male prostitute. This was in fact reported on in 1990. So I'm not sure what their beef is. They like to point out that the prostitute, Steve Gobie, ran a gay escort ring for awhile out of Frank's apartment. But Frank himself reported that to the House Ethics Committee when he found out about it and the Ethics Committee concluded that Frank had no knowledge of it until he reported it. And, if they think that having a gay escort service running out of Franks' apartment was such a serious crime that didn't get enough press, all I have to say to that are two words: JEFF GANNON.

But beyond all of this, there is the issue of hypocrisy. Neither Bill Clinton nor Gerry Studds nor Barney Frank ever tried to lecture anyone else about how they should run their sex lives. But the whole 'family values' platform is practically mandatory for a Republican running for office anymore. So they spout it. And when one of them is caught, well it is more interesting to see what happens to people who live in glass houses when they throw stones. There are many sinners in the world, and when a sinner is caught sinning it is less of a story than when the modern-day Pharisee, who claims to be the defender and upholder of high moral values, is caught sinning. That is human nature-- to want to hold the hypocrite up to the highest level of public ridicule and scorn.

Today right wing jock Sean Hannity tried to address the hypocrisy issue by saying, that 'Democrats SHOULD preach family values.' Hmmmm. Personally, I think I have 'family values,' but the problem is his emphasis on 'preach.' I'm perfectly willing to share my faith and my lifestyle with anyone who is interested, and I've always been up front about them, but I don't 'preach' to people about how they should live, judge them for their lifestyles (it was ironic that Craig's bizarre news conference seemed to be more focused on denying that he was gay than on denying that he was soliciting sex,) or frankly care what their sex life is. But apparently Hannity thinks (apparently because the hypocrisy angle almost exclusively cuts against Republicans) that therefore Democrats should become more like Republicans. Hint: If we thought that we had to 'preach' (and more to the point, legislate) moral values, well then we'd be Republicans.

To be honest, I don't care one iota whether Larry Craig is gay or not. His family, especially his wife, might care but the Craig family sex life isn't my business. Playing footsie under the stall partition in a bathroom is a bit weird, but weirdness isn't a crime. Soliciting sex is a crime, and pleading guilty to a crime without even consulting a lawyer shows a profound lack of judgement that the voters of Idaho might want to consider. Ultimately though, that is up to the voters in Idaho, and I don't live in Idaho.

But yeah, he might want to resign. Because I don't think he will find much support from other Republicans, especially those (like current and former Congressmen Dan Burton and Newt Gingrich who criticized Clinton's affair even while having affairs of their own) who may be trying to overcompensate for their own little secrets by beating the morality drums louder than ever.

Rick Renzi needs to Resign, Now!

Yesterday, my congressman, Rick Renzi announced that he won't seek re-election in 2008 when his term expires. Renzi has been in the middle of a corruption investigation and the FBI raided his business earlier this year. Renzi announced that he won't seek re-election but he has refused to resign. This is unfair to voters in this district, as they no longer have a full time congressman. Renzi no longer goes to committee hearings (he is barred from them) and any legislation he puts up there has less chance of passing than if it was offered by a noncorrupt Congressmember.

I met Rick Renzi when he attended the Founder's Day barbecque in the small town I live in, in 2002 (when he was first running.) I can tell two stories that speak volumes about the man.

The first was when he was at the barbecque and he was going down the line shaking hands of people who were waiting in line for their term to be served. I have a friend whose wife is from Australia. He stuck out his hand and she told him that she was not an American and couldn't vote. So he just pulled his hand away without shaking hers. Couldn't even be bothered to say, 'pleased to meet you' and finish shaking her hand.

My own Rick Renzi story from that barbecque is this: I asked him whether he supports continuing to maintain a selective service registration data base. He said he did. I asked about his opinion on gays in the military (knowing that he wouldn't be for it.) He said he supported the current, 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. So then I pointed out that if both policies were in place and there were ever a draft, people who wanted to dodge it could claim they were gay. Renzi obviously was surprised, having not considered that before. He stammered around, and said 'the recruiter could tell.' I asked on what basis, and then mentioned that in a draft there is no recruiter, you just show up and if you pass the physical you're in. So then he suggested a polygraph. I answered that I finally got it, that these young men and young women would all show up for the draft, and the first thing we'd do is hook them up to a machine and ask them questions about their sex lives. Renzi turned purple. I didn't think that such an idiot could possibly be elected to Congress so I let him go.

What I didn't count on was 1. how much money he had (we now know, he had it because of the Sandlin land deal which is now among the matters under investigation); or 2. that he was a master of the personal smear. He overwhelmed George Cordova with a barrage of attacks (embezzlement, fraud, illegally wiring money out of the country) which, if true would have put Cordova behind bars for a long time. Of course Cordova never was charged with a crime because it was all a lie in the first place, in fact he subsequently pursued a civil court case against Renzi for slander and that was settled out of court but involved Renzi paying him money (not that at least at the time having mysterious amounts of money was any problem for Renzi.) Ironically, it is Renzi, not Cordova, who is now the subject of a Federal investigation. In subsequent campaigns against Paul Babbitt and Ellen Simon, Renzi also used smear tactics to win.

There is one problem with Renzi's announcement that he won't seek re-election. And that is still his refusal to resign. As a congressman-in-name-only the people here in this district don't have the same quality of representation as we should expect, especially with our 'Congressman' still drawing a $135,000 per year salary. He's done virtually nothing in the way of constituent service since the initial FBI raid of his family business back in April. As a citizen of CD 1, I demand that we have a legitimate representative who is carrying out all duties of a congressman, as soon as possible. If Mr. Renzi resigns, then constituent duties will be appointed to a neighboring conressperson, and a special election would be scheduled within a 75- to 90 day window.

Marbury defends Vick, dogfighting.

New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury defended Michael Vick and said today that he believes that dogfighting is a sport.

Well, I suppose that you can call anything a 'sport,' no matter how barbaric it is, even dwarf-tossing or Russian roulette.

If it's a sport, it's a sport that is illegal in all fifty states. There is a reason why it is. It's because in a civilized society we've come to a collective decision that people should look elsewhere for entertainment than in watching animals maul, cripple and kill one another for 'sport.'

Marbury tries to compare it to 'people who shoot deer.' But there are some big differences. Let's enumerate some of them:

1. The goal of a hunter is to kill a deer as quickly and efficiently as possible, minimizing the amount of suffering involved. In dogfighting, the goal is to produce death, but it is rarely quick or painless, and even the winning dog will sustain a a great deal of pain. In fact, if dog fights ended quickly, there wouldn't be as much money bet on them and they likely wouldn't be as popular. However, deer hunting isn't a 'sport' in which the agony is prolonged for the purpose of making money.

2. Most (though not all) deer hunters eat what they shoot. In this sense, deer hunting is no different than eating a steak that was killed in a slaughterhouse. As far as I know, Michael Vick never had a Pit Bull cutlet for dinner.

3. Thanks to the boneheaded predator policies of the nineteenth century, most areas where deer live no longer have enough (or any) large predators that eat deer. Therefore they multiply to the point where they are both a threat to the ecosystem at large and a threat to themselves and if the population were left unchecked they would eat their food supply and many would die of starvation. State game and fish departments monitor the deer population and use hunting as a tool to manage the deer population. It is also much more cost effective to sell hunting licenses to people who want to help them manage the deer population than it would be otherwise to have to pay professional hunters to do the same. It is true that there is also an overpopulation of dogs (many adoptable dogs are put in shelters and have to be euthanized because of lack of homes to place them in) but dogfighting aficionados actually contribute to the overpopulation of dogs as they breed many pit bulls and other varieties of dogs which because of their upbringing are unadoptible and either abandon them or have them seized by authorities. In fact, we saw an article just the other day in the Washington Post about how A North Carolina shelther will have to euthanize adoptable dogs because a judge has ordered them to use their space to house pit bulls seized in raids on dogfighting operations. Point made

Marbury is free to voice his opinion but it is a fact that societies can make laws which they believe are in the public interest, and this law has been enacted. There are certainly laws which have been enacted which I believe society should consider getting rid of (an example being federal laws against marijuana use) but I don't consider marijuana use to be a form of recreation because the law is very clear that it isn't.

If Marbury wants the law changed, then he should lobby to get it changed. Good luck with that, given the obvious contempt that most people have shown for what Vick did. But until then, anyone who is convicted of involvement in dogfighting will face the consequences of the law. As they should.

It's not time to walk away from the men in Crandall Canyon mine yet.

It's not time to walk away.

Yes, three additional miners have been killed and several injured in a cave in while trying to reach six who were trapped in the Crandell Canyon mine almost two weeks ago, but the fact is that they were set up to fail.

The mine itself has a long and well documented history of safety violations. But the rescue operation, thrown together hap-hazardly and operated by the company itself, was being run in such a dangerous way that several miners-- comrades of the men who were trapped-- refused to participate in such a dangerous venture because they could smell a death trap. They have since been shown as prophetic.

Most damning, the mine operators had a chance to accept help from the United Mine Workers-- an organization which knows a great deal about mine safety and which has been involved with a number of successful rescues. But apparently their anti-union dogma won out so that this offer of assistance was declined. Under the circumstances, should any reasonable offer of assistance be declined, from anyone who knows enough and has the resources to help?

So now they are talking about ending the search. It is true that four bore holes have been drilled without detecting any sign of the men. It is true that there is a chance that the men were killed in the initial cave-in and are buried under tons of rubble. And there is a chance that they may have survived but in the twelve agonizing days that have followed have died from injuries, lack of oxygen, lack of water or any of many other myriad possibilities. It is possible that if they are dead, their bodies may never be found.

But on one day this week some noise was detected deep inside the mine. The origin of the noise is unclear but it is quite possible that it could be the trapped men. Their employers, the government and all of us as Americans have an obligation to at least investigate whether it was, and continue to look for them and try to rescue them for as long as it is reasonably possible that they could have survived. And if they found a large chamber with breathable air (and breathable are was detected by at least one monitor sent down there) and they had some water, it is very possible that they could still be alive today.

And so we should not walk away from them.

Government controlled by those who want to steal from the rest of us.

We know that the Crandell Canyon mine had numerous safety violations over the past couple of years. We know that last month the government agency that oversees and inspects the mine finally fined them sixty dollars for a repeat violation.

As I blogged shortly after it happened, the government regulators failed to protect the lives of six men trapped deep inside the mountain (and by extension, the lives of two more who were killed in a cave in last night during the rescue operation.)

For a fine to be effective, it has to be enough to be more than just a cost of doing business-- the consequences of not taking action (in this case making safety improvements) have to outweigh the consequences (cost) of taking the needed action.

So why did the government fail in its duty and purpose to protect these men? There are a lot of answers to that. We know that government works slowly anyway (not always a bad thing-- too much often does get done during moments of hysteria before more sober minds take over.) We know that the government has to be officially unbiased-- the mine owners have rights too, and those rights require that procedure be followed. We know that there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of similar situations in America today, and the regulatory agencies generally don't get funded at a level that would allow them to keep a tab on everything.

But there is something insidious here. Something that goes beyond all of that. It starts out with the massive, astronomical taxpayer subsidies that are being paid to all kinds of otherwise very profitable corporations-- energy companies, pharmaceutical companies and yes, mining companies. But it is more than that.

It is a government, and especially an administration which has consciously pursued a policy of, for example, helping pharmaceutical companies selectively gouge Americans by making it more difficult to re-import drugs at lower prices, even drugs that may have been manufactured in the very same factory as the similar brands in American pharmacies came from. They've been allowing energy companies to rake in a lot of loot while doing nothing about the price of fuel. The recall of toys was ordered by mattel, not by the U.S. government.

In other words, our government is neither unbiased, nor is it carrying out as its primary duty the need to protect its own citzens. No, our government, instead of regulating those who want to put the screws to us, is an active particpant and is helping them do it.

Without any government at all, the rich and powerful would pretty much have their way-- they could afford to do what it takes to win all the time, no matter what suffering it causes. That is one reason why they are always advocating 'smaller government.' However, government in theory protects not only the rich and powerful, but also those who would otherwise be at their mercy.

Government is a tool which can be used by the people through their elected leaders to build a more humane, better world.

But in the wrong hands, it can also be a source of great evil.

Call the far right anti-immigration hardliners what they are: socialists

I had a letter published in today's print edition of the Arizona Republic. Though there were some minor edits in the letter, the point is essentially unchanged. It began on Tuesday, when another writer criticized undocumented immigrants and asked why they didn't have the 'decency to at least become naturalized citizens.'

My reply was very plain: I wrote,

Short answer: We don't let them.

Every year the legal immigration quota is full. The number of undocumented immigrants is the accumulated difference between the government mandated supply (when Congress sets the yearly immigration quota) and the market based demand (the number of jobs that they fill)

So really what this comes down to is the government trying to limit the number of people who can fill the jobs, so in effect limiting the number of jobs which employers can create. There is a name for this philosophy, of the government controlling fundamental parts of the economy in order to manage it. That name is socialism. There is also a name for the competing philosophy, that the market demand for any given product will determine how much of that product is needed, and this applies to labor just as it applies to any other commodity. The name of this philosophy is capitalism.

Earlier this year, some people in Congress, with the support of the President, attempted to introduce a bill which would both give us the security of knowing how many immigrants were in the country as well as giving us information on who they were. It was a market based solution, in which those who wished to work in the United States would pay a fee or a fine and then be allowed to find work. This would not result in an unlimited supply of immigrants, contrary to what some said, because once the supply of jobs was met, the fee would be large enough to deter people once their chance of finding a job in an already saturated market dropped down low enough.

But the neo-socialists, who wanted the government to control the job market instead, screamed that this was 'amnesty,' and shouted it down.

So be it.

But clearly they have taken the socialist position, so someone should ask some of the anti-immigration hardliners why they think that socialism is better for our economy than capitalism would be.

Weapons we paid for lost in Iraq, some used to kill Americans.

We know (and it has been documented ad nauseum) how there has been little or no accountability for money that has been sent to Iraq-- you know, the guys who were driving around Baghdad in pickup trucks early on during the occuption of Iraq handing out wads of hundred dollar bills, trying to buy us love.

We know that there has been little or no accountability for the no-bid contracts handed out to Halliburton and other contractors. That too has been documented ad nauseum.

But you'd think at least there would be some accountability for weapons sent to Iraq. After all, if we are arming people, we at least want to know who we are in fact arming and where the arms are wouldn't you?

Well, apparently not.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Pentagon cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, or about half the weapons earmarked for soldiers and police, according to a government report.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, said in a July 31 report to lawmakers that the Defense Department also cannot account for 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets reported to be issued to Iraqi forces as of September 22, 2005....

One senior Pentagon official told The Washington Post some weapons probably were being used against U.S. troops. He said an Iraqi brigade created in Falluja disintegrated in 2004 and began fighting American soldiers.

So even arms aren't worth auditing when we send them into a country full of enemies. Un-friggin-believable. The ineptitude and incompetence of this administration is simply mind-boggling.

Richardson has the best Iraq plan

Many of the other Democratic candidates have recently explained that they support leaving some troops in Iraq in order to prevent genocide, fight terror, keep the Kurds safe, etc.

They don't get it.

First, none of these require U.S. troops. There are certainly Shiites who kill Sunnis and Sunnis who kill Shiites in Iraq, but that is not genocide. It is a civil war. And genocide won't happen for one very basic reason-- Iraq is crawling with arms. Large scale massacre of all the followers of a group in a region (this is what genocide is) becomes impractical if the people targetted are even lightly armed-- you man ovewhelm them with force, but losing a soldier at every second or third house that they clear out would not be an acceptable rate of loss.

Second, the terrorists are there to fight us. And has recently been shown by some Sunnis turning on their former al-Qaeda allies, they don't want domination by foreign invaders. Neither us nor al-Qaeda.

Third, the Kurds were plenty autonomous and self-protecing for years without out putting troops on the ground. The only real threat they might face is Turkey's army to the north, but let's be honest here-- if the Iraqi Kurds ever want independence they have to prove that they are willing to live within the rules and mores of the world they are in. And for starters that would mean cracking down on people wanting to attack over the border into Turkey. In fact, I would join many in supporting the idea that Turkish Kurds should decide their future for themselves, but they have to renounce violence as a means to get there.

The bottom line though is that none of this requires any American troops. And if we leave troops there then the folks in Iraq who want to kill Americans will continue their work unabated. And sooner or later the troops we leave will be involved in combat and take casualties.

Far better to do something different. Let's get down a book that has likely never been dusted off in the past six years. The book of diplomacy.

Rudy Giuliani's confidante and partner: a pedophile priest

Rudy Giuliani has long been accused of not having exactly the finest circle of friends. We all know by now about Bernard Kerik, the former police commissioner with ties to organized crime, about whom Giuliani was briefed in 2000 before he became police commissioner and decided to let it go. Kerik of course has since been convicted of corruption and is a major embarrassment to Rudy.

Then he hired Thomas Ravenel to run his South Carolina campaign, and was embarrassed when Ravenel was caught dealing cocaine.

But is there a limit to who Rudy would hire?

Apparently not. I mean, if anybody would be radioactive politically, you'd think it would be a child molester.

According to 2002 testimony before a Suffolk County (NY) Grand Jury investigating abuses by the Catholic Church, Monsignor Alan Placa is referred to in reports as 'Priest F' If we read the specific report on Priest F, we read

In Priest F’s first assignment, he appears to have made feeble attempts at abusing a boy who was an alter server. Once, when he was working at the rectory on a slow evening, the boy was in the office watching TV, Priest F came in and asked if he could join him. He pulled up a chair next to the boy and put his right hand on his thigh. Slowly his hand began to creep up towards the boy’s genital area. Alarmed, the boy covered his crotch. After Priest F’s efforts to push his arm away failed, Priest F gave up and left. The boy remembered that Priest F was very nervous. He never told anyone at the time because he didn’t think anyone would believe him.

The conduct repeated itself within a week, only this time, the boy crossed his legs as soon as Priest F pulled up his chair. Even so, Priest F tried to push his hand between the boy’s legs. Throughout both encounters, Priest F never said a word. Even after this second incident, the boy never told anyone. He was embarrassed and didn’t want any of his friends to think he was a homosexual. This victim came forward decades later, only after Priest F denied sexually abusing anyone in a local newspaper story about sexually abusive priests.

Later on in the same report we read:

Once, Priest F approached one of the boys behind the school stage. He grabbed his crotch. The boy reacted violently, pushing Priest F away and warning him never to touch him again.

At one point, two victims complained to the schools’ rector, a priest, about Priest F. The complaint resulted from one boy’s suspicions, later confirmed to be correct, that Priest F was abusing another younger boy. The pair thought a complaint by two of them would have to be believed. It wasn’t.

The tragic death of a victim’s father led, finally, to the end of Priest F’s sexual abuse of him. At the funeral home, Priest F approached the boy, moving close to him. As he moved his hand towards his genitals, the boy told Priest F, “Don’t ever fucking touch me again or I’ll kill you.” This event was witnessed by another boy who saw the abusive conduct by Priest F and heard the response to it.

We also read this:

Priest F was cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims. He fondled boys over their clothes, usually in his office. Always, his actions were hidden by a
poster, newspaper or a book.* He talked continuously as he fondled them. Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F.
Once, Priest F approached one of the

The footnote is even more outrageous:

One of the victims remembers the first incident of abuse taking place when preparations were underway to attend a right-to-life march on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The students were making banners with Priest F’s help. It was a banner that was used as the foil on this occasion.

Monsignor Placa is named in the Grand Jury report completed in 2003 as having both abused children himself and covered up abuse by other priests. Although the abuse happened long enough ago that the statute of limitations for criminal charges against Monsignor Placa had expired by that time it was fundamental in pursuing a suit against the Diocese of Rockville Center.

After the report was issued, Monsignor Placa was stripped of his authority and suspended from serving as a Catholic Priest. But who should show up to rescue him? None other than an old friend. An old friend whose first wedding he had been first man at, and then officiated at for his second wedding in 1984. An old friend named Rudy Giuliani.

Placa was hired in 2002 as a consultant by Giuliani Partners, a New York legal firm which is run by the former mayor. He remains on the payroll even today.

So if Rudy Giuliani is willing to hire a priest who has been disowned by the Catholic Church for child sexual abuse, then there are three questions we have to ask:

1. Is there anybody he wouldn't hire? He's already been willing to hire a mobster, a coke dealer and a child molester. Who does that leave? Osama bin Laden?

2. What kind of judgement does this show in a man who wants to be President? Even George W. Bush's defenders admit that his unyielding willingness to stand behind friends, everyone from Harriet Miers to Donald Rumsfeld in the face of stark evidence that they can't do the job, has resulted in some appallingly poor decisions. Wouldn't this kind of pattern suggest that Rudy could be more of the same?

3. We know that Rudy's own kids won't even talk to him because of how he treated their mother (who learned that he was planning to divorce her and marry his current wife via a televised news conference.) And now we see that he is willing to reward a man who hurt other people's kids. So if he becomes President, how much do you think he will care about what happens to your kids?

A President whose best friend is a child molester, and he rewards him for it with a job. I wonder, if Rudy is elected, do you think he will appoint Alan Placa as secretary of Children, Youth and Families?

Another day in the Bush administration-- we learn about another whistleblower who got the ax.

Doug Parker is not an ideologue. He was, however a competent administrator who began working for the United States when Gerald Ford was the President. He worked for 29 years for the U.S. Forest Service. By 2005 he was the pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry health for the agency's Southwestern region.

Parker took his job seriously. So he didn't consider it acceptable when he found that pesticides were being misused, often illegally in the National Forests. So he raised the issue with his supervisors. And they fired him for bringing it up.

Parker is now suing in court to get his job back.

In June, an in-house appeals board upheld his firing. So Doug Parker has realized that he won't get anywhere appealing within the administration, and he is now in court contending that his firing was illegal and had no other basis than his pointing out that the law was not being followed.

According to the lawsuit, Parker became the subject of hostile treatment by his supervisors after complaining about what he called a "systemic problem" when it came to proper pesticide use across several forests in New Mexico and Arizona.

Parker had accused some managers of not preparing environmental risk assessments and failing to get approval from agency officials who had the authority to make decisions about pesticides.

He was concerned that not following agency policies or laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act — which serves as the basis for federal management of public lands — could have consequences for public safety and the environment.

"Responsible management officials knew and were aware that Mr. Parker considered the manner in which pesticide coordination was being carried out by others to be ethically, legally and environmentally unsound," the lawsuit reads.

This story is only the latest in a long series of retaliatory moves taken by the Bush administration against whistle blowers. But let's be clear here-- the reason they've had so many problems with whistleblowers is because there have been so many fouls to blow the whistle on. In keeping with the Bush administration's philosophy of governance however, they haven't addressed the problems that cause whistleblowers to pop up by doing a better job of complying with the law, but instead they have tried to make examples of those who do (and in Parker's case, the objections were never even raised publically until this week) in order to rule by fear, threats and intimidation. Or sometimes, as we saw in the U.S. Attorney scandal, it is a matter of removing a professional public servant who is doing a competent job in a sensitive area, and replacing him or her with some kid whose primary job qualification is being a Republican.

If there was justice in the world, next year we'd have a Democratic President, Parker would get his job back and have his recommendations acted on immediately, and maybe even get a promotion (the position of immediate supervisor of his old position would be a good one for him to be in.)

President blames Congress for bridge collapse, proposes corporate tax cuts as the cure.

It's hard to believe, but President Bush blamed Congress for the bridge collapse last week at the same time that he pushed for new corporate tax cuts.

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure....

Bush also warned China not to start a trade war, blamed Congress for not doing more to shore up infrastructure such as the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last week, and pushed back against Democratic presidential candidates who are promising to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Yeah. OK. We clearly need a lot of money to pay for upgrading and maintaining our infrastructure, whether it is bridges or other elements (like the steam pipe that blasted a hole in Manhattan last week). How is a corporate tax cut going to do anything about that?

I might take him seriously about claiming that 1. it's up to Congress to come up with the money to fix it, 2. we need more tax cuts now, and 3. we have to hold the line on spending, if he wasn't going to change the dial again and ask for another hundreds of billions for Iraq next month.

This guy doesn't understand the meaning of chutzpah.

GOP has a good thing going in the Ames straw poll; Maybe Democrats should do something similar.

Not often that I approve of something that Republicans do, but I have to admit they have a good thing going with the upcoming Ames straw poll in Iowa.

With the primary season now compacted into less than a month (either that, or the actual Iowa caucus may come before Christmas this year) it is a fact that most Presidential candidates, especially those who lag in the polls but might have something useful to say, just won't have the time or resources to compete and get the necessary press coverage to make their case to the voters.

And one can argue that little is at stake in a voluntary (show up with an Iowa driver's license, claim to be a Republican, pay $35-- I guess that is to keep out the po' folks-- and vote) straw poll, but in fact it does provide an early test of the ability of a campaign to organize and turn out supporters in Iowa, a key to victory with its first-in-the-nation caucuses. More importantly, it will likely give some lesser known candidate a chance to jump up and seize the moment and muscle his (since the GOP primary field, as usual, is 100% white and male) way into contention.

Plenty will be at stake too. GOP candidates John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have both decided to skip the event, in effect conceding it to Mitt Romney. However this is more than as they would tell you, 'a strategic decision;' The underlying fact of the matter is that McCain and Giuliani don't have the organization in Iowa that Romney does, so if they did participate they'd embarassingly lose their first head to head contest; and if they don't build an organization in Iowa soon (maybe even by December if the caucuses move up) then they may well underperform then, and maybe lose to Romney when it is for real. Four or five months is a long time, but not that long.

Among other candidates, many of them have invested heavily in the straw poll. While Romney will win, how big he wins will be an early test of his strength. If he doesn't win by 20 or 30% over his nearest rivals with his main opponents for the nomination skipping the event it could be a sign that his campaign in Iowa isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson has said flatly that if he doesn't finish 'first or second' in the straw poll, he is done. Well, my prediction is that he won't, and he will be gone. Thompson had a chance to be a serious candidate had he run in, say, 1988 or 1996, but he waited to run until his moment had long since passed.

Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback, who have been hitting each other over the head competing for the same group of voters are also trying to finish second. They've pulled out all the stops too, even encouraging supporters of Giuliani and McCain to show up and vote for them. One of them will certainly finish ahead of the other, and will claim a victory (likely he will be the 'minor' candidate who springs into the discussion) while the other will probably discover that he is following the path into irrelevance that was already blazed by Tommy Thompson.

An intriguing question is how well Ron Paul does. Paul's supporters are few but are almost fanatical in their devotion to him. The straw poll will provide an early window on how much they will impact the GOP race. Some Ron Paul sites on the internet are already predicting that the straw poll will be stolen from him, so they plan to conduct an exit poll of participants. It could be fun to watch the fireworks on that one.

Bonds does deserve the record.

Like a lot of baseball fans, I think I've warmed just a bit to Barry Bonds' pursuit of baseball's all time home run record in the past few days. And like many of them, the catalyst was the intentionally cold, dispassionate face of Commissioner Bud Selig, sitting up in the luxury booth, almost glowering every time Bonds stepped to the plate. Yeah, I think that Barry got the record by juicing himself full of steroids, but if Selig isn't willing to step up and announce what Bonds' penalties will be, then he should quit trying to play to respond to criticism of his past failures in confronting steroid use and end up looking like that sour old butler from the movie, 'The Haunted Mansion'. Thankfully, Selig missed last night's game (because, as his office noted, he was preparing for a meeting with George Mitchell and the Steroids Committee,) and he had the class to call Bonds after the game and offer him his congratulations.

Let's also get another point straight-- steroids is now taken much more seriously as 'cheating' than it was just a few years ago when Bonds was apparently using them. In 1998, Mark McGwire was hailed as a 'hero' for breaking Roger Maris' record and he and the media brushed off allegations of steroid use. He was gushed over by that very same Bud Selig. When he retired five years ago he was still considered by most to be a sure-fire Hall of Famer.

Perceptions have changed since then. And Bonds has been part of the change. McGwire's record stood for only three years, before it was shattered by Bonds. But unlike McGwire, Bonds was surly, sometimes on bad terms with the press and besides that his name had come up in connection with a Federal investigation-- specifically that of BALCO, a San Francisco area lab that was accused of supplying steroids to a number of players for the Giants and Athletics, including Bonds. Bonds is rumored to have perjured himself in front of a federal grand jury investigating the BALCO case, so the possibility that he could be indicted on a felony charge and maybe even go to prison has loomed in the background (though luckily for him, one of the U.S. attorneys let go by Gonzalez was for northern California; though the political angle on it was that the catalyst for the firing was the investigation into corruption charges against Congressman John Doolittle (R-CA) the firing has also slowed down action on a number of other cases, most notably the case involving Bonds. The U.S. Senate two years ago began investigative hearings into steroid abuse in baseball, and McGwire, who was at that time still immensely popular, probably talked himself out of a shot at the Hall of Fame with his now infamous response to the Senate panel, 'I'm not here to talk about the past.' Why did he agree to testify then? So he could talk about the weather? And then McGwire's old 'bash brother' teammate in Oakland, Jose Canseco, published a book in which he described steroid use as rampant in baseball, pointing fingers at everyone from McGwire to George W. Bush (who was the owner of the Texas Rangers when Canseco played there and described a clubhouse practically swimming in steroids.)

So now it is being said of Bonds that he cheated his way to the record, and doesn't deserve it. Perhaps, but let's face it-- trying to get an edge, legally or not in baseball is as old as the game itself. Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry described in detail a few years ago how he doctored, scuffed and managed to spit on baseballs, in clear violation of the rules of the game. Pitcher Doc Ellis once took speed so he could throw faster, and whether he threw faster or not, he did end up throwing a no-hitter that day. Pitchers who use marijuana to help loosen up before a game have been too numerous to mention. Hall of Famer George Brett once had a home run disallowed for using too much pine tar on his bat; the call was later reversed by the commissioner's office, but one wonders if they'd have done the same if it was someone of a lesser stature than George Brett. Sammy Sosa, who gave McGwire a run for his money a few years ago and who has also been accused (without any real evidence) of using steroids, was caught using a doctored bat in a game three years ago. Remember that when Bonds is alleged to have used steroids, they were considered no higher a level of cheating than say, a scuffed ball or a corked bat, and if Canseco is to be believed then as many as half of all players on the field are using or have used steroids to 'improve' themselves. In such an environment, it's just as accurate to argue not that players who use performance-enhancing drugs have an advantage, but rather that players who don't are at a disadvantage.

One final point-- Bonds has always been a very good hitter. Taking steroids is a separate issue from that. I doubt if Arnold Schwarzeneggar could hit a home run, because hitting a home run takes a lot of concentration, good wrists, timing and other skills that have nothing to do with steroids. I'm not even sure that strength is all that high on the list-- I've seen a woman hit a softball hard enough that it was way out of the field, and would probably have left a major league park. The truth is that hitting is both an art and a science, and the assumption that one can just bulk up and suddenly home runs will come is just plain untrue.

Selig is also partly to blame. Some years ago, in the face of declining ticket sales, some changes were made to the game to juice up the offenses. Shorter fences, livelier balls, so much that even journeyman infielders can often hit twenty home runs in a season (what used to be considered a magic mark for power hitters.) So is it any wonder that the best home run hitters over the past decade have almost routinely rocketed past numbers that had stood unchallenged for decades?

So, while I agree that he did most likely get there while enjoying the dubious benefit of steroids, Barry Bonds does deserve the record. No asterisk.

And in other news-- Alex Rodriguez, who has never been accused of using steroids and who could very well have another decade left to play, hit number 500 the other night....

Death of an editor.

There are some stories that are important, but I'd probably not comment on them for the matter of more pressing news, if I didn't think I had to comment on them.

But when people are shot dead for what they have written, it is time to spread what they have written far and wide.

Last Thursday, journalist Chauncey Bailey was murdered by a gunman in Oakland in what police are calling 'an assassination.' A 19-year old man was later arrested for Bailey's murder.

The suspect is a member of the black muslim community in Oakland.

A couple of years ago, Bailey, a top notch investigative reporter began investigating a series of crimes that occurred at local liquor stores, in which groups of well-dressed young men did their best Carrie Nation imitation and went into liquor stores and destroyed bottles of booze. Alcohol has certainly been the cause of a great deal of misery in Oakland, as it has been everywhere else, but of course it is specifically protected by the 21st amendment to the Constitution (the only drug to be so protected.) But what Bailey was investigating was a crime, pure and simple. It led him to Oakland's black muslim community (no surprise there). Bailey discovered that it is run by one man, Yusuf Bey and that he runs it from a bakery. Still not much of a surprise as that information was widely known before Bailey's articles came out.

But then he reached higher, and dicsovered that Bey had cultivated a culture based on violence (see for example Bailey's own work, The sinister side of Yusuf Bey's empire) and that he had reached up into the ears of state and local government officials. This clearly was a crime, and Bailey reported it. He even named names.

And that made Bailey a marked man. There are those who would prefer that journalists not write about them. A prime example is the zetas, who have already killed a number of Mexican journalists and even forced entire newspapers to shut down for daring to print their names. So Bailey met this same fate last Thursday, being cut down on his way to work. Police later arrested a 19 year old follower of Bey and charged him with the murder.

And that is why I have linked to one of Bailey's articles in the post. The best way to deter future such murders is to give it more press play than his work would have otherwise gotten.

Utah mine disaster

What do the Sago and the Alma #1 mine disasters last year in West Virginia, and the Crandell Canyon mine disaster now unfolding in Utah have in common?

The short answer is that all three occurred at non-union mines.

The Crandell Canyon disaster, in which we can and should hope and pray for the lives of six coal miners who remain trapped by a massive cave-in and unaccounted for, occurred in a mine in which the method of mining-- in effect carving out a checkerboard pattern of chambers which are then intentionally caved in after they are worked, is notoriously very dangerous (though considered a 'cash cow' for the company-- it is much cheaper than having to build fixed-chamber mines.) It is very likely during one of these intentional small scale cave-ins that the much larger one occurred. However, even if the miners had a union, in a so-called 'right-to-work' state like Utah, the rules are tilted in favor of the mine operators. The idea that the Federal Government will force the company to comply with workplace safety regulations is laughable at best, especially with the current administration; the Crandell Canyon mine, like the others I mentioned had numerous violations of basic workplace safety rules, and they received little or virtually no punishment for them. Just last month the operators of the Crandell Canyon Mine, after being found to not have done anything about a previous violation, did in fact face the wrath of the Bush administration. They had to pay a $60 fine.

Sixty dollars. That's all, for a repeat violation. In order for a fine to be effective, it has to be for a large enough amount that the violators will find it worthwhile to fix the problem, instead of just including the occasional token fines as part of 'the cost of doing business.'

So if the Federal Government won't do much about mine safety, then who will?

Simple. A union. And I will repost something that I blogged both about the post regarding the aftermath of the Sago mine and the Alma #1 mine.

Would a union have helped prevent this? You bet your sweet patootie they would have. Unions go to court and fight aggressively to have regulations enforced and safety improvements made, and the 'penalty' problem I mentioned in the second question doesn't exist, because employers fear legal action by the union and/or strikes much more than they fear the relative inaction by the government. Three years ago, the union in Pennsylvania (remember that?) pushed for everything from a speedy rescue operation to overtime pay for the trapped men.


The case I alluded to in Pennsylvania was that of the Somerset mine disaster, which occurred in a union mine. Not only is it true that in contrast to the other three we are discussing, that disaster occured because of a poor map showing the location of an underground chamber of water rather than any safety problem with the mine itself, but the Pennsylvania mine had had a much better safety record than any of the other three.

The best friend that a working man or woman has while ina tight spot is a strong union.

AMTRAK should figure out a policy for dealing with drunken passengers before they make more of them.

In order to convince more people to ride the train, AMTRAK is now going to give away up to $100 in free alcoholic beverages per passenger to passengers who are members of its guest rewards program (regular AMTRAK travellers.)

Of course they have a right to give away anything they want to in a promo, but the choice of alcohol is an astoundingly poor choice for AMTRAK right now, and a bitter irony for Roosevelt Sims, a diabetic man who was kicked off of an AMTRAK train out in the middle of the Coconino National Forest, miles from civilization just over a month ago. Sims' family claim that he was going into diabetic shock even as he was being kicked off the train; AMTRAK says that he was intoxicated. Luckily, after state and local authorities spent thousands of taxpayer dollars searching for Sims, he was found four days later, though in pretty bad shape, dehydrated and confused as to where he was. Luckily it was summer and he didn't freeze to death. It's a good bet that if it had been during the winter, they'd have had to carry him out in a body bag.

Since this new policy is being announced only a month later, I doubt if AMTRAK has had time to revise their old policy. So the question has to be asked, what if one of their passengers has too much booze?

Do they kick them off in the middle of the Sonora desert next time? How about the Okeefenokee swamp? What about a bare plain in Montana when the temperature is about forty below? The promo is after all scheduled to run between November and January. And don't say they wouldn't do it, because as they proved with Roosevelt Sims, safeguarding the lives of their passengers is not much of a priority.

And until it is, and they have a policy that safeguards the lives of passengers, even drunk passengers, they have no business giving anybody alcohol.