Slow blogging ahead...

Posting will be light in the next day to two. I really need to spend some uninterrupted time on It's Still the Economy, Stupid, especially since it's no longer just mine to neglect. Also, Wampum will be migrating to a new home eventually, as soon as I get a better handle on Movable Type. For now, I've got my banner up, but nothing else. That needs to change if I ever want to get away from the hell Blogger/Blogspot has become.

Also, today is IEP day for my eldest son, Sam. Sort of fitting, seeing that the House is voting on IDEA re-authorization today.

I'll be around, but barely. In the meantime, check out any of the fine blogs on the right (as in little "R" - they're mostly all Lefties - maybe a centrist thrown in for good measure.)

A Senator's job is what again?

Bush judicial pick approved, but barely
April 30, 2003
BY CARL WEISER

WASHINGTON--Defying a throng of blind, deaf and disabled activists, the Senate on Tuesday confirmed a controversial nominee for a court one step below the Supreme Court.

The 52-41 vote for Jeffrey Sutton came almost two years after the lawyer from Columbus, Ohio, was nominated by President Bush for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles appeals for Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

The 52 votes Sutton got are the fewest for any confirmed federal judge since 1986. Opponents said a vote for Sutton was a vote against the Americans With Disabilities Act, which Congress passed in 1990 to deter bias.

In one of the 12 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, Sutton said Congress had gone too far when writing the act. He argued it should not apply to state governments. The court agreed.

It was expected that the nomination would pass, especially with the defection of DINOs Nelson (NE) and Feinstein. But I was surprised that seven Senators had not voted. A quick look at the roll call indicated that of the seven, three, John Kerry, Bob Graham and Joe Lieberman, were Democratic candidates.

So where were the Senators on a vote so important to the poor and disabled?

Senator Lieberman was in South Florida fundraising.

Senator Kerry was in Alabama fundraising.

Senator Graham was in Iowa campaigning for his yet undeclared run.

Only Senator John Edwards was where he was supposed to be, on the floor of the Senate. This parent of disabled children appreciates that type of action, versus empty rhetoric.

[Update: Drew, of So Far, So Left, lists the Senators who voted yea in the Sutton nomination and whose terms are up in 2004. Links are bloggered, but you can't miss it.]

Deja-Vu Syndrome is spreading in the media

It's now taken hold of at least one polling organizations.

The latest CBS poll was very interesting, mostly mirroring last week's USA TodayCNN/Gallup poll. But the fact that pollsters are now asking these questions indicates they too are increasingly aware of the similarities between 1991 and 2003. Here is the last segment reported by CBS.com:

GEORGE W. BUSH AND GEORGE H. W. BUSH
The public’s priorities and views of the economy in this post-war poll are reminiscent of the public’s views twelve years ago, as the 1991 Gulf War was winding down, when the economy also dominated the public’s concerns.

In April 1991, 32 percent named the economy and jobs as the number one priority for the country, while 9 percent volunteered the Persian Gulf and foreign policy as the top concern. Today, the economy and jobs also far outdistance the public’s concerns about foreign policy issues or war.

In 1991, views of the economy were similar to those held now; 42 percent of the public thought the economy was in good shape, and 57 percent thought it was in bad shape.

RATING THE ECONOMY

Now
Good - 44%
Bad - 54%

4/1991
Good - 42%
Bad - 57%

Then, as now, negative views of the economy were paired with a bleak assessment of its direction, with only about one in five thinking that the economy was on the road to recovery.

ECONOMY IS…

Now
Getting better - 19%
Getting worse - 28%
Staying same - 52%

4/1991
Getting better - 18%
Getting worse - 33%
Staying same - 47%

The Persian Gulf War had an enormous impact on the public’s views of then-President George H.W. Bush, causing his job approval rating to soar, from 62 percent just before the war began to 83 percent during the war. But that success was short-lived; as the economy worsened, and the public focused on priorities at home, George H.W. Bush’s job approval rating dropped to 75 percent by June and was 51 percent by the end of that year. Economic conditions, and the president’s response to them, are widely viewed as the cause of his loss of public approval.

President George W. Bush experienced a similar surge in public approval after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, reaching a job approval rating of 90 percent by October 2001. His job approval rating has steadily declined since then, and was 58 percent just before the war against Iraq. He experienced an upward bounce during the war, to 71 percent, but that has declined a bit in this poll.

PRESIDENTIAL JOB APPROVAL

George W. Bush
After war was over - 67%
During war - 71%
Before war began - 58%

George H.W. Bush
After war was over - 80%
During war - 83%
Before war began - 62%

Both presidents receive similar ratings on their handling of the economy, although George W. Bush is viewed slightly more positively than his father was. In April 1991, 38 percent approved of the way George H.W. Bush was handling the economy, and 48 percent disapproved. In this poll, 42 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove of the way his son is handling the economy.

HANDLING OF THE ECONOMY

George W. Bush, 4/2003
Approve - 42%
Disapprove - 45%

George H.W. Bush, 4/1991
Approve - 38%
Disapprove - 48%

[Nota bene: Here's a graph (.pdf format) which shows pretty clearly the direction George H.W. Bush's favorable ratings took in the year after the Persian Gulf War ended.]

I've been asserting for months that if Progressives, heck, any Bush critics, would continue to hammer the similarities between Bush I and II, despite Rove&Co. objections, it would begin to stick. This is not a Teflon presidency. Get out your glue sticks.

Forget the So-called-liberal-media: It's the Pollyanna Press now

The irony of it all. In a rare occurrence, an Administration release actually offered an honest assessment of a negative economic report:

The Employment Cost Index for total compensation rose 1.3 percent from December 2002 to March 2003, following a 0.7 percent gain from September to December 2002, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Benefit costs increased 2.2 percent and continued to substantially outpace the 1.0 percent gain in wages and salaries for civilian workers in March. The Employment Cost Index (ECI), a component of the National Compensation Survey, measures quarterly changes in compensation costs, which include wages, salaries, and employer costs for employee benefits, for nonfarm private and State and local government workers.

Employer costs for benefits account for nearly 30 percent of compensation costs and include such items as health and other insurance, retirement plans, paid leave, and legally-required benefits like Social Security. For the year ended March 2003, benefit costs increased 6.1 percent, greater than the 4.9 percent gain for the year ended March 2002. Much of the increase in benefit costs stemmed from the continuing rise in the costs for health insurance and the recent upturn in retirement costs, particularly for defined benefit pension plans.

But could the so-called-liberal New York Times report such a frank admission by the BLS? Obviously not:

Workers' Wages, Benefits Up 1.3 Percent
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:35 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. workers' wages and benefits rose by a brisk 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2003, the biggest increase in nearly 13 years, even as businesses struggled with the lackluster economy.

The increase in the employment cost index for the January to March quarter was nearly twice as big as the 0.7 rise posted in the fourth quarter of 2002, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

Although companies have been keeping work forces lean to deal with the uneven economy, they are providing workers who are still on the payrolls more generous compensation packages. That's goods news for the ranks of the employed but can be a potential strain on some profit-pressed companies.

Spin, spin, spin.

[also posted at It's Still the Economy Stupid]

Nationwide Call-In Day: Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Use the toll-free Congressional switchboard at 1-800-839-5276

Today is the day, a National Call-In Day for two issues critical to disabled individuals and special needs children: The Senate votes today on the nomination of Jeffrey Sutton, and the House votes tomorrow on the re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Senate to Vote on Sutton Nomination April 29

Please tell your Senator to vote NO on the nomination of Jeffrey Sutton to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals!

"Jeffrey Sutton, nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee), was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 13. The full Senate began consideration of the Sutton nomination on April 11, and will vote on April 29.

Over the last several years, Jeffrey Sutton has become a leading activist in the so-called “states’ rights” movement, personally arguing against Congress’ authority to enact laws protecting Americans against discrimination based on race, age, disability, and religion. Sutton’s record as a lawyer and advocate reveal him to be an extremely ideological and conservative activist with a particularly troubling record in many areas important to our communities. For example:

**Sutton has been involved in a targeted effort to challenge and weaken the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), arguing that it was unconstitutional for the ADA to permit state employees to bring lawsuits to protect their rights against discrimination. In fact, Sutton went further and told the Supreme Court that the ADA was “not needed.”

**Sutton has argued against allowing individuals from suing on the basis of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, color, or national origin.

**-Sutton has also argued for severe limits on the ability of state employees who are victims of age discrimination to recover damages.

**Sutton argued that the civil rights remedy of the Violence Against Women Act was unconstitutional, barring women who are victims of gender-motivated violence from bringing a civil rights action before a federal court. Sutton also maintained that a violent act against a woman has no affect on her ability to earn a living wage, get an education, and travel, thereby invalidating Congress’ authority to remedy non-economic, violent activities.

Based on Jeffrey Sutton’s record as a lawyer and legal advocate, it is clear that his legal philosophy is focused on limiting Congress’ historic role in protecting the civil rights of all Americans. Sutton’s judicial activism targets the disadvantaged and could roll back years of progressive and protective legislation. [source: civilrights.org]


House to Vote on HR 1350, IDEA Re-authorization, April 30

Please call your Congressperson and voice your opposition to H.R. 1350. Ask them to oppose H.R. 1350.

Tell them that, "H.R. 1350 is a Bad IDEA !"

"The vote on H.R. 1350 is scheduled for April 30. It is critical that we voice our opposition.

Objections to H.R. 1350: "Improving Education Results for Children with Disabilities Act":

** Change from annual to three-year IEPs.

** Elimination of short-term objectives and benchmarks.

** Limiting attorney fees for attorneys who represent parents.

** Changes in discipline provisions that punish kids for their disabilities: schools can remove a student unilaterally for infractions of any school rule even if the behavior is caused by the child's disability. The bill eliminates manifestation determinations, functional behavior assessments, and behavior intervention plans.

** A companion bill includes a voucher program for public schools to send children to private schools that are not accountable under IDEA.

** There is no full funding, and 15% of the inadequate funding there is can be diverted to programs for non-IDEA-eligible children.

** Procedural changes make it impossible for parents to participate in or monitor the process: voluntary binding arbitration, a one-month waiting period, a one-year statute of limitations.

** 10 states will be given "paperwork reduction" incentives that allow them to change documentation requirements without public review. [source: DREDF]

Once again, use the Toll-Free Congressional Switchboard (it's paid by your tax dollars - use it) at 1-800-839-5276.

Need to know your Senator or Congressperson?

Here are previous writings by Wampum on Jeffrey Sutton and IDEA.

More on the missing CNN poll

Yesterday, I wrote about last week's USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll which mysteriously was never reported by CNN on its website. Leah A., in comments, reminded me that Howard Kurtz was a CNN employee as the host of Reliable Sources. I was intrigued because Kurtz, in the Post, was one of the handful of journalists who discussed the poll in print last week. However, when I checked the April 27th transcript for Reliable Sources, no mention of the poll.

But since I was already mucking through the transcripts, I looked into last week's Inside Politics, and, lo and behold, found this highly "interpreted" report by Bill Schneider and Judy Woodruff:

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let's talk a little more now about the president's tax cut plan and how the American people see it. Our senior political analyst Bill Schneider is in Washington. First of all, Bill, new poll numbers out today. How much support is there out for the president's tax cut plan?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Limited. Especially when you consider how popular President Bush is after the war. We asked Americans nationwide, do you think the tax cuts President Bush is proposing are a good idea or a bad idea? And just 42 percent say they're a good idea. Slightly more, 47 percent, call the tax cuts a bad idea. That is a remarkable lack of public enthusiasm for what ought to be an easy sell.

WOODRUFF: Well, what explains the lack of enthusiasm?

SCHNEIDER: One word: recession. The view of the economy has become markedly more negative since the beginning of the war with Iraq. Just after the war started, 41 percent of Americans thought the economy was in recession. Now, it's up 15 points to a solid majority. Fifty six percent now believe the U.S. is in a recession. Now, wait a minute. President Bush is calling his tax cuts a jobs and growth package. People concerned about recession ought to be enthusiastic about the tax cuts.

Not so. Americans who believe the country is in recession solidly oppose the tax cuts, 57 percent. The tax cuts are more popular among people who believe we're not in a recession. That holds true even among Republicans, Republicans who think the country is in recession are split over the tax cuts. Republicans who say we're not in recession overwhelmingly favor them. So, the bad economy is undermining President Bush's argument for tax cuts. In bad times, people think the country can't afford tax cuts, particularly when they see government services like education being cut.

WOODRUFF: But Bill, does all this mean the lack of enthusiasm for tax cuts, does that in any way mean the president is in trouble for reelection next year.

SCHNEIDER: Not yet. When we asked registered voters whether they'd vote for Bush or the Democrats in 2004, Bush leads 49 to 36 percent. That's not quite a majority.

Now, how can Bush even be ahead if Americans believe the economy is in recession and if, as you reported earlier, the economy outweighs national security in importance? President Bush has a solid lead among national security voters, nearly 50 points ahead. He trails by about 15 points among voters who say their top issue is the economy. The economy does not pay off for Democrats nearly as much as national security pays off for President Bush.

[end of report]

It's rather interesting, besides the final spin Schneider puts on the "results", that no other source, including USA Today, which provided a least a dozen of the questions and answers, mentions the Bush vs. Democrat figure. What's with that?

Anyway, that was the extent of the reporting on a poll which must have cost CNN a bucket of money.

Quote of the day

Who said this during Sunday's line-up?

"What I'm trying to figure (is) why these conservatives are pushing the bigger and bigger tax cuts when, traditionally, conservatives have been opposed to deficits."

"If we get these big deficits, then the pressure will be on to strangle the spending, to strangle what is called the 'wasteful social spending,' whether it's Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security ... Head Start programs or Pell Grants. I think that's the tactic."

[Answer in Comments]

Always read the fine print

So when I took my morning jaunt over to the Yahoo! Economic Calendar to get a quick update on this morning latest releases, I saw that the Commerce Department had put out March's "Personal Spending" numbers, and although they were up 0.4%, they were lower than the 0.6% that "the Market" was expecting. I moused on over to the Times, where I was somewhat surprised to see this:

Consumer Spending and Personal Incomes Rise in March
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:39 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans flocked to the shopping malls in March, boosting spending by 0.4 percent, the best gain this year, as consumers started to shake off their worries about the Iraq war.

The Commerce Department said the March increase in spending followed a lackluster 0.1 percent gain in February and a decline of 0.1 percent in January. It marked the strongest monthly increase since a 1.1 percent surge last December."

Anyone reading that would expect that the US might just be on the edge of economic recovery. And I wonder how many busy New York Times readers stop there, and go onto the next article. I suggest reading a little bit further down. Well, actually, almost to end of the article in fact:

The Commerce Department report on incomes and spending showed that the 0.4 percent jump in spending in March came from strength in spending on nondurable goods, such as clothing and food, and on services such as rent payments. Spending on big-ticket durable goods such as cars was actually down for the month.

The 0.4 percent rise in consumer spending was much more subdued once the impact of rising prices on the purchases of gasoline and other items was removed. Adjusting for inflation, the March increase was a tiny 0.1 percent, while February was transformed from a gain of 0.1 percent to a decline of 0.4 percent.

Sounds like a real rebound in consumer spending. Not.

Eat your veggies? Maybe not...

I have to admit that the headline, "Advocacy group finds contaminant in lettuce", caught my eye this morning due to the fact that, after four bedrest pregnancies in six years and subsequent added baby weight, I'm eating a lot of lettuce these days. But I really wasn't prepared for the implications when I opened the Boston Globe to read:

State and federal environmental officials believe that perchlorate, a salt used to help power missiles and the space shuttle, may cause health problems, even in trace amounts. Because it is known to affect thyroid hormone production, which is critical to early brain development, perchlorate exposure may be especially dangerous for pregnant women and young children.

Of course, I Googled the contaminant, recently found in four of twenty-two samples of California-grown lettuce (including organic brands), and became even more alarmed:

Thyroid hormones are crucial to proper development of many organ systems, including the nervous and reproductive systems. (Porterfield 1994, Jannini 1995.) The possible developmental effects of hypothyroidism include mental retardation, vision, speech and hearing impairment, deaf-mutism, spasticity, abnormal gait, delayed reflex development, impaired fine motor skills, and abnormal testicular development in males. (EPA 1998; Brechner 2000.) In older children, depressed thyroid levels have been associated with lower motivation to learn and attention deficit disorder. (Porter et al. 1999.)

The Globe and other related articles offered rocket fuel as the cause of the contamination of Southern California and Arizona's main irrigation resource, the Colorado River, and though there are other sources, this is correct (also from ewg.org):

Perchlorate salts are used in a variety of products as diverse as electronic tubes, car air bags, leather tanning and fireworks. Perchlorate was once used as a medical treatment for patients with severe hyperthyroidism, before serious side effects all but discontinued its use in the 1960s. (EPA 1998.) It is still used on a very limited scale in medicine for diagnosis and imaging. But perchlorate's main use is as an explosive propellant: Ninety percent of the perchlorate produced goes into solid rocket fuel for Air Force missiles and the NASA space shuttle. (EPA 1998.)

It turns out that perchlorate is also found to collect in high concentrations in breastmilk. Gee, like I need one more thing to worry about regarding my children's neurological development.

So much for salad, at least until this story further develops.

Don't blink now! A new not-so-favorable poll!

This morning, while I was Googling news to get a sense of where American sentiment currently stands on Bush's tax cut plan, I ran across this bit in Deb Price's informational piece in this morning's Detroit News:

[A]s a USA Today/CNN poll released Friday shows, Americans' No. 1 concern is the economy. The poll's findings are cause for alarm for the Bush White House:

53 percent said the state of the economy will determine their vote in November 2004, while only 36 percent said national security -- Bush's strength in polls -- would dictate their choice.

54 percent of Americans think Bush isn't devoting enough attention to the economy.

36 percent said proposed tax cuts will "mostly help" the economy, while 57 percent said the cuts would either do nothing or undermine the economy further.

Needless to say, I thought, wow, with all the focus on Bush's trekking around the country, pushing his purported stimulus package, such numbers from CNN and the Gallup Organization would have sparked a bit more coverage.

I wanted to see more on this poll, so naturally, I moused over to the CNN website. What did I find?

Nothing. Nada. Not a mention of the poll or its findings.

So next, I clicked over to Gallup's site. Nothing in print, but I did find a video clip which unveiled some of the polls results.

Finally, I visited the USA Today website, where I found an article from last Friday entitled, "Bush says $550B tax cut will boost economy; Poll: Few say cuts will help" in the archives. Of course, I had to pay $2.50 to access it. But it at least provided some more data on the mysterious poll, including the following questions and responses of 1,001 adults April 22-23 (with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points):

How much attention do you think President Bush is paying to the economy?

Too much: 1%
Right amount: 43%
Not enough: 54%

Are President Bush's proposed tax cuts a good or bad idea at this time?

Good idea: 42%
Bad idea: 47%
No opinion: 11%

What effect will the proposed tax cuts have on the U.S. economy over the next year?

Mostly help: 36%
No effect: 31%
Mostly hurt: 26%

Has the was with Iraq made you more confident in Bush's ability to handle the country's other problems?

More confident: 43%
Less confident: 15%
No difference: 41%

Within the text of the article, a little more information was provided about American attitudes towards the importance of the economy:

53% say the economy will most sway their voting decision; 36% say national security will be most influential.

[T]he poll finds Americans split 50% to 48% over whether he is in touch with the problems of ordinary people.

Most Americans, 56%, believe the economy is in recession, although government statistics show that it is not.

Although the poll is merely that, a poll, I found it newsworthy for a couple of reasons. First, the poll was taken while much of the media is still focusing its attention on national security issues, namely Iraq, and to a lesser extent, North Korea. That Americans are resisting the not-so-subliminal media attempts to mold the public focus on international events is telling of the power of the economy. And second, the poll results contradict the strategy Bush's political handlers disclosed last week, an "election campaign that is being built around national security and Mr. Bush's role in combating terrorism."

So how well will that play with American voters? Surprise, surprise, the USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll also addressed such issues:

How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism?

Very worried: 8%
Somewhat worried: 26%
Not too worried: 39%
Not worried at all: 26%

In fact, the poll now indicates that Americans may fear John Ashcroft more than Osama bin Laden:

Should the government take all steps necessary to prevent additional acts of terrorism in the USA even if it means your basic civil liberties would be violated?

Take steps even if civil liberties are violated: 33%
Take steps but not violate civil liberties: 64%

The Bush Administration can't even get a break on its role in Iraq's future:

Who do you think should be in charge of:

Overseeing the transition to a new government in Iraq?

United States: 41%
United Nations: 52%
Both equally: 4%
Neither: 2%

Providing humanitarian assistance to Iraqi civilians?

United States: 26%
United Nations: 65%
Both equally: 9%

Of course, I wasn't the only one who found this poll to be so newsworthy. Three others, besides the Detroit News, did as well.

Compare that with the 300+ news organizations which reported on the Pew Research Center's recent poll announcing Bush's 72% favorable rating.

The So-Called-Liberal-Media strikes again.

Judges matter

This is one reason why appointments to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals are so important:

Appeals court halts work of trust fund master
Friday, April 25, 2003

A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily suspended a court investigator whose work on the Indian trust fund led to the imposition of contempt sanctions on two Bush administration officials.

In a short order, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals took Joseph S. Kieffer III off the case pending further review. Although the Department of Interior has sought his removal, the three-judge panel didn't explain why they acted.

Since April 2001, Kieffer, a former military intelligence specialist, has functioned as a court monitor and, more recently, a special master-monitor in the long-running Cobell case. His suspension has little practical effect because he hasn't issued a major report in more than a year and his work has been held up by government lawyers who have challenged his every move.

But it came at a critical juncture in Secretary of Interior Gale Norton's appeal of her recent contempt citation. Last September, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth called Norton and former Indian affairs aide Neal McCaleb "unfit" to manage the trust assets of 300,000 American Indians. The challenge was heard yesterday by the the three-judge panel, one of whom questioned whether the mark on Norton's career was appropriate.

The three Judges on the panel which removed Kieffer were Douglas Ginsburg, A. Raymond Randolph, and Karen Lecraft Henderson, all Reagan or Bush I appointees. Ginsburg, some might recall, was the conservative nominated by Reagan to serve on the Supreme Court, after having been appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court the previous year, at age 40. An anti-regulatory ideologue, his nomination was only withdrawn when it was discovered he'd smoked pot as a professor at Harvard Law School.

This is the court to which Miguel Estrada, age 42, has been nominated by Bush Jr.

Some thoughts on "Enlighten Me" Syndrome

Bean, now on "staff" over at Alas, A Blog, included these paragraphs in her latest post on feminism and pro-feminists:

When a man comes up to me and professes feminism, a lot of times, what it has meant is, "I want to be a better human being, and since you are a feminist woman, I'm going to dump it all at your feet and ask you to be responsible for my enlightenment while I pepper you with questions, demand that you explain all things feminist to me, and then when I fail to achieve the enlightenment I want, I can blame you for not enlightening me properly." It's a setup, the whole thing.

That's where part of the skepticism comes from, dude. A man who comes up to me and says that he is feminist is often trying to get me to take responsibility for his enlightenment. Not only is this a great way for him to wriggle out of any culpability when he fails to do so, but it also puts a tremendous burden on me for the enlightenment of another human beings, when all I'm trying to do is live my own damned life, which is more than enough for one human being to do.

This is why, when I hear of a man who calls himself a feminist, my reaction is generally, "That's nice, I wish you luck." What the hell else am I supposed to do? Teach him how to be a human being?

Although I believe without the slightest amount of doubt that not only am I a feminist, but I'm married to one as well, this quote struck me for other reasons.

I found the words to be even more fitting if I struck out the concept of feminism, and substituted colonialism, or white paternalism, instead. I won't say racism, although I don't know if most Americans understand the difference; American Indians do not view themselves merely in terms of racism, but even more so as victims of colonialism.

I want to be a better human being, and since you are a colonialized native, I'm going to dump it all at your feet and ask you to be responsible for my enlightenment while I pepper you with questions, demand that you explain all things native to me, and then when I fail to achieve the enlightenment I want, I can blame you for not enlightening me properly.

In my first semester in my doctoral program at a very, very, liberal university, all the new anthropology graduate students, regardless of their specialty, e.g., archaeology, cultural, medical, physical, had to participate in a group seminar. It was the first time I really noticed how white liberals could be even more annoying than conservatives. I've noticed some of the same behavior recently in the Lefty Blogosphere. I haven't been able to formulate a coherent explanation for it until this time. Thank you, Bean.

Flashback Friday yet once again

BUSH'S FISCAL FEARS
Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, Creators Syndicate Inc.
April 24, 1991

President Bush spent nearly an hour last week reassuring six uneasy conservative Republican members of Congress but in doing so also exposed fiscal fears that are immobilizing his economic strategy.

The lawmakers were reassured by the president's continued support for a capital gains tax cut. But that backing is compromised by twin demons that haunt the Oval Office: "fairness" and the budget deficit...

NEEDED: A POSTWAR PICKUP
Hobart Rowen, Washington Post
April 25, 1991

The full extent of the global economic damage created over the past year by the Persian Gulf War, upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and wild gyrations in crude-oil prices is coming into view for the first time

In its World Economic Outlook released this week, the International Monetary Fund said that the combined effect of those events "was to further weaken the world economy at a time when growth was already slowing in a number of large industrial ...

SORTING OUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF WAR
TRANSFORMATION OF IRAQI BATTLEFIELDS TO KILLING FIELDS HAS REKINDLED SOUL-SEARCHING IN U.S.
E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post
April 26, 1991

President Bush, who relied heavily on moral arguments to make the case for going to war against Iraq, finds his postwar policies at the center of a debate over what moral obligations the United States has toward Saddam Hussein's opponents, notably the Kurds

The war's unexpected consequences -- uprisings by Shiites in Iraq's south and Kurds in the north that led to brutal crackdowns, thousands of dead and millions of refugees -- has raised new questions...

HELP, HEALTH!
Boston Globe
April 25, 1991

The cost of health care seems to defy all efforts at restraint by the government or individuals. In 1989, according to the Health Care Financing Administration, spending exceeded $604 billion. Here are some details:

- Expenditures in 1990 rose to 12.2 percent of the gross national product.
- Government at all levels spent nearly 15 percent of revenue on health care in 1989. In 1965 the comparable figure was 5 percent.
- Spending by business in 1989 leaped to 8.3 percent of wages and...

EDUCATION CHIEF DEFENDS CHOICE-OF-SCHOOLS PLAN
John W. Mashek, Boston Globe
April 25, 1991

WASHINGTON -- Education Secretary Lamar Alexander yesterday defended the freedom-of-choice provision in the Bush administration's education plan, predicting that "in five years it won't even be an issue."

At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Alexander faced questions about allowing parents to request transfer of their children to schools of their choice, including private or parochial schools...

HOME SALES PICK UP: ECONOMY'S SIGNS MIXED
Kent Gibbons, USA Today
April 26, 1991

U.S. business failures in the first quarter of 1991 were 53.8% higher than last year: 20,881 vs. 13,577. Failures were up in every region and every sector except mining, says Dun & Bradstreet.

Jobless claims rose sharply the second week of April, after two weeks of declines, the Labor Department said Thursday. New applications for unemployment benefits rose to 498,000 ...

DOW FALLS 28 AFTER JOBLESS REPORT
Washington Post
April 26, 1991

Blue-chip stocks fell sharply today after a report of higher jobless-benefits claims and after a dramatic plunge in Compaq Computer stock.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 28.46 points, or 1 percent, to end at 2921.04. New York Stock Exchange volume was a moderate 166.9 million shares.

The market was pounded early in the session by news that initial claims for unemployment benefits climbed by 47,000 to 498,000 in the week ended April 13, indicating no signs of relief from the...

BUSH IS VULNERABLE
John C. White, Washington Post
April 26, 1991

The Democratic doomsayers have been wringing their hands and beating their breasts for weeks now with great effect. In fact, it would sometimes appear that the thing the Democrats do best is hang crape at their own funerals. The columnists have had a field day mocking the Democratic candidates and possible candidates. The back-benchers at Duke's and Joe and Mo's have relegated the Democratic Party to the status of a cruel joke...

RACIAL POLITICS -- AGAIN
Boston Globe
April 23, 1991

The White House has apparently stuck a politically poisoned knife into the heart of negotiations between civil rights groups and major corporate leaders that were designed to produce a consensus on legislation to strengthen that bar against discrimination in employment. With its action, the White House and some in the Republican Party seem to have served notice that they intend again to make racial politics -- this time quotas -- a central issue in national politics...

FACING THE ENERGY FUTURE
Washington Post
April 23, 1991

On Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee will consider an urgent if delicately phrased call from the National Academy of Sciences for a national energy strategy to stem the ominous pace of global warming. The question overhanging the hearing will be whether the Bush administration is ready to face the implications of the NAS call.

A prestigious panel made up of scientists, economists, energy-industry representatives and environmental specialists reported two weeks ago that a significant...

RECESSION WORSENS IN QUARTER
USA Today
April 27, 1991

The extent of the slump in economic activity was revealed Friday when the Commerce Department reported that the gross national product shrank at a 2.8% annual rate. GNP is the value of all goods and services produced.

The first-quarter decline in GNP follows a 1.6% drop in the final quarter of 1990. It marked the first back-to-back fall in GNP - the ...

NEGOTIATING A HAZARDOUS NEW PATH IN IRAQ
Jonathan Kaufman, Boston Globe
April 23, 1991

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Having avoided a quagmire in the Gulf War, is the United States now entering a quagmire in its rescue of the Iraqi Kurds?

President Bush and officials in Washington say no. But the closer one gets to the Turkish-Iraqi border, the deeper and trickier the sands appear.

In the Middle East, changing national borders -- whether Israel's occupation of the West Bank or Iraq's seizure of Kuwait -- have often led to unexpected and unwanted consequences....

Jobless claims up again

More bad unemployment news:

Jobless Claims Climb More Than Expected
April 24, 2003
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans lining up for state unemployment benefits last week climbed more than expected to the highest level in over a year, the government said on Thursday, suggesting a deteriorating labor market.

First-time jobless claims rose by 8,000 to 455,000 for the week ended April 19, the Labor Department said. It was the highest level since the week ended March 30, 2002 and the tenth straight week that claims held above the key 400,000 level, regarded by economists as a sign of an unhealthy labor market. The gain far exceeded expectations. In a Reuters poll, economists forecast that jobless claims would fall to 425,000.

A Labor Department official said there was nothing specific behind the increase in claims.

Duh, they don't manipulate the numbers to make the claims go up, just to make them look like they've gone down.

Senator Snowe, proud RINO

While I was busy flouting the stupidity of the Club For Growth attacks on my senior Senator, Olympia Snowe, I missed an even bigger story regarding the moderate Republican from Maine. Fortunately, the ever vigilant Lisa English of Ruminate This caught the scoop on Ms. Snowe's efforts to delay the FCC decision on new media rules.

Whose family values?

While I wholeheartedly agree that all civil-rights minded Americans should publicly flay Rick Santorum for his remarks against gays, there was a whole 'nother barrel of fish he opened up in his April 7th interview with the Washington Post's Lara Lakes Jordan which Democrats and Progressives should soundly address:

"The basic liberal philosophy is materialistic, is relativistic, to the point of, you've got candidates for president saying we should condone different types of marriage," Santorum said. "That is, to me, the death knell of the American family."

I've been working for a few weeks now on a long essay, perhaps even a short book, on the abdication of the American family to the Republicans. Once more we see Republicans wallow in that windfall, trumpeting a basic dichotomy between liberal and "family" values. We now even have the Republican leadership asserting the former will in fact lead to the demise of the latter.

We need to put an end to this partisan chicanery here and now. Since the mid-1990s, the Republicans have mounted a campaign to convince American parents that they are the party which embodies that nebulous term, “family values”. What are true family-oriented values? Ask most soccer-moms and dads and you will hear concerns about education, healthcare, public safety and the environment. Losing a job, not making the mortgage, crumbling schools and overcrowded classrooms, these are the nightmares of American families, not what John and Fred are or are not doing in the privacy of their home. Most parents, whether they be actual or de facto (as in guardians or foster parents), have basic dreams, for themselves and their children. They want a comfortable place to live, most likely a home (whether it be a house, apartment, mobile home or hogan); they're concerned about their own health and that of their children, and want to prevent illness or injury, as well as have access to care should they become sick or impaired. If their children are injured through corporate negligence or denied access to state sponsored programs such as education, parents want to trust that they can find recourse through the courts or government. American parents want their government and institutions to cherish and protect their children as much as they do.

The truth is that the Republicans have spent the last ten years waging outright war on these very dreams and values of American families. The No Child Left Behind Act has left thousands of schools behind, underfunded, its teachers and administrators on the brink of being "replaced" for not meeting impossible federally-imposed, standardized test "goals", all so that Republicans can finally win approval for private school vouchers. The Republican policy of tax cuts for the super-rich has left state governments, most all of which are constrained by balanced budget requirements, gasping for life, slashing funding for all but the most basic social, educational and public safety needs. Affordable quality daycare is scarce, respite care for families of special needs children revoked, afterschool and enrichment programs which keep children and teens engaged during the part of the day they're most vulnerable slashed under the weight of state and local budget shortfalls. This Administration's environmental policies have further threatened our children's health and wellbeing, from increasing pollutants in the air and water to suppressing information about the actual dangers these policies license.

Some would call these "needs", not "values". The American Heritage lists one definition of value, "[a] principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable." So what are the principles, standards or qualities Republican's see fit for American families? Kenneth Lay's principles which led him to squander the savings of tens of thousands of his employees? The standards of Phillip Morris, which included manipulating nicotine levels to increase addiction and marketing to children and teens? The qualities of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, such as defrauding federal courts and covering up government misdeeds in order to protect her position? The Bush Administration's behavior over Iraq offers a whole litany of "values"; bullying, deceit, profiteering, grandiosity, cronyism, parsimony, callousness, to name just a few.

Democrats need to re-examine what in essence we've relinquished to the Republicans. According to the 2000 Census, there are 71.8 million families, with an average family size of 3.14, and family-based households account for over two-thirds (68%) of all household units. Households with children under 18 account for over a third (38%) of all US households.

Average American parents don't have time for platitudes and dogma. On the whole, we're pragmatists; we prefer common-sense solutions to those goals of decent jobs, education, healthcare, public safety and a healthy environment. Democrats have long addressed these concerns, but recently have allowed the Republicans to derail getting this message across, with assaults on every front from foreign policy to affirmative action to civil liberties. In order to get back on track, Democrats need to state loudly and clearly their policies on economic recovery, healthcare and saving education from NCLB.

The Democratic plan should focus first and foremost on jobs; saving those still remaining and replacing the more than 2.3 million lost under the first two years of Bush II. States facing massive budget shortfalls have placed tens of thousands of jobs on the chopping block; teachers, firefighters, police, social workers, all tax paying citizens, most with families of their own. The Democrats should demand the federal government make up for the billions it denied the states in its 2001 tax give away to the wealthy. In order to create new jobs, governments should free up the current tight lending environment, providing small business loans and venture capital to entrepreneurs, rather than dividend tax cuts to the rich. Families who have to live on a budget expect the federal government to do the same. Massive deficits are a policy decision which directly effect low and middle income families in the form of higher interest rates and reduced home-ownership funding.

Second, Democrats should attack the Bush education plan head on. Even Senator Edward Kennedy, the original co-sponsor of NCLB, has withdrawn his support for the albatross it has become to school districts and students alike. Revisiting its dependence on standardized testing of all students, even those with special needs or English-language limitations, is forefront on many parents wish lists. In addition, increasing funding for school building construction and renovation, lowering class size and teacher training are no-nonsense approaches nearly every family can support. And finally, ending unfunded mandates by providing the level of support promised 25 years ago with the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would go a long way to stop the internecine fighting over music and art versus one-on-one classroom aides.

Third, Democrats need to respect parents enough to offer them sensible healthcare choices. I plan on writing in more detail on this subject soon, but the current employer-based health insurance system is seriously flawed and Democrats should respect parents enough to be willing to make a case for single-payer healthcare, without the specter of Hillarycare preventing them from doing such. Half of all Americans are self-employed or work for small business. A single-payer system is most friendly to small businesses, who are currently being smothered by the skyrocketing cost of healthcare premiums. Maine has led the country in its promotion of a consumer-small business cooperation in the development of a single-payer healthcare initiative which passed the House in 2000, and is currently once again making its way through the legislature.

Democrats must also appeal to American families on issues of corporate responsibility and environmental protection. These issues may have been crowded out in Bush's War on of Terror, but they are forefront in the minds of many concerned parents.

Republicans have leaked to the media that foreign policy will be the political battleground in the 2004 election. But the most savvy of the Right's strategists understand that their best chance for victory lies in the family rooms of America, not the streets of Baghdad. They have coopt traditional Democratic venues such as education and healthcare reform, and turned these institutions on their heads. Its time for Democrats to step up to the Little League plate and fill the bases with the real family values of compassion, respect and responsibility for our communities and the environment. We should expect any number of Santorum pitches to the head, but with this game plan, Democrats, on behalf of all families, are sure to drive in a winning run in 2004.

Singin' the Red State Unemployment Blues

I've been thinking a lot about the unemployment rate, but not only the big picture, but what it might mean in the nitty-gritty of election strategy next year. For that, I think one needs to look more intently at the state-by-state unemployment levels, particularly in relation to where they were when George Bush II took office in January 2001.

For the past three months I've been gathering the numbers and ruminating over them. After a number of different sorts and groupings, I decided to look first at those states which were essentially close races for Bush, that is, states where the margin of victory or loss to the combination of Gore and Nader votes was plus or minus seven percent. Within that group, I then sorted by the percentage change in the state's unemployment rate. The results are listed below:

Of the twenty states listed, 12 are Red, or Bush states. The remaining eight were Gore victories.

The question which comes to mind is, if these unemployment numbers do not turn around, particularly in states such as Colorado, Ohio and Arizona, where Bush's margin of victory was rather narrow, perhaps Democrats should be focusing their energy, and money, on these particular battleground states. I personally never thought of Colorado and Arizona being very competitive for the Democrats, but with the emerging Latino electorate, as well as the poor employment, they appear to be more than just that.

For what its worth, only three states out of the fifty and DC did not see their unemployment rates increase.

[Source: www.bls.gov]

Pssst...Over here...A story on Norton's, er, Lott's criminal behavior

The Democrats have such an amazing issue with which to throttle the Administration, and yet time and again they pass up the opportunity to use it. I guess the American Indian community should tie John Lott to the story somehow, and perhaps then it would be fair game. Here's more fodder in case anyone might have the inclination:

Report says Interior hid computer-system troubles: Software was supposed to help track Indian trust royalties
By Robert Gehrke
The Associated Press

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - WASHINGTON - A judge was kept in the dark about failures in a computer system created to help track royalty payments that were owed to American Indians, a court-appointed investigator reported Monday.

Last September, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Interior Secretary Gale Norton had defrauded the court by making misleading statements about the department's efforts to fix management problems of oil, gas, mining, timber and other royalties from Indian lands. That included covering up failures of the Trust Asset and Accounting Management System.

On Monday, Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master in the case, said the Interior Department made a concerted effort to sanitize its report on the computer system to make it appear to be working well. He said the department ignored advice from its own experts, who said the report as presented to the court was misleading and inaccurate.

Including the objections would have been an admission that the department had deceived the court by filing misleading reports about the status of the computer system since 2000, Balaran said.

The Interior report was filed a month before Norton took the stand in her defense.

The department's reports "were contrived to present a gilded portrait of the TAAMS system and avoid adverse consequences arising from contempt proceedings pending at the time," Balaran wrote.

Interior Department spokesman Dan DuBray said he had not read Balaran's report and could not comment.

"They wasted three months of a judge's time by putting on a false defense," said Dennis Gingold, attorney for a group of Indians suing the government. "It really is a disgusting finding."

The department has appealed Lamberth's contempt ruling, and oral arguments on the appeal are scheduled Thursday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The lawsuit, which is nearing its seventh year, stems from the department's management of a trust fund established by Congress in 1887 that today handles royalty payments from 11 million acres held by about 300,000 American Indians.

For more than a century, untold amounts of money meant for some of the nation's poorest residents was lost, stolen or never collected, according to a string of government reports.

In 1999, Lamberth ordered the department to provide an accounting of the Indian assets and demanded the department reform its management of the money.

The accounting system was to have been the centerpiece of efforts to improve records keeping and through 2001 the department had spent an estimated $40 million on the project.

Last September, Lamberth said the project was in a state of disrepair and its future was uncertain.

More on the lead thread

A number of blogs have picked up Kevin Drum of Calpundit's lead football and run with it. Both Dwight Meredith of PLA and JD over at the fledgling Silver Rights have posted their thoughts and recommendations on the subject of childhood lead poisoning.

It is a topic with which I am far too familiar. My youngest son, Jonah, was lead poisoned at 15 months. We own a lovely early 20th Century Four-Square which just happens to have lots of tall windows with sills 21" from the floor, just the height for a toddler to chew on while learning to walk. Even coats of non-lead paint over the toxic early layers make no difference; unless special encapsulating paint is used, lead seeps into the layers of new paint. In Jonah's case, one small chip lead to a blood lead level of 50µg.

Over 50% of the housing stock in Maine has lead paint; it's an old state with lots of old houses. Ironically, many of the new lead poisoning cases are coming from a demographic not traditionally associated with lead poisoning: The kids of middle-class do-it-yourselfers. Whereas there are a number of funding sources for landlords to tap to abate their low-income apartments (not that they all do it), moderate income homeowners have no such options. Many families purchase fixer-uppers as their first homes, without much equity to secure additional loans. I'm not exactly sure how the Times came up with a figure of $32 million, or $1000 per home - the estimate to abate our home professionally was over $15K. (Then, of course, you have to worry about unscrupulous contractors - the one who worked on our home was fined by the Maine DEP for the improper work done on our, and 13 other, homes.) Regardless, lead paint will continue to be a problem for generations until the government puts it resources where its soapbox has been.

[Note: The story behind lead paint marketing is unbelievably chilling. It makes tobacco companies and their conspiring over nicotine levels look like amateurs. Paint manufactures knew from the 1910's that lead was neurotoxic, but marketed it as safe, in fact preferable to other paints. Lead in paint was not banned in the US until the late 1970's.]

Whence the War's Windfall?

Leading Economic Indicators Drop
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:03 a.m. ET

New York (AP) -- A key indicator of future U.S. economic activity fell 0.2 percent in March, the Conference Board said Monday.

The Index of Leading Economic Indicators measures where the overall U.S. economy is headed in the next three to six months. It stood at 100 in 1996, its base year.

Consumer spending has been the fuel for the struggling economy, but according to the Conference Board, their desire to spend appears to be tapering off.

"The combination of the slowing in consumption growth and the delayed start to more investment has effectively extended the soft spot that the economy has been in," Goldstein said.

He added that the end of the Iraq war has not boosted business capital investments or consumer spending, as some had predicted or wished.

"A decade ago, the end of fighting didn't deliver much impetus to the domestic economy," Goldstein said. "As was the case then, an end to the fighting may do little to change trends in the U.S. economy."

Yet this has not stopped every center-right to neocon economist, including Alan Greenspan, from asserting that everything would be just peachy once Bush got his war on and done with. This was also the sense, not surprisingly, from those same economists (including old Greenspan) twelve years ago.

AP closed this article with this ray of hope:

Although the index was down for a second consecutive month, the Conference Board said the information available so far in April suggests that the declines will not continue.

Did that information take into account this little tidbit, also just released this morning?

Oil Above $30 Ahead of OPEC Meeting
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:14 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices held above $30 on Monday ahead of this week's OPEC producer cartel meeting which is expected to tighten crude supplies as fuel demand dips to the lowest point in the year.

U.S. light crude (CLc1) in New York stood 18 cents lower at $30.37 a barrel. Trade in Brent crude on London's International Petroleum Exchange was closed for the Easter holiday.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet in Vienna on Thursday for an emergency meeting called after oil dropped about 30 percent in a month as Middle East oil flows escaped severe disruption from war in Iraq.

Oil prices rebounded late last week as Iran called on OPEC, which controls over half world oil exports, to cut official production quotas warning that failure to rein in supply could trigger a price collapse.

Other OPEC members have said tighter compliance to official output limits would probably be enough to avoid a supply glut.

OPEC pumped more than 1.5 million barrels per day over its self-imposed 24.5 million bpd production ceiling in March as it raised output to counter the loss of Iraqi supply and earlier disruption from a strike in Venezuela.

Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh on Monday said OPEC's quota busters should be the first to restrain output. ``All those that have increased their output in an unusual way, they should also be the first to decrease their production,'' the Aftab-e Yazd newspaper quoted Zanganeh as saying.

Oil prices have risen back above $30 -- the level that some economists warn can hurt economic growth -- on the month-long absence of Iraq's crude exports, halted since the start of the U.S.-led offensive.

U.S. inventories of crude and refined products are still below normal levels heading toward the U.S. summer vacation driving season when gasoline demand peaks.

Many economists (even the armchair kind, such as myself) argued that much of the sluggishness in the economy over the past few months, from manufacturing to consumer spending, was due to high energy costs. Neither businesses or individuals, after being gouged at the pump and electricity meter, had extra cash on hand to spend. Most analysts, however, argued that once the war was over, oil would flow like water, at $20 per barrel, and all would be saved.

It seems OPEC has other ideas. What would we expect. Wasn't like Bush was taking their concerns into account before waging his petty revenge on Saddam.

And this is supposed to be a slur?

The neo-cons Club For Growth recently released to political ads, lambasting moderate Republican Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio for not supporting Bush's $726 billion tax cut. The Senators, heralded as "Franco-Republicans" by the CFG, are compared to French president Chirac in their willingness to stand in the way of the president's agenda.

'President Bush courageously led the forces of freedom. But some so-called 'allies' like France stood in the way.

'At home, President Bush has proposed bold job-cutting tax cuts to boost our economy.

'But so-called Republicans like Olympia Snowe stand in the way. America needs strong allies abroad. And President Bush needs strong supporters in the Senate.'

'Hey, Olympia Snowe. Join President Bush's fight to cut taxes and fix the economy,'

Obviously someone at the Club For Stupidity Growth didn't do their homework.

Maine has the largest Franco-American community in the US, with approximately a quarter of the population claiming French, Acadian or French Canadian descent. Maine is the only state where French is an official state language. Our tourism is heavily dependent on Quebequois visitors. What koolaid did the neocons drink to think that draping Olympia, the most successful politician in Maine history, with the French flag would be viewed in a negative light?

But, hey, if they want to throw their money away....

[Update: Tom, in comments, points out a Freudian-slip on the news editor's part. For my part, I did edit Snowe for Voinovich (as the CFG website has the media clip and so is true to content), but the substitution of "cutting" for "creating" was the Straits Times doing.]

[Update2: The Portland Press Herald editorial staff agrees with me.]

Saturday...around the blogs...you'd think it was the 4th of...

Oops, got a little carried away there.

My favorite quote of the week. Teresa Nielsen Hayden of MakingLight on the recently discovered species, bleeding-heart freepers:

(There’s a new one: bleeding-heart freepers. They didn’t care about the Iraqi people last week and they won’t care about them next week. It’s just their football cheer of the moment. The advent of the internet has made so many things possible. Self-published recreational journalism has always been around; but back when you had to at least learn to run a mimeograph, and you had to pay postage to distribute your deathless prose, people who didn’t actually have much to say for themselves found other hobbies.)

Let's hope they're a highly endangered species.

Interested in making the 2004 Democratic race even more insane (and I mean that sincerely is a positive way), head on over to Kos and Jerome's DraftClark website and sign the petition. I did. Not because I'm committed to Clark (I'm still rather pleased with Edwards' domestic platform) but because good competition is healthy for a real big-tent party. Besides, if Clark can convert two Deanies, there must be something to him.

No, this is not a post from 1991

But it is from one of my favorite "deja vu" sources, the Boston Globe:

Poll says economy is top US concern
By Diego Ibarguen, Knight Ridder
4/19/2003

WASHINGTON -- For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the American people are more concerned about the nation's economic woes than about terrorism, war, or Iraq, a poll suggests.

The poll, released yesterday by the Pew Research Center, found that 41 percent of respondents cited the economy, unemployment, or the federal budget deficit as the nation's biggest problem, while 29 percent pointed to issues related to war and terrorism.

President Bush's approval rating remains high -- 72 percent -- but that apparently has not translated into solid political support. Nineteen months before the 2004 presidential election, 48 percent of registered voters polled said they would support his reelection, while 34 percent said they would prefer a Democratic candidate.

Bush's approval rating is up from a prewar rating of 55 percent, but is still well below the 89 percent approval mark his father, President George H.W. Bush, reached after the 1991 Gulf War.

And with that newsworthy tidbit, I guess it's time to unveil a side project I've been putting together in my limited free time, It's Still the Economy, Stupid, an attempt to collect weblog and traditional media articles in one place. I've just begun to put together the blogroll; any suggestions as to other center-to-left weblogs which regularly post on economic news would be welcome.

Bloglight Zone

So Blogger is screwing with my template: At least a half dozen or so of my links on my blogroll disappeared. Very Strange.

Flashback Friday once again

RELIEF GROUPS SAY THAT IRAQ FACES WIDESPREAD FAMINE, EPIDEMICS
April 17, 1991
Stephen Kurkjian, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- Millions of other Iraqis inside that bomb-shattered country will soon face suffering equal to, or perhaps greater than, that of the Kurdish refugees, two international relief organizations predicted yesterday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Physicians for Human Rights forecast widespread famine and disease within weeks unless significant international efforts are made to provide food and medical supplies and to help Iraq repair its electricity grid, water...

FED TAKES A PAUSE ON RATES: MANY ON BOARD SEE TURNAROUND SOON
John M. Berry, Washington Post
April 19, 1991

Federal Reserve policy makers, fearful of fueling inflation, agreed unanimously at their last meeting March 26 that they may have pushed interest rates low enough to end the recession that began last summer, according to Fed officials

Many of them are convinced that the turnaround will come soon, the officials said. The key housing and automobile sectors have hit bottom and likely will begin to improve, if very slowly, during the current quarter, they believe...

BUSH PLANS SCHOOLS OVERHAUL BACKS SCHOOL CHOICE, NATIONAL TESTS; CRITICS HIT LACK OF FUNDS
April 16, 1991
Muriel Cohen, Boston Globe

For the first time since President Bush declared himself the "education president," his administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of American schools, but critics charge the proposal provides no new money.

The plan would give parents a choice of schools, provide children with broad social services, offer universal preschool programs, set up national tests and encourage new approaches to running schools...

HOW CAN US BE SO GOOD AT BOMBING, SO SLOW AT RESCUING?
April 16, 1991
David Nyhan, Boston Globe

The help the US government belatedly air-dropped to Kurds clinging to the muddy mountainside bordering Turkey epitomized what has gone so horribly awry since President Bush proclaimed victory over Iraq.

Pallets of food, medicine and blankets, hasty care packages assembled out of guilt for our forsaking the luckless Kurds, suddenly became lethal weapons. Some parachutes failed to open; others blossomed only half-way. The result was that the relief packages from US tranports wound up...

U.S. TRADE DEFICIT DOWN TO $5.3 BILLION IN FEBRUARY: MONTH'S DECLINE IS ATTRIBUTED TO CHEAPER OIL AND LOWER DEMAND FOR AMERICAN GOODS
John Burgess, Washington Post
April 19, 1991

The U.S. trade deficit in February dropped to $5.3 billion, its lowest monthly level since 1983, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.

Economists welcomed the decline. But many played down its significance, noting it was caused not by increased exports -- U.S. sales abroad actually declined slightly -- but by cheap oil and a recession-induced decline in U.S. demand for foreign goods...

DEFEATED BUT DEFIANT, KURDS HUNGER TO FIGHT AGAIN
April 19, 1991
Jonathan Kaufman, Boston Globe

SILOPI REFUGEE CAMP, Turkey -- They call themselves "peshmerga" or "we who face death."

They are Kurdish rebel soldiers, and at the height of their power a few weeks ago they were perhaps 100,000 strong and controlled scores of northern Iraqi cities and towns. Now defeated and forced to flee, many plot their return and the renewal of rebel fighting.

"We want to keep all of Kurdistan!" Ekrem Cihangir Ismail said excitedly as a crowd of refugees gathered around...

ALEXANDER'S ACCREDITATION STANCE DRAWS FIRE
April 18, 1991
Anthony Flint, Boston Globe

Education Secretary Lamar Alexander has put the brakes on a regional college accrediting agency that uses an institution's cultural diversity as a criterion for evaluation, raising concern in higher education circles about government meddling.

In an April 11 letter, Alexander scolded the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools for delaying accreditation of Baruch College in New York because the institution had not done enough to hire minority faculty or retain minority...

UN AND IRAQ AGREE ON AID FOR CIVILIANS PROPOSAL WIDER THAN US PLAN, COULD POSE DILEMMA FOR BUSH
April 19, 1991
Michael Kranish, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- Iraq and the United Nations tentatively agreed yesterday to establish dozens of "humanitarian centers" that could feed and shelter virtually any Iraqi citizen, a proposal that goes far beyond President Bush's plan for six temporary Kurdish refugee camps.

While US forces were surveying northern Iraq and preparing to meet Iraqi military commanders in the town of Zakhu, a "memorandum of understanding" was signed in Baghdad authorizing Saddam Hussein's...

TURNAROUND BY 1992?
April 18, 1991
Frank Perrotta, Boston Globe

Richard Syron, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said the New England economy should return to "moderate growth by the end of the year" . . . Peabody Construction Co. of Boston and Braintree won a $15.9 million contract from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to expand and renovate the MBTA Operations Center on High Street . . . Boston lawyers Bingham Dana & Gould has opened an office in Hartford . . . Campeau Corp. said it could not explain the sharp...

DEMOCRATS BLAME BUSH FOR IRAQ REFUGEE CRISIS
April 18, 1991
Michael Kranish, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- During the Gulf War, many Democrats praised President Bush reluctantly as a decisive leader who stuck to his principles. But as the Kurdish refugee crisis has grown, Democratic critics are becoming more outspoken in attacking Bush's postwar performance as marked by waffling, miscalculation and an abdication of leadership.

With Bush's acknowledgment on Tuesday that his 11-day-old airlift of relief supplies to the Kurds was not working, Democratic leaders have been...

CONFIDENCE SEEN A FACTOR IN DOW'S 53.71-POINT CLIMB BUT HOUSING STARTS, OUTPUT DECLINE
April 17, 1991
Mariann Caprino, Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The stock market yesterday surged in a flurry of buying spurred by new confidence that the economy is on the verge of recovery.

The Dow Jones average of 30 industrials jumped 53.71 points to close at 2986.88, the third-highest finish ever for the key barometer.

Stock prices opened on a weak note following government reports showing that in March, housing starts declined 9.3 percent and industrial production fell 0.3 percent...

BUSH ACCUSED OF ELECTION PLOY ON RIGHTS BILL
April 16, 1991
Michael Kranish, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- Civil rights leaders charged yesterday that the White House tried to halt a promising round of negotiations being led by business leaders on the civil rights bill, saying that the Bush administration does not want the bill to succeed and thus rob the administration of the politically powerful job quota issue before next year's election.

"It is increasingly obvious the White House does not want a good civil rights bill," said Ralph Neas, chairman of the...

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM: THE SYNDROME RETURNS, COURTESY OF GEORGE BUSH.
April 19, 1991
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

"By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." -- George Bush, March 1, 1991

"The United States is not going to intervene militarily in Iraq's internal affairs and risk being drawn into a Vietnam-style quagmire. -- George Bush, April 16, 1991

A month ago, George Bush triumphantly declared the Vietnam syndrome dead. Today, he is its chief purveyor. "Vietnam" is his preferred retort to those who fault him for not having used American air...

REMINDERS OF BUSH'S BLINDERS
April 18, 1991
Mary McGrory, Washington Post

Two inconveniently charismatic foreign leaders came to town this week and, besides unsettling George Bush, reminded us of two strains in our foreign policy -- a short attention span and a tolerance of aggression against a country without oil

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the president of Nicaragua, wanted money, the Dalai Lama of Tibet wanted a change in our policy toward China, neither of which Bush could easily provide....

WHERE ARE THE DEMOCRATS?
April 16, 1991
Mark Shields, Washington Post

Question What was the meanest, most hurtful trick Ronald Reagan ever played upon Democrats? No, it was not the two humiliating landslide defeats the Gipper administered in 1980 and 1984. Nor was it Reagan as rhetorical grave-robber baldly expropriating the words of revered liberal icons such as FDR and JFK and employing their heroic language in support of Reagan's own conservative program. No, Reagan's meanest vengeance upon the party of his birth can be found in today's acute shortage ofdeclared 1992 Democratic presidential candidates. By leaving office, the Gipper effectively left the Democrats without any plausible identification papers of their own -- with no ideological equivalent of a major credit card or a picture ID The major reason for the acute shortage of Democrats now running for the White House has far less to do with the recent, semi-daunting poll numbers of President Bush than with the fact that in spite of Reagan's dominance of the decade's politics, Democrats -- except at the presidential level -- managed to prosper politically during the '80s by simply assuming the role of compassionate, nurturing defenders of Social Security, school lunches and the environment against their portrait of Reagan as the uncaring tribune of the Deserving Rich. By 1989, the Democrats' basic slogan and organizing principle, "We're not Reagan" had become dated, irrelevant and vacuous...

And who would have imagined these two would be in the news again in the same week, though this time in the same story?

NEIL BUSH REPRIMANDED FOR CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: S&L REGULATOR ISSUES MILDEST SANCTION
Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post
April 19, 1991

The nation's top thrift regulator yesterday formally reprimanded President Bush's son Neil for engaging in conflicts of interest while serving as a director of the now-defunct Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan Association

Timothy Ryan, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), said Neil Bush "has engaged in unsafe or unsound practices and breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." Ryan ordered him to "cease and...

HOW SHOULD THE PRESS TREAT KITTY KELLEY?
April 18, 1991
Joseph P. Kahn, Boston Globe

Besides George Bush, the last newsmakers to appear on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously were Norman Schwarzkopf and Saddam Hussein.

This week, to the surprise of almost no one, both covers belong to ballistic biographer Kitty Kelley, whose media image currently lies somewhere between war hero Stormin' Norman and the villainous Butcher of Baghdad. With attributes of each.

Kelley, author of "Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography" -- which tops the New York...

Yay!

For a couple of months now, I've been feeling almost silly, banging my "deja vu" drum all by my lonesome. But I figured, sooner or later, others would pick up the beat. That day has come.

(via Ruminate This)

Cheese-eating Republicans surrender over "scalping" issue

More proof Republican "big tent" words only offer cover for an inherently bigoted core. Of course, it will mostly go unnoticed by the media et al.

Jobless claims increase markedly

This is not good news at all.

Jobless Claims Surge to 442, 000 Last Week
By Reuters
Filed at 8:55 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More Americans than expected signed up for state unemployment benefits last week, reflecting increased layoffs in the auto industry as the world's richest economy limped forward, a government report on Thursday showed.

First-time jobless claims rose by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 442,000 for the week ended April 12, the Labor Department said. It was the ninth straight week that claims held above the key 400,000 level, regarded by economists as a sign of an unhealthy labor market.

Much of the rise reflects an increase in layoffs in the auto industry, a Labor Department official said.

The gain was well above expectations. Economists in a Reuters poll had forecast, on average, that jobless claims would edge up to 411,000.

The auto industry, as you can see just a few posts below, was the one shining start in retail sales last month. If producers are laying off workers, they obviously don't expect that trend to continue.

The Administration also revised last week's claims, from 405K to 412K. Isn't it funny how they keep losing jobs when the initial, closely watched, reports come out?

The Administration discovers its artsy side...

A growing number of weblogs, especially Body and Soul, Making Light, and even Instapundit, have expressed their outrage, dismay and in some cases, exculpation over the pillaging of the Iraqi National Museum. Although I discussed it in passing a few days back, I suspect friends who know me as an archaeologist, not a parent of autistic children or a policy wonk, may be wondering why I haven't had more to say on the issue.

I have been thinking about it. A lot. In fact, I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that most of my free "thinking time", i.e., that not taking up mentally planning general life activities, has been consumed by the subject.

I started to write down my initial thoughts, and then moused on over to Jeanne D'Arc to locate an appropriate link. While there, I noted her mention of Bryan Pfaffenberger's piece on who might benefit from the looting. As I read it, I felt a bit of wind knocked out of my sails, as he'd written much of what I had composed in my head. In particular, he introduced his readers to a newly formed group of art dealers, lawyers and museum curators, with the innocuous sounding name, American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP). This organization had been raising concerns within the archaeological community since its formation in the fall of 2001. Many believe it is not shear coincidence that its inception was marked just as the Administration's anti-Iraqi war-drums began to sound.

As Pfaffenberger's article noted, "the group is known to consist of a number of influential dealers who favour a relaxation of Iraq's tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities. Its treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as 'retentionist' and has said he would support a post-war government that would make it easier to have antiquities dispersed to the US." The ACCP, however, is not alone in these goals: even the International Confederation of Art and Antiquities Dealer Associations (CINOA), lists as one of its stated aims, "[t]o promote the abolition of restrictions on the import and export of cultural goods." A few days ago, Koichiro Matsuura, the Director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) urged CINOA, along with Interpol, the World Customs Organization, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to join a ”comprehensive mobilization so that stolen objects do not find their way to acquirers.”

But the ACCP, with its founder Ashton Hawkins, former executive vice-president and Counsel to the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had access to the Bush Administration's Department of State and Defense at level not typical most newcomers, and New York artsy folk at that. Prior to the war, the ACCP met with Defense and State officials, purportedly to offer "help in preserving Iraq's invaluable archaeological collections, but archaeologists fear there is a hidden agenda to ease the way for exports post-Saddam." A letter to the Guardian from prominent British archaeologists this week warned the ACCP was "already persuading the Pentagon to relax legislation that protects Iraq's heritage by prevention of sales abroad, arguing that antiquities will be safer in American museums and private collections than in Iraq."

Today, the ACCP appeared to join the chorus of scholarly voices calling for a moratorium on trade in Iraqi antiquities. One might then ask, doesn't this exculpate them?

A few things about the National Museum's collections raised a significant amount of concern in this archaeologist. Although not unusual in even prominent American museums, there was mention (and I wish I could find the source, but it made perfect sense under recent circumstances) that the Iraqi National museum had not catalogued a large number of its artifacts. Of the nearly 170 thousand artifacts missing, tens of thousands, maybe even half, had not been photographed and had their characteristics detailed in writing. So while customs agents around the world will be looking for highly publicized artifacts, those others, no less precious, but undocumented, may move about unnoticed.

But what if there is a moratorium on all pre-Gulf War II Iraqi artifacts?

How long would such a moratorium last? One year? Two? The ACCP was not interested in changing antiquities import/export law to allow for the trafficking of illegal goods. They are interested in the loosening of laws to allow for legally excavated and purchased materials.

This is where understanding a bit about the nuts and bolts of archaeology may be enlightening. Only a relatively small portion of archaeological excavation is done by universities and museum programs. Most, particularly in areas of high industrial, commercial and/or residential development, are done by professional archaeologists, or cultural resource management firms, who work with the company developing the site for modern use, to remove, with useful provenience information, endangered artifacts and other material (soil samples, carbon, etc.) Although not an inexpensive added cost to any project, one can be fairly confident that Hussein, who had a strong appreciation for Iraq's cultural heritage, would have required such work. If foreign companies were developing in an area of sensitive sites for their own use, he probably would have passed the cost on to them. Of course, Iraq got to keep the recovered materials, no matter who was footing the bill.

While most of the artifacts excavated from developed sites would be forwarded on to regional or national museums for study, further documentation, preservation, restoration and in some cases display to the public, project reports prepared by the CRM firm would also be prepared and sent to the site developer as well as the government entities overseeing such projects. In Iraq, I suspect that would generally be the ministries of the Interior and Oil.

Archaeologists often must try and think like our traditional antagonists, unscrupulous antiquities dealers and art collectors. Thus, if I were such, with the added benefit of backing from my government and its corporate financial supporters, I would not look towards the illegal market. Instead, I would consider loosening the regulations on legally exporting materials excavated after the war. With the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, the number of public projects will be countless, most contracted out to American firms. Many will be revisiting areas previously excavated as sensitive sites, possibly with significant archaeological material in situ (the goal of even rescue archaeology is to leave as much of the site intact for future, less time-critical, study.) Would anyone really notice if, on top of the thousands of new artifacts recovered from any such site, a few hundred others, with documentation only slightly altered for dates, were to end up in on the same cataloging table? Who would know, accept those in possession of the reports harbored in the former Ministries of the Interior and Oil? (Both incidentally protected from pillaging by US forces while the National Museum and Library suffered such a fate.) With Saddam's cultural protections restricting the export Iraqi treasures lifted, antiquities collectors, such as those represented by the ACCP, would argue that they were in fact helping Iraq, as even the most developed country could not be expected to catalog, restore and protect the thousands of priceless pieces swamping the heavily damaged museums during the Reconstruction Period.

But the ACCP wouldn't expect the Bush Administration would help in this little "arrangement", would they? How would they benefit? Well, for the truly intrigued, my suggestion would be, as always with this Administration, to follow the money. A good place to start might be those on 45-person ACCP Board of Advisers, such as Shelby White, who in the two years prior to the fall of 2002 had given tens of thousands in contributions to Democrats, suddenly started writing checks to the Republican Congressional candidates and the Republican Leadership Council.

A moratorium will not stop the ACCP from trafficking in the stolen loot from Iraqi archaeological collections. With the help of the Bush Administration and its Reconstruction cronies, they may even do it legally.

[note: edited to clean up typos]

They've screwed in the lightbulb, but haven't yet flipped the switch...

You know how frustrating it can be when you read an article which steps up to the base, pulls back its bat, sees the ball fly right through the zone, but then fails to swing. Well, Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder succeeded in introducing me to that feeling once again in their report on newly released poll numbers. After a summary of the good, but predictable, news for Bush (73% favorable rating) they tried their hand at analyzing the American political psyche and what it may portend for the 2004 election:

From a political perspective, the Times/CBS News poll pointed to a number of signs, on both the domestic and foreign policy front, of the difficulties the Democratic Party faces as it tries to win the White House and Congress next year.

The nation has rallied around its president and is confident about the state of the country, a not-uncommon occurrence at a time of war. But beyond Mr. Bush's approval rating, a figure that typically gyrates with changing times, the number of Americans who believe the country is heading in the right direction has jumped nearly 20 percentage points since February, to 56 percent. That measure is closely watched by pollsters as a reliable indicator of the re-election prospects of an incumbent.

And there has been a jump of 7 percentage points since January, to 54 percent, in the number of Americans who said they had confidence in Mr. Bush's ability to make the right decisions about the economy. That sentiment was voiced even as respondents expressed concern about the decline of the economy under Mr. Bush, and even though just 46 percent said they approved of his handling of the economy.

The improving view of Mr. Bush on the economy appears to be a dividend of the overall jump in Americans' perception of Mr. Bush during the war. Mr. Bush's political advisers have argued that any voter concerns about the economy would ultimately be outweighed by a perception that Mr. Bush is a strong and grounded president, created by his handling of the war in Iraq.

[nota bene: According to Carville and Begalia, when Clinton came up with the old saying, "Its the economy, stupid," the "stupid" he was addressing was the media, not the public.]

Once again, this is great news for Bush in the present, not at all unexpected. But this paragraph is where my hopes were lifted... then dashed:

Mr. Bush's father, at a similar point after the previous war in Iraq, also enjoyed relatively favorable marks for his management of the economy. That perception, along with his own approval rating — which was even higher than the figure enjoyed today by his son — swiftly deteriorated as images of the war were supplanted by concerns about a troubled economy.

What? That's it? The so-called-liberal NYTimes couldn't hire itself an intern to do a half-measly job of comparing these poll results with those of Bush Sr.'s following Gulf War One?

Well, then, I'll do it for free.

For those not exactly familiar with their GWI history, the UN coalition forces initiated the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in mid-January, 1991. Although an official cease-fire was not signed until March, it was clear by mid-February that the military operation was an overwhelming success. And on February 28th, David Broder and Richard Morin of the Washington Post reported on the latest poll findings, much as Nagourney and Elder did today:

NATIONAL OPTIMISM SURGES ON WAR SUCCESS
POLL SHOWS UNPRECEDENTED RISE IN OPINION THAT U.S. IS HEADED IN RIGHT DIRECTION

The military success in the Persian Gulf War has triggered an unprecedented surge in national optimism, a new Washington Post poll shows. Between October and last weekend, the percentage of Americans who responded that the nation is going in the right direction has shot up from 19 percent to 58 percent, while the proportion saying things are going "pretty seriously off on the wrong track" has dropped from 78 percent to 39 percent.

Broder and Morin, at least back then, were not half the lapdogs today's White House press corps seems to be. In fact, they wrote what the Times should have included today in its analysis, including interviews with policy experts (there's a novel idea!):

Several private pollsters and opinion analysts cautioned that the euphoria bred by the victory over Iraq could prove to be fleeting. But they also said that if the optimism is sustained, it could have major beneficial effects for the economy, President Bush and the Republicans. "Peoples' attitudes toward government, their levels of trust in government, their belief in the efficacy of government may well increase markedly as a result of the positive experiences of the war," said Thomas E. Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution.

Linda Divall, a Republican pollster, said, "The whole question is how sustainable this will be. After the war is over, people will focus on the next problem to be solved . . . and that's the economy."

Alan Secrest, a Democratic pollster, agreed. "You're certainly seeing the revival of American confidence, particularly in respect to foreign intervention. But there are a host of issues waiting in the wings to pour forth as soon as the gulf conflict has been resolved. Those are the issues that were ascendant last fall, primarily jobs, taxes and the economy."

"Obviously it's a good number," Republican pollster Ed Goeas said. "But you have to be cautious, because it's being driven almost entirely by peoples' attitude toward the war."

Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman said, "My guess is this won't last. But the question for Democrats is whether it will change enough to give us a hearing. The good news for Bush is that he's had a great military victory. The bad news is that now he has to deal with the economy and all the other problem areas."

William Hamilton, a Democratic pollster, said his sense is that some fundamental attitudes have been changed by the gulf conflict. "My gut tells me this war has been a good thing for the American psyche," he said.

"People feel good that something we did worked. In time, I suspect some of the cynicism will come back," he added.

So here we have it; another article on another favorable poll penned at the end of another war with Iraq under another Bush Administration. However, the list of similarities doesn't stop there. Foremost is that which all the 1991 pollsters, Republican and Democrat, forewarned; Jobs, jobs, jobs. Then, as now, the unemployment situation drove the economy. I don't mean to keep harping on this (okay, yes I do) but almost half a million jobs have been lost in the past two months. That's even with the deployment of 300,000 soldiers to the Gulf, many of whom were reservists holding down day jobs. First time unemployment claims continue to pour in at over 400,000 a week. And business leaders see no indications that they'll start hiring again anytime soon.

So where does that leave us with Bush and his lofty poll numbers? Well, if we take a look into our Washington Post time machine, back to a mere 6 weeks after the first post-war poll mentioned previously, Richard Morin, this time with E.J. Dionne, Jr., follow up with this article, headlined:

POSTWAR GLOW HAS FADED, POLL FINDS
April 12, 1991

The surge of national optimism that followed the military victory in the Persian Gulf War has ebbed abruptly as Americans again focus on an uncertain economy and other domestic problems overshadowed by the conflict, a new Washington Post poll shows The survey found that 51 percent of those questioned now say the country is "pretty seriously off on the wrong track," up from 39 percent in a survey taken in late February, when the war was coming to a successful close. In the new poll, 42 percent said the country was moving in the "right direction," down sharply from 58 percent in the last survey. The "right direction, wrong track" question is a classic one used by pollsters to measure the popular perception of the country's well-being.

President Bush's popularity, in the meantime, has begun to drop from celestial levels to the merely extraordinary. In the latest survey, 78 percent of those questioned said they approved of the job Bush was doing as president, down from 90 percent in a poll conducted immediately after the war ended. His current standing puts him back to almost exactly where he was in January, shortly after the air war began.

The shift in the national mood appears to have been caused less by the bloody aftermath of the war against Iraq than by a change in the nation's focus of attention -- though the war's messy ending could be having the indirect effect of encouraging Americans to think about other things.

The news in the poll, taken over the weekend, was by no means all bad for Bush and the Republican Party. While perceptions of the economy remain gloomy, they have improved dramatically in recent months. Still, the survey results appeared to dash any Republican hopes that war euphoria might have a long-term effect.

Only 20 percent of Americans said their assessments of the nation's direction were based mainly on the outcome of the war. In this group, optimists outnumbered pessimists 6 to 1.

The vast majority -- 68 percent -- said they based their assessments on factors other than the war. In this group, the pessimists predominated by better than 2 to 1.

Follow-up interviews with some of those who think the country is on the wrong track suggested that economics are at the heart of the souring national mood.

"I thought Bush did a good job on the war," said Dolores Fantauzzo, 63, of Kingston, Mich. "But that's kind of in the past. It doesn't concern me personally anymore, but the economy here does. Everything is closing down. My son-in-law can't get a job. My daughter just got a job. Everything is part-time."

"I'm worried that the world for my two boys won't be as good for them as it was for me," said Josie Tobar, 54, of Santa Ana, Calif. "It seems that things will only be getting worse, not any better."

Atrios pointed his readers to the FreeRepublic website just a week ago, as an indication that even the extreme Right was feeling the pain of Bush II's economy.

The glow will fade again. It's still about the economy, stupid.

Industrial production slumps

More bad economic news from the Federal Reserve:

Industrial production fell 0.5 percent in March and is now estimated to have edged down 0.1 percent in February. Manufacturing output declined 0.2 percent in March, but excluding motor vehicles and parts, it was little changed for the second consecutive month. Output at utilities fell 4.1 percent after having increased noticeably in the past two months. Mining output moved up 0.6 percent and was 1.2 percent above the level of March 2002.

Even with the war factored in, market analysts were only expecting a 0.2 - 0.3 percent decrease. Utilities experienced the largest drop (4.1%) which may indicate that either households were tightening their belts and turning down their thermostats, or factories were shutting off machines. Both scenarios do not bode well for a quick post-war economic recovery.

The news from New York State was even more grim:

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions for New York’s manufacturers deteriorated markedly in April. The general business conditions index dropped to –20.4, its lowest level since October 2001.

Carol Stone, Deputy Chief Economist for Nomura Securities, warned:

March was just not a very good month. Purchasing manager surveys also indicated that manufacturing contracted in the month so this should not be a surprise to us.

I am much more concerned about Empire State survey that seemed to indicate that this contraction is intensifying in April. I hope that reflects pre-Iraq war planning and these things will turn the other way now that the war is losing force.

The market may focus more on this Empire state survey because it is more current.

This, of course, spells further trouble for NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, who on top of this just got handed an empty plate from Gov. Pakaki in his plea for some form of revenue increase for the beleaguered city. Pataki, for his part, has seen no indications from the Administration that his own government's $10 billion deficit will benefit from federal relief.

Bush obviously wrote off New York's electoral votes ages ago. Too bad no one informed the Republican governor and NYC mayor just what that entailed.

Shiny happy people spending...(maybe)

Since this article came out last week, I've been ruminating on some points:

Confidence Rising, Consumers Begin to Spend More Money
By KENNETH N. GILPIN

In the first encouraging news about the American economy in weeks, two reports released today showed that consumers are not only spending more money than they did in the depth of winter, but that they are also somewhat more confident about the future.

Retail sales, which slid 1.3 percent in February because of fierce winter storms, rose 2.1 percent during March, the Commerce Department said.

The gain, which was much higher than than economists' consensus estimates, was the biggest monthly gain since October 2001. In advance of the report, economists were projecting that retail sales rose 0.6 percent in March.

One thing which bothered me right off was the caveat Gilpin included later in the piece:

But analysts noted that March's sales gains were not broad-based.

Almost all of the increase was a result of a sharp jump in auto sales and a huge, weather-related increase in the sale of building materials.

Excluding those two items, retail sales rose a much more modest 0.2 percent. And sales at department stores, which account for about 6 percent of total retail sales, fell during March, the Commerce Department said.

To get a better understanding of these nuances, I moused over to the Commerce Department's website, where I found this graph:


Its fairly clear that new car sales are making the difference, and with concerns about interest rates rising and the end of 0% dealer financing, there were some pretty strong incentives to buy (I'd also hazard a guess that the jump in weather related accidents in February helped cement the deal.) Should economists, or even financial reporters, become overconfident that a bounce in retail sales and consumer confidence harkens a rosier future, particularly with all the other bad news of late in the employment sector, i.e. 480+K jobs lost in February and March?

To be honest, I was expecting the news to be grim, particularly consumer confidence. But something about the report kept nagging at me, as it just felt so familiar. So on a hunch this morning, I took a trek back into the Washington Post archives. And there I found these:

CONSUMERS SPENT MORE IN FEBRUARY: EXPERTS CAUTION SPREE MAY NOT LAST
Anne Swardson, Washington Post
March 29, 1991

Consumers, who apparently have been feeling more hopeful since the Persian Gulf War, may finally be starting to show it in their spending habits.

The Commerce Department said yesterday that consumers raised their spending, especially on automobiles, an inflation-adjusted 0.4 percent in February. It was the first significant rise in spending since last June.

and

UPBEAT CONSUMER CONFIDENCE SURVEY BOOSTS STOCKS: DOW JUMPS 49 POINTS
Washington Post
March 27, 1991

Blue-chip stocks soared today, rising on the back of a private survey showing that consumer confidence in March took its biggest leap in more than 20 years.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed with a robust gain of 49.01 points to 2914.85. It was the steepest rise since a 58-point jump on March 3. New York Stock Exchange volume was active at 198.7 million shares.

These reports came out at the close of the first Gulf War, when America under G.H.W. Bush was struggling to rebound from recession. Prior to the war, some economists had warned that an expensive military action might plunge the economy back into the red, a "double dip" effect. But most of those forecasts were based on a protracted engagement, not the quick "clean" war Bush in fact achieved. Such a efficient wrap-up, as well as the rebounding retail and consumer confidence numbers had many of those same economists predicting new economic growth by summer. Instead, Bush Sr. saw his economy, as well as his job approval rating, tank as the thermometer rose. Turns out it was the employment situation, not consumer spending, which sank the economy in 1991, as unemployment, which had steadily increased 1.4% over the two years prior to the Gulf War, stabilized, and then escalated another 1.4% to a June 1992 high of 7.8%.

There are obvious differences between the economic picture of the spring of 1991 and today. Inflation and the impact of interest rates, although with the recent jump in wholesale prices, the former may need to be adjusted to the "similar" column. But as I've been saying for months now, for all Bush Two wants to argue his fate will not follow that of his father's, perhaps its time to crack a few more of those "published in Texas" American history texts.

Out of the frying pan...

And into the fire.

The stories percolating from of Iraq of anarchy and destruction in the wake of US invasion leave one to wonder if, despite Saddam's brutal government's demise, if it was in fact worth it. Hospitals and schools looted for incubators and children's desks. Government offices and courthouses razed with all of their contents. Baghdad's world famous Iraq National Museum, home to the greatest collection of archaeological artifacts in the Middle East, pillaged, its entire contents stolen or destroyed. Cities have no fresh water or electricity. On top of the thousands of wounded swamping the few remaining hospitals, there is a growing threat of epidemic, not from SARS, but from cholera.

The Bush Administration appears outwardly surprised by these events. They thought that the few thousand (hundreds?) of Iraqis cheering their entry into Baghdad indicated that the rest would be a cakewalk? The Republican Guard, Iraq's feared and battlehardened army, lost only a small percent of its forces to the war; the remainder just melted back into the population, carrying their weapons and brutality with them. The Ba'ath Party also claimed a few million members, most of whom are currently indistinguishable from their neighbors, the victims of their abhorrent policies. Saddam did not reign his country with his own iron fists: He had tens of thousands of accomplices, all of whom stand to lose their livelihoods, even their lives, in the aftermath of "regime change". Not only would all those cushy bureaucratic and law enforcement jobs, and their salaries, be gone, but once the records were opened to scrutiny, the extent of various individual's complicity in the crimes of the dictatorship would be clear. So the white-collar criminals who bolstered the previous government turned into common thieves and vandals, running off with whatever they could and destroying the evidence of their misdeeds. Don't tell me the Administration thinks that its mainly the average liberated Joe on the street engaging in these crimes?

However, it seems that Bush and his minions are just fine with the media promoting this image. At first, when it appeared just Ba'ath party offices and homes were targeted, chickenhawks and their talking heads claimed the Iraqis pilferers were just taking back what had been stolen from them (this was the spin Glenn Reynolds preferred.) But as the vandals turned to ransacking hospitals, conservatories, schools and museums, the news turned negative. Many critics, including Iraqis, believed the Administration had ulterior motives for allowing the looting to continue. An article in the Boston Globe addressed some of these concerns,

Talib al-Baghdad, an Iraqi lecturer at Qatar University, maintained that the United States was egging on the looters to make its troops seem indispensable to public order. Speaking to Al-Jazeera television, he also saw a conspiracy to destroy Iraq's infrastructure so that American companies could profit from rebuilding it.

I'd argue that the Administration sees an additional benefit. With the assistance of the purportedly unbiased media, they have been able to paint the entire Iraqi populace as an uncivilized mass easily thrust into anarchy by the mere removal of their cruel dictator. According to the Globe, this has not gone unnoticed even by Iraqis,

''People think all Iraqis are looting. There are only 5 percent of people looting. The rest are good,'' Hassan Shrawa, a 30-year-old engineer, said Saturday on a Baghdad street.

Promoting such a belief system could benefit the Administration in upcoming days. As the media becomes dis-embedded and able to report independently, the news emphasis will inevitably shift from glorifying the war to documenting its horror. Its already begun, in fact. Not to give undue credit to the media: Gore and suffering sells, and while before they were not in a position to obtain the live footage of mangled children, now they have full access to the misery of post-war Iraq. This Administration, the most scripted and media manipulating in history, understands the necessity to counter the empathy blossoming throughout the world, and more importantly, in US viewers.

So the trade-off is between allowing US troops to be criticized for not interceding to stop the pilferage and destruction, or to undermine that growing empathy by placing the responsibility for the anarchy squarely on the uncivilized and obviously immoral Iraqi people, essentially dehumanizing them into a lawless mob. Add to that the incidents of suicide bombings and sniper attacks, and the American public will soon be clamoring for even more draconian measures in order to restore "order" in Iraq.

Look for the Administration to use this new view of Iraqis to justify delaying handing over control to an Iraqi civilian government, democratically elected or otherwise. And let's not even talk about what such a mob might do with all that oil....

Memories lost, now found.

I was up in the attic this afternoon, to climb the 80 year-old+ wooden ladder that allows the only access to our roof. The forecast was for rain. Heavy rain, and I noticed when I pulled into the driveway yesterday that a part of the roof looked "askew" (there is no real way to explain it - the house is a 1913 American Foursquare with a hip-roof which at one time sported a "widow's walk" - apparently the covering for that part of the roof had flipped up onto itself, allowing a great flooding of our attic in the previous rainstorm.)

Have I mentioned that I'm afraid of heights, and this American Foursquare is 2.5 stories on a 6 ft. foundation? Anyway, as I was descending the creaky old ladder, I spotted an old photo on top of a stack of books on the top of the attic's bookcases. It was above eye-level when standing in the attic, which is why I haven't been able to find it for months now. I first pulled it out of my mom's things as I was sorting through them after her death last fall. When my dad died five years ago, she moved most of their household up into my attic and barn, I suppose with the intention of spending summers visiting from her winter home in Florida parsing through what she couldn't in her new grief. So I did the sorting, donating some things to charity, including others in our fall yard sale. Most stayed in the attic, not much more organized, but at least I knew they were there.

Then there was the photo. I'd seen it years before, and asked my mom about it. It was 1955, and she was 16 and a half. Its the only photo I have of her in full regalia. Most of the photos of her that age are with high school friends, noticeably "tanner" then her peers, but sporting the same clothes and make-up. She looked like a typical All-American kid. But this photo documented the part of her life not shared with those friends, and in 1950s racist America, shared with few outside of her family. I somehow misplaced it, trying to make sure I wouldn't do exactly that, putting it in a safe place, up on the bookcase, away from little hands and a leaky roof. Today it was recovered, an inheritence more precious to me than any money or possessions my mother could bequeath.

It's cracked and faded, but irreplaceable.

Flashback Friday once again

PLIGHT OF THE KURDS: WHAT SHOULD US DO? A WAY THAT WON'T END TURMOIL BUT WILL SAVE LIVES
April 12, 1991
H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe

Wars have a way of ending in moral ambiguity, political uncertainty and, sometimes, betrayal. The French and the British betrayed the Arabs who followed T.E. Lawrence's call for a revolt in the desert during the First World War. The Kurds, whose suffering has tarnished the victory of Desert Storm, were promised nationhood 70 years ago.

Today, President Bush stands accused of betraying both the Kurds and the Shiites of southern Iraq. After publicly calling for the citizens of Iraq to...

IRAQ'S OIL
April 11, 1991
Washington Post

OIL PRICES are a little higher than a year ago, but they are back in the range that the world has come to consider normal. That's remarkable, since two of the world's largest oil exporters -- Iraq and Kuwait -- are now shipping none at all. The explanation is that some of the other OPEC countries are producing more -- above all others Saudi Arabia, which alone has made up most of the shortfall left by its neighbors to the north. Worldwide oil production is back almost exactly where it...

WORLD COPS AND ETHNIC VIOLENCE
April 12, 1991
Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Washington Post

No sooner had the United States won the war against Iraq than anxiety spread in some quarters that George Bush was going to be too quick to use military force and to apply American influence in general, too eager to impose an excessively ambitious, American-centered "new world order." It was indicated that he would be full of an arrogance born of his successful exercise of power in the Persian Gulf....

US DENIES IT FIRED CRITIC OF IRAQ SALES
April 11, 1991
John W. Mashek, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Sam Gejdenson accused the White House yesterday of a "patent disregard for free speech" in the reported ousting of a Commerce Department official who testified that the Bush administration ignored warnings to limit exports of US technology to Iraq before the invasion of Kuwait.

Gejdenson, a Democrat from Connecticut, was angered over press reports that Dennis E. Kloske, undersecretary for export administration, was fired or pushed out of office. Kloske testified...

POSTWAR GLOW HAS FADED, POLL FINDS
April 12, 1991
E.J. Dionne Jr., Richard Morin, Washington Post

The surge of national optimism that followed the military victory in the Persian Gulf War has ebbed abruptly as Americans again focus on an uncertain economy and other domestic problems overshadowed by the conflict, a new Washington Post poll shows.

The survey found that 51 percent of those questioned now say the country is "pretty seriously off on the wrong track," up from 39 percent in a survey taken in late February, when the war was coming to a successful close. In the new poll, ...

STUDY CHALLENGES US GLOBAL WARMING POLICY
April 11, 1991
Dianne Dumanoski, Boston Globe

A major study by the National Academy of Sciences challenged Bush administration policy on global warming yesterday and urged the United States to act now to cut "greenhouse gas" emissions, saying major reductions are possible at little or no cost.

"In other words," the panel said, "insurance is cheap" against global warming.

The study, requested by Congress in 1988, represents a major departure from the last major academy report on the greenhouse problem...

ISRAEL REBUFFS U.S. ON SETTLEMENTS: LEADERS REJECT LINKING A CONSTRUCTION HALT TO MIDEAST PEACE
April 12, 1991
Jackson Diehl, Washington Post

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and several leading members of his cabinet united today behind a firm rejection of suggestions by Secretary of State James A. Baker III that Israel curtail the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as part of a Middle East peace process.

One day after a visit here by Baker in which the settlements were a persistent theme of discussion, Foreign Minister David Levy told a cabinet session that he had informed Baker that Israel has a right to...

CNN'S PETER ARNETT DECRIES OFFICIALS' 'PACKAGING' OF WAR
April 12, 1991
Thomas Palmer, Boston Globe

Cable News Network correspondent Peter Arnett said yesterday that, during the Persian Gulf War, Baghdad was one of the few places where one could "avoid the patriotic fervor that swept much of the world."

Arnett, who was the lone Western newsman to report from Baghdad for much of the war, deplored the "packaging" of wars by governments, which he said prevents the consequences of conflict from being witnessed by the world.

RYSKAMP NOMINATION IS REJECTED: PARTY-LINE VOTE DEFEATS BUSH CHOICE FOR APPEALS COURT
April 12, 1991
Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post

The Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time rejected a judicial nomination of President Bush yesterday, voting down appeals court nominee Kenneth L. Ryskamp of Miami amid accusations that he was insensitive on civil rights issues.

The committee's Democratic majority prevailed in an 8 to 6 vote that followed party lines. The decision turned on comments by Ryskamp, a U.S. district judge, about Hispanics and suspects who had been mauled by police dogs, as well as Ryskamp's...

REPORT: TAX CUT BAD FOR ECONOMY
April 12, 1991
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A proposed Social Security tax cut that has strong support in the Senate would push up interest rates, worsen inflation and slow economic growth, the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday. In a report to the Senate Finance Committee, the agency suggested the national savings rate, already so low that it usually is blamed for many of the nation's economic problems, would decline for the next...

TWO WARS, SHIITE REBELLION LEAVE BASRA A FETID SHAMBLES
April 10, 1991
Wafa Amr, Associated Press

The streets are littered with the stinking carcasses of dead animals, some gnawed by packs of roving dogs and covered with flies and mosquitoes. Barefoot boys and girls fight swarms of flies to collect water from pestilent puddles. Hungry infants are fed starch and water instead of milk.

After two wars and a month-long Shiite Muslim revolt, the southern Iraqi city of Basra bears little resemblance to the thriving port of 1 million people once known as the Venice of the Middle East....

STATES' VERSION OF BUSH'S 'NEW FEDERALISM': GOVERNORS, LEGISLATORS UNVEIL THEIR PLAN TO FOLD DOMESTIC PROGRAMS INTO BLOCK GRANTS
April 9, 1991
David S. Broder, Washington Post

Governors and state legislators came up yesterday with their version of a Bush administration plan to fold billions of dollars in domestic programs into a handful of block grants. Their response to one of the president's highlighted 1991 initiatives drew cheers from the White House but still faces an uphill fight in Congress.

Bush offered his variation on the "new federalism" theme of his predecessor, President Ronald Reagan, in a surprise section of January's State of the ...

And these two little blurbs appeared in the Washington Post's financial pages on April 10th:

The economy will pull out of the recession during the current quarter, say 70 percent of the nation's top economists in a survey by the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter.

A majority of American businesses surveyed recently think the economy has bottomed out and stands poised for recovery, and that inflation is under control, said the American Business Conference, a group of mid-size, fast-growing firms.

[edited 4/11]

Ouch

This BLS alert just arrived in my box this morning (you can sign up for BLS press release via email here):

The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods advanced 1.5 percent in March, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. This increase followed a 1.0-percent gain in February and a 1.6-percent rise in January. At the earlier stages of processing, prices for intermediate goods moved up 2.0 percent, after increasing 2.1 percent in the prior month. The crude goods index jumped 13.3 percent, following a 4.8-percent gain in February.

It really is a recycled war...

...right down to the OP-ED pages...

PROPAGANDA PRISONERS
David Nyhan, Globe Staff
April 11, 1991

If our generals are ever tempted to re-fight the last war, they'll have to go it alone -- because the American press wants no part of it. We know when we're licked.

As with the air war which flattened Iraq's infrastructure, and the ground war which thumped the rubble, the job of squashing the people who bring you the news was no contest. "Who could not be moved by the sight of that poor demoralized rabble -- outwitted, outflanked, outmaneuvered by the US military?" crooned Secretary of State James Baker to the Washington media establishment. Droll pause. Then, "But I think, given time, the press will bounce right back." Heh, heh.

Crawling out from their bunkers after a war in which their reporting was largely irrelevant and their commentary generally superfluous, America's newspaper editors convene in Boston to lick their wounds and ponder the error of their ways.

Peter Arnett, the journalistic hero who took a propaganda pasting from the likes of Gen. Schwarzkopf and Sen. Alan Simpson for on-the-scene exploits while we were bombing the blazes out of Baghdad, follows Vice President Dan Quayle to the editors' podium. Both face a challenge in damage control.

Quayle speaks for a White House whose triumph over Iraq is turning into turmoil over the slaughter of the Kurds. The war we won with 6,500 tons of smart bombs and 82,000 tons of the dumb variety has become a peace we are losing to shame over our latest abandonment of the Kurds.

Arnett is the unintentional symbol of the shrinking number of newspeople willing to take on the love-it-or-leave-it lobby which wishes to put the press in its place.

The invitation of the storied Arnett from editors of newspapers must be unintended irony. His chronicling of the Vietnam War ran in the AP's client newspapers. This time he was broadcasting live for CNN. If ever editors needed confirmation that, in war as in presidential elections, they follow docilely in the footprints of television, here it is.

This was the first war in which America's newspapers were generally reduced -- through no fault of the intrepid front-line correspondents of both sexes and many nationalities -- to following the war through controlled military briefings. Whether from Saudi Arabia or the bowels of the Pentagon, the White House press room or the wherever-Bush-wants-to-talk-into-a-mike, golf-cart remote location, the men prosecuting the war never lost any semblance of control to the people trying to cover it.

The vaunted "pool" system was a largely futile exercise in bureaucratic cunning and media gullibility. After Grenada and Panama, the nearly 1,000 journalists who surrendered to military custody in Saudi Arabia were POPWs: prisoners of the propaganda war. Newspaper editors, like their brethren in the no-longer-so-profitable electronic media, spent a fortune to cover this war.

For that outlay, they got very little the government did not program in advance and wanted aired. It ran as close to script as a Roger Ailes- produced political rally. Post-war, we got the Ailes-produced political rally on network television, replete with George and Barbara wanly waving American flags to welcome home the troops. (Has Ailes tried to patent Old Glory yet?)

If truth is the first casualty in war, surely good taste bites the dust earliest in a Roger Ailes ("Remember me? I brought you Richard Nixon!") spectacular.

Some editors must take the benign view: the press did a good job under difficult conditions. An air war is impossible to cover without relying on the top brass. The restrictive press-pool system effectively came apart at the seams once the ground war started. But a ground war lasting only four days does not give your intrepid correspondents a lot of opportunity for distinguished combat reportage.

Then there's the harsh view: the press dived in the tank again, intimidated by Bush's poll ratings. Once the Democrats came up short in the Senate (52-47), the press followed the politicians lock, stock and poll-rating onto the cheerleading squad. Whatever they fed, we swallowed.

We took Gen. Kelly's video, Gen. Neal's assurance that those Iraqi babies in the bomb shelter were not our fault, that what we used to call "civilian casualties" was now transmogrified into something called "collateral damage." For every gritty, fear-swallowing front-line journalist, there were 20 pinned down in front of a replay monitor in Suadi Arabia, laptop at the ready, swiping verisimilitude courtesy of CNN. It was an odd war.

The press was had, as the editors have been had, as the people were had. The neat little war gave us this terribly nasty peace. How come? The Bush administration sewed us all up in the old trick bag, early on, and didn't let us out till it was all but over. Well, the editors can take a joke. Any group that would solicit the vice president's views on how we conduct our business has one hell of a sense of humor.

And they were actually stunned?

The New York Times finally reports the obvious:

The majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, and other lawmakers arrived at work today expecting the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee to adopt the compromise, which tries to shield vaccine makers from lawsuits while expanding the rights of parents of injured children to bring claims before a special court.

Instead, when the meeting began, Congressional aides watched, stunned, as lobbyists for several vaccine manufacturers huddled anxiously with the staff of Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire and the committee chairman. Moments later, Mr. Gregg announced that the meeting, called a "mark up" in Senate parlance, would be postponed for lack of a quorum.

In an interview, Senator Gregg said he saw no reason to rush the bill when the companies had concerns.

The new straw man germ

In November, Frist, Armey and the Republican screw-autistic-kids-cabal claimed that they had to attach the "Eli Lilly Liability Protection Amendment" onto the Homeland Security Bill so that vaccine manufacturers wouldn't be afraid to produce the smallpox and anthrax vaccines needed to protect us from Osama bin Hussein's terrorist hoards. Even when confronted with the facts that George Bush had already exempted smallpox and anthrax from consumer lawsuits and smallpox and anthrax were not considered "childhood" vaccines, and thus injury claims would not fall under 1980s Congressional vaccine injury legislation, they merely shook off the arguments and waved American flags and shouted "Remember 9/11!". It worked. Briefly. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, including those of my own two Senators, Snowe and Collins, and the provision was removed in January.

Now, Frist, and his henchman Judd Gregg, Chairman of the Senate HELP committee, have found a new rallying cry - SARS! Yes, they are asserting that autistic kids need to be sacrificed so that vaccine manufacturers will save us all from the mutated corona-virus emanating from southern China.

Do these men have no shame whatsoever? Are they so in the pocket of pharmaceuticals that they will grab for any straw, exploit any fear, to pay off their campaign debts? If in fact SARS is spread by cockroaches, Capitol Hill better be investing in bug spray. Or perhaps give the House Majority leader a call.

Just the facts, Ma'am

Quite a few times in the past, I've railed against journalists who seem to have no problem slipping their own biases into their reporting, but can't even get basic facts straight. Take for instance, vaccines and Thimerosal. In the US, most childhood vaccines no longer contain the mercury-based preservative, and in fact, some never did. That was due to the fact that they contained live agents, and flooding such fragile organisms with a preservative would obviously kill the organism. Is this such a difficult conclusion to reach, even without a PhD in biology?

However, Laura Meckler of the Associated Press, in two separate AP reports in the past day, has not been able to make the connection, even though she has no problem coming to other [pro-manufacturer] conclusions :

Childhood vaccines are safe for almost all children, but a small number are injured each year. Under current law, injured families must file claims first with the compensation fund, where cases are independently evaluated, before going to court. Average awards are just under $1 million.

If someone's claim is denied, or if the monetary award is considered unsatisfactory, a lawsuit may be filed in federal or state courts.

Some families have found a way to skip the compensation fund and go directly to court by claiming their children were harmed by a vaccine's ingredients, rather than by the vaccine itself.

Specifically, many contend their children's autism is caused by a preservative called thimerosal, which contains mercury and once was used in the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

The Institute of Medicine, which gives expert advice to Congress, reviewed the issue and said in 2001 it found no proof that autism is caused by the MMR vaccine or by thimerosal. The report did say a link between thimerosal and an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders is medically plausible.

I've already left a message in Ms. Meckler's voice mail at the AP offices in Washington. Maybe she would get the hint if others called as well:

Laura Meckler
Associated Press
Washington
2021 K Street NW, 6th Floor
Washington DC 20006-1082
(202) 776-9400

Oh, Joe, say it isn't so...

Apparently bloggers aren't the only ones these days who have a problem crediting their sources.

This morning, I was Googling news on the CC TLD .iq, as my spouse had been interviewed by a journalist yesterday in regards to the status of the Iraqi top level domain. I was particularly interested when I ran across this article on the website of the British The Register,

Iraq, its domain and the 'terrorist-funding' owner
By Kieren McCarthy
Posted: 09/04/2003 at 11:54 GMT

The war against Iraq may be drawing to a close but the war over its Internet future is just beginning.

As with the overthrow of the Afghanistan regime by US forces, it is widely thought that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power will see the Middle Eastern country catch up with the rest of the world in terms of Internet infrastructure and use.

Currently, there is limited, expensive and state-controlled Internet use in Iraq, beamed via satellite since sanctions on the country have made it unable to install pipes and networks. In the north of the country, the Kurds have set up their own system free from Baghdad control by riding on the back of satellite feeds for Turkey. It too, however, remains very costly.

But any Internet construction in Iraq will inevitably take place through its assigned country-code top-level domain - .iq.

All in all, the article went over in detail that which I already knew; the story of how the Palestinian-born owner of the current .iq CC TLD was sitting in a Texas prison, awaiting trial on charges of funneling money to Hamas. But, towards the end, I read something eerily familiar:

Fortunately, there are a dozen other ways control of the domain can be wrenched free. Since no aspect of the .iq domain, including the email addresses, are working (no surprise since the owner has been in jail since December), any ICANN-accredited registrar could push for the deletion of the current information and transfer to themselves or a third party. Or, using the same method, it could be hijacked by taking control of the Internet servers that the .iq domain points at.

Alternatively, Sprint could be persuaded to pass the blocks of IP address that InfoCom currently possesses to a third party since the company stands accused of illegal activity.

And, of course, there is the official process of IANA redelegation through ICANN could be started. In this case, however, it would be essential for an interim administration to be up and running before anything happened. Theoretically, anyone could kickstart this process but ICANN has recently been very keen on governments taking control of Internet domains - especially ones that will sign up to its new contract.

I don't always pay attention to everything my spouse says - he's a dyed-in-the-wool techie if there ever was one, and often while listening to him describe the intricacies of the actual bones and guts of the Internet, I nod my head up and down while thinking about whatever fire needs dousing next in my household. But I distinctly remember him describe to me, as well as to another colleague via phone, these different scenarios. And behold, he even mentions them in a letter to the attorney of the .iq domain, described in detail on his .iq website. (No, he is not an html guru.)

I emailed him the article at work, called him and informed him of my suspicions - that someone had been mining either his obscure little website on the subject, or lifting from his emails to the NANOG mailing list. He concurred, and is off right tracking the download from his site by theregister.co.uk domain - gee, there are times when being a geek has its benefits, and this is one.

So for all those who complained that the actions of one blogger, who I have openly chided as well, should be taken as an indicator that all blogging is suspect and not up to the level of "real journalism", remember the pendulum swings both ways.

Good news on the Frist bill front

Just got off the phone with Senator Edwards' office. No quorum in committee, ergo, no markup.

We live to fight another day.

[Update: Spoke too soon.]

According to the AP (see above post on the article's author), "Democrats said the postponement had more to do with objections lodged at the last minute by two of the four major manufacturers of vaccines."

More details further down in the article:

Under the deal reached late Tuesday with Dodd, Republicans agreed to give families a one-year window to enter the fund, even if they are outside the new, six-year deadline for filing claims. That includes those with court claims pending and those who never filed a case with a court or the fund.

A Democratic aide, who asked not to be identified, said that Merck and Wyeth, two of the four major vaccine manufacturers, opposed the compromise as being too generous to families. They wanted a stricter statute of limitations.

The aide added that lobbyists for vaccine manufacturer Aventis and pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly supported the compromise. Lilly is the manufacturer of thimerosal and is facing several lawsuits that would be moved to the fund under this bill.

I don't know what the deal is with Wyeth, but Merck is the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine. Currently, Merck benefits from the three year limitation, as most cases of autism are not diagnosed until age three, and then it takes some time for the previously normal parents to turn into the raving lunatics blaming all of their ills on the poor vaccine manufacturers. There's a lot of buzz in the autism community that new research by Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who first described autism with associated bowel disease and its possible connection to the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, will be publishing new research which further buttresses his earlier research. I suspect Merck has heard it as well: I get hits every week from Merck, Wyeth and Lilly domains, so you know they're keeping their ears to the pavement. MMR has been on the US market since the mid-1980s, and although the percentage of autism cases associated with the vaccine are relatively low (under 20%), it's still enough to worry the manufacturer, should claimants not prevail in the Vaccine Court, and proceed to the traditional civil courts.

My son, the budding paleontologist

Me [laying out today's clothes]: Sam, what's this? (fully expecting "dinosaur")
Sam: It's a triceratops.
Me: (speechless)

This, from a boy who was not speaking when he turned 3.

In the interest of full disclosure, it was actually a skeleton of a triceratops. Must have inherited his mom's love of bones.

Will the Kiddie Kevorkian get his way?

I know that I'm emotionally invested in this issue, but the obvious arrogance and indifference exhibited by Senator Frist over this issue makes me see at least a dozen shades of red.

The Senate Wednesday may strike a deal on how to handle hundreds of suits by parents who believe a common vaccine additive caused a wave of autism during the 1990s when the substance, called thimerosal, was heavily used, according to negotiators involved in talks on Capitol Hill.

If negotiations are successful, parents of children allegedly injured by vaccines in the early 1990s will still be able to seek compensation, but only under a federal program that limits payments and not in court.

Those parents were outraged late last year when Republicans in Congress quietly slipped a provision into homeland security legislation that would have insulated vaccine giant Eli Lilly from thimerosal suits. Congress repealed that provision two months later.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Senate Health Committee Chairman Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Tuesday held a news conference to support their "Improved Vaccine Affordability and Availability Act." The original version of that legislation would also have barred those families from compensation, similar to the provision that was in the homeland security bill.

But negotiators on Capitol Hill said privately that Frist might agree to alter his legislation Wednesday to give those parents a one-year grace period to pursue their claims -- but only in a federal program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services that limits some claims to $250,000. Those claims would be barred from court.

Frist said Tuesday he might be willing to alter his bill and allow some of those complaints from the early 1990s to receive some compensation.

"We will look and see how far you should go back," he said. "That is an issue that we will look at tomorrow."

What makes this particularly galling is that it comes at a time when new peer-reviewed research is being released which implicates Thimerosal in the upsurge in autism cases which began in the early 1990s. In the recent issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Geier and Geier, who testified before Congress last year on the issue, used CDC research only made available through Freedom of Information Act requests. According to the abstract,

In this study, we evaluated doses of mercury from thimerosal-containing childhood immunizations in comparison to US Federal Safety Guidelines and the effects of increasing doses of mercury on the incidence of neurodevelopment disorders and heart disease. This study showed that children received mercury from this source in excess of the Federal Safety Guidelines for the oral ingestion of methylmercury. Our analyses showed increasing relative risks for neurodevelopment disorders and heart disease with increasing doses of mercury. This study provides strong epidemiological evidence for a link between mercury exposure from thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines and neurodevelopment disorders.

Obviously, this does not seal the case for a mercury-autism link. The CDC, probably in anticipation of this report, assisted in the publication of yet another epidemiological rehash of previous methylmercury (versus the ethylmercury in Thimerosal) research in the "commentary" section of the March issues of Pediatrics. The point is, research on autism and vaccines is just now beginning to "ramp up"; until the IOM is able to resolve the "biologically plausible" designation it has afforded vaccines in the causality of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, should Congress be shutting the door on those families whose very future may be determined by their ability to access the NVICP? There have been no Senate hearings to discuss the implications of the Frist Bill. Time and again, either through stealth or muscle, he has pushed this payback to the industry which bankrolled his election bid.

The UPI article says nothing of Frist's attempts to raid the Vaccine Injury Compensation fund, or to potentially undermine all claims, by adding language which would allow "genetic profiling" of claimants. For the full implication of the Frist bill to overhaul the NVICP, see this earlier post.

How not to make blogging more respected....

Not to mention harm your own reputation.

I'm not about to knock a man when he's down, particularly when there's a pile on happening already. But, there's a lesson here for bloggers, old time gurus and neophytes alike. Credit your work. Always. Not only does it undermine anything and everything else that you've written when you plagiarize (or are discovered), it has implications for those who have supported you. In this climate, we've seen "guilt by association" rear up time and time again. The practice is personally hurtful as well - someone else worked, possibly long and hard, to write the piece so easily cut and pasted by others, whether it be whole sentences or more ephemeral ideas. In fact, I only decided to pen this post after a good friend reminded me of my dejection when someone I respected once plagiarized my work. Most misdeeds have victims as well as perpetrators - there are few victimless crimes.

Thug Marine recruit watch

Do we have to unequivocally "support our troops" when we're sending guys like this to Iraq?

Three Green Bay Teens Get Jail Time For Beating Autistic Classmate

Three Green Bay teens were convicted Monday of beating up a 15-year-old disabled classmate in October.

Cole Young, Shawn Quayle and Justin Bower, all 18, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor party to the crimes of battery and criminal damage to property. They were originally charged with felony physical abuse of a child and criminal damage to property.

According to the criminal complaint, the boys chased the victim — who was riding a bicycle — from Ninth Street through Colburn Park to Fisk Street and down Seventh Street. The suspects rode in a minivan as the victim pedaled west along Mason Street, crossed Military Avenue and fled through Fireman’s Park.

At Kennedy Elementary School, the suspects hit the victim’s bike with the minivan. The older boys held the victim on the ground, kicked him and spit on him and choked him with his shirt. At one point, Young asked the victim, “How does a steel toe feel?” and then stomped on the victim’s head.

The victim, who is now 16, did not appear in court. His parents were present for Monday’s hearing. The victim’s mother said he suffers from high-functioning autism.

Quayle and Young were sentenced to 90 days in jail. Their lawyers declined to accept probation as a punishment because both young men said they were joining the U.S. Marine Corps and were expected to report for duty in August. Being on probation would disqualify them from joining.

Brown County Circuit Court Judge Kendall Kelley described the incident as “outrageous."

Quayle told Kelley he was sorry and remorseful for his actions, which he said were “stupid and childish."

“What it was, in fact, was brutal … that’s different,” Kelley said.

Bower, who is not joining the military, was sentenced to two years’ probation and 30 days in jail. The young men must pay restitution of $469 for the victim’s medical bills and damage to his bicycle.

Add this to the scores of sexual abuse and rape charges made by female Air Force Academy cadets, and there is reason to be concerned when reports of military brutality and rape filter out of Iraq. I support the troops, but not unconditionally.

Blogosphere input needed

I'm currently working on a chapter on families and health care, and have been looking at a number of Democratic candidate, special interest (doctors, insurers, etc.) and public policy proposals. I'm not looking to pick a fight with Dean supporters, I want honest feedback from Progressives (and conservatives, if there are any who actually visit my site) regarding Dean's plan. Here is the outline from the Dean for America website:

Guaranteeing coverage to all Americans will involve a mix of state and federal programs, as well as the existing private sector. Similar to our program in Vermont, states should be required to guarantee coverage for all children under age 23. In return, the federal government should assume responsibility for drug and acute medical care for Americans over age 65. In addition, older Americans deserve a pharmacy benefit under Medicare - an unaffordable impossibility under the current fiscal policies of President Bush. With a pharmaceutical package, Medicare becomes a decent insurance program. Finally, to cover those between the ages of 23 and 65, we should use the present employer-based system with refundable tax credits and federal subsidies to cover low- and moderate-income Americans who lack insurance.

So here are things which concern me:

1) States are currently cash strapped as it is. If we roll-back the Bush tax cuts, there's still no guarantee that states can pick up the costs of providing coverage for a third of the population, not without either robbing other state programs (Medicaid, education, etc.) or increasing taxes. Currently, between a quarter and a third of children (depending upon state income guidelines) are eligible for the Children's Health Insurance Program established by Congress in 1997. CHIP is both state and federally funded, and still many states are currently cutting back on eligibility due to budget deficits. How are states going to expand the program to cover all children, plus young adults to age 23 if they are struggling, even with federal assistance, to pay for the current program (along with Medicaid costs for low-income seniors)?

2) Currently, most seniors and disabled adults are eligible for Medicare part A, which covers hospital and nursing care. This is what Dean is describing when he says "acute care" for seniors. However, even under the current plan, seniors must pay a premium of $58.70 per month, and 20% of the Medicare approved amount for services after they meet a $100.00 deductible. Coinsurance and deductibles for long-term care under part A are much higher. For low-income seniors, states generally try and help cover some of these costs, but with states in budgetary crisis, that may stop. While I agree that a prescription program is needed, shouldn't we look to fill the current gaps first?

3) The idea of covering 40 million Americans with tax credits and federal subsidies is right in line with the current Bush plan. If the current healthcare crisis is directly related to skyrocketing insurance premiums, what does this do, other than to put federal money directly into health insurers' coffers?

4) According to an interview Dean gave to Medscape (registration required), Dean is a fan of managed care, although he is against consumers being able to sue HMOs. On CBS' Face the Nation on January 5th, Dean asserted that he supported both tort reform and caps on damages, through the states, naturally. How are these views in line with traditional Progressive stances?

5) Dean has come out strongly against single-payer coverage (see the above Medscape article, for example.) Why, if only to take private insurance costs, the biggest influence on skyrocketing premiums, out of the equation?

You can email me your responses as well, although let me know if you don't want me to publish them. I'm hoping for some real discussion on these issues, as affordable, accessible healthcare seems pretty central to Progressive values, and Dean has put his plan out there, I suppose for us all to examine. Seems like a good idea to do so.

[Update, 4/8/03: From Comments]
Siliconretina, brave soul, very much appreciated by me, responded in comments. Since I have some more specific questions, I posted the thread back here, so as to elicit more discussion.

[The original points are in italics, my response and questions are not.]

General points:
It's not a "cadillac" program, it's "catastrophic" care.

It's not ideal, it's pragmatic. "It's what I can get passed."

I think Dean, if he's going to run under his doctor moniker, needs to plan for preventive care. Catastrophic care really only helps hospitals and doctors, who are left holding the bag for indigent patients. But on to the details.

1) Health insurance for the under 23 crowd is an extension of Medicaid. and insurance for the young and healthy is cheap.

State Medicaid programs, with the help of the federal CHIP program, currently cover 1/3 of all children. Covering kids may be cheap, but many states cannot even cover the small portion of which they are currently obligated. Without federal help, how can they pick up 2 times the number of children, plus another 7-8% of the population? (Go from covering 10% of the population with federal help, to 33%, with no increase in federal reimbursement.)

2) "If you add a prescription drug program, Medicare is not a bad insurance plan." I don't have facts, but I _think_ that prescription drugs have higher cost impact on seniors than the gaps to which you refer. Again, think catastrophic, not cadillac.

Well, you might be taking from all to help a few. All seniors pay at least $700/yr in premiums and deductibles for part B. Then there is that 20% co-pay. Do all seniors spend at least that in drugs every year? While I do agree that we need a prescription benefit, I don't think moving Medicaid to the federal level without keeping current subsidies for poor individuals is the right thing to do, even if some individuals benefit.

3.1) it gets everybody in the US covered.
3.2) it is a growth stimulus for small businesses

I don't think this point has been worked out at all yet, and I agree that its really the "mushiest". But you're still talking about potentially 30 million adults, ages 23-65. That's a lot of tax credits and small business incentives. Are the credits and incentives going to keep up with the 20%+ increases in premiums experienced in the past few years? And that money is still going right into the private insurance sector, to pay for the multimillion dollar salary of Aetna's CEO, or for Cigna to pay out as dividends.

If we're going to have to still deal with that middle pool of adults, I prefer Edward's plan, which makes the pool much smaller. He suggests insuring all kids and their parents under the federal CHIPs plan (no increased cost to states), lower the age of Medicare buy-in to 55, and then deal with what's left. Much smaller pool, and we've nibbled away with national single payer programs, getting everyone more used to the concept.

4) he's not a traditional progressive.

I agree.

5) He's not against single payer, from what I understood. His goal is to get everybody covered first and then reform the system second. He thinks that he can get his plan through congress, no matter the make-up, Republican or Democratic controlled. His worry about single-payer is that it would stall in congress and nothing would get done.

This is what he said in the Medscape/Healthplan interview:

Healthplan: What about your efforts in lobbying for universal health insurance? What would such a system look like at the national level?
Dean: My preference is that we have a program similar to Medicare-I'd add a prescription benefit to that-for kids under age 22, so you include kids while they are in college. I'd prefer that be run by the states. And after that, between ages 22 and 65, it should be left up to the private sector. But we're going to need to have some tax credits and (other) things so that small businesses can be able to afford to buy health insurance for employees and their families.

And later in the interview:

Healthplan: You have said that in the next economic downturn you expect employers will either drop health insurance coverage or give employees a defined contribution so they can purchase their own coverage. What role do you see managed care playing?
Dean: I think that will push Congress toward (a) single payer (system), which I do not support. First of all, I would hope we would be able to keep the private sector involved, getting managed care companies in the individual market-and in a community-rated state that shouldn't be too difficult. Secondly, allow uninsured individuals to aggregate in some way so they can buy health insurance directly from HMOs and other insurance companies, so that we do not end up relying on government programs.

Maybe I'm misreading these answers, but it doesn't sound like Dr. Dean supports a single-payer solution as his first choice.

He emphasized incremental and pragmatic. His "motto" was "Let's get everybody covered first, and then we can have a huge fight about how to reform the system".

Will this actually succeed in getting everyone covered, or merely guarantee eligibility. On his website, Dean states, "As a Governor, I am proud that virtually every child under 18 and more than 92 percent of adults in Vermont are eligible for health coverage." But back-and-forth in the Medscape article is a bit more enlightening in regards to those claims:

Healthplan: Tell us about your efforts in guaranteeing insurance coverage in Vermont.
Dean: You cannot be turned down for insurance coverage in our state if you have the money for a policy. And we have community rating so that it doesn't discriminate against people in their fifties. The largest group of people without insurance is between the ages of 55 and 65. In our state, you cannot discriminate price-wise against those people, nor can you discriminate against pre-existing conditions in any way.

Is this what Dean means by Vermonters being "eligible for health coverage"? As long as they have the money, they can get it. But what if they can't afford the skyhigh premiums? And what about those 8% of adults? Why aren't they eligible if you can't be turned down?

I don't mean to be so picky about details, but Dean has set himself up as the Healthcare Candidate, so I just want to be clear exactly what that means. I personally don't think that educating the public about all the benefits of single-payer is such a bad thing either, particularly if you get the Small Business Administration to buy into the idea, as they have here in Maine (we have a single-payer plan working its way through the legislature now - it passed the House in 2000, got held up in the Senate.) It sure beats heading down the current road, and I don't know if more of "business as usual", even if might cover more, is necessarily the way to proceed.

They've got the guns, who needs the butter?

This came in the (e)mail this morning:

National Association of State Medicaid Directors

Dear Colleagues:

As you may know, recently the Chair of the US House of Representatives Budget Committee directed members to identify one percent savings across all domestic programs (including Social Security benefits (i.e., OASDI, SSI, and SSDI), Medicare, and Medicaid) for the federal Fiscal Year 2004 budget. These reductions were included in the House Budget Resolution; a draft budget
blueprint that must be "conferenced" or jointly agreed to with the US Senate then approved by the President before it becomes law. The impacts of this one percent reduction on programs used by persons with disabilities would be:

* Medicaid would receive an approximately $92 billion reduction in federal Medicaid matching dollars over a ten year period;
* SSI would receive approximately $18.5 billion reduction over ten years;
* Food Stamps would cut by $12.5 billion over ten years; and
* Child Care programs would be reduced by $1.2 billion over ten years.

Attached is a summary of the potential cuts developed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). The positions of CBPP are not representative of policy positions of APHSA but their document is a good snapshot of the current House proposal. Also attached is a letter from the US Senate urging the House to drop the reductions in Medicaid from their Budget Resolution. APHSA is working with its sister executive branch organizations, the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures, to inform federal policymakers of the implications of such reductions on states and the people state systems serve and support.

Michael Cheek

Project Director
National Association of State Medicaid Directors
Center for Workers with Disabilities
810 First Street, NE, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20002
Voice: 202/682-0100
Fax: 202/289-6555
Email: mcheek@aphsa.org
Web: www.nasmd.org/disabilities

Lori Piestewa

I've noticed in my tracking software a number of Google searches for Lori Piestewa which bring people to this site. I have written of Ms. Piestewa while she was MIA, but now that she has passed, I will honor what I understand of Hopi tradition, and not write of her passing.

I know, however, that a fund is currently being set up for her children. When I am privy to more information regarding that fund, I will post it.

Brief hiatus

I promised myself that I'd get the first three chapters of my current writing project done by the end of next week, and I've only a outline in still in front of me. So no more blogging until I make at least some headway.

There are lots of good bloggers over on the sidebar. Spend some time visiting a site not hosted by the average white male (not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that.) I'll drop in to check comments and post if anything overly compelling pops up.

Two big issues for special needs children are on the frontlines in Congress this week. Jeffrey Sutton's nomination goes to the Senate floor for debate and IDEA will go to the full House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday, April 9. Sutton's nomination has sparked a little fuss in the lefty blogosphere, IDEA reauthorization almost none whatsoever (you can read my earlier posts on Sutton and IDEA.)

Hope to be back soon.

Pocket book hate crimes?

The FBI claimed that their recent "interviews" with thousands of Arab- and Iraqi-Americans, many American citizens, were to insure they were not the victims of discrimination or even hate crimes. So are we to then expect the CEO of Fleet to be receiving a call from the DoJ regarding this matter?

Muslim society presses Fleet: Challenges decision to shut 15 accounts with Arabic names
By Matthew Brelis, Globe Staff
4/4/2003

Officials from the Muslim American Society are in discussions with FleetBoston Financial Corp., asking the bank to re-examine its recent decisions to close at least 15 accounts of individuals or institutions with Arabic names.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, said Fleet ''is a test case'' and the effort might spread to other large national banks that he said might be engaging in discriminatory practices.

Fleet spokesman James E. Mahoney, who met with Bray on Wednesday, said ''there has been no purposeful discrimination on the part of Fleet.'' Mahoney would not discuss the specific accounts yesterday. But he said, ''The decisions we make regarding account closing are based on account activity, not on factors such as ethnicity, race, religion, and country of origin.''

Mahoney said large banks like Fleet, Citibank, and Bank of America are ''in a tough position. We are required to disrupt terrorist financing while at the same time protecting the rights and privacy of our customers.'' Mahoney said all large banks have computer surveillance programs to detect possible money laundering and suspicious activity. ''Those systems are audited by federal regulators, and we are expected to report to federal authorities certain types of activities, and we are expected to close accounts when we detect certain types of activity,'' he said.

The Federal Reserve and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency oversee banking, and federal law enforcement authorities work with banks to uncover suspected money laundering and potential terrorist activity. If the federal government asks a bank like Fleet to close an account, the bank complies with the request, officials said. Fleet would not say whether it closed the 15 accounts because of government requests or its own surveillance.

''The whole financial services industry, banks, credit unions, brokerages, and mutual funds, are all really struggling with the mandates placed on them by the USA Patriot Act and we are still waiting for major regulations that deal with customer identification,'' said David Floreen, senior vice president of the Massachusetts Bankers Association. ''The bankers I have talked to have a sense of skittishness. They have to check names of customers against federal lists, and you don't want to discriminate and offend customers.''

Many Arab-Americans are also afraid to speak out, said Bray and other civil rights activists and attorneys.

Hossam Algabri of Cambridge saw his Fleet account of more than 14 years closed in November. Algabri was laid off from Ptech, the Quincy software firm searched by federal authorities in December as part of a financial crimes investigation. Algabri said most of the employees were laid off in the wake of the investigation. He said he is not a target of the investigation and never bounced a check.

''My paycheck would go into the account and I would pay bills and donate to charities, all of which are approved by the government and most of which are here in Boston,'' he said. ''I feel discriminated against.''

Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the regulations present a dilemma. ''They have to flag people who have suspicious activity, and they are bound by law to confidentiality and cannot disclose to anyone that the account has been flagged. But has there been a rush to judgment on any activity, like money sent overseas?

''Anyone who comes to the states comes for a better income and they send money back to their homeland,'' Najimy said. ''If an Arabic or Muslim name makes any wire activity suspicious, then there is a problem. Many of the account holders here don't believe they have had any suspicious activities.''

Don't count on the post-war Baghdad Hillbillies

Now this is a frightening analysis, from business leaders, foreign policy analysts and Gulf-region economists, no less. Apparently, the Administration and head-in-the-Iraqi-desert-sand Congressional Republicans don't want to hear it.

Oil funds won't suffice - experts
By Warren Vieth, Washington
05/04/2003

To hear some Bush administration officials tell it, the reconstruction of Iraq will largely pay for itself, thanks to a postwar gusher of petroleum revenue.

"The one thing that is certain is Iraq is a wealthy nation," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

A look at the national balance sheet tells a different story.

Iraq will emerge from the war a financial shambles, many economists say, with a debt load bigger than that of Argentina, a cash flow crunch rivaling those of Third World countries, a mountain of unresolved compensation claims, a shaky currency, high unemployment, galloping inflation and a crumbling infrastructure expected to sustain more damage before the shooting stops.

And the more oil Iraq produces to try to pump up its earnings, the more likely it becomes that prices will fall, leaving it no better off than before.

"Clearly, it's a basket case," said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "Once you start talking about it, you see what an impossible situation it is. I don't think the Bush administration is anxious to have that conversation."

Bathsheba Crocker, director of the Post-War Reconstruction Project at the centrist Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Iraq's oil money is not the panacea many Bush officials seem to think it is.

"It's unreasonable to think that oil is going to finance all of the needs of the country," Crocker said. "All told, there's just not enough money to go around."

Baker and Crocker are among a small but vocal contingent of non-government economists and foreign policy analysts who say it's time for America to stop pretending that life in Iraq after the war will resemble something out of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Its a longish article but definitely a worthy read.

Arnett back in Baghdad

Glad to hear it.

Peter Arnett now reporting for Arab channel Al-Arabiya
By Associated Press, 4/5/2003 06:24

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Peter Arnett, fired by NBC earlier this week for giving an interview to state-run Iraqi television, is reporting for pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, the station said Saturday.

''He (Arnett) is an able reporter who has covered wars before and who knows Iraq well,'' the Dubai-based station's editor-in-chief Salah Nejm told The Associated Press.

''I think he is unbiased and has a lot of experience,'' Nejm said.

Arnett started reporting for Al-Arabiya on Friday, becoming its third correspondent in Baghdad. His reports are voiced over in English.

NBC fired him for giving an unauthorized interview to Iraqi TV, during which he said the U.S.-led war effort had initially failed because of Iraq's resistance.

NBC said the company was angered because Arnett gave the interview without permission and presented opinion as fact.

How long before some hypocritical, chickenhawk Congressman calls for the revocation of Arnett's citizenship? Any bets?

While the chimp's away, the scientists will play....

Someone over at the F.D.A. has definitely gone off rez. See, Mr. Bush, what can happen within your own Administration when you're aggravating your RSI playing wargames on the PS2 out at Camp David?

F.D.A. Sharply Lowers 'Safe' Mercury Level
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOBILE, Ala., April 4 — The Food and Drug Administration has begun using the Environmental Protection Agency's much lower safe level for mercury in the human body, an official of the food and drug agency said this week.

Before the change, the F.D.A. guidelines set a safe level that was four times as high as that of the environmental agency's standard.

"The F.D.A. is basing its advisory on the E.P.A.'s reference dose," Dr. David Acheson, the newly appointed chief medical officer in the F.D.A.'s science office, said in an interview first reported in The Mobile Register. "Are we formally endorsing it? I'm not aware, but we are certainly using it and pay attention to it."

A paper in the current issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association detailed the new position.

"This is really a landmark paper," said Kathryn R. Mahaffey, an E.P.A official who helped write the article. "It's really a consensus on what we know about mercury."

Dr. Acheson said the food and drug agency planned to add more fish to its list of those that should not be eaten if new mercury testing reveals that a species tends to exceed the new levels.

Notice how Acheson hedged by asserting that, although they were using the new standards, they weren't officially "endorsing" them. No, that might really tee off Big Phama and the coal-burning lobby.

Around the Poliblogosphere:

The "real" Natalie Maines apology:

As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I now realize that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.

I hope everyone understands, I'm just a young girl who grew up in Texas. As far back as I can remember, I heard people say they were ashamed of President Clinton. I saw bumper stickers calling him everything from a pothead to a murderer. I heard people on the radio and tv like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott badmouthing the President and ridiculing his wife and daughter at every opportunity.

I heard LOTS of people disrespecting the President. So I guess I just assumed it was acceptable behavior.

But now, thanks to the thousands of angry people who want radio stations to boycott our music because criticizing the President is unpatriotic, I realize it's wrong to have a liberal opinion if you're a country music artist. I guess I should have thought about that before deciding to play music that attracts hypocritical rednecks.

I also realize now that I'm supposed to just sing and look cute so our fans won't have anything to upset them while they're cheating on their wives or getting in drunken bar fights or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting highway signs and small animals...

[Thanks Nicole Schultheis]

Nathan Newman has the scoop on one of the most galling stories of American "largess" in Iraq:

Well, we are already getting a taste of how the US plans the Occupation of Iraq. Not only do they plan to hand over its assets to US corporations with nice fat deals, for the average Iraqi they seem intent on promoting the worst crack-brained privatization ideas, including apparently forcing starving and thirsty Iraqis to pay for water.

The idea was to "jump start a free market economy" in Umm Qasr by giving scarce water supplies to middlemen with trucks, then let them charge a fee to any Iraqis needing water.

"This provides them with an incentive to hustle and to work," said Bassert, an assistant commander with the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade.

Unfortunately, there's more.

Jeralyn at TalkLeft has more information on the latest victim of Ashcroft's Patriot Act injustice, Mike Hawash, the 38 year-old, father of three Intel software developer and American citizen.

Its all Greek to me. Well it is to Mary, hanging out over at The Watch (permalinks are screwy, just scroll down, you'll know when). She thinks she can get away with honing in on my Cassandra gig. Ha!

Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba of Troy, was Agamemnon's war prize whom he brought back home with him. Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo in exchange for her favors, but when Cassandra reneged, he punished her by letting her keep the gift, but preventing anyone from believing her. The utterances of Cassandra were thought the ravings of a mad woman.

Having watched the approach of this war and predicting the utter insanity of trusting this President with conducting that war, I know I feel very much like a Cassandra. And I know a number of others feel the same.

Unemployment Numbers: More Rottenness in Denmark

The unemployment rate predictions this week were pretty glum, as they rightfully should have been. For four out of the last five weeks, new unemployment claims were above the orange-alert benchmark of 420,000. Long-trusted surveys had found manufacturing was contracting not expanding as it has, albeit weakly, the month previous, and high energy prices and general economic anxiety had led consumers to tighten their purse strings.

Optimistic analysts expected a tenth of a percent increase in the March unemployment rate, to 5.9%; doomsayers predicted a higher jumps, to 6, or possibly 6.1 percent.

Imagine the glee, from the Oval Office down to Wall Street when the number released this morning by the BLS held firm at 5.8%, even with a loss of 108,000 jobs during the month.

I too, should have been happy, as perhaps it meant the economy was holding its ground, and not in fact slipping into that feared double dip. But instead I was depressed. And pissed.

Since January I've been watching the BLS unemployment summaries closely, after I first noted what seemed to be an unlikely three-tenths of a percent drop in the unemployment rate in January, particularly when employment only increased by 143,000. After some digging, I noticed that the the BLS had instituted a whole series of changes, which the bureau admitted would "affect the comparability of the January 2003 estimates with those for earlier months". They also shifted 200,000 worker off the books by declaring that they were not actively seeking work. The total of these "adjustments" made a somewhat bleak economic picture look much rosier than expected, even as other worrisome news was rolling off the presses.

In February, the economy lost a whopping 357,000 jobs; that is the newly released "revised" number, up 49,000 from the original 308,000 in March 6th report. How the Bush Administration happened to forget to count those 49,000 lost jobs is beyond my comprehension, and I wonder if they'll just happen to find more lost jobs to supplement the March numbers. Reviewing the details of the February unemployment report, I found more machinations, and even with the surge in actual numbers, few seemed to question the highly touted "rate" of 5.8%.

But even with a loss of close to a half a million jobs in two months, the unemployment rate has increase a mere tenth of a percent. To put that in perspective, since the beginning of 2001, the economy has shed nearly 2 million jobs, and unemployment has risen from a December 2000 rate of 3.9% to a December 2002 rate of 6.0%, and now stands at 5.8. Doesn't it seem at all suspect that a loss over 1.5 million jobs corresponds with an increase of 2 whole percentage points, but a half million job loss equates to a tenth of a percent rise?

Just a cursorily reading through the latest report made it clear that the Administration was continuing to move the numbers around, although in smaller and more subtle ways. I assume this is in part due to their belief that as long as the war dominates the news, little attention will be paid to the actual numbers; as long as The General Public hears that the unemployment rate stayed the same, no additional details are necessary. Rove and Company understand this, hence, the subterfuge.

The BLS has also announced that as of June, they will again be implementing major changes to the way unemployment data is calculated and reported. Expect that this pattern will continue, a big shell-game, followed by a few months of little shell games, every six months until the election. This Administration understands that its no longer really about, "Its the economy, stupid", but the package they can feed the shallow, lazy, lapdog media and have them report as the not-so-bad-after-all economic picture.

Flashback Friday for the Week of April 4, 1991

[Note: As I did not know on which early April day in 1991 specific March economic numbers were released, I expanded my search criteria to include the few days surrounding the usual target day. I did this not knowing what the results would be, with the intention of reporting exactly what I found, good or bad.]

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE HITS 4-YEAR HIGH: 205,000 LOST JOBS IN MARCH
ANALYSTS SEE RECESSION WORSENING
John M. Berry, Washington Post
April 6, 1991

The economy moved deeper into recession last month as employers cut another 205,000 workers from their payrolls, helping to push the nation's unemployment rate from 6.5 percent to 6.8 percent, the highest level in more than four years, the Labor Department reported yesterday.

The number of unemployed has risen by 2 million since last June to 8.6 million, and the unemployment rate has increased by 1.5 percentage points during that period.

SECRETS: A WASHINGTON INDUSTRY EXPECTS 1991 TO BE A BETTER YEAR
April 3, 1991
Richard L. Vernaci, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The government last year created 6.8 million secrets, roughly the same as in the previous year, but that does not take into account the effects of the Gulf War, according to a report released yesterday.

Nevertheless, President Bush wrote a letter accompanying the report to praise the government for keeping military secrets during the war while providing for an informed public.

"Under very trying circumstances, this system worked most effectively in safeguarding the privacy...

A POLICY OF ECONOMIC NEGLECT
Washington Post
April 6, 1991

Anyone puzzled about how President Bush can ignore the plight of the Kurds may also want to ask how he can ignore another group, less in danger of death but still at considerable risk: jobless Americans. Yesterday's announcement of the latest unemployment figures confirmed what everyone knew anyway -- that the economy continues to sag and the administration has no intention, largely for ideological reasons, of doing anything to get it started again...

TREASURY FREEZES IRAQ'S US ASSETS 52 COMPANIES, 37 PERSONS ARE LABELED AS FRONTS, AGENTS FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN
April 2, 1991
John Aloysius Farrell, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- Attempting to cripple Saddam Hussein's "subterranean network" of arms traders and money dealers, the US Treasury Department fingered 52 firms and 37 individuals from around the world yesterday as fronts or agents of the Iraqi government.

John E. Robson, a deputy secretary of the Treasury, said the US government is freezing all American assets of the companies and people on the list, and would prosecute anyone who violates the US trade embargo with Iraq by dealing...

JOBLESS RATE MASKS LOOMING TROUBLE FEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR IDLE WORK FORCE
April 6, 1991
Mitchell Zuckoff, Boston Globe

The relatively small rise in Massachusetts' unemployment rate last month masked two looming problems that threaten to send it higher, and the economy tumbling further, in the months ahead.

First, new figures show that 50,000 state residents stopped looking for work in the past year, meaning they no longer are included in unemployment statistics. If they had been counted, the March jobless rate would have been a stratospheric 11.4 percent, not the 9.7 percent reported yesterday.

TEMPTING TO INSURRECTION
William Raspberry, Washington Post
April 5, 1991

Back before Desert Shield became Desert Storm, the rap on President Bush was that he seemed unable to come up with a convincing and consistent rationale for our military presence in the gulf. One day it was to protect Saudi Arabia, the next to reclaim Kuwait and later to drive Saddam out of power

The confusion was not over the validity of any of those goals but over the fact that each of them, taken individually, suggested different uses of U.S. and allied power. Our passive presence in ...

UNEMPLOYMENT FUND DEPLETED, OFFICIALS SAY
April 4, 1991
Frederic M. Biddle, Boston Globe

The state's unemployment insurance fund will go broke within two weeks, forcing the Weld administration to borrow as much as $30 million this month from the federal government to keep it solvent and possibly beginning a costly cycle of borrowing as continued high joblessness drains the fund, advisers to the Department of Employment and Training said yesterday.

And with a projected "$150 million to $200 million" deficit by year's end, the depleted fund is almost certain...

ADMIRAL WILL RETIRE EARLY AFTER BLASTING PENTAGON PLAN
April 4, 1991
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A top Navy admiral is leaving his job several months ahead of schedule, only days after he blasted one of Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney's most-touted projects for reforming the Pentagon.

Vice Adm. Peter M. Hekman, the head of the huge branch that oversees the Navy's ship and weapons programs, has formally requested retirement beginning in May, a Navy spokesman said yesterday.

The spokesman said Hekman's deputy, Rear Adm. Walter H. Cantrell, will head the...

BUSH BARS ARMED AID FOR REVOLT
April 4, 1991
Michael Kranish, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- President Bush firmly ruled out yesterday any possibility of military support for Iraqi rebels, saying he does not want to get "sucked into" the civil war, but he explicitly called on the Iraqi military to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Despite reports that more than a million Kurds are fleeing Saddam Hussein's army and further pleas by rebel leaders for US intervention, Bush said he would not order Iraqi helicopters to be shot down, even though such flights violate...

REPORTERS FLEE IRAQ, SWIM, HIKE TO TURKEY
April 3, 1991
Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey -- At least 35 foreign correspondents fled into Turkey to escape attacks by Iraqi troops, officials and reporters said yesterday. Most of the reporters had to cross a swift river or hike across rugged mountains, they said.

Turkey's Anatolia News Agency quoted some of the reporters as having said that one journalist had been killed and two had been injured in clashes between Iraqi troops and Kurdish rebels. Not all of the journalists' names were given, and the report...

FACTORY ORDERS DROP FOR 4TH MONTH
Associated Press
April 3, 1991

Orders received by US factories in February fell for the fourth straight month, the Commerce Department said. Orders fell 0.5 percent following a revised 1.6 percent decrease in January and declines of 0.4 percent in December and 5.8 percent in November. "The decline in manufactured goods orders, although somewhat less serious than the previous month's figures, confirms the economy is still deep in recession," said Gordon Richards, an economist for the National Association of Manufacturer's....

INDIANS SAY TREATMENT IN US MERITS UN PROBE
April 3, 1991
Associated Press

RAPID CITY, S.D. -- The US government's confiscation of Sioux Indian land in 1877 after gold was discovered in the Black Hills is a human rights violation worthy of review by the United Nations, Indians said at a hearing Monday.

"It is wrong for a powerful nation to take territory from another nation," said Gerald Clifford of Wounded Knee, coordinator of the Black Hills Steering Committee, which conducted the hearings. The group has been working for the return of 1.3 million...

YOU WANT A CONTROVERSY? JUST MAKE ONE UP
Washington Post
April 6, 1991
OP/ED

Apparently Ann Devroy and R. Jeffrey Smith forgot that there were others who heard the interview between Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and David Frost {"Bush, Cheney Dispute General on End of Fighting"}. The selective editing of the general's remarks makes him say what was not said and fails to reflect the tenor of his remarks.

Neither the president nor the general needs any defense. Neither do they need street urchins to holler...

US AGREES TO MEET WITH IRAQI REBELS BUSH AIDES SAY THAT TALKS DON'T INDICATE SHIFT IN POLICY
April 3, 1991
Michael Kranish, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration agreed yesterday to hold high- level talks with Iraqi rebel leaders, but senior Bush aides said they do not expect any change in the White House's hands-off policy on the internal rebellion.

The State Department spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, was asked why the administration is doing nothing to stop Iraq's war against the rebels. She responded: "It is a terrible, terrible situation. But to say we're going to go do something about...

CHENEYS COUPLE PROMINENCE WITH POWER
April 1, 1991
John W. Mashek, Boston Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- "We Win War" reads the blaring newspaper headline hanging on the refrigerator of Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and his wife, Lynne, in their Virginia townhouse.

The headline explains in large measure why Cheney, a former White House chief of staff and congressman from Wyoming, has risen to national prominence.

In a recent Los Angeles Times national poll, Cheney's very favorable rating leaped from 3 percent before the Gulf War to 33 percent afterward...

BUSH, HISPANICS IN BUSINESS TALK TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT
PRESIDENT TO MEET SIMILAR GROUP IN TEXAS MONDAY AS GOP STEPS UP DRIVE FOR MINORITY SUPPORT
John E. Yang, Washington Post
April 6, 1991

The topic was U.S.-Mexican trade and economic development when President Bush met here today with Hispanic business leaders, but Republicans hope there may be some political dividends as well.

The session on Bush's call for free trade between the United States and Mexico played nicely into the GOP's stepped up efforts to court minority voters, especially Hispanics, a group that traditionally has had low voter turnout and voted Democratic...

Thank god for that $250,000 cap on damages:

FIRM WINS $64 MILLION IN DISPUTE WITH IRAQ
Tracy Thompson, Washington Post
April 6, 1991

A federal judge yesterday awarded a New Jersey company $64 million in damages against the government of Iraq in a contract dispute over four blast furnaces that Iraq reportedly planned to use to make nuclear weapons

Before he awarded the damages to Consarc Inc., manufacturer of the furnaces, U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin questioned firm representatives about why they were not more suspicious of Iraq's intentions...

Is the White House press corp getting a tad fiesty?

From today's briefing:

Q: Ari, can I ask about the question of whether to press on to Baghdad or linger on the outskirts for a while -- is that a question that rises to the President's level, or does he delegate that entirely?

MR. FLEISCHER: A decision that General Franks makes.

[snip chemical weapons question]

Q: Ari, you said it's a decision for General Franks. Has General Franks or anybody else in the command joined in the NSC meetings or other briefings so that the President has been in on the consultation on this issue of the Baghdad drive?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President leaves these decisions to the military planners. They make the call. It is their decision about the timing and the tactics of the war. The reason for that is because it should not be a decision that's made on any other basis than on the military facts on the ground, made by the military officials that the President has charged with winning the war.

Q: Right, but you've made a special point of saying that the President has been a tough questioner of his military leaders and wanted to be involved and informed, maybe not making the decision, but that would make the case for somebody like General Franks coming into the NSC meeting and having a chance to discuss this with the President.

MR. FLEISCHER: Every day, DOD officials will inform the President about what is next across the battlefront. And that's how the President stays updated on the latest events, and that's the process.

Q: But how can he ask these tough questions if General Franks isn't having a conversation with him?

MR. FLEISCHER: I don't understand the question.

Q: Well, you've been making a point for days now that the President asks -- likes to ask tough questions and see his role as keeping people accountable. How does he ask those questions if Franks isn't in a conversation with him?

MR. FLEISCHER: Nobody said he's not in a conversation with him. Franks is in a --

Q: I just asked whether General Franks was briefing the President by videophone on the issues of when you take Baghdad.

MR. FLEISCHER: The answer is yes. It's not on a daily basis, but it's on a regular basis.

Q: Do you know if he did it today?

MR. FLEISCHER: I believe he did yesterday. But keep in mind, there's a military chain of command by design. And the chain of command works from General Myers -- I mean, General Franks to General Myers to Secretary Rumsfeld to the President.

Justice delayed but not forgotten

When American PollyAnnas shrug off concerns about the potential mistreatment of individuals or groups by federal law enforcement based upon their national origin, its not necessary to point back 50 years to the internment of Japanese Americans: One only needs to open the history books to the section on American Indian harrassment by the FBI during the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Oh, silly me, those Texas-based textbook publishers left out that chapter.

Imitation the best form of flattery?

I just popped in on the new US Ministry of Propaganda website Command Post teamblog. I was under the impression that it was set up as an alternative to Sean-Paul's highly successful war coverage over at The Agonist, but with a slightly more right-of-center slant. I now know I was misled: Whereas the obvious goal of Mr. Kelly's blow-by-blow coverage is an attempt to provide mostly raw, unfiltered, unhyped reports from sources on the ground and around the world, the Command Post is little more than a news aggregator for US army embeddeds and DoD briefings. The comments are quickly beginning to resemble those at LGFs.

That they can do such a poor job with such a purportedly large base of contributors is almost unfathomable. Sean-Paul, while he may get tips and an occasional linked story, is essentially a one-man show. For my part, I'll stick with the original.

Embedded Racism?

This certainly gives the term new meaning. This comes from my friend, Michael Two Horses, founder of CERTAIN (Coalition to End Racial Targeting of American Indian Nations):

On March 24th, 2003, during Christian Broadcasting Network's news program, CBN reporter Paul Strand made a racially insensitive and inflammatory comment. Paul Strand is currently traveling with the Army's Third Infantry Division in Iraq. In response to a question from Pat Robertson, Strand replied:

"So I guess if this were the Old West I'd say there are Injuns ahead of us, Injuns behind us, and Injuns on both sides too, so we really don't want to give the enemy any hints about where we are."

Needless to say using a racial slur against American Indians to describe the situation in Iraq is disturbing and makes one wonder what prejudices Mr. Strand harbors. Any network - let alone a Christian network - should not allow such statements to pass with out an official rebuke.

Further, it belies a continuing problematic relationship that White Americans have with their own history, once again placing European invaders in the context of facing an alien and duplicitous "enemy," while suggesting that European/Euramerican objectives in the invasion of the Americas - the displacement of and genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of these continents - were somehow worthwhile Christian goals.

Can anyone imagine if Stand had used other racial slurs, on tape, even the ones most often heard over on the Freeper boards describing persons of Arab descent?

I wonder if the CNB audience appreciates the accuracy of Strand's statement: American Indians have the highest per capita representation in the armed forces. I think CNB's got a load of apologizing to do, starting with the family of Private First 1st Lori Piestewa of the 507th Maintenance Company, reported MIA since March 23.

The Army or CNB should pull the plug on Strand's reporting. You can call the Army's Office of Public Affairs or email CNB.

Proactive blogging

First there was Take Back the Media.

Now, Avedon Carol and Lisa English bring We Want the Airwaves to the blogosphere.

Why? Lisa tells us over at her regular digs, RuminateThis. Read. Inform others. Act.

Chicken Little Economics 101

For months now, citing the effect skyrocketing energy prices would have on consumer and business spending, I've felt like Chicken Little prattling on that the sky was falling. Well, guess what?

Manufacturing Sector Slumps as Factory Orders Fall 1.5%
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:06 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Orders to U.S. factories dropped by 1.5 percent in February, the biggest decline in five months, as prewar jitters and higher energy prices sapped the buying appetite of businesses and consumers.

The Commerce Department's report released Wednesday offered more evidence that the nation's battered manufacturing sector, which has been shedding hundreds of thousands of workers and operating below capacity, is bearing the brunt of the economy's problems.

The over-the-month decline in February came after factory orders went up by a solid 1.7 percent in January, a brief bright spot in otherwise lackluster activity.

February's performance was weaker than the 0.7 percent decline that analysts had been forecasting. Manufacturers saw orders drop for metals, machinery, computers and electrical equipment. Orders for automobiles and parts were flat.

The 1.5 percent decline in orders in February was the largest drop since September, when orders fell by 2.4 percent.

This news comes on the heels of yesterday's Institute for Supply Management's March report that its manufacturing index fell to 46.2, down from the previous month's reading of 50.5. A number below 50 indicates manufacturing activity contracted, while a reading above suggests growth in the manufacturing economy.

And unemployment numbers come out on Friday:

The nation's unemployment rate rose to 5.8 percent in February. Economists believe it could move to 5.9 percent or 6 percent for March, and higher in the months ahead. The government reports on the employment situation for March on Friday.

Economists also believe the economy lost 40,000 jobs in March alone. That wouldn't be good, but it would mark an improvement over February when payrolls were slashed by a whopping 308,000.

A big fear is that a worsening labor market will make consumers a key force keeping the struggling economy going turn more cautious, slowing the economy even further, economists say.

The article also surmises:

Some private economists worry that the malaise in manufacturing could spread to other parts of the economy, throwing it into a new recession. Odds of a so-called double dip recession are growing, economists say, because the job market is expected to lose more ground.

I can't help but imagine Karl Rove is ripping his hair out over these numbers. The economy under George H. W. Bush slipped into the second slump of its double dip recession the summer after Gulf War I, and it spelled the president's eventual defeat at the ballot box 15 months later. All eyes, I predict, will be focused on the economies of the Midwest manufacturing belt, states which have flipped like pancakes between red and blue over the past few elections. I know mine will. Perhaps its a good time to see whether Missouri has purchased any new touch-screen voting machines.

Scalia strikes again

Lesbians and gays should not feel alone in the disdain a member of the Supreme Court, in this case Justice Scalia, openly exhibits towards them while sitting on the nation's highest bench. Yesterday, during arguments in the landmark tribal sovereignty case, Inyo County v. Paiute-Shoshone Indians of Bishop Community of Bishop Colony,

Justice Antonin Scalia challenged the concept of tribal sovereignty Monday while other members of the U.S. Supreme Court pondered whether a state is authorized to seize records from an Indian casino. Scalia said Congress never has passed legislation recognizing the sovereign immunity of tribes, noting the concept was created by the Supreme Court.

“I’m puzzled why tribes should receive greater protection than England or Germany,” Scalia said. “Why should we give greater protection to this lesser sovereignty that consists of an Indian tribe?”

The case before the court will determine whether tribal records, as opposed to personal tribal members' property, are protected from state or local law enforcement proceedings, including search and seizure in the investigation of off-reservation crimes. The Supreme court ruled in 2001 that state authorities may enter a reservation to investigate or prosecute off-reservation violations of state law, but that it was limited to the individuals personal property and activities.

In this case, the state is asking for a reversal of the Ninth Circuit court's decision that search warrants against an Indian tribe and tribal property violate the tribe's sovereign immunity. In their probe of purported welfare fraud by three employees of the tribe's casino, Inyo County investigators sought to obtain employment records to support their claims that the workers were illegally receiving general assistance while working for the tribe. The tribal casino, however, cited the tribe's sovereign immunity and refused to honor the search warrant. The county sheriff then proceeded to break into a tribal building, bolt cutters and all, to seize the tribal accounting records.

The tribe also asserts that the district attorney and county sheriff violated the Fourth Amendment when they executed the search warrant to seize tribal property, on tribal land, both of which were outside their jurisdiction. Furthermore, the contend that such a violation is actionable under federal law (42 U.S.C. § 1983), and, therefore, district attorney and sheriff are not entitled to qualified immunity, e.g., the tribe can initiate a civil action against them.

This case should clearly be a slam-dunk on behalf of the tribe. Even the Administration has sided with the Indians: Barbara McDowell, assistant to the solicitor general, told the court that search warrants are a “threat to the dignity of sovereign immunity.” Reid Chambers, tribe's attorney in the matter, "said the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 does not give state officials jurisdiction over tribal casinos. 'The tribe is not subordinate to the state of California. It is subordinate to the United States.'"

Unfortunately, Justice Scalia, with yesterday's words echoing previous ones on earlier decisions undermining basic Indian sovereignty rights, has indicated his obvious bias. It should be a surprise to no one that Indian tribes prevail in less than 20 percent of their cases before this Supreme Court. Death row appellants have a better record.