Thursday, July 02, 2009
Action alert: Medical Marijuana bill needs support
by Larry Geller
The governor’s potential veto list is out. I know that people may differ on whether they think a bill should be allowed to live or die. I have my opinions, but for some of these bills, I am not as informed as others might be on the pros and cons. So I’m grateful when a reasoned appeal comes into my inbox that I might be able to pass on.
This message was written by Pam Lichty, President of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawai'i, a trusted and reliable source.
If you agree with Pam that this expected veto should be overridden, she gives suggestions for action towards the end.
I know that Disappeared News readers have made a difference, so if you agree with this one, I hope you’ll take action. Your call/fax/email can help.
Ok, over to Pam.
Aloha folks -
Well as you may have heard by now, SB 1058 CD1 (the Medical Cannabis Task Force bill) is on the Gov's potential veto list. This means she has the ability to veto it by July 15th, but won't necessarily do it.
This is her message on the bill:
SBIO5B SD2 RELATING TO CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES. HD2 CDI
Veto Explanation: Sets up a Task Force on medical marijuana. Both the medical cannabis task force and the salvia divinorum (a psychoactive herb) task force established under this measure will require significant financial resources and manpower from the Department of Public Safety, a department that must focus on
running our correctional facilities and meeting its safety obligations. Until federal marijuana laws are changed, it is inappropriate for State law enforcement agencies to recommend ways to access, transport, or increase the use of marijuana. Salvia divinorum can be added to the list of controlled substances, if deemed necessary, without the convening of a task force.
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So the first thing to do is to bombard the Guv.'s office w/ calls and faxes and emails to try to get her to change her mind.Please do it soon because there are just a few more days. (Some legislators don't read their email. If you send one, make the subject line say what you want in case they don't read further.) Contact information is below.
And importantly contact your Rep.s and Senators, the conference cmttee members, and esp. the House and Senate leadership to encourage them to find the political courage to override the veto if need be. (Last year, you may recall, she vetoed a similar bill and the Senate overrode it, but the House did not.)
Incidentally the final vote on this bill in the Senate was unanimous and in the House only Rep. Finnegan (R) voted against it!) So it had very strong support.
Sen. Will Espero has been great on the issue (it's his bill), and on the House side the conference committee was co-chaired by Reps Karamatsu, Hanohano,Yamane, and Aquino. Rep. Marumoto was also on the cmttee. So it would be great to contact them as well as Speaker Say and Pres. Hanabusa (all contact info. below).
One of the points to make it that a lot has changed at the federal level since last year. U.S. Attorney General Holder is now saying that essentially he will not interfere w/ states on medical marijuana issues unless they are breaking both federal AND state law, or using medical marijuana as a shield for trafficking, etc.
Meanwhile other states are making great strides on this issue! The Rhode Island legislature just overrode their governor overwhelmingly when he vetoed a bill to set up compassion centers for a state-authorized distribution system. See below and perhaps tell our Legislators about this example!
Scroll to bottom for legislative contacts plus gov.. HERE'S A LINK TO THE RHODE ISLAND STORY.
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CONTACTS:
Governor Linda Lingle: 586-0034, fax 586-0006
Speaker Calvin Say: 586-6100, fax 586-6101, repsay@capitol.hawaii.gov
Pres. Colleen Hanabusa: 586-7793, fax 586-7797, senhanbusa@capitol.hawaii.gov
Conference committee members:
Rep. Aquino: 586-6520, fax 586-6521 repaquino@capitol.hawaii.gov
Rep. Karamatsu: 586-8490,fax 586-8494, repkaramatsu@capitol.hawaii.gov
Rep. Hanohano: 586-6530,fax 586-6531, rephanohano@capitol.hawaii.gov
Rep. Yamane: 586-6150, fax 586-6151, repyamane@capitol.hawaii.gov
Rep. Marumoto: 586-6310, fax 586-6311, repmarumoto@capitol.hawaii.gov
Sen Espero: 586-6360, fax 586-6361, senespero@capitol.hawaii.gov
Sen. Taniguchi: 586-6460, fax 586-6461, sentaniguchi@capitol.hawaii.gov
--
Pamela G. Lichty, MPH
President
Drug Policy Forum of Hawai'i
P.O. Box 61233
Honolulu, HI 96839
Phone: 808 735-8001
Fax: 808 735-2971
www.dpfhi.org
Tune in to Town Square today (Thursday) for Nomi Prins interview, 5-6 p.m. 89.3 FM
by Larry Geller
Instead of talking on the cellphone in your car today, tune in to Town Square, KIPO 89.3 FM 5-6 p.m., or from home, streaming from hawaiipublicradio.org. Hosted by Beth-Ann Kozlovich. Get the inside scoop on the economic bailout, the economic meltdown, and more, from an insider: journalist Nomi Prins, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and author of books including Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America.
She has a new book coming out, It Takes a Pillage. Find out about that and how Goldman Sachs might pay out the biggest bonuses in its history while foreclosures continue to devastate ordinary people, on tonight’s Town Square.
Superferry article close, but no prize
by Larry Geller
Ok, no big deal, but the Star-Bulletin might have questioned this statement:
The company spent as much as $20 million fighting in court to keep the operation open, including the costs of keeping the ships ready and crews on the payroll while it waited for the state Supreme Court to rule, Harman said.
The ferry actually shut down after the Supreme Court ruling.
The article identified Alex Harman as a partner in the firm J.F. Lehman & Co.
The story also touched on the operating costs of the single ferry that operated in Hawaii:
Harman said that the company tried unsuccessfully to lease the ships to ferry operators in the Caribbean and Europe. The ships, which require about $20,000 a day to operate not including crew costs, may wind up being used by the U.S. military, Harman said.
So far most press coverage has avoided relating the costs of operation of the vessel to the revenues received. Estimates appearing in the blogosphere repeatedly questioned whether the company was making a profit, even on the best of days.
When a company can’t make money, bankruptcy is one likely outcome, and could have been predicted.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Hawaii’s Internet tax could cost the state rather than help
by Larry Geller
Hawaii’s Internet tax (HB1405) could drive web companies to incorporate elsewhere. That’s what a caller told Lt. Governor Aiona yesterday on KHBH. If that happens, then the state would lose the amount of corporate taxes they now pay.
For most of us small timers, Amazon ads bring in little, so when the expected email arrived yesterday announcing that all Amazon Associates in Hawaii were being terminated, it was a ho-hum thing. I used to run those ads on my food blog, but took them out. They were a distraction and brought in next to nothing. As of July 1, Amazon would have to take state tax out of my almost nothing.
But others, with larger web presences, will take a bigger hit. The caller yesterday mentioned a six-figure loss. With numbers that big, it’s understandable that entrepreneurs will be looking to move their corporations out of Hawaii. It’s easy to do.
Just a couple of them moving out should result in a loss of revenue to the state greater than the tiny sums expected from Amazon and other affiliate programs. For those who were making significant revenues from affiliate programs, the tax on that income will be lost.
It’s not just Amazon, of course—dozens of vendors canceled affiliates in New York when that state passed a similar law, according to testimony on this bill. Should companies register elsewhere, the entire tax on their incomes will be lost, not just 4%.
The Internet tax bill is on the governor’s list of bills she may veto. On balance, this is one that we may be better off if she did kill it
Governor’s potential veto list is out
by Larry Geller
Gee, the Advertiser breaking news doesn’t have it yet, but the Star-Bulletin does. I depend on the Adv. for breaking news, and this was expected, so they should have been on the alert. Now, if they did, and I'm the one who missed it, I’m sure to get a nastygram or two.
The list is here (pdf file).
On this list is HB128, which drastically increases contribution limits to state legislators from out of state, among other things. I hope it does get vetoed. Also there is the “card check” bill with a feeble excuse for why the gov wants it vetoed (should could just have said “ ‘cause I’m a Republican” and we would understand). That should be overridden. And the Internet tax bill, probably a bad idea, I’ll discuss that one separately.
And many more.
Try get up early: Tomorrow--Open Table: Separation of Church and State, Islam Day
Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 1, 2009, the Interfaith Alliance/Open Table presents its monthly program at 07:00-08:30 a.m. (yes, that is a.m.) at Harris United Methodist Church, 20 N. Vineyard St. nr Nuuanu Ave. (ample parking-driveway off Nuuanu Ave.).
07:10 a.m. -- 7:10 a.m. “Separation of Church and State: Where is the Line?”, Daniel Gluck, Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Hawaii.
7:50-8:30 a.m. “Islam Day in Hawaii”, Hakim Ouansafi, President and Chairman of the Muslim Association of Hawaii.
This promises to be a great program. No RSVP necessary, just show up. They usually have munchies and drinks available.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Twitter on Honduras coup
by Larry Geller
Update: With cell phones and landlines cut off, it would seem unlikely that there’s much twittering originating within the country. Google doesn’t say if there is any Internet or not… meanwhile, the Organization of American States has been streaming video live and archived here.
Ok, I’m trying to see if checking Twitters on #honduras or one of the other keywords is any advantage.
CNN seems almost as quick with the news, and it’s in English (could they be watching Twitter also? Probably!). My junior high Spanish is enough to get the gist of the tweets, but it’s not easy reading. The links have been good, though.
At last look, tweets were discussing the appointment of a new president. But CNN has the same, and some background to it.
Besides, how do I know where the tweets are coming from?
Being a passive spectator of CNN or Google News is certainly easier. The info is packaged and delivered to my screen. So I’m trying to break through my resistance to just sitting here and letting CNN do the work. Actually… lots of other things happening besides the coup, which CNN or Google displays but the tweets do not…
Now, I think with Tweetdeck I can watch tweets and run my browser at the same time. Is there an even better way?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Learning about Iran: Fox vs. YouTube
by Larry Geller
Dave Winer, in a podcast I recently listened to, pointed out (I have to paraphrase) that while cable news was busy talking about a story, whether Sotomayor was a racist, YouTube was focused on events in Iran.
Sotomayor isn’t a racist, but Fox News and the others had a story about that, and they were all engrossed in retelling and debating their story. It wasn’t about observable facts.
Meanwhile, new events in Iran caught the focus of the world. There was a story, with basically two poles to it, both accepted by what I’ll call MSM, or Mainstream Media for a moment. The two poles were: (1) the election was rigged (despite lack of evidence), and (2) Mousavi is a good guy who should be the president of Iran. Sure, it can be sliced other ways also. But the MSM likes black-and-white distinctions. Saves them from having to do much digging, and perhaps (sadly) that is what the audience also prefers to be fed. There is info on Mousavi for the Googling. In fact, the first hit, and not a bad one, was from the MSM itself, a CNN article:
Though the 67-year old is credited for successfully navigating the Iranian economy as prime minister during a bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, he also was a hard-liner whom the Economist described as a "firm radical."
He, like most Iranians in power, does not believe in the existence of Israel. He defended the taking of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979, which led to the break in ties between the countries.
He was part of a regime that regularly executed dissidents and backed the fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie.
And as late as April, he opposed suspending the country's nuclear-enrichment program but said it would not be diverted to weapons use.
The complete article has more, and the alternative media more still. For background on Iran, the alternative media is much better. Fox would not want to remind readers that it was this country that destroyed Iranian democracy, and I wonder if they have mentioned that not so long ago George Bush and of course Dick Cheney were salivating over the possibility of bombing Iran unilaterally. Remember McCain, singing Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? Now we seem concerned about their democracy.
Ok, cutting to the present. While Fox News remains Fox News, citizen journalism does way better. The television will show protesting crowds. Search YouTube for Tehran, though, and you will see news posted from cellphones and camcorders on the ground. The first hit was very hard to watch – a young woman dying of a chest wound.
The use of Twitter may have been exaggerated by the media, but YouTube and Flickr will bring you there. It gives us new choices. We can skip the filter of the MSM, even the filter of alternative media and go right to the streets along with the protesters.
This is new. So it is possible to cancel the cable TV subscription and get better news. Twitter is not bad either. YouTube and Twitter are direct. No stories about stories. Filter the news yourself, make of it what you will.
There’s another way to slice newsmaking besides mainstream/alternative. In another article I’ll try to write about the professional/amateur slice. With the newspaper meltdown, there are professionals out here among us amateurs, so alternative media may benefit. At the same time, we can’t do without the professionals, whether they are writing print stories or blogging.
Anyway, check out YouTube for news or Iran and see what it’s like to move your eyes away from the talking heads and go right to the scene of the action yourself. If you spend time there, I predict that for many, there’s no going back.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Why the public plan option won’t work
by Larry Geller
Obama is rallying the troops in a fake “grassroots” support effort to bolster his healthcare plan. HCAN (Health Care Action Network) has gathered members (including two from Hawaii) to DC today to push for the “public plan” option. The battle is engaged.
Certainly, many of Obama’s supporters want to back him in bringing about a new system. But many would prefer that he work to bring about a single-payer system. The majority of Americans disagree with his refusal, if one can trust the various polls.
Here is a letter that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times that succinctly describes why his plan won’t work anyway.
From the NY Times, 6/25/2009, p. A22, or click here.
Will a Public Plan Bring Better Care?
The New York Times
June 24, 2009
To the Editor:
Re “A Public Health Plan” (editorial, June 21):
A public plan option that competes with private insurers won’t fix health care. Competition in health insurance involves a race to the bottom, not the top. Insurers compete by not paying for care: by seeking out the healthy and avoiding the sick; by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients. These bad behaviors confer a decisive competitive advantage; a public plan would either emulate them — becoming a clone of private insurance — or go under.
Moreover, the savings on overhead from a public plan option are far smaller than you suggest. While it might cut insurers’ profits (which is why they hate it), that’s only 3 percent of the roughly $400 billion squandered on health bureaucracy annually.
Far more goes for armies of insurance administrators who fight over payment, and to their counterparts at hospitals and doctors’ offices — all of whom would be retained with a public plan option. In contrast, a single-payer reform would radically simplify the payment system and redirect the vast savings to care.
Steffie Woolhandler
Cambridge, Mass., June 21, 2009
The writer, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, is a primary care doctor.
Reproduced for educational purposes without profit in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. Correspondence may be sent to larry –a t – disappearednews0com.
Chris Hedges on Iran—a must read
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away, published on truthdig.com on 6/22/2009, is a must read for anyone following the Iranian protests and wondering how America figures into the scene over there.
Snipping is unfair. I recommend clicking over there to read the whole thing, but to encourage you, here is a short snippet:
“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”
“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.
Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today—the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy—would be dead now.”
Washington has never recovered from the loss of Iran—something our intelligence services never saw coming. The overthrow of the shah, the humiliation of the embassy hostages, the laborious piecing together of tiny shreds of paper from classified embassy documents to expose America’s venal role in thwarting democratic movements in Iran and the region, allowed the outside world to see the dark heart of the American empire. Washington has demonized Iran ever since, painting it as an irrational and barbaric country filled with primitive, religious zealots. But Iranians, as these street protests illustrate, have proved in recent years far more courageous in the defense of democracy than most Americans.
…
We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Amazon.com emails Hawaii associates on termination of program thanks to new law
by Larry Geller
An email from Amazon.com just came in:
We regret to inform you that the Hawaii state legislature has passed an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that, unless vetoed soon by Governor Lingle, would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with Hawaii-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of Hawaii.
I have not run Amazon ads here, but other websites do. The email ends with:
Note that other states, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee, considered nearly identical schemes, but rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states residents.
Let’s see what happens.
Amazon may have emailed first, but it’s likely that other advertisers could follow suit. Kind of “de-monitization” of websites. For most websites, Amazon revenue probably adds up to very little, but I wonder what the effect on the big guys like newspaper sites might be if ads are withdrawn. Just thinking out loud, I don’t know enough to speculate.
Paul Krugman on Barack Obama messing up
by Larry Geller
We’re being warned.
In Not Enough Audacity, Paul Krugman warns:
The big question here is whether health care is about to go the way of the stimulus bill.
Obama keeps screwing up, trying to be non-partisan and compromising before he has even negotiated. The guy is compromising with himself:
On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold.
But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.
In an article yesterday Krugman warned:
Really bad news on the health care front. After making the case for a public option, and doing it very well, Obama said this:
“We have not drawn lines in the sand other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don’t have health insurance or are underinsured,” Mr. Obama said. “Those are the broad parameters that we’ve discussed.”
There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side
Krugman suggests:
Maybe there’s a way to recover from this. But it’s up to the health reform activists to stiffen the administration’s spine….
Speaking of spine, Sen. Bernie Sanders stands taller than most Democrats. Check out his article Stop Health Care Industry Fraud, released today (6/25/2009). His article links to some citations. Good job. Here’s a YouTube video of Sanders in action on this issue (click the little box at the bottom for full screen):
I keep getting emails “signed” by Obama. Too bad he doesn’t read the ones I send him. Maybe he’ll read Krugman in his copy of the NY Times.
Clean elections and an end to corporate control are still the goals
by Larry Geller
Ian Lind and I differ on what position advocates for clean elections should take on campaign spending limits. He wrote today, in his article on the decision in Tavares v. Wong:
Supporters of campaign reform opposed a bill introduced in the 2009 legislative session that would have allowed corporations to give no more than $25,000 in total to all candidates combined. By rejecting that measure, reformers now face the prospect of the upcoming 2010 election without any limits on corporate money in place.
The decision was not unexpected. Regardless, advocates discussed the case and its effect on possible approaches during this past legislative session as the House in particular squirmed and contrived to blow corporate contribution limits sky high through legislation.
The right thing to do, I believe, is to keep pushing for a total ban. Other states have banned or severely limited corporate contributions, why not Hawaii?
How could advocates support a $25,000 or $50,000 limit one year and go back the next asking for a total ban? The Tavares v. Wong case had nothing to do with the goals that have been in place for years and years.
More than that, as I was contemplating the passing earlier this week of Prof. Ira Rohter, I realized that for as long as I knew him, and for years and years before that, Rohter was an uncompromising voice for clean elections and an end to corporate bribery of lawmakers. You can’t have half-clean elections any more than health care for half the population or democracy only for those with money. He was fighting for voters to control their own government way before this particular case. We will carry on his fight.
While it would have been nice if the court had decided differently, they have not said that corporate contributions should continue, only that Wong was wrong in her interpretation of the law.
Good try, Wong, but I don’t think advocates regret demanding an end to bribery and pay-for-play, and for sure, we will keep at it until we achieve our goals.
Update: Not everyone reads blog comments. This one, I felt, is worth elevating. By Anonymous:
I'm glad Barbara Wong challenged the interpretation out of a conviction that campaign contributions should be transparent.
The whole scenario, to me, is interesting...
This issue of limiting corporate contributions that flow from treasuries (corporations can still give in lots of other ways) has a long history in Hawaii.
At one time, legislators, out of good conscience, decided to put in place a $1,000 limit of on corporate contributions. That limit was later lifted, but then the law passed in 2005 got us into this situation where the language of the $1,000 ban was vague and needed interpretation from the court.
Legislators had the opportunity to clarify the language on the $1,000 limit, but they couldn't come to a compromise: some legislators wanted a total ban, but most wanted to set the cap at some higher amount like $50,000, or even allow unlimited amounts.
Meanwhile, citizen advocate groups, who have always called for a total ban, or to at the very maximum, for a clarificatiion to cap the corporate contributions at $1,000, of course were not going to say "oh, sure, let's settle for $25,000 because legislators are telling us that's the best they can do."
The truth of the matter is that citizen advocates had a certain amount of leverage on the legislators on this issue, which left the legislators with two choices:
1. clarify the law, and set it at a $1,000 or a ban (consistent with
earlier precedents with the law in Hawaii), or2. leave it up to the courts, creating a likely scenario that corporations
would be able to donate unlimited amounts.Further, the truth of the story is that legislators chose option "2" and are now shirking responsibility and blaming citizen advocate groups for not playing insider politics by striking a compromise at "$25,000".
This is what's interesting -- almost laughable -- to me. Citizen advocate groups are catching blame for decisions made in an arena like this.
Ultimately, unless you're in the neo-conservate economic camp, most people agree that private money has a corrosive effect on the lawmaking process: it stifles innovation, aggregates power, and shuts ordinary people out of the process.
If anybody is to blame, I would say it's the legislators who wanted to set the cap at $50,000 or at unlimited amounts.
These folks are the real reason we're in the situation we're in. If they would have agreed to clarify the language at $1,000 or at a total ban, we would have been on our way to improving democratic principles that we like to preach about.
However, instead of blaming these folks, legislators are putting the blame on citizen advocate groups.
If your kids told you to quit smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and you told them they had two options: 1/2 a pack, or no limit at all, and the children said "neither one, you should quit altogether", would you blame your kids for your inability to quit smoking?
Ah Quon to be honored posthumously
by Larry Geller
The Hawaii House Blog reports today that:
The nation's educators will posthumously honor Ah Quon McElrath with the César Chávez Acción y Compromiso Human and Civil Rights Award. The National Education Association (NEA) will present her family with the award at a special dinner on July 2, 2009 in San Diego.
I can’t tell you how much I miss AQ. She was a role model and leader and never gave up the good fight.
More:
Ah Quon passed away on Thursday, December 11, 2008 at the age of 92, a few days before her 93rd birthday. She was a well-known social activist and advocate for social justice who walked the halls of the State Capitol lobbying lawmakers to increase public services and enhance the benefits and rights of low-income workers. Ah Quon spent most of her life as a social worker for the International Longshoremen's and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and is renowned as the icon of the Hawaii labor movement.
Hawaii court shreds state’s argument in Tavares v Wong, now sky’s the limit on total corporate campaign contributions
by Larry Geller
What state legislators could not achieve this past session due to persistent protests, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals has gifted to them in an opinion filed this morning. A summary of the opinion is here.
The opinion minced no words—Campaign Spending Commissioner Barbara Wong’s interpretation of the statutes and of legislative intent was incorrect at every point. Contributions given to Maui Mayor Charmain Tavares were legal.
The case concerned transparency and also held that a corporation could give only $1,000 in total to all candidates. The Circuit Court and now the ICA did not go along with that. So campaign contributions can be given to each candidate, up the the limits prescribed by law, with no total limit at all.
Legislators’ coffers can now be filled with as much as corporations want to spread around. Had one or another of their proposed bills made it into law, there might have been a $25,000 or $50,000 limit in total contributions from any one corporation. In the end, that might have produced about the same result for lawmakers. Advocates worked against those high limits (about 23 other states and the federal government prohibit contributions from corporate treasuries).
The ICA dashed a key argument by Wong that any contribution, other than by a natural person, must be made as a non-candidate committee, saying that is simply not in the statute. This is the part that was mocked during oral arguments by Attorney William Crockett (for plaintiff Charmaine Tavares) after Deputy AG Russell Suzuki asserted it to the three-judge panel. He was painfully direct in saying that the statute simply didn’t require any such thing, a company giving a contribution is simply that, and not a non-candidate committee.
What’s next? Sen. Les Ihara and perhaps others will be introducing legislation next session to prohibit corporate donations directly to candidates, but allow them to continue to make $1,000/election donation to their PAC. Activists will continue to support their position that Hawaii should severely limit, if not ban, corporate contributions.
Party Time
While most people struggle in these hard economic times, somewhere in the State Capitol they may be partying right now.
(thanks to attorney Lance Collins for quick pointer to the opinion)
Tweets at the end of the universe
by Larry Geller
As I was sifting through Mark Sanford tweets early this morning, I was thinking that I don’t recall that Twitter was foreseen in any of the science fiction that I read mostly as a kid.
The closest thing I can think of was a Twilight Zone episode in which a man buys a newspaper and tosses his coin into the box where people toss coins, and it stood on edge. At that moment the famous Twilight Zone theme plays, and you know something is going to happen. It turns out that the guy now has the power to read minds. Through the magic of Google, here’s a snippet of the synopsis of that episode:
Bank clerk Hector B. Poole is on his way to work when he stops to buy a newspaper. He tosses a quarter into the coin box and it lands exactly on edge. Hector goes on his way but starts to at first hear what he thinks are people talking out loud voicing their innermost thoughts. Distracted, he is almost hit by a car. The driver comes over and apologizes to him… but Hector realizes is thinking that Hector is an idiot. He asks the man what he's saying and the man says he didn't say anything, while still thinking Hector is an idiot.
That’s pretty close to Twitter, including the part about being distracted and almost hit by a car. People tweet the most trivial things in their thoughts and we all can tune in.
But otherwise, this Twitter phenomenon, whether it is a temporary fad or much more than that, didn’t break into any SF I remember.
In a way, my childhood SF experience was very conventional and literary. By that I mean there were big words in those books, bigger than I use in this blog. There were no Kindles or Tablet PCs to contain e-texts for reading, I had to carry heavy paperbacks with hundreds of pages in them. It took a week or more to finish anything by Robert A. Heinlein. There was magic in the reading. I read between classes, while walking in the hallways, during lunch, after school, obsessively.
In all that, no one tweeted, and few analogs to the cell phone existed.
But more important, look at the contrast between investing time reading a thick Heinlein novel and spending hours of a day sending or receiving 140 character tweets. What are we doing to ourselves?
When you go to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, I bet they’ll ask you to leave your cellphone back in your space ship. Just relax and enjoy the spectacle. After all, you paid an incredible sum to be there at that moment (or you will pay, please see below). Nowhere in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy do I find a mention of diners texting or tweeting their friends as the universe ended in front of them.
But the reality is, I think, that if the world ended today, it would be thoroughly documented by tweets and re-tweets until the very last cell tower vaporized.
“ "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "The Universe as we know it has now been in existence for over one hundred and seventy thousand million billion years and will be ending in a little over half an hour. So, welcome one and all to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!" ” — The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Milliways, also known as The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, can only be visited practically by time travel, as it exists at the end of time and matter. Marvin the Paranoid Android is one character who manages to reach Milliways without the use of time travel, merely by being very patient. One of the restaurant's major attractions is that diners can watch the entire universe end around them as they eat. The terminal moment is followed by dessert. Reservations are easily obtained, since they can be booked once the patron returns to his or her original time after their meal, and the restaurant's bill can be paid by depositing a penny in any bank account of the present time: by the end of the universe, Compound interest will be enough to pay the extremely high bill.
(Now, why didn’t Obama’s bailout team think of a scheme like that? It could save us taxpayers all that future debt. I.e., we just each deposit a penny in a Goldman Sachs or Citibank account and ask them to wait awhile, they’ll get their bailout in due course.)
It would be interesting to check out Millways today (where did I park my time machine?). While the spectacle unfolds before them, the kids will no doubt be preoccupied with their little video games, their iPods plugged into their ears, while the adults concentrate on furiously sending their tweets. It’s an obsession which consumes them even though, as they can see out the huge picture window, no one is left out there to receive them.
Sanford tweets are the latest rage
by Larry Geller
Hawaii wakes up so late that the Twitter action on the Continent can peak before we even have breakfast.
So it was with tweets about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s weekend tryst in Argentina.
Not only were the tweets flying while most of us slept, but someone beat me to the story. Here’s a roundup summarized from a Mediachannel.org article. I’ll just pick a few, click over there for more.
pourmecoffee: “I don’t think it’s good that a main takeaway of Sanford’s press conference is how really awesome his mistress is.”
Bagyants: “Sanford turned down one stimulus, accepted another. Flip flopper!“
TeresaKopec: “So instead of walking the trail, he was chasing some tail.“
martinboz: “Somehow I doubt Argentinian tourist bureaus are going to use #Sanford as a selling point when promoting themselves as a vacation spot.”
JayRodriguez: “Oh my God - The Gov. Sanford story was SOOOOOOOO much better than I thought it’d be. I was expecting a pain killer addiction, tops.”
Spinelli666: “At least Sanford proves that not all #gop members hate all foreigners“
waitwait: “Anyone else feel let down when Sanford finally used the pronoun “she” to describe affair partner? me: *raises hand*”
maxsparber: “None of us are in a position to judge Sanford until we too have had sex with a woman in Argentina. Now who is up for a road trip?”
alanpdx: “The reason the #gop is so upset with #sanford is that he outsourced his hookers to a South American country.“
And this tweet on Jon Stewart’s perceptive remark last night, which I link to because he used the p-word and I don’t want Google to send strange people here, so if you’re over 18 just click this. Or, if you’re under 18 and your parents won’t let you twitter yet.
Star-Bulletin reports on new move in Superferry creditor dance
by Larry Geller
The Star-Bulletin and Advertiser stories this morning on the ongoing Hawaii Superferry bankruptcy hearings in Delaware were similar, except for this information in the Star-Bulletin:
The creditors said the Superferry's abandonment motion is particularly troubling because it was filed less than a week after the company filed a motion seeking to initiate the transfer of $7.5 million held in escrow to Guggenheim Corporate Funding LLC, one of the Superferry's creditors. The committee is objecting to the release of those funds because it says Guggenheim has no security interest in the $7.5 million and the escrow conditions governing the release of that money have not been and can never be satisfied.
A quick Google search at 3:30 a.m. did not reveal who Guggenheim Corporate Funding is, so I’ll have to check further after morning coffee. There were a lot of hits related to bankruptcy proceedings and one as a “stalking horse bidder” which is intriguing enough to look up on its own.
There may be nothing in it, but why would HSF try to move Guggenheim ahead of other creditors? Just a question mark for the moment.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Goldman Sachs leads the screw-a-thon
by Larry Geller
This is so disgusting that I don’t even want to dirty my computer by writing about it.
Just go read: "Suck on Our Yachts": Goldman Sachs Issues Non-Apology for Destroying the World Economy (alternet, 6/22/2009).
Ok, just a little snippet:
So some Dutch teachers' union that a year before was buying ultra-safe U.S. Treasury bonds in 2006 runs into a Goldman salesman who offers them a different, "just as safe" AAA-rated investment that, at the moment anyway, just happens to be earning a much higher return than treasuries. Next thing you know, a bunch of teachers in Holland are betting their retirement nest eggs on a bunch of meth addicted "homeowners" in Texas and Arizona.
This isn't really commerce, but much more like organized crime: it was a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the economy that wouldn't have been possible without accomplices in the ratings agencies and regulators willing to turn a blind eye.
Of course, you’ll read my article below on record Goldman Sachs bonuses.
Goldman Sachs bonus payouts look to be the largest in its 140-year history
by Larry Geller
And Americans are still getting foreclosed in record numbers? Where’s the outrage?
The Guardian newspaper reports staff at Goldman Sachs can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history [Democracy Now, 6/22/2009]
See the story (or video available on the linked page) for more on this and on regulation of the financial industry.
Advertiser catches up a bit on Superferry news
by Larry Geller
Here’s today’s (6/24/2009) Honolulu Advertiser front page (snippet):
Yup, it’s true. But it’s very much last week’s headline.
Here’s the Star-Bulletin story from exactly a week ago, 6/17/2009:
The Advertiser story contains more current news than its unfortunate headline. But hotter news than this is available on the Web and in Hawaii blogs. For example, This story out of Atlanta:
The U.S. Maritime Administration says that it plans to repossess and sell a pair of fast ferries built at Austal USA for Hawaii Superferry Inc. [Press-Register, Government to repossess Hawaii Superferry boats built at Austal, 6/24/2009]
In the same article is an interesting juxtaposition of facts:
Austal Ltd. President Bob Browning said he was disappointed that MARAD decided to seize the ferries without involving Austal in a project to prepare them for military use.
MARAD made the ferry loans under its Title XI program, which is supposed to support U.S. shipyards by reducing their reliance on military work.
The first confirms a military objective, though we can’t, of course, say that Austal hasn’t just thought of it, this very moment. But the second is interesting: the loan was made to reduce Austal’s reliance on military work. Then why didn’t they build a ferry that was sized and suited to Hawaii rather than to Navy requirements?
The article includes a variant of the common mis-statement of why the Supreme Court ruled Act 2 unconstitutional. Nevermind.
More from the web: shipbuilder Austal has got themselves a couple of hundred millions in military contracts that make their Hawaii Superferry loan loss seem trivial (snippet):
Henderson-based shipbuilder Austal has taken a step towards a long mooted defence contract after the US Navy exercised an option to fund the purchase of long lead time equipment for two additional vessels, valued collectively at $450 million.
The equipment, including water jets, diesel engines and reduction gearboxes, will be used for the construction of two additional 103 metre Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSV).
Today's award is valued at $125 million.
Austal's contract with the US Navy includes options for nine additional vessels to be awarded between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2013. [West Australia Business News, Austal set to win more US Navy contracts, 6/22/2009]
More related to Hawaii Superferry is Ian Lind’s post today, linking to original court documents, a valuable service. See the bottom of this article. And then jump to Brad Parsons’ article here for even more.
If you want to keep current on Superferry news, you can’t go wrong bookmarking the blogs, or putting their RSS feeds into your favorite newsreader.
Winning the hearts and minds of Pakistanis 60 deaths at at time
by Larry Geller
The guy was already dead. Surely the idiot who pushed the trigger button knew he was bombing a funeral. Or was he ordered to do it?
US Drone Attack Kills 60 in Pakistan
At least sixty people have been killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region. Pakistani officials say the bombing struck a funeral for a Taliban commander who died in an earlier attack. The missiles were reportedly launched as funeral-goers dispersed after delivering prayers. It was the deadliest of more than twenty US drone attacks so far this year. [Democracy Now, 6/24/2009]
Al Jazeera quotes an un-named US official:
Questioned about the reported attacks, a US defence department official said: "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan." [aljazeera.net, 6/24/2009]
But eyewitnesses differ:
"I saw three drones, they dropped bombs," Sohail Mehsud, a resident of Makeen, said.
And 60 civilians are dead (other estimates are higher, 70 or 80 so far).
The entire world should be condemning the US’ use of drones to kill civilians. Where are they? C’mon world, squeak up, you cowards. Make us stop. (sigh)
Michelle, thanks for your email!
by Larry Geller
Dear Michelle,
Glad to get your email. I especially liked your empathy for the “daily struggles now confronting so many families.” Yes, many, many families are in deep trouble.
So may I ask a favor?
I think you know that many of those struggles can be attributed to so many families losing their homes or jobs, and also their medical care. You know that the cost of paying for medical care can bankrupt a family, then they lose their homes. I don’t need to tell you this, I know.
What most Americans want and most doctors want, according to poll after poll, is single-payer health care. In fact, A new poll by the New York Times and CBS News has found that 72 percent of Americans support the government creating a public healthcare plan, similar to Medicare, which would compete with private insurance plans. That is: single-payer.
If your husband hasn’t seen that poll yet, I wonder if you could circle it in the paper and put it in front of his morning coffee tomorrow?
The insurance industry lobby is swarming around him like flies, and he hasn’t dared to swat a one of them. In fact, it was reported today that he may be willing to drop the so-called “public option.”
How would it feel if the flies won?
If businesses small and large are relieved of the burden of paying for health insurance, then they will be more competitive, and so many jobs will not be lost. That’s why the Canadian auto industry will survive even as the US auto industry fails, for example. You can mention this to him also, because you said you care about our daily struggles.
Unless something is done for the people instead of for bankers, conditions in this country are going to get worse. By election time, 2010, there could be a backlash against Democrats who have supported insurers and bankers over the needs of struggling Americans. Congress could swing Republican. That could put an end to your husband’s chances of hanging in there for another four years.
In the end, we’ll all lose. So please spread some of your compassion around the household, and get Barack to do what’s right for the people.
I emailed him myself about this, but so far he hasn’t replied. He just wants me to contribute money.
Guess what—I’m tired of bate-and-switch politics. No more money until he begins to deliver on his campaign promises.
Sorry to have to say that, but we citizens, even if jobless, even if houseless, still have the power of the vote. I’d hate to see the Republicans regain any of the hard-fought ground we stand on now, but all they have to do is promise a chicken in every pot on Fox News, and many people will be persuaded.
So go in there and yell at him, would you? Wake him up.
Thanks
--Larry
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Jimmy Carter: Hope for Gaza
Hope for Gaza: Address to the UN Relief Works Agency’s Human Rights Graduating Class
By Jimmy Carter, 2002 Nobel Peace Laureate - in Gaza, 16 Jun 09
Director of UNRWA operations John Ging, thank you for inviting me to Gaza. Distinguished guests, children of Gaza, I am grateful for your warm reception.
I first visited Gaza 36 years ago and returned during the 1980s and later for the very successful Palestinian elections. Although under occupation, this community was relatively peaceful and prosperous. Now, the aftermath of bombs, missiles, tanks, bulldozers and the continuing economic siege have brought death, destruction, pain, and suffering to the people here. Tragically, the international community largely ignores the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are being treated more like animals than human beings.
Last week, a group of Israelis and Americans tried to cross into Gaza through Erez, bringing toys and children's playground equipment – slides, swings, kites, and magic castles for your children. They were stopped at the gate and prevented from coming. I understand even paper and crayons are treated as "security hazards" and not permitted to enter Gaza. I sought an explanation for this policy in Israel, but did not receive a satisfactory answer – because there is none.
The responsibility for this terrible human rights crime lies in Jerusalem, Cairo, Washington, and throughout the international community. This abuse must cease; the crimes must be investigated; the walls must be brought down, and the basic right of freedom must come to you.
Almost one-half of Gaza's 1.5 million people are children, whose lives are being shaped by poverty, hunger, violence, and despair. More than 50,000 families had their homes destroyed or damaged in January, and parents are in mourning for the 313 innocent children who were killed.
The situation in Gaza is grim, but all hope is not lost. Amidst adversity, you continue to possess both dignity and determination to work towards a brighter tomorrow. That is why educating children is so important.
I have come to Gaza to help the world know what important work you are doing. UNRWA is here to ensure that the 200,000 children in its schools can develop their talent, express their dynamism, and help create the path to a better future.
The human rights curriculum is teaching children about their rights and also about their responsibilities. UNRWA is teaching about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the struggle for these rights all over the world, Gaza's children are learning that as you seek justice for yourselves, you must be sure that your behavior provides justice for others.
They are learning that it is wrong to fire rockets that may kill Israeli children. They are learning that arbitrary detention and the summary execution of political opponents is not acceptable. They are learning that the rule of law must be honored here in Gaza.
I would like to congratulate both UNRWA and the children who have completed the human rights curriculum with distinction. They are tomorrow's leaders.
In addition to the tragedy of occupation, the lack of unity among Palestinians is causing a deteriorating atmosphere here in Gaza, in Ramallah, and throughout the West Bank.
Palestinians want more than just to survive. They hope to lead the Arab world, to be a bridge between modern political life and traditions that date back to the Biblical era. The nation you will create must be pluralistic and democratic – the new Palestine that your intellectuals have dreamt about. Palestine must combine the best of the East and the West. The Palestinian state, like the land, must be blessed for all people. Jerusalem must be shared with everyone who loves it – Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
With our new leaders in Washington, my country will move into the forefront of this birth of a new Palestine. We were all reminded of this renewed hope and commitment by President Obama's recent speech in Cairo.
President Obama's resolve to resume the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process based on the principle of two states for two peoples must be welcomed. This vision of two sovereign nations living as neighbors is not a mere convenient phrase. It is the basis for a lasting peace for this entire region, including Syria and Lebanon.
We all know that a necessary step is the ending of the siege of Gaza – the starving of 1 ½ million people of the necessities of life. Never before in history has a large community been savaged by bombs and missiles and then deprived of the means to repair itself. The issue of who controls Gaza is not an obstacle. As the World Bank has pointed out, funds can be channeled through a number of independent mechanisms and effective implementing agencies.
Although funds are available, not a sack of cement nor a piece of lumber has been permitted to enter the closed gates from Israel and Egypt. I have seen with my own eyes that progress is negligible.
My country and our friends in Europe must do all that is necessary to persuade Israel and Egypt to allow basic materials into Gaza. At the same time, there must be no more rockets and mortar shells falling on Israeli citizens.
I met this week with the parents of Corporal Gilad Shalit, and have with me a letter that I hope can be delivered to their son. I have also met with many Palestinians who plead for the freedom of their 11,700 loved ones imprisoned by the Israelis, including 400 women and children. Many of them have been imprisoned for many years, held without trial, with no access to their families or to legal counsel. Rational negotiations and a comprehensive peace can end this suffering on both sides.
I know it is difficult now, surrounded by terrible destruction, to see a future of independence and dignity in a Palestinian state, but this goal can and must be achieved. I know too that it is hard for you to accept Israel and live in peace with those who have caused your suffering. However, Palestinian statehood cannot come at the expense of Israel's security, just as Israel's security can not come at the expense of Palestinian statehood.
In his speech in Cairo, President Obama said that Hamas has support among Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a full role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, accept existing peace agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.
I have urged Hamas leaders to accept these conditions, and they have made statements and taken actions that suggest they are ready to join the peace process and move toward the creation of an independent and just Palestinian state.
Khaled Mashaal has assured me that Hamas will accept a final status agreement negotiated by the Palestinian Authority and Israel if the Palestinian people approve it in a referendum. Hamas has offered a reciprocal ceasefire with Israel throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, neither the Israeli leaders nor Hamas accept the terms of the Oslo Agreement of 1993, but the Arab Peace Initiative is being considered now by all sides.
I have personally witnessed free and fair elections in Palestine when Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas were elected president and when legislative members were chosen for your parliament. I hope to return next January for a similar event that will unite all Palestinians as you seek a proud and peaceful future.
Ladies and gentlemen, children of Gaza, thank you for inviting me and for sharing this happy occasion with me. Congratulations for your achievements.
Johan Galtung’s view from Europe: Women and Men, Peace and Security
“Very much of the peace existing in the world is carried on the shoulders of women. That capacity should benefit humanity at all levels, micro-personal, meso-social, macro-states, mega-regions….More important than negotiation tables would actually be myriads of women, and men, capable of holism, dialectics, empathy, compassion, nonviolence, dialogue, handling conflict, building peace, creatively.”
Women and Men, Peace and Security – Track 1: Reinforcing Role of Women in Peace and Security
By Johan Galtung
European Commission Speech - Making the Difference: Strengthening the Capacities to Respond to Crises and Security Threats; Brussels, 03/May/09
Ladies and gentlemen,
My approach to this topic is based on 50 years experience with how women and men relate to peace and security issues; in formal and informal politics, in mediation and mediation training, in peace- keeping operations and peace-building, and in meetings like this one.
But let me first issue a warning against what I am going to say. There are gender differences. But they are not 100-0; 100% of women are like that, and 0% of men. More like 75-25, or 67-33, or 60-40. Exceptions may overshadow the rules. Moreover, women may be slipping from their position of comparative advantage. And men may climb up to female levels of insight and practice; we are not lost by definition. There are no iron laws here. There is no essentialism. There is some biology, however; strange if there were not. But mostly socio-cultural contextuality, and with changing gendered interfaces with that context, the relation to peace and security will also change.
One more introductory remark. The epoch-making UN SC Resolution 1325 on the horror costs of war paid by women as victims and the peace benefits from women as empowered actors was a late, but most welcome, gift to humankind; admirably enacted, like in this meeting by the EU.
So, here we go; exploring nine peace/security dimensions.
Holism vs. Specificity. Women tend to be more holistic and contextual, taking more factors into account; men more specific, zooming in on the factors of their choice. They love data about their pet factors, and feed on numbers where women feed on overviews. Men tend to arrange their factors in linear sequences and go for linear agendas in thought, speech and action; women go more for spiraling agendas, returning to points in very complex landscapes. Women see men as mechanistic, men see women as scatterbrains uttering bla-bla.
Dialectics vs. Final State. Women are used to contradictions and tensions, with a baby suckling, a child tucking at the skirt for attention, three casseroles overboiling, the fire coming to an end, a knock at the door, a nagging, egocentric husband, attention from an unwanted suitor--and handling all of that. Disorder, chaos, entropy as the normal state of affairs, navigating waters whipped by storms from all corners. Men have a wish for order, cosmos and energy emerging from, and protecting, the state of law and order, like a well greased bureaucracy with clear standard operating procedures for all, and for all situations. A ceasefire looks orderly, and, consequently, is easily accepted as the end of the crisis, a final state.
Human Empathy vs. Metal, Things. Observing Norwegian peacekeeping forces in Serbia-Beograd, with 30% women, women were clearly more interested in talking with Serbs, Croats and others to understand them better, and the men more interested in observing them, focused more on their binoculars, radar screens, armed vehicles, arms; metal, things. Closeness vs. distance. High empathy vs. low empathy. Crucial.
Compassion vs. Deduction. This is Gilligan's dimension(1) , here one among many: women derive political conclusions from compassion with others, to be helped, including across conflict borders, men more from deductions from abstract, general principles, like democracy, human rights, self-determination, to be monitored. That compassion may extend particularly to other women in wars with sexualized violence as a part of the conquest, and more particularly to mothers from mothers and their offspring, knowing the impossible situation for adequate child care during a war. Men get more trapped in them vs. us.
Nonviolence vs. Violence. Above 90% of criminal and war violence is committed by men, making gender a major factor of war-peace. Added to socio-cultural division of labor women have more mono-aminooxidase, MAO, blocking hormones releasing violent aggression; men less.
But women also have more corpus callosum, connecting the emotions and verbal ability in the two brain-halves, making women better at verbalizing emotions. Whereas MAO makes men more physically violent, the latter may predispose women for more verbal violence, for poisoned arrows carrying much emotional hurt. Female verbal superiority makes "let's sit down and talk it over" the equivalent of "let's have a good boxing match", given male physical superiority. Many men cannot match female loquacity, and fear it will take very much time away from work. Marriages may become arenas for the dialectics of the two violencies.
Dialogue vs. Debate. A dialogue is a mutual search for something news, a debate is about winning, continuation of war by verbal means; a dialogue is questioning, a debate is dictating. Women vs. men again.
Handling Conflicts vs. Managing Crises. Women see unacceptable goals and means in all, whereas men judge their side by good intentions and others by bad means. For women, violence means something underneath must be handled, for men it is a crisis to be managed by being strong. Women see their side as a part of the problem, not only the solution (in some, self-recrimination may go too far). Men see their side as infallible, fueled by fear of looking vulnerable, even weak.
Peace vs. Security. The two words do not stand for the same reality. "Peace" is a situation where conflicts are transformed equitably and projects of equitable cooperation are built; security is a situation of low probability of violence to oneself, often fueled by paranoia. Peace is a relation between parties. Security is something one party has; and the sum of two or more "securities" is not peace. It follows that women more easily incline toward the former, like catering to the whole family, and men more toward the latter, catering mainly to egocentric, satisfied, undisturbed, secure, existence.
Diligence vs. Creativity. Women more diligent, and men more creative? So it seems, possibly because women feel more insecure.
Except for the last factor, this overview explains well what was so clear during the Cold War: men focused on arms and their numbers (usually faked anyhow), women on marches and contacts and human relations; men focused on what is wrong about them, women also on us.
But this comparative peace advantage held by women is fragile.
Thus, training in violence competence, be that in gangs, in liberation-resistance-revolution struggles, in regular state armies, breaking down old divisions of labor, makes women more like men.
So does simplifying home and family, outsourcing childcare and food-making, sharing house-work, make women more like men.
And so does having PhDs in subjects like international law and studies, political science and economics, as abstract, general systems with principles and deductions from them, again making women more like men. No argument against women taking PhDs, but against constructions of the world where human beings hardly even exist, only systems(2).
These factors can be counteracted when women are aware of them. The same goes for possible deficits in creativity, so needed when a new social reality has to be built on the ashes of one that failed.
Very much of the peace existing in the world is carried on the shoulders of women. That capacity should benefit humanity at all levels, micro-personal, meso-social, macro-states, mega-regions. Women should emerge from victimhood to leadership in mediation-negotiation, without becoming too self-righteous. More important than negotiation tables would actually be myriads of women, and men, capable of holism, dialectics, empathy, compassion, nonviolence, dialogue, handling conflict, building peace, creatively. Men alone around a negotiation table may be up to some mischief; women are needed. NGO mediation open to women should precede state-region mediation closed to them.
This will not be easy. Men will be jealous and afraid of losing power. They should be praised and raised, and women are good at both.
NOTES:
(1) Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
(2) Johan Galtung, 50 Years: 25 Intellectual Landscapes Explored, TRANSCEND University Press, 2008; www.transcend.org/tup.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Health care action in DC—a protection racket
by Larry Geller
On Town Square Thursday night (6/18/2009), guest Russell Mokhiber, phoning in for the program from his home late at night, mentioned that he had run into White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel the day before. Here’s an article describing what that was about: Single Payer and the Duplicitous Rahm Emanuel (CommonDreams.org, 6/18/2009).
Here’s a video that was included in the article. It includes the question of why the Congressional Budget Office isn’t scoring single payer. If it did, it would likely find out that everyone could be covered for what we are paying now or less.
Conclusion? What Congress and Obama are doing is trying to protect their big donors, especially the insurance companies.
Check out the story. Here’s a snippet:
We also asked Emanuel why Obama flip-flopped on single payer.
After all, as a young state Senator in Illinois, Obama said he was for single payer.
All that would be needed to make single payer a reality, Obama said in 2003, would be for the Democrats to "take back the White House, the Senate and the House."
Fast forward six years.
The Democrats have taken back the White House, the Senate and the House.
Now Obama is opposed to single payer.
Why did Obama flip flop?
"It's about the objective, not the means," Emanuel said.
Well, if the objective is to cover everyone and control costs, the CBO says that the Democratic Party's tinkering plans won't do it.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Akaka bill blues
by Larry Geller
(thanks to Dick Mayer for pointer to this story)
This is as upbeat as this NY Times story gets:
The state of Hawaii turns 50 this year (it joined the union on Aug. 21, 1959). People there should be happy. But it’s hard.
The economy is really bad. The housing market and construction industry are in deep slumps. Tourism has been hammered by the recession and swine flu. Unemployment is double what it was a year ago. To close a $688 million budget gap, the governor announced the most drastic furlough program in the country. She’s closing state offices three days a month, for two years. Aloha Friday, where people go to work in aloha shirts and muumuus, is going to be Furlough Friday, where they stay home in pajamas and look for jobs on the Internet.
And now, to top everything off, a communist dictator supposedly wants to blow up Hawaii. A Japanese newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, reported this week that North Korea planned to launch a ballistic missile in Hawaii’s direction around the Fourth of July. [NY Times, Hawaii Blues,6/20/2009]
I’m going to clip this one and send it to the next relative who chides us for living in “Paradise.”
The article is flip about our troubles, and plugs the Akaka bill. I suppose it’s too much to ask that it recognize that many Native Hawaiians, supposedly the beneficiaries of that legislation, feel it is simply the next step in colonization of their land. Or something like that, I shouldn’t interpret.
US Maritime Administration reported moving to seize two Hawaii Superferries
by Larry Geller
… [Austal] chief executive Bob Browning said yesterday talks with the US Maritime Administration, which ranks above Austal as a secured creditor of Superferry, had “come unstuck” in the past 24 hours.
It is understood the USMA, whose debt stands at $US135 million, declined to provide the maintenance funding for Superferry’s vessels while it completed the reorganisation and instead moved to seize the ferries.
…
Mr Browning said the exposure was the only such financing deal Austal had entered into “and we won’t be doing it again”. [The West Australian, Austal cops $US11m Hawaii hit, 6/20/2009]
These days, “superferry” hits from Google searches usually come up with news of the ferry service in the Philippines, which has had its share of bumps but which is still running.
Recently, there are hits for a new superferry named the Norman Arrow, which is crossing the English Channel:
Try out the new fast cross-channel superferry – Norman Arrow, the world’s largest diesel-powered catamaran – which docks at delightful Boulogne-sur-Mer, with its superb beaches and chic boutiques, just an hour after leaving Dover. [easier.com, 6/18/2009]
The ferry has its own blog, here and here.
Politico suggests: Ahmadinejad won. Get over it
by Larry Geller
The mainstream media has failed to come up with any evidence that the Iranian election was stolen, yet so many stories seem to accept that premise implicitly. And yeah, where were they when our own presidential elections were cast in doubt?
But back to Iran, here’s another article that points out how the results are in line with Ahmadinejad’s prior election performance in 2005 and with recent polling.
…Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.
Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive elections at the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. Manipulation has always been there, as it is in many other countries.
…
With regard to electoral irregularities, the specific criticisms made by Mousavi — such as running out of ballot paper in some precincts and not keeping polls open long enough (even though polls stayed open for at least three hours after the announced closing time) — could not, in themselves, have tipped the outcome so clearly in Ahmadinejad’s favor.Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral fraud even by American legal standards. And, compared with the U.S. presidential election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran’s electoral process seem less significant.
If Ahmadinejad indeed won, then what are we seeing as protests seethe and Iranian leaders crack down on the press and communications? People are being killed. It might be safe to say it is a revolt or revolution. If so, it’s about much more than a rigged election.
The article commented on problems with Obama’s comments before the polls closed (see article). He’s very likely going to have to find a way to restore communications with a government headed by Ahmadinejad.
Assuming the revolution doesn’t succeed, of course.
Note to Ian Lind: Feline Furlough time
by Larry Geller
I love your cats, and thanks to your Friday Felines photos, I can even identify most of them by name. I wish I still had cats. For one thing, this blog would be far more popular.
So I regret to inform you that, as a state worker, you certainly must understand that Governor Lingle intends for everyone to share the economic burden equally. And although she exempted the legislature, where you have worked part of the year, it’s not clear that the exemption extends to your cats. I did not see any specific exemption for cats.
This implies that for three Feline Fridays of the month, your cats will not be compensated for their, um, work.
I know this sounds cruel, but you wrote about the furloughs this morning on your blog, You seem to understand where the governor is coming from perfectly. Far-right politicos do not view their policies as cruelty, they call it “compassionate conservatism.” Starvation is for their own good.
Look, she didn’t care about starving senior citizens by withholding $500,000 each of two years that the legislature apportioned for Kupuna Care. And the first $500,000 was withheld while the state still had a surplus. So don’t think your cats are entitled to get away with anything. If seniors can starve, so can they. Many state workers’ salaries support multi-generational and multi-pet families. Starvation, you’ll remember, is for their own good.
I did like your article this morning, and for the sake of your cats (and those of state workers everywhere), I hope that there is a public reaction, at least a few twitters, that will reset the governor onto a more humane path. I hope, when hearing their pets crying pitifully for their furloughed Friday meals, citizens will be moved to action.
Delaying social security claims by over two years, which you cited as a possible result of Lingle’s furloughs, would affect large numbers of cat-owning families. Will that spur citizens to action?
When the feds cut off Hawaii’s funds, which you mentioned as a possibility, will that, maybe, spur citizens to action?
In the meantime, the image below was popular during the Superferry protests. Maybe it’s time to revive it.
(click for printable bumper sticker)
Unfortunately Italy fails to solve its financial crisis
by Larry Geller
The financial crisis affects people worldwide. Who could be faulted for hoping for a miracle to relieve their worries? And where better for a miracle than Italy?
Danny Schechter cites a news report that could have saved Italy’s financial butt:
Milan (AsiaNews) – Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.
He explains why this would be good for Italy:
The cute part of this is that if the certificates are real Italy just got a hell of a bonanza - their money laundering laws provide for a statutory 40% penalty for failure to declare instruments and cash in excess of $10,000 Euros, which means they’d garner a close-to-$40 billion dollar windfall.
And why not Italy, and why not now?
In the last two years, Italian authorities have seized some $800 million of U.S. bonds in the Como area in northern Italy [Reuters, 6/19/2009]
Unfortunately for Italy, the bonds are fake (see Reuters article). The US Treasury noted that there is only $105 million in Treasury bearer bond securities outstanding altogether. The confiscated bonds appear to be photoshopped.
Well, now that the story is out, more photoshoppers may be tempted to try their hands at counterfeiting. What better way, as the Reuters article hints, for North Korea to finance its nuclear weapons program and evade US sanctions?
Oh, well. Sorry about that, Italy. Now it’s back to the, um, drawing board.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Healthcare, elder care on HPR, PBS tonight
by Larry Geller
Don’t miss Town Square tonight (Thursday), on the national healthcare plan. It’s a moving target, but you’ll have a chance to hear from guests in Hawaii and from Washington DC, including the first person to be arrested protesting at Sen. Baucus’ hearings. Hosted by Beth-Ann Kozlovich. 5-6 p.m. KIPO 89.3 FM or streaming from hawaiipublicradio.org. Do you support Obama’s health plan? What IS Obama’s health plan? Do you support single-payer? Listen, and call in.
Then take a break and tune in for Graying of Hawaii, a documentary, really a series of interviews, which might leave you with the impression that neither our state administration nor Honolulu as a county are stepping up to their responsibilities as our population ages. The film is followed by a panel discussion. Insights on PBS Hawaii, special 2-hour program, tonight (Thursday) 7:30 – 9:30 p.m., PBS. The panel will take calls from viewers.
Tweet-tweet vs. bang-bang
by Larry Geller
Mike Lukovich’s cartoons seem tuned in to the power of the electronic revolution. They’re copyrighted, so I can’t reproduce them here, but check out this one and this one. Ok, this one too. I hope the links remain good. His website and cartoon archives are here.
Can Twitter and citizen journalism really defeat the repressive Iranian regime? Here’s a snippet of a New York Times op-ed you might want to read in its entirety:
For the first time, the moderates, who were always stranded between authoritarian regimes that had all the powers of the state and Islamists who had all the powers of the mosque, now have their own place to come together and project power: the network. The Times reported that Moussavi’s fan group on Facebook alone has grown to more than 50,000 members. That’s surely more than any mosque could hold — which is why the government is now trying to block these sites.
…
Second, even if defeated electorally, the Islamists and their regimes have a trump card: guns. Guns trump cellphones. Bang-bang beats tweet-tweet. The Sunni Awakening in Iraq succeeded because the moderates there were armed. I doubt Ahmadinejad will go peacefully.And that brings me to Netanyahu. Israel was taken by surprise by events in Lebanon and Iran. And Israeli officials have been saying they would much prefer that Ahmadinejad still wins in Iran — not because Israelis really prefer him but because they believe his thuggish, anti-Semitic behavior reflects the true and immutable character of the Iranian regime. And Israelis fear that if a moderate were to take over, it would not herald any real change in Iran, or its nuclear ambitions, but simply disguise it better. [NY Times, The Virtual Mosque, 6/16/2009]
I would like to add my own take to those of the experts. To wit:
There’s a fundamental difference between the way Internet resources (and cellphone texting, etc.) are being used in Iran and in Europe and how they are being used in the USA, for example, to get Obama elected.
Obama was not the head of the Internet movement that helped push him over the top. Martin Luthor King was the head of his movement, he lead the marches, he addressed the crowds. Obama used the Internet, and continues to use it, as a way to raise money and gather support. He goes his own way, disillusioning and disappointing many of his electronic supporters, but comes back to them nevertheless for support.
Last Saturday my.barackobama.com was used to whip up support for his healthcare plan, for example. Of course, the plan doesn’t exist yet. By the time it gets out of Congress it will bear no resemblance at all to the single-payer system that the majority of his supporters really want. It will be something acceptable to the insurance and healthcare industry lobbyists who have been circulating around Washington like flies.
This use of the Internet is not a grassroots effort at all, because Obama isn’t offering his supporters what they want or believe in. He’s asking for money, and did so again this week in an email.
In Iran at present, and during the recent European actions (which hardly made it into your newspaper at all, of course), the movement leaders used Twitter, Facebook and other communication resources to communicate with their followers and the world. Same in Burma during the most recent resistance actions.
We’re being telemarketed, while in Europe and elsewhere they are trying to change their government. We’re acting like sheep, they are acting like tigers. It’s the same Internet. What we do with it is the difference.
Update: Another point of view on the extent of Twitter usage in Iran is here: Iran: Before You Have That Twitter-Gasm….
… This afternoon, I emailed UCSD professor Babak Rahimi, the author of “Internet & Politics in Post-revolutionary Iran” and someone who is in Tehran right now covering the events. I asked what he thought of my hunch that we in the Western press are over-hyping the impact of Twitter. Here’s what he said:
“I very much agree with you. The Twitter factor is present, but not as significant as, say, cell phone or social networking sites… [granted, it's hard to separate these out -- nms] I just wonder (or worry) how the U.S. media is projecting its own image of Iran into what is going here on the ground.”
New York Times catches up to another bit of NSA domestic email surveillance
by Larry Geller
Yes, your emails are being collected and spied on.
NSA Database Collects Millions of Intercepted Emails
The New York Times has revealed that the National Security Agency is operating a secret surveillance database that contains millions of intercepted foreign and domestic emails. The NSA’s database, codenamed Pinwale, allows the NSA to search through millions of email messages, including correspondence to and from Americans. The Times reports the NSA database even includes some intercepted personal correspondence of former President Bill Clinton. [Democracy Now headlines, 6/18/2009]
This come as no surprise to Disappeared News readers. Articles here from at least as far back as February 2008 have pointed out that in order to find out whether an email is going to some terrorist overseas, the NSA has to open each and every email and read its headers. That’s how emails are routed through the system, by what it says in the headers inside the email. And they are storing them in a database because they are trying to deal with 40 trillion bits of data per second, which means putting them away to be checked as they can get to them.
Your email to Mom may be checked right away, in a couple of days, or who knows, in a couple of years. So be careful what you write to Mom about your political views [dear NSA: when you read this, no, I’m not using “Mom” as a secret code word, it’s a common abbreviation for one’s mother].
Be the first on your block to tap your neighbor’s phone calls
Whistleblower confirms spying on all communications
Electronic Frontier Foundation files suit against telecom immunity law
Will Congress cave in to Bush on the Protect America Act?
Tune in to videos from Iran: “My friends have been shot!”
by Larry Geller
You’ll have to tune in to alternative media for on-the-ground coverage of the revolt against Iran’s repressive government—for that’s what the current election protest seems to be about.
Much of the coverage is close to real time. It’s raw, direct, and powerful. It’s from cellphone and video cameras just like the ones we own and use. We can identify with the photographers, they’re like us.
Check out in particular this site, supported by the Pirate Bay file-sharing folks, and intended to keep communications channels open even as the Iranian government clamps down on protesters’ access to the Internet. It’s titled “Anonymous Iran.” See this page for videos.
Of course, the videos are going to be disturbing. They are uncensored and real. These are not sanitized Associated Press stories, nor are they filtered to avoid spoiling anyone’s morning coffee.
The US government has interfered to keep Internet channels open:
US State Dept Asks Twitter to Delay Shutdown Due to Iran Protests
The US State Department has admitted it contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election. Meanwhile, the video website YouTube has said it has relaxed its usual restrictions on violent videos to allow the images from Iran to reach the rest of the world. [Democracy Now headlines, 6/18/2009]
Some of the news will appear, filtered and sanitized, in the next day’s papers. They can’t help it. They have no room to bring it all to you, they don’t like showing people killed, and they can’t get the stories anyway, journalists are being excluded from the protest scenes, though some operate secretly and at great risk. This is where citizen journalism steps in, and I have yet to see a better example of this growing experiment.
I also wonder if our press hesitates to remind Americans that when our elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen, they did such a pathetic job of covering the stories, and that we, as sheep citizens, simply accepted the outcome. The vote in 2008 was also problematic but since Democrat Barack Obama won with a considerable margin, there was no appetite to check whether his margin should have been much larger still.
The Iranians, in their own way, and with an unfortunate loss of life and injuries, are showing that they really can’t accept that part of the American way of life, anyway.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tavares v Wong—Deputy AG v AG
by Larry Geller
Deputy AG Russell A. Suzuki (back to the camera) presented oral arguments this morning for the Campaign Spending Commission, and attorney William F. Crockett for Charmaine Tavares. The Supreme Court courtroom is a very comfortable place to observe, and the session was lightly attended.
This case will likely determine whether the $1,000 aggregate corporate campaign contribution limit holds, or, by affirming the ruling of the Second Circuit Court, is invalid. It could do for legislators what they could not do for themselves this past session, get them more corporate campaign money.
Probably a trained legal mind could meaningfully comment on who did better with the judges today. My impression is that Suzuki’s arguments were somewhat strained. On the other hand, Crocket was incisive and I suspect convincing.
Behind the scenes is Mark Bennett, the Attorney General, arguing in an Amicus Curiae brief that the Second Circuit Court's judgment should be affirmed.
Whaa? The deputy AG argues for Wong and his boss files a brief against him? Suzuki explained at the beginning of the hearing about the “firewall” that lets him do this.
Like I said, what came to mind was a wrestling match where the outcome is predetermined and then they go beat each other up enough to be convincing. Far be it from me to say that Suzuki is not arguing zealously on behalf of his client. No, I would never say that.
I wonder why the Campaign Spending Commission did not get themselves an independent attorney. The DOE avoided the AG’s office and went to an outside attorney to defend itself against claims made by special needs parents. They got their money’s worth, unfortunately for the parents.
Oral arguments in Tavares vs Wong today
by Larry Geller
Today the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Tavares v Wong in the Supreme Court courtroom, 417 South King Street, from 10:00 a.m.
The case has great implications for clean elections in Hawaii. It seeks to reverse a Second Circuit Court ruling related to corporate campaign contributions (see Judiciary description below).
In a nutshell, the legislature (some say unintentionally) set a limit of $1,000 on the amount that corporate treasuries can give to all candidates or their committees. This case will decide whether that limit holds.
Advocates and gobs of testimony this past session prevented the legislature from setting grossly higher limits. New legislation would likely have rendered this case moot. Now, it will be up the the Court to decide.
If they reverse the Second Circuit, then the $1,000 aggregate limit could stand. If they affirm it, there will be parties and celebration at the State Capitol.
There is always a question in my mind when cases like these come up as to whether they are being fought as strongly as they should be. You know, like a wrestling match where the fix is in but the audience doesn’t know it. Perhaps there will be some learned commentary after today’s oral arguments.
At least, if there are parties at the Capitol, I hope they don’t drive home under the influence.
Here’s the info from the Judiciary website:
Brief description
Barbara U. Wong (Wong), in her capacity as Executive Director for the Campaign Spending Commission seeks reversal of the Second Circuit Court's declaratory judgment that corporations are permitted to make direct contributions to a candidate or that candidate's committee, up to the limits specified in HRS § 11-204(a)(1)(c) (Supp. 2005).
Plaintiff-Appellee Charmaine Tavares Campaign (Tavares) received a $2,000 campaign contribution from Plaintiff/Intervenor-Appellee Quong Enterprises, L.L.C. (Quong). Wong informed Quong and two other corporations that they had violated HRS § 11-204(b), by making monetary contributions in excess of $1,000. Tavares sought declaratory and other relief and Quong intervened, both alleging that Wong incorrectly interpreted HRS § 11-204. The Second Circuit Court concluded that the language of HRS § 11-204(a)(1)(c) is plain and clear, permitting Quong and the other contributors to make direct contributions to Tavares not exceeding an aggregate amount of $4,000. On appeal, Wong argues, inter alia, that the Second Circuit Court failed to recognize the ambiguities in HRS § 11-204 and that the court's ruling defeats the purposes of the campaign spending law to provide transparency in the flow of corporate contributions and require accountability on the part of contributors and candidates. In addition to the Answering Brief filed by Tavares and Quong, the Attorney General of the State of Hawaiʻi filed an Amicus Curiae Brief highlighting the constitutional implications of this case and arguing that the Second Circuit Court's judgment should be affirmed.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Thank God for Jimmy Carter--Hamas accepts Israel with 1967 borders and Jerusalem as its capital
by Larry Geller
Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed prime minister of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, yesterday said his movement accepts a Palestinian state alongside Israel with its 1967 borders with full sovereignty and Jerusalem as its capital.
“We welcome any push for achieving this dream if there is a real plan for resolving the Palestinian issue,” Haniyeh said in a news conference with visiting former US President Jimmy Carter here.
Haniyeh also praised US President Barack Obama’s June 4 address in Cairo to the Muslim world. “We saw a new tone, a new language and a new spirit in the official US rhetoric,” he said. [Arab News, Hamas accepts Israel with 1967 borders, 6/17/2009]
(Thanks to Patricia Blair for pointer to this article)
Let’s see how this plays out.
Is Barack Obama big enough to accept and build on the good work that Jimmy Carter has done? Will the USA ever tell Israel to get busy dismantling its illegal settlements (all of them) in the occupied territories?
How will they disappear this news?
Congresspeople take contributions from the health care/insurance industry, and they invest in the health industry, to an extent you wouldn’t believe
by Larry Geller
No wonder Sen. Max Baucus won’t put single-payer on the table. But read on, it’s not just Baucus.
Now, a new article in the Montana Standard finds Senator Baucus has received more campaign money from health and insurance industry interests than any other member of Congress. The article says, "In the past six years, nearly one-fourth of every dime raised by Baucus and his political-action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical-supply firms, health-service companies and other health professionals.” [Democracy Now, Report: Senator Max Baucus Received More Campaign Money from Health and Insurance Industry Interests than Any Other Member of Congress, 6/16/2009]
(You can read the transcript, view the video, or listen to the audio at the above link, or catch the program tonight on Oahu at 10 p.m. on channel 56.)
The data are compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks and sorts campaign donors by profession and industry. Here's a summary of what the State Bureau discovered:
From 2003 to 2008, the Baucus campaign and his Glacier PAC, which raises money and distributes it to other candidates, received 23 percent of their $14.8 million from health care and insurance interests.
The $3.4 million from these sectors includes $853,000 from pharmaceutical and health products, $851,000 from health professionals, $467,000 from hospitals and nursing homes, $466,000 from health service and HMO interests, and $784,000 from insurance.
The insurance sector money includes donations from all types of insurance company interests, including health insurance.
Five of the top 10 specific donor sources for Baucus were drug companies, health insurers or health-related firms. For example, employees of Schering-Plough Corp., a major drug firm, gave him $92,000 over the period, more than any other single source. [The Billings (Montana) Gazette, Insurance, health interests fill Baucus' coffers, 6/14/2009]
It’s not just Baucus. The article includes a table for several others.
Today’s Democracy Now included a segment in which Amy Goodman reviews not only campaign contributions, but investments held by individual congresspeople. It was shocking to hear. This is a snippet from the segment:
AMY GOODMAN: The Washington Post revealed almost thirty key lawmakers helping draft landmark healthcare legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has at least $50,000 invested in a healthcare index.
Republican Senator Judd Gregg, a senior member of the Health Committee, has up to $560,000 worth of stock holdings in major healthcare companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.
The family of Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman held at least $3.2 million in more than twenty healthcare companies at the end of last year.
Senator Kerry, John Kerry, and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry hold at least $5.2 million in companies such as Merck and Eli Lilly.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee plans to hold a key hearing today to discuss healthcare reform. On that twenty-two-member panel, at least eight Senators have financial interests in the healthcare industry. The hearings will be held by Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, whose wife serves on the boards of four healthcare companies. She received more than $200,000 in salary and stock from her service last year.
And Republican Senator Johnny Isakson holds at least $165,000 in pharmaceutical and medical stocks.
Democratic Senator Kay Hagan holds at least $180,000 in investments in more than twenty healthcare companies.
Are these folks going to screw themselves financially by hurting medical, insurance or pharmaceutical companies?
So if we didn’t know before, now we know the extent of corruption in our democratic process. If we don’t get affordable healthcare for everyone, it will simply be because politicians are behaving as we expect them to, given their financial interests.
How to change it? First thing, look in the mirror. Seriously.
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
--Bertrand de Jouvenel
Obama takes charge
No, not a mosquito, it was a fly. What ever happened to accuracy in reporting? [Update: they fixed the title of the YouTube video, it now says “fly”']
Ok, it’s not Disappeared News, but why be serious all the time. See clever remarks on the Christian Science Monitor web page here.
Could Obama be a one-term president?
by Larry Geller
I’m not really suggesting “Democrats for Palin 2012” though the thought momentarily flashed through my cranium. But what exactly will happen as Obama’s supporters realize that they’ve been hoodwinked?
I got an email this morning from Obama (Ha, for real?) The From address is President Barack Obama info@barackobama.com. An email from the Big Guy himself? It has his name on the bottom too…No, of course it’s not from him. At the bottom it says “Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee.” I’m just some data in their mailing list.
They want money from me:
Will you donate whatever you can afford to support the campaign for real health care reform in 2009?
The last time I was asked to support Obama’s health care reform, he supported single-payer. Not now. He still wants my money but he has abandoned me and something I believe strongly about. No, Barry, you won’t get my money, and maybe you should think of giving out refunds, actually.
What the majority of Americans want, what the majority of doctors even want, according to various polls, and what Obama talked about before he was elected, is single-payer.
While reading that email this morning, on NPR was Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:
Asked if the administration's program will be drafted specifically to prevent it from evolving into a single-payer plan, Sebelius says: "I think that's very much the case, and again, if you want anybody to convince people of that, talk to the single-payer proponents who are furious that the single-payer idea is not part of the discussion."
What will it take to convince Barack Obama that he needs to stand by his campaign promises? Will the possibility of being a one-term president do the trick? Is making his supporters “furious” the best thing he can do for himself?
Well, I’m sure his buddies in the insurance industry will take care of him. He won’t miss my few bucks.
The latest to get “furious” at Obama are supporters of equal rights in marriage. It seems that Obama said he believed that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) should be repealed when he was running for president. DOMA prevents same-sex couples from enjoying equal federal benefits even if they are in a recognized same-sex marriage, or civil union, or anything. Now he’s totally reversed himself on that.
Obama is now defending the DOMA in Smelt v. United States, a lawsuit brought in federal court in California by a married same-sex couple asking the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits.
Worse, according to a widely circulating legal commentary,
(1) even if the Obama Administration finds it politically necessary to defend the federal DOMA, its DOJ has by far exceeded the procedural grounds needed for dismissal;
(2) the DOJ's substantive arguments about due process, equal protection, and federalism are meritless;
(3) the "neutrality-in-federalism" argument is so transparently flawed that it reveals discriminatory intent, and may, without exaggeration, be condemned as "absurd" or "insulting";
(4) Obama has fallen short of his stated commitment to repeal the federal DOMA, and has instead resorted to the same legal arguments of the Bush Administration.
No wonder this feels like more of George Bush—an advocacy group discovered on Friday
that one of the three Obama Justice Department attorneys who wrote and filed the anti-gay DOMA brief last night is W. Scott Simpson, a Mormon Bush holdover who was awarded by Alberto Gonzales for his defense of the Partial Birth Abortion act.
But is that reaction actually “furious?” More from the same advocacy group (Americablog):
And before Obama claims he didn't have a choice, he had a choice. Bush, Reagan and Clinton all filed briefs in court opposing current federal law as being unconstitutional (we'll be posting more about that later). Obama could have done the same. But instead he chose to defend DOMA, denigrate our civil rights, go back on his promises, and contradict his own statements that DOMA was "abhorrent." Folks, Obama's lawyers are even trying to diminish the impact of Roemer and Lawrence, our only two big Supreme Court victories. Obama is quite literally destroying our civil rights gains with this brief. He's taking us down for his own benefit.
I think that qualifies as “furious.”
There has been no meaningful assistance to those losing their homes to foreclosure, no relief from usurious interest rates from bailed-out banks, and plenty of other reasons to be “furious”. Oh, let’s not forget escalation of the Afghanistan war and no real pullout from Iraq.
I got an email “what did you expect?” It really hurt, because I did expect better. Yes, we have better than Bush, better than McCain, better than Palin, but not as good as Obama promised.
Monday, June 15, 2009
US media hot to find election fraud in Iran
by Larry Geller
(Thanks to Viviane Lerner for pointer to this article)
It also has been curious to see U.S. news organizations care suddenly about legitimate elections when most of them ignored, ridiculed or covered-up evidence that George W. Bush stole the U.S. presidential election in 2000 and possibly in 2004 as well.
--Robert Parry
Journalist Robert Parry knows Iran. He broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s while reporting for the Associated Press and Newsweek. In What If Ahmadinejad Really Won? he presents arguments that the election was likely legit.
Contrasting the US media’s dismissal of fraud accusations in the US elections of 2000 and 2004 with their concern for election integrity in Iran:
Yet, when an election occurs in another country and an “unpopular” leader appears to win, an opposite set of rules apply. Anyone who doesn’t immediately accept the assumption of voter fraud is naïve; every “conspiracy theory” is cited respectfully while contrary evidence is downplayed or ignored….
Another irony is that Iran's religious leaders now have ordered an investigation of the fraud allegations in a country not known for its democratic institutions. That is more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004.
Parry cites an op-ed in today’s Washington Post which reports extensive polling in every province in Iran that produced roughly the same tallies as did the election.
This is a pretty good article to read before your morning paper arrives tomorrow with more news of “voter fraud” in Iran.
An analysis of Obama’s Mid-East speech
(Thanks to Patricia Blair for sending this article, and to its author, Toufic Haddad for permission to reproduce it here. The link to The Faster Times, where the article is located, doesn’t work yet. The Faster Times is an on-line newspaper still under construction. Also, if you are curious about the title, see the author’s notes at the end. I appreciate the author’s thoroughness in including reference links for readers to follow.)
American media have a short memory. It took Stephen Colbert to remind us that there is still a war in Iraq. This article is far better than a reminder, it supplements the skimpy coverage of reaction to Obama’s Mid-East trip that appeared in our daily papers.
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian American activist who was formerly co-editor with Tikva Honig-Parnass of the Jerusalem-based magazine Between the Lines, and co-author of the paperback, Between the Lines: Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. War on Terror: Tikva Honig-Parnass, Toufic Haddad.
Hussein Strikes Out: The Palestinian score card in Cairo*
Toufic Haddad
The Faster Times, June 11, 2009It’s no secret that Obama’s 4 June speech in Cairo was supposed to begin the mop-up job in U.S. foreign relations after the Bush regime’s eight-year Middle East frat party. Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan have all experienced direct military aggression, including thousands killed and wounded by the U.S. or Israel based upon explicit justifications linking them to the “global war on terror.” Many others have experienced tumultuous blow-back and threats. But did his speech do the job? Was Obama effective in convincing Arabs and Muslims that he was dedicated to getting the stench of Pabst Blue Ribbon (and not a little blood), out of the oriental carpet?
Obama had an unprecedented opportunity to speak to millions of Arab and Muslim viewers thanks to the prevalence of Arabic satellite stations, who whipped anticipation of his speech up to a feverous pitch in the days preceding it. And no doubt, it was the first time many listeners were so directly exposed (and largely impressed) by Obama’s rhetorical eloquence.
But Obama’s communication style is also built on a great deal of what Henry Kissinger used to call “constructive ambiguity.” The problem is, Kissinger was Secretary of State over thirty years ago, and this is 2009. It is precisely thirty-plus years of supposed “ambiguity” in U.S. policy that has led to the contemporary blood-letting. Obama’s words need to look good on the ground, not just on television, because a great deal of people’s lives depend on it.
Such is the case in Palestine, where I watched Obama’s speech to the background noise of Israeli fighter jets conducting aerial maneuvers over the West Bank. This omnipresent reminder of life under Israeli occupation, and the direct knowledge of its destructiveness, is the prism through which many Palestinian not only see Obama’s speech, but also live it.
So how did the U.S. President do?
Hussein struck out.
Obama had a strike against him in Palestine before actually coming to the plate, thanks to his performance during the Israeli war against Gaza. As he waited patiently in the wings for his 20 January inauguration, Israel was brutalizing Gaza with U.S. backing and weapons - an assault that killed more than 1400 Palestinians, and completely destroyed more than 4200 homes. (13 Israelis died - ten soldiers, three civilians, with no Israeli homes destroyed.) It was then when the Obama team dropped the lame “there is only one president at a time” line, despite the then-president elect’s freedom to critique Bush II policies on the tanking US economy, and to express his mind on other foreign policy matters such as the attack in Mumbai.
That aside, Obama still failed to make amends in his Cairo speech when it came to addressing issues that affect Palestinian lives.
Obama didn’t start off well when he noted that America’s bond with Israel is “strong” and “unbreakable.” Really? So there is simply nothing Israel can do that would get the U.S. government to change its fundamental support? Forget the Arabs, if this is true, it’s a worrying sign for US democracy.
Second, Obama’s justification for U.S. support of Israel was also based upon the experience of Jewish history in Europe, focusing particularly on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust - an issue Arabs had little to do with. Despite his eloquence, Palestinians have a difficult time being convinced by anyone that they should pay for intra-European racism.
But Obama tried to be even handed by acknowledging that Palestinians had “suffered in pursuit of a homeland”, “endured the pain of dislocation … wait[ing] in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.”
While these words might appear sympathetic to a Western audience’s ear, Palestinians hear them differently.
According to Obama, Palestinians are in “pursuit of a homeland”, not their homeland - a subtle elision enough to raise fears amongst Palestinians that they might end up on a series of reservations called “a homeland” but which still isn’t their homeland. His reference to the fact that Palestinians have “endured the pain of dislocation” also skirted around the question of how they were miraculously dislocated. How about “expelled by Zionist militias during Israel’s creation and prevented from returning in contravention to U.N. General Assembly resolution 194 passed over 110 times?”
Instead Obama expects Palestinians to take comfort in the fact that he sees their situation as “intolerable” and that America will not turn its backs on “the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”
Also sounds good, no? The problem is its dishonest. The U.S. has supported, funded and protected this intolerable situation by arming Israeli military operations and protecting Israel in the U.N. with its Security Council veto. Is it too much to ask for an apology?
What about those “legitimate aspirations for dignity, opportunity, and a state” then? Lest we be “blind[ed] to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.”
But this is actually the former U.S. government position. Ever since George W. Bush recognized the right to Palestinian statehood, the question has been upon the precise contours and arrangements of this state, not that such a state will be. Obama’s net point pick-up here: zero
Then began the lecture on liberation: “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.” Really Obama? Violence played no role in the success of liberation movements? Algeria? Vietnam? The great majority of post-colonial states in Africa and Asia - including Kenya?
The reference to the African American struggle was particularly delusional: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t America fight a brutal civil war to free southern slaves? Could the civil rights movement have done what it did without the determined (and violent) struggle of its predecessors, the abolitionists and the resistance of slaves themselves?
Obama attempted to assure that it’s the principle that matters: “[V]iolence is a dead end. [...] It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”
Here, Obama the lawyer uses a classic bait and switch: the initial principle “Violence is a dead end” is equated with acts to terrorize and kill civilians. But does this represent all violence? Can violence ever be employed in a legitimate way to a positive end?
The U.N. thinks so when it acknowledges the right of occupied and colonized people to achieve self-determination. America apparently thinks so as well. Doesn’t Obama talk about why more attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan are necessary in another part of his speech? Kind of gives the shooting of rockets at sleeping children a new/old twist.
Obama’s advice to the Palestinians: its “time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build.” The Palestinian Authority needs to “develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people.” Hamas “must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
What does this mean though? It’s no secret Obama is speaking about the need for the Palestinian Authority to get rid of its own corruption so it can be competent and respectable enough to be able to defeat Hamas, be it democratically or possibly militarily. Mind you, it’s clear Obama is also talking to the “Palestinian Authority” associated with Mahmoud Abbass (Abu Mazen), not the democratically elected Palestinian Authority with a Hamas majority - led by Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, and with dozens of its parliamentarians in Israeli jails.
In Obama’s world though, Hamas is not the legitimate government that Palestinians voted for. It instead must “put an end to violence” (again - no acknowledgment of a right to resist), while recognizing “past agreements” and “Israel’s right to exist.” Besides the fact that the latter are also Bush II demands, aren’t these matters for a democratic government to decide? Every government can choose to abide by an agreement or not - ask an American Indian. But if Obama still wants to apply pressure on another country’s democratic decision, he still has to answer why it is incumbent upon an occupied people to acknowledge the right to exist of their colonial occupying masters? Also, since when is “right to exist” equated with right to exist in a form that discriminates against indigenous Palestinians because they are “non-Jews” living in the Jewish state?
Then came the juicy bone: “Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s.” The U.S. “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” which “violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
Pressure on Israel - now we’re talking.
“Continued Israeli settlements” however is not the same as “all Israeli settlements.” Obama wants no future settlement construction, but he is mum about the existing settlements. To be fair it needs to be acknowledged that if actually transformed into policy, this demand does represent the one break from Bush II policies. But it is fair to ask how relevant this is. It is already widely acknowledged that the existing Jewish settlements already carve up the West Bank into Swiss cheese. Without tackling these settlements, he’s really only talking about how many holes in the Swiss cheese/ state, and not whether it is a Swiss cheese state.
One last twist of Israel’s arm: Israel must “ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society”, and “Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.”
Ouch. That hurt.
Obama’s deafening silence regarding the devastation recently wrought upon Gaza is particularly noteworthy here. The war enraged the Arab and Muslim world from Jakarta to Casablanca. But what did Obama have to say about it? Ziltch. Arab cynicism for Obama’s “one president at a time” line is substantiated because he was silent then, and remains silent now.
That about wraps up the Palestinian play card in Cairo. Tune in next week for when these policies begin to fall apart.
While well-meaning folks in the West might feel that Obama deserves credit in his quest to find “a new beginning” to a violent and ugly relationship between the U.S and the Arab and Muslim people, they also need to realize that the latter’s blood is still wet in the carpet.
And while it might be unfair to expect a sea change in policy from just one speech so early in his presidency, it is equally unfair to ask the historic victims of U.S. policies to put the past aside, especially when the crimes committed against them are so recent and omnipresent, and continue to go unacknowledged - like a frat boy’s forgotten date rape victim, asked out on another date.
*NB - The title needs a caveat. Anyone notice that once Obama talked to the Arab and Muslim world, “Hussein”, Obama’s middle name, resurfaced from its hibernation during his election campaign? This at the same time gives no justification to any racists or Islamophobes to disrespect the man for his middle name. The use of Hussein here is nonetheless justified because it is part of the image Obama was crafting and trying to sell to Arabs and Muslims in Cairo during his speech.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Caucus, circus, same thing
by Larry Geller
The circus in New York continues to break entertainment records. I imagine that many New Yorkers are discovering their state capitol for the first time.
One of the two senators who switched his vote to swing power to the Republicans, Pedro Espada, claims that his home was broken into, although he didn’t report it to police for two days. His home in Mamaroneck, Westchester County, that is. He represents a district in the Bronx, so he should be living there. His residence status is under investigation by the Bronx District Attorney's Office.
Today (Friday) a demonstration took place in front of his Bronx district office.
According to WBAI news, his Bronx district office is empty.
The latest on the other switcheroo, who is currently under indictment for assaulting his girlfriend, is that he’s planning to vote with his own party and caucus with the Democrats. How is that possible? He’ll essentially be a spy if allowed into the Democratic caucus. Circus, I mean.
Buy American—Honda, that is
by Larry Geller
In April I posted a prediction I made years ago, before I had a blog:
I have long wondered if, by a certain year (say, 2015), the only cars made in the USA might be Hondas. US automakers just can’t figure out their own business.
I wouldn’t dream to pinpoint the year, but Detroit kept doing things wrong and the Japanese manufacturers were doing things right.
GM and Chrysler are in chaos while Honda benefited greatly from the increase in gas prices last year. While it has had to shrink its workforce slightly in the current recession, it had the luxury of offering workers really sweet deals to retire. And yes, Honda is still making cars in Ohio. Detroit will match their fuel efficiency one day, but perhaps not with American-made cars.
The newer prediction, watching how bailed-out bankers were overseeing the evisceration of GM, was:
Why, first of all, should the automakers even want to make cars in the USA? We make little else at present, and so much of an “American” car is made overseas anyway. Why not, um, get rid of the unions altogether and just close down the auto plants? Oh, not right away (that might be a wee bit unpopular at present, so best not to talk about it while asking to be bailed out). But that might be the business plan.
The bankers want profit, they couldn’t care less about workers. If profit means bringing in cars from overseas, they’ll do it without guilt pangs. You don’t get to be filthy rich as a banker without a sociopathic personality, I don’t think.
This just out today:
As rescue attempts go, the Obama administration and its Auto Task Force are pursuing a peculiar course: They seem intent on keeping General Motors and Chrysler afloat as corporate entities by tossing more U.S. workers overboard.
Even as unemployment rates soar in longtime GM-centered communities hit by shutdowns, such as Janesville, Wis. (14.7 percent), and Flint, Mich. (15.3 percent), Obama and his task force pressed GM and Chrysler for more cuts. GM plans to shut down at least 14 factories and discard some 21,000 workers. Chrysler is closing eight U.S. plants, though it claims that somehow its merger with Fiat will result in a new increase of 5,000 jobs. In a telling observation that carried unsettling echoes of Bill Clinton’s push for NAFTA, theNew York Times called the job cuts and other worker sacrifices “steps that most analysts thought could never be pushed through by a Democratic president allied with organized labor.” [In These Times, Auto Task Force Outsources Jobs, 6/12/2009]
Right. The president is allied with the bankers, not with labor.
Get used to it.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a stimulus program? This is reverse stimulus, cutting jobs. Guess what—the chances are we’re being swindled on this stimulus thing too. Foreclosures continue, Congress refused to cap interest rates, etc. But I digress.
The key point I’d like to offer here is that neither Congress nor Obama nor the fat bankers want to save GM as an auto manufacturer. They just want to save their profits. If importing cars from Mexico, China, India, or wherever will bring the bankers big bucks, then they’re happy.
Get used to it.
And buy American. American Honda, that is. Made in Ohio with American labor. For as long as that lasts.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
More “democracy,” New York style
by Larry Geller
Earlier today I listened to WBAI’s evening news to find out what was happening with the lockout situation at their state legislature. It’s serious news coverage, and very high quality, so the humor was between the lines and I had to Google references for the earlier article (it’s hard to quote from or cite a radio news program).
Just now I listened to the rest, while folding laundry. It was all interesting and even nostalgic. And very embarrassing, as an ex-New Yorker (did the NY Post really send a clown to Albany, the state capital? To cover the story, or just to be there? Would anyone notice?) (WBAI, don’t you realize this is bad for tourism, bad for people to hear? Hard for us to explain to our friends and neighbors? I hope no one asks me about that clown…)
For example, it seems that the legislature put New York City’s schools under the control of the mayor, but if they don’t find a way to get Albany operational real soon, the law will expire and (even more) chaos will descend on the city school system. Nobody will be in charge of it.
But there was more. I learned that the “community boards,” which are like our neighborhood boards but consist of 50 appointed people. Not elected, appointed. So of course it is a corrupt system. Lucky we live Honolulu. Their budget for things like fax and copy machines is being cut. A great backdoor way to put them out of business.
Next, there is a school board of some kind in New York City. They were going to vote on something the mayor didn’t like, so he just replaced the board members who were going to vote against with others who voted for. Or vice versa, I’m not sure, but you get the idea. Totally corrupt.
Then there was a discussion about the “rubber rooms” filled with teachers staring at blank walls. I first read about these a couple of years ago in a Village Voice article still on line. The radio story was another description of corruption. The rubber rooms have been in use for decades. Now, in a recession, can they afford to pay a small army of teachers to sit and do nothing?
Let’s say a teacher is legitimately accused of doing something, or maybe a principal would like to get rid of a teacher but doesn’t have anything real. It doesn’t matter. Just find something to accuse the teacher of. Even if it is determined down the road to be unfounded, the teacher can be sent off to the “rubber room” to languish for months or years waiting for the process of resolution to move along. From the VV article:
It's not hard to see why teachers call this place the "rubber room," where they spend months—and even years, some simply waiting to see what they've been charged with.
The Department of Education, naturally, says that teachers end up for long periods in rubber rooms because their union—the United Federation of Teachers—has made it so difficult to fire lousy teachers.
The UFT, on the other hand, says that it's the DOE that abuses rubber rooms, sending teachers there that principals consider troublemakers. In other words, the union tends to see the rubber room system as the Guantánamo Bay of the school world, where political prisoners are sent by dictatorial principals. (Not surprisingly, the teachers doing time in rubber rooms we spoke to tended to agree with this view.)
Meanwhile, as teachers spend month after month reporting to mind-numbingly boring rooms waiting to be found incompetent (in some cases), or fit to return to teaching (in others), you pay. And pay.
All this (and more) in one single half-hour radio program. From a distance, it’s perhaps stuff to muse about, raw material to write about or even to be mildly amused about (why? I don’t know—perhaps because we are supposed to be the country hicks and they the sophisticated city folks, but we do way better than they do with all this).
Yes, that’s it, I think. We’ve been a state for 50 years and New York from the beginning, or thereabouts. They should be ahead of us, especially in things such as popular government. By the people, for the people, etc., refined and improved with the passage of time.
In many ways, it seems, they are the primitive state.
Why don’t New Yorkers do something about it? Well, heck, they have good food, classical music (they actually pay musicians over there, I understand), a lively arts scene, theater, a great transportation system, good cheese, wine, real Whole Foods stores, Central Park, computer shops and department stores, Coney Island, Nathan’s, pizza, knishes. Bagels with cream cheese and lox.
So what’s a little corruption with all that. And who knows where Albany is anyway, it’s not on the subway map.
How to save money in a recession: call off the cops
by Larry Geller
Speaking generally, if cops are left to do their thing, they like busting folks for growing or using marijuana. One incentive has been the forfeiture laws. According to the jurisdiction, cops get to confiscate and sell or keep cars, homes, even iPods or iPhones or anything nifty they can carry away.
But at what cost? Filling the courts and the jails costs society a fortune. The pressures of bad economic times should cause us to re-think this scheme.
The clear beneficiaries have been the companies that form the “prison industrial complex” including operators of private prisons, but extending to those who are contracted to provide mental health programs (and fail to deliver), health care services (and fail to deliver) and even, but perhaps rarely, drug treatment services (which they also fail to deliver).
To change the laws takes time and runs up against powerful lobbying interests for the prison-industrial complex. Municipalities that benefit from the jobs brought by private prisons want their facilities filled to capacity. So how can these special interests be overcome?
It’s far easier to just call off the cops. That’s right, either formerly declare that hunting marijuana plants with helicopter flights zigzagging around Kauai or the Big Island is now the lowest priority, or (why not?) just cut the funds for those expensive helicopters out of the budget. Then sit back and reap the benefits of fewer court proceedings and fewer expensive prisoners to look after. That’s even easier than legalizing pot, which is a concept now on the table for the first time.
On Kauai, as Joan Conrow notes in her article which inspired this one,
Asset forfeiture laws have pushed cultivation from private to public lands.
This short sentence has big implications. It means that Kauai police are not enjoying the profits the forfeiture laws would otherwise bring to marijuana raids. So when they rev up those helicopters ($300-600 an hour?), it’s just the first installment on an expensive process that doesn’t reduce marijuana use anyway, and if it would, might be responsible for pushing people towards harder drugs.
So why not just call off the cops? It’s like putting money in the bank.
Americans being asked to give up medical privacy, but there are alternatives
by Larry Geller
I keep hearing that our private medical information will have to be kept in one central (government? insurance company?) database in order to lower costs. I hear that’s because when you go to a doctor, they might repeat tests because they don’t know what the previous doctor has already asked for.
You know that once your data—whether medical, financial, or personal—gets out, it is free to roam. A laptop might be stolen in California, and with it your social security number. Or someone might break into a computer in your bank and get possession of your identity.
If there is a central government database with your information on record, it’s just a question of when, not if, the information will get out. They just don’t seem to understand how to safeguard private information.
There is another way to be sure that the second doctor learns what the first doctor did. It does involve electronic medical records, but not a centralized database.
My GP was one of the first in Hawaii, I understand, to use electronic records. He even got into a newspaper article about it. His data is encrypted. If someone were to get hold of it, they’d have nothing they can use. Some of my other doctors are now also computerized, while others hold out with paper charts and records.
Ok, so what’s the secret alternative? If the format of medical records is standardized, then when I go from Doctor A to Doctor B, I ask Doctor A to transmit my records, or just the necessary part, to Doctor B. Of course, the transfer would be encrypted. That’s the key part, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Also, I don’t want any central computer making decisions about my medical care (more than they already do!). If Doc B feels it is important to repeat a test that Doc A recently did, I don’t want any amorphous piece of silicon interfering with that decision.
I might also make arrangements with Doctor A that in case something happens to her/him, I would get a copy of my records in electronic form to go to the next doctor. Or the records could be held in encrypted form in a vendor’s database.
So you see my point—all that’s needed to realize most of the savings that are being discussed is the ability to transmit records electronically, not the requirement that there be one giant database in government or private hands.
New York politics--"Half of Albany is under indictment."
by Larry Geller
…The governor also made one of the more unusual pleas for sanity, imploring lawmakers to “think of the lobbyists”
Lucky we live Hawaii.
As kids living in Brooklyn, I never thought about state government. There was Borough Hall and of course the mayor and corrupt city government, and after that Washington, DC. England had a Queen, I remember, but that’s about it. Albany, the seat of state government, didn’t exist. It wasn’t even on the subway map.
It is hard to believe that New York has a state government at all today. I wrote Coup in New York legislature endangers same-sex marriage vote to highlight the civil rights issue. Since that coup the news has focused on the craziness around it.
What has been revealed about how Albany runs should cause anyone who believes in democracy to weep. Yes, if you click on any of the links below, you’ll see what we’ve learned since 1776.
For you geeks, there’s a Blackberry that played a crucial role in this coup. Read on.
First, the indictments. Two senators crossed the isle, you’ll remember, throwing control of the Senate to the Republicans. Both have been or are facing indictment:
Underscoring the antic nature of the leadership struggle, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle spent the day courting Hiram Monserrate, a Queens Democrat, who was indicted in March on charges of assaulting his companion with a broken glass.
Mr. Monserrate emerged at the end of the day to say he was still throwing his support behind a new leadership coalition controlled largely by Republicans.
Democrats threatened again to go to court to prevent Republicans from taking over the Senate and kept the ornate doors to the Senate chamber locked.
…
Mr. Espada also railed against his critics, calling attacks against him “way beyond the pale.” Mr. Espada has been fined more than $60,000 for failing to disclose his campaign contributions; the attorney general is investigating whether a nonprofit group he founded misappropriated money; and the Bronx district attorney is investigating whether his primary residence is in the district he represents.[NY Times, Door Is Locked, and Senate Is in Gridlock, 6/11/2009]
Democrats have kept the Senate chamber locked, so no business has been conducted since the coup. They haven’t let the Republicans in to take over.
Estrada said he has the keys, though they couldn’t get him into the chamber today. He says he’s going to get in tomorrow. How, with a battering ram?
New York Governor Paterson had a good reason why they should open the doors. From the same article:
“This is getting a little ridiculous — they’ve got to act like adults here,” Gov. David A. Paterson lamented at a news conference Wednesday afternoon in his chambers on the second floor of the Capitol. He urged lawmakers to return to the Senate and settle the leadership fight, but he has been largely relegated to the sidelines.
The governor also made one of the more unusual pleas for sanity, imploring lawmakers to “think of the lobbyists,” explaining that they had worked hard “to persuade legislative leaders and legislators of issues.”
Yeah, this is sad for the lobbyists. I like who he thinks of first. Not the people, but the lobbyists. Sheesh.
Nearby, amid the crush of camera crews, a clown dispatched to the Capitol by The New York Post added to the carnival atmosphere.
An op-ed has more insight:
The Republicans plan to install Pedro Espada Jr., a much-investigated Democratic state senator who has turned breaking campaign laws into a second career, as the new president of the Senate. Also, next in line for governor. Espada represents a poor district in the Bronx, and his sympathy for his impoverished constituents’ hopes and dreams is so great that he sets an example of upward mobility by living in the suburbs. [NY Times, Bring On the Tarantulas,6/10/2009]
And check this out, a saga of stupidity (same op-ed):
The coup was engineered, at least in part, by Tom Golisano, a billionaire who has failed in repeated attempts to become governor, even after underwriting his own political party to provide the nominations. Golisano spent several million dollars helping the Democrats get their precious two-vote majority. In triumph, he traveled down from Buffalo to share his insights on how to resolve the state fiscal crisis with the new majority leader, Malcolm Smith. To Golisano’s outrage, Smith kept checking his BlackBerry while his patron was talking.
This is a truly shocking story. In this country, even presidential candidates nod thoughtfully while their deep-pocketed donors explain how all the nation’s problems can be traced back to the devaluation of the zloty. A six-term senator with an ego the size of a brontosaurus will sit mute, in apparent fascination, while the heir to an oil fortune reveals his plan to reduce crime by chopping off the fingers of shoplifters. Anybody who has been in politics for more than six minutes knows that the cardinal rule is to look interested when a rich guy is telling you his thoughts.
This guy Golisano really runs the place, it seems. What’s going on in New York makes all the effort this past session to control Hawaii legislator’s access to corporate money seem very worthwhile.
Golisano, who moved from Rochester to Florida this year after Democrats temporarily raised the state income tax on high earners, has promised campaign money for those who carry out his reform agenda. That includes the two Democratic senators who broke ranks to join the Republicans, Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx - elected temporary president of the Senate Monday - and Hiram Monserrate of Queens.
Given the primary challenge the two Democrats can expect, that counts for a lot. But Golisano stressed that his political action committee, Responsible New York, "will be watching very carefully" to see if the new coalition keeps its promises.
He added his PAC will not bankroll legal bills for Espada, whose campaign finances are under investigation, or Monserrate, who has been indicted on felony assault charges. But he laughed off criticism of his building a takeover of the Senate on their support.
"The governor used drugs - what do you want from me?" Golisano asked, referring to Gov. David A. Paterson's acknowledgment last year that he had tried cocaine and marijuana in his youth. "Half of Albany is under indictment." [Newsday, Billionaire businessman helped GOP take back Senate, 6/9/2009]
New Yorkers may not like how their government is being run, but they can’t do anything about it apparently. One citizen did work her way close to Golisano to say:
"You bought our democracy! How dare you do that? Go back to Florida and screw up their state!" she shouted. "You are a disgusting human being!"
Let this be a lesson to us in Hawaii: we need to keep control of our government and work to improve it. I know that I’ll get some emails saying that developers and millionaires already control Hawaii’s government. The book, “Land and Power in Hawaii” is still a good read.
Still, I haven’t seen any Hawaii stories as good as what’s going on right now in NY. I know that the House locked the Senate out on the closing day of the session a couple of years ago, but that’s just small giggles. If you have any good tales, send ‘em this way.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Duke Bainum passes away suddenly at 56
by Larry Geller
Ian Lind’s blog has had the following posted for at least half an hour, and that’s very unusual:
I’m afraid this is it, from the Advertiser breaking news: Council member Duke Bainum dies. Bainum was 56, and died of an aneurysm last night, according to the article.
Ian had just begun working for him on Monday. Check out the Advertiser. They are already updating the website.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Coup in New York legislature endangers same-sex marriage vote
by Larry Geller
The New York state legislature was poised to vote on same-sex marriage legislation. It was supposed to be decided any day now.
But on Monday, two conservative Democratic senators from New York City voted with the 30 Republicans to reorganize the Senate, and in doing so switched the GOP to the majority. The excuse was legislative reform, but that’s hard to swallow, especially since in the 40 years the Republicans were in power, they didn’t often acknowledge the need for reform.
No, as far as I can tell from all the way out in the Pacific Ocean, it may have been an attempt to kill the same-sex marriage vote.
Sen. Espada, one of the two defectors, was made Senate president, second in line to the governor, as a reward. He has said he would like same-sex marriage to come up for a vote, but we’ll see. Now the Republicans control what comes and goes from committee and what will come up for a vote.
The New York State legislature is considered by many to be the country’s most dysfunctional. A Brennen Center for Justice study confirmed this.
It’s not over in New York. There may be a challenge. If you’re curious, google for recent articles. Read about how the Dems actually turned the lights out so that the Republicans couldn’t take over. Yes, dysfunctional is the word for it.
Maybe we have a pretty good bunch of lawmakers here in Hawaii. Reading about New York makes me appreciate them more. Seriously.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Parents have to fork up thousands to pay for ordered summer school for special needs students.
by Larry Geller
Since the end of the Felix Consent Decree, a decade-long settlement of the 1993 Felix vs. Waihee lawsuit by special needs parents against the Department of Education, and the Department of Health, anecdotal reports are that the DOE has regressed and that services to some children have been cut. I know, I know, “anecdotal reports” are not solid evidence.
It would take a dedicated team of reporters to interview parents and see if the reports are real. That’s not likely to happen, with newspaper budgets shrinking here as elsewhere. Also, parents fear retaliation if they speak out. Bob Rees would have done it, I suspect, but Bob is no longer with us.
But here’s an anecdote for you that is supposed to air on tonight’s KHON news. So it’s really not disappeared news, but sort of soon-hopefully-to-appear news.
I don’t know how the story will go, but basically, the word is that the DOE did not pay to send seven special needs students to summer school as ordered by a hearings officer in March. So the parents had to pay out thousands of dollars of their own. I understand the latest is that they may get it back. There’s nothing like some embarrassing news coverage to shake things loose at the DOE. Actually, I don’t know the details, I’m going to tune in to KHON news tonight myself to learn about it.
While I’m open to hearing from parents about situations they have run into, it really would not shed much light on whether or not the DOE is in compliance with federal law or has backslid. While the Consent Decree was in progress there were publicly available statistics and the vigilance of the Felix attorneys. All that is gone now.
I am checking on the accuracy (or lack thereof) of some reports that DOE submitted to the feds, and if that proves interesting, I’ll let readers know.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
That train is not gonna go past the Prince Kuhio Federal Building
by Larry Geller
(thanks to Denny and Lynda Lou McPhee for the link to the article below, and for suggesting the title)
When the Myrtle Avenue El was torn down in Brooklyn (it went right outside one of my college classrooms), we cheered. It was relief from the incessant noise that we were celebrating. These days, it seems that having a train skim by building windows is also a security issue.
Planning Mufi’s train to run outside the windows of the Federal Courthouse is just plain stupid. But that’s what our city council did.
In January, three federal agencies asked the city to change the train's route to avoid passing near the Prince Kuhio Federal Building. Their concern was that the train system, which would pass at the same level as three judges' chambers, could be a platform for a terrorist bombing or attack by someone with a grudge against a particular judge. [Honolulu Advertiser, Judges still oppose rail route, 6/2/2009]
Federal judges are so concerned about security these days that several of them are packing heat:
"I live with a constant heightened sense of awareness," said John R. Adams, a federal judge in Ohio who began taking firearms classes after a federal judge's family was slain in Chicago and takes a pistol to the courthouse on weekends. "If I'm going to carry a firearm, I'd better know how to use it."
The threats and other harassing communications against federal court personnel have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 to 1,278, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Worried federal officials blame disgruntled defendants whose anger is fueled by the Internet; terrorism and gang cases that bring more violent offenders into federal court; frustration at the economic crisis; and the rise of the "sovereign citizen" movement -- a loose collection of tax protesters, white supremacists and others who don't respect federal authority.
…
Hundreds of threats cascaded into the chambers of John M. Roll, the chief U.S. district judge in Arizona, in February after he allowed a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants against a rancher to go forward. "They cursed him out.” [Washington Post, Threats to Judges, Prosecutors Soaring, 5/24/2009]
Casually insulting the “banana patch” community (55 residents, 10 homes and a church) that the train is planned to displace, Councilman Charles Djou voiced what the others should have thought about (from the Advertiser article):
Councilman Charles Djou, who also met with the judges, said the city can't afford to alienate key federal officials.
"One of the biggest parties out there that you've got to get this right with is the federal government," he said. "This is not some banana-patch farmer. How can it possibly be good to upset federal judges who might review this project and engage the U.S. Justice Department against you?"
As the article also points out, the feds don’t have to give the city the easement it needs to run the train over federal property. Simply because of that, choosing that route was dumb to begin with, but that reality escaped the city council.
It’s clear that the judges won’t give up. The city should very quickly say “yes, Your Honors” and take their train elsewhere.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
MARAD may take possession of the two Superferries
by Larry Geller
Maritime industry expert Tim Colton ran this short blurb on the Hawaii Superferry bankruptcy:
HAWAII SUPERFERRY FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY
End of the HSF story. Read the report in the Honolulu Advertiser here. Read the filing here. Now that HSF is broke, MARAD [the federal Maritime Administration] can take title to the two ships, pay off the bondholders and maybe charter them directly to the Navy. Somewhere in this pile of @&*% there's a pony. May 31, 2009.
That lead to this story in the Press Register (Alabama), Austal, Maritime Administration weigh next step after Hawaii Superferry files Chapter 11, 6/2/2009), referring to the two HSF ships:
Their future may indeed be with the military, industry watchers have said.
Austal late last year was awarded a potential $1.6 billion contract for so-called Joint High Speed Vessels, which are similar in design to the Hawaii Superferry. The first one is not scheduled for delivery until 2011.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in April that he intended to charter two fast ferries to transport troops and equipment, while up to 10 of the Joint High Speed Vessels are being built at Austal USA.
Upon news of the bankruptcy, industry analyst Tim Colton said on his blog that "now that HSF is broke, MARAD can take title to the two ships, pay off the bondholders and maybe charter them directly to the Navy."
Susan Clark, a MARAD spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., said the administration can indeed foreclose on the vessels once it assumes the debt or pays off the obligations.
However, she said, "it is too preliminary in the process to determine what other options may be available."
Austal officials, as well, said it's too early to say how they will proceed or what future role Austal might play.
Defense Industry Daily: Bankruptcy may complicate military charter
by Larry Geller
Just for completeness, here’s a link to a Defense Industry Daily article, which suggests that Hawaii Superferry’s bankruptcy may complicate the possibility of a federal military charter that Austal would like to pursue.
Tavares v Wong set for hearing before Supreme Court on June 17
by Larry Geller
This is the case that could determine whether corporations can give only $1000 in total to all candidates or their committees, or whether that interpretation of the law will remain overturned. The case is Charmaine Tavares Campaign v. Barbara Wong in her capacity as the Executive Director of the Campaign Spending Commission. A judge on Maui killed the limits, and this is the appeal.
This past legislative session, advocates and supporters (including you, thanks for emailing legislators!) successfully prevented the legislature from drastically increasing that limit to $25,000 or even $50,000. So the status quo remains. The Tavares case could change that, though, if the Court finds for the plaintiff. I’m afraid that they very well might. It’s going to be a tough fight. Another variable in this is just how strongly the defendant will stand by that $1000 limit.
The case will probably hinge on legislative intent. That is, did the legislators really intend there to be a $1000 limit as the law had been enforced, or did they make a mistake? The Court’s ruling will determine whether legislators can go after lucrative corporate contributions, and that’s clearly related to who our elected officials feel responsible to, we who voted for them, or the corporations who vote with their money.
I’ll have to admit to having a bad feeling about this. It’s just not like our legislators to set such a low limit on themselves, speaking generally. We’ll have to see what the Court decides.
Oral arguments are generally posted on-line. They will appear here if they are posted.
Hawaii’s Supreme Court is a great old building, if you’d like to come down and check out the hearing in person. It is currently scheduled to start at 10 a.m. on Wednesday June 17. Best to get there a few minutes early.
Lingle “taxes” state workers
by Larry Geller
After promising not to increase taxes, Governor Linda Lingle has announced she will place the heaviest burden of tax increases on state workers.
Well, taking 14 or so percent of their pay and dumping it into the state treasury sure sounds like a tax. Trouble is, it’s a tax mainly on workers. Perhaps Lingle’s objections to raising taxes meant only that she objects to raising taxes on the rich.
While those in upper income brackets tend to invest, workers, whether public or private, spend their money locally. So this is a “tax” also on retail stores and every segment of the economy that depends on ordinary people. Kind of a reverse incentive that will hurt the economy somewhat.
Also, in Hawaii, one state worker may be supporting a multi-generational family. The loss of income could mean that an older person has to choose between food and medicine.
Whether it’s a worker’s family that can’t take care of its health or someone who will lose out when DHS announces how it will manage announced cuts to Medicaid, it’s important to keep in mind that when healthcare is impacted, some people lose their lives. They don’t get routine care or testing, and by the time something hurts enough, it could be too late.
What to cut? It’s a tough choice with no winners, only losers. Should there be a legal challenge to furloughs based on existing contracts, there needs to be a contingency plan. Furloughs sound better than layoffs, which is what Plan B would likely come to. At least the state workers still have their jobs and benefits. The state cannot print money, so the problem needs to be resolved. Other states have or are making similar painful decisions.
Lingle also announced cuts to Medicaid and the school budget. Even before the current economic crisis she withheld money from senior services. It seems that the most vulnerable citizens of Hawaii will bear the brunt of the Lingle budget balancing.
(The Star-Bulletin cover today depicts Lingle as a stern mother figure, perhaps. If only she really cared.
It reminded me of an old tabloid cover picture of Bush which gave me the thought, at the time, that if hung on the wall, it would have made a good dart board. Today’s Star-Bulletin is a little thin for that, but if you pick up a couple of free copies at Subway or elsewhere around town and clipped them together, perhaps it’s doable.)
The governor and the legislature have been at odds over how to deal with the budget crunch. There’s nothing funny about that. Perhaps if they found a way to get together on Hawaii’s problems there might be a chance of at least making the best of admittedly difficult choices. I’d love to see a picture in the paper of everyone at the State Capitol standing together to present their best effort.Jimmy Carter calls for release of pictures and investigation of US war crimes
by Larry Geller
Obama would clearly like to “disappear” America’s disgraceful legacy of torture and human rights violations, but he can’t actually do that. The more he attempts to hide information or avoid prosecuting Bush-era perpetrators, the more that calls for action will recur.
Here’s the latest, from former president Jimmy Carter. This interview aired on CNN Monday night. CNN scooped itself by posting the interview in advance on its Political Ticker blog:
Got ADHD? Disappeared News will tweet for you
by Larry Geller
I just don’t want to be the last person on the planet to tweet.
Really, everyone is tweeting and the pressure is building, I can feel it.
So Disappeared News will tweet. Check it out at twitter.com/DisappearedNews. This is not my personal twitter and I won’t be bothering you with details of what I ate for breakfast. And only tweets for significant articles, not for everything. So your peace won’t be disturbed.
During the legislative session it was great to be informed by Twitter of when some bills were coming up for hearing, considering that it was ‘way after midnight already. Helpful night birds tweeted the info. I was even able to jump into my car and get there in person after a tweeted warning.
If I’d like you to email your legislators or congresspeople, I’ll tweet also. In other words, for action alerts.
Yeah, I’m being overly practical. This Twitter thing has become something of a fad, everyone is doing it suddenly.
And now people have hundreds or even thousands of “friends.” To me, a “friend” is someone I might borrow $20 from. Or loan $20 to. Just as an example. A friend is someone to talk with over a double espresso or meet at Borders. Or a friend is someone who comes with us for dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant.
Ok, I’ll try it, anyway.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Austal expects to assume ownership of Superferries and then charter them to US Dept. of Defense
by Larry Geller
This interview in tomorrow’s West Australia Today validates speculation in the Hawaii blogosphere that the entire Superferry project might, just might, have been staged to prove sea worthiness of the aluminum ship design prior to intended military use.
"If the business continues to operate, the chances of Austal getting its money back eventually are high," Austal executive chairman John Rothwell told AAP.
Mr Rothwell said it was likely that ownership of the vessels would return to Austal, which would then charter them to the US Department of Defence.
Austal holds a second registered mortgage over the vessels, ranking it as a creditor behind the US Maritime Administration. [West Australia Today, Austal customer bankrupt, owes $26.3m, 6/2/2009]
Have we been used? Would the state also hope to get back the money owed it by HSF if the company were allowed to continue to operate? Or should we be looking for a sell-off of the ships to recover funds to pay creditors? Is that possible?
Superferry bankruptcy pre-determined?
by Larry Geller
(Click for larger)
This chart is from the one quarterly report that the governor prepared to submit to the legislature (the Jan-March 2009 quarterly report).
The report helpfully includes the caption “Lower travel during the winter months is expected.” If it is expected, and looking at the chart, then bean counters would have to conclude that the question about bankruptcy was not “if” but most likely “when.” At least, they would have had to have plans for how and when to pull the plug.
This isn’t a case of 20-20 hindsight. If you’ve been reading the Hawaii blogs, you know that external estimates, which admittedly can never be certain, indicated that the Superferry company most likely was continually hemorrhaging money. The popular theory, which again is speculation, was that HSF was being used to prove seaworthiness of the vessel design so that Austal USA could get lucrative military contracts.
A lot of speculation, you may say, but on the other hand, it is usually hard to justify continuing a business that cannot make money. If they intended to make a go of it in Hawaii as a passenger ferry, it doesn’t appear to have worked well enough, and if they were proving seaworthiness, well, mission accomplished.
Let’s take a closer look at the numbers, based on information from HSF itself, and a back-of-the envelope estimate by our citizen analysts.
During the course of the Supreme Court trial, and earlier as well, HSF is reported to have stated that its costs were $650,000 per week when not operating. So that would be $2,600,000 lost per month. Note that if the ferry is not operating, it uses little fuel and other expenses are also minimal, but if it runs, it has to pay for fuel. So when operating, by their own statement, costs must be above $2,600,000 but we can’t say how much yet.
From the chart, the Superferry had only one good month, July 2008. The current citizen analysis is that 37,000 passengers at an approximate $55 fare is $2,035,000. For vehicles, 9,000 vehicles at an approximate $60 fare each would be $540,000. This gives an approximate income of $2,575,000. Remember, we don’t know fuel, labor, or other costs.
So even in its best month, HSF likely lost money, it’s only a question of how much.
And it’s been downhill ever since.
Plus, check the unpaid bills in the bankruptcy filing.
In a business actually intending to earn money, the officers would have had to be scratching their heads for some time wondering about whether their business plan was sound, and contemplating quitting or going bankrupt to shed its obligations if not. Similarly, if theories about HSF’s possible role as a test bed for further military contracts hold any water, there would have been a plan as to when and how to wrap up services in Hawaii.
We don’t know what was on their minds and it doesn’t much matter. The business appears not to be capable of making money, nor did they try and modify it so that it might (for example, by applying for a freight tariff so they could take on cargo).
Press accounts of how the end came correctly report that services stopped due to the Supreme Court ruling. Had they dug deeper, they might also have reported that the Court simply put an end to a business that was losing, rather than making, money.
Throughout the Superferry’s history in the Islands, the press has avoided digging into its performance. If it had done so, the public would have better understood the economic and perhaps also the political dynamics of this long-running disaster.
We also could have understood what it would take to put a viable interisland ferry service in place, if that is possible. That is the longer term loss from this experience.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Nevada, pushed by tourism industry, overrides veto and enacts domestic partnership law
by Larry Geller
The Nevada legislature overrode a veto by Republican governor Jim Gibbons to enact a domestic partnership law for same-sex and unmarried straight couples on Sunday evening. Like Hawaii’s legislature, Nevada lawmakers seem willing to work odd hours.
Unlike Hawaii lawmakers, though, they were persuaded to act in part by Nevada’s tourism industry (mainly the casinos).
Proponents were able to persuade two members of both the Senate and the Assembly to switch sides since earlier votes. Many were pressured by executives for the casino industry, who feared a boycott by gay travelers. [NY Times, Nevada Partnership Bill Now Law, 6/1/2009]
If that’s what it took, Hawaii lawmakers should equally fear a future boycott. It’s just a question of time before pressures increase on them to follow the growing national trend towards civil liberties and equal rights for same-sex couples.
Governor’s first and perhaps last quarterly Superferry report discovered
by Larry Geller
Brad Parsons, ever vigilant, has discovered that the governor has actually submitted one of the required quarterly reports that Act 2 required her to prepare and submit to the legislature.
Here is the link to Brad’s article and to the report.
The news that the governor had not provided the reports as required by law first appeared here on Disappeared News on March 12. I had asked for copies under Hawaii’s open records law and after a short delay was told that the reports did not exist. It seems that the next one was done, and it’s a good read for those still following this sad saga.
Reports are due for the life of Act 2, so there should be one more, though since the ferry isn’t operating, it presumably would not be very interesting. Act 2 expires in July.
I just reviewed the report briefly tonight, but it seems to validate concerns about illegal items transported on the Superferry. It also gives a hint at some of the costs the state incurred in support of the ferry operation, costs that you and I paid as taxpayers (oh, Sen. Slom, you paid also, you know, willingly or unwillingly, and these are a small part of the total bill) (it’s like a “Superferry tax” and I know you are against taxes… (ha!)).
With the bankruptcy filing comes loss for the state and for taxpayers. The idea of bankruptcy is that the company will get to basically screw its creditors in order to live on and return to profitability. Even though the two ships may never return to Hawaii, the legal process allows the company this chance to recover. They could do anything they need to, whether or not Hawaii is involved in their plans.
It’s up to us, or rather, to the Lingle/Aiona administration, to evaluate the chances for recovery of any of the amounts owed to the state and to go after the money in bankruptcy court in Delaware. Yup, Hawaii Superferry is not a Hawaii company at all, it’s incorporated in Delaware.
Johan Galtung’s view from Europe: Dialectics of History: Germany-Israel
“Careful, Israel. You are very close to overstepping the borders where even the status quo West has some stoplights. Nobody believes you as a beacon of human rights and democracy in the problematic Middle East when you break all human rights and laws of war”
Dialectics of History: Germany-Israel
By Johan Galtung - 01/Jun/09
"I feel uneasy. I love him, but how do I know how he is?" The councilor said, "Watch how his father treats his mother. This is his key model. Unless challenged to the contrary this is what he takes for normal, natural. If you have problems with that as his model, rather challenge it now. When you are bound by the marital contract it may be too late". Wise words.
Individuals are more imprinted by their family of origin, negatively and positively, than they care to know. There is a transfer of individual behavior from one generation to the next, like there is a transfer in national behavior from one dominant nation to the next. What else should we learn from, if not from our experiences, individually or collectively?
Except, unless we are able spiritually to transcend model experiences badly in need of improvement; aiming at a better marriage than our parents ever achieved, at better inter-nation relations than the horrors history had in store for us.
Israel, inhabited by a nation seeing itself as much above average in human intelligence, has fallen head first into this trap. The Gaza massacre some months ago was a true copy of the Nazi German attack on the Warsaw ghetto--immortalized the postmodern way through a movie, The Pianist (Palestinians, for heavens sake, make as many superb movies as possible, the language of our time). A basically defenseless people, encased in a ghetto, makes some symbolic defense--and brings down the hell administered by the master. Beyond a military operation to close tunnels or exits, collective punishment for "insurrection"--the Anglo-American term for opposition to their god-given right to divide and rule, conquer and possess. And sheer extermination: the fewer of them, the better.
What is now being prepared by the Netanyahu-Lieberman regime (and Russian Israelis in general) is another true copy of Nazi Germany. The oath of loyalty to the State of Israel "with a Jewish character" at the threat of loss of citizenship gives the fifth of the population of Arab-Muslim background emigration as the only alternative. The 1948 Naqba pushed out by various means, including killing 711,000 Palestinians, 85% of those residing in the territories of the self-declared Israeli War of Independence (copying the USA, against the UK). A continuation of Naqba by legal means if this becomes the law of the "land of the Jews" who actually lived all over the Middle East, only a small part of them in the Holy Land.
Naqba. The Horror. Nobody except clowns like David Irving (who got a good laugh turning little stupid Norway upside-down by his mere presence last week) denies theshoa, but questions numbers and ways of killing. But Natanyahu-Lieberman now want to rule out references to Naqba making them punishable by law.
They want to deprive the Palestinians of their trauma while clinging to their ownshoa to the point of forcing some countries--by the threat of sanctions--to make a "denial" (read "doubt", questioning) punishable (like by that other little stupid country, Austria, putting the clown in prison).
Few are so conscious of traumas, glories, myths, as the Jews, evidenced by a calendar filled with collective memory, mostly trauma. Elevating their own, even to White House celebration, under the present White House Chief of Staff, this past Easter. Depriving Palestinians of the Naqba is like depriving Jews of Babylon and Egyptian captivity: spiritual, collective murder. Spiritual fascism, by legal means. And a desperate absurdity, paving the way for the decline of Israel.
Try to deprive a nation of its identity and you reap confusion, unbelief in the first run. And then comes a hatred finding its violent outlets, not in needlepricks like small suicide bombs and some rockets from North and South--the most cumbersome and unlikely method being nuclear-tipped missiles from Iran, but the real thing. The Israeli response will be massive "transfer", using the myth of Jordan as Palestine-- like Germany first pushed the Jews out, to Poland, Warsaw-- fulfilling the program of the unmentionable Naqba.
Careful, Israel. You are very close to overstepping the borders where even the status quo West has some stoplights. Nobody believes you as a beacon of human rights and democracy in the problematic Middle East when you break all human rights and laws of war, in bello and ad bellum, and your democracy is a meager electoral choice between generals as if democracy is a military staff meeting. Gradually trade will wither away. Diplomatic relations may go from empty to zero to negative. And sooner or later more and more countries will recognize diplomatically a Palestine with no known borders, like once they did with Israel. Measures such as those contemplated will make Palestinians transcend their bitter quarrels. With 15,000 Jews leaving Jerusalem annually, maybe 80% secular, we are heading for even more polarization. Admittedly, dreams of a Middle East Community recede below the horizon.
How do they dare? One reason: because Jews for Obama launched the Illinois state senator in 2004, and won, financed by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Excelon (Zeit-Fragen, 18/05/09), committing him to Israel and Wall street, one might assume. As long as it lasts. A world and a regional empire in tight embrace, on the way down. Playing cards with a fragile world.
Hawaii Superferry blames Supreme Court for bankruptcy while disappearing its creditors
by Larry Geller
Declaring bankruptcy is one way out for the Superferry. While their statement blamed the Hawaii Supreme Court ruling shutting down operations as the cause, if, in fact, they were running at a loss, bankruptcy was always a strong possibility and no surprise (except to those who depended on the daily papers for their Superferry news). By seeking relief from creditors, HSF leaves the suckers behind and could live to sail another day.
The warnings were there if one read the blogs. There should be additional information coming out beyond this initial news report. Let’s see how the papers do, now that Hawaii Superferry is no longer one of their big advertisers.
The case is In re HSF Holding Inc., No. 09-11901, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington) and may provide more details as it unfolds.
For now, here is the Bankruptcy Petiton filed yesterday, including a list of creditors and amounts owed, a motion to order payment of pre-petition wages which identifies current employees, and a motion related to the previous one.
The Advertiser article today sought comments from one of the two Republican state senators left standing, Sen. Sam Slom, and then Senate Majority Leader Gary Hooser.
From Sen. Slom:
State Sen. Sam Slom, R-8th (Kahala, Hawai'i Kai), called the Superferry bankruptcy a "tremendous tragedy for Hawai'i."
Slom said he believes opponents of the project were in the minority and that the Supreme Court's decisions were wrong. He said the ferry had the potential to unite the Islands economically and to create more business opportunities on the Neighbor Islands.
Slom seems to believe that a business that lost money continually “had the potential to unite the Islands.” Unless a business can turn around and make money, Sam, it has no potential at all. Even if the Court let them go on, how does a business run on negative income? Can’t blame this one on opponents, Sam, the opponents were right.
Analysis of Superferry operations has long pointed out what Slom can’t see. Here is a recent analysis by Brad Parsons. Brad considers also the advantages that the Superferry had in (for example), fast transport of vehicles, but here is a snippet related to break-even fares, ca. 2008:
Late last year HSF disclosed their operating costs were $650,000 per week, with the increase in marine diesel oil (MDO) fuel cost to over $1000 per metric ton or over $3.75/gal* for MDO at the retail level, their weekly costs since last fall have increased at least an additional $105,000 per week due to fuel alone. That means the 1/4 ridership/vehicle capacity they needed before just to cover fuel costs has increased now to about 1/3 capacity just to cover fuel costs. HSF has been running recently at loads of 1/4 to 1/3 capacity for the early runs and a 1/4 or less for the evening runs. A little more than their second and third quarters of ridership are needed to cover the rest of their expenses, leaving less than the top quarter of full capacity to net income, at current prices. If HSF doubled their current prices per person from $39 to $80 and per vehicle from $55 to $110, their ridership breakeven levels would be half what they are now, but demand would likely drop off for their services.
Sen. Hooser hopes to look forward. That should include determining what type of interisland transportation is most suited to Hawaii’s needs. It will likely be a smaller vessel. Even with reduced fares (leading inevitably to bankruptcy), the Superferry could not fill its seats to capacity. Had it charged what it needed to cover fuel and other expenses, it would have had fewer passengers still.
Was bankruptcy the only route? Well, it’s happened, but now that it has, it would be hard to imagine a responsible investor purchasing a business with no prospects of turning a profit. Unlike Sen. Slom, anyone evaluating the prospects of running the business at a loss would responsibly back away from it. That doesn’t leave many options. HSF could have tried for a comeback with a smaller vessel and after completion of the EIS that the law requires. Who knows, if they emerge from Chapter 11, that’s still a possibility (if, perhaps, a small one).
No, the saga isn’t over. Bankruptcy will cost the creditors (including the State of Hawaii), but the ferry company could emerge with its ships still afloat. Imagine that. They could move on to eventual profitability while we get stuck with the bill.
Hawaii holds a third mortgage on the Alakai. I’ve been told that a third mortgage is not worth the paper it is printed on, but why, then, go to the trouble of doing it?
The state has to answer now what it can do with that piece of paper, instead of sticking other harbor users with the $40 million or so in improvement costs and sticking the taxpayers with other bills. The Lingle administration owes taxpayers for its aggressive promotion of this private business and should be at least as aggressive in the bankruptcy proceedings to recover whatever is possible.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Why the Right will fight Obama on the Sotomayor nomination
by Larry Geller
Obama was not the “most liberal senator” and has not turned out to be a liberal president. The right also labeled John Kerry as the most liberal senator when he was running for president. They lie. Why do they do this, I wondered.
Now, although confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is pretty much assured unless something unforeseen happens, the Right echo chamber is already resounding with lies and distortions. And just plain repetition (see video below). Why do they do this, I wonder.
Especially, with the Republican Party in disarray you’d think they would want to court, rather than alienate, Hispanic and minority voters and women. But no, they are assailing Sotomayor as racist, misquoting what she has said, and lying whenever they can think of something to lie about.
Ben Dimiero from Media Matters for America put together this video. He also sends out a daily email which is a compendium of the day’s media issues and well worth subscribing to.
Viewers who depend on Fox News for information must be convinced by now. It’s been pounded into their heads so much.
This morning’s Democracy Now explained a bit about why the Republicans do this. It was something I hadn’t thought about. From the program (Oahu viewers can see it tonight at 10 p.m. channel 56 or from the web at any time):
JUAN GONZALEZ: And you also write, Tom, about the cottage industry that has developed around Supreme Court nominations and how sides, from both the left and the right, gear up for these nominations. Could you talk about that a little bit?
TOM GOLDSTEIN: Sure. It’s as with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, who are really smart people. They are more conservative than me, to be sure, but they have a lot of integrity. They are, you know, good judges. And when they were nominated by President Bush, they were attacked mercilessly by the, you know, folks on the left. And same with Judge Sotomayor, a person of incredible integrity, great intelligence, and now attacked from the far right.
And the cottage industry point is that these groups gear up now, and this is their principal fundraising mechanism, to say, “The President now is trying to either destroy the Supreme Court or save the Supreme Court. You need to support us.”
...
So, even though it’s certain that Judge Sotomayor is going to be confirmed, absolutely certain, absent some totally unexpected ethical transgression, she is going to go through the wringer now, so that these groups are able to fundraise.
I never thought of that. But it has that air of truthiness about it. By yelling and screaming that Sotomayor is a racist, or that the world will end if she is seated on the Supreme Court, these groups will get to wring money out of the lemmings who are predisposed to believe whatever the Right says anyway.
The snippet above implies that both sides engage in this.
In the wings but under the radar are white supremacists who are no doubt doing the same, warning their followers that not only have blacks taken over the White House itself, but now immigrants are moving into the courts. Aside from raising funds, let’s remember that these folks usually have guns or worse. Armed, angry lemmings.
Of course, it takes an adequate supply of lemmings, and I suppose our educational system is being re-designed to fulfill that need. Amazing how it all fits together.
It also takes a press that is salivating over potential profits from the controversy at best, and that will turn its back on white racist remarks except to package them and deliver them to the public, to create the chamber in which the Right can echo. The media will amplify their voices. The fundraising groups will find it easier to gather support.
Here is how the echoing is going so far. Not necessarily in chronological order, and I’m sure this is far from complete:
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in a written statement, said Tuesday he's concerned Sotomayor has shown "personal bias based on ethnicity and gender."
"Judge Sotomayor will need to reassure the country that she will set aside her biases, uphold the rule of law and interpret the Constitution as written, not as she believes it should have been written," said Smith, who will have no vote in the matter, as the confirmation is a Senate matter. [Fox News, Sotomayor's Judicial Record Could Be Battlefield for Critics, Advocates, 5/26/2009]
Give me a break. Has Smith been concerned, in the past, that white male appointees need to set aside their biases? Is Smith genuinely as bigoted as this sounds, or is he just pounding the Republican drums?
Here’s another of the same. Another Republican, of course, Sen. James Inhofe, (R-OK) is concerned that Sotomayor be without the “undue influence” of her race and gender:
Of primary concern to me is whether or not Judge Sotomayor follows the proper role of judges and refrains from legislating from the bench. Some of her recent comments on this matter have given me cause for great concern. In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences. [Talking Points Memo, Inhofe Wants to Make Sure Sotomayor Is "Without Undue Influence" From Her Race And Gender, 5/26/2009]
Rush Limbaugh:
"I mean, do I want her to fail? Yeah. Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes -- she'd be a disaster on the court."
"You know, Obama talks about 'we need people with empathy.' It's not even about empathy, folks; that's just cover. He just wants one of his own on the court to do his dirty work from the highest court in the land, and she fits the bill."
…
"So here you have a racist. You might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist. And the libs, of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone, because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he's appointed one." [mediamatters.org, 5/26/2009]
CNN:
Rush Limbaugh isn't the only one calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Newt Gingrich is, too — and he's demanding that Obama's pick to the Supreme Court withdraw her nomination. [CNN Political Ticker, Gingrich: Sotomayor 'racist,' should withdraw nomination, 5/27/2009]
Enough for now. I’m wondering if the Republican party is harming itself further with these tactics, or if they are cleverly feeding as well as preaching to the choir.
Bad car-ma over the holiday
by Larry Geller
A week or so ago I took my car in for some brake work. The squeak from the right side was an indication that something needed attention. So the squeaky brake got fixed, and the piggy bank is thinner.
Then, wouldn’t you know it, over a holiday weekend, the car decides to squeak again, but much louder. Expletive deleted. Why do cars do that? It’s a holiday! We needed a car on Monday, so off via taxi to the car rental place at the airport (the only Enterprise open over the holiday with a car) to get one. Tuesday I took our squeaking car in bright and early for repair.
What a drag, and an unexpected expense. Well, I got a call mid-day Tuesday. “Come get your car.” “Is it fixed already??” “It was just a bean.”
A bean?? ?? This would even stump the guys at Car Talk. A bean.
I went to get the car and we looked at a diagram of a set of brakes. On one side is a dirt shield, or cover. It is supposed to keep things out. What happened was that one of those sticky pods or beans from the trees got inside and pushed against the inner workings, making a loud noise. When the mechanic took the cover off, he found the bean. That was it. Apparently, this happens in places where the trees drop those kinds of pods in large quantities. They stick to the bottom of your shoes, and they can get into brake parts.
So we returned the rental car last night and went out for some Thai food. We asked for it hot and we got it hot. And then over to Bubbies for ice cream. Needed to have some comfort food (this is what works for us).
At the next table at Bubbies was a person I assumed was a Japanese UH student. He had a cell phone with a rotatable screen that was playing an HD movie in incredible color. Then he rotated and it and it became a phone menu. Pictures of his friends appeared as he scrolled down the list. Who knows what else the thing did. We are so far behind in this country… but nevermind. All thoughts of the bad carma were erased. I just wanted to know where I could find out more about that cellphone.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Superferry may be safer as a ferry than as a combat ship
by Larry Geller
I was reading about Israel’s use of white phosphorus in Gaza, a war crime because it was used in civilian areas. That stuff burns and there is nothing to be done about it. It may also have been used recently in Afghanistan by one side or the other.
And then, there has been some speculation that the ferry formerly known as Hawaii Superferry may, once its new ramp is attached, see service around Guam/Saipan/Tinian, where troops are soon to be sent from Okinawa.
As long as it remains a “ferry,” perhaps it will find a niche. But suppose one of these lightweight aluminum bubbles is used in a war zone, where it might be hit by some of that white phosphorus?
_1921.jpg)
This is a photo of the USS Alabama hit by white phosphorus in 1921. Good thing it wasn’t made out of aluminum. Here is a picture of a white phosphorus shell and launcher. One guy can shoot it. I’m not sure how that compares with what was dropped on the Alabama.
So I asked researcher Brad Parsons. He discovered the above pic, but also some info on the burning point of aluminum and white phosphorus. Brad posted his findings on his blog.
The white phosphorus burns at a temperature way higher than the melting point of aluminum. And aluminum itself can burn.
Anyway, this is just idle curiosity. The ferry is not in Hawaii any longer. I hope its flammability remains untested.
Do-it-yourself gas cap
by Larry Geller
The Hawaii state legislature caved in to industry and the governor’s pressure and killed our state gas cap. Then, in 2008, gasoline prices skyrocketed and we suffered along with the rest of the country.
It’s unlikely that the legislature will dare try to pass a gas cap bill again. We’re on our own. If there is any manipulation of prices, we get manipulated. If there is gouging, we just get gouged. That’s the way it is.
There’s a new web service that purports to let individuals and businesses hedge against increasing gas prices. I don’t know if it works, and I don’t endorse it. I’d hate to find out it is some kind of scheme. All I know about this is a URL. Which is: http://www.petrofix.com/. The Petrofix website says that you can create your own gas cap. Actually, a hedge against increasing prices.
It’s obviously a gamble, at best.
If anyone does try this, I’d be curious to learn how it went. If it goes badly, please don’t blame me, I didn’t twist your arm.
Support a super Hawaii advocacy organization
by Larry Geller
Henry Curtis is fundraising for Life of the Land. This is one of the best advocacy organizations to support, IMHO. They are fighting for you, and as they succeed, your energy bills are controlled. Stuff like that. Does the government look out for you? No. Henry does.
Here’s his message, including where to send your support donation.
Aloha,
LOL has always operated on a very tight budget, because our staff are passion driven, they truly believe that their research and work will help Hawai`i become a more self-sufficient place where people can live healthy lives and enjoy the most beautiful environment on the planet.
LOL is the only community group which intervenes before the Hawai`i Public Utilities Commission which regulates electric utilities and implementation of energy policy.
We were the first party to sponsor expert witnesses in contested case hearings on climate change, biofuels, wave energy, ocean thermal power, Sea Water Air Conditioning, and environmental justice.
LOL also works on include civil unions, land use, open government, genetic engineering, agriculture, water, and justice.
We focus primarily on research, education and advocacy before state agencies.
Now we need your help. Please make a generous contribution today
We depend almost solely on community support. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT. We bravely stand alone when all others are caving in, we are courageous in the face of intense adversity, we are principled in that we would never sell our the values and ideals that Life of the Land has lived by for 38 years, and we will continue to be the clear voice for the community when powerful interests are trying to roll over you.
Please help us
Checks:
Life of the Land
76 N. King Street, Suite 203
Honolulu, HI 96817
PayPal: http://www.lifeofthelandhawaii.org/Donation.html
LOL Web Site www.lifeofthelandhawaii.org
By the way, Disappeared News has a little donation button over on the left side. After you support Life of the Land, please try that button too, it helps pay for the server and other expenses. Thanks!
Hawaii ACLU: “School are not prisons, and students shouldn’t be treated like inmates.”
by Larry Geller
(thanks to Viviane Lerner for a pointer to the ACLU web page and for the title)
The drug-sniffing dog is cute. It wins over school principals and teachers. Wouldn’t it be great to have this friendly little puppy keep our school safe from drugs?
Since there is no way to prove it works (kids aren’t dumb, if there were drugs in lockers in the first place, which has not been shown to be a problem, they would take them out and not get caught) (unless another kid plants some, of course). But these proposed rules have more problems than just the dog issue.
The Board of Education will vote on new rules at their meeting on Tuesday. Unless there is great public outcry, they’ll pass them. The cute dog (and the firm that employs it) will win, and students will lose.
The Hawaii chapter of the ACLU recommends sending in testimony to the Board and going down there in person on Tuesday. If you can, I hope you’ll do that. The ACLU web page is here.
Their suggested testimony actually explains the problem quite well. I hope they won’t mind if I reproduce it here. It’s better if you use your own words, of course, but this is good guidance and a great explanation of the concerns.
SAMPLE TESTMONY
To: Hawaii State Board of Education
Via E-mail: BOE_Hawaii@notes.k12.hi.us
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 3:00 p.m. Queen Liliuokalani Building, Room 404
Re: Proposed Changes to Chapter 19
Dear Chair Toguchi and Members of the Hawaii State Board of Education:
I strongly oppose the proposed changes to Chapter 19 because they erode student privacy without making our schools any safer.
First, the list of “contraband” is overly broad. The new rules would allow school officials to search every pocket of a student’s backpack, pants, or purse just because the student might have a cell phone. Students with braces could be sent to detention because rubber bands are “contraband.” Any student suspected of having chewing gum could be suspended. School are not prisons, and students shouldn’t be treated like inmates.
Second, some of the proposed definitions are so vague that they will inevitably lead to claims of discrimination. For example, the rules prohibit “inappropriate physical contact” – including consensual physical contact – between students. But the rules don’t explain what conduct is “appropriate” or what is “inappropriate” and will vary from person to person. School officials might believe that it’s “appropriate” for boys and girls to hold hands but “inappropriate” for two girls to do so. Similarly, the rules prohibit “using words in an inappropriate way” and “low-intensity failure to respond to adult requests” – completely meaningless phrases that could have parents screaming at teachers if they enforce – or they fail to enforce – the rules.
Third, I strongly disagree that school officials should be able to search students’ lockers – and their personal property contained in the lockers – at any time, without cause. The rule changes for locker searches are unnecessary (as well as unconstitutional): current rules already allow for searches of students whenever there is reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The rules also allow for the immediate search of any locker if school officials believe there is imminent danger from the locker's contents. Therefore, as currently written, the rules in Chapter 19 already give school officials ample ability to keep our kids safe, while preserving their constitutional rights to privacy and free speech.
Fourth, I think that the use of drug-sniffing dogs is invasive, unnecessary, and a waste of scarce educational resources. Even the best drug-sniffing dogs are wrong between 12.5% and 60% of the time. Large numbers of completely innocent students may be detained and questioned by school officials and even the police, creating an administrative nightmare without making schools any safer.
Fifth, the rules now authorize suspensions of up to 92 days and drug testing of kindergarteners. This move towards “zero tolerance” in schools simply makes no sense: children and teenagers will make mistakes; it’s the Board’s job to make sure that children get the tools they need to become productive, responsible members of society – not to give them criminal records and punish them with suspensions so lengthy that the students may never catch up to their peers.
We are teaching our children the wrong civics lesson. The U.S. Constitution protects Americans from unsubstantiated searches, but allowing school officials to search through students' personal effects without cause is a glaring affront to this bedrock constitutional right and teaches a miserable civics lesson to our students. By allowing suspicionless searches, we are mistakenly teaching young people that they must choose between being safe and free. Our constitution was built on the foundational idea that Americans can be safe AND free.
These changes take our school system in the wrong direction. Please do not implement these proposed changes.
If you’re concerned, please email your own testimony (the BOE email is given in the ACLU’s sample testimony).
Another reason to object: The ACLU is likely to win lawsuits against the state if schools start strip-searching kids or suspending them according to the new rules. I would bet on the ACLU winning. Which means that our tax money would go to pay needless legal fees.
We can avoid that by working to defeat these new rules before they are put into effect.
What is a “surplus lines insurer” and what does that have to do with the safety of HMSA’s new online service?
by Larry Geller
I was wondering why a doctor would risk a precious medical license by participating in this on-line service. Towards the end of this article I’ll explain what I learned. And thanks to the person who sent the “leak.”
On an impulse, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Advertiser. It appeared in today’s paper, a great spot. Here’s what I wrote:
HMSA ONLINE CARE
PROMOTING SERVICE AS SUBSTITUTE UNWISE
Sen. Josh Green is correct in objecting to HMSA's misplaced recommendation of its online consultation service (Advertiser, May 21).
With some possible exceptions, the quality of the consultation does not adequately protect the patient. The online doctor can't look down your throat or in your ear, for example, and so the care that can be given is very limited. It remains to be seen whether patients will learn to make only appropriate use of online consultations.
There is a better alternative to visiting the ER — do what the tourists do, where possible — visit an after-hours walk-in clinic. On rare occasions when something needed immediate attention, our family did just that. A live doctor was able to provide top-notch medical care.
Our Department of Health could promote the availability of walk-in clinics as part of a comprehensive healthcare solution for Hawai'i. HMSA's promotion of its online service as a substitute for a visit to a flesh-and-blood doctor is irresponsible.
The service could become a useful adjunct to treatment if a patient's primary care physician is participating in the experiment, and of course could answer general questions authoritatively, or assist those too remote to have any other option.
Larry Geller
Honolulu
The original Advertiser article reports that HMSA does promote their on-line service as an alternative to an office visit:
HMSA has said the system isn't a replacement for face-to-face office visits and may be attractive to people who haven't had the time to make a doctor's appointment. Moreover, it sees the program as being an alternative to the 90,000 annual emergency room visits that are costly, but sometimes occur because no doctor's offices are open.
It’s doublespeak. Sounds like they are promoting the service for those “who haven't had the time to make a doctor's appointment” as a replacement for a face-to-face visit, doesn’t it? And again, there are other ways to reduce the number of ER visits if the state cared to do that.
Rep. Green wrote in that Advertiser article:
"It is deeply irresponsible and reckless for HMSA to use the swine flu crisis to promote Online Care in their recent announcements, which falsely imply that it is safer for a patient in Hawai'i to use the Online Care system than to see a doctor in person," Green, a sometime HMSA critic, said in an e-mail.
"These assertions are medically unsound and undermine the professional standard of care established by the medical community in Hawai'i."
Of course, if HMSA can replace office visits with on-line sessions, since a responsible doctor won’t prescribe treatment this way (IMHO), HMSA will save a fortune. That’s right, if you don’t see a doctor in person and get your strep throat diagnosed, they won’t have to pay to treat it, will they.
Check out the web promotion. These are snipped from HMSA’s website for educational purposes only. Click for large enough to read.
Ok so far, maybe. Let’s learn more:
Some of this sounds really good! Choose a physician based on language, qualifications. Cool. It says you can get treatment and a prescription. The physician will inform your regular doctor about what was prescribed for you. It doesn't say when, but that’s a quibble. You could have something growing in you that needs to be taken out, but of course the on-line doctor can’t press your abdomen to discover that.
Why would a qualified physician be participating in a service where the patient’s blood pressure can’t even be checked? Where a patient might want an antibiotic, for example, and give a fake report just to get the meds?
The rates may look attractive, compared with your co-pay right now, as the chart below indicates, but keep in mind that you’re not getting a “real” doctor visit for your money, and you won’t be able to talk as long as your issue may require. The doctor can’t look down your throat if necessary. Even if you have a webcam, it won’t work. And notice that HMSA is selling this to non-members, so someone with no insurance is going to pay for an inferior level of service—that could cost them their life, if they don’t follow up with an office visit. Or, if the doctor is responsible, will be useless. Get thee to a real physician is what the on-line doctor better say. $45 please.
HMSA will determine, apparently without recourse, how long you can talk with your on-line physician. If the physician has extended the talk (by 3 minutes!) it cannot be extended again. HMSA has spoken. Doesn’t matter if you and your physician need to talk more.
This is a great example that critics of managed care can use to show that insurers are getting between physicians and their patients.
Why would a doctor agree to risk a precious medical license in order to participate in this plan? Here’s why: HMSA provides them with insurance. From the doctor’s brochure:
Is malpractice coverage included with HMSA’s Online Care?
Yes. Malpractice coverage is provided by the Lexington Insurance Company (a member company of AIG), the largest medical malpractice carrier in the country. The policy is independent of your existing malpractice coverage for your practice.
Disclaimer: This product description is for informational purposes only and does not provide a complete description of coverage terms, conditions, exclusions and limits. Insurance for this program may be provided by a surplus lines insurer.
So the online doc is covered (not you). “But what,” you may ask, “is a ‘surplus lines insurer?’ “
From the first Google hit:
There are some cases, however, (generally less than 10% of policies nationwide) where the licensed insurers will not accept a risk because it does not meet their internally established guidelines. The risk may be too big, too unusual or substandard. In these cases, a specially licensed producer called a surplus line producer gets involved. Their special surplus line license allows them to procure a policy for you from an insurer that is not licensed in your state.
Much of Hawaii’s malpractice insurance comes from out of state anyway. There are reasons for this that are too lengthy to go into here. I am concerned, of course, about this part: “The risk may be too big, too unusual or substandard.”
Given the uniqueness of this program, perhaps that’s what HMSA has to do. But remember, the insurance protects the doctor facing you on the screen. If you are injured or harmed in some way because you participated, and if you live, you have to sue. Also, many doctors and the Hawaii Medical Association are pushing hard in the state legislature to limit what you can recover as damages (they call it “tort reform”). Should they succeed one day, a patient’s ability to recover damages would be severely limited. But the participating doctor is covered.
That would explain why the face you see on the screen is smiling.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Circuit City reappears
by Larry Geller
It looks like Circuit City, under new ownership, is back—but on-line only.
I don’t know yet if the prices are competitive, but interestingly enough, the shopping cart was willing to give free shipping to Hawaii on that 46-inch HDTV. I didn’t go all the way to buying it, though, so I don’t know that for sure.
A USB cable that I could use and that I hadn’t seen elsewhere, was $9.95 but the shipping was $24.95, so of course I passed on it. My guess is that Hawaii shoppers will have to use one of the re-shipping services, wiping out any potential savings.
Also, check that the warranty on anything you buy is good in Hawaii.
I found I really missed CompUSA when it closed, despite my unhappiness with it while it was here. At least, there was Circuit City. Then that left, as well. The on-line versions of these stores are not adequate substitutes. And how can Hawaii aspire to be a high-tech center of the Pacific when we don’t even have a decent computer store here??
Disappeared youth: my fantasy career operating a giant earthmover
by Larry Geller
A little girl managed to buy a Kubelco SK150LC excavator on-line for $15,000. She was only 3 years old, so her parents wouldn’t let her keep it.
I remember how many times I watched guys wearing yellow helmets push and pull levers at construction sites in New York City, wishing I could have a job operating one of those things. Maybe it’s a guy thing. Actually, just having some time to play is what I really wanted, not the job. Imagine the power that one fingertip on a lever can command in one of those things…
I learned it is a common enough fantasy. In fact, a comment attached to the above article notes that:
There is a business in Germany that lets you use diggers, graders all kinds of big machines. Wives/gf's typically give a gift of x many hours of earthmoving to their partner. I'm in the US but I would love to have some fun at that place....
It would look so cool on my resume: computer engineer, director of joint venture company, earthmover operator…
Glenn Greenwald analyzes Obama’s preventive detention proposal
by Larry Geller
Check out Glenn Greenwald’s article on Obama’s preventive detention proposal.
Obama should know better. Obama does know better. Obama should not be allowed to get away with this.
Greenwald’s article is a long and comprehensive analysis. To encourage you to click over and read it, here is a snippet which will give you the flavor of his concise analysis:
Is it "due process" when the Government can guarantee it always wins?
If you really think about the argument Obama made yesterday -- when he described the five categories of detainees and the procedures to which each will be subjected -- it becomes manifest just how profound a violation of Western conceptions of justice this is. What Obama is saying is this: we'll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don't think we can convict in a real court, we'll get convictions in the military commissions I'm creating. For those we can't convict even in my military commissions, we'll just imprison them anyway with no charges ("preventively detain" them).
Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you'll get convictions is not due process. Those are called "show trials." In a healthy system of justice, the Government gives everyone it wants to imprison a trial and then imprisons only those whom it can convict. The process is constant (trials), and the outcome varies (convictions or acquittals).
Obama is saying the opposite: in his scheme, it is the outcome that is constant (everyone ends up imprisoned), while the process varies and is determined by the Government (trials for some; military commissions for others; indefinite detention for the rest). The Government picks and chooses which process you get in order to ensure that it always wins. A more warped "system of justice" is hard to imagine. [salon.com, Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal, 5/22/2009]
I thought this craziness would be all over when Bush got into his last helicopter ride out of DC. It’s disappointing, discouraging, and even depressing to see his legacy reborn in the guy we were counting on to bring us that promised change.
Update: Andy Parx posted an excellent comment. Since many readers don’t look at comments, I want to include it here.
The question at the heart of this that Greenwald doesn’t get to is that if you haven’t got any evidence to convict someone it’s quite probable they didn’t do anything. In other words how can they say they “know” they did something if they don’t have any evidence. What are they, psychic?
More like psycho...pathic.
The rules of evidence in the American justice system are there so you don’t have manufactured cases based on some kind of “we’re sure they did it so they must have done it” fallacy. Thinking “they might have done it” doesn’t cut it for good reason. It’s apparent in many of these cases they can’t even meet preponderance of evidence” standards much less reasonable doubt.
All too often overzealous prosecutors delude themselves into thinking “it must be” the person they suspect and have arrested even when it isn’t and they proceed to trial based on that. That’s how we get 99% of the wrongful convictions.
And that’s just regular prosecutors – the ability to self delude themselves is the prime hallmark of the Bush/Chaney (now apparently Obama) cabal. If all they have is a “confession” they tortured out of someone it’s worthless, most likely given just to get them to stop. If they can’t even gather evidence after a tortured-out confession it’s obviously because there isn’t any evidence there, just a self- deluded surety that these guys did something.
Apparently they “rounded up the usual suspects” and now have no idea what they might have done but they’re sure they “must have done something”.
They’re as “sure these guys are guilty” as they were that Sadam had nukes and that we’d be greeted as liberators and... and...
# posted by Andy Parx : 12:21 PM HST
“Terrorist plot” smells like another dumb entrapment
by Larry Geller
Osama must be laughing as he surfs the headlines on the web.
You probably spotted the story on the four petty criminals who have been promoted to terrorist status. I suppose now it’s ok to take them someplace and torture them until they confess their close connection to Al Qaeda.
This smells like entrapment. Certainly, we are no safer because these losers were lead on and assisted just so that they could be arrested at an opportune moment. For instance, the moment when Dick Cheney needed to make his point on the importance of enhanced interrogation on keeping America safe.
It’s sad that our newspapers don’t at least raise the question of entrapment.
As to timing, Cheney kept making the case that we are safer for all that torture. His fellow Republican, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell, took his arguments apart quite neatly (see: The Wshington Note, The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney, 5/13/2009). This article was written a week ago, and it was interesting to have it in hand while checking out Cheney’s latest TV blast.
In fact, Cheney did not only authorize torture to “keep America safe” according to Wilkerson, but to extract false information to justify American military actions. Just like we accuse our enemies of doing:
Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.
So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)
So now we have some newly anointed terrorists to keep the fear going. And Dick Cheney (Wilkerson refers to him as the Sith Lord who shares leadership of the Republican Party with Rush Limbaugh) just won’t give up the scare tactic. Someone should count the 9/11 references in his speech.
So let me close with this soon-to-be-famous (?) line: “The only thing we have to fear are the fearmongers themselves.”
It’s time, Mr. President, for some change
by Larry Geller
—Rachel Maddow
It was shocking to me to hear President Obama’s speech on the radio. I thought, for sure, there would be immediate reaction from human rights groups and from the overseas press. Here at home, disappointingly, much of the commentary, including on NPR, has aimed so low that it debates whether Obama or Cheney made a better speech, or analyzes the president's demeanor during his talk.
Human rights groups have, in fact, risen to condemn the substance of Obama's speech. This Atlantic article (Civil Liberties, Human Rights Groups Not Assuaged By Obama's Speech, 5/21/2009) is a good summary of a few organizations’ positions. An example from the article:
"He wraps himself in the Constitution and then, in our view, proceeds to undermine it," Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) President Michael Ratner said.
One of the most scathing commentaries is in today’s Progressive Review Undernews (Obama Assumes the Rights of a Dictator, 5/22/2009). Sam Smith begins the article:
With his comments on preventive detention, President Obama has assumed the privileges of a dictator. There are no constitutional grounds for what he intends to do and nothing therefore to prevent him from expanding the language to include, for example, preventive detention for journalists who oppose the first three country conflict America has been in since World War II.
The claim by both Bush and Obama that they can exercise unconstitutional powers because we are in a war is supported neither by the document itself nor by reality, inasmuch as Congress has yet to declare war on anyone we are currently fighting. Further, all the unconstitutional measures used or proposed - from torture to preventive detention - have gained prominence without a single significant effort on the part of the United States to lessen the chances that someone in the countries concerned might wish to harm us. We have not only jettisoned the Constitution but common sense as well.
Smith’s article is short but powerful and worth a read.
Should we be concerned? I suggest that we should be very concerned. Behind Obama, when he spoke, was a copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Trampling on it while giving a speech was a good trick, but he should not be allowed to go forward with the violations of human rights that he proposed. We’ve had enough of that.
It’s time, Mr. President, for some change.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Garrison Keillor exposed
by Larry Geller
Rory O’Connor takes on Garrison Keillor in Prairie Home Torture Companion. Yup, Keillor wants to “move on” and let the criminals go. Some liberal.
America won’t be allowed to “move on” without dealing with this. From another Rory O’Conner article:
When it comes to America’s torturing, none of us are blameless in our actions, our ignorance or our acquiescence – not the President and other senior officials who allowed, not the President and senior officials who condone it by refusing to prosecute, and certainly not citizens who elected them and then looked away. [Time to Think About Torture, 4/29/09]
And that goes for Garrison Keillor as well.
Torture photos beginning to leak already?
by Larry Geller
Some of the pictures President Obama doesn’t want to release may already be out there. Others could be leaked in the future. See the end of this article for some links. If you dare.
But why did Obama renege on his agreement to release the pictures? John Dean probably has it right, in this Tikkun article which begins:
Allow me to share some analysis about the way things work in Washington. President Obama's flip-flop on his agreement to turn over photographs of detainees being tortured by American soldiers is a message with broad and clear implications. Those who believe that the Obama Administration should expose and prosecute persons who committed war crimes should understand that it is not going to happen the way they would like, or as quickly, because Obama is having internal battles as well. His pullback is not occurring because he fears that Republicans will attack him (he knows they will); rather it is occurring because he needs the national security community behind him, and they fear they will be further embarrassed and humiliated if more information is revealed.
According to The Washington Post, President Obama told White House lawyers he does not "feel comfortable" releasing the photos because of the reaction they could cause against U.S. troops, and because "he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court," in responding to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
If the photos get out anyway, it may not hurt Obama as much as if he were the one to release them, then. Such is the theory.
Some photos may already be out there. Be warned, if you click the next links, you’re going to see something unpleasant.
A few appeared last week on Brad Blog. That story links to additional photos published by the Sydney Morning Herald. While these are purported to be among the collection Obama now refuses to release, of course it’s impossible to know without being able to look inside his desk.
Will these photos cause damage to America in the “war zone,” as has been explained? Probably not these few. Should Obama continue to cover up instead of prosecute, and should a large number of photos leak out, perhaps that will be damaging. The solution is to get busy and clean up the mess, not hope it will be forgotten. John Dean provides some explaination of the resistance that Obama is likely meeting from the Washington bureaucracy.
While I hope you will click over to Tikkun and read the entire John Dean article, in case you don’t, I’d like to snip his closing paragraph also:
I would encourage those who are demanding exposure and prosecution to keep pounding their drums. Clearly, they are on the right side of this issue, and Obama knows it. While he is going to placate the national security bureaucrats from time to time in order to lead them effectively, hopefully the pressure for him to deal with the atrocious behavior of Bush and Cheney is only just getting started.
So if you know a way to get your message to Obama, please do so. Let’s keep pounding those drums for justice.
Capital punishment and extraordinary rendition in Hawaii
by Larry Geller
Hawaii does not have capital punishment—officially. Instead, we have a program of “rendition.” Our administration contracts with a private prison operator in Arizona, where no state law protects them (since no Arizona citizens are incarcerated at Saguaro Prison, Arizona state prison laws don’t apply, nor does Hawaii law). The prison is operated by Corrections Corporation of America.
Since August 2008, three Hawaii prisoners have died in Saguaro.
Whatever their offense, they were not supposed to die.
Something is very wrong, but these deaths have not yet received the public attention they need to have.
There could be an investigation, but it’s up to Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and House Speaker Calvin Say whether this will happen (yes, later I’m going to ask if you could email or call them about this).
Here is some information on the three recent deaths.
- James Kendricks died in August 2008 on the prison basketball court. While CCA said that they did everything they could, other reports are that the staff did nothing.
- A prisoner named Cartel died after calling for medical help. He was on his way to medical when he was sent back to his cell for head count. And later, there he died. Again, this is according to reports.
- Patrick Garcia died in early May. He was about 42 years old and had a heart attack. The question is whether he received any assistance.
A May 10, 2006 article in In These Times highlighted the glaring failures in Hawaii’s system of out-of-state incarceration. The article reported that:
A 1993 study focused on the recidivism rates of Hawaiian prisoners found that 90 percent of inmates sent to other states to do their time eventually returned to prison. Those incarcerated in their home state had recidivism rates ranging from 47 to 57 percent.
It also noted:
Hawaii represents the most extreme example of these practices because all of its transferred prisoners are sent to the mainland, and because all of those prisoners are sent to facilities run by just one private prison operator: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
Today, Hawaii leads the nation in interstate prisoner transfers. Nearly 2,000 prisoners—roughly half of the state’s adults convicted of felonies—are serving out their sentences in CCA-run prisons in Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma. Notably, 41 percent of the “shipped” prisoners have been native Hawaiian, although they represent only 20 percent of the state’s prison demographic.
This and other articles achieved widespread interest because of the death of transferred Hawaii inmate, 43-year-old Sarah Ah Mau, on New Year’s Eve 2005.
Mau, serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, had been incarcerated since 1993 and had a shot at parole eligibility in August 2008.
She never got that chance. Instead she died of as-yet-unexplained “natural causes” after two days in critical condition—and a month after first complaining of severe gastrointestinal distress. Family members and fellow prisoners say that Ah Mau’s pleas for medical care were ridiculed, downplayed or ignored by prison employees. As her stomach distended—and other body parts began to swell visibly—prisoners say that Ah Mau was fed castor oil and told to stop complaining unless she wanted to face disciplinary action.
What was Hawaiian resident Ah Mau doing in Kentucky in the first place? She was a commodity in an increasingly common practice: interstate prison transfers.
Returning to the Saguaro incidents, the state’s contract also came under scrutiny in a 2007 story by Advertiser reporter Kevin Dayton:
An Arizona mayor who signed off on part of a multi-million dollar government contract to house Hawai'i inmates in prisons on the Mainland also is an employee of Corrections Corp. of America, the company that holds Hawai'i inmates at the privately owned Arizona prisons.
Allegations of mismanagement by CCA surfaced almost immediately. From an August 2007 AP story::
Two managers at a private Arizona prison that houses inmates from Hawaii quit the facility with complaints of poor management, inadequate facilities and lack of staffing.
Two days after the managers abruptly left their jobs, staff members at the Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy inadvertently opened security doors Aug. 3, releasing seven inmates from their cells. One inmate was injured in a fight and another had to be subdued for refusing to return to his cell.
The employees who quit the prison, addiction treatment manager Michael VanSlyke and principal Rich Stokes, explained their departures in e-mails to Shari Kimoto, Hawaii Department of Public Safety mainland branch administrator.
…
In the e-mails, Stokes said upper management at the facility spies on staff, controls all communication with the outside and degrades inmates.
Water runs into cells when inmates take showers because the drains are higher than the surrounding floors, and the air conditioning system frequently fails, he said.
Staff members are often locked in or out of their units because doors can't be opened because there aren't enough correctional officers, Stokes said, adding that many of the officers who are there are overworked and undertrained.
VanSlyke's e-mail said Saguaro doesn't have adequate facilities to treat inmates and will never qualify for inpatient licensing as required by Hawaii's contract with CCA.
These situations cry out for an audit of the Saguaro facility.
Call to Action—Your help is needed
HCR199, passed by the legislature, requests that an audit be done on the Saguaro Prison in Arizona. Each year there are more audits requested than the state auditor can accommodate, and so she consults with the two legislative leaders to choose which ones to go with.
Please take a moment to email or call and ask that the audit take place. Here is the appeal from Kat Brady, Coodinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons:
Mahalo nui to all who have contacted Senate President Hanabusa (senhanabusa@capitol.hawaii.gov) and Speaker of the House Calvin Say (repsay@capitol.hawaii.gov) to urge them to have the Saguaro audit done. If you haven’t e-mailed them yet, please do so. They are prioritizing audits for the Legislative Auditor to do, so we want to make sure that Saguaro is front and center!
Sen. Hanabusa’s phone number is 586-7793 and Rep. Say’s phone number is 586-6100, if you prefer to call.
You can make this audit happen, please email or call right away.
Update: See comment to this article and link to the website National Public Service Council To Abolish Private Prisons.
Move over da Vinci
by Larry Geller
While admiring the artwork by Google contest winner Christin Engelberth (Bernard A. Harris Jr High School, San Antonio, TX), it occurred to me that I was not alone. Most everyone else on the planet with a computer (and perhaps some astronauts as well) has also seen it by now. Google’s web page may be the most-viewed spot in history.
Christin’s fame may be short-lived, but it’s huge, for the moment.
In fact, I’m wondering if more people have seen Christin’s drawing than have seen the Mona Lisa, which is, after all, tucked away in a room in the Louvre in Paris. And La Gioconda may never catch up. I have no idea of the numbers on either side of this bet, but it sounds reasonable that this could be true.
What power Google has. There’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t use one or another of their services. And strangely enough, it’s for free. That’s the biggest mind boggler of all.
What did she know and when did she know it?
It’s tough working in DC.
Light verse on the current controversy from Rick Horowitz:
"What did you know,
And when did you know it?"
The pressure starts building,
But try not to show it…
Factchecking Pelosi and the CIA
by Larry Geller
It’s confusing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did change her story and is contradicted by a CIA memo. But parts of that memo were discovered to be incorrect. It wouldn’t be the first time that the CIA lied.
Through the narrow window of short newspaper articles it’s hard to get the full picture of this confusing situation. Through the tinted glass of Fox News little truth is likely to be discernable either. So this analysis by factcheck.org is very welcome. Snipped from the middle:
So whose story should we believe? The politician who has changed her story already? Or the government agency with its specific time line supported by one of the lawmakers it briefed and also by Panetta? Normally we'd say that's a pretty easy call. But things aren't quite so simple. There are reasons for thinking that the CIA memos aren't all that reliable either.
For one thing, while Panetta says the CIA's 10-page summary of briefings is "the most thorough information we have," he also admits the possibility that it may not be entirely correct.
…
And sure enough, three different legislators have disputed various details in the CIA's account of the briefings. Former Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat who in September 2002 served as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with the Huffington Post that prior to the release of the memo, the CIA initially told him that CIA records indicated he'd been briefed four times on torture policies. Graham, however, has rather famously chronicled pretty much every aspect of his life (right down to, say, what he puts in his pockets each day) since his first run for governor of Florida in 1977. Graham checked his notebooks and discovered that, in fact, he was briefed only once, on Sept. 27, 2002. Graham said he informed CIA officials of the discrepancy, telling NPR that after the agency reviewed its records "they indicated that I was correct. Their information was in error. There was no briefing on the first three of four dates."
So what is the conclusion? Normally, factcheck.org is able to tell us, but this time, it’s up to Congress and to us.
Should Pelosi resign? Only if all the Republican insiders who had knowledge of waterboarding and the torture program go first, IMHO.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Transcript available describing ongoing torture at Guantanamo
by Larry Geller
Democracy Now has posted the transcript of yesterday’s program segment on the torture squads still operating at Guantanamo today. Yes, under President Obama, torture continues. See yesterday’s article, now amended with part of the transcript.
Hawaii’s 2010 elections enjoined by Maui judge
by Larry Geller
Judge Joseph E. Cardoza granted an injunction today against Hawaii’s illegal use of electronic voting machines and the illegal transmission of vote results over the Internet. A written decision will be issued in the coming weeks, he said.
The suit (Babson v. Cronin, Civ No. 2cc08-1-000378 ) was brought by attorney Lance Collins on behalf of five citizens of Maui against Hawaii’s Chief Elections Officer (see background on Disappeared News in these articles). The suit challenged three aspects of the voting process, according to attorney Collins:
1. The use of electronic voting machines was not adopted
through lawful rulemaking n accordance with the Hawai'i Administrative Procedure Act (HAPA).
2. The use of the Internet and/or telephone lines to transmit
vote counts was not adopted through lawful rulemaking (HAPA).
3. The use of the Internet and/or telephone lines to transmit
vote counts is not allowed under current state law.
As I wrote earlier, one of the plaintiffs, Bob Babson, has been particularly concerned that electronic transmission of vote counts can compromise the integrity of the entire election system. He emailed:
The Hart tabulators at the four county count centers are connected to telephone lines so they can transmit votes to the Hart tabulator at the state count center which is also connected to telephone lines.
However, since they are connected to open telephone lines, they could easily be programmed (secretly) to dial … a secret website controlled by Hart where the vote files could be opened and votes flipped and then immediately sent onto the state count center.
Bob correctly points out that we would never know if that has been done.
An administrative hearing officer last year, in a ruling that was “extremely critical of Kevin Cronin, the state's chief elections officer” (Honolulu Advertiser,Voting-machine deal in jeopardy ,8/10/2008), found that the Office of Elections acted in bad faith in awarding the contract for voting computers to Hart. The contract was to be cancelled at the end of the year. This new ruling by Judge Cardoza adds that the machines were used in a way that is contrary to Hawaii law.
It would be timely to review the actions of the Office of Elections and see what adjustments need to be made in its management. As attorney Collins said in his statement today after the judge’s ruling:
“Voting is the bedrock of a democratic society. The desire to use the latest technologies cannot override requirements for orderly and secure vote counting procedures.”
There is time to fix this before the 2010 elections. We should not assume that the Office of Elections is able to do that on its own, given the track record of its current chief elections officer.
Update: the case number in the original post was incorrect. It has been fixed above. You can follow the case by going to the state Judiciary's web site and go to "Search Court Records" and input 2cc08-1-000378.
Obama’s “sword of Damocles:” failure to deal with America’s torture
by Larry Geller
First Obama was about to release a small selection of new torture photos (for sure, they would not be the worst ones). Now he has changed his mind. Closing Guantanamo was a major campaign promise and on taking office he said he would do it, but he can’t even get his own party to go along with him. He does not seem to have ended torture there, and is bringing back military commissions.
The Senate has just voted decisively to strip funding needed to close GITMO from a military funding bill. The amendment was introduced by Obama’s fellow Hawaii native Sen. Inouye. That and the 90-6 vote must have hurt.
One of host of articles appearing worldwide:
Senators on Wednesday followed through with their vow to deny the Obama administration the necessary money to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Voting 90-6, the Senate stripped $80 million from a supplemental military funding bill, $50 million of which was designated to close the controversial prison and $30 million for a Justice Department investigation into interrogation techniques used there.
The amendment by Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe - both of whom have personally toured the prison - actually goes beyond the military supplemental to deny the administration any past money it could use to close the prison and transfer the prisoners into the United States. [The Hill, Guantanamo Closure Funds Stripped by Senate, 90-6, 5/20/2009]
These reversals and the resistance from his own party can only hurt Obama and diminish the glow of his halo. It’s becoming clear that the Obama who was packaged for election is not the Obama who now must deal with actually being president. It does not speak well of Democrats (who may themselves have been briefed on the torture) that they are working against, rather than for, resolution of the torture issues and of their own likely complicity.
Above Obama hangs a “sword of Damocles” that will threaten his image as long as the new photos are not released, as long as GITMO remains open, and as long as our government refuses to prosecute the real criminals who tortured and cost prisoners their lives—in fact, the story of the homicides has largely not even surfaced in the American press. The bad apples are not the ones at the bottom of the barrel, they are the ones at the top during the Bush administration who have poisoned the whole batch.
Obama doesn’t seem to be concerned about rescuing American values. The world is taking note, however. Trials that should have been held in this country will take place in Spain. Instead of cleaning up our act we will be letting others demonstrate, over the coming months and years, that we would rather compound our guilt by trying to cover up instead of cure what we did. It’s too big to cover up, though. Releasing the photos now would be a useful step, while letting them come to light via leaks in the future gives us no credit at all.
The photos will likely emerge one day, and with increased impact just because Obama is trying to suppress them. In Spain, Judge Baltasar Garzon has launched probes that will play out over time. Even if the Spanish government yields to pressure and derails the trials, that will not stop the controversy or quiet the growing anger should we not deal appropriately with Guantanamo, rendition, and our continued use of torture at home and abroad.
Check out today’s Democracy Now, 10 p.m. channel 56 on Oahu, or on the web, for New Yorker Correspondent Jane Mayer and British Attorney Philippe Sands on Bush Administration Torture and How Obama Should Address It.
I now turn you over to Jon Stewart, from his program yesterday.
(click the little box in the lower right for full-screen)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
72-year-old McCain tweets a flip-flop
by Larry Geller
The suddenness of Twitter’s ascent to popularity has amazed me. It used to be that if an organization didn’t have a web page, it didn’t exist. Then, if you didn’t have a blog, you were a nobody. Now, if you don’t tweet, you’re not among the living at all.
Can you believe? An aging failed presidential candidate is out there tweeting with the youngest of them. The Political Animal blog reports on McCain’s reversal on cap-and-trade legislation:
Sen. John McCain now appears to oppose climate-change legislation, an abrupt switch that could seriously threaten any movement on such a bill.
"Nearly 1000 page Climate Change legislation -- appears to be a cap & tax bill that I won't support," McCain wrote in a Twitter message Monday, a reversal of the position he took on the Senate floor in March.
No maverick this McCain, he’s right there with everyone else, adopting the latest fad.
Blockbuster investigation: Guantanamo torture continues under Obama
I wasn’t prepared to hear this on Democracy Now before breakfast. Starting from material in the Spanish war crimes investigation, Jeremy Scahill reports that torture squads still roam Guantanamo, continuing the practices of George Bush even under Obama. You can click the little box at the bottom for full screen.
A transcript should be available later today here. The summary:
Jeremy Scahill: “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama”
Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal.
Update: The transcript is available here. I’ll snip one portion, describing the torture that is still going on today, under Obama:
JEREMY SCAHILL: When the Bush administration established the US prison camp at Guantanamo, of course, we know well that they set up a system where detainees were going to be systematically tortured. And, of course, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed on this program, despite what they’re saying right now.
And while much of the focus has been on the tactical use of torture at Guantanamo, almost no attention had been paid to a parallel force that was torturing prisoners in a variety of ways, including waterboarding them, and that is this riot squad of sorts that you referred to called the Immediate Reaction Force. The prisoners and their lawyers at Guantanamo call it the “Extreme Repression Force.”
And basically what this is is a thug squad that is used to mercilessly punish prisoners who show the slightest bit of resistance or who do things that technically they’re not supposed to do, infractions like having two Styrofoam cups in their cell instead of one.
Guards will call in this goon squad. They come in with their Darth Vader outfits, and they literally gang-beat prisoners. There are five men, generally, that are sent in. Each of them is assigned to one body part of the prisoner: the head, the left arm, the right arm, the left leg, the right leg. They go in, and they hogtie the prisoner, sometimes leaving them hogtied for hours on end. They douse them with chemical agents. They have put their heads in toilets and flushed the toilets repeatedly. They have urinated on the heads of prisoners. They’ve squeezed their testicles in the course of restraining them. They’ve taken the feces from one prisoner and smeared it in the face of another prisoner.
And while Barack Obama, almost immediately upon taking office, issued an executive order saying he was going to close down Guantanamo within a year and that he was going to respect the Geneva Convention while his administration reviewed Guantanamo, this force has continued to operate and torture prisoners under the Obama administration.
In fact, in February of this year, about a month after Obama was inaugurated, there were sixteen prisoners on a hunger strike at Guantanamo. The Immediate Response—or Immediate Reaction Force was used to go in and violently shove massive tubes down their noses into their stomachs. And what the IRF teams, as they’re called—when they beat someone, it’s called IRF-ing, or to be IRF-ed up by these teams. They would use no anesthetics or any painkillers, shove this massive tube by force down their nose into their stomach and then yank it out. Some prisoners have described this as torture, torture, torture. And many have passed out from the sheer pain of this operation.
This force has received almost no scrutiny in the US Congress or the US media and operates at this moment.