DAMN THE MAN!

OMG! What an A...Hole!

2010-09-15T19:22:00.000-04:00

Stay tuned for my response....to their response...and around and around it goes....(click on image twice to read)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2010-08-29T06:57:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, it's just a little too far. Sometimes you have to stop, raise your fists in the air and scream, "ENOUGH! STOP ALREADY!" Yesterday was one such day, and although one would have thought it would be Glenn Beck's "I Have A Scheme" speech to put me over the edge, that merely primed me for my 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore"! moment. You see, as I was going about my daily business, I happened upon THIS free local publication:

What the HELL??? OUR town? YOUR town maybe. I just can't even say how weary and sick I am over this non-stop assault on common-sense and a semblance, just a semblance, of intelligence and thoughtfulness. NO MORE, dammit! So, as I'm thumbing through the damn thing, I am struck by the huge amount of local advertising in it. Did these people READ this before they bought their undoubtedly dirt cheap advertising? God, I hope not. As the day wore on, I could not get this off of mind. So, I decided to launch a one-woman boycott. Undoubtedly, I look like a freak, some kind of gadlfy harpy. Maybe I AM a gadly harpy. So be it. There comes a time when enough is enough. So...I sent the following email to as many of the advertisers that I could, that is, those that had an easily obtained email address. (Because, really, I just couldn't believe that people read this and still bought advertising in it):

To Whom it May Concern;

I am disappointed to see that you are advertising in the hate rag that goes by the innocuous name 'Our Town'. Are you aware of the type of vitriol this dubious publication prints? I have attached a copy of the front page of the most recent edition. I suspect, that you were not aware of the content of their publication when you agreed to advertise in it, undoubtedly with incredibly low fees. I will be watching closely for the next edition and am afraid to say that if your establishment continues to advertise in it, I can then only assume that you share the publisher's distasteful views. Sadly, this will cause me to take my business elsewhere as well as encourage all family, friends and associates to do the same.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Sincerely,
Maria

I don't know, maybe that's a little too strongly worded. So, I did get one immediate response:

date
Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 5:52 PM
subject
Re: Our Town
mailed-by srs.bis.na.blackberry.com

Who are you ??

Fair enough. So, I replied:

I'm a citizen of Morris County who's sick and tired of all this crazy inflammatory rhetoric and I guess I've just had it. I accidentally picked this up at a local store today and I sure as hell don't want people thinking our communities welcome this kind of crap. This is a publication that originates out of Pennsylvania NOT Morris County.

Thanks for asking,

Maria

Oh, shit, I am a crank! Aaaah, well. So, this morning, I have this response, from Charlotte's Web, a restaurant and caterer in Dover:

date    Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 10:37 PM
subject    Charlottes web
mailed-by    aol.com

The magazine you mention is a FRANCISE ! the people who run this very popular magazine are very nice and and have no agendathey only want to but want to make a living. I think some of their jokes are funny but I also feel they have the right to publish what they want. You know that freedom of speech thing and all.   Thank you for comments. Stephanie @ Charlottes @ Web

Wait...jokes...funny??? Like this one:

And, for what it's worth, a good amount of the jokes in this thing are at the expense of the Irish or Catholics...what is this, 1937?

Sigh....Here we go....(and btw, please note my restraint on grammar, spelling, and the question of their 'agenda'...I mean, PUHlease...)

date    Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:42 AM
subject    Re: Charlottes web
mailed-by    gmail.com

Thank you for your reply.

Freedom of speech is a guarantee of the Constitution of the United States, not a birthright. This is a lesson, btw, learned in 12 years of Catholic school-anyone who's experienced that knows, while the government cannot squelch freedom of speech, private individuals or institutions have no such obligation.

So, they do have a guaranteed right to publish whatever they have. I do not have an obligation to support that publication nor the entities that underwrite it. However, if I choose to NOT support those entities without explaining to them WHY I am not doing so, that's kind of pointless. Thus my previous email.

That being said, I appreciate your taking the time to respond.
Thank you,

Maria

So....there you have it. It will be interesting to see what, if any, the other responses look like. And, if you'd like to join in at home, here is a partial list of the companies I contacted:

Charlottes Web

Happie Time Pool

IHSS services (see first response, this is an in home health services provider, btw)

Region Oil

Merry Heart

Pediatric Dental Associates of Randolph

The Arrangement Salon Day Spa

N. J Hear

Karl's Appliance

Feel free to contact them. No, really. Because I fear that it is taken for granted that the majority of folk in Morris County agrees with this kind of crap. At the very least, it's apparent that the spokesperson for Charlottes Web doesn't give a rat's ass how they appear to their customers. How do they not know I am not Corporate entity? As a matter of fact, my employer has utilized this company for catering events in the past. It would require very little effort on my part to gather enough of my co-workers to approach the individual in charge of hiring the caterers and convince them to no longer use them. Except they already dropped them because of quality concerns.

Anyway, I welcome all to join my Quixotic endeavor and if you do, please let me know any results. I will continue to post responses if/when I receive them.

Peace Out, my brothers and Sisters!

Banks Siding Against the Customer in Fraud Cases-new article by Naomi Wolf

2010-08-24T05:36:00.000-04:00

Banks Siding Against the Customer in Fraud Cases

by Naomi Wolf

Like most consumers, I had always assumed that banks and customers are united in wanting to curtail bank fraud. Unfortunately, I have learned that in fact bank fraud is a big and profitable business -- for the banks themselves; and that changes in electronic banking, combined with the power of lobbyists to sustain the status quo that is stacked against ordinary account holders, mean that if consumers' accounts are corrupted, they can face systemic stonewalling by the banks themselves -- and have little recourse.

In 2005 I started to notice irregularities in a checking account I held with WaMu; but the irregularities were ambiguous. I sought at various times over the course of the next two years to go over all my statements -- but had trouble getting all my records from both online banking and from my branch itself. A busy working parent, I was certainly not as proactive as I should have been -- and, like many consumers of bank services, since we had family accounts and two mortgages at WaMu for many years, and had good relationships with our local branch, I also made the mistake of trusting the bank.

I noticed eventually that checkbooks were missing from my home, and finally my accountant got enough of the records to see an unmistakable pattern of fraud, and called my attention to it. I filed a police report and alerted WaMu to the fraud. For months thereafter, as you can see in the lawsuit that attorney David Fish and I have filed against J P Morgan Chase, now owner of WaMu, that is up on TheSmokingGun.com, I complied with what the WaMu bank officials directed me to do -- which was to leave the accounts open so they could investigate, they said, the fraud. If the fraud is reported within six months of confirmation of fraud, it is liable for the loss.

Then the same officials who had directed me to keep the accounts open, disappeared -- systematically, for just over six months. When I sought to talk to the fraud department, I still could not get records -- including my own missing bank statements -- even to see the full extent of my losses. The bank officials who had directed me to keep my accounts open were unavailable at the branch -- over the course of many attempts to speak with them. The police at the Sixth Precinct needed to see the missing documents, but even they could not force WaMu to hand over their -- my -- records. (WaMu's own internal emails cite a $300,000 figure for my loss from fraud -- I still did not have enough of my records to identify the loss. It is illegal, by the way, to withhold from an account holder his or her own records). 

At eight months after the fraud discovery was confirmed -- eight months of trying to communicate with officials and a fraud department who were oddly unavailable or unresponsive -- I received a form letter from the WaMu Fraud Department advising me that according to the regulations, I had had a six month window for taking action; and (since WaMu had played out the clock for eight months) the letter asserted that I had waited 'too long' and my case was closed.

Inadvertently, subsequent to that, a WaMu bank official handed me the wrong file -- wrong from his point of view; illuminating from mine, and from any consumer's. It contained emails, some of which you can see at TheSmokingGun.com, from WaMu bank officials to one another -- and including emails from and to their counsel, PR department and and the fraud department -- that take as given that stonewalling a client with a fraud claim on the bank is standard practice; and yet one freaked-out bank official in the emails warns his colleagues that if their mechanisms in this regard became known, their practices would be all over the newspapers.

I was stunned by what seemed from the emails to be a systemic practice. Why would a bank want to perpetuate bank fraud rather than fight it?

As I researched the issue and spoke to other consumer bank account holders whose accounts had been corrupted by fraud, and to consumer advocates, I learned how systemic experiences such as mine -- and worse experiences -- are becoming. I heard from consumers across the country from all walks of life who had also been misdirected by their banks, or told that for various technical reasons their corrupted accounts could not be closed, and then faced difficulty reaching fraud departments or officials once the fraud was confirmed.

As Geoff Kischuck, an actuary in California whose business account was corrupted by fraud, and who then had to go daily to Bank of America for four months before he could successfully close the account, explained, there is a great deal of profit being made by banks with this situation. 'The shift from paper checks clearing physically, to electronic bank transactions, benefits the banking industry immensely,' he notes. The reason? It generates interest on the 'float time' that is still reckoned by the time that paper takes physically to clear, even while the electronic transaction is instantaneous; so it is in the interest of the banking industry to have as much electronic banking as possible. But electronic banking is much easier to hack -- and identity theft and bank fraud have skyrocketed accordingly; but the bank benefits a second time with every case of bank fraud and identity theft -- because of the immense fees -- overdraft fees, bad check fees, that can amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars with each corrupted account -- racked up by the corrupted accounts. The longer it takes to close the corrupted account, the more difficult it is for the customer to have accountability with the bank's fraud department -- the more revenue for the bank. The bank freezes your ability to address the roblem -- but continues to charge you fees for the corrupted account. `Because of the fees that get drained out of an account, banks actually profit from bank fraud,' explains Kischuk.' Multiply this by the number of times across the country a consumer account faces identity theft or bank fraud -- and you see a mini-industry.

Customers assume that banking regulation and Congressional oversight means that if they find fraud on their checking accounts, there is accountability -- which is not in fact the case; strong bank lobbyists translate into weak protections for consumers and, as you can see from the emails, the bank's reasonable assumption that most customers in this situation will not be able to hold them accountable. And indeed, since legal action is time-consuming and expensive, most defrauded bank customers do eventually give up and go away.

I am certainly shocked by my own experience -- but even more disturbed after learning that such things and even worse have happened and continue to happen to people from all walks of life -- immigrants, retirees, people on disability -- who have experienced loss of savings, retirement accounts, college fees, mortgage payments and so on through bank fraud -- and who do all the things their banks direct them to do, only to find they have no actual recourse. They do not understand -- as I did not -- that a bank's fraud investigation department is actually likely fraudulently representing itself as the customer's, rather than solely the bank's, advocate. Banks such as WaMu -- and now Chase, which bought WaMu -- expect such people to simply go away. They -- and we -- should, rather, reach out to our elected representatives for wholesale reform -- and put each and every such case online, so consumers can see the worst offenders for themselves, and, with the power of the internet and their own consumer choices, protect themselves and demand accountability.

Your request is being processed... Wells Fargo Overdraft Lawsuit: Bank Ordered To Pay $203 MILLION In Fees Over 'Unfair' Charges

2010-08-12T05:57:00.002-04:00

Your request is being processed... Wells Fargo Overdraft Lawsuit: Bank Ordered To Pay $203 MILLION In Fees Over 'Unfair' Charges

What if the Tea Party was Black?

2010-07-23T13:23:00.000-04:00

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Dead Birds of The Big Green Building Where I Work

2010-06-26T07:29:00.000-04:00

(note: this was originally posted on my FB)

I work in a big green building made of glass. 

It’s quite lovely.So sleek and shiny and reflective of the greenery that surrounds it, a very attractive building.

Unfortunately for some creatures that attraction can be fatal.Some of the innocent creatures of this earth realize too late that the beautiful blue sky and leafy trees are a façade. 

They find themselves slamming into an icy wall of death, unable to see through the welcoming façade to the truth.

The true color of the place, a green, while appropriate, not so much a green of life and vibrancy. A different kind of green altogether.

Things are not always what they  

seem.

Unfortunately, for some creatures, this can fatal. 

Found: Tape of my father speaking to a High School Religion Class

2010-05-30T19:38:00.000-04:00

April, 1982; about two weeks before he died, my father spoke to a Religion Class at Columbus (Catholic) High School. Topics include faith, love and support of family, judgment and retaining one's virginity thru masturbation. Yup, that's my dad.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!

2010-05-01T07:00:00.004-04:00

This is an awesome video of an awesome organization!

Citizens for Community Improvement

It is ON!

2010-04-28T05:12:00.003-04:00

Bank Protests in Kansas City

Is Your Doctor Listening?

2010-04-13T04:58:00.004-04:00

Denise Grady's recent column in the New York Times; about how patients report symptoms and how doctors and nurses filter and interpret that information is spot on. How do I know?

In 2006, when I broke my collarbone I told my doctors for months..months! that I thought that the pain was beyond what should be expected from a broken collarbone. My comments were continuously dismissed, until finally, out of most likely a desire to shut me up, a surgery was performed, (ostentatiously meant to lob off the offending 'non-healing' end of my collarbone with a predicted 75% chance of failure to address the pain...since they didn't really believe it existed anyway). The surgery revealed that the collarbone, in reality, had shattered and there were several bone chips embedded in the surrounding muscle. Afterward, the surgeon mentioned that usually an injury of this sort would entail an immediate surgery, (mine occurred nearly 6 mos. after the break). "Based on what?" I asked the surgeon. And his reply was, "Well...based on the level of pain the patient was experiencing."

I still have am awestruck at that response. And I rest my case.

Something a little postitive for a change

2010-03-05T19:29:00.001-05:00

Denville Hates Handicapped People

2010-01-14T06:42:00.004-05:00

Recently, it came to pass that I was made aware of a handicapped pedestrian access issue along the main street of my town of Denville, New Jersey. The handicap parking spot is three or four parking spots east of the curb cut (the only access to the sidewalk for wheelchairs). This forces the person in the wheelchair to wheel in the street in order to reach it. There is a real danger of being backed into and ran over by parked cars that one is forced to pass should they back up and not be able to see the person in the wheelchair.

So I sent an email to the mayor of Denville in November. I did not receive a reply, not even an acknowledgment of his receipt of the email. Maybe I should have sent a second. But I'm not inclined to politely beg for my elected officials' attention. So I made this video:

The mayor's reply (ten days later, accused the video of having 'unfair connotations'. I think the mayor is giving my editing skills too much credit. No 'connotations' here, no fancy editing; simply a front-line view of Denville from The Chair. He promises, "We will investigate the area you mentioned. We would be glad to upgrade those areas that might be deficient." The mayor, albeit somewhat defensive, is a decent sort, so maybe they will. We'll see.

Bank of America Fires It's One Employee With A Conscience

2009-12-07T11:09:00.009-05:00

Thank You, Jackie Ramos

Evidence that "Moral Banking" is an Oxymoron: Why I Got Fired

Transcript from the Video:

"My name is Jackie Ramos, and I would like to tell everyone a story. I am a former employee at Bank of America in Georgia. I worked in the customer assistance department from May 1st to November 23rd, 2009. And by the way, "customer assistance" is a euphemism for "the collections department."

Every day I came to work and did just as I was supposed to: I collected. In fact, I was one of the top performers of my department, even outdoing those who were more tenured than I was. But something was wrong. There was something inherently evil about my job.

I'm not sure if Bank of America knows this, but we are in a recession, and most of us, we are hurting.

Day in and day out, I was told to charge people who had already fallen behind in their credit card bills an additional $15 just to make a payment with me. As I was told by my manager, it was a convenience fee. I was told to deny refunding as many late and over the limit fees as I could. There was even one month I was given a verbal warning about the amount of fees that I refunded, because as I was told so many times, Bank of America is a corporation, and they are for profit.

There is something we have in my department called a Fix Pay. Essentially it is a program that turns your balance into an installment loan. It stops all fees on the account, and it also closes your account. In order to get a Fix Pay, though, you have to qualify by answering a rather irrelevant set of questions, like how much you spend on groceries and how much your cellphone bill is. Day in day out I had to deny countless people who needed the program but didn't qualify. Too often I would have to give them the spiel about, "I can't accept you [into the program] because your disposable income is too negative," and then they would just sit there on the phone and say, "Well, if I could afford to pay my bill, why would I need a program?"

I will never forget one card holder. A 24-year-old woman with a child, just found out she had cancer, she lost her mom and her husband all in the same week. Of course she had a very limited income. She had to quit her job. But she still respected Bank of America enough to try to pay off her $6,000 debt. But she just needed help. She sobbed on the phone telling me she couldn't afford the 30 percent interest that we had her--sorry, 29.99 percent interest--that we had her account on. She couldn't afford the $39 late fee, the $39 over the limit fee. She told me that we were her first credit card when she turned 18, we were her only credit card, and that she was a loyal customer, and given the time to be on this earth a little while longer she would have always remained a loyal customer. I couldn't put her on the program, she didn't have enough income.

According to BOA she doesn't have enough income to be put on the program, but she can however keep paying the high interest rate on the account, and fees, because at the end of the day it is her account, she did rack up the debt, and she was late, so she did deserve that 29.99 percent interest rate that she had, and it wasn't up to Bank of America to help her figure out how to get this debt paid off. It was up to her.

There's a joke in my department: upstairs they sell you the credit, downstairs we collect on it. Too often I heard stories about how senior citizens and college students were specifically targeted, so Bank of America could continue to make money off of them. I had one elderly lady who was legally blind. Every month she sent them the incorrect amount because she couldn't see. Her 3 percent APR after 3 times being late went to 29.99 percent. She actually told me that one of the associates told her she needs to look at her statements more clearly.

After all, who better to target than the young and the old. Don't deny for a second that there are systematic practices put in place to keep America in debt.

I'm not doing this video because I'm bitter. I'm not doing this video because I hate [my old boss]. I still have a lot of respect for him. Out of all the interviews I had in my life, I will never forget the one I had with him. He told me the most interesting interview question he's ever been asked is, "What keeps you up at night?"

Before I got that job, that question didn't really make sense to me. Who asks that in an interview, I thought? But now that I've been in that department for a while, it makes sense, it does seem normal. All the people that I've had to deny [repayment] programs to--they kept me up at night. All the people that I've pissed off with a $15 "convenience fee"--they kept me up at night. All the people who were dying, lost a child, husband, mom, dad, all the people who lost their jobs and sat on the phone sobbing to me that if we just gave them a little bit of help, they could make ends meet--they kept me up at night. All the angry cardholders who told me the reason why Bank of America is the corporation that it is, is off the hard work of them and their tax dollars--they kept me up at night.

So... I stopped denying people. I helped people get on programs that they didn't necessarily qualify for, but who definitely needed the help. Every day I was told three things:

do the right thing for the customer;
think of yourself as a customer;
and do the right thing for the company.

I figured if I placed more cardholders on programs at affordable rates, then maybe they could afford their light bill, or even enjoy a trip with their child to the movies. If the account was affordable for the card holder, it wouldn't charge off. I mean, that seems as simple as 1 and 1 being 2. But my company didn't think so.

At the end of the day I would love to have a company that thought of me as more than just a dollar bill. I would love to have a company just be more humanitarian, and think of me as a person instead of a profit.

But the three things I was told to think about every day in my interactions with cardholders didn't matter. In fact, only one of them did. "Do what is right for the company." Again, Bank of America is for profit. They would rather charge 30 percent interest anyway, than give hard working Americans like me and you a lower interest rate and work with us instead of against us.

So, [my boss] fired me. He told me I can't put people on programs who don't deserve it. During our meeting, he asked me if what I did was right. I looked him dead in the eye and I said, "Absolutely." I know he was expecting me to maybe say no or to apologize, but there's no apology. There's no way I could look myself in the mirror every day and justify not helping someone when I had the power to do it.

Given the opportunity to do it again, I wouldn't change a thing. He actually looked at me, he told me that he understood why I did what I did, he said I had a really big heart. But at the end of the day, it was policy, and he had to let me go. He told me my manager would escort me to the security desk and that all my stuff would be there.

And he was right. All my stuff was there in two boxes, all my awards, all the pictures of my son, even a plate of food that I had on my desk. [My manager] packed all my belongings, including the plate of food, and threw it in the box. The food got all over my shoes and awards, even the picture of my son. After all, Bank of America? They're just a corporation. They're not concerned with their employees' well-being or clearly even their cardholders.

There's a saying in my department that you are as good as your last payment. No truer words could have been spoken.

I'm not necessarily sad about losing my job. I felt like I took a stand and I did what was morally correct. I have a wonderful support system, I have a college degree, and I consider myself personable, so I'm sure I'll land back on my feet. In fact, as my manager was escorting me outside she told me that if I needed a reference, she would highly recommend me to everyone. I received nothing but accolades while I was at Bank of America. Even while I was getting fired my boss told me that out of anyone she's ever met I've had the highest morals and biggest heart she's ever seen, and that means more to me than my job.

At the end of the day, I don't have anything keeping me up at night. I did the right thing in God's eyes and I'm sure that He'll bless me. But [boss], can you say the same?”

One Million Percent Interest? Yup.

2009-12-06T07:31:00.003-05:00

from The Huffington Post

December 2, 2009 11:22 AM

Overdraft This!

by Erik Sean Nelson

"Overdraft Fee" is such a harmless sounding name. Focus groups must have reacted negatively to the bank's second choice, "Kick You While Your Down Fee." I really hate overdraft fees. The Fed has made banks allow you to opt out of them, but my family has received calls from banks telling me it's foolish to opt out. Really? Congress is trying to further regulate the banks' ability to charge them. An overdraft fee is essentially a short-term loan. If you bounce a $1 Slurpee the bank can charge you $35 (which is essentially an interest charge). Because your bank account is now negative and you can't do any banking until you pay it back, the length of that loan is usually one day. At first glance that looks like an interest rate of 3,500% (unconscionable but still incorrect). Because we are used to seeing loans in terms of Annual Percentage Rate, we have to multiply 3,500 by 365 days. Now you can clearly see that your bank is kind enough to loan you the $1 to buy that Slurpee at 1,277,500% interest. Don't you love unregulated capitalism?

Remember, dear readers, that you can be sent to jail if you loan money to your friend at a rate higher than 18%. That's right. An individual can't charge more than their state's usury limit, however if you are a business then you can charge much more (from my credit card's 27% to the Slurpee's 1 million percent). If you bought a $100,000 house at a million percent, it would take you 2 billion years to pay it off. But don't worry you'll have the last laugh, because the Sun is going to foreclose on you before the bank gets the last penny... which makes you laugh at those stupid banks.

Why are things a crime for the normal citizen, but daily routine for the Big Guys? In life it seems that doing something that is "small scale immoral" gets you in trouble, while doing something that is unfathomably immoral is legal. Kill one person and you get life in prison. Kill 1 million people and it's called War. War, we're told, is a legal and "necessary evil." Yeah well, killing my rich mother-in-law is what I call a "necessary evil" too but I don't see the "I Need A Ferrari Defense" going over too well with the judge.

Here's another example of business vs. individual: Say you loan a friend a book but he keeps forgetting to give it back. You then break into his house and take it home. Don't plan any vacations because you are going to jail. However if you are late in paying the bank for your car then they'll come to your house and repossess it. Why do the banks always win? It's almost as if there is someone who is always there to change the rules and bail them out.

Lastly, what can happen to you if you make an illegal copy of a CD? The FBI can charge you criminally. But when Walmart makes a copy of Mountain Dew and calls it "Mountain Lightning," that's called "corporate business smarts." Let's see if Wachovia will sue me if I try opening a bank called "Wackjovia." Oh, they'll bankrupt me into eternity. But it would be fun to have Citibank sue me because I chose to open a Schittibank. In fact, all the banks would end up suing me because they each take singular pride in being the sch*ttiest.

Update

2009-11-10T09:26:00.003-05:00

Well, haven't had a lot of time nor energy to address these issues but here are some developments:

JCP&L: Called my 'Customer Service Advocate' Lisa and asked her to come out and read the meter. A couple of days later, got a voicemail from her stating that she felt the reading was relatively accurate. Based on??? Left her another message asking her to call me again. No further calls. I paid the bill, since I had the money and the next bill I received WAS based on an actual reading. The amount? $18.21. Wait, what was that last estimated bill again? $210.75. That's what I thought.

Chase: Sent them an email informing them of the pending Consumer Rights legislation. They refunded a couple of the overdraft fees. Gee, thanks.

T-Mobile. Still haven't been able to get ahold of them. They suck.

Stay tuned for latest screwing over by CIGNA regarding my wheelchair claim-a NEW wheelchair claim. This is epic and so inane as the amount involved is minuscule, in comparison to say...the $5000.00 bone stimulator I was recently required to purchase. Man, those dudes apparently have something against wheelchairs.

OCCUPATION IN CALIFORNIA!!

2009-09-28T05:40:00.005-04:00

State University Students in California are occupying University Buildings in Protest of Massive Cuts and Privatization Attempts. From the blog OccupyCa (http://occupyca.wordpress.com/):
Occupy California!
We are occupying this building at the University of California, Santa Cruz, because the current situation has become untenable. Across the state, people are losing their jobs and getting evicted, while social services are slashed. California’s leaders from state officials to university presidents have demonstrated how they will deal with this crisis: everything and everyone is subordinated to the budget. They insulate themselves from the consequences of their own fiscal mismanagement, while those who can least afford it are left shouldering the burden. Every solution on offer only accelerates the decay of the State of California. It remains for the people to seize what is theirs.

The current attack on public education – under the guise of a fiscal emergency – is merely the culmination of a long-term trend. California’s regressive tax structure has undermined the 1960 Master Plan for free education. In this climate, the quality of K-12 education and the performance of its students have declined by every metric. Due to cuts to classes in Community Colleges, over 50,000 California youth have been turned away from the doors of higher education. California State University will reduce its enrollment by 40,000 students system wide for 2010-2011. We stand in solidarity with students across the state because the same things are happening to us. At the University of California, the administration will raise student fees to an unprecedented $10,300, a 32 percent increase in one year. Graduate students and lecturers return from summer vacation to find that their jobs have been cut; faculty and staff are forced to take furloughs. Entire departments are being gutted. Classes for undergraduates and graduates are harder to get into while students pay more. The university is being run like a corporation.

Let’s be frank: the promise of a financially secure life at the end of a university education is fast becoming an illusion. The jobs we are working toward will be no better than the jobs we already have to pay our way through school. Close to three-quarters of students work, many full-time. Even with these jobs, student loan volume rose 800 percent from 1977 to 2003. There is a direct connection between these deteriorating conditions and those impacting workers and families throughout California. Two million people are now unemployed across the state. 1.5 million more are underemployed out of a workforce of twenty million. As formerly secure, middle-class workers lose their homes to foreclosure, Depression-era shantytowns are cropping up across the state. The crisis is severe and widespread, yet the proposed solutions – the governor and state assembly organizing a bake sale to close the budget gap – are completely absurd.

We must face the fact that the time for pointless negotiations is over. Appeals to the UC administration and Sacramento are futile; instead, we appeal to each other, to the people with whom we are struggling, and not to those whom we struggle against. A single day of action at the university is not enough because we cannot afford to return to business as usual. We seek to form a unified movement with the people of California. Time and again, factional demands are turned against us by our leaders and used to divide social workers against teachers, nurses against students, librarians against park rangers, in a competition for resources they tell us are increasingly scarce. This crisis is general, and the revolt must be generalized. Escalation is absolutely necessary. We have no other option.

Occupation is a tactic for escalating struggles, a tactic recently used at the Chicago Windows and Doors factory and at the New School in New York City. It can happen throughout California too. As undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff, we call on everyone at the UC to support this occupation by continuing the walkouts and strikes into tomorrow, the next day, and for the indefinite future. We call on the people of California to occupy and escalate.

More Insurance Fiascos….

2009-08-21T06:14:00.007-04:00

Do people realize how messed up our healthcare system actually is? I seriously doubt it. Two quick stories:

Again, I have really good benefits. Even so, if you are sick or have a chronic illness, you really have to work at being on top of these things and you have to do so at a time when you feel the least inclined to do so. I can do it because 1. I don't have a choice, as paying for a covered service is not an option for me no matter how convenient, and 2. I understand the process, because I work for an insurance company, so I don't get taken by surprise. That gives me a huge advantage. Also, if you don't think an insurance plan is going to try denying something hoping that you don't contest it, then you've been pretty damn healthy. I promise they will do that.

My first example of the skewed healthcare system can be found looking over my recent claim just for a triple metatarsal bone fusion with bone graft. These charges are for the surgery alone; the surgeon, anesthesiologist and facilities and excluding charges for peripheral expenses such as diagnostics, medicine, durable medical equipment, consultation, follow up exams and the like. For the day of surgery alone, the providers' write-off was over $15,000.00. If I didn't have insurance, I would have been responsible for something like $22,000.00. The insurance company, however, is only billed around $7000.00. It is nothing but a travesty that the uninsured has to pay 78% MORE than insurance companies.

There’s more …

Recently I had to file a claim for the rental of a wheelchair for the brief, non-ambulatory period immediately after the surgery. As always, I spoke to the insurance company beforehand to make sure there was nothing I had to get pre-approved. Unfortunately between the time of that phone call and when I actually rented the chair, my insurance company was taken over by CIGNA. Sigh. My first explanation of benefits stated that the service was denied because the code sent in was for a cushion, not a chair. I did a bit of research and offered to fax them a copy of the page of the medical coding book that shows the code is indeed for a wheelchair. They responded that this was a service that required pre-certification (see above comment) and so I then informed them of my previous conversation including date and the name of the person I spoke with, in which I was assured that the service DIDN’T require pre-certification. Their response was that it then had to be reviewed for medical necessity (apparently to stem the frivolous rental of wheelchairs, no doubt a source of great health insurance waste). So, I helpfully mentioned that they have records showing they paid for a surgery to remove part of my collar bone and shoulder bone, thus excluding the option of using crutches, as well as the recent foot surgery causing the need.

Recently, I received two letters stating that the service had been approved. Yet, no payment was forthcoming. In a phone call yesterday, I was informed that the claim was in medical review. I offered to fax them one of the approvals I had received but they declined.

And so it goes

One last thing. The wheelchair rental cost a little over one hundred dollars. This thing, (post-surgical boot):

Cost $399.00...!?!?!? I feel like I could have made that with duck tape and some two-by fours.

Why I’m for Tort Reform or, Can We Get to the Point Already?

2009-08-17T07:13:00.001-04:00

It’s no secret that I have a chronic health condition, Psoriatic Arthritis, which is a form of rheumatoid arthritis, a sometimes debilitating disease. The twenty-seven years of my life (which equals the entirety of my adult life) that I’ve been dealing with this has given me a pretty wide reference of the healthcare industry from the patient’s perspective. My conclusion? We got a issue in America! I will share just one (of many) unnecessary health odysseys I’ve been forced to endure to illustrate how tort reform can save money.

A few facts to keep in mind: 1. I have very good health insurance. This fact is crucial. No way would this have gone on if I were uninsured. 2. There are two symptoms of our healthcare industry’s malaise at work here: the fear of lawsuits and the lack of focus of doctors which I feel is a result of the over scheduling of patients in an effort to deal with the costs of out of control malpractice expenses. I’m actually being generous here because I refuse to believe that so many doctors that, incidentally, enjoy very good reputations, can be so incompetent.

Here’s the deal: About a year and a half ago, I started to experience the strange sensation of what felt like electric shocks coursing through my feet and legs. Please note that, while I may seem like a physical wreck, every single health issue I have can be traced back to the arthritis and its treatment-by all other standards, I am actually glowingly healthy. I was pretty sure this wasn’t an issue with circulation.

So, trying to get this over with quickly, I made an appointment with a neurologist with my chief, actually my only, complaint being that of these, while not painful, unbelievably annoying sensations in my legs. After examining me, he sends me for a full blood work-up and a cervical MRI. This is an MRI of the neck. I did not mention any problems with my neck but apparently the physical exam showed some kind of issue- I have learned it is not to one’s advantage to question a doctor without hard evidence in hand …sometimes not even then. I have to perform this fragile dance around doctor’s egos all the time in my epic quest to avoid permanent disability. So, the MRI comes back, and the doctor tells me that while there is damage in my cervical vertebrae it’s not of an unusual amount considering the underlying arthritis and oh….my blood tests were totally normal. So I ask say, “Ok…so then, what about my legs?” He answers, “What? What about your legs? “

So I go to my orthopedic office, which is probably where I should have started, and the spine surgeon there sends me for a lumbar MRI (MRI of the lower back). The lumbar MRI shows compression of the L5 nerve root (and curiously, a healed fracture somewhere else in the spine). The orthopedic surgeon goes on to spell out the steps of treatment, the first of which is to undergo injections into the spine, (these injections being the sort that require general anesthesia, one of my biggest and perhaps irrational fears). These are to address the pain, he tells me but if they cannot alleviate the pain or if I begin to have neurological symptoms then the only solution is surgery. The man is looking right into my eyes as I tell him, “I am not in pain. There is no pain. My only symptoms are neurological.” He then responds by saying, “Ok then, let’s get you scheduled for those injections.” This, by the way, is one of the official orthopedic doctors of the New York Jets (which, actually, may explain a lot). So, my response was, “Yeah. OK, I’ll get right on that.”

My rheumatologist (I have far, far too many doctor/patient relationships) has told me before, “Unless you’re completely incapacitated, or have a one hundred percent guarantee of success, do not ever let a surgeon touch your back or neck.” This seems like good advice.

So, a little while after this, I am going over all the results with my primary care physician. She is reading the blood test results when she declares, “Well, here we are!” and shows me on the print-out where it says that the level of Vitamin B-12 is such that …’the patient may be experiencing neurological symptoms such as a ‘pins and needles’ or ‘electric shock’ sensations in their extremities”, caused by malabsorption. Whadya know. This is then followed by yet another series of tests (more blood tests, B-12 injections, abdominal sonogram and upper endoscopy) to determine the cause of the malabsorption. Finally…turns out taking 800 mg of ibuprofen for 25 years can be a little hard on the stomach (a part of my medical history, by the way, that all of my doctors were aware of…assuming they were listening or actually read the my chart), and this has caused an otherwise symptomless stomach issue that resulted in my stomach’s inability to absorb B12 (and, ironically, calcium). Problem solved.

Grand total in healthcare costs? $6525.70. Amount in healthcare costs that were actually necessary? $3922.80. Overkill amount? $2602.90 This, of course, is not taking into account the paid and unpaid time off work that all this testing required and not even beginning to put a price on the level of my stress and frustration.

Keep in mind this is just ONE of my less than stellar experiences with the healthcare industry. Thank God that arthritis is not (immediately) fatal or, apparently, I would have died a long time ago.

Best healthcare in the world. Indeed.

My point is that obviously unnecessary tests are routinely prescribed and they cost us all a bundle of money. Furthermore, it has been my experience over and over again that after having ordered outrageously expensive diagnostic testing, very rarely does the doctor seem to actually read the results. What’s the damn point? This is why I am so adamant about the need for healthcare reform. I have so many more examples like this; it’s hard to avoid becoming depressed (which would, of course, engender even more healthcare costs). And ironically, I am one of the lucky ones. What if my chronic condition had a more directly fatal consequence? What if I had NO insurance? I do think that Tort reform would go a long way in eliminating the practice of this kind of medicine. Also, doctors obviously need more time to spend with individual patients when one is finding that test results are not even carefully analyzed, if at all.

SCORE ONE FOR JCP&L

2009-07-23T05:14:00.001-04:00

Hey, now, I’m not a totally unreasonable person. As my faithful readers (reader?) already know, I’ve had an ongoing issue with JCP&L and their billing practices. But it is not my intent just to throw shit their way for the sake of it. I’m just being diligent. Hey, I’ve been frugal since before it was cool and I strongly believe that people need to be on top of these things, not just JCP&L but ALL your bills…I’ve discovered discrepancies in my T-Mobile bills, hospital bills, bank statements etc. I think it is just sound financial policy to analyze any bill before paying because it’s a hell of a lot easier to verify the correct amount than to try to get a refund on an overpayment. That being said, I am not a blowhard for the mere joy of blowhardiness and so I present the conclusion of this particular episode:

I was contacted by Lisa, who as it turns out, has the position of “Consumer Advocate” for JCP&L. I wasn’t aware the position existed, and although it may be a mandated position and she obviously has a vested interest, I am nonetheless cautiously impressed. So, Lisa offered to come out and read the meter and then discuss it with me. In the meantime, my son Remy and I did a bit of brainstorming regarding the possibility that our electricity consumption had risen by 77% … the main possible culprit being the humongous computer he brought back from MIT for the summer and the mitigating factors of my being off work (thus consuming electricity during a period of time I would usually be at work) and the round the clock consumption of the crazy waking/sleep cycle of your typical teenager in the summertime (ie. Up all night). He did a few calculations as he often does and concluded it was unlikely, yet possible. Turns out it’s not as unlikely as we thought.

Unfortunately, I was tied up in jury duty at the time of our appointment and wasn’t able to meet with Lisa. However, after several attempts we finally connected on the phone and Lisa explained to me that she personally read the meter and it as it turned out, it was correct. She also identified an issue with the utility’s access to the meters which is apparently the source of why there are so many estimates, and she stated that she would work with the Housing Authority to obtain the access…the lack of which is most likely an oversight as they generally do have access to various Housing Authority property utility rooms.

So, the conclusion is, as follows: The original estimate WAS off but not as crazily as I originally concluded. The second estimate was an actual reading although that was not presented clearly in the re-billing. The reason the estimate was made was not due to bad staffing policy but miscommunication between the Housing Authority and JCP&L regarding access to the meters. Mystery solved, nefariousness disproven….THIS time.

That’s a relief because I don’t ‘fight the man’ for the pure joy of fighting…although the joy does sometimes exist. It’s refreshing to NOT have one’s sense of paranoia reinforced at every turn, especially after the zeitgeist of the W years, and to add a little bit more trust to these public relationships. And I come away from this particular exchange with JCP&L impressed with their handling, or more precisely, Lisa’s handling of the situation. She really did go out of her way to get to the bottom of it AND she persisted in contacting me until she was successful and I find that rare. So…score one for the Man in their employment of Lisa, who apparently takes the term ‘advocate’ in her job title to heart. Until next time!

JCP&L...AT IT AGAIN

2009-07-19T13:18:00.005-04:00

ORIGINAL BILLING

REBILL

UPDATE:

received a call yesterday from JCP&L rep who seemed to think the latest billing was an actual read. However...the bill reads "estimate...re-bill". Looking through all the bills from the past year (except the last re-billing in April which is no longer available ??) the ones that were estimates say estimate and the ones that were actual readings say reading. So....I was confused. Out of what I assume to be frustration, the rep offered to come out personally and read my meter. I asked if she could then stop in and discuss it with me. So....we are on for Wed. Stay tuned!!!....Some of you may recall a few months back when Jersey Central Power and Light overestimated my bill by 82%. Well...here they go again. I received a bill about two weeks ago for $146.53. The average fees for my last three months of usage amount to $62.94. That's a whopping 132% above my average actual use of electricity. Now, believe it or not I do not enjoy continually making complaints to the governing boards of various public service providers. I find it boring and dull and I HATE numbers. Figuring out percentages and fractions is what I get PAID to do-not what I do for fun. So...I first called the utility hoping this could solve the problem. I requested that an actual person be sent and actually (actually in this sense being the direct opposite of virtually) read my meter. The customer service representative assured me it would be done, and, when as an aside I asked WHY, this time, an estimate was made to begin with, she told me that it was probably because so many meter readers are on vacation. Apparently JCP&L has never heard of staffing software...any of you poor slobs out there that have ever asked for a day off and been told 'there is no time available', well, you know what I'm talking about.

So, I'm thinking, "Great. Case closed." No need to bother the Board of Public Utilities this time.
Hmmph. Not so fast, Ria. I get an email this morning with a 'new' bill, a re-bill to be precise which, like the first bill is AN ESTIMATE!! In the amount of $111.35. Ok, so they are going in the right direction but that is STILL 77% MORE than the average of my last three months of usage combined. Nice try. So...even though I COULD have been reading my Sunday Times, I filed yet another complaint with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities...(see below-short and sweet).

REMEMBER FOLKS! READ YOUR BILLS CAREFULLY! You may be getting overbilled. And if so and you live in NJ, here is a handy link to the on-line complaint form at NJ BPU.

And here is a sample (mine), complaint letter:

I continue to have a problem with JCP&L overbilling me based on their estimates of my service usage, Most recently I was billed fee of $146.35 for the billing period of June 4th through July 6th based on their estimate. In the previous month to this billing, my usage amounted to a total fee of $69.27. The month previous to that, $65.52. Those bills were based on actual usage. I called the utility and requested that they do an actual reading. Today I received an email billing me $111.35 which was AGAIN, based on an estimate of usage. This is listed as a 'rebill', indicating that in response to my request for an actual reading, they simply re-estimated my usage. I don't understand this and I don't find it acceptable. It creates suspicions about the ethics of their billing practice and makes me question why it is so often that the company relies on estimates for billing. I live in public housing and the meter reader always has clear access to the meters. Thank you for your assistance.

RACISM REDUX: ANGLO (steve) KING, NO WHITES ALLOWED and TEXAS CURRICULUM

2009-07-10T08:18:00.016-04:00

Aaaah.....yes.
I have been described as an angry person once or twice, this is true. But I make a concerted and conscious effort daily to redirect my anger, and generally I do this by calling to mind the Monty Python lyrics; "Always look on the bright side of life." Indeed, it is a personal rule of mine that for every negative thought or sentence I must, MUST find some positive spin. This is really nothing more than a survival technique. Anger builds upon anger and negativity indeed feeds upon itself like the out-of-control snowball barreling down the mountainside gathering momentum and mass along the way. This shit cannot be good for a person. So I choose instead a Sisyphean course of action, eternally attempting to shove the boulder of positive thoughts to the top of the mountain despite the fact the anger and negativity will always push it back down to the valley. Luckily, life is so vast and intricately complicated that it does indeed provide plenty of positive fodder: my kids, my relative health, my family, a comfortable couch, etc. etc. Okay, that being said, if a person has even a scrap of sensibility for their fellow man and pays even a modicum of attention to what is happening in the world around them, how the hell can they avoid being Pissed the eff off??? In the last week or so, we have been handed several incidents that could set our blood to boil. Therefore, I present to you after a blissful hiatus of smiley faced unicorns and rainbows, the revival of Damn the Man. Dammit!

Right-o, then: Exhibit A:

Steve King, Congressman from Iowa.

Okay, I already knew this guy was an asshole. My mother lives in Northeastern Iowa and last spring, after Iowa's Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal, she was plagued with robo-calls from his office begging for assistance in overturning the decision. It mattered little that his district is clear across the state from her, she is not his constituent and she called his office several times to tell them to stop. They kept a-coming, and not just to her, several of my friends in Iowa suffered similar harassment. My mother finally got the calls to stop by calling his office in DC and, because she somehow got a hold of one of his aides cell phone numbers, calling said aide after each robo-call.

And now, he rears his crazy face again in his Quixotic fight to retain the status of the white European christian man,this time by voting against a symbolic measure to honor the slaves that, well, ... slaved... to construct the Capitol. His rationalization? "And of the 645,000 Africans that were brought here to be forcibly put into slavery in the United States, there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery. And I don't see the monument to that in the Congressional Visitor Center, and I think it's important that we have a balanced depiction of history." Ok first of all, that sentence doesn't make sense. Is he saying 600,000 of the 645,000 slaves kidnapped from Africa gave their lives in the Civil War? Well, yeah, he is saying that, literally, but what he means, we can safely assume, is that 600,000 (presumably) white Union soldiers 'gave' their lives, yadda yadda. Dude, learn to speak your native language. And, of course, had he done a quick Google search on Civil War soldier memorials in the DC area, it would have taken .024 seconds of his precious time to find 226,000 results of sites with information about such memorials.

He originally claimed his opposition was simply a result of his policy to vote against purely symbolic gestures. Until he was reminded of his resolution from December of 2007, "Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian Faith." Oh. Oooops. Then He backtracks and explains that his no vote was actually; "...a bargaining chip to allow for the actualy(sic) depiction of "In God We Trust" in the CVC". Yeah, whatever. It's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide the fact that he is, simply put, a racist ass and he is up against the wall with the fact that his kind is going down, GOING DOWN. About time. No mas, asshole.

Moving right along, then...Exhibit B: The Valley Swim Club

A private pool in Philadelphia kicks to the curb a group of Black kids. Because the kids are black and the pool's management are racist. This is pretty much unambiguious and indefensible. Really, I just include this to illustrate the fact that the recent popular mantra of 'Racism is Dead' is, unfortunately, laughably premature. What really kills me about this story are the kids and the fucking boulder created in their stomachs when they fully realized what was actually going on. Goddammit.

Our final exhibit, Exhibit C:
Texas' Desire to Bleach its State Curriculum Standards

Sigh. A committee to provide curriculum recommendations to the Texas State Board of Education wants to blacklist historical figures such as of Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez with the rationalization that they can't hold a candle to Ben Franklin. Nice try, assholes. You know, I'm not even going to detail their rationalizations, suffice to say they stand behind Congressman King with their backs to the wall of their declining status. Aaaah, but here's the positive spin: Steve King, Texas committee assholes? Their backs ARE against the wall. Business as usual for Whitey is slowly yet undeniably fading. What we're witnessing is kind of a cultural 'Fight or Flight' reflex-the primordial response to the threat of extinction; all emotion and devoid of reason. Makes me wonder, in the words of Bob Dylan; "How does it feel? To be on your own? With no direction home? A complete known..."

Aaah, Karma. It's a beautiful thing.

JCP&L: Baaaad Estimators

2009-04-02T17:22:00.009-04:00

See below: my latest complaint filed with the Jersey Board of Public Utitlies after JCP&L overestimated my electricity usage by 81.29%...and then sent me a shut-off noticed when I paid only $37.00 less than what my actual usage amounted to:

Dear BPU:
My electricity bill for the period of January 01, 2009 through March 04 of 2009 was estimated by JCP&L at $329.29. When I protested and they sent someone to read my meter, the actual usage proved to be $181.80. This means that they overestimated a total of $147.49; in other words. a 81.29% overestimation. I understand why they have to sometimes estimate but am questioning their method of estimation. My problem with them has been resolved but I would like this gross overestimation to go on record on the chance that others similarly overestimated may also complain and perhaps JCP&L can be persuaded to reanalyze their estimation methods. Because I knew I had not used that much electricity I paid by my estimation, which was under by $37.00, a 21% underestimate-quite a bit more accurate than theirs. Yet, my $37.00 underestimate still earned me a shut-off notice. Thank you for listening,
MFD

If you are receiving 'estimated' bills that seem a little high-call JCP&L (1-800-662-3115) and request an actual reading!

This just in:
Received today:
(click on the image to read)

JCP&L: Showing their true colors

2009-04-01T18:21:00.000-04:00

JCP&L denies full pension to former employee's widow

by Karin Price Mueller/The Star-Ledger
Monday April 06, 2009, 9:00 PM

How much is 17 hours of your life worth? It's a question widow Brenda Slutter has been wrestling with for years.

Her husband, Ron Slutter, worked for Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) for nearly 36 years. He died of cancer at age 58. Knowing his death was imminent, Ron made arrangements to retire, a move that would allow his wife to receive the largest possible company pension benefit after his death. He was told by JCP&L, his widow said, that his official retirement date had to be on the first of the month -- but died 17 hours and 40 minutes before the paperwork was finalized.

Bruce Winter/Express TimesBrenda Slutter, widow of Ron Slutter, who is being denied full pension benefits by Jersey Central Power and Light because her husband died shortly before the paperwork was finalized.

Thanks to a tangle of bureaucratic rigidity, legal fine print and the timing of her husband's death, Brenda, 59, receives only half the pension benefit her husband meant for her to receive.

"If January only had 30 days, he would have made it," Brenda said.

BUREAUCRATS AND TECHNICALITIES
Ron Slutter was a popular guy at JCP&L, working up the ladder until he was in charge of teams that buried underground cables. His personnel file is decorated with letters thanking him for exceptional service. He had 165 unused sick days on the books when he died.

"He was a good employee," Brenda said. "The day I took him to the hospital, he didn't want to go unless he could get in touch with his foreman to let him know he'd be out."

In 1998, Ron was diagnosed with asbestosis, an incurable lung condition caused by long-term exposure to asbestos. (In medical reports, his doctors said they believe it was contracted after asbestos exposure on the job, and the Slutters filed a worker's compensation claim in 2000. That case has not yet been resolved; JCP&L declined comment, citing employee confidentiality concerns.)

Ron worked through his illness until late 2005, when he was diagnosed with colon, stomach, spleen and pancreatic cancer, which his medical reports indicate commonly follow asbestosis.

By January 2006, knowing he was dying, Ron took steps to maximize the pension he accrued during his 35-plus year career with JCP&L, his wife said.

He knew if he died as an active employee, Brenda would receive only a 50 percent payment option on his pension -- a loss of more than $7,200 a year. So on Jan. 24, 2006, he informed his benefits department he wanted to retire immediately.

A portrait of Ron and Brenda Slutter.

The Slutters were told Ron's official retirement date would have to wait until Feb. 1 because the company processes retirement dates only on the first of the month.

Ron completed all the necessary paperwork from his hospital bed, electing a pension payout option -- known as the 100 percent spousal option -- that would continue to pay 100 percent of his pension to his wife for her lifetime.

Ron died at 6:20 a.m. on Jan. 31, 17 hours and 40 minutes before his official retirement date and 54 days after his cancer diagnosis.

As Brenda grappled with the death of her husband of 36 years, she thought her financial future was secure. But then JCP&L gave her unexpected news: because Ron died as an active employee, his retirement was never official. Therefore, his wife was due only a 50 percent benefit rather than the 100 percent pension payout she would have received had Ron held out a few more hours.

Three years later, Brenda Slutter is still fighting. She's talked to the benefits department, sent letters to JCP&L executives, tried going through her husband's union and submitted appeals to the company's Retirement Board -- to no avail. She's now retained an attorney.

"I'm not trying to sue them for anything. I just want what my husband wanted for me," Brenda Slutter said.

Brenda was already retired when Ron died, but to make ends meet she takes occasional cleaning jobs. She hasn't been able to tap into her retirement savings without facing penalties because she's not yet 59 1/2.

"They said to me, 'Well, we gave you his full life insurance,' because if my husband had retired, the company would have only given me $30,000 of his $98,000 life insurance," Brenda Slutter said. "Mind you I paid the policy premiums. They did me no favor."

Bamboozled contacted JCP&L to talk about the case, but the company wouldn't discuss any particulars.

"We respect the privacy of all of our employees and do not publicly discuss or disclose any personal information," said Ronald Morano, spokesman for First Energy, the parent company of JCP&L. "We work diligently to ensure that our employees and their families understand their benefits and the options available to them."

THE LEGAL SIDE OF THINGS
JCP&L isn't legally bound to pay Brenda Slutter the full benefit, but it could choose to work around the letter of the law because Ron's intent was clear.

"Look aside the technicalities of the law," said Edward Cohen, the attorney for JCP&L's labor unions, including Local 327 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, to which Ron Slutter belonged. "The company knew in reality that he wanted her to have the 100 percent benefit."

Ron Slutter filed all the right forms. He just didn't live long enough.

If JCP&L didn't want to let the pension law slide, it could have assigned Ron an earlier retirement date. Even today, nothing but company policy is stopping JCP&L from making that date change retroactively.

"The reality is there's no one who would complain if they gave her the pension," Cohen said. "Can they say they're not supposed to do that? Yes. But who's going to complain? Nobody."

After investigating Brenda Slutter's story, Ron Slutter's work and benefit history with JCP&L and the 17 hours, Bamboozled asked the company to once again reconsider Brenda Slutter's pension payout.

"That's a discussion between the company and the family," said Morano, the JCP&L spokesman.

Brenda Slutter isn't surprised by the company's response, and she's not giving up her fight.

"This is not how you reward someone for doing an excellent service for your company," she said. "I guess First Energy needs half of my husband's pension more than I do"

Yeah, just like they needed my electricity payments in advance.

Three More DAYS!!

2009-01-17T05:54:00.000-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Barack Obama: Path to the Presidency

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

A Little Bit of the Best and Worst

2009-01-01T10:20:00.012-05:00

Damn The Man's Take on a Few Things that Come to Mind at the end of the Catalysmic Year of 2008:

Biggest Assholes

King of all Assholes For Life: Dick Cheney

Aptly named, Cheney is the epitome of the white, European Male’s peculiar version of Machismo, does what he wants when he wants and is never, ever wrong-My Way or the Highway, The Buck Stops Here, I’m the Decider, etc etc. Most assholes who embrace this personal dichotomy are merely annoying but Cheney, oh man! Somehow, when the majority of the country was neck deep in the national consume-fest orgy, their corneas replaced by dollar signs, this slimy motherfucker slipped in the back door. Utilizing his sock-monkey puppet Bush, (Moron of the Century), Cheney then hi-jacked the reins of the most powerful country of the United States. He then proceeded to reshape it in his odiferous image which, of course, resulted in his COMPLETELY. FUCKING. US. UP. Oh, it’s epic, it’s historical, it’s completely insane! As if single-handedly orchestrating the dismantling of the power, wealth and respect of our great country wasn’t enough of an achievement, he goes out as he came in: The very definition of Arrogance; rationalizing that he did nothing wrong because, by virtue of being the Vice President, everything he does is right and he leaves the country nearly choking to death on the toxic fumes of his flatulence. I often joke around about one person or other being the anti-Christ but honestly, if I actually believed in such a thing? Cheney quite likely is the real deal. Good Riddance ASSHOLE.

Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Iowa

The man behind perhaps Iowa’s biggest travesty of justice, the Postville Immigration Raid.

Sarah Palin

If I went to high school with Sarah Palin, undoubtedly, I would have kicked her ass.

Rush Limbaugh

I really wish this cretin would just shut the fuck up already.

Coolest Dudes Around

1. OBAMA

Thankgodthankgodthankgodthankgod!

2. Paul Krugman

Nobel-Peace-Prize winning Economist telling it like it is! Congratulations MR. K-you the bomb!

3. Erik Camayd-Freixas

Certified Spanish Interpreter for the Federal Courts employed during the Postville raids and who wrote the true, sad and repulsive story of what really happened at the Cattle Congress grounds.

4. Dude who Threw His Shoes at Bush

Thank you for doing what any other person in the world with any semblance of cajones would jump at the chance to do.

Best Editorial Comic

although I guess, technically in 2009. By Drew Sheneman of the Star Ledger

Favorite Conservative Columnists

1. Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star Ledger

Dude hates SUV’s, Neo-Conservatism, Bush, Corzine, pretty much all government and loves surfing and beer. Recently, he had the balls to out Caroline Kennedy as equal to Sarah Palin in her abysmal grasp of English Grammar which, sadly, I have to agree with. Although he sometimes pisses me off, ya gotta love a guy who hates SUV’s. Come on!

2. Kathleen Parker, syndicated columnist

Kathleen Parker pisses me off a lot more often than Mulshine but she stands by her word. When she called for Palin to gracefully bow-out of the presidential race, she received an avalanche of hate-mail, some of it threatening from the Conservative Right with whom she has always aligned herself. She had the honesty to write that in all her conservative column writing she had never experienced such vitriol from the left side of the spectrum. I may not agree with nearly anything she says but I enjoy her columns nonetheless.

Favorite Liberal Columnists

1. Fran Wood of the Star Ledger

Clear and concise and right on target, alas Fran has recently announced her (probably forced) retirement. Fran! Don’t Go!

2. Matt Taibbi, Political Contributor the Rolling Stone

Quite possibly THE most cynical and sarcastic voice of my generation and folks, that is saying a LOT. He unsparingly exposed life on the campaign trail, undercover as a minion of Hagel’s mega church, and amidst the 9-11 conspiracists. Not for the faint at heart.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

2008-12-15T04:53:00.005-05:00

WOW

December 13, 2008

Even Workers Surprised by Success of Factory Sit-In

By MICHAEL LUO and KAREN ANN CULLOTTA

CHICAGO — The word came just after lunch on Dec. 2 in the cafeteria of Republic Windows and Doors. A company official told assembled workers that their plant on this city’s North Side, which had operated for more than four decades, would be closed in just three days.

There was a murmur of shock, then anger, in the drab room lined with snack machines. Some women cried. But a few of the factory’s union leaders had been anticipating this moment. Several weeks before, they had noticed that equipment had disappeared from the plant, and they began tracing it to a nearby rail yard.

And so, in secret, they had been discussing a bold but potentially dangerous plan: occupying the factory if it closed.

By the time their six-day sit-in ended on Wednesday night, the 240 laid-off workers at this previously anonymous 125,000-square-foot plant had become national symbols of worker discontent amid the layoffs sweeping the country. Civil rights workers compared them to Rosa Parks. But all the workers wanted, they said, was what they deserved under the law: 60 days of severance pay and earned vacation time.

And to their surprise, their drastic action worked. Late Wednesday, two major banks agreed to lend the company enough money to give the workers what they asked for.

“In the environment of this economic crisis, we felt we were obligated to fight for our money,” Armando Robles, a maintenance worker and president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represented the workers, said in Spanish.

The reverberations of the workers’ victory are likely to be felt for months as plants continue to close. Bob Bruno, director of the labor studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predicted organized labor would be emboldened by the workers’ success. “If you combine some palpable street anger with organizational resources in a changing political mood,” he said, “you can begin to see more of these sort of riskier, militant adventures, and they’re more likely to succeed.”

The tale of how this small band of workers came to embody the welter of emotions in the country’s economic downturn is flecked with plot turns from the deepening recession, growing anger over the Wall Street bailout and difficult business calculations. The workers were not aware, for example, that Republic’s owners had quietly set up a new company, Echo Windows LLC, incorporated on Nov. 18, according to records with the Illinois secretary of state’s office. And Echo had bought a window and door manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa.

Company officials in Iowa declined to comment, but Mary Lou Friedman, the human resources manager at Echo, said in a telephone interview that the factory had 102 employees, all nonunion.

And at the last minute of negotiations, according to Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, who helped moderate talks to resolve the standoff, and union officials, Republic’s chief executive, Richard Gillman, demanded that any new bank loan to help the employees also cover the lease of several of his cars — a 2007 BMW 350xi and a 2002 Mercedes S500 are among those registered to company addresses — as well as eight weeks of his salary, at $225,000 a year.

The demand held up the settlement, which was reached only after Mr. Gillman agreed to back down. (Mr. Gillman said Friday that he had sought the money to offset a large bonus in 2007 that he had chosen not to accept.)

In many ways, however, Republic was an unlikely setting for a worker uprising. Many workers interviewed, including some who had been at the plant for more than three decades, said they considered it a decent place to work. It was a mostly Hispanic work force, with some blacks. Some earned over $40,000 a year, including overtime, pulling them into the middle class and enabling them to set up 401(k) retirement accounts and buy modest homes.

But after Mr. Gillman took over as owner in 2006, there were several rounds of layoffs, and the number of employees fell to about 240, from more than 500.

The company had been affected by the declining housing market, and Mr. Gillman said it had also been affected by Chicago’s higher production costs. He said he had hoped to salvage the business by buying another manufacturer in Ohio, but was turned down by Bank of America.

“This has been the worst week of my life,” he said. “I know many of those workers at Republic personally, and I put 34 years of my life into that business, and all my money, too. No stone was left unturned in our effort to save Republic.”

By mid-October, the company had exhausted its $5 million line of credit with Bank of America, and the bank was refusing to lend the company any more money.

“We declined to provide an additional loan because of the company’s dire financial conditions,” said Julie Westermann, a bank spokeswoman.

Bank officials said Republic filed for bankruptcy on Friday.

In mid-November, during a late-night vigil to see where the missing equipment was going, Mark Meinster, 35, one of the factory’s union organizers, broached the possibility of a sit-in with Mr. Robles, the president of the local, if the plant should be closed.

Mr. Robles, 38, who had worked at the factory for eight years, said he was excited by the idea but also mulled the potential repercussions. “We’d basically be trespassing on private property,” he said. “We might get arrested.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Robles told Mr. Meinster that he believed most workers would participate. In the coming days, the idea would take root among other union leaders.

On Tuesday, Dec. 2, Barry Dubin, the company’s chief operating officer, delivered the final verdict to workers, telling them they would probably not be getting severance pay or be paid for accrued vacation days. Union leaders quickly moved to hash out details of an occupation.

“We knew keeping the windows in the warehouse was a bargaining chip,” said Melvin Maclin, a groove cutter and vice president of the local.

While some workers picketed Bank of America, others began attending to their own financial worries, with many liquidating their 401(k)’s. Others cast worried eyes on their meager savings accounts.

On Friday, union officials met with company officers and learned the workers’ health insurance was being cut off.

Later, with employees gathered in the cafeteria, Mr. Robles asked for a show of hands of how many would be willing to stay at the factory. All hands went up, with shouts of, “Sí, se puede!” — or “Yes, we can!”

“I ain’t got no other choice,” Alexis McCoy, 32, a driver’s assistant, said later. “I have a newborn. I have to take care of my family.”

Local politicians discouraged the police from arresting the workers. Exasperated company officials decided not to press the matter as the news media began arriving in droves.

The workers organized themselves into three shifts and set up committees in charge of cleanup, security and safety. A sign was taped to a cafeteria wall banning alcohol, drugs and smoking.

Negotiations involving the company, Bank of America and union officials began late Monday afternoon at the bank’s offices downtown.

At the root of much of the discussions was the federal law requiring employees to be given 60 days’ notice, or that amount of severance, when plants close.

Bank officials said it was not their responsibility as lenders to ensure that the company made these payments. They said later that they had been discussing closing the plant with the company as far back as July, giving it plenty of time to fulfill its obligations to its workers.

Nevertheless, union officials argued that Bank of America had received billions of taxpayer dollars in the recent federal bailout, meant to free up credit to companies like Republic.

“We never made the argument you have a legal responsibility,” said Mr. Gutierrez, who described bank officials as willing to be helpful almost immediately. “We said, ‘Will you make a corporate responsibility decision?’ ”

Bank of America’s offer to lend the company roughly $1.35 million came on Tuesday, and additional help came from William M. Daley, the brother of Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and the Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase, which owned 40 percent of the window company and agreed to lend an additional $400,000.

Mr. Gillman’s demands, however, became a major sticking point. “I’m not going to describe to you the words that were used when those issues were brought up,” Mr. Gutierrez said.

Eventually, the parties agreed that the workers would be the only ones to benefit. They would be paid severance and for vacation, and receive two months’ health coverage. The company owners also agreed to come up with $114,000 to cover the payroll for their last week of work.

When union negotiators returned to the factory on Wednesday evening with the agreement, the workers approved it unanimously. They emerged from the factory chanting, “Yes, we did!”

ROLE REVERSAL

2008-12-09T05:07:00.002-05:00

Breaking News! Illinois Factory Workers Screwed By Their Employers!!  Wait, wait....no, that's not the story. The story is...Illinois Factory Workers Screwed By Their Employers are Supported By the Government!  What????  Obama hasn't taken office yet...but already a major shift seems to be occurring in the psyche of the nation's leaders.

In a classic "We're Mad As Hell and We're Not Going To Take it Anymore!" move, a group of factory workers, given three days notice out the blue about the impending demise of their workplace AND told they wouldn't be paid earned vacation hours, took action. They refused to leave work and utilizing a classic civil disobedience maneuver, occupied the windows manufacturing plant. FIGHT ON, BROTHERS!!  

But, in my jaded view, the even more amazing aspect of this protest is that the government of the State of Illinois quickly took up the side of the workers, suspending all State business with its bank, the Bank of America, and readying a complaint through the Dept. of Labor.

If one fails to grasp the significance of the government's taking the moral high road on behalf of the blighted worker, these three words should freshen your memory: Air. Traffic. Controllers. Remember? In 1981, when 12,000 Air Traffic Controllers went on strike, the government....FIRED. THEM. ALL.  A move which arguably led to this day, having created an environment where owners are comfortable pitting themselves against workers and in their pursuit of the almighty dollar, plan to discard them with nary a consequence to their business. 

Could this be a sign of a seismic shift in the national moral standards...or maybe I should say, an unprecedented move to actually build a national moral standard in relation to workers' rights?  One can only.....hope.  Read on, my friends:

December 9, 2008

Illinois Threatens Bank Over Sit-In

By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — As workers at a window-making plant here prepared to spend a fourth night in the factory they had been told to leave for good, union leaders, bankers and company owners met into the night on Monday but the meetings ended without bringing about an end to the workers’ peaceful but increasingly tense occupation of the plant.

The layoff of 250 workers last week at Republic Windows and Doors on the North Side with only three days’ warning and without pay the workers say is owed to them had, by Monday, drawn the attention of nearly every politician with a connection to this city, numerous union and workers’ rights groups and scores of ordinary people, who arrived at the plant offering families toys, food and money.

Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who met with the workers Monday morning, said the State of Illinois was suspending its business with the Bank of America, Republic Windows’ lenders, and that the Illinois Department of Labor was poised to file a complaint over the plant closing if need be. Political leaders on the Chicago City Council and in Cook County threatened similar actions. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez said he was encouraging the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice to investigate. “Families are already struggling to keep afloat,” Mr. Blagojevich said.

Workers here say they blame the operators of Republic Windows and Doors, a manufacturing company that was founded in 1965, for giving them just three days’ notice before closing last Friday, with no earlier hints to the employees that orders for vinyl windows and sliding doors had fallen off.

Late Monday, the company released a statement that indicated that it had known since at least mid-October that it intended to close the factory by January. The statement suggested that it had gone back and forth with Bank of America for more than a month, but that the bank had rejected several of its “wind down” plans as well as the company’s request for financing to pay workers’ owed vacation.

The statement also revealed that the family of Richard Gillman, once a minority shareholder who in 2006 and 2007 bought out Republic, last month formed a new window business — Echo Windows LLC. All along, workers here said they feared the owners were shutting down to reopen a cheaper operation somewhere else. A trade publication reported last week that Echo had recently bought a window manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa. No one from Republic could be reached for comment.

“It is looking like reopening is exactly what happened,” said Tara Taffera, the editor and publisher of the publication, Door and Window Manufacturing magazine.

The company’s statement said it had been placed, “in the impossible position of not having the ability to further reduce fixed costs, coupled with severe constrictions in the capital debt markets and an unwillingness of the current debt holder to continue funding the operations.”

The workers here also blamed Bank of America for preventing the owners from paying its workers for already-earned vacation time and severance. Workers here said the owners told them last week that Bank of America had cut off the company’s credit line and would not allow payments.

As part of government bailout efforts for the struggling banking industry, Bank of America has received $15 billion, and is expected to receive an additional $10 billion. That fact left many workers here seething.

“Taxpayers would like to see that bailout money go toward saving jobs, not saving C.E.O.’s,” said Leah Fried, an organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. “This is outrageous.”

Officials said negotiations would resume Tuesday.

Bank of America issued a statement late Monday stating that the company, not the bank, had the ability to choose whether to honor what it owed workers.

“We agree with the statements of public officials that Republic Windows and Doors should do all it can to honor its obligations to its employees and minimize the impact of failure on those employees,” the statement said.

“When a company faces such a dire situation, its lender is not empowered to direct the company’s management how to manage its affairs and what obligations should be paid,” it went on. “Such decisions belong to the management and owners of the company.”

Federal law from the late 1980s requires employers to give workers 60 days’ notice (or 60 days of pay) in cases of plant closings or large layoffs. Still, that federal law, known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, provides exceptions in cases when a “faltering company” is actively seeking capital to save itself and has reason to believe announcing a possible closing might prevent it from getting that capital or in “unforeseeable business circumstances,” like unexpected conditions outside an employer’s control.

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

2008-11-29T09:40:00.003-05:00

No comment needed

November 29, 2008

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN and ANGELA MACROPOULOS

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y. At 3:30 a.m., the Nassau County police had to be called in for crowd control, and an officer with a bullhorn pleaded for order.

Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. Someone taped up a crude poster: “Blitz Line Starts Here.”

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

Some workers who saw what was happening fought their way through the surge to get to Mr. Damour, but he had been fatally injured, the police said. Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.

Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman who was described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.

Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, who is in charge of the investigation for the Nassau police, said the store lacked adequate security. He called the scene “utter chaos” and said the “crowd was out of control.” As for those who had run over the victim, criminal charges were possible, the lieutenant said. “I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it is not,” he said. “Certainly it was a foreseeable act.”

But even with videos from the store’s surveillance cameras and the accounts of witnesses, Lieutenant Fleming and other officials acknowledged that it would be difficult to identify those responsible, let alone to prove culpability.

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

Wal-Mart security officials and the police cleared the store, swept up the shattered glass and locked the doors until 1 p.m., when it reopened to a steady stream of calmer shoppers who passed through the missing doors and battered door jambs, apparently unaware that anything had happened.

Ugly shopping scenes, a few involving injuries, have become commonplace during the bargain-hunting ritual known as Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The nation’s largest retail group, the National Retail Federation, said it had never heard of a worker being killed on Black Friday.

Wal-Mart declined to provide details of the stampede, but said in a statement that it had tried to prepare by adding staff members. Still, it was unclear how many security workers it had at the Valley Stream store for the opening on Friday. The Green Acres Mall provides its own security to supplement the staffs of some large stores, but it did not appear that Wal-Mart was one of them.

A Wal-Mart spokesman, Dan Folgleman, called it a “tragic situation,” and said the victim had been hired from a temporary staffing agency and assigned to maintenance work. Wal-Mart, in a statement issued at its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., said: “The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this tragic time.”

Wal-Mart has successfully resisted unionization of its employees. New York State’s largest grocery union, Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, called the death of Mr. Damour “avoidable” and demanded investigations.

“Where were the safety barriers?” said Bruce Both, the union president. “Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner? This is not just tragic; it rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart.”

While other Wal-Mart stores dot the suburbs around the city, the outlet at Valley Stream, less than two miles from New York City’s southeastern border, draws customers from Queens, Brooklyn and the densely populated suburbs of Nassau County. And it was not the only store in the Green Acres Mall that attracted large crowds.

Witnesses said the crowd outside Wal-Mart began gathering at 9 p.m. on Thursday. The night was not bitterly cold, and the early mood was relaxed. By the early morning hours, the throngs had grown, and officers of the Fifth Precinct of the Nassau County Police Department, who patrol Valley Stream, were out in force, checking on crowds at the mall.

Mr. Damour, who lived in Queens, went into the store sometime during the night to stock shelves and perform maintenance work.

On Friday night, Mr. Damour’s father, Ogera Charles, 67, said his son had spent Thursday evening having Thanksgiving dinner at a half sister’s house in Queens before going directly to work. Mr. Charles said his son, known as Jimmy, was raised in Queens by his mother and worked at various stores in the area after graduating from high school.

Mr. Charles said he had not seen his son in three months, and heard about his death about 7 a.m. Friday, when a friend of Mr. Damour’s called him at home. He arrived at Franklin Hospital Medical Center an hour later to identify the body. Mr. Charles said he was angry that no one from Wal-Mart had contacted him or had explained how his son had died. Maria Damour, Mr. Damour’s mother, was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but was on her way back to the United States, Mr. Charles said.

About the time that Mr. Damour was killed, a shopper at a Wal-Mart in Farmingdale, 15 miles east of Valley Stream, said she was trampled by a crowd of overeager customers, the Suffolk County police reported. The woman sustained a cut on her leg, but finished her shopping before filing the police report, an officer said.

Damn the Man Artist!

2008-11-16T10:26:00.000-05:00

Herbert on Acorn:

2008-10-21T07:33:00.003-04:00

October 21, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

The Real Scandal

By BOB HERBERT

It never ends. The Republican Party never gets tired of spraying its poison across the American political landscape.

So there was a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the press should start investigating members of the House and Senate to determine which ones are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Can a rancid Congressional committee be far behind? Leave it to a right-wing Republican to long for those sunny, bygone days of political witch-hunting.

Ms. Bachmann’s demented desire (“I would love to see an exposé like that”) is of a piece with the G.O.P.’s unrelenting effort to demonize its opponents, to characterize them as beyond the pale, different from ordinary patriotic Americans — and not just different, but dangerous, and even evil.

But the party is not content to stop there. Even better than demonizing opponents is the more powerful and direct act of taking the vote away from their opponents’ supporters. The Republican Party has made strenuous efforts in recent years to prevent Democrats from voting, and to prevent their votes from being properly counted once they’ve been cast.

Which brings me to the phony Acorn scandal.

John McCain, who placed his principles in a blind trust once the presidential race heated up, warned the country during the presidential debate last week that Acorn, which has been registering people to vote by the hundreds of thousands, was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.”

It turns out that a tiny percentage of these new registrations are bogus, with some of them carrying ludicrous names like Mickey Mouse. Republicans have tried to turn this into a mighty oak of a scandal, with Mr. McCain thundering at the debate that it “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Please. The Times put the matter in perspective when it said in an editorial that Acorn needs to be more careful with some aspects of its voter-registration process. It needs to do a better job selecting canvassers, among other things.

“But,” the editorial added, “for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.”

Two important points need to be made here. First, the reckless attempt by Senator McCain, Sarah Palin and others to fan this into a major scandal has made Acorn the target of vandals and a wave of hate calls and e-mail. Acorn staff members have been threatened and sickening, murderous comments have been made about supporters of Barack Obama. (Senator Obama had nothing to do with Acorn’s voter-registration drives.)

Second, when it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we’re seeing it again now.

In Montana, the Republican Party challenged the registrations of thousands of legitimate voters based on change-of-address information available from the Post Office. These specious challenges were made — surprise, surprise — in Democratic districts. Answering the challenges would have been a wholly unnecessary hardship for the voters, many of whom were students or members of the armed forces.

In the face of widespread public criticism (even the Republican lieutenant governor weighed in), the party backed off.

That sort of thing is widespread. In one politically crucial state after another — in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you name it — the G.O.P. has unleashed foot soldiers whose insidious mission is to make the voting process as difficult as possible — or, better yet, impossible — for citizens who are believed to favor Democrats.

For Senator McCain to flip reality on its head and point to an overwhelmingly legitimate voter-registration effort as a “threat to the fabric of democracy” is a breathtaking exercise in absurdity.

Miles Rapoport, a former Connecticut secretary of state who is now president of Demos, a public policy group, remarked on the irony of elected Republican officials deliberately attempting to thwart voting. Some years ago, he said, he “and all the other secretaries of state” would bemoan the lack of interest in voting, especially among the young and the poor.

Now, he said, with the explosion of voter registration and the heightened interest in the presidential campaign, you’d think officials “would welcome that, and encourage it, and even celebrate it.” Instead, he said, in so many cases, G.O.P. officials are “trying to pare down the lists.”

My Grandpa and John McCain

2008-10-18T07:34:00.004-04:00

I just finished watching the clips of Obama and McCain at the Al Smith dinner and I have a confession to make. I don't want to hate McCain. I don't really even want to dislike him. He's no Bush (either one), certainly no Cheney and although the manner in which he's been conducting himself recently makes it more difficult to not dislike him, there's some type of fail safe switch deep inside my psyche that resists. I think it I know what that is : John McCain reminds me of my grandfather. This is not meant as jab at his age; my grandfather died when he was just a few years older than McCain and I was twenty-four. I'm not envisioning some ancient and decrepit centenarian.

William Richard Brady was born on 05/16/1914, the first of a large, Irish family in the tenements of Chicago. Like many in his generation, he left school early (after sixth grade) and went directly to work. Throughout his life, he worked as a trolley-car conductor, a short-order cook, a security guard and a linen delivery man, and although he wasn't educated, he was a very intelligent man.

Grandpa was a die-hard Republican. I'm not sure this was always true, but certainly from the time that he learned his Teamster pension was stolen by Jimmy Hoffa, he was a staunch conservative. He was a grumpy old man, make no bones about it-but not nearly as grumpy as he deserved to be. He lived a tough, tough life; born into poverty and fighting to escape it his entire life. He was the eldest son of an Irish father and German mother-undoubtedly a scandalous union for the time. Growing up in depression-era Chicago he certainly felt the responsibility of his family's survival. Things were tough and, to paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, he "knew the raging lash of poverty'. Because his father fell ill relatively young with emphysema, (the disease that would ultimately cause the death of most of his children), and his mother with cancer, he became their sole support and thus avoided being drafted into WWII. No such luck for his brother Richard, the sibling closest in age to Grandpa who, from all accounts, was his best friend, co-hort and partner in crime. Uncle Richard went off to war and came back, like so many young men have and are, even now, an emotionally unrecognizable man. Soon after his return from the war, he disappeared and the only other time Grandpa had word of him was in the mid-1950's when the FBI knocked on his door and grilled him about Richard's whereabouts. Nobody ever really knew why the FBI was looking for Richard, but years after my Grandfather died his youngest brother hired a private investigator who ultimately learned only that Uncle Richard had died in Los Angeles in 1979 of emphysema.

That was but one of many losses; my grandmother nearly died as a result of negligent care after my mother's birth and she suffered a lifetime of pain and disability due to the subsequent emergency hysterectomy in her early twenties and its resulting early onset of osteoporosis. My grandfather seemed to bear these hardships in a surprisingly, for the times, healthy way. He was a man not afraid to cry and to grieve and he would then carry-on, making the best of the situation. My mother, being an only child, became the vessel of his hope for the future. Grandpa, defying the sentiments of the time regarding women's roles in the world, encouraged and empowered her to get an education and succeed in life. Which she did, despite their poverty, earning a BSN from Marquette University's sister school, Alverno College. To this day she credits her father with giving her the mindset and opportunity to reach beyond their circumstances.

Despite their poverty and blue-collar jobs my grandparents did well. A little saavy investing on my grandmother's part and hard work and frugality on my grandfather's enabled them to lift themselves solidly into the middle class-not only owning, but having built to spec their own modest brick bungalow by the time they were in their late forties.

My grandfather's history has little in common with John McCain's, this is true and I mention it only to illustrate a few of the many ways in which he lived an admirable life. The ways in which John McCain reminds me of my grandfather are more about their world-view. They both lived in a world of black and white:you were either good or bad, with them or against them and neither would hesitate to declare which category they felt that you fell into. Irascible, curmudgeonly and yes, irritating, they share many common attributes. At the same time they are funny and charming and when you've just about reached your last straw they always seem to play their last card-they reveal that glimmer of heroics and valor of their youth and their basic integrity and goodness. You just can't completely give up on them. At the same time, towards the end of their lives, they seemed to change, somehow betraying the principles on which they lived their entire life. My grandfather, by becoming incredibly whiny and clinging and disturbingly bigoted, shed the skin of responsibility and independence in which he lived his true life. And John McCain? Well, I think we are all witnessing now, in the way he is allowing his campaign to be conducted, the great betrayal of the moral base from which he has navigated the bulk of his time on earth. It is a sad, maybe even tragic scenario, this vision of great men taking leave of the moral compass that has guided them so far and for so long.

But, in the same way that they could not alter the lack of grey area in their worlds, I can neither let go of the images of the man of integrity.

When someone you love and are close to dies of a protracted and devastating illness, it is not long after their passing that your image of them ill and weak recedes into the background, taken over by your memories of their greatness, their good times and their strength.

This thing is this: those are memories and when all is said and done, that person, the one that you loved and admired, is gone.

So, I can't hate John McCain. But in a sense, it seems, he is already gone.

gotta love them MIT nerds

2008-10-12T06:33:00.002-04:00

Jason Jones Interviews Wasilla Residents After the Debate

2008-10-07T05:47:00.002-04:00

Last night, The Daily Show featured a segment where reporter Jason Jones, after watching the debate at ye olde watering hole in Wasilla, Alaska, interviewed the viewers there. Here are a couple of the patrons comments:

Fat, Old Grizzly Adams Dude: "Hey I went and asked all my colored friends what they thought of Rev. Wrong (Wright) and neither one of them agreed with him."

Jason Jones: "I believe they prefer the term negro".

FOGAD: "Well...hey.... whatever".
*********
Jason Jones: "The beltway's already saying that it's a wash"

Young goatee guy: "A wash? He's gay".

JJ: "Pardon?"

YGG: "He's gay".

JJ: "Well, the beltway... the washington insiders...they're saying it's a wash".

YGG: "They're all gay".

Speechless

2008-10-06T19:26:00.002-04:00

Apparently I watched the VP debate a little too closely because I feel nearly incapable of a coherent original thought, goshdarnit! That's ok, there are plenty of people with a voice left and here's what they have to say about our friend Sarah Palin:

McCain sprung his vice-presidential selection on us at the last minute, possibly under the impression that the country felt things had gotten too boring lately, and would appreciate the excitement of having a minimally experienced political unknown serving as backup to a 72-year-old cancer survivor.-Gail Collins

On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it.-David Brooks

Palin launched into her charm offensive — winking, smiling, dodging questions and speaking in her signature Sarah-phonics , a mash up of sentence fragments and colloquialisms glued together with misplaced also’s and there’s — gibberish really.

-Charles Blow

As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.- Kathleen Parker”

Of course, there's a difference between a lack of polish and a lack of coherence. Some of Palin's interview responses can't even be critiqued on their merits because they're so nonsensical. . - Kathleen Parker”

Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts” of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability, she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was, miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.” –Maureen Dowd

At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,” asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)- Maureen Dowd

She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”-Maureen Dowd

If bull were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself” -Gail Collins

If Palin were a man, we'd all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she's a woman -- and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket -- we are reluctant to say what is painfully true. . - Kathleen Parker”

My Kids Are Awesome Geniuses

2008-09-28T19:26:00.006-04:00

Oh my GOD I love my kids....Amelia just came up with the BEST term (very descriptive of McCain's recent demeanor):
Big Dick Politics.
Way to go, MIL! "What is UP with those assholes?"

How This Thing Works

2008-09-27T04:55:00.009-04:00

Just a short little article- I did not write-while I work (gotta shore myself up here for the coming long winter)....and work on my own (essay that is). This is a pretty excellent list of paragraphs and reading it just really...well, it saddened me. Because it's just so damn true.

"How racism works:

Consider the following:

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"?
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the
election numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes
positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities
in another when there is a color difference.
— Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

Really, this is something I think everyone should keep in mind while they follow the election.

LOOOONG but Important Article on Palin

2008-09-15T04:33:00.003-04:00

Let's see....cronyism (check), secretism (check), imposing one's own personal 'values' system on one's constituency (check). This is all starting to sound a bit familiar (*cough*gw*cough*)

From Sunday's New York Times:

September 14, 2008

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL POWELL

This article is by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell.

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.

“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he “did not recall” referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.

Hometown Mayor

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.

And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.

But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.

Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.

Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.

Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.

Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.

“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Reform Crucible

Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.

Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”

Government

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.

“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.

Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”

Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.

Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.

Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.

“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”

What I really think

2008-09-13T12:40:00.003-04:00

Well, you probably already know. Nonetheless, my latest letter to the editor-short and sweet:

To the Editor;

I recently read a quote from New York Governor David A. Paterson, who said; "...there are overtones of potential racial coding in the campaign." "I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama black in a sense that would be a negative,".

I definitely think Paterson's on to something here. Take for example, how the McCain camp continuously accuses Obama of elitism and being out of touch with 'regular' Americans. Obama was raised by a single mother and his father was an absent alcoholic. He gained acceptance to the best educational institutes in the world, overcoming the circumstances into which he was born through hard work, perseverance and personal fortitude. You could say he's pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Isn't this what the Republican Party has been excoriating the poor for NOT doing for decades? And yet, when encountering just such a success story, they label him elitist. Elitist? Don't they really mean 'Uppity'?

Paul Krugman On The Lying Republicans

2008-09-12T03:55:00.002-04:00

September 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Blizzard of Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.

So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.

Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.

And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.

Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

BRING IT ON MAMI!

2008-09-04T06:34:00.003-04:00

(I almost didn’t post this because really, WHY are we comparing Obama to the VICE presidential candidate? But since they already went there-hey! I’m right behind them.)

As indicated by the Palin’s speech last night, It is ON! Ok, Mami, let’s take it outside…I mean, ahem…As you wish:

There’s been quite a bit of talk regarding ‘experience’ and comparing Obama and Palin’s. Why? Not really sure since one is a presidential candidate and one is the bizarre pick of a(n addled) presidential candidate. Eh, who am I to quibble. Let’s take a look, though, shall we? (MUCHO mucho Gracias to Otello365 - see original post)

“Comparative Experience: A Scholarly Study Into the Lives and Backgrounds of one Barack Obama and one Nancy Palin”

by Otello365:

1980 - 1984
Obama: B.A. in political science with a specialization in international relations from Columbia University.

Palin: Wasilla High School, captain of the state-champion basketball team. Miss Wasilla, runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, also Miss Congeniality, although that is now disputed.

Him: Ivy League degree. Her: tiara.

1985 - 1990

Obama: moved to Chicago; became a community organizer as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization on Chicago's far South Side. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization.

Moved to Boston to attend Harvard Law School. Selected as an editor and then elected president of the Harvard Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the law review's staff of 80 editors.

Palin: Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, with a minor in political science from the University of Idaho. Brief stint as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations; left to join her husband in commercial fishing.
Him: sterling legal education. Her: sportscaster.

1991 - 1995

Obama: graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School; received contract and advance to write a book ("Dreams from my Father") as well as a fellowship at the University of Chicago Law School. Directed the Illinois Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be. Appointed as a Lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development. Active in several community organizations, usually as a board member.

Palin: member of the Alasaka Independence Party which advocates "Alaska First". Elected to Wasilla city council.

Him: Expert on our nation's fundamental legal principles. Her: plotted to leave the Union; thinks Pledge of Allegiance was written by our founding fathers.

1996 - 2000

Obama: promoted to Senior Lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Elected to the Illinois Senate. Sponsored more than 800 bills. In 2000, lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.

Palin: elected as mayor of Wasilla (population 5,470), defeating the incumbent by a total of 616 votes to 413. Town budget, $8 million (3 millionths of the Federal budget), approximately 100 employees. Reduced property taxes but increased sales taxes. Fired the Wasilla police chief, citing a failure to support her administration. (He then sued Palin on the grounds that he was fired because he supported the campaign of Palin's opponent, but his suit was dismissed when the judge ruled that Palin had the right under state law to fire city employees, even for political reasons.) Hired a DC lobbyist to bring $8 million in earmarks to the city.

Him: sponsored 800 bills. Her: swayed 616 voters.

2001 - 2004

Obama: reelected in 2002 and became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee.

Publicly spoke out against the invasion of Iraq BEFORE the congressional authorization in 2002, and then again before the actual invasion in 2003.

Wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

November 2004: elected to the US Senate, receiving over 3.5 million votes, more than 70% of total.

Palin: elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. Unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor, coming in second in a five-way race in the Republican primary, receiving 19,000 votes. Appointed to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, served as chairman from 2003 to 2004 and also served as Ethics Supervisor. Resigned in protest over the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members. Exposed the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, for doing party work on public time and working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. Director of Ted Stevens' 527 group.

Him: demonstrated the wisdom to oppose the Iraq folly before it even began. Her: hasn't really though much about it - despite the fact that 17 Alaskans have died there

2005 to present

Obama: Sworn in as the fifth-ever African-American U.S. senator. Worked with Republican Senator Lugar to author and implement a program to locate and dismantle stray Russian WMD's. Designated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the party's point man on ethics. Worked with Russ Feingold to pass a major ethics/lobbying reform bill. Cosponsored, with John McCain, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. Called for increased fuel efficiency standards (3 percent every year for 15 years). Assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Veterans' Affairs, and Homeland Security. Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Waged a tremendous battle to become the Democratic presidential nominee. Currently manages 2,500 campaign employees and a budget of $40-$50 million/month.

Palin: 2005: board member, Valley Hospital Association, which runs the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Wasilla.

Became youngest and first female Governor of Alaska, taking office in December, 2006. Auctioned off the Governor's jet on eBay. Took on fellow-Republican Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings. Promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska. Helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits. Formed a sub-cabinet group of advisers to address climate change but does not accept that it is man-made. Objected to listing polar bears as an endangered species because it might hurt oil and gas development in the bears' habitat. Was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it. However, Alaska kept the federal money. Denied her daughter was pregnant before she confirmed it. Supported abstinence-only education.Currently under a bipartisan investigation for abuse of power for dismissing Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner. Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard, but has played no role in national defense activities, even when they involve the Alaska National Guard. (The entire operation is under federal control, and the governor is not briefed on situations.)

Obtained her first passport in 2007 to perform visits to the Alaska National Guard in Kuwait and Germany. (Foreign experience so limited that a stopover in Ireland listed on her resume.)

Him: Impressive figure on the national stage who knows how Congress works and is engaged with foreign policy issues.

Her: small state governor for 21 months; "next to Russia", but that is just 1 of the 190 countries in the world she has never been to.

Conclusion: the word "executive" is not some kind of magic force multiplier when placed in front of the word "experience".

And...of course, the antidote to this insanity: Jon Stewart Interviews, that's right, Rush Limbaugh!!

Why McCain Picking Palin Reminds Me of a Bunch of Dumb Crocodiles (strong language alert)

2008-08-30T05:12:00.008-04:00

(apologies to Stephen Pastis)

So...McCain picks a woman ... McCain picks...a...woman...a woman?

Hey there, now-hold your horses-this isn't just any woman-this is the modern day embodiment of Phyllis Schlafly. Wait? What's that you say? Phyllis Schlafly is STILL alive? WTF? And she just published a book titled, "Supremacists"? Again, WTF???? Is she the anti-christ? She must be, like, a hundred years old by now...oh...she's only ten years older than McCain? Which puts her a WHOPPING 16 years shy of the century mark? Hmmm...

But I digress...Palin...yeah. In McCain's obvious and pathetic attempt to pander to the disappointed Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits, he has managed to choose a vice-presidential candidate who, other than sporting a penis, could not be more diametrically opposed to the values espoused by said pandered group. At the same time, managing to insult ALL women, with this metaphorical pat on the head and reassuring, "There, there now, Dear" gesture.

Well...message to McCain:

Motherfucker, PUHLEEEEASE!

Now, I understand how the cumulative loss of irreplaceable brain cells starts to have an impact as we age, but MUST we be so obvious? Evidentally Palin's main claim to fame is choosing not to abort her fetus...now, there's an unusual decision by a self-declared Chrisitan Conservative, anti-Choice candidate. (NEWSFLASH: I decided to NOT abort TWO fetuses..fetusi?...and it seems to have worked out pretty well. Yay me! I mean, Yay God!) Her other claim to fame (or infame) is her apparent abuse of her governorship in the firing of an Alaskan State Trooper whom just happened to have recently divorced her sister (take THAT, Mrs. Stand-by-your-man Clinton).

So where do the dumb crocodiles come in? Well, if you're familiar with the genius Stephen Pastis' comic strip, "Pearls Before Swine", then you know about the Fraternity of Crocodiles, those wacky amphibians who, in their pathetic attempts to eat the PC, left-leaning Eco-warrier Zebra are constantly inadvertantly offing themselves. What lovable, dumb characters, those zany Crocodiles. Then again, they don't have the future of Western Civilization in their hands.

And neither does McCain...yet.

Let's keep it that way, folks!

Full Text of OBAMA 08/28/08 Speech in Denver

2008-08-29T06:52:00.002-04:00

For your reading pleasure:

To Chairman Dean and my great friend Dick Durbin, and to all my fellow citizens of this great nation: With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Let me express my thanks to the historic slate of candidates who accompanied me on this journey, and especially the one who traveled the farthest_ a champion for working Americans and an inspiration to my daughters and to yours — Hillary Rodham Clinton. To President Clinton, who last night made the case for change as only he can make it; to Ted Kennedy, who embodies the spirit of service; and to the next vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, I thank you. I am grateful to finish this journey with one of the finest statesmen of our time, a man at ease with everyone from world leaders to the conductors on the Amtrak train he still takes home every night.

To the love of my life, our next first lady, Michelle Obama, and to Sasha and Malia, I love you so much, and I'm so proud of all of you.

Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.

It is that promise that has always set this country apart, that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well.

That's why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women, students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors, found the courage to keep it alive.

We meet at one of those defining moments, a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work, and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes, and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.

This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land: enough! This moment, this election is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

Now let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that, we owe him our gratitude and respect. And next week, we'll also hear about those occasions when he's broken with his party as evidence that he can deliver the change that we need.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives, on health care and education and the economy, Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this president. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisers, the man who wrote his economic plan, was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners."

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is, you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well, it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president, when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000, like it has under George Bush.

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job an economy that honors the dignity of work.

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great, a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight.

Because in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton's Army and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.

When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed.

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight, and that tonight is her night as well.

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States.

What is that promise?

It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves, protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity, not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.

That's the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now. So let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes — cut taxes for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stopgap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.

As president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies retool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy; wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

America, now is not the time for small plans.

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance. I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American — if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent.

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses; and the time to protect Social Security for future generations.

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime, by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less because we cannot meet 21st century challenges with a 20th century bureaucracy.

And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our "intellectual and moral strength." Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents; that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework; that fathers must take more responsibility for providing the love and guidance their children need.

Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility — that's the essence of America's promise.

And just as we keep our keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America's promise abroad. If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

For while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell, but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we're wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.

You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but it is not the change we need.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

As commander in chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.

But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America, they have served the United States of America.

So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past. For part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose our sense of higher purpose. And that's what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This, too, is part of America's promise, the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

And you know what it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming. Because I've seen it. Because I've lived it. I've seen it in Illinois, when we provided health care to more children and moved more families from welfare to work. I've seen it in Washington, when we worked across party lines to open up government and hold lobbyists more accountable, to give better care for our veterans and keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands.

And I've seen it in this campaign. In the young people who voted for the first time, and in those who got involved again after a very long time. In the Republicans who never thought they'd pick up a Democratic ballot, but did. I've seen it in the workers who would rather cut their hours back a day than see their friends lose their jobs, in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb, in the good neighbors who take a stranger in when a hurricane strikes and the floodwaters rise.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit that American promise that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours, a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead, people of every creed and color, from every walk of life, is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of Scripture, hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Witnesses to Dr. King’s Dream See a New Hope

2008-08-28T12:47:00.003-04:00

August 28, 2008

By MICHAEL POWELL

DENVER — She figured this dream for dead so many decades ago.

Dezie Woods-Jones plans to stand Thursday night with her California delegation in a stadium here and listen to Barack Obama, the first black major-party presidential nominee in the nation’s history, give his acceptance speech. Ms. Woods-Jones, now in her 60s, is one of a tiny handful of delegates who on the same day in 1963, Aug. 28, stood with hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington and heard a young minister, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., deliver his soaring “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I was young, naïve enough to think I would see that in 5, 10 years,” she said. “Then you see leaders killed, you see police brutality, residential segregation in cities. About 10 years ago I thought: I won’t see this. This is something for my grandchildren.”

She paused, her eyes now red-rimmed.

“What to say except, ‘Oh, hallelujah!’ ” she said. “We have a lot of work, a lot, but we are so much closer than I expected.”

These veterans of the March on Washington are the living connective tissue to the America of 1963, when the police in some cities and towns still beat blacks with truncheons, and the story of their journey is as complicated as race itself.

At least five veterans of that march traveled to Denver this week as Democratic delegates, among them Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who is the last man alive of the 10 who spoke that day at the Lincoln Memorial. This son of sharecroppers, who was almost beaten to death by police officers in Selma, Ala., when he marched with civil rights activists across a bridge, stood on a sun-splashed street in Denver and considered the distance traveled.

His bald head still bears near half-century-old scars.

“We’ve had disappointments since then, but if someone told me I would be here,” Mr. Lewis said, shaking that head. “When people say nothing has changed, I feel like saying, ‘Come walk in my shoes.’ ”

Many veterans of the march will gather at televisions in their living rooms Thursday night, or sit with friends and old comrades and watch an event they would have considered impossible not just in 1963, but perhaps in 1983, or 1993. Theirs is often a cautious optimism; time has left them with a sense of the provisional nature of progress.

David R. Jones, now president of the Community Service Society in New York, recalled milling about in Washington in 1963, a 15-year-old there with classmates from a lefty school in Manhattan. Then Dr. King began to speak, and they fell quiet. “I never saw that kind of a speech,” Mr. Jones said.

He was transported. But the years ahead often cast a deep shadow. Mr. Jones, who is black, was beaten by the side of the road in Maine. He fought for decades to integrate middle-class housing developments and saw young whites wave watermelons at black marchers in Brooklyn. There were great victories, too, not least the election of dozens and dozens of black members of Congress, a few senators, and in his own city, Mayor David N. Dinkins. But he is left with a chary view of history’s march.

“Obama doesn’t have all the burdens of my generation,” Mr. Jones said. “We have one foot in both eras. We’re still living out a lot of anger.”

The Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy can bubble with anger still; his 75 years have not dulled his outrage. He served as the District of Columbia’s delegate in the House in the 1970s and 1980s, and often raged at what he saw as the racism of denying Washington statehood and full voting rights.

Years earlier, as a 30-year-old, he was asked by Dr. King to coordinate the logistics for the March on Washington. Those were precarious days; just a week before, white segregationists had marched through Washington carrying signs reading “Martin Luther Coon go home.” When he traveled across the Potomac to Virginia, he rode in the back of the bus.

“People ask what has changed, and I say don’t trivialize the changes,” Mr. Fauntroy said. “I’m seeing the fruit of the changes that began in 1964. I was close to Bobby Kennedy. He said to me: ‘You know, America’s going to change. Forty years from now, a black man could achieve what my brother has achieved.’ ”

At least 20,000 whites were among the marchers who stood on the Washington Mall that hot and sticky day 45 years ago. Many had ventured south to work for civil rights in the hamlets of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi.

Cappy Harmon, 59, remembered her father, an Episcopal minister who had been jailed in North Carolina, loading her two sisters and her mother into a Volkswagen bus and driving south from Roxbury, Mass.

“It was one of those times when it was very clear what was right and what was wrong,” Ms. Harmon said.

The years to come offered less clarity. The civil rights movement fractured, Dr. King was assassinated, and Ms. Harmon, who works at Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, spoke of exploring her views with a new clarity.

“I was learning about my own racism, which was ingrained in ways that you don’t always understand,” she said. “It really was a long journey for all of us. But, in a way, an exciting one, too.”

On Thursday night she plans to watch the candidate she has supported from the beginning accept the nomination, an experience she likens to that march 45 years ago. “It’s incredibly exciting,” she said.

And yet, even for these veterans, fear can temper their joy. They have seen too many defeats — many supported Jesse Jackson’s two losing runs at the nomination in the 1980s — to assume a near majority of white voters would elect a black man.

Ms. Woods-Jones, president of Black Women Organized for Political Action, nearly vibrates with the joy of living in this moment. She describes her 35-year-old son sitting on a couch with her grandson, crying as he watched Mr. Obama this week. This is a hopeful woman tempered by history.

“The concern for me, well, America has grown to a point,” she said. “Having said that, there will still be those who go into the booth, their closet, and can’t vote for him. I hope, I pray, most of us are past that.”

A little earlier, Archie Spigner, a retired New York city councilman from Queens, sat on a park bench in Denver in his pin-striped suit. Gray now, he was a Young Turk in 1963 when he and other activists forced their white-run union to send buses to Washington. He came back enraptured but noticed that the world had not changed.

Mr. Spigner recalls real estate agents who would not return calls, burger joints in Queens that would not hire his constituents. Months ago, he endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton, because she is his state’s senator (he harbors a lifelong allegiance to the powerful Queens Democratic Party machine) and because she might have had an easier joust with history.

“Would it have been easier with Hillary? Maybe,” he said. “We’re rolling the dice. As a black man, I hope, I hope.”

Ralph Blumenthal contributed reporting from New York, Robbie Brown from Atlanta, and Rachel L. Swarns from Washington.

They're at it again

2008-08-27T14:47:00.005-04:00

August 27, 2008

Nearly 600 Were Arrested in Factory Raid, Officials Say

By ADAM NOSSITER

Federal officials on Tuesday revised upward to 595 the number of suspected illegal immigrants arrested this week in a raid on a Laurel, Miss., factory, making it the largest immigration crackdown on a United States workplace in recent years.

On Monday, the day of the raid, officials said at least 350 people had been arrested.

Officials said 475 of the immigrants were immediately taken by bus to a detention center in the central Louisiana town of Jena and would face deportation. At least eight appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg, Miss., on Tuesday, where they faced criminal charges of aggravated identity theft, which usually means stealing a Social Security number or using a false address.

Of the 595 arrested, 106 were temporarily released for what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials called “humanitarian” reasons — because of illness or the need to care for children — though they still face deportation. Nine unaccompanied 17-year-olds were taken into custody by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The relatively low number of criminal cases could represent a shift in government policy, several immigration experts said, particularly in view of the hundreds who were prosecuted and sent to jail after a similar raid at a meatpacking plant at Postville, Iowa, in May.

“I’m going to hope that it is,” said Kathleen C. Walker, a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. After Postville, “they got a lot of heat from different avenues,” Ms. Walker said, referring to the outcry from advocates over the mass, rapid-fire nature of the criminal proceedings, which took place on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Iowa.

But an ICE spokeswoman said some of the 475 could still face criminal charges, and she rejected the suggestion that the government’s policy had changed.

“Absolutely not,” said the spokeswoman, Barbara Gonzalez, in an e-mail message. “In fact it’s the opposite.” She added that more people were being charged with crimes by ICE every year.

A Mississippi immigrants rights group continued Tuesday to criticize the large-scale raid, in which numerous federal immigration agents descended on Howard Industries, a major employer in southern Mississippi and a manufacturer of electrical transformers, among other things. Officials with Howard did not return phone calls Tuesday.

“It’s just horrific,” said Victoria Cintra, an organizer for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. “We’ve got two families where the mom and the dad were released with ankle bracelets” — electronic tracking devices — “and they have children. They’ve got bills to pay and kids to feed. We’ve got a woman who is 24, 26 weeks pregnant, and she’s got a husband, brother, father and brother-in-law who were detained.”

One of the workers who appeared in court on Tuesday, Paula Gomez, a native of Mexico who worked at Howard, was accused of using a stolen Social Security number, according to court records.

“Most of the families are not leaving their homes because they are afraid,” said the Rev. Ken Ramon-Landry of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Hattiesburg, speaking of family members of those who had been taken away.

The government said it had acted on a tip from a union member, but union officials in Mississippi said they did not know the identity of the tipster. But Robert Shaffer of the Mississippi A.F.L.-C.I.O. said it was “common knowledge” that Howard and other area employers “kind of cater to the undocumented workers.”

“You ask anyone in the Laurel-Hattiesburg area,” Mr. Shaffer said.

NY TIMES WEIGHS IN ON POSTVILLE-Take TWO

2008-08-01T05:30:00.010-04:00

August 1, 2008

Editorial

'The Jungle,' Again

A story from the upside-down world of immigration and labor:

A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develops an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group shows workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand tells a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor experts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called "a kosher 'Jungle.' "

The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.

In May, the government swoops in and arrests ... the workers, hundreds of them, for having false identity papers. The raid's catch is so huge that the detainees are bused from little Postville to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo. The defendants, mostly immigrants from Guatemala, are not charged with the usual administrative violations, but with "aggravated identity theft," a serious crime.

They are offered a deal: They can admit their guilt to lesser charges, waive their rights, including the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, spend five months in prison, then be deported. Or, they can spend six months or more in jail without bail while awaiting a trial date, face a minimum two-year prison sentence and be deported anyway.

Nearly 300 people agree to the five months, after being hustled through mass hearings, with one lawyer for 17 people, each having about 30 minutes of consultation per client. The plea deal is a brutal legal vise, but the immigrants accept it as the quickest way back to their spouses and children, hundreds of whom are cowering in a Catholic church, afraid to leave and not knowing how they will survive. The workers are scattered to federal lockups around the country. Many families still do not know where they are. The plant's owners walk freely.

This is enforcement run amok. As Julia Preston reported in The Times, the once-silent workers of Agriprocessors now tell of a host of abusive practices, of rampant injuries and of exhausted children as young as 13 wielding knives on the killing floor. A young man said in an affidavit that he started at 16, in 17-hour shifts, six days a week. "I was very sad, and I felt like I was a slave."

Instead of receiving merciful treatment as defendants who also are victims, the workers have been branded as the kind of predator who steals identities to empty bank accounts. Accounts from Postville suggest that that's not remotely what they were. "Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served," said Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language interpreter for many of the workers. "This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write Spanish, let alone English."

The harsh prosecution at Postville is an odd and cruel shift for the Bush administration, which for years had voiced compassion for exploited workers and insisted that immigration had to be fixed comprehensively or not at all.

Now it has abandoned mercy and proportionality. It has devised new and harsher traps, as in Postville, to prosecute the weak and the poor. It has increased the fear and desperation of workers who are irresistible to bottom-feeding businesses precisely because they are fearful and desperate. By treating illegal low-wage workers as a de facto criminal class, the government is trying to inflate the menace they pose to a level that justifies its rabid efforts to capture and punish them. That is a fraudulent exercise, and a national disgrace.

FIGHTING BACK

July 28, 2008

Iowa Rally Protests Raid and Conditions at Plant

By JULIA PRESTON

POSTVILLE, Iowa — About 1,000 people, including Hispanic immigrants, Catholic clergy members, rabbis and activists, marched through the center of this farm town on Sunday and held a rally at the entrance to a kosher meatpacking plant that was raided in May by immigration authorities.

The march was called to protest working conditions in the plant, owned by Agriprocessors Inc., and to call for Congressional legislation to give legal status to illegal immigrants. The four rabbis, from Minnesota and Wisconsin, attended the march to publicize proposals to revise kosher food certification to include standards of corporate ethics and treatment of workers.

The march drew a counterprotest by about 150 people, organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes illegal immigrants and proposals to give them legal status.

At one point, tension surged as the two sides shouted slogans at each other through bullhorns from opposite sidewalks of the main street of this town with a population of about 2,200. The marchers said, “Stop the raids!” Protesters across the street responded, “Illegals go home!”

No incidents of disorder were reported by the police.

The debate over kosher standards has intensified since the May 12 raid at the plant, in which 389 illegal immigrants, the majority from Guatemala, were detained. Reports by many of those workers of widespread labor violations in the plant have been prominent news in the Jewish media, provoking discussion of whether Jews should buy meat and poultry products made there.

Agriprocessors, owned and operated by Aaron Rubashkin and his family, is the largest kosher plant in the United States. Its products, sold as Aaron’s Best and Rubashkin’s, among others, dominate the nation’s market for kosher meat and poultry.

The plant had been cited for state and federal labor violations before the raid, including inadequate worker safety protections and unpaid overtime. Since the raid, immigrants under 18, the legal age in Iowa for working on a meatpacking floor, have said they worked long hours at Agriprocessors, often at night.

Agriprocessors’ beef and poultry are killed and packaged using procedures specified by strict Jewish dietary laws, and are certified by rabbis who are recognized authorities on kosher food.

In 2006, after reports in The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, of harsh working conditions at Agriprocessors, a commission of inquiry organized by Conservative Jewish leaders criticized the plant’s operations and called for more safety training and increased inspections by state labor officials.

A member of that commission, Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., proposed a new system of kosher certification that would include consideration of working conditions in plants where the food is produced.

Rabbi Harold Kravitz, from the Adath Jeshurun synagogue in Minnetonka, Minn., said on Sunday that the health and safety issues raised by the commission did not appear to have been addressed. Speaking to the rally on a dusty driveway in front of the plant, Rabbi Kravitz said that Jewish laws governing the kosher processing of animals should not be separated from Jewish ethical principles.

“Proper business conduct and treatment of workers also are important Jewish values,” Rabbi Kravitz said.

He and several Jewish community activists met on Sunday morning here with Chaim Abrahams, a top manager of the plant. Aaron Goldsmith, a Postville resident who participated in the meeting, said Mr. Abrahams reported that about 360 of the arrested workers had received all payments that they were owed and that Agriprocessors was making weekly deliveries of food to about 30 immigrant families in Postville.

Although Agriprocessors executives have largely avoided speaking to the news media, Getzel Rubashkin, 24, a grandson of Aaron Rubashkin, emerged from the plant and approached the rally.

“There’s no argument here,” said Getzel Rubashkin, who said he works in the plant but was not a representative of Agriprocessors and was speaking for himself. Agriprocessors managers, he said, “treat their workers well and they pay their workers well and there is no other policy.”

“The company is not on the other side of any of these people,” he said, referring to the immigrants lined up behind banners across the street from the plant.

Getzel Rubashkin said a large number of illegal immigrants had been hired because they presented identity documents that he called convincing forgeries.

“The high number of illegal people who were working here is more a testimony to the quality of their deceit, of their papers,” Getzel Rubashkin said. He said the company did not criticize immigration authorities for the raid.

“Obviously some of the people here were presenting false documents,” Getzel Rubashkin said. “Immigration authorities somehow picked it up and they did what they are supposed to do, they came and picked them up. God bless them for it.”

On Postville’s main street, the protesters opposing the immigrants’ march praised Iowa federal prosecutors, who convicted 297 illegal immigrant workers from the plant, most on criminal document fraud charges.

“It’s a felony when you take someone’s identity, and we think that needs to be out there when you talk about the supposed injustices against undocumented workers,” said Susan Tully of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organizer of the counterprotest.

Like the marchers, the protesters were also angry at Agriprocessors managers. To date, the only managers arrested were two floor supervisors, on immigration harboring charges.

“It’s cheap labor, that’s what they’re getting away with,” said Ruthie Hendrycks, 48, of a group called Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform. “I want to see these employers that hired children and illegal aliens do serious jail time.”

Guess What?? Postville Slaughterhouse Owners were Child slave masters!!

2008-07-27T18:50:00.002-04:00

July 27, 2008

After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries

By JULIA PRESTON

POSTVILLE, Iowa — When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.

Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.

One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”

At first, labor officials said the raid had disrupted federal and state investigations already under way at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher plant. The raid has drawn criticism for what some see as harsh tactics against the immigrants, with little action taken against their employers.

But in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.

Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant. They have told investigators that they were routinely put to work without safety training and were forced to work long shifts without overtime or rest time. Under-age workers said their bosses knew how young they were.

Because of the dangers of the work, it is illegal in Iowa for a company to employ anyone under 18 on the floor of a meatpacking plant.

In a statement, Agriprocessors said it did not employ workers under 18, and would fire any under-age worker found to have presented false documents to obtain work.

To investigate the child labor accusations, the federal Labor Department has joined with the Iowa Division of Labor Services in cooperation with the state attorney general’s office, officials for the three agencies said.

Sonia Parras Konrad, an immigration lawyer in private practice in Des Moines, is representing many of the young workers. She said she had so far identified 27 workers under 18 who were employed in the packing areas of the plant, most of them illegal immigrants from Guatemala, including some who were not arrested in the raid.

“Some of these boys don’t even shave,” Ms. Parras Konrad said. “They’re goofy. They’re teenagers.”

At a meeting here Saturday, three members of the House Hispanic Caucus — including its chairman, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois — heard seven immigrant minors describe working in the Agriprocessors plant.

Iowa labor officials said they rarely encounter child labor cases even though the state has many meatpacking plants.

“We don’t normally have many under-age folks working in our state,” said Gail Sheridan-Lucht, a lawyer for the state labor department, who said she could not comment specifically on the Agriprocessors investigation.

Other investigations are also under way. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is examining accusations of sexual harassment of women at the plant. Lawyers for the immigrants are preparing a suit under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act for wage and hour violations.

Federal justice and immigration officials, speaking on Thursday at a hearing in Washington of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee, said their investigations were continuing. A federal grand jury in Cedar Rapids is hearing evidence.

While federal prosecutors are primarily focusing on immigration charges, they may also be looking into labor violations. Search warrant documents filed in court before the raid, which was May 12, cited a report by an anonymous immigrant who was sent to work in the plant by immigration authorities as an undercover informant. The immigrant saw “a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees.” Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards.

In another episode, the informant said a floor supervisor had blindfolded an immigrant with duct tape. “The floor supervisor then took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it,” the informant said, adding that the blow did not cause “serious injuries.”

So far, 297 illegal immigrants from the May raid have been convicted of document fraud and other criminal charges, and most were sentenced to five months in prison, after which they will be deported.

A spokesman for Agriprocessors, Menachem Lubinsky, said the company could not comment on an active investigation.

“The company has two objectives in mind: to restore its production to meet the demands of the kosher food market and to be in full compliance with all local, state and federal laws,” Mr. Lubinsky said. Reports of labor violations at the plant “remain allegations only, that no agency has charged the company with,” he said.

The Agriprocessors kosher plant here has been owned and operated since 1987 by Aaron Rubashkin and his family. His son Sholom was the plant’s top manager until he was removed by his father in May after the raid. The plant’s products are distributed across the country under brands including Aaron’s Best and Aaron’s Choice.

Most of the young immigrants were hired at Agriprocessors after they presented false Social Security cards or other documents saying they were older than they were.

But in an interview here, Elmer L. said he had told floor supervisors that he was under 18. He asked that his last name not be published on advice of his lawyer, Ms. Parras Konrad, because he is a minor in deportation proceedings.

“They asked me how old I was,” Elmer L. said. “They could see that sometimes I could not keep up with the work.”

Elmer L. said that he regularly worked 17 hours a day at the plant and was paid $7.25 an hour. He said he was not paid overtime consistently.

“My work was very hard, because they didn’t give me my breaks, and I wasn’t getting very much sleep,” he said. “They told us they were going to call immigration if we complained.”

Elmer L. said that he was clearing cow innards from the slaughter floor last Aug. 26 when a supervisor he described as a rabbi began yelling at him, then kicked him from behind. The blow caused a freshly-sharpened knife to fly up and cut his elbow.

He was sent to a hospital where doctors closed the laceration with eight stitches. But he said that when he returned, his elbow still stinging, to ask for some time off, his supervisor ordered him back to work.

The next day, as he was lifting a cow’s tongue, the stitches ruptured, Elmer L. said, and the wound bled again. He said he was given a bandage at the plant and sent back to work. The incident is confirmed in a worker’s injury report filed on Aug. 31, 2007, by Agriprocessors with the Iowa labor department.

Gilda O., a Guatemalan who said she was 16, said she worked the night shift plucking chickens. She said she was working to help her parents pay off debts.

Another Guatemalan, Joel R., who gave his age as 15, said he dropped out of school in Postville after the eighth grade and took a job at Agriprocessors because his mother became ill. He said he worked from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. in a section called “quality control,” a job he described as relatively easy that he got because he speaks English.

But he said he and other workers were under constant pressure from supervisors. “They yell at us when we don’t hurry up, when we don’t work fast enough for them,” said Joel R. He and Gilda O. did not want their last names published because they are illegal immigrants and they were not arrested in the raid.

Most of the young immigrants have been released from detention but remain in deportation proceedings. Ms. Parras Konrad said she will ask immigration authorities to grant them special four-year temporary visas, known as U visas, which are offered to immigrants who assist in law enforcement investigations. Iowa labor officials are considering supporting some of those requests, Ms. Sheridan-Lucht said.

Agriprocessors executives said they had begun an overhaul of hiring and labor practices, starting with hiring a compliance officer, James G. Martin, a former United States attorney in Missouri. In an interview, Mr. Martin said the company had contracted with an outside firm, the Jacobson Staffing Company, to handle its hiring, and new safety officers, including one former federal work safety inspector.

Mark Lauritsen, a vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant, said he remained skeptical. “They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.

AMATEURS

2008-07-23T06:28:00.008-04:00

The Morris County Daily Record (quite possibly THE worse local paper I've encountered in my life-long newspaper addiction) gets into the frugality game with this ground-breaking advice:

Saving at the store

Some money-saving tips from panelists at the Affordable Food Summit.
• Prepare a spending plan
• Don't shop on an empty stomach
• Shop with a list, set a budget and stick to it
• Buy fruits and vegetables in season
• Pack brown-bag lunches
• Look at generic and store brands
• Consider incorporating more meatless meals, less junk food, smaller portions
"What's good for your bottom line can sometimes be good for your waistline," said Barbara O'Neill of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension.

wow. deep, man

IN OTHER DR NEWS....

Flight with 7 congressmen makes emergency landing

By CHEVEL JOHNSON
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS -- A Continental Airlines flight carrying former presidential candidate Ron Paul and six other members of Congress to Washington, D.C., made an emergency landing in New Orleans on Tuesday after a loss in cabin pressure.

The seven congressmen, all from Texas, were trying to get back in time for a Tuesday night vote on an aviation safety bill when the flight landed without incident, a spokesman for one of the representatives said. ....

sorry. Couldn't resist.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

2008-07-13T06:07:00.002-04:00

YA GOTTA BE ASLEEP TO BELIEVE IT
r.i.p. George

NY TIMES WEIGHS IN ON POSTVILLE

2008-07-13T05:11:00.004-04:00

July 13, 2008

Editorial

The Shame of Postville, Iowa

Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

Court interpreters are normally impartial participants and keep their opinions to themselves. But Dr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, said he was so offended by the cruelty of the prosecutions that he felt compelled to break his silence. “A line was crossed at Postville,” he wrote.

FIGHTING THE MAN IN WATERLOO

2008-07-11T04:51:00.003-04:00

Do you mean to tell me that the immigrant detainees in Waterloo were essentially denied their constitutionally guaranteed rights????!!!

July 11, 2008

An Interpreter Speaking Up for Migrants

By JULIA PRESTON

WATERLOO, Iowa — In 23 years as a certified Spanish interpreter for federal courts, Erik Camayd-Freixas has spoken up in criminal trials many times, but the words he uttered were rarely his own.

Then he was summoned here by court officials to translate in the hearings for nearly 400 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a raid on May 12 at a meatpacking plant. Since then, Mr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, has taken the unusual step of breaking the code of confidentiality among legal interpreters about their work.

In a 14-page essay he circulated among two dozen other interpreters who worked here, Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,” Professor Camayd-Freixas said in the interview. “The great majority were under the impression they were there because of being illegal in the country, not because of Social Security fraud.”

During fast-paced hearings in May, 262 of the illegal immigrants pleaded guilty in one week and were sentenced to prison — most for five months — for knowingly using false Social Security cards or legal residence documents to gain jobs at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in nearby Postville. It was the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

The essay has provoked new questions about the Agriprocessors proceedings, which had been criticized by criminal defense and immigration lawyers as failing to uphold the immigrants’ right to due process. Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee, said she would hold a hearing on the prosecutions and call Professor Camayd-Freixas as a witness.

“The essay raises questions about whether the charges brought were supported by the facts,” Ms. Lofgren said.

Bob Teig, a spokesman for Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, said the immigrants’ constitutional rights were not compromised.

“All defendants were provided with experienced criminal attorneys and interpreters before they made any decisions in their criminal cases,” Mr. Teig said. “Once they made their choices, two independent judicial officers determined the defendants were making their choices freely and voluntarily, were satisfied with their attorney, and were, in fact, guilty.”

Mr. Teig said the judges in the cases were satisfied with the guilty pleas.

“The judges had the right and duty to reject any guilty plea where a defendant was not guilty,” Mr. Teig said. “No plea was rejected.”

The essay by Professor Camayd-Freixas, who is the director of a program to train language interpreters at the university, has also caused a stir among legal interpreters. In telephone calls and debates through e-mail, they have discussed whether it was appropriate for a translator to speak publicly about conversations with criminal defendants who were covered by legal confidentiality.

“It is quite unusual that a legal interpreter would go to this length of writing up an essay and taking a strong stance,” said Nataly Kelly, an analyst with Common Sense Advisory, a marketing research company focused on language services. Ms. Kelly is a certified legal interpreter who is the author of a manual about interpreting.

The Agriprocessors hearings were held in temporary courtrooms in mobile trailers and a ballroom at the National Cattle Congress, a fairgrounds here in Waterloo. Professor Camayd-Freixas worked with one defense lawyer, Sara L. Smith, translating her discussions with nine clients she represented. He also worked in courtrooms during plea and sentencing hearings.

Ms. Smith praised Professor Camayd-Freixas’s essay, saying it captured the immigrants’ distress during “the surreal two weeks” of the proceedings. She said he had not revealed information that was detrimental to her cases.

But she cautioned that interpreters should not commonly speak publicly about conversations between lawyers and clients. “It is not a practice that I would generally advocate as I could envision circumstances under which such revelations could be damaging to a client’s case,” Ms. Smith said.

Professor Camayd-Freixas said he had considered withdrawing from the assignment, but decided instead that he could play a valuable role by witnessing the proceedings and making them known.

He suggested many of the immigrants could not have knowingly committed the crimes in their pleas. “Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security card was or what purpose it served,” he wrote.

He said many immigrants could not distinguish between a Social Security card and a residence visa, known as a green card. They said they had purchased fake documents from smugglers in Postville, or obtained them directly from supervisors at the Agriprocessors plant. Most did not know that the original cards could belong to Americans and legal immigrants, Mr. Camayd-Freixas said.

Ms. Smith went repeatedly over the charges and the options available to her clients, Professor Camayd-Freixas said. He cited the reaction of one Guatemalan, Isaías Pérez Martínez: “No matter how many times his attorney explained it, he kept saying, ‘I’m illegal, I have no rights. I’m nobody in this country. Just do whatever you want with me.’ ”

Professor Camayd-Freixas said Mr. Pérez Martínez wept during much of his meeting with Ms. Smith.

Ms. Smith, like more than a dozen other court-appointed defense lawyers, concluded that none of the immigrants’ legal options were good. Prosecutors had evidence showing they had presented fraudulent documents when they were hired at Agriprocessors.

In plea agreements offered by Mr. Dummermuth, the immigrants could plead guilty to a document fraud charge and serve five months in prison. Otherwise, prosecutors would try them on more serious identity theft charges carrying a mandatory sentence of two years. In any scenario, even if they were acquitted, the immigrants would eventually be deported.

Worried about families they had been supporting with their wages, the immigrants readily chose to plead guilty because they did understand that was the fastest way to return home, Professor Camayd-Freixas said.

“They were hoping and they were begging everybody to deport them,” he said.

Ms. Smith said she was convinced after examining the prosecutors’ evidence that it was not in her clients’ interests to go to trial.

“I think they understood what their options were,” she said. “I tried to make it very clear.”

Legal interpreters familiar with the profession said that Professor Camayd-Freixas’ essay, while a notable departure from the norm, did not violate professional standards.

Isabel Framer, a certified legal interpreter from Ohio who is chairwoman of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, said Professor Camayd-Freixas did not go public while the cases were still in court or reveal information that could not be discerned from the record. Ms. Framer said she was speaking for herself because her organization had not taken an official position on the essay.

“Interpreters, just like judges and attorneys, have an obligation to maintain the confidentialit of the process,” she said. “But they don’t check their ethical standards at the door.”

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