Kos’ ActBlue Not My Progressive Cuppa Tea

Kos, of DailyKos fame, created a little whiles back ActBlue, an “online clearinghouse for Democratic action.” I like the idea of using the net to fundraisefor worthwhile candidates, but he added a page today that I’m not necessarily behind 100%. The new page lists candidates that, “have been tireless advocates and allies of the netroots. Their continued support will help ensure the long-term health and viability of a free, open, and healthy netroots. All members of this page are incumbents who have shown a commitment to blog participation, opposed efforts to regulate the netroots, and are proponents of net neutrality.”

I see the benefits of supporting the netroots, encouraging blog participation and fighting for net neutrality, but I don’t like the idea of backing electeds on a one-issue basis (in this case, netroots issues). The electeds listed thus far (Slaughter of NY, Miller of NC, and Conyers of MI) all would receive my general backing, but as this list expands, I’d be worried single-issue fundraising will make things more compicated than they need to be.

I believe that netroots campaigns are a powerful tool.  They must be defended as a tool for fighting for larger issues. For me, netroots issues aren’t the end-all but the desired end result is increased and open democratic participation — supporting a candidate simply because of their support for netroots activism is not the way forward.

I support your work, Kos, but I gotta disagree with ya on this one.

C’Mere Ya Lil’ Bugger: Another Gov’t Laptop Swiped

Note to self: Create new category on blog titled, “Jesus Christ, really? Again?”

WaPo blogger Brian Krebs reports that the FTC, the commission charged with enforcing safeguards for consumer privacy, has had two laptops with individual’s personal information stolen. He quotes the info, according to the the FTC statement was, “gathered in law enforcement investigations and included, variously, names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and in some instances, financial account numbers.”

Krebs quotes Brian Krenim, a firewall and software designer, discussing the sale of these data leaks and losses. “By the time you add up a million here and 900,000 there and 4 million over there, you’ve covered most of the credit-holding and wage-earning population of the U.S.,” Ranum wrote in an e-mail. “I’m sure my math is suspect, but I estimate that there are about 156 Americans whose personal information has not yet been compromised.”

Anybody wanna write an email to the company auditing the CIA/FBI/Treasury program intercepting global bank records and simply ask them to do nothing more than not bring our info home on laptops?

We can say something like, ‘I don’t like that you have this info, but at the very least leave it at the office! There’s no need for you to bring it home on a laptop. I get that ‘the terrorist masterminds’ are hard workers and eat/sleep/live destruction of our beloved country, but go home and enjoy our remaining freedoms — sleep with your spouce, goto church, watch SportsCenter or the new season of Entourage, cook some food, whatever, I don’t care… but, please, for the love of God and country, give the data crunching a break for the night and LEAVE THAT SHIT AT THE OFFICE!’ (Boldface text at your own discrection.)

P.S. If you would really like to get in touch with them: Booz Allen Hamilton, 8283 Greensboro Drive, McLean, VA 22102 or call (703) 902-5000.

Fed Election Comm. “Intimidates” Soft Money Donors

The Hill reports, “The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is being accused of attempting to intimidate soft-money donors to 527s by targeting the donors for questioning.”

The Fringe Right is clearly setting itself up as the collective martyr well in advance of the 2008 election, so they can have a long established paper trail concerning all the evil-doing at the FEC.

The new regulation, which took effect in January 2005, stated that 527s would be subject to regulation if, when seeking money, they “indicated” to donors that the money would be spent to support or oppose a federal candidate…

“I know for a fact that the FEC has subpoenaed donors who may have contributed to 527s in past election cycles and believe that technique is more rooted in preventing future donation to other 527s than anything else,” said Chris LaCivita, a former senior adviser to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and former head of Progress for America, both right-wing groups.

Another strategist connected with a prominent conservative 527 group, the Club for Growth, confirmed that the FEC is targeting donors.

“I’ve heard that lots of other groups have gotten subpoenas and requests for depositions of donors,” said David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, which is tied up in litigation with the FEC. Keating said he was not talking about donors to his group.

Expect that these donors will hold their first full-scale press conference denouncing the America-weakening FEC featuring a Publishers’ Clearinghouse-sized box of Kleenex.

Privacy International Files Suit

Privacy International filed suit against SWIFT, the financial industry cooperative clearinghouse which provided millions of private banking records to the CIA, FBI, and US Treasury Dept. According to the International Herand Tribune:

The complaints were filed in all 25 member nations of the European Union, plus Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Iceland. The group said it also filed a complaint in the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

“Swift appears to have violated data protection rules in Europe by making these transfers without the consent of the individuals involved, and without the approval of European judicial or administrative authorities,” Mr. Davies(the director of Privacy International) said. “The scale of the operation, involving millions of records, places this disclosure in the realm of a fishing exercise rather than a legally authorized investigation.”

Privacy International lays out seven points, each of which will necessarily be unpacked in the coming days and weeks:

There are a number of inconsistencies in the accounts so far.

1. The U.S. claims that this is a narrowly focused programme that is compliant with the law, while the Belgian Government has concerns that the data is accessed without authorisation by a Belgian judge.
2. The Bush Administration claims that it has been open with reporting this to Congressional leaders, but some found out as late as May 2006 once it became clear that the story was about to break.
3. As with most cases of international co-operation, the country seizing the data, i.e. the U.S., is claiming universal jurisdiction while the regime responsible for protecting the data, the EU, is disavowing any responsibility.
4. The U.S. claims that the data is only used for combatting terrorism, but then admits that it has shared data on other illegal transactions with relevant agencies.
5. The U.S. claims that they only get access to specific data when it is relevant to an investigation, but this does not explain how they have been able to access to the entire database of billions of transactions.
6. The U.S. claims that it the data is searched only when it is relevant to an investigation and then admit that there were possibly hundreds of thousands of such searches.
7. The U.S. claims that it had briefed the international oversight bodies, e.g. G-10 bank central governors, but the Central Bank governors deny that they have jurisdiction over such activities and the Belgian Minister of Justice admitted that she heard of the transfers from the media.

These inconsistencies have severe implications for trust and confidence in the international finance sector. PI calls for an immediate halt of the transfers until essential questions regarding due process and privacy protections can be answered adequately.

New Page: Domestic Spying – Bank Info

We’ve just launched a new page about the latest aspect of the Bush Administration’s broad domestic spying programs. The page will be continuously updated, so please let us know if you think there are any articles or resources we should include.

 

New page: Domestic Spying – Bank Info

And Here I Thought My Freedom to Shop Would Be My ONE Protected Liberty!

A quick question:

 

 

I’m no lawyerly law guy or nothin, but how is it that limiting campaign contributions (ie, money) is limiting speech, but tracking my money isn’t like tracking my speech?

I didn’t get it, so through my good friends at Fox News I asked Sen Arlen Specter what he though. Arlen said:

“I think it’s premature to call for a prosecution of The New York Times, just like I think it’s premature to say that the administration is entirely correct. I think you start with the proposition that there is not the privacy interest in bank records that there is in a telephone conversation. And let’s find out more before we try to make a judgment here.”

 

Bad proposition, Arlen, bad proposition. I gotta ask his mommy to remind him that he should never assume, cuz we all know what he’ll make.

I’m told shopping got us through September 11. Regardless, I’m kinda bummed that the government now seems to know about my tandem addictions to cottage cheese and porn, which is totally unrelated to the GWOT. God only knows what this Administration is capable of if we no longer have the freedom to shop privately.

It begs the question:

If we’re no longer able to shop, how am I, an everyday Joe, able to battle the terrorists in my everyday life?

 

Net Neutrality Update

The vote that was supposed to take place this last Thursday, June 22nd, on the issue of net neutrality was delayed.

While everyone works and waits to see what happens next, check out what some of the opposition to net neutrality has been doing according to Russel Shaw of ZDnet.

As AT&T continues its battles with net neutrality proponents on Capitol Hill this week, I thought it would be interesting to see where AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre has been spending his own money this campaign and election cycle.

I went to Opensecrets.org, and checked under “Whitacre.”

I found several donations, most of them to Net Neutrality opponents.

These personal $1,000 campaign donations from the controversial and outspoken AT&T chief have been to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas); Rep. Michael McCall (R-Texas), and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada). Whitacre has written $500 checks to the campaigns of Sen. George Allen (R-Virginia) and Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-New Jersey).

Whitacre has also donated $1,000 to the pro-Republican Keep Our Majority PAC, and a like amount to Sen. John McCain’s Straight Talk America.

Also, thanks to Davey D for sending out this article/link on the topic.  The article is a good summary of the issue, meant to be sort of a rally cry before the vote on Thursday.  Since the vote was delayed, it still applies.  A couple interesting points from the article are below, even though you should read the whole thing.

Scott Goodstein of savetheinternet.com….points out that the U.S. telecom companies claim to be the most advanced in the world and that they need financial incentive in order to create faster speeds and innovations, but the U.S. is actually behind in development.

"There are actually 15 countries ahead of the U.S. in the percentage of its citizens who have access to broadband Internet access," Goodstein said by phone. "The highest speed in the U.S. is 1.5 megabits per second which is provided at a cost of around $30 per month. In France, users get 25 megabits per second for about $6 per month. In some Asian countries, customers are about to start to receive 1000 megabits per second. The argument that U.S. telecom companies need an end of network neutrality in order to provide more than 6 megabits per second is absurd. Its a money grab." He also points out that the telecom companies did not invent the Internet and that they "have been subsidized millions of dollars by U.S. taxpayers to provide universal broadband access, but have yet to deliver."

Possibly the darkest possibility if the Senate does not uphold net neutrality, is that telecom companies will outright deny access to certain voices. Telecom companies have been lobbying to assert a free speech right based on a United States Supreme Court ruling that first amendment speakers may not be compelled to provide a platform for a different persons speech. In other words, if the telecom companies do not agree with the position of a particular group or individual, they do not have to make that group or individuals position available to its customers

SWIFT Responds

The response from the bank association that narc'ed the bank data to the Bush Administration:

To the SWIFT community:

There is an article in the June 23 edition of New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other US newspapers on terrorism investigations and the role of SWIFT. Let us begin by underscoring SWIFT’s commitment to the highest standards of integrity, confidentiality and availability of the messaging data we transmit on behalf of our members and users.

As you may know from the User Handbook and swift.com, SWIFT has a longstanding history, beginning in the 1990s, of cooperating with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and international organisations such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in their efforts to prevent misuse of the financial system. Our members support this policy.

The following is SWIFT’s official statement on the articles:

Statement on Compliance by SWIFT

SWIFT is the industry owned cooperative supplying secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to over 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. SWIFT is solely a messaging intermediary for transmitting secure and confidential financial messages between financial institutions. SWIFT is not a bank, nor does it hold accounts of any customers.

SWIFT takes its role as a key infrastructure of the international financial system very seriously and cooperates with authorities to prevent illegal uses of the international financial system. Where required, SWIFT has to comply with valid subpoenas. SWIFT’s compliance policy is published on www.swift.com.

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, SWIFT responded to compulsory subpoenas for limited sets of data from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury. Our fundamental principle has been to preserve the confidentiality of our users’ data while complying with the lawful obligations in countries where we operate. Striking that balance has guided SWIFT through this process with the United States Department of the Treasury.

SWIFT negotiated with the U.S. Treasury over the scope and oversight of the subpoenas. Through this process, SWIFT received significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced under the subpoenas. Independent audit controls provide additional assurance that these protections are fully complied with.

All of these actions have been undertaken with advice from international and U.S. legal counsel and following our longstanding procedures on compliance, established by our Board.

SWIFT is overseen by a senior committee drawn from the G-10 central banks and has informed them of this matter.

SWIFT values the trust that our members have placed in us for more than 30 years and we will continue to work vigorously to protect and maintain that confidence.

What we have written should give our community a better sense of how seriously SWIFT takes its responsibilities and how we have tried to deal with these matters in the most professional manner. The SWIFT Board and Executive have done their utmost to get the right balance in fulfilling their obligations to the authorities in a manner protective of the interests of the company and its members.

Leonard H. Schrank, CEO, SWIFT

Yawar Shah, Chairman of the Board, SWIFT

Stephan Zimmermann, Deputy Chairman, SWIFT

While Your Were Sleeping: Pentagon Document Classifies Homosexuality as a Mental Disorder

In case you missed it:

A Pentagon document that surfaced this week classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, grouping it with retardation and personality disorder [full document in PDF here, or here for the brief list from p68]. The document has outraged medical professionals, psychologists, and members of Congress, who disagree with this labeling and its discriminatory undertones. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Psychological Association have both written letters condemning this classification, while nine members of Congress have asked for a full review of the document and policy.

The Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSMM) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which first called attention to this classification, points out that this document was re-certified as “current” in 2003, despite the fact that the APA removed homosexuality from DSM-IV-TR (the definitive guide to mental health classifications) over 30 years ago. Dr. Steven Samuels, a social psychologist who has worked with the military, suggests that this classification is not scientifically derived, but socially and politically motivated. According to CSSMM, he stated that, “to classify homosexuality with mental retardation, impulse control, and substance abuse, shows at best an ignorance of basic psychology and at worse a purposeful intolerance and discriminatory practice that is incompatible with the high values of the military.”

The Pentagon maintains a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regard to closeted homosexuals and prohibits openly gay women and men from serving at all. Within the last year, 726 military members were discharged under the “don’t ask” policy, signaling the first increase in dismissals since 2001. In response to the recent criticism, a Pentagon spokesman said the document is currently under review.

For full supporting docs from the UCSB Center, click here.

Finance Expert: The Bank Data Spying Program Has Been Public

From the Counterterrorism Blog:

 

Reports of US Monitoring of SWIFT Transactions Are Not New: The Practice Has Been Known By Terrorism Financing Experts For Some Time; By Victor Comras

Yesterday’s New York Times Story on US monitoring of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) transactions certainly hit the street with a splash. It awoke the general public to the practice. In that sense, it was truly new news. But reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:

“The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.”

Suggestions that SWIFT and other similar transactions should be monitored by investigative agencies dealing with terrorism, money laundering and other criminal activity have been out there for some time. An MIT paper discussed the pros and cons of such practices back in 1995. Canada’s Financial Intelligence Unit, FINTRAC,, for one, has acknowledged receiving information on Canadian origin SWIFT transactions since 2002. Of course, this info is provided by the banks themselves.

While monitoring SWIFT-handled transfers is a useful tool in identifying and tracking certain suspicious transactions, its importance should not be overstated. The information in SWIFT’s hands is no better than the information which it is provided by the banks handling the transactions at both ends. And there is already an obligation on banks in the US and Europe to report all “suspicious transactions” The problem is that FINCEN and the corresponding FIUS in other countries have simply been overwhelmed by the enormous amount of transactions that are reported to them (see my earlier blog) Another problem is that European Banks are just getting around to providing (and requiring) information, such as names, account numbers and addresses of originators and recipients of transactions channeled or handled by them through SWIFT or other international transfer facilitators (see my earlier blog). And most banks outside of Europe, the United States and other OECD countries, still do not require, or verify, such information.

The fact is that there is really very little privacy today when it comes to the international transfer of funds. That is why criminal networks, money launderers and terrorist groups have increasingly turned to Hawalas and cash couriers for such transactions.

June 23, 2006 09:35 PM

On this last point, about there really being very little privacy today when it comes to the international transfer of funds, I refer to yesterday's White House press briefing from which I quoted yesterday. At the briefing Tony Snow tries to plow over a question that simply lays out a simple point, namely, why does it matter that this program's existence has been brought to broader public knowledge? If terrorists financing experts would've known about SWIFT anyway, they would've found other ways to funnel money, and surely these experts weren't relying on the NY Times to find out that the info was being intercepted.

 

Q Well, given all that you're saying, and given the fact that it has been well known publicly that the government has endeavored to cut off the financial spigot, to use your term, why did the administration go to such intense lengths to stop the publication of something that people think is somewhat self-evident?

MR. SNOW: Because the means and methods by which we do it are not.

Q But the existence of this organization is no secret, either.

MR. SNOW: Are you kidding? Are you talking about Swift? When did you know about Swift before?

Q I'm talking about those in the —

MR. SNOW: — know about Swift before? (Laughter.)

Q While I don't, I can assure you that people in the financial community know.

MR. SNOW: I guarantee, you go talk to your local banker — you talk about —

The answer isn't found at my local bank branch. It's completely unfounded to say, as some administration supporters have, that "A productive and important investigative mechanism has been disrupted and greatly diminished" because this program has been brought to brighter public light. The financial experts funneling money for terrorists would have certainly known about SWIFT already, and, as the post above from Counterterrism Blog explains, they've already resorted to underground money transmitters (Hawalas) and hand-to-hand cash couriers.

 

The answer to the question, "why does it matter that this program's existence has been brought to broader public knowledge?" lies not in the exposure of the way the US has been attempting to track terrorist funding, but the simple fact that it's been happening.

 

Simply put, it's a twisted ankle for an administration that has two recent black eyes from the NSA surveilance program. They're beaten and bruised already, and by this program becoming more public, the program is not weakened in the slightest, but the Administration most certainly is.

 

Maybe we'll soon hear about the administration's legal justification for why it has been monitoring the health records of US citizens, in the hopes of tracking people that are attempting to obtain dialysis equipment to ship overseas to Osama bin Laden.

Snow: I Got Your Legal Authority, I Got It Right Heeeere

So, on top of phone and emails records, we know the Bush Administration has been monitoring financial transactions of "suspected terrorists" Aside from this being the same language they used when they claimed only international phone calls originating in the US were being intercepted, we have a legal question about this. As posed to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow earlier today:

Q Why didn't the President seek congressional authorization for the program?

MR. SNOW: He didn't need to.

Q Why?

MR. SNOW: Because, why would he need it? Under what statute would he need congressional authorization?

Q On what legal — what is your legal basis for —

MR. SNOW: The legal basis — no, the legal basis here is that you've got an executive order and furthermore, if you want to get into the legal vagaries, I will send you over to the Treasury Department attorneys who have been working this.

Beautiful. Annnnddd regarding why the Administration pressured the NY Times from disclosing the story…

MR. SNOW: You're absolutely right, I do not know the specific statute, which is why I will present it to you.

Q But, again, why go to the extraordinary effort of trying to get news media to inform people what their government is doing?

MR. SNOW: Well, I'll tell you what, does CNN disclose what it does with the financial information or personal information of the people who log onto its website? Does The New York Times? Does The L.A. Times? Your organizations all collect personal data on people who use your services. But there's a second point —

Q Do you not understand the difference between private companies and governments, sir?

I'm just waiting for another government employee to lose thousands of records after illegally downloading them onto his laptop, bringing it home, and then having it stolen from his house (recent story). Or maybe just the info can get posted on a website (printed in tomorrow's Wash Post). 

We need this to be said bluntly: The hands of the US government are not a reliable place for sensative information about its citizens to be held.

 

This is gonna be a mess, I say, a go'dang mess.

Wresting Control from the US

On other internet-related news, there continues to be rumblings that ICANN, which currently is the US-controlled body that governs the internet, may have to cede some or even all of its power to a UN body. The UN Working Group on Internet Governance has laid out four options for the future governance of the internet:

 

 

Option One – create a UN body known as the Global Internet Council that draws its members from governments and "other stakeholders" and takes over the US oversight role of Icann.

Option Two – no changes apart from strengthening Icann's Governmental Advisory Committee to become a forum for official debate on net issues.

Option Three – relegate Icann to a narrow technical role and set up an International Internet Council that sits outside the UN. US loses oversight of Icann.

Option Four – create three new bodies. One to take over from Icann and look after the net's addressing system. One to be a debating chamber for governments, businesses and the public; and one to co-ordinate work on "internet-related public policy issues".

The UN Working Group recently set up a 46 member advisory group, that is one step in wresting sole control away from the US. The advisory group:

 

 

compris[es] representatives of government, the private sector, academia, technical experts and civil society, to help determine how it should be run. According to one member of the advisory group, Chris Disspain, CEO of Australia's Internet domain administrator, auDA, creation of the forum "marks a great opportunity for all the Internet's stakeholders from around the world to have a say on issues of Internet governance". According to Disspain, "The Internet works well at a technical level…However, there are many non-technical aspects of Internet governance that would benefit from multi-stakeholder input at an international level."

 

One ultra-conservative observer describes this battle for the governance of the cyber-commons by stating that if the UN is able to gain control of the internet from the United States, the international body will, "place it under the 'unbiased' control of China, Sudan, and Cuba." There is some serious outreach and public education that needs to be done on this issue.

This fight can not be placed in terms too grandiose. We must maintain Net Neutrality and urge for the overall governance of the internet be moved from the US to an accountable, transparent, democratic body.

The Internet As You Know it is in Danger

My blog partner keeley wrote an article earlier today about how the internet is having a major effect on the way people vote in elections, vote in polls, and how campaigns are run. This is huge, and it doesn't even count all the other ways the internet and communication have allowed people to express themselves and spread the word about issues that are important to them, polical or not.
But if certain companies have their way, all of that is about to change.

The issue is called Net Neutrality. Up until now, the internet has operated under the concept of Net Neutrality, meaning that people can write and read about whatever they want, i.e. blogs and message boards, etc. It also allows for people to create a presence on the internet cheaply or freely and be on an even playing field with big companies and politicians. But big companies are spending big money on lobby campaigns to have more control on the way people use the internet, while some politicians are giving in as well as realizing that the internet can be a threat to them.
Hip Hop journalist and activist Davey D has been writing a lot on this issue, and has become a big advocate for working to maintain net neutrality. Here is some of what he had to say in an open letter he wrote to the hip hop comunity about why people should care:

"Here's what's happening folks. The house has gone and passed the COPE bill and rejected proposals to insure Net Neutrality. Those who sided with the Comcast and Verizon are well aware that the ability of ordinary people to communicate to the masses is a problem because its been the only thing holding them accountable. For the last 5 years, the biggest stories about government corruption, corporate swindles, global warming and no weapons of Mass Destruction has come through Internet bloggers who were able to push an issue to the masses and force Fox, CNN and other News outlets to pay some sort of attention."

"Anyone who is an activist and championed causes ranging from Election fraud and Diebold Machines, police brutality Freeing Mumia, Global warming, Media Reform and Saving the South Central Farm in LA just to name a few this is will especially hit you hard, because the Internet and its neutrality provisions have enabled many of us to counter biased mainstream media outlets get information out about particular causes all over the world."

"Yesterday that ability took one step closer to coming to an end. The mantra being sung on Capitol Hill is Shut it down, Shut that shyt down and redirect traffic to a handful of places and media outlets that they can influence and control."

This is big. But as expected, it's not getting as much attention as it deserves. Below are a few resources to find out more, get you started, and get involved. Anyone who is interested in blogs, message boards, political news sites, open publishing, or any other tool that can be used as internet activism should look into this.

• savetheinternet.com – major coalition working on the issue. They have frequent updates and a large number of resources. Check out their FAQs page about the issue.

• Davey D's website. Check here for more articles and updates from the Davey D standpoint.

• Hillary Clinton's letter to Allhiphop.com. Good quick read. I don't always like Hillary, but she got it right here.

Netroots Digging Deep

A good piece in today's Guardian on the blogosphere's influence on the 2008 election:

Joe Lieberman has a fight on his hands. Until very recently, the three-term Democratic senator and former presidential candidate was cruising to re-election in Connecticut, his home state. But the 64-year-old grandee now finds himself in sudden danger of falling victim to a new political life form: the internet candidate.

Ned Lamont, a cable television entrepreneur, has come from nowhere to pose a serious threat, with the help of internet fundraising and anti-war bloggers outraged at Mr Lieberman's gung-ho support for the Iraq invasion.

Less than two months ago, the Connecticut senator was 27 percentage points ahead of Mr Lamont in the polls. By last week that had shrunk to six points, with seven long weeks to go before the Democratic primary election.

Over the weekend, in a sure sign of nerves, the Lieberman camp "went negative", producing a much-ridiculed attack advert in the form of a cartoon portraying the upstart as a bear cub running as a proxy for Republican interests.

What seemed at first to be a quixotic challenge to a Democratic titan is turning into an epic battle that could signal the direction the party will take.

It is a test of strength between the old way of doing politics built around a hierarchical party machine and the new campaigns fought by the so-called "netroots", who organise themselves and raise money on the web. The first netroots uprising was the Howard Dean insurgency, but when the former Vermont governor imploded as a candidate in 2004 the new politics lost some of its glamour.

If Mr Lamont stages an upset in the Connecticut primaries on August 8, it may signal the point of no return for American politics. "It will change the kind of person who goes into politics," said Arianna Huffington, who runs the political blog Huffington Post. "It will end the dominance of consultants who have been running campaigns in the same focus-group, poll-driven way that has taken the soul out of politics."

For the time being, this conflict between old and new is being fought out principally inside the Democratic party…

Read the rest of this worthwhile article here.

Bayer’s HIV Problems

From Reuters yesterday:

Bayer AG on Wednesday (June 21, 2006) said U.S. regulators approved its fully automated test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The German healthcare company said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the test, called EHIV, which works by detecting antibodies to the virus. It is to be used on Bayer's ADVIA Centaur Immunoassay System. 

Lest we forget Bayer's shameful history relating to this disease, watch a very brief and very frightening MSNBC piece on Bayer's awful indiscretions.  Perhaps, at the very least, Bayer should offer millions of these automated tests to the nations which it knowingly and intentionally dumped the HIV virus on.

Here is more about that story from a May 2003 story in a leading French paper:

A division of the pharmaceutical giant Bayer in the 1980s sold a medicine to Asia and Latin America that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS while it was selling a new, safer product in the west, The New York Times alleged Thursday…. The company also sought to save money by honoring several fixed-price contracts with the old product, which was cheaper to produce than the new, safer blood-clotting medicine, the daily said other company records suggest.

"These are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, who as director of the Public Citizen Health Research Group has been investigating the industry's practices for three decades.

In a statement to the daily, Bayer said Cutter had "behaved responsibly, ethically and humanely" in selling the old product overseas, adding that it did so because some customers doubted the new drug's effectiveness, because some countries were slow to approve its sale and because a shortage of plasma hindered mass production of the new medicine…

The New York Times said it was practically impossible to determine how many hemophiliacs in Latin America and Asia were affected by the company's sale of Factor VIII concentrate after February 1984 when the new product came out.

However, in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs were infected with the HIV virus after using Factor VIII, and many since have died, according to records and interviews obtained by the paper.

Cutter also continued to sell the older product after February 1984 in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina, the daily alleged….

The Cutter documents were produced in connection with lawsuits filed by American hemophiliacs, which had gone largely unnoticed until the daily said it began asking about them.

In the United States, according to the Times, thousands of hemophiliacs were infected with AIDS from contaminated blood-clotting medicine.

 

Pastors for Peace

Last night I went to an event in Northampton, MA that was hosting the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba. This is the 17th year the organization, run under the umbrella of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, has pulled together this trip to bring awareness to the ugliness of the US led embargo against Cuba and to bring some humanitarian relief. All of this is done openly and without permission from the US government.

I and one of my best friends offered last night, and again this morning, to join this specific bus of the caravan going along the east coast of the US (there are many more buses traveling south throughout the country). If there is space on the bus, we will be joining the other travellers/ambassadors later this morning. This and the other caravans will meet in Texas, before passing through the border to Mexico and flying to Cuba for eight days in July.

I will be sure to keep people posted on the caravans progress, whether I am riding with them or not.

John Jay Offers Much Needed Opportunities to Prisoners

I don't always turn to TV shows for information on social and political topics, but in an old episode of OZ i watched last night, one of the characters offered a thought provoking quote. The man, a prisoner, compares his own goals to those of a caseworker who aims to rehabilitate inmates by saying "You're trying to make this place better, i'm trying to destroy it."

While the two men disagree on the means to an end, they both agree that the state of the prison system is horrible. This leads me to the story of a program I read about in this weeks City Limits online magazine. A program that both characters could recognize the benefits of.

The program, called the College Initiave, was created by Episcopal Social Services in 2002 and picked up by John Jay College recently. This program offers a new way for incarcerated people to get an education – after they are released.

In the past, college programs for prisoners have been held within prison wallls. While these programs have proven to be very effective, much of the Federal and State funding for them has been cut back in the last ten years or so. The City Limits article outlines a brief history of this as follows:

"Efforts to educate prisoners got a boost in the 1970s, when post-secondary schools nationwide developed educational programs in prisons with the support of the federal Pell Grant, allowing incarcerated people to earn various degrees…"

"The results have been impressive: In a 2000 study conducted over three years, New York State Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) reported that roughly 30 percent of women who didn’t attend college while in prison were re-incarcerated, compared to 8 percent of women who did attend college."

"Despite such evidence, federal funding for many prisoner college programs was eliminated by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act over a decade ago. More than 350 college programs established in prisons nationwide were shut down. New York followed suit and pulled state funds. Only a handful of college programs remain in New York prisons, including satellite programs of Bard College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Nyack College."

The College Initiative creatively offers similar possibilities for prisoners, but doesnt rely on these funding sources or college classes that take place within the confines of prisons. It reaches out to prisoners before they are released, helps them apply to college, offers a college prep program, helps them apply for financial aid, and in some cases even helps raise funds to assist prisoners in other aspects of their life while they pursue their degrees.

In a world where prisoners are released into society with little education, little to no job opportunities, broken links to community and family, and high rates of drug addiction and disease, a program like this offers a breath of fresh air. 

 

Here's a little background on prisoner reentry from The Urban Institute's review of But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry, a book by John Jay President Jeremy Travis (The full article can be found here):

"In 2002, more than 630,000 individuals left federal and state prisons, roughly 1,700 a day. Thirty years ago, just 150,000 men and women made a similar journey annually."

"In 1973, there were just over 200,000 people in state and federal prisons; in 2003, there were 1.4 million people. According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 5.6 million U.S. residents have served time in prison. At current incarceration rates, nearly 1 in 15 persons born in 2001 will be imprisoned during his or her lifetime."

"Former prisoners face significant hurdles as they exit prison. Most leave with low educational levels, extensive family obligations, prior criminal involvement, and poor ties to the workforce. This population is also contending with extraordinarily high levels of communicable diseases, chronic disease, mental illness, and drug and alcohol addiction. For instance, an estimated 16 percent of state inmates have a mental condition or have spent at least one night in a mental hospital or a mental health facility. Some 450,000 prisoners released each year abused drugs or alcohol before entering prison."

"Two-thirds of former prisoners will be re-arrested within three years of their release from prison, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Nearly half will be convicted of a new crime, and a quarter will return to prison for these new convictions."

Cult of Personality

Bennie Thompson had a strong post on The Hill's blog earlier today:

Why Did The Letter Come All Of A Sudden?
June 19th, 2006

The mysterious appearance of this letter, which details Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham looking to secure a contract for Shirlington Limousine with the Department of Homeland Security, on the day after the hearing and after intense media scrutiny would lead even the most trusting person to wonder what else is lurking in the catacombs of the DHS. This is all a bit too convenient. I can promise that this investigation will go forward and we will hold the top leaders of this Department accountable. If we can’t trust them to find a letter, how can we trust them to find a terrorist?
Posted by Miss. Dem. Rep. Bennie Thompson

For the background basics on Duke Cunningham's improprieties, check dKosopedia. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay sums up the Republican culture of corruption well with his take last week on Cunningham's actions:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) yesterday defended Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) after calls from congressional Democrats to investigate the Republican appropriator for selling his San Diego home to a defense contractor whose firm had received $65 million in federal funds in 2004.

“Duke Cunningham is a hero,” DeLay said during a press briefing Tuesday. “He is an honorable man of high integrity.”

World Bank’s Wolfowitz Picks Top Deputy

The Financial Times and Italy's API report that World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz has tabbed the first female Spanish Foreign Minister, Ana Palacio, as his top legal deputy. The API story explains:

Ms Palacio was the foreign minister in the Anzar government and supported the US intervention in Iraq. Wolfowitz, former vice secretary for Defence in the Bush administration, has always been seen as a bold member of the US government and at the Bank too is surrounded by leading conservative figures such as Robin Cleveland, Kevin Kellems and Suzanne Folsom. Ms Palacio has revealed to The Financial Times that she intends " to see that the law in the development process is respected", an issue than Wolfowits has always promoted as part of his policy against corruption. "Corruption – Ms Palacio explained – is the catalyst for the problems of governance".

So, we're all probably familiar with P. Wolfy [Straussian neo-con that had been plotting the invasion of Iraq years before September 11, 2001, etc etc etc], but a quick reminder on Ms Palacio may be in order. She is a trustee of the Canegie Foundation, supporter of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, was Chair of the EU's Committee on Citizen's Freedoms and Rights. This is likely a thank you for gift wrapping Spanish soldiers for the invasion of Iraq. I'd say to expect a similar appointment for an Italian loyalist minister, following Italy's recent beginnings of a pull out from Iraq.

Palacio may have put it best in her 2004 interview with the uber-conservative American Enterprise Institute:

My message to the United States is this: Never forget to empower your allies, because it’s very difficult today to be an ally of the United States in today’s Europe.

The World Bank: Movin' the battle from the warzone to the free trade zone, one appointment at a time.

No End in Sight for War in Iraq

Yahoo news/Associated Press reports:

"The House on Friday [today] handily rejected a timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, culminating a fiercely partisan debate between Republicans and Democrats feeling the public's apprehension about war and the onrushing midterm campaign season."

"In a 256-153 vote that mirrored the position taken by the Senate earlier, the GOP-led House approved a nonbinding resolution that praises U.S. troops, labels the Iraq war part of the larger global fight against terrorism and says an 'arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment' of troops is not in the national interest."

While this doesn't come as a huge surprise, i'd just like to give a shout to Nancy Pelosi for the following quote

"Stay the course, I don't think so Mr. President. It's time to face the facts," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California answered, as she called for a new direction in the conflict. "The war in Iraq has been a mistake. I say, a grotesque mistake."

Just for fun, check out Nancy Pelosi's score on the League of Pissed Off Voters' scorecard.  This is a good tool for finding out where elected officials stand on a number of categories (based on their voting history).

In Quebec, Childcare = Cheap

Sorry, but I couldn’t resist doing another parenting post when I saw this article in the New York Times (Have they always had these good parenting articles? Maybe I’m just noticing now because it applies to me.)

When it comes to childcare, Quebec has the right idea.

David Leonhardt writes:

“THERE is one place in North America where parents of young children don’t have to worry about child care. In Quebec, full-time day care costs just $7 a day — Canadian dollars, at that — thanks to a government program aimed at one of the thorniest problems that workers in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s face.”

“Starting in 1997, the Quebec Family Policy subsidized day care for 4-year-olds at government-approved centers around the province. By 2000, the program had expanded to cover any child not old enough for kindergarten, all the way down to infants. This is universal day care, an audacious idea that recognizes the revolution in women’s work over the last 30 years.”

I wonder what it would take to get something like this to happen in the U.S.? Here’s a short report done by the Nation’s Network of Child Care Resource and Referral on average prices of childcare in the U.S.

Breastfeed that baby!

I don’t know if any of our readers care about this (all 5 of you!), but as a new father, i felt it was important for people to take a look at this NYTimes article on the benefits of breastfeeding and the current campaign around it.

The article states that breastfeedng can help prevent “colds, flu, ear infections, diarrhea and even obesity….”

Later, it goes on to say

“Some studies also suggest that breast-fed babies are at lower risk for sudden infant death syndrome and serious chronic diseases later in life, including asthma, diabetes, leukemia and some forms of lymphoma, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Research on premature babies has even found that those given breast milk scored higher on I.Q. tests than those who were bottle-fed.”

Not to mention the bonding between mother and child that it offers.
Personally, i encountered this information for the first time in the course offered by our hospital and in some books that my wife and I had purchased. But what about people that choose not to take those course or buy those particular books, or people that may not have access? Currently, there is a lack of wide distribution of this information. The article says that “Breast-feeding increases with education, income and age.”

I would also like to highlight that breastfeeding can be very difficult due to the standards that have been created as far as finances and job situations. The writer says:

“Urging women to breast-feed exclusively is a tall order in a country where more than 60 percent of mothers of very young children work, federal law requires large companies to provide only 12 weeks’ unpaid maternity leave and lactation leave is unheard of. Only a third of large companies provide a private, secure area where women can express breast milk during the workday, and only 7 percent offer on-site or near-site child care, according to a 2005 national study of employers by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute”

Plus, we’ve found it very difficult to find places in public that are comfortable for breastfeeding (Babies R Us seems to offer the best amenities in Manhattan, that we know of).

In summary, breastfeeding is very difficult for the reasons above and many more. But if you can, do it for the kids!

NYPD Asst. Chief Smolka’s Latest Resume Builder

Notorious NYPD Assistant Chief Bruce Smolka sticks his foot in his mouth again.

At a community meeting on June 6th, held to discuss a permit application for the 2nd Annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice, Smolka "told TransJustice members, 'to Go Back to The Village' and that their applications for a 5:00pm rally at 42nd Street & 8th Avenue would not be allowed."

Smolka is well-known for his general contempt for all those who aren't quite similar to him in nearly every way (also check this). As for the march itself, this is from today's International Action Center press release:

Millions of LGBT people and their supporters will participate in Pride parades and festivals, in the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, St Louis, and in the Twin Cities region on the weekend of June 23-25th. In both, NYC and San Francisco, the Friday evening of Pride weekend has been when Transgender communities traditionally hold marches and rallies.

[...]

Historically, 8th Avenue has been regarded as the place that several LGBT and HIV organizations as well as LGBT nightclubs have called home. TransJustice called the rally at 42nd Street & 8th Avenue to address the growing violence and murders of Trans people. The rally will also be used to commemorate the 6th year anniversary of Amanda Milan, a 25 year-old African-American transgender woman, who was brutally murdered, on June 20, 2000, in the middle of an intersection near Port Authority Bus Terminal as onlookers cheered.

[...]

“The Trans Day of Action is not only to fight for transgender peoples’ rights. It is an anti-war and anti-police brutality march. We are rallying to demand money for jobs and affordable housing of all New Yorkers,” said Lourdes Hunter, of TransJustice, "We stand against the anti-immigrant attacks coming from the White House. We know this is why Mayor Bloomberg really doesn’t want us on 8th Ave, but we intend to fight for our right to march and rally on June 23rd”.

Turning Point, What Turning Point?

The Wall Street Journal "Washington Wire" blog has a surprisingly good piece on President Bush's response to questions about Zarqawi's death last week. On a question asking whether he sees evidence to support his statement last week that Zarqawi's death can be a turning piont in the war, his response was less than exceptional…

“I think – tide turning – see, as I remember – I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of – it’s easy to see a tide turn…Did I say those words?” Assured that he had, he added that “I probably ought to then reflect on those words and think that – I sense something different happening in Iraq. The progress will be steady toward a goal that has been clearly defined. In other words, I hope there’s not an expectation from people that, all of a sudden, there’s going to be zero violence…” After rambling a bit more about the new government and its responsibility to keep voters happy, he wound up, “So there is a noticeable change. And whoever said it’s a tide turning, and all that needs – never mind.”

For the record, during the president’s Rose Garden announcement of Zarqawi’s death last week, he said, in a scripted statement, “Zarqawi’s death is a severe blow to al Qaeda. It’s a victory in the global war on terror, and it is an opportunity for Iraq’s new government to turn the tide of this struggle.” [emphasis mine]

Of all news outlets, once the Wall Street Journal is describing a rabidly pro-business president to be "rambling a bit more," you know the man must be having a tough time in office. Billionaires for Bush, YOU MUST UNITE — If you're losing the Journal one blog post at a time, God only knows whats next for The Economist!

The Economics of Post-Graduation

The New York Times recently ran an article listing some tips for recent college graduates on how to budget themselves and save for their future. This is a group that sometimes gets overlooked when talking about debt, economics, credit, etc, so its nice to see an article directed towards them. After all, the combination of starting wages (or no wages due to long/unsuccessful job searches), loan payments, and being cutoff or reduced from previous funding soures (i.e. parents) can hit a person hard. Plus, these tips can work for everyone.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the article:

• "Train yourself to use the A.T.M. only once a month. Take out enough cash to get you through the month, and when you run out of cash near the end of the month, stop spending"
• "Set aside 10 percent of your paycheck in a savings or brokerage account separate from where the rest of your money goes."
• Take advantage of a 401k plan (if your job offers it to you). The article states "Say you withhold $375 a month for your 401(k). In 40 years, you'll have $750,000."
• And finally, make your own coffee and cook for yourself instead of constantly buying beverages and eating out.

The article also links to some supposedly helpful budgeting calculators, however the links seem to be down at the moment. Hopefully those will come back.

I only wish they gave us a few more statistics on how bad the economic situation for recent college graduates really is. It would be interesting to see some numbers on their average debt or average yearly income.

Getting Caught Keeping Your Hand in the Cookie Jar

From Sunday’s Albany Tribune:

“Three people who worked at Bronx charities created by Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. say the state senator secretly gave them currency or money orders and instructed them to personally contribute the cash into his or his son’s campaign accounts. Two of the charities have been heavily financed by special legislative grants of taxpayer money — called “member items” — arranged by the senator’s son, Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. State law makes it unlawful for a person to give money in someone else’s name to a candidate’s campaign, but that is exactly what Sen. Diaz did, three former loyalists said in interviews.

[...]

Soundview Community in Action is a Bronx nonprofit group that formerly employed Sen. Diaz, his wife and his former wife, the mother of Assemblyman Diaz. Soundview received hundreds of thousands of dollars in so-called legislative “member-item” funds through the senator’s son while his family members were employed.

This isn’t a new story, either. Here’s a piece from 2004 on investigations into Soundview Community in Action. ACORN ran a free tax preparation site for low-income taxpayers out of Soundview in 2005. Here is where you can read about Soundview being plugged into a federal appropriations bill under the Juvenile Justice Programs section. And a press release about US Representatives Crowley and Serrano forking over 50 grand to Soundview, in which Rep Serrano states, “Soundview Community in Action provides an important service to our community… Congressman Crowley and I are proud to be supporting the Soundview community.”

Repost: Al-Qaida in Iraq Names Official Successor to Zarqawi

Reposted from the conservative CounterTerrorism Blog:

Al-Qaida in Iraq Names Official Successor to Zarqawi

By Evan Kohlmann

This morning, the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) released an authentic statement on behalf of Al-Qaida in Iraq announcing that Al-Qaida's Shura Council had agreed upon a successor to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: a shadowy figure named Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. Though the statement offered no further details at to Abu Hamza's background, his name "al-Muhajir" ("the Emigrant") would tend to suggest that he is of non-Iraqi origin.

Interestingly, there do not appear to be obvious references to Abu Hamza al-Muhajir in any of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's propaganda material from the last three years, and to the best of my knowledge, neither the Iraqi government nor the U.S. military has ever publicly named him as a wanted Al-Qaida member. Even the jihadi community that supports Al-Qaida was caught somewhat offguard by this announcement — many of them had simply assumed that Al-Qaida Deputy Commander Abu Abdelrahman al-Iraqi would take over in Zarqawi's absence.

The Rueters Canada reports, "Muhajir, little known in the West, was not among the names that al Qaeda experts had expected to succeed Zarqawi. Al Qaeda makes up about five percent of Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency but its suicide bombers have carried out the most spectacular attacks."  Rueters UK continues by quoting from al Queda in Iraq's release: "'Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir is a good brother, has a history in jihad and is knowledgeable. We ask God that he … continue what Sheikh Abu Musab [al-Zarqawi] began,' it said."

This leaves me confused: I thought this new leuitenant, Abu Abdel Rahman was already captured [check here and here for confirmation].  Thanks to Blogenlust for bringing this to our attention, and keeping these "unknown unknowns" responsibly unknown.

Just for enjoyment purposes:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense news briefing
 

Graffiti Fight in New York City

New York City Councilman Peter Vallone really doesnt like graffiti. So much so that he seems to have a personal vendetta against the art form, attacking it in all formats and even trying to stop it when legally sancitoned.

Earlier this year, the Council member helped put a law into effect that made it illegal for people ages 18-21 to possess art materials such as spray paint or broad tipped markers (yes, you read that correctly – possess).

Now that law is being challenged. On April 25th, clothing designer Marc Ecko filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of seven young artists, arguing that the law violates their first amendment rights.

After bouncing around several levels of courts and judges, a temporary block has been placed on the law.

On June 9th, Gotham Gazette reported:

"A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked enforcement of a city law that bans 18 to 21 year olds from possessing spray paint or broad-tipped markers often used for graffiti… The freeze on enforcement, which backs the decision of a lower court, will stay in effect while the judge considers the case."

Hopefully the temporary block will become permanent. Just because someone who is within that age range is in possession of those items, it doesnt mean that they are painting on private property. What if they want to do graffiti inspired art at home, in a studio, or in an art class? Also, it doesn't make any sense to target only that age group when anyone of any age could potentially use those items for graffiti.
Related Links:

• Ecko's fight in other cities
• Funny Anti-Vallone culture jamming
• More on funny Anti-Vallone culture jamming (look at the rest of this site for great posts on street art, culture jamming, public space, etc)

Jack Cafferty on Arlen Specter’s Increasing Uselessness

I'm not a huge fan of CNN's Jack Cafferty, and have been relatively pleased with Arlen Specter's actions around the NSA wiretapping spectacle… until now. Check this at YouTube.

Better late than never…

Just came across this cartoon from al Jazeera's English language website on the US immigration demonstrations: Liberty's Spray.

- On another note: National Geographic reports that a San Diego company will soon be introducing, "The world's first hypoallergenic cats."  As someone who is allergic to cats, but against the idea of biotech firms engineering life, I am just floored by this announcement.

Regulation is now “Personally Offensive”

The Charlotte Observer, the hometown paper of Bank of America, reported on Tuesday that two mortgage lending bills in the House, long ago introduced, are now being quietly negotiated.

Bill #1: The The Prohibit Predatory Lending Act (H.R.1182) sponsored by Democratic Reps Miller and Watt of North Carolina would provide strong and meaningful protections for mortgage borrowers throughout the country.

Bill #2: The industry-driven H.R.1295 (analysis, pdf) is being peddled by PA Democrat Paul Kanjorski and ensconsed-in-scandal Ohio Republican Bob Ney.  It would not only weaken federal protections for mortgage borrowers, but would put a sleeper hold on most state laws that provide any level of protection above and beyond what federal law provides (PDF).

In a strange, but growing, Republican push to undercut state law with weak federal provisions on everything from clean air to health care, states would no longer be able to provide protections for mortgage borrowers in their state. This is just one aspect of this strange role reversal, that is seeing Democrats increasingly pushing for stronger states' rights.

Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus, member of the House Financial Services Committee, and large recipient of bank money, is supposedly the neutral arbiter of these federal mortgage lending bills. And why, you may ask, is an arbiter necessary? Because the industry's feelings have been hurt by irresponsible, meany-head consumer advocates, of course…

[Negotiations] would be the first of many steps required to change the law. It will be difficult not least because the discussion is brimming with emotion.

For many loan sellers, the idea that discrimination is widespread — and that they require additional regulation — is personally offensive. The industry has argued that borrowers are responsible for educating themselves, and for shopping around to find the best rate.

"The only discrimination that occurs in the mortgage industry is against the lazy," Kyle Killian, a Charlotte loan seller, wrote in an e-mail.

The part I don't understand here is whether the calls for regulation of this industry (which still has obvious discrimination issues) are only now becoming "personaly offensive" to the bankers, brokers and lobbyists, or if these accusations "brimming with emotion" have been causing them to cry themselves to sleep every night for years on their fat beds of money.

The poor babies; I'll shed a single tear for them the day after a meaningful law is signed and immediately enacted by the president. Don't even bother to hand me a Kleenex in the meantime.

Until that day comes, write your representative and God help the American mortgage borrower hopeful to find a breath of fresh air with this Constitutionally-challenged administration still in power.

UPDATE 5:47pm: TPM Muckraker has the latest dirt on Ney's connections with Jack Abramoff.

From Genocide to Jail

As if Sudanese refugees didn't have it bad enough in their escape from bloodshed, poverty, and persecution, it has now been disclosed that a large group of them has been put in prison in Israel.

The New York Times says:

"The [Israeli] government says that because Sudan is on the American State Department's list of terrorist countries, it fears that terrorists could be lurking among the Sudanese here. But human rights groups have challenged the detentions in court, and now some of Israel's most loyal supporters are saying the policy is wrong because it allows fear to overwhelm moral obligation…"

 "The 1954 enemy infiltrators law under which the Sudanese were arrested allows the government to hold them without judicial review to determine if they are security threats. A small number of Sudanese, mostly minors or mothers with very young children, are confined to communal farms and villages"

 

Click here for some background on the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.

US Military Stands Down as Gay Iraqis Killed

From today’s Washington Blade story, “US Military Acknowledges Iraq Anti-Gay Killings:”

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, when we’re in a fledgling time like this, to go in and say, ‘Here’s these issues that are going to repel 80 percent of the population and this is what we want to inflict on you,’” he said. “We’re trying not to get into too many values judgment type issues and just do the right thing.”

Breasseale’s comments came in response to questions about how the U.S. was responding to a decision last October by a powerful Islamic leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to issue a fatwa calling for the killing of gays in Iraq. Bush administration officials have cited al-Sistani as a moderate voice among Iraqi Shiites.

Islam considers homosexuality sinful. A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Sistani, says: “Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way,” according to BBC news reports…

A network of gay Iraqi exiles in Europe reported that the fatwa triggered a flurry of assassinations, kidnappings and death threats against Iraqi gays.

Ali Hili, founder and spokesperson for the exile group LGBT Iraqis U.K., said Islamic death squads came to life in response to Sistani’s fatwa and brought about an atmosphere of terror among gays. He said some death squad members arranged meetings with gays through chat rooms by posing as gays themselves, then captured and sometimes assaulted or killed their targeted victims.

This is not a new story. Pink News reports that the anti-gay fatwa was lifted on May 10, 2006, while In These Times reported that these hate-killings are being “exported” from Iran.

The BBC ran a related piece in April 2006; Gay City News and Democracy Now both focused on this issue in March 2006. Special thanks to Raw Story for highlighting the Washington Blade piece.

Zarqawi’s bro-in law busted

Much is made of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.  Here is a good reminder of some briefs of the overlooked background from DailyKos, and a strange post from the Counterterrorism blog about his brother-in-law getting arrested live on al-Jazeera.  I haven't seen anything confirming Zarqawi's one-leggedness, an unsubstatiated claim made by the US military to make Zarqawi seem weak (like the claim that bi-Laden couldn't fire a machine gun).  SusanG at DailyKos had a short, informative piece recently on these tactics at "Have One Leg, Will Terrorize."

Your new (insider) trade representative

Now that NY Sen. Chuck Schumer withdrew his opposition to the president’s nominee to be the next U.S. trade represetative, Susan C. Schwab is likely to be approved. Here’s a quick-and-dirty, highly informal profile of Schwab.

Like her predecessor Rob Portman, who has very close ties to the Bush family, Schwab is by no means a new face on the scene. After serving in the administration of Bush 41, Portman was elected to the House’s Ohio delgation, where he pushed through a bill to have the CIA headquarteres renamed for, who else, Bush 41. At the rededication cerimony, Bush 41 also thanked John Kerry and the now befallen Porter Goss. None of the San Diego driven CIA scandal has been tied to administrator-tuened-representative-turned-trade ambassador Portman yet, but who knows…

But back to Schwab: In 1989, Bush 41 appointed Schwab as Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director General of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 2003, she had been nominated as Deputy Treasury Secretary, but was forced to withdraw after she was questioned about tax payments on the sale of $1.5 million of stock in Calpine Corp., where she was a board member and member of the “Compensation Committee.” She’s on the board of an equity firm called Adams Express (check their top 10 holdings here), holding at least $18,000 in personal wealth on the company at the end of 2003. She’s also on the board of Petroleum and Resources Co. — check their not-so-surprising list of top investments here, in which she owns between $10,000 and $50,000 in equity. For a full listing of corporate connections, check this 10-kwizard.com search.

Quick-and-dirty.

Cops in Schools

Earlier this week, City Limits reported the findings of a recent study done by NYU Wagner students on NYC's Impact Schools Initiative, which places extra police and security in schools that are considered to be "at risk" of higher crime and disorder.

The article says:

"Putting police officers in violence-prone schools may cut crime, but it also increases tensions, turns harmless disputes into criminal matters and is perceived by many students as racially biased…."

"The Wagner report found that the program has also increased expulsions and that many students in these schools get criminal records for incidents that would not be treated as criminal offenses if they were committed in schools with less police presence. 'The Impact Initiative is a quick-fix to lower the number of crimes and it ignores the educational and psychological aspect of violence,' said Roberta Thomas, who recently graduated from the Wagner program and worked on the report."

 

By the looks of it, the city treats crime in schools the same way it treats other crime and quality of life issues: arresting and punishing "offenders" without looking into more long term solutions or the bigger picture of the problems.  I guess we can add children in Impact Schools to the list of groups that have been subject to policies of overpolicing (ie the homeless, protestors, and victims of policies such as racial profiling and the wars on terror and drugs)?

 

A few more links on Impact Schools in NYC:

• Drum Major Institute's findings on Impact Schools.
• Gotham Gazette on school security
  

And a link to a good organization working on topics along these lines:

• The Prison Moratorium Project 

 

Spotlight on Bed-Stuy Gentrification

To go along with Keeley's gentrifiction post, here are a couple articles i've encountered recently on gentrification in Bed-Stuy.  The New York Sun ran an article yesterday about the Renaissance of the neighborhood, while New York Magazine ran an article a while back about one specific block.

While gentrification has been a fear/issue in the community for a while, it's interesting to see that the media is running articles on it.  The articles can make for a good read, but i'm not sure that they are helping matters any.  

SAJE Gentrification Slideshow

SAJE, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, released earlier this week a slideshow briefly discussing the roots of gentrification in Los Angeles.  The slideshow is a good primer on the very complex issue.  (SAJE, a very respected and respectable organization, is also celebrating its 10-year anniversary.)  For more background on gentrification, check out this Brookings Institution report (pdf) or this scary take on gentrification from Columbia professor Lance Freeman.  Mark Winston Griffith from NEDAP in New York City also discusses the role predatory/extortionist mortgage lending plays in the gentrification process at this DMI Blog post.

Diasabled in Disasters

GovExec recently reported that the Departmentof Homeland Security’s Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals With Disabilities plans to establish a “disasbility section” in the disaster headquarters. Here is a recent testimony from the head of this DHS Council, Daniel Sutherland, briefly discussing the obstacles people with disabilities can face in times of disaster. He states that about 250,000 people in the hurricane affected areas were disabled, including:

“Twenty-five thousand people stated that they had vision or hearing impairments. Over 100,000 people stated that they had a physical disability that made it difficult to walk, climb stairs, lift, dress, bath or even get around inside their own home. Almost 65,000 people were categorized as having a “mental disability” – a category which would include people with Alzheimers, people with cognitive disabilities, and some of the few who would self-identify as a person with mental illness.”

With hurricane season a week in, let us not lose sight that those most vulnerable, those on the front line with the greatest vulnerabilities, are the first to be afforded additional defences and resources from any future disaster.

Wal-Mart, Your Soon-To-Be Neighborhood Bank

Wal-Mart and Home Depot continue their efforts to obtain “industrial loan bank” charters. These charters supposedly limit what a bank can legally do as compared to a full-service traditional bank — Wal-Mart, for example, claims it is only applying for this charter in order to process credit and debit card transactions in-house, instead of paying another company to do it — but if this is anything like Wal-Mart’s “limited” entry into the grocery store business which has exacerbated a dual system of food access in the States (poor shop at Wal-Mart & Costco, the rich at Whole Foods with fewer options in between), community banks are rightfully up in arms. Wal-Mart’s 2005 entry into liquor distribution has already and will continue to have the same market squeezing impact on the little distributors. There will be more on all this later, as Wal-Mart is almost certainly going to expand beyond credit card transactions into check cashing, then into offering checking/savings accounts for employees, and on and on…

Neutering the Energizer Bunny

I’ll file this one under “things I could never make up, but somehow someone got paid for it.” From Brandweek.com daily updates…

“The Panasonic Battery Corp. today launched “Neuter Your Bunny,” a public awareness effort promoting pet-rabbit neutering while also drawing attention to its new line of batteries, which it would seem is attempting to go head-to-head with the Energizer battery…and its iconic ad bunny. Confused? Yeah, we were too. See if you can follow this: Panasonic is touting its new Oxyride Extreme Power batteries. It claims in a release that right about now is when folks who got the kids a rabbit for Easter are realizing that maybe this wasn’t the best idea. So Panasonic will neuter some bunnies on Wednesday, June 14, (In New York; where else?) courtesy of its battery line. The company will also make a $10,000 donation to the House Rabbit Society. It’s all explained much better than we could ever do at NeuterYourBunny.com. We’re pretty easygoing when it comes to promotions and PR campaigns, but this one is a little out there, even for us. Think we’re kidding? Wait ‘til you see the Web site. Odd, indeed.”

This is a high school prank, not a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Is this what it takes to get the attention of the US battery-buying public? Quite literally to remove the genitals of your competitors?? Brandweek nailed it on this one: Odd, indeed, and I’d add scary to the list. Next from this ad firm: Six Flags Theme Parks promotes their newest roller coaster by attacking Disney World and Mickey Mouse through distribution of free mouse traps and bait stations for one-day all across the Bronx? This is nothing new, though, in the world of dirty politics.

Also check the amazing-it-exists “Hopper Home Bunny Blog” for info on this ad campaign, and more general bunny-related items. Just plain odd.

Implanting Immigrants

Saturday's Houston Chronicle reported:

"A tiny microchip implanted just under the skin offers the best tamper-proof identity system for immigrant guest workers, says the head of a Florida-based company that has already implanted millions of the identity chips in household pets and livestock."

The article mentions that these radio frequency chips are installed in alzheimer's patients so that when this patient visits a hospital they haven't been to before, they are literally carrying their medical chart on them. This means, as the argument goes, that there's less chance that the patient misremembers what happened on the last visit to the doctor and therefore this will minimize complications. RFID chips are like scary-sized versions of the technology used in the UPC on your Juicy Juice so it can be scanned at the grocery store — limiting owner error by disallowing the clerk from ripping you off and pocketing the difference. (Note: those UPCs will convert to RFID soon and check the the 'History of RFID' in PDF.)

Couldn't I, in an extreme case, just walk around a retirement home with a hand scanner collecting personal info from elderly residents with Alzheimer's? Oh, this would only yield a 16-digit code which then must be matched with the company's medical database which, as we saw with ChoicePoint and beyond, these databases are absolutely insecure and prone to breaches. How can private companies, already proven incapable to protect patient privacy, be trusted to upload, download, and secure this type of information for medical patients, "guest workers" or anyone in general? Answer: They can not and should not be trusted.

Who else has been subjected to these RFID chips?

"The VeriChip has the capability to provide medical information in critical care situations such as Hurricane Katrina, where individuals requiring emergency care may not have access to their medical records. With the VeriChip's unique identification number, which can be scanned into a database, emergency medical personnel can gain immediate access to a patient's medical records… The County Medical Examiner's office in Lafayette County, MS, intends to store the VeriChips and scanners for future pending disaster relief and body identification assistance."

Am I the only one that reads this all to mean that undocumented immigrant workers, the elderly (presumably, largely without familial ties to help take care of them), and and those poor of the Gulf Coast who do not have the means to retrieve or reconstitute their medical history will be the first in line? And how can it be worth the money to install these chips into people in Lafayette County, MS unless they expect those people to be in a situation where they would not have family around them to identify them? It's almost as if there's some way to know who might be worst affected by a natural disaster… it's almost as if these people are being used as a test case… almost as if this experiment will be yielded useless unless the people with the new RFID chips don't die…

And how will this product make it to "market," besides simply exploiting the sick elderly and undocumented immigrants? Well, by developing the supply and then lobbying for the demand in Washington… Scott Silverman, the CEO of this Florida-based company (Applied Digital), personally donated at least $7,700 GOP electeds in the 2006 election cycle alone, including Bill Nelson (committees), Bob Bennett (committees), Orrin Hatch (recent release) and, everyone's favorite internal lobbyist, Bob Ney (no note needed). Check Silverman's 2006 rap sheet at opensecrets.

UPDATE: Australia will attach RFID to prison inmates.  Although they're not implanted, this is just a step down the slope…