Not Your Father's America

Republican Jesus

This and more at: http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/

Tom Toles - room for religion

Monte Wolverton - stop gloating

Borowitz Report - earthquake shocker

SEVERE EARTHQUAKE IN INDONESIA HAS NO EFFECT ON SCHIAVO CASE
Networks Explain Decision to Stay in Florida

A severe earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale which struck Indonesia on Tuesday had "little or no effect" on the Terri Schiavo case, the 24-hour news networks confirmed today.

The networks made the announcement to explain why they had for the most part retained their massive media presence outside Ms. Schiavo's hospice in Florida while offering scant coverage of the Indonesian disaster, which has so far resulted in a death toll topping 1,000.

"While the Indonesian earthquake appears to be a disaster of unspeakable magnitude, it is difficult to see it having any lasting impact on the Schiavo story," one network source said. "The public trusts us to deliver Schiavo news on a 24-hour-a-day basis and we do not intend to betray that trust."

Consistent with that mission, the networks today asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency ruling that would keep the Schiavo story alive at least until May sweeps.

Joining in the appeal was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who told reporters today that "we must do everything in our power to keep these television cameras rolling."

"There is no rational reason for disconnecting these TV cameras as long as they are pointed at my face," Rev. Jackson said. "As long as there is publicity, there is hope."

Elsewhere, to pay his respects to the late Johnnie Cochran, former football great O.J. Simpson said he would take one day off from looking for the real killers of his wife Nicole.

Borowitzreport.com

The End of Reason

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted March 31, 2005.

Organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level, so let's call its institutions by their proper name: superstition-based institutions.

For Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, until 2003 the deputy head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's most powerful office, seeing The DaVinci Code in a Vatican bookstore was the last straw. In early March he lashed out at Catholic bookstores for carrying the book, and directed Catholics not to read it. Why? "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true."

Fables?

Dan Brown's phenomenal bestseller suggests that Jesus was an immensely popular and prophetic leader who married one of his closest associates and had a family. Archbishop Bertone and the Church maintain that Jesus was at the same time a man, the son of God, and God himself, that a virgin woman gave birth to him and remained a virgin, that a few days after he was killed he came back to life and shortly thereafter was taken up to heaven to spend an eternity directing the destinies of billions of people.

In a rational world the burden of proof as to which is fable would fall on the Church. But there's the rub. For when it comes to organized religion, no burden of proof is required. On the contrary, by definition, religion requires faith and faith renounces evidence. Taking a proposition "on faith" means to consciously and willfully refuse to examine the facts.

There is a word for this type of thinking: Superstition. Many dictionaries define superstition as "belief which is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines superstition as "a belief, practice or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature" and "a fearful or abject state resulting from such ignorance or irrationality."

Of course, we all have our superstitions. I may refrain from walking under a ladder, or throw salt over my shoulder after a salt spill to avoid bad things from happening to me. But organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level. It demands that we govern our lives with superstition, promises us eternal salvation and bliss if we do, and threatens us with eternal damnation and pain if we do not.

It is long past time we stopped giving a free pass to organizations that refuse to be guided by reason and would force their unreason on the entire society. A first step would be to stop calling these "faith-based institutions" and start calling them by the synonymous and much more instructive term, "superstition-based institutions."

No Other Superstition But This One

Organized superstitions might be more socially supportable if their creed included a provision accepting the organized superstitions of others. Unfortunately, modern religions do not practice tolerance. For example Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore gained widespread fame and even adulation when he refused to obey court orders to remove from the Alabama Courthouse a huge stone tablet on which was inscribed the Ten Commandments. When he was asked how he would react to the suggestion that a monument to the Koran or the Torah also be placed in the Courthouse he brusquely declared he would prohibit such an installation.

A few months later, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence explained why he knew he would win his battle against Muslims in Somalia. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

The creationism vs. evolution debate also illuminates this intolerance. Christians insist that their creation myth represent the creationist side. But there are many creationist myths, many of which predated both Christianity and Judaism. If evidence is not needed, why exclude any superstitions? As Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith, "there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh and Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the seas."

The impact of moving towards "superstition-based institutions" would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary. Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:

I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

Fanatics and Zealots Destroying the Liberty of Thought

In her magnificent book, Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby describes the 230-year-old battle in the United States between reason and superstition. She discusses the post-Civil War period in which the battle may have been most evenly matched.

Robert Green Ingersoll, possibly the best known American in the post Civil War era and the nation's foremost orator, traveled around the country arguing about the harm that comes from self-congratulatory, aggressive and assertive organized religions.

He explained why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man."

Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,'" he insisted. "It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized."

In 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course he can do it."

Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth."

During the era when Ingersoll and Stanton spread their own form of the gospel, the Church was making ever-more explicit its own hostility to reason as a guide to human behavior. In 1869, Pope Pius IX convinced the First Vatican Council to proclaim, "let him be anathema ... (w)ho shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine."

His successor, Pope Leo XIII, in one of his best known encyclicals maintained, it "has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanctions, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will."

Other churches agreed. In 1878, geologist Alexander Winchell was dismissed from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville for publishing his opinion that human life had existed on earth long before the biblical time frame for the creation of Adam. Most Methodists supported the dismissal, arguing that Vanderbilt was founded by Methodists and dedicated to the goals of the church.

Some 45 years later, the famous Scopes trial opened. Most of us know that William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the prosecution of Scopes, a biology teacher who in his classroom violated Tennessee law forbidding the mention of evolution. What we may not know is that William Jennings Bryan was a three-time democratic presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. After the Wilson administration Bryan devoted himself to campaigning around the nation on behalf of state laws banning the teaching of evolution. For Bryan faith always trumped religion. "(I)t is better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the ages of rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father than to know how far the stars in the heaven are apart."

That was then. This is now. A few months ago, a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, refused to show Volcanoes, a science film funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The film was turned down because it very briefly raises the possibility that life on Earth may have originated at undersea steam vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said that many people said the film was "blasphemous." Lisa Buzzelli, director of the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, told The New York Times, "We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public."

Buzzelli's probably right. And that cannot bode well for America's future economic and technological leadership. A 1988 survey by researchers from the University of Texas found that one of four public school biology teachers thought that humans and dinosaurs might have inhabited the earth simultaneously. A recent survey by Gallup found that 35 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe it is the "inspired" word of the same. Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation; another 40 percent believe God has guided creation over the course of millions of years.

The Politicizing of Religion

I know most people who are reading this are asking, "Would you ban organized religion?" Of course not. Religion is an integral part of human existence. For tens of thousands of years humans have sought to explain the unknowable and have found comfort in believing that the death of a loved one may simply be the transition of that loved one to another, more sublime state.

But today organized religion has declared its intention to use its influence far beyond its congregation. The politicization of religion and the rise of a superstition-driven state may be the most important development in this country in many, many decades.

Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and arguably the third most powerful person in Washington told an audience just a few weeks ago that the problems in America began when "they stopped churches from getting into politics ... Lyndon Johnson ... passed a law that said you couldn't get in politics or you're going to lose your tax-exempt status ... It forces Christians back into the church. That's what's going on in America ... That's not what Christ asked us to do."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading candidate to become chief justice, has declared in oral hearings "the fact that government derives its authority from God." In January 2002, in a major speech revealingly titled "God's Justice and Ours," delivered to the University of Chicago Divinity School, Scalia favorably cited Paul's announcement, "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." And Scalia declared that the death penalty is God's will. "The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral," he observed. "I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal."

One of President Bush's first acts in office was to create an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Today 10 federal agencies have a Center for the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The White House web site gives churches Do's and Don'ts for applying for federal assistance. It has funded 30 organizations to provide training and technical assistance for religious organizations desiring federal grants. And it guarantees that any religious organization in need of help will find a ready and willing person on the other end of the phone.

After failing to persuade Congress to change the law, President Bush, by Executive Order, rewrote the rules to allow federal agencies to directly fund churches and other religious groups. In 2003 such groups received an astonishing $1.17 billion in grants from federal agencies.

"That's not enough," H. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives recently told the Associated Press. He notes that another $40 billion in federal money is given out by state governments and "many states do not realize that federal rules now allow them to fund these organizations."

In 2003, an independent study found little activity or interest by states in contracting with religious groups. But federal intervention has persuaded them that future funding depended on their having these groups provide services. By Towey's count, 21 governors have established their own faith-based offices.

The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives maintains, "There is no general federal law that prohibits faith-based organizations that receive federal funds from hiring on a religious basis." It further explains that "for a religious organization to define or carry out its mission, it is important that it be able to take religion into account in hiring staff. Just as a college or university can take the academic credentials of an applicant for a professorship into consideration in order to maintain high standards, or an environmental organization can consider the views of potential employees on conservation, so too should a faith-based organization be able to take into account an applicant's religious belief when making a hiring decision."

One major program funded by the White House is Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. It runs the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in prisons in Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa and Texas. The Christ-centered program offers prisoners privileges that include access to a big TV, computers, and private bathrooms in return for a hefty dose of Bible study and Christian counseling. As a condition of being hired, the program's employees are required to sign a statement affirming their belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Superstition as a Lethal Force

Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the recent enactment by several states of laws that allow pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients whose behavior conflicts with the their superstitions.

The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is behind much of the violence around the world. The conflicts in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v. Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians) and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians v. Chechen Muslims) constitute only a few of the places where religion has been the explicit cause of million of deaths in the last ten years.

Sam Harris discusses "the burden of paradise." Why are there suicide bombers? "Because they actually believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal truth of the Koran ...Why did 19 well-educated, middle class men trade their lives in this world for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so."

To Harris, condoning the use of superstition as an important social force enables and encourages extremism. "The concessions we have made to religious faith," he maintains, "to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something other than evidence -- have rendered us unable to name, much less address, one of the most pervasive causes of conflict in our world."

In 1784, Patrick Henry introduced a bill in the Virginia General Assembly that would have assessed taxes on all citizens for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion." The bill's passage seemed certain. But then James Madison issued his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, eventually signed by some 2,000 Virginians.

"What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?" Madison asked. "In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people."

The two-year debate over the assessment bill ended in its overwhelming defeat. Instead the Virginia legislature in 1786 passed an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. The preamble to the original bill, written by Thomas Jefferson, declared, "Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their mind; that Almighty God hath created the mind free... ."

The final law contained only the last few words of Jefferson's preamble, "Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free ... ."

After the passage of the legislation, Jefferson wrote Madison to express his pride in Virginia's leadership on this crucial issue. "(I)t is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions."

In early February 2005, the Virginia House of Delegates easily approved (69-27) an amendment to the state's constitution that would allow the practice of religion in public schools and other public buildings. A few weeks later the amendment was killed in a Senate committee (10-5).

It was a lonely victory for reason in this increasingly unreasonable time. The battle between rationality and superstition continues.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn. and director of its New Rules project.

http://www.alternet.org/story/21641/

Carlyle's $10 Billion Puts Private Equity In Hunt for Big Game

By DENNIS K. BERMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 29, 2005; Page C1

The private-equity industry has its first $10 Billion Man: Carlyle Group.

The Washington, D.C.-based fund that invests in corporate buyouts today will take the wraps off its newest funds, having raised $7.85 billion for making U.S. investments and an additional $2.2 billion for European purchases, according to Carlyle officials. The U.S. fund is the largest buyout fund ever raised.

And Carlyle will be able to borrow about $45 billion against that $10 billion. That total is more than the combined market capitalizations of Nike Inc. and Ford Motor Co., with plenty of change to spare.

Carlyle's co-founder and managing director, David Rubenstein, said the size of the newest funds means that a new group of large and well-known companies could be candidates for private-equity buyers.
"Nothing is off the table now," Mr. Rubenstein said.

The new launches by Carlyle come amid a fund-raising arms race among the world's largest private-equity players, which buy or take stakes in both public and closely held companies, make big changes and then
sell the companies or take them public.

Once content with deals valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, the firms now are staging massive, and often daring, buyouts valued at $15 billion or greater.

Ego and hubris are an inevitable part of this world, and the race to create the first $10 billion fund has become an industry parlor game. But the sheer size of recent deals is forcing the firms to become
ever-bigger pools of capital. Finding the funding is no problem for the field's biggest names. Cash is streaming in, offered by big pension funds, institutions and very wealthy investors seeking returns
that historically are touted as outpacing the overall stock market. Carlyle, in fact, turned away about $2 billion in prospective investments.

While Carlyle's U.S. fund is the largest raised to date, it won't keep that title for long. Funds raised by Blackstone Group, Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs Group are expected to be as big or larger.

For the largest deals, "You are at a competitive advantage to drive the transaction if you can lead the equity with a $1 billion commitment," says Michael Klein, head of global banking at Citigroup
Inc. That became clear yesterday after SunGard Data Systems Inc. announced that seven buyout firms were acquiring it for $10.8 billion, the second-largest private-equity deal in history behind Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts's $25 billion leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in the late 1980s. The SunGard deal is considered a harbinger of more large-scale transactions to follow.

"The capital is there, the financing is there and the kinds of companies willing to consider it are there," Citigroup's Mr. Klein said.

In all, an estimated $1 trillion in capital is available to the world's private-equity firms, a figure that factors in the amount of debt that banks are willing to lend against the firms' raised equity.

Such scale brings its own set of challenges. Private-equity firms are relatively tiny organizations, often staffed by just a few dozen people. As they do more -- and bigger -- deals, they will have to
expand their infrastructure. And pursuing bigger targets means they will have to stage more "club deals" that bring in capital from a group of firms. That raises concerns about management control and
whether returns from these firms will begin to look the same.

The industry earned a dubious reputation in the 1980s after buying companies and then staging what were viewed as ruthless job cuts and corporate shake-ups. Carlyle's Mr. Rubenstein said that perception has
changed. "Buyout firms have become more socially respectable. More CEOs of large public companies feel it is responsible to consider a buyout.

"When people thought of U.S. capitalism, they thought of General Motors and IBM," Mr. Rubenstein said. "Now they think of private equity. They are more at the cutting edge."

Carlyle -- which often has been the object of criticism because of its political connections -- has indeed built its reputation through its gilt-edged group of executives, which include former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, onetime Clinton Chief of Staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty and former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt.

Like most firms, Carlyle has proved an eclectic buyer, having backed or purchased Yellow Pages businesses, a natural-gas company, an aircraft-construction company and a health-maintenance organization. In all, Carlyle has more than $25 billion under management in 28 different funds and has invested $13 billion since its founding in 1987.

"If you go back to the early 1990s or late 1980s, a $700 million check would have been a huge deal," says Daniel F. Akerson, co-head of the U.S. Buyout fund. "Now people are looking at a different set of
variables."

Write to Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com

TV ads on DeLay to run in three GOP districts / LIBERAL GROUPS TO LAUNCH ADS AGAINST DELAY

TV ads on DeLay to run in three GOP districts

Public Campaign Action Fund

Dear Friend,

We just announced a multiple-congressional district television ad buy to put Republican politicians on the hot-seat for defending Tom DeLay's corruption.

But, within hours, it was reported that radical right groups are circling the wagons around Tom DeLay and trying to shore up support among Congressional Republicans with grassroots campaigns in similar districts as the ones we're targeting.

This is a battle for public opinion and we need your help to win it.

Help us run hard-hitting TV ads demanding that three targeted members of Congress -- Reps. Rob Simmons (CT), Tom Reynolds (NY), and Doc Hastings (WA) -- join our call for DeLay to resign. You support will also help us match DeLay's allies by expanding our ads to other districts around the country.

Please make a donation for $50, $100, or more, today.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_delay

Let me tell you what I think is at stake. We know DeLay has to go. He's a walking scandal, an embarrassment to our democratic ideals, and he has dragged Congress into private matters to divert attention away from the ethics scandals swirling around him.

But, as a colleague of mine said in the New York Times today, a fish rots from the head, and DeLay is certainly the symbol of all the money-rot in Congress. If he is allowed by Republicans to stay, it gives all the big money politicians and their lobbyist friends freedom to buy and sell policy at will. That's why we have to win this fight. The stakes are too high.

Donate to help run these ads, and spread them to other districts.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_delay

It's a fight we can win. Cracks have already appeared in DeLay's conservative foundation. The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Monday against him. Last week the conservative San Diego Union-Tribune called for him to step down. Since launching this campaign, 20,000 Americans have signed our petition, and tens of thousands more have taken action through other organizations.

Reps. Simmons, Hastings, and Reynolds need to hear from us. Make a donation and help run these ads. With your help, we'll strike a blow to the corrosive pay-to-play system worshipped by Tom DeLay.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_delay

Thanks,

David Donnelly
Public Campaign Action Fund

P.S. If you'd prefer to send a check in the mail, send it to Public Campaign Action Fund, 1320 19th Street, NW, Suite M-1, Washington, DC 20036. Contributions to Public Campaign Action Fund are not tax-deductible.

LIBERAL GROUPS TO LAUNCH ADS AGAINST DELAY

Two liberal organizations are beginning an ad campaign this week designed, they say, to pressure House Majority Leader Tom DeLay into leaving Congress. The 30-second television spots highlight DeLay's recent ethical troubles in the House, as well as his ties to a political action committee in Texas that is under criminal investigation there. The ads also spotlight a recent revelation that DeLay, R-Texas, traveled unknowingly at the expense of a foreign agent five years ago. Leaders of Public Campaign
Action Fund and the labor-backed Campaign for America's Future said they spent $75,000 on the ads, which are to begin airing Thursday in the districts of DeLay and Reps. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., Rob Simmons, R-Conn., and Thomas M. Reynolds, R-N.Y. DeLay, who was attending an airport groundbreaking event in his district, heard about the new ad campaign from reporters. "Bring it on," he told them.

From: CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE

Laura Bush, Women and Realities of Afghanistan

SAHAR SABA, saharsaba@yahoo.com, http://www.rawa.org

A member of the foreign affairs committee of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, Saba is in Pakistan working with Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan. She said today: "It's very sad that there is little discussion of Afghanistan except with events like this visit by Laura Bush. The last three years after the collapse of the Taliban have seen little change for most women in Afghanistan, especially outside of Kabul. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai promised during the presidential election to get rid of the warlords, but they are in the cabinet. We are seeing rapes of girls, forced marriages, kidnappings and a dramatic increase in suicides among young women who see no way out. ... We continue to have very poor medical facilities, little electricity. Thousands of children died during the cold of the last winter."

SONALI KOLHATKAR, sonali@afghanwomensmission.org, http://www.afghanwomensmission.org

Kolhatkar, based in Los Angeles, is co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission and has recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan. She said today: "Mrs. Bush said yesterday that 'American women stand in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan.' But most Afghan women disapprove of U.S. policy. Women are overwhelmingly disappointed with the re-emergence of warlords, a direct result of U.S. policy. These warlords are ideologically similar to the Taliban and many have horrific war crimes in their past. Unfortunately the Bush administration and Mrs. Bush refuse to apply the same standards of women's rights to their warlord allies."

Kolhatkar added: "Laura Bush is taking $21.2 million in school grants to Afghanistan. Afghanistan's education was recently called the 'worst education system in the world' by the UN, and unfortunately Mrs. Bush's donation will barely make a dent in the needs -- the United Nations, the Asia Development Bank and the World Bank estimate the need in Afghanistan to be at about $15 billion over a period of 10 years. Afghan Finance Minister Hedayat Arsala predicts the needs to be around $22 billion for the first five years. Mrs. Bush's small donation (hugely outweighed by the U.S. military budget for Afghanistan) is clearly aimed at promoting a perception of U.S. generosity, rather than achieving real progress for Afghanistan. If Mrs. Bush was really interested in Afghan women's rights, she should back an immediate disarmament of warlords, disbarment from government positions, and a war crimes tribunal to demand justice for past crimes. The warlords hinder Afghan women's development, democratic freedoms and access to education."

The Associated Press reports that Laura Bush's trip "was timed to coincide with a meeting in Kabul of the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council." Writing about the group in a recent paper, "Afghan Women Continue to Fend for Themselves," Kolhatkar commented: "Consistent with the Bush administration's main interest in stimulating [a] 'private sector economy' in Afghanistan, the UAWC's core mission is to 'develop and foster partnerships between the private and public sectors,' according to a U.S. State Department press release. So committed is the U.S. to Afghan women that the Council has no formal budget..."

[See:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/2004afghanwom.html ]

LAURA FLANDERS, Lflanders@aol.com, http://www.lauraflanders.com

Flanders is author of the book "Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man," just out in paperback, which includes profiles of Laura Bush and Karen Hughes. Flanders said today: "The First Lady celebrates the ouster of the Taliban while she and her husband collaborate with misogynist theocrats in the USA. In Kabul, the U.S.-installed Karzai government works hand-in-glove with warlords who trail a long record of rape and human rights abuse. Laura Bush's trip, presumably choreographed by Karen Hughes, is intended to put a female-friendly face on an unpopular pro-corporate agenda being promoted by private U.S. companies. Hughes has said she wishes she could have done PR for Exxon after the Valdez spill. U.S. oil companies, Afghan warlords -- and heroin dealers -- have seen more gains from the U.S. role than the mass of Afghan women ever will."

CARMELA BARANOWSKA, cbaranowska@yahoo.com.au, http://www.talibancountry.com

Currently in New York City, Baranowska is the award-winning filmmaker of "Taliban Country," made in the most remote and dangerous parts of Afghanistan last year. It shows U.S. Marines hunting Taliban and Al
Qaeda. Extended portions of the documentary are available at the above web page. Baranowska said today: "We uncovered U.S. abuse of Afghans as well as collusion with local war/drug lords. The footage is a unique and unprecedented 'window' onto an extremely traditional way of life which is being totally destroyed by U.S. military operations, detention, abuse and torture. The U.S., in effect, is making more Taliban.

"The film has led to two U.S. military inquiries and the 'firing' of the U.S. Marines' battalion commander, a rising Pakistani-American called Lt. Col. Asad Khan. ... Who knows what really went on? Was Khan a scapegoat? Where did the chain of command end? None of the military documents have been released publicly. In the bigger picture, the U.S. military was supposed to have released its own internal military report back in June 2004. However, their constant delay has meant that the abuses
are continuing."

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

A REPORTER IN HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050326/NEWS/503260408/1060

Florida freelance television reporter Mike Vasilinda's public relations firm "has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories," while those stories aired on CNN and Florida NBC affiliates. Mike Vasilinda Productions has also worked on political campaigns. Vasilinda rejected comparisons to Armstrong Williams, "because he has not personally promoted any government programs or appeared in any of the videos his business produced." Journalism professor Bob Steele said the arrangement "certainly raises some red flags."

SOURCE: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, March 26, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3522

Judge Blocks Rule Allowing Companies to Cut Benefits When Retirees Reach Medicare Age

By ROBERT PEAR, March 31, 2005

WASHINGTON, March 30 - A federal district judge on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that would have allowed employers to reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they reach age
65 and become eligible for Medicare.

Ten million retirees could have had benefits cut under the rule, which was adopted last April by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The judge, Anita B. Brody of the Federal District Court in Philadelphia, struck down the rule and issued a permanent injunction that prohibits federal officials from enforcing it.

The rule "is contrary to Congressional intent and the plain language of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act," the 1967 law that bans most forms of age discrimination in the workplace, Judge Brody wrote.

The erosion of retiree health benefits is an explosive political issue. Before issuing the rule, the commission was deluged with letters opposing it.

The rule would have created an explicit exemption to the age discrimination law, allowing employers to reduce health benefits for retirees when they became eligible for Medicare. Under the rule,
Judge Brody said, employers could have given older retirees "health benefits that are inferior" to those given retirees younger than 65.

The commission argued that employers were more likely to continue providing health benefits to retirees under 65 if they were allowed to reduce or eliminate benefits for those 65 and older.

AARP, the main plaintiff in the case, rejected that argument. It said the rule would accelerate the erosion of retiree health benefits, a trend that has been evident for more than a decade.

Christopher G. Mackaronis, a Washington lawyer for AARP, said Wednesday: "The rule was an example of executive arrogance. Federal agencies have no authority to rewrite laws passed by Congress. The
rule was adopted in April 2004, but officials tucked it in their back pocket while they courted older voters last year. After the election, they moved forward with the regulation."

The rule, written by the commission, was reviewed and cleared by other agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services.

Cari M. Dominguez, the chairwoman of the commission, said her agency would ask the Justice Department to appeal the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.

The appeals court ruled on the same legal issue five years ago, in a case involving retirees who had worked for Erie County, Pa. Judge Brody closely followed the precedent laid down by the appeals court.

The commission's rule would allow employers to engage in "the exact same behavior" prohibited in the Erie County case, Judge Brody said. In that case, the appeals court found that Congress had intended the age discrimination law to apply "when an employer reduces health benefits based on Medicare eligibility."

In the district court, the commission argued that it had the power to exempt certain conduct from the age discrimination law as long as the exemption was reasonable, "necessary and proper in the public
interest."

Judge Brody rejected that contention. The commission, she said, was trying to "issue a blanket exemption for illegal behavior," not confined to a few individual cases. "An administrative agency,
including the E.E.O.C., may not issue regulations, rules or exemptions that go against the intent of Congress," she added.

The law clearly forbids employers to discriminate on the basis of age in setting pay and employee benefits, Judge Brody said. And the law, as interpreted by the appeals court, "prohibits the practice of coordinating retiree benefits with Medicare eligibility," she said.

No law requires employers to provide health benefits to workers or retirees. Employers can legally provide benefits to active workers and not to retirees. Many employers have eliminated retiree health
benefits. But, Judge Brody said, if an employer provides benefits to retirees, it cannot discriminate among them on the basis of age.

Lawyers said the ruling would apply to companies that give health benefits to early retirees and want to reduce coverage when the retirees reach 65 and become eligible for Medicare. Employer-
provided health benefits do not duplicate Medicare. Rather, they help retirees pay medical expenses not covered by Medicare. Those expenses could include co-payments and deductibles and prescription
drug costs, beyond what Medicare might pay.

Michele Pollak, a lawyer at AARP, said, "It is less expensive for employers to purchase a health plan that supplements Medicare than it is to purchase health benefits for younger retirees not eligible
for Medicare."

The American Benefits Council, a trade group for large employers, and the HR Policy Association, which represents human resource executives at 250 large companies, said they were disappointed with
Judge Brody's decision.

Daniel V. Yager, senior vice president of the association, said the ruling was "a major setback for many employers that are trying to maintain employer-provided benefits for pre-65 retirees."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/politics/31retire.html?th&emc=th

Goldman ups price outlook By Ciara Linnane

Oil tops $55 a barrel level

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures climbed back above the $55 a barrel level in premarket trade Thursday, extending the prior session's late gains, after Goldman Sachs raised its oil price outlook. "We believe oil prices have entered the early stages of a superspike period," said analyst Arjun Murti, who raised his superspike range to $50-105 a barrel from $50-80. Investors are also awaiting the release of weekly natural gas supply data. The crude contract for May delivery was last trading up 2 percent at $55.09 a barrel. May natural gas was up 1.1 percent at $7.55 per million British thermal units. Enercast analysts are expecting the Energy Department to report a withdrawal of 49 billion cubic feet.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/newsfinder/pulseone.asp?siteid=mktw&guid={58510034-772F-421F-A133-B270CE138CD4}&dist=bnb

End-Times Update (U.S. only)

After analyzing and interpreting various Koranic verses, Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi has published a study currently circulating in many Muslim countries that claims the United States will "cease to exist" sometime in 2007, when Allah will send a tsunami larger than last December's as retribution for America's sins against mankind.

http://www.therevealer.org

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - SAM HARRIS

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

SAM HARRIS
Neuroscience Graduate Student, UCLA; Author, The End of Faith

Twenty-two percent of Americans claim to be certain that Jesus will return to earth to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. Another twenty-two percent believe that he is likely to do so. The problem that most interests me at this point, both scientifically and socially, is the problem of belief itself. What does it mean, at the level of the brain, to believe that a proposition is true? The difference between believing and disbelieving a statement—Your spouse is cheating on you; you've just won ten million dollars—is one of the most potent regulators of human behavior and emotion. The instant we accept a given representation of the world as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as false, it remains a string of words.

What I believe, though cannot yet prove, is that belief is a content-independent process. Which is to say that beliefs about God—to the degree that they are really believed—are the same as beliefs about numbers, penguins, tofu, or anything else. This is not to say that all of our representations of the world are acquired through language, or that all linguistic representations are on the same logical footing. And we know that different regions of the brain are involved in judging the truth-value of statements drawn from different content domains. What I do believe, however, is that the neural processes that govern the final acceptance of a statement as "true" rely on more fundamental, reward-related circuitry in our frontal lobes—probably the same regions that judge the pleasantness of tastes and odors. Truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, in more than a metaphorical sense. And false statements may, quite literally, disgust us.

Once the neurology of belief becomes clear, and it stands revealed as an all-purpose emotion arising in a wide variety of contexts (often without warrant), religious faith will be exposed for what it is: a humble species of terrestrial credulity. We will then have additional, scientific reasons to declare that mere feelings of conviction are not enough when it comes time to talk about the way the world is. The only thing that guarantees that (sufficiently complex) beliefs actually represent the world, are chains of evidence and argument linking them to the world. Only on matters of religious faith do sane men and women regularly dispute this fact. Apart from removing the principle reason we have found to kill one another, a revolution in our thinking about religious belief would clear the way for new approaches to ethics and spiritual experience. Both ethics and spirituality lie at the very heart of what is good about being human, but our thinking on both fronts has been shackled to the preposterous for millennia. Understanding belief at the level of the brain may hold the key to new insights into the nature of our minds, to new rules of discourse, and to new frontiers of human cooperation.

BBC - Brain chip reads man's thoughts

Last Updated: Thursday, 31 March, 2005, 11:29 GMT 12:29 UK

A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind. Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001.

The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone.

The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher.

Mind over matter

He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home.

Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable paralysed people to control devices with the brain.

Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain.

It's quite remarkable

Dr Richard Apps, neurophysiologist from Bristol University

Recently four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, were able to move a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes that pick up brain waves.

Mr Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement.

Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals.

The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought.

Motor control

Professor John Donoghue, an expert on neuroscience at Brown University on Rhode Island, is the scientist behind the device produced by Cyberkinetics.

He said: "The computer screen is basically a TV remote control panel, and in order to indicate a selection he merely has to pass the cursor over an icon, and that's equivalent to a click when he goes over that icon."

Mr Nagle has also been able to use thought to move a prosthetic hand and robotic arm to grab sweets from one person's hand and place them into another.

Professor Donoghue hopes that ultimately implants such as this will allow people with paralysis to regain the use of their limbs.

The long term aim is to design a package the size of a mobile phone that will run on batteries, and to electrically stimulate the patient's own muscles.

This will be difficult.

The simple movements we take for granted in fact involve complex electrical signals which will be hard to replicate, Dr Richard Apps, a neurophysiologist from Bristol University, the UK, told the BBC News website.

He said there were millions of neurones in the brain involved with movement. The brain chip taps into only a very small number of these.

But he said the work was extremely exciting.

"It's quite remarkable. They have taken research to the next stage to have a clear benefit for a patient that otherwise would not be able to move.

"It seems that they have cracked the crucial step and arguably the most challenging step to get hand movements.

"Just to be able to grasp an object is a major step forward."

He said it might be possible to hone this further to achieve finer movements of the hand.

Matthew Nagel's story is featured in a Frontiers programme on BBC Radio Four on Wednesday 13 April, 2005, at 2100 BST.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4396387.stm

Tom Tomorrow

Mike Lane - govt handbook

Jen Sorensen - captains of industry

Borowitz Report - mandela inspiration shocker

MANDELA: MICHAEL JACKSON GIVES ME STRENGH
King of Pop a Source of Inspiration, Former South African President Says

Former South African President Nelson Mandela said today that thinking about Michael Jackson gave him strength during the many years he was imprisoned and that the King of Pop continues to be a source of inspiration to him today.

"When you are behind bars with no hope of release, you need to find strength wherever you can," President Mandela said in an exclusive interview with a Danish magazine. "Personally, I found strength in Michael Jackson."

The former South African president said that while imprisoned in the 1980's, he drew emotional sustenance from following Michael Jackson's recording career.

"It took great courage to leave the Jackson Five and go solo," President Mandela said. "I thought to myself, if he had the courage to do that, I, too, must have the will to go on."

Even to this day, President Mandela said, Michael Jackson is "a constant source of inspiration" to him, adding, "When I am not drawing strength from Michael Jackson, I am drawing strength from Martha Stewart."

Mr. Jackson received kind words from another international icon today, the boxer Muhammad Ali, who today told a Norwegian newspaper today that he, too, draws inspiration from the platinum-selling recording artist.

"When people ask me where I get my strength from, I tell them that I look at the man Michael Jackson looks at when he looks at the man in the mirror," the former heavyweight champion said.

Elsewhere, with enlistment levels falling, the Pentagon said it would focus its recruitment effort on people who had not read a newspaper in the past two years.

Borowitzreport.com

News that the 'Rapture' Has Come and Gone Alarms Many Christians

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/
What if the 'Rapture' happened but you were left behind? That's what millions of Christians are wondering amid mounting evidence that the Rapture, the much-anticipated event in which God summons his faithful to the heavens, may have happened earlier this month. Among the startled 'still here': House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, just one of the political leaders who had expected to be making the trek skyward.
(3/29/2005)

Goldwater's warnings coming true?

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

By PAT MURPHY

The man Republicans lionized as a wellspring of conservative wisdom and scourge of government tyranny saw it coming.

Beware, Sen. Barry Goldwater warned: the country is being pushed into a theocracy by overbearing religious extremists who'll suffocate individual freedom.

Did Goldwater, who died in 1998, foresee the sort of politicians and "religious" fanatics who turned Terri Schiavo's tragedy into a circus?

Listen to what he had to say decades ago:

· "The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both."

· "I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?"

· "And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'"

· "When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."

Foretelling things to come, televangelist-politician Pat Robertson wrote in 1991, "By the end of this decade control of the major institutions of society will be firmly in the hands of those who share a pro-family, religious, traditional value perspective."

Nine years later, George W. Bush was president. Stem cell research banned. Evolution discredited in education. PBS browbeaten by "moral values" Education secretary William J. Bennett. Broadcast language policed. Sex education textbooks censored to include only abstinence. Aid to foreign agencies involved in abortion cancelled. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives created. The Justice Department forms the "religious rights" unit. Attacks launched on same-sex marriage. Pharmacists refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

Coming soon: hand picked "moral values" judges to enforce America's conservative political pact with religion.

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?issue_date=03-30-2005&ID=2005102341

Teaching Darwin splits Pennsylvania town / Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science

Teaching Darwin splits Pennsylvania town

Sun Mar 27, 5:54 PM ET

DOVER, United States (AFP) - The pastoral fields and white frame houses appear at peace, but this Pennsylvania farm town is deeply at war over teaching Darwin or Christian creationism in its schools.

Since last year the school board voted to have high school biology teachers raise doubts about Darwin's 145-year-old theory and suggest an alternative Christian explanation for life. The city has since been deeply riven over the issue of separation of church and state.

In January the school board ordered teachers to tell students that Darwinism is not proved, and to teach as well an alternate theory, "intelligent design," which posits that a grand creator, God, is responsible for the development of living organisms.

"Darwin's theory is a theory ... not a fact," the school board declared in their statement to the teachers. "Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view," said the report.

The command landed in the sprawling, red-brick Dover high school like a bomb. Biology teachers refused to read it, while around 15 students walked out in protest.

"Reading it sends the message that it is a legitimate scientific idea or theory," said Jen Miller, a biology teacher who is also a church-goer and daughter of a minister.

As news of the dispute spread, the small city of 25,000 found itself the focus of a national battle over Darwinism, creationism and the role of religion in schools.

Around 19 states are experiencing similar fights, according to the National Center for Science Education.

The National Science Teachers Association reported that 31 percent of teachers say they feel pressured to include non-scientific alternatives to evolution in science lectures.

Throughout Dover, a conservative, religious city in the Pennsylvania farm country, the talk is of nothing else, and the subject provokes angry arguments.

In December 11 parents, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), filed a lawsuit against the school board, leading to stormy public meetings and resignations.

The divisiveness now focuses on the election of a new school board from among its citizens.

"Creation is why we are here," said retired teacher Virginia Doll, defending the introduction of religion into the biology classes.

"We have a rather religious town, the God we serve is important in everything we do," she said.

On the other side was clergyman Warren Esbach. "I'm opposed to any group who wants to establish a theocracy. I come from a church who fled Germany in the 18th century for religious freedom," Esbach said.

According to the teachers, the issue arose suddenly, over only a few months last year, in part from a council discussion over the use of a book which some council members called too Darwinian.

"Here we have non-scientifically educated people trying to tell teachers what is scientific and what is not scientific," said Bryan Rehm, one of the 11 plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

With the lawsuit pending, the council members, defended by an organization of Christian lawyers, will not talk about the case.

But pastor and parent Ray Mummert, 54, explained their point.

"If we continue to indoctrinate our young people with non-religious principles, we're headed for an internal destruction of this society," he said.

"Evolution is just a theory and there are other theories," Mummert explained, smiling through his beard.

"There is such a complexity in life, and science wants to hang its hat on a belief that life somehow started -- they say there is no creator, no order ... I believe there is a creator," he said.

Both sides acknowledge the political context of the debate over Darwinism, and the relation to the re-election of staunchly Christian President George W. Bush (news - web sites).

"Christians are a lot more bold under Bush's leadership, he speaks what a lot of us believe," said Mummert.

"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture," he said, adding that the school board's declaration is just a first step.

"It took 30 or 40 years to eliminate God in school, it will take probably 30 or 40 years to get him back. You take a little step first, a little bite, then another little bite and another," said Steve Farrell, a nursery keeper, who dreams of the return to prayer in class.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1548&ncid=1548&e=1&u=/afp/20050327/lf_afp/uspoliticsreligion

Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science

March 30, 2005

COMMENTARY

By Michael Shermer, Michael Shermer is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and the author of "Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown" (Times Books, 2005).

According to intelligent-design theory, life is too complex to have evolved by natural forces. Therefore life must have been created by a supernatural force — an intelligent designer. ID theorists argue that because such design can be inferred through the methods of science, IDT should be given equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes. Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require just that.

The evolution-creation legal battle began in 1925 with the Scopes "monkey" trial, over the banning of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. The controversy caused textbook publishers and state boards of education to cease teaching evolution — until the Soviets launched Sputnik in the late 1950s and the United States realized it was falling behind in the sciences.

Creationists responded by passing equal-time laws that required the teaching of both creationism and evolution, a strategy defeated in a 1968 Arkansas trial that found that such a law attempted to "establish religion" in a public school and was therefore unconstitutional. This led to new equal-time laws covering "creation science" and "evolution science." In 1987, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 7 to 2, said teaching creation science "impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind."

This history explains why proponents of intelligent design are careful to never specify the true, religious nature of their theory and to insist that what they are doing is science. For example, leading ID scholar William Dembski wrote in his 2003 book, "The Design Revolution": "Intelligent design is a strictly scientific theory devoid of religious commitments. Whereas the creator underlying scientific creationism conforms to a strict, literalist interpretation of the Bible, the designer underlying intelligent design need not even be a deity."

But let's be clear: Intelligent-design theory is not science. The proof is in the pudding. Scientists, including scientists who are Christians, do not use IDT when they do science because it offers nothing in the way of testable hypotheses. Lee Anne Chaney, professor of biology at Whitworth College, a Christian institution, wrote in a 1995 article: "As a Christian, part of my belief system is that God is ultimately responsible. But as a biologist, I need to look at the evidence…. I don't think intelligent design is very helpful because it does not provide things that are refutable — there is no way in the world you can show it's not true. Drawing inferences about the deity does not seem to me to be the function of science because it's very subjective."

Intelligent-design theory lacks, for instance, a hypothesis of the mechanics of the design, something akin to natural selection in evolution. Natural selection can and has been observed and tested, and Charles Darwin's theory has been refined.

Intelligent-design theorists admit the difference, at least among themselves. Here is ID proponent Paul Nelson, writing last year in Touchstone, a Christian magazine: "Right now, we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity' — but, as yet, no general theory of biological design."

If intelligent design is not science, then what is it? One of its originators, Phillip Johnson, a law professor at UC Berkeley, wrote in a 1999 article: "The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism versus evolution to the existence of God versus the nonexistence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.' "

On March 9, I debated ID scholar Stephen Meyer at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. After two hours of debate over the scientific merits (or lack thereof) of IDT, Meyer admitted in the question-and-answer period that he thinks that the intelligent designer is the Judeo-Christian God and that suboptimal designs and deadly diseases are not examples of an unintelligent or malevolent designer, but instead were caused by "the fall" in the Garden of Eden. Dembski has also told me privately that he believes the intelligent designer is the God of Abraham.

The term "intelligent design" is nothing more than a linguistic place-filler for something unexplained by science. It is saying, in essence, that if there is no natural explanation for X, then the explanation must be a supernatural one. Proponents of intelligent design cannot imagine, for example, how the bacterial flagellum (such as the little tail that propels sperm cells) could have evolved; ergo, they conclude, it was intelligently designed. But saying "intelligent design did it" does not explain anything. Scientists would want to know how and when ID did it, and what forces ID used.

In fact, invoking intelligent design as God's place-filler can only result in the naturalization of the deity. God becomes just another part of the natural world, and thereby loses the transcendent mystery and divinity that define the boundary between religion and science.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-shermer30mar30.story

Easter Reflections on Tom Delay

In recent days, criticism has unfairly rained down on House majority leader Tom Delay for supposedly comparing himself to Jesus. As Delay put it in his own defense, "people hate the messenger. That's why they killed Christ."

On this Easter Sunday, it is worth noting that the similarities between Jesus and Tom Delay are striking:

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000138.htm

Pharmaceutical Industry Reacts to State Efforts To Reduce Prescription Drug Costs

Access this story and related links online:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=28984

The Los Angeles Times on Monday examined the pharmaceutical industry's efforts to defeat proposed ballot initiatives in California that would require drug makers to provide discount prescription medications to consumers, as well as pharmaceutical industry efforts against similar measures in other states. The "most aggressive counterattack" has been launched in California, where drug makers have raised $8.6 million to defeat a ballot measure proposed by not-for-profit Health Access California, according to the Times. The proposed ballot measure would require drug makers to provide discounts to California residents with annual incomes that do not exceed 400% of the federal poverty level, a group estimated at about six million to 10 million state residents. Under the measure, drug companies that do not comply with the program would be shut out of Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program.

Schwarzenegger Plan

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) negotiated a voluntary discount plan called California Rx that would provide a 40% drug discount to state residents whose annual incomes do not exceed 300% of the federal poverty level. According to the Times, the Schwarzenegger administration has not negotiated agreements with individual drug makers. If approved, the plan could take effect as early as next year in part because drug makers would not challenge it in court, the administration says. However, state Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer (D), who has proposed legislation that Health Access used as the basis for its ballot initiative, said the plan would not ensure state residents the
lowest prices on drugs. In addition to its support for Schwarzenegger's proposal, the pharmaceutical industry has pledged support for proposed ballot initiatives that would reduce trial lawyers' contingency fees and require unions to obtain members' permission before using their dues for political
activities. According to the Times, such measures are intended as "retaliatory" actions against trial lawyers and unions, groups that comprise "the heart of Democrats' donor base." Jan Faiks, a vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said, "We take it as such a serious threat to the health and welfare of the pharmaceutical industry that we have to make a stand here. It's a very bad precedent. You're the leader in the country, and there are 26 states that allow ballot initiatives."

Efforts in Other States

According to the Times, manufacturers also are "on the defensive" in Washington state and Rhode Island as legislators become increasingly interested in controlling drug prices. Ohio and Maine have launched voluntary discount plans for low-income residents but have been unable to punish individual manufacturers that refuse to offer discount prices. The Ohio plan, which was launched this year and used as the model for Schwarzenegger's proposal, offers discounts of about 26% off retail prices. The Maine discount program claims savings of up to 15% off retail prices on brand-name drugs and 60% on generics. The program is operating after a long delay in court, but the state has not yet taken action against drug manufacturers that do not offer discounts to comply with the program. PhRMA officials are negotiating with labor leaders and legislators in Washington state, Rhode Island and Illinois about
creating voluntary programs, while other states, such as West Virginia, are pursuing other efforts to address prescription drug prices (Rau, Los Angeles Times, 3/28).

MSNBC - Follow the Money - corruption in Iraq is out of control

Watchdogs are warning that corruption in Iraq is out of control. 3/27 ..

msnbc.msn.com/id/7306162/site/newsweek

The Future of Copyright in the Internet Era

Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster. The case raises questions about the nature of copyright in the age of the Internet.

DEAN BAKER, dean.baker1@verizon.net, http://www.cepr.net/publications/AFV.htm

Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Baker wrote the paper "The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights," which outlines a system that "would allow each individual to contribute a refundable tax credit of approximately $100 to a creative worker of their choice" as an alternative to copyright.

He said today: "Copyrights are a relic of the feudal guild system that has long outlived its usefulness. We have far more efficient mechanisms for promoting creativity and innovation in the modern economy. For example, the Artistic Freedom Voucher system could provide a greater pool of money to support to creative and innovative work, with less government interference than the copyright system. Instead of trying to adjust its business model to the Internet Age, the entertainment industry is playing the role of 21st century Luddites by trying to suppress technology in order to preserve its old-fashioned business methods."

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN, siva.vaidhyanathan@nyu.edu, http://sivacracy.net

Vaidhyanathan is author of the books "Copyrights and Copywrongs" and "The Anarchist in the Library." He said today: "In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that insofar as technology was concerned, hands off is the best policy the government could pursue. As a result of the court's ruling in the Betamax case we saw the flourishing of the VCR. That ruling not only changed the way we experience media and opened up new markets for video, it granted confidence to inventors. If the Supreme Court rules differently in the Grokster case, it could scare away an entire generation of creative engineers. Technologies like Grokster are simply search engines using the peer-to-peer nature of the Internet. If you have a problem with peer to peer, you have a problem with the Internet. The question is: Do the interests of the big Hollywood studios trump the interests of everybody else on the Internet? If that's the case we're in for a lot of trouble."

Vaidhyanathan, who is assistant professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, added: "There are legitimate copyright issues and they should be pursued in civil court. But enforcing it at the level of the technology is not appropriate. It would do more harm than good."

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

#13 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

13 Cold fusion
AFTER 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers.

With controllable cold fusion, many of the world's energy problems would melt away: no wonder the US Department of Energy is interested. In December, after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving proposals for new cold fusion experiments.

That's quite a turnaround. The DoE's first report on the subject, published 15 years ago, concluded that the original cold fusion results, produced by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and unveiled at a press conference in 1989, were impossible to reproduce, and thus probably false.

The basic claim of cold fusion is that dunking palladium electrodes into heavy water - in which oxygen is combined with the hydrogen isotope deuterium - can release a large amount of energy. Placing a voltage across the electrodes supposedly allows deuterium nuclei to move into palladium's molecular lattice, enabling them to overcome their natural repulsion and fuse together, releasing a blast of energy. The snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory.

"Cold fusion would make the world's energy problems melt away. No wonder the Department of Energy is interested". That doesn't matter, according to David Nagel, an engineer at George Washington University in Washington DC. Superconductors took 40 years to explain, he points out, so there's no reason to dismiss cold fusion. "The experimental case is bulletproof," he says. "You can't make it go away."

From issue 2491 of New Scientist magazine, 19 March 2005, page 30

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - ELIZABETH SPELKE

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

ELIZABETH SPELKE
Psychologist, Harvard University

I believe, first, that all people have the same fundamental concepts, values, concerns, and commitments, despite our diverse languages, religions, social practices, and expressed beliefs. If defenders and opponents of abortion, Israelis and Palestinians, or Cambridge intellectuals and Amazonian jungle dwellers were to get beyond their surface differences, each would discover that the common ground linking them to members of the other group equals that which binds their own group together. Our common conceptual and moral commitments spring from the core cognitive systems that allow an infant to grow rapidly and spontaneously into a competent participant in any human society.

Second, one of our shared core systems centers on a notion that is false: the notion that members of different human groups differ profoundly in their concepts and values. This notion leads us to interpret the superficial differences between people as signs of deeper differences. It has quite a grip on us: Many people would lay down their lives for perfect strangers from their own community, while looking with suspicion at members of other communities. And all of us are apt to feel a special pull toward those who speak our language and share our ethnic background or religion, relative to those who don't.

Third, the most striking feature of human cognition stems not from our core knowledge systems but from our capacity to rise above them. Humans are capable of discovering that our core conceptions are false, and of replacing them with truer ones. This change has happened dramatically in the domain of astronomy. Core capacities to perceive, act on, and reason about the surface layout predispose us to believe that the earth is a flat, extended surface on which gravity acts as a downward force. This belief has been decisively overturned, however, by the progress of science. Today, every child who plays computer games or watches Star Wars knows that the earth is one sphere among many, and that gravity pulls all these bodies toward one another.

Together, my three beliefs suggest a fourth. If the cognitive sciences are given sufficient time, the truth of the claim of a common human nature eventually will be supported by evidence as strong and convincing as the evidence that the earth is round. As humans are bathed in this evidence, we will overcome our misconceptions of human differences. Ethnic and religious rivalries and conflicts will come to seem as pointless as debates over the turtles that our pancake earth sits upon, and our common need for a stable, sustainable environment for all people will be recognized. But this fourth belief is conditional. Our species is caught in a race between the progress of our science and the escalation both of our intergroup conflicts and of the destructive means to pursue them. Will humans last long enough for our science to win this race?

BBC - Hair is good source of stem cells

Last Updated: Monday, 28 March, 2005, 23:53 GMT 00:53 UK

Most people have about 100,000 hairs on their head

US scientists say they found a good source of stem cells - hair follicles.
The fact that hair grows quickly and is continually replenished makes it an attractive source to harvest the amount of stem cells needed for treatments.

This has been a major stumbling block of stem cell research, as well as controversy surrounding the ethics of harvesting cells from embryos.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science study shows nerve cells can be grown from hair follicle stem cells.

Stem cells are immature cells that have the ability to become any kind of tissue in the body.

Hair grows from follicles and new follicle cells are born from stem cells that exist in a small bulge on the side of the hair follicle.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have already suggested that these stem cells might be a way of treating baldness.

Now Dr Yasuyuki Amoh and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, have shown that the same stem cells could potentially be used to treat neurological conditions.

They found that the follicle stem cells from the whiskers of mice expressed a substance called nestin, a known signal to tell cells to develop into neurons.

They then tested whether the follicle cells could develop into mature nerve cells and found that they could when they were transplanted under the skin of the mice.

The follicle stem cells were also able to grow into skin cells, smooth muscle cells and pigment-producing cells called melanocytes.

"These results suggests that hair follicle stem cells may provide an accessible source of stem cells for therapeutic application," said the researchers.

Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the division of developmental genetics at the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research, said: "It's definitely a source of cells that needs to be explored.

"We want to find the best source of cells possible."

He said it would be important to compare the quality of hair follicle stem cells with stem cells derived from other sources.

He said follicle stem cells did carry the bonus of being relatively accessible.

---- Hair facts -----------------------------------------------------

Hair grows 1.25cm per month on average
Humans have about 100,000 hairs on their head
Blonds have 140,000, brunettes 120,000 and red-heads 90,000
The lifespan of a single head hair varies from race to race, but on average is about 5 years
A new hair takes 3-6 months to grow

Source: Institute of Trichologists

---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4378941.stm

The latest from NASA's Earth Observatory (29 March 2005)

In the News:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/

* Latest Images:
Massive Earthquake Along the Sunda Trench

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16864

Eruption of Klyuchevskaya Volcano

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16863

Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl Volcanoes, Mexico

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16862

Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16861

Soot Affects Polar Ice

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16860

Where Europe meets Africa

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16859

Fires in Hispaniola

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16858

Floods in Afghanistan

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16857

* NASA News
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/
- NASA Study Finds Soot May Be Changing the Arctic Environment

* Media Alerts
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/
- Climate Change Poorly Understood by U.S. Public, MIT Survey Finds
- New Research Indicates a 'Troubled' Greenhouse Is Brewing
- Ice Core 'Dipstick' Indicates West Antarctic Ice Has Thinned Less
than Believed
- South America's Vast Pantanal Wetland May Become Next Everglades,
Experts Warn
- World's Largest Rainforest Drying Experiment Completes First Phase
- Wolves Alleviate Impact of Climate Change on Food Supply, Finds New
UC Berkeley Study

* Headlines from the press, radio, and television:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Headlines/
- Scientist Probes Climate Problem
- New Volcano Threat: Just When You Think It's Safe
- Experts: Central U.S. Could Have Quakes
- Tsunami Alert Technology - the Iron Link
- Tsunami Region Takes Stock of Reef Damage
- Japan to Warn of Tsunami Threats
- Weather Service to Keep Hurricane 'Line'
- Expert: Nature, Not Mankind, to Blame for Strong Storms
- Northwest Salmon Habitat Threatened by Warming
- Scientists' Tsunami Mercy Mission
- NASA Study Finds Soot May Be Changing the Arctic Environment
- U.S. Government to Track Greenhouse Gas Reductions
- Pollution Plagues China's Giant Irrigation Scheme
- Sediments in Northern Gulf Of Mexico Not Energy Efficient
- Illuminating Retreating Glaciers: Swiss Glacier to Get Heat Shield
- Nuclear Energy Touted as Solution
- South America Wetlands May Be 'Next Everglades'
- Pollution Killing Asia's River Dolphins

* New Research Highlights
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Research/

Ted Rall - most loyal voters

Pat Oliphant - rev tom delay

David Horsey - social security stories

Borowitz Report - HARVARD PRESIDENT AGREES TO WEAR DRESS FOR A YEAR

"Landmark Deal,"’ Says Summers In what he called "a landmark deal" with female faculty members, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers agreed today to wear a dress through the end of the 2005-6 academic year.

The embattled Harvard president, who created a ruckus when he seemed to question women’s ability in the fields of math and science, said that he hoped wearing a dress would demonstrate that he was "trying to be more empathetic" to women’s concerns.

Dressed in a stylish Chloe dress and looking somewhat unsteady in his Manolo Blahnik slingbacks, Mr. Summers appeared at a press conference looking very much like a man eager to put the recent brouhaha behind him.

After a journalist at today’s press conference accused the Harvard president of caving in to pressure, Mr. Summers replied, "You wouldn’t accuse me of being weak if I were a man."

But the so-called "Tootsie deal" is receiving mixed reviews from some at Harvard, such as classics professor Croughton Davies, who today said that forcing Mr. Summers to wear a dress for a year "blurs the line between disciplinary action and fraternity hazing."

"I’m not sure if being president of Harvard is worth a tinker’s dam if it means vamping around Harvard Yard like some sort of Ivy League tranny," Professor Davies said. "Larry Summers wasn’t a bad-looking man, but he is one absolutely hideous woman."

Elsewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney said that he would not run for president in 2008, denying a report that appeared in the Book of Revelation.

http://borowitzreport.com/

Political Rift Drives Jen and Brad Apart for Good

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/

Jennifer Aniston has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, ending months of speculation that the two had healed the political rift that drove them apart in January. Meanwhile, Mr. Pitt has once again been spotted in the company of liberal activist Angelina Jolie.
(3/28/2005)

The US Federal Reserve is behind the curve and scrambling to catch up - Stephen Roach

Global: The Test

Stephen Roach (from Hong Kong)

The US Federal Reserve is behind the curve and scrambling to catch up. Inflation risks seem to be mounting at precisely the moment when America’s current-account deficit is out of control. Higher real interest rates are the only answer for these twin macro problems. For an unbalanced world that has become a levered play on low real interest rates, the long-awaited test could finally be at hand.

In an era of fiscal profligacy, real interest rates are the only effective control lever of macro management. It is important to stress the “real” dimension of this construct -- the need to strip out the money illusion associated with fluctuations in the price level and focus on inflation-adjusted interest rates. From that simple vantage point, America’s central bank is swimming upstream. Measured tightening is being largely offset by a measured increase in underlying inflation -- muting the impacts of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to turn the monetary screws. And it’s become a real footrace: The Fed tightened by 25 basis points on March 22, only to find that a day later the annualized core Consumer Price Index accelerated by 10 bp. In fact, the acceleration of the core CPI from its early 2004 low of 1.1% y-o-y to 2.4% in February 2005 has offset fully 74% of the 175 bp increase in the nominal federal funds rate that has occurred during the current nine-month tightening campaign. At the same time, America’s current account deficit went from 5.1% of GDP in early 2004 to a record 6.3% by the end of the year -- a deterioration that begs for both higher US real interest rates and a further weakening of the dollar. The response on both counts has paled in comparison to what might be expected in a normal current-account adjustment. Behind the curve? You bet.

But how far behind? The answer to that question, of course, hinges on one of the slipperiest concepts in economics: the “neutral” policy rate. This is the magic threshold at which monetary policy is judged to be perfect -- neither accommodative nor restrictive insofar as its impact on inflation or the real economy is concerned. The problem with neutrality is that it is only a theoretical notion -- we honestly don’t know the actual number. In that respect, it’s just like “potential GDP growth” or the “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU)” -- equally brilliant macro constructs that are literally impossible to measure. Such is the sad irony of macro policy management: The key metrics we need to steer the economy are not posted in the engine room. In their rare candid moments, the authorities will confess that this is a very touchy-feely process -- you’ll know neutrality when you get there. That hardly instills much confidence in the “science” of macro policy. But I guess that’s why we pay the fiscal and monetary authorities the big bucks.

So let’s venture an educated guess: Say, for purposes of argument, that the neutral real federal funds rate is 2%. I didn’t pluck that number out of thin air: It’s approximately equal to the 1.9% long-term average of the inflation-adjusted policy rate since 1960. It makes some sense -- albeit far from perfect sense -- to define this metric as the average short-term real interest rate that, by definition, would be consistent with average outcomes for growth and inflation. But there’s now a problem: Neutrality no longer cuts it for a Fed that is behind the curve with respect to the twin concerns of inflation and current-account financing. Having played it cute and waited too long, the Fed must now aim for a “restrictive” target in excess of 2%. Again, for expositional purposes, put this level at 3%. Then add in some upside to the core CPI of about 2.75% and, presto, the Fed needs to be shooting for a nominal funds target of around 5.75% -- or more than double the current reading. That amounts to another 300 bp of tightening. If the Fed stays with its measured approach of doling out the tightening in 25 bp installments, then it would finally hit that target 18 months from now in September 2006. Unfortunately, given the long and variable lags of the impacts of monetary policy, the twin genies of inflation and the current-account adjustment might be well out of the bottle by then. If that were the case, the 3% target on the real funds rate would translate into something higher than 5.75% in nominal terms. Little wonder that talk is now rampant of stepping up the pace of tightening. Remember 1994?

These are operational considerations. If you disagree with some of my assumptions, plug in your own metrics on neutrality or the future path of the core CPI. But I would venture to guess that the answer in all but the most heroic cases would still produce a nominal target for the policy rate that is well above the current 2.75% reading. And that sets the stage for the real test: the sensitivity of the US economy and a US-centric global economy to higher real interest rates.

From my perspective, this is where the rubber meets the road for the Asset Economy. Lacking in support from labor income generation, America’s high-consumption economy has turned to asset markets as never before to sustain both spending and saving. And yet asset markets and the wealth creation they foster have long been balanced on the head of the pin of extraordinarily low real interest rates. The Fed is the architect of this New Economy, and most other central banks -- especially those in Japan and China -- have gone along for the ride. Lacking in domestic demand, Asia’s externally led economies know full well what’s at stake if the asset-dependent American consumer ever caves. And so they recycle their massive build-up of foreign exchange reserves into dollar-denominated assets, thereby subsidizing US rates, propping up asset markets, and keeping the magic alive for the overextended American consumer.

Asset markets around the world are now quivering at just the hint of an unwinding of this house of cards. And they quiver with the real federal funds rate barely above zero. What happens to these markets and to an asset-dependent US economy should the Fed actually complete its nasty task of taking its policy rate into the restrictive zone? It wouldn’t be at all pretty, in my view. The main reason is that the Fed and its reckless monetary accommodation have fueled multiple carry trades for all too long. And those trades are now starting to unwind, as spreads widen in investment-grade corporates, high-yield bonds, and emerging-market debt (see Joachim Fels’ March 23 dispatch, “The Party’s Over”). Can an ever-frothy US housing market be too far behind? The optimists tell me not to worry -- that the real side of the US economy barely skipped a beat in the face of wrenching unwinding of carry trades in 1994. That’s apples and oranges, in my view. America was much more of a normal economy in 1994 -- with a personal saving rate of 4.8%. It had yet to experience the joys of consuming and saving out of assets. The equity bubble of the late 1990s and the property bubble of the early 2000s -- both outgrowths of extraordinary monetary accommodation, in my view -- changed everything. Now it is a very different animal -- the Asset Economy -- that must come to grips with monetary tightening.

Largely for that reason, I still don’t think America’s central bank is up to the task at hand. In the face of disruptive markets or growth disappointments, this Fed has repeatedly opted to err on the side of accommodation. I suspect that deep in its heart, the Federal Reserve knows what’s at stake for the US -- and for the world -- if the asset-dependent American consumer were to throw in the towel. Unfortunately, that takes us to the ultimate trap of global rebalancing -- a realignment of the world that requires both higher US real interest rates and a weaker dollar. Should the Fed fail to deliver on the interest rate front, I believe that the US current-account correction would then be forced increasingly through the dollar. And that would redirect the onus of global rebalancing away from the American consumer onto the backs of Europe, Japan, and China. Call it a “beggar-thy-neighbor” monetary policy defense -- pushing the burden of adjustment onto someone else.

It didn’t have to be this way. The big mistake, in my view, came when the Fed condoned the equity bubble in the late 1990s. It has been playing post-bubble defense ever since, fostering an unusually low real interest rate climate that has led to one bubble after another. And that has given rise to the real monster -- the asset-dependent American consumer and a co-dependent global economy that can’t live without excess US consumption. The real test was always the exit strategy.

http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20050325-fri.html#anchor0

SOCIAL SECURITY STILL SOUND--

The latest report by the Social Security Fund Trustees shows the system will be sound for decades and there is no need to rush into President Bush's reckless plans to privatize Social Security, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. Trustees reported March 23 that without changes to address long-term financing problems, the trust fund would be able to pay full benefits until 2041, and there would still be sufficient money coming in to cover 74 percent of benefits thereafter. The report also reflects a 12-year improvement in the outlook since 1997, when trustees projected a shortfall beginning in 2029. Also, last week seniors rallied across the country calling for their representatives and
senators to stop Bush's privatization scheme. In Denver, hundreds of workers and members of the Alliance for Retired Americans rallied March 21 at the state capitol just hours before Bush spoke there as part of his nationwide campaign to create private Social Security accounts. The rally coincided with the beginning of the Alliance's Truth Truck tour, which will deliver 1 million petitions the Alliance has collected from seniors to members of Congress urging them to protect Social Security. The Truth Truck began its 3,000-mile, six-state tour March 21 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and will end April 1 in Harrisburg, Pa. In Greensboro, N.C., March 23, a crowd of more than 50 Alliance and coalition activists gathered to tell Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) and Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr to oppose Social Security privatization. North Carolina State AFL-CIO President James Andrews delivered petitions signed by 1,046 of Coble's constituents to the congressman's office calling on him to protect Social Security.

For more information, visit

http://www.retiredamericans.org

or

http://www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity .

From: Work in Progress

The Education Censors / Spring break - evangelizing vacations

The Education Censors

By Tom Hilliard

Religious conservatives in Texas are pressuring textbook publishers to conform to their agenda—which is changing schoolbooks everywhere

Want to avoid getting a sexually transmitted disease? Here’s some advice from Holt Lifetime Health, a health-education textbook that just entered the market: "The most effective way to protect yourself from STDs is to remain abstinent until marriage."

Holt is not alone in delivering a "Just say no" message to sex-obsessed teenagers. Starting in September 2005, Capital Region health-education teachers who purchase new textbooks will have their choice of three nationally distributed textbooks. All three adhere to the so-called "abstinence-only" curriculum, which advises students to abstain from sex until marriage and avoids any mention of contraception or safer-sex options.

New York state has never endorsed the abstinence-only approach and probably never will. Study after study has judged abstinence-only an educational disaster, leading to increased rates of unprotected sex, which generally boosts teen pregnancy and STD infection rates ["Ab staining From the Truth," Newsfront, Dec. 9, 2004]. Critics of abstinence-only methods say a better model is the so-called "abstinence first" approach, which advises students to remain abstinent but also teaches them about contraception and family planning.

Yet abstinence-only is about to become the national standard for health- education textbooks. How did this happen? Who decided, based on what instructional and scientific criteria?

For answers, we must travel 1,850 miles to the Austin headquarters of the Texas State Board of Education. Each fall, the Texas Board of Education considers a new crop of textbooks for adoption. The 15 elected members of this powerful group can vote to approve a textbook as "conforming" to Texas state law, which means the state will pay for local school districts to use the textbook, or to reject it, which effectively shuts the textbook out of the $400 million Texas market.

Publishers compete energetically to win the Texas Board of Education’s adoption sweepstakes. In their strenuous efforts, publishers break bread and cut deals with the most powerful political players—not teachers, not school board officials, not parents or government officials, but rather Texas’ community of religious conservatives, whose support or opposition can make or break a textbook adoption.

Consider the fate of two health-education textbooks submitted for adoption in 1994. Holt Rinehart Winston proposed a modestly worded abstinence-first textbook. Texas conservatives sharply disapproved. Even worse, the textbook used line drawings to show girls how to conduct a self-examination for breast cancer. The notion of taxpayer-funded pictures of breasts drove conservatives wild with rage. The Holt textbook went down to defeat.

Glencoe McGraw-Hill’s entry, on the other hand, received near unanimous approval. A 1995 memo by Glencoe regional vice president David Irons explained why: "Glencoe Health . . . does not contain a discussion about alternatives to abstinence . . . does not promote a Pro-Homosexual lifestyle or an Anti-Family agenda [and] is the only health text endorsed by the Texas Council for Family Values, the American Family Association . . . and Concerned Women for America." Glencoe Health went on to take 60 percent of the Texas market. McGraw-Hill subsequently promoted Irons.

Mindful of the 1994 experience, progressive activists prepared in 2004 for another harsh battle over sex education. But they had reckoned without the textbook executives’ keen instinct for self-preservation. "The books came precensored," says Steve Schafersman, president of Texans for Science. "Textbook manufacturers can tell which way the wind is blowing far ahead of time. They capitulated in advance."

Holt’s new textbook corrects the previous edition’s ideological missteps. For example, Holt Lifetime Health provides a list of eight tips for preventing STD infection. The list starts with "Practice abstinence" and moves on to such helpful tips as "Get plenty of rest," "Respect yourself," and "Go out as a group." But the list omits Holt’s recommendation from the 1994 edition: "Using a latex condom properly during sexual intercourse reduces the risk of getting an STD during sex." Since six out of 10 students have sexual intercourse prior to graduating high school, this might have been useful advice. The other two publishers also submitted abstinence-only textbooks. (Glencoe declined to supply a copy of its textbook, while Thomson Delmar declined to comment for this story.)

Holt spokesman Rick Blake argues that his company made a reasonable decision to put contraceptive information into a separately available supplement. Blake notes that supplements can be introduced without review by the Texas Board of Education. "Many school districts require parental consent to give their kids sexual education," explains Blake. "If detailed information about contraception is in the health textbook, you can’t use it. The school district takes it out of the kids’ hands." It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Holt’s dilemma. If conservative school districts in Texas and other southern states boycott a health-education textbook because it includes contraceptive information, the textbook company will lose millions—even if its book had won statewide adoption.

Supplements are not loved by all teachers, though. A health educator in San Antonio (who asked that her name not be used) says supplements rarely meet her needs: "You can’t find them when you need them. The educator before you may have used them and put them in a box, or the students didn’t return them, or they fall apart after a year or two. They disappear very quickly." She also points out that many school districts do not allow teachers to teach from supplements, which would seem to defeat the point. Finally, there’s cost. According to prices on the Holt Web site, providing this supplement to a class of 30 would cost almost $500. That’s a heavy price for a school district to pay for an invitation to community controversy.

Religious conservatives on the Texas Board of Education, having received abstinence-only textbooks without even having to ask, proceeded to make further demands on other red-meat social issues. At the final hearing in November, the three textbook companies agreed to insert new language affirming that marriage is a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife"(although Holt asserted that it would not use the language outside Texas).

Tellingly, the Texas Board of Education imposed the new demands in the wake of the Nov. 4 election, which sharply raised the political prominence of religious conservatives in Texas. "Board members run for reelection," crowed board member Terri Leo to a Baptist news service. "The huge victory on Tuesday factored into helping me garner the votes I needed."

The surging influence of the religious right in Texas will influence the content of textbooks nationwide, including right here in the Capital Region. "Textbooks are a national market," notes William Bennetta, president of the American Textbook League and a longtime independent textbook reviewer. "The books that kids in Albany read have been diddled to conform to the tastes of people in Texas."

Texas is one of 21 states that use a statewide textbook adoption process, thereby wielding the power to rewrite textbooks to meet their priorities. "When you create a new edition," says Steve Driesler, president of the American Association of Publishers’ Schools Division, "you’re talking about tens of millions of dollars of investment, and obviously the publisher wants to recoup that as soon as possible." Driesler notes that a big state adoption enables a publisher to recoup its investment within a year. So most publishers hold off on writing new editions until that particular subject comes up on the adoption calendar of the largest state-adoption states.

California’s market size outstrips that of Texas, yet Texas has become far more powerful. Most state-adoption states are in the South, a result of banding together after the Civil War to pressure educational publishers to supply them with pro-Confederate history textbooks. Officials in these states treat Texas as the lead steer, often adopting and purchasing the same textbooks that have been adopted and purchased in Texas. Also, California adopts locally at the high school level, leaving Texas as the only big player in that market.

And New York? Even though Texas and New York have roughly equivalent student populations, New York exercises little influence over the writing of textbooks. That’s because ours is one of 29 "open states" that allow individual school districts (and in some cases individual schools) to choose their own textbooks. "If New York City is [adopting textbooks] on a different schedule from Albany, we can’t do a different textbook for each locality," says Driesler. He insists that publishers do customize for localities, but mostly through the teacher’s edition or supplements rather than the edition that students read.

The implications are as profound as the math is simple. There are four national textbook companies, and only three publish health-education textbooks. All three wrote new editions for Texas adoption in 2004, and all three textbooks are fervently abstinence-only, although Holt rather dubiously claims that its decision had "nothing to do with the Texas adoption." Without public debate of any kind, the national editions of all three health-education textbooks became exemplars of the abstinence-only approach.

And conservative influence does not begin or end with health education. Consider the changes made to these 2002 textbooks adopted by the Texas Board of Education:

Evolution: In Our World Today: People, Places and Issues (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill), a passage noting that "glaciers formed the Great Lakes millions of years ago" was altered to read "in the distant past" after a conservative reviewer attacked the phrase as merely "the opinion of some scientist who support [sic] the theory of evolution."

Islam: A passage in World Explorer: People, Places and Cultures (Prentice Hall) noting that the Quran teaches "the importance of honesty, honor, giving to others and having love and respect for . . . families" was deleted after a conservative reviewer branded it "more propaganda" for Islam.

Global warming: Prentice Hall dropped an entire section on global warming from World Explorer after a reviewer charged that it would "prepare students to look to the government for solutions to problems."

Since textbook companies generally make one national edition, New York school districts are likely to find language of this kind quietly added to or dropped from the latest editions of their textbooks. The ghostly exacto knives of conservative ideologues will be invisible to even the most suspicious teachers, unless they take hours of their day to pore over Texas Board of Education testimony.

Parents or stu- dents vaguely expect their schools to select textbooks that represent the state of the art in their particular subject areas. Ironically, however, the textbooks available for selection have almost certainly been vetted chapter by chapter and line by line for adherence to a right-wing ideology that most New Yorkers do not share.

Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police, the most stinging recent indictment of textbook censorship, has advocated abolishing the state-adoption system entirely. Ravitch’s proposal could substantially reduce interest-group interference with the textbook adoption system. But religious conservatives are unlikely to allow Texas to voluntarily disarm. Indeed, a bill now pending in the Texas Legislature would vastly expand the Texas Board of Education’s power to demand content changes to remedy such undesirable qualities as "viewpoint discrimination."

New York state could reclaim its market power by consolidating local school adoption systems into a statewide one. But the Texas case study shows what unintended side effects can strike. As the stakes for each adoption rise, the lobbies start circling and the press releases start flying. Can New York fight the influence of Texas without becoming Texas?

To find out more:

New Yorkers interested in learning more about Texas’s messy textbook adoption system can get the progressive perspective from the Texas Freedom Network (www.tfn. org) or Texans For Science (www.texscience.org), or the conservative perspective from Educational Analysts (www.textbookre views.org). Or you can go straight to the source: the Texas Board of Education (tea.state.tx.us).

http://www.metroland.net/features.html

Spring break - evangelizing vacations

What does Campus Crusader Becca Johnson hear on the beach in Florida this spring break? Not waves or partying or even the solicitations of Girls Gone Wild filmcrews; Johnson hears the yearning of sunbathers to listen to the Good News. "'They're willing to listen to me, about my relationship with Christ, because they see that my life is more fulfilling than just drunkenness and sex,'" Johnson explained to MSNBC correspondent Roger O'Neil. O'Neil's gloss on evangelizing vacations is only slightly more thoughtful than Johnson's. Here's his version of the good news:
"Whether you're walking the beach for Jesus or spreading the gospel of creationism with dinosaurs, opportunities abound to spend your vacation with your faith." He's right, we suppose, if by "your faith" he means aggressive conversion attempts, rinky-dink dinosaur-debunking operations and multi-million dollar "Christian science centers"...

From: http://www.therevealer.org

Pharmacists' Rights at Front Of New Debate

Because of Beliefs, Some Refuse To Fill Birth Control Prescriptions

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 28, 2005; Page A01

Some pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.

The trend has opened a new front in the nation's battle over reproductive rights, sparking an intense debate over the competing rights of pharmacists to refuse to participate in something they consider repugnant and a woman's right to get medications her doctor has prescribed. It has also triggered pitched political battles in statehouses across the nation as politicians seek to pass laws either to protect pharmacists from being penalized -- or force them to carry out their duties.

"This is a very big issue that's just beginning to surface," said Steven H. Aden of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, which defends pharmacists. "More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable medications across the counter. We are on the very front edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the line."

An increasing number of clashes are occurring in drugstores across the country. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.

"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."

That is what happened to Kathleen Pulz and her husband, who panicked when the condom they were using broke. Their fear really spiked when the Walgreens pharmacy down the street from their home in Milwaukee refused to fill an emergency prescription for the morning-after pill.

"I couldn't believe it," said Pulz, 44, who with her husband had long ago decided they could not afford a fifth child. "How can they make that decision for us? I was outraged. At the same time, I was sad that we had to do this. But I was scared. I didn't know what we were going to do."

Supporters of pharmacists' rights see the trend as a welcome expression of personal belief. Women's groups see it as a major threat to reproductive rights and one of the latest manifestations of the religious right's growing political reach -- this time into the neighborhood pharmacy.

"This is another indication of the current political atmosphere and climate," said Rachel Laser of the National Women's Law Center in Washington. "It's outrageous. It's sex discrimination. It prevents access to a basic form of health care for women. We're going back in time."

The issue could intensify further if the Food and Drug Administration approves the sale of the Plan B morning-after pill without a prescription -- a controversial step that would likely make pharmacists the primary gatekeeper.

The question of health care workers refusing to provide certain services first emerged among doctors, nurses and other health care workers over abortions. The trend began to spread to pharmacists with the approval of the morning-after pill and physician-assisted suicide in Oregon, with support from such organizations as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Pharmacists for Life International, which claims 1,600 members on six continents. Its members are primarily in the United States, Canada and Britain.

"Our group was founded with the idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's been going on is the use of medication to stop human life. That violates the ideal of the Hippocratic oath that medical practitioners should do no harm," said Karen L. Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, who was fired from a Kmart pharmacy in Delhi, Ohio, for refusing to fill birth control prescriptions.

No one knows exactly how often that is happening, but cases have been reported across the country, including in California, Washington, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina. Advocates on both sides say the refusals appear to be spreading, often surfacing only in the rare instances when women file complaints.

Pharmacists are regulated by state laws and can face disciplinary action from licensing boards. But the only case that has gotten that far involves Neil T. Noesen, who in 2002 refused to fill a University of Wisconsin student's birth control pill prescription at a Kmart in Menomonie, Wis., or transfer the prescription elsewhere. An administrative judge last month recommended Noesen be required to take ethics classes, alert future employers to his beliefs and pay what could be as much as $20,000 to cover the costs of the legal proceedings. The state pharmacy board will decide whether to impose that penalty next month.

"He's a devout Roman Catholic and believes participating in any action that inhibits or prohibits human life is a sin," said Aden of the Christian Legal Society. "The rights of pharmacists like him should be respected."

Wisconsin is one of at least 11 states considering "conscience clause" laws that would protect pharmacists such as Noesen. Four states already have laws that specifically allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions that violate their beliefs. At the same time, at least four states are considering laws that would explicitly require pharmacists to fill all prescriptions.

The American Pharmacists Association recently reaffirmed its policy that pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions as long as they make sure customers can get their medications some other way.

"We don't have a profession of robots. We have a profession of humans. We have to acknowledge that individual pharmacists have individual beliefs," said Susan C. Winckler, the association's vice president for policy and communications. "What we suggest is that they identify those situations ahead of time and have an alternative system set up so the patient has access to their therapy."

The alternative system can include making sure another pharmacist is on duty who can take over or making sure there is another pharmacy nearby willing to fill the prescription, Winckler said. "The key is that it should be seamless and avoids a conflict between the pharmacist's right to step away and the patient's right to obtain their medication," she said.

Brauer, of Pharmacists for Life, defends the right of pharmacists not only to decline to fill prescriptions themselves but also to refuse to refer customers elsewhere or transfer prescriptions.

"That's like saying, 'I don't kill people myself but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.' What's that saying? 'I will not off your husband, but I know a buddy who will?' It's the same thing," said Brauer, who now works at a hospital pharmacy.

Large pharmacy chains, including Walgreens, Wal-Mart and CVS, have instituted similar policies that try to balance pharmacists' and customers' rights.

"We obviously do have pharmacists with individual moral and ethical beliefs. When it does happen, the pharmacist is asked to notify the manager that they have decided not to fill the prescription, and the manager has the obligation to make sure the customer has access to the prescription by another means," said Tiffany Bruce, a spokeswoman for Walgreens. "We have to respect the pharmacist, but we have to also respect the right of the person to receive the prescription."

Women's advocates say such policies are impractical, especially late at night in emergency situations involving the morning-after pill, which must be taken within 72 hours. Even in non-urgent cases, poor women have a hard time getting enough time off work or money to go from one pharmacy to another. Young women, who are often frightened and unsure of themselves, may simply give up when confronted by a judgmental pharmacist.

"What is a woman supposed to do in rural America, in places where there may only be one pharmacy?" asked Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which is launching a campaign today to counter the trend. "It's a slap in the face to women."

By the time Suzanne Richards, 21, finally got another pharmacy to fill her morning-after pill prescription -- after being rejected by a drive-through Brooks Pharmacy in Laconia, N.H., one late Saturday night in September -- the 72 hours had long passed.

"When he told me he wouldn't fill it, I just pulled over in the parking lot and started crying," said Richards, a single mother of a 3-year-old who runs her own cleaning service. "I just couldn't believe it. I was just trying to be responsible."

In the end, Richards turned out not to be pregnant, and Pulz was able to obtain her prescription last June directly from her doctor, though she does not think she was pregnant, either.

"I was lucky," Pulz said. "I can sympathize with someone who feels strongly and doesn't want to be involved. But they should just step out of the way and not interfere with someone else's decision. It's just not right."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5490-2005Mar27

IBM Retirees say golden years tarnished by IBM's failed promises

By CRAIG WOLF
POUGHKEEPSIE JOURNAL

Benefits Restoration Inc. focuses on IBM retirement medical issues:

www.benefitsrestoration.org

IBM's Web site: www.ibm.com

(Original publication: March 26, 2005)

Twice a day, Bruce Williams drives a bus for the Red Hook School District in Dutchess County. Weekends, he's often out on his freelance job videotaping couples getting married.

That may not look like retirement, but it is, 21st-century style.

"You cannot retire any more," said Williams, 65. "I drive a school bus and I have a video business, or I couldn't survive."

But Williams did not have a low-paying job during his 26 years with IBM Corp., known for its pay and Cadillac-style benefits. "I had good jobs there. I can't complain," he said.

What he does freely complain about is the hit that his finances took when IBM cut retirees' medical benefits. It started around the time he retired in 1993. IBM had capped how much the company would pay on average per retiree, forcing retirees to cough up a share.

Two years ago, the plan changed again and Williams' monthly contribution jumped from about $50 to $350.

"This is from a company that said the retirees will never have to pay," Williams said. "They say plan for retirement. How do you plan for retirement when they're going to change the rules of the game?"

Williams has lots of company. IBM officials have estimated that there are about 114,000 retirees in the United States.

IBM maintains its benefits are better than average, and specifically better than most other companies in information technology.

"IBM is not immune to the steep increases we're seeing in health-care costs," Kendra Collins, a spokeswoman at Armonk headquarters, said. "Our company pays more than $1.5 billion a year on health-care related benefits, including some of the most competitive retiree health-care benefits found in the industry today. We offer a range of coverage options … including ones where the retiree has no monthly payment … to help them manage costs."

About 400 New York-area retirees are claimed on the roster of Benefits Restoration Inc., a group formed by retired IBMers to press IBM executives for mercy on medical benefits practices.

IBM has about 9,000 employees in the Westchester area and about 11,000 in Dutchess County. Current employees will face the costly changes when they get to retirement age, but will have more time to try to prepare for it.

Many retirees didn't see it coming and said they felt the company had misled them.

"In exit interviews . . . they kept saying, 'At least you'll always have your medical, and you'll be treated like an employee,' " said Bob Wilbarg of Hopewell Junction, who retired early in 1992. "That was words, not what was written down."

There was fine print, even some large print, that said IBM reserved the right to change the plan at any time.

Wilbarg now pays "$300 and change," but is philosophical. IBM still subsidizes the plan. "I look at the industry in general, and I say it ain't so bad."

That's the company's point, too, that most of its competitors don't even offer retirement medical benefits.

Bill Balis of New Paltz, who was a manager at the East Fishkill plant in Dutchess County, thought he had it made when he left in 1990.

"When I retired, I said, 'I'm going to live pretty good on this salary.' It's not working out that way.

"It's costing me, for the Mrs. and I, $352 a month," Balis, 74, said.

A 1996 IBM publication for employees described the caps, or annual maximums, and explained they were created "to more effectively control and account for the total expected health-care costs for retirees," adding, "these maximums will improve IBM's ability to
prudently manage its health-care costs while maintaining broad coverage under the plan."

"Nothing contained in any section of this book shall be construed as creating an express or implied obligation on the part of IBM," states a 1989 IBM handbook for employees.

George Pilch of New Paltz believes IBM could have afforded to handle it differently to keep faith with those who had already retired.

"Why don't they continue that promise?" Pilch, 77, said. "They could say to new hires ... it's a different world out there. I should still be entitled to what I was promised."

IBM's standard recruiting pitch emphasized benefits as part of total compensation, Pilch said. As a manager, he delivered that pitch often.

"I used to tell these kids (they'd) have benefits for the rest of their (lives)," he said. "I probably lied to a thousand people, and I don't like that."

Bonnie Bartivic of Fishkill was impressed with IBM's benefits when she joined the company "young and naive," and stayed for a career.

Benefits were stressed when she was hired, Bartivic said. "Managers said that was the big thing."

But in 1993, when she said she felt pressure to take an early retirement buyout offer, IBM's tune had changed.

"We needed you, we used you and we didn't promise you from cradle to grave," she said. "Well they did. It was a verbal contract or agreement. Now they're trying to get out of that."

New City resident John F. Samuels, 65, who retired from IBM in 1993, said he too has been hit by regular increases in his monthly medical contribution.

Samuels now pays $450 a month for his wife and himself.

"It's a difficult thing when you have a fixed income," he said. "I didn't anticipate these expenses."

Like other IBMers with long careers — Samuels notched almost 33 years — he feels betrayed.

"I feel that IBM had a commitment to long-term employees, and they've failed that commitment. They always told us, 'Your pay is not just salary. It includes all these benefits,' he said.

"I was a manager for 12 years, and I know what I was telling the people who worked for me. Salary was not just salary, but days off and health benefits. It was understood they would continue into retirement."

Sandy Anderson of Burlington, Vt., president of Benefits Restoration, has checked into whether a lawsuit could be filed.

He said lawyers warned that legal precedent seems not to back retirees in such suits. One suit brought against insurance giant Metropolitan Life brought a court ruling that said the company's written retirement plan was not subject to amendment as a result of internal discussions, like manager briefings and group presentations.

"So they can lie to you as long as they have a document on file with the Department of Labor," Anderson told a Benefits Restoration gathering held recently at the Family Partnership Center in Poughkeepsie.

"The likelihood of our prevailing in a lawsuit is very slim indeed," Anderson said.

An attempt was made to get a shareholder resolution on the agenda for IBM's April 26 annual meeting asking IBM to prepare "a report examining the competitive impact of rising health insurance costs." IBM objected, and the Securities and Exchange Commission said the
company could leave the resolution out because it pertained only to "ordinary business," which the rules don't allow on stockholder ballots.

Political options have been pressed, but with little success. In Congress' last session, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., with Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, as a co-sponsor, to provide emergency protection for retiree health benefits. It died. Tierney reintroduced it last Tuesday as H.R. 1322. It has been referred to committee, a routine first step, and sometimes the last one.

"The likelihood of that going anywhere in this administration is slim to zip," Anderson said, noting he was a Republican.

Public opinion and continued advocacy remain options, he said. But ultimately, the problems faced by IBM retirees, as well as the company that employed them, are far broader than just IBM's world.

The ultimate answer, Anderson suggested, may well be national health insurance, a single-payer system.

Anderson retired from IBM in 1997 after a 36-year career that began in Fishkill, included a stint in Somers and finished up in Burlington.

He became interested in organizing retirees after his medical benefits for himself, his wife and college-age daughter went from $189 to $567 in 2003.

Anderson said he was motivated to action mainly by his own guilt over his role as a manager.

"The cost of medical benefits isn't going to sink my ship. I was a manager when I left, and I'm not doing too bad," he said. "My issue is a matter of conscience. I've lied to a lot of people, unwittingly, but nonetheless."

Anderson suspects the 50 or so members of Benefits Restoration who live in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties are motivated by similar feelings.

"People down here are relatively affluent, and haven't gotten hit really hard themselves, but they recognize that this is a question of ethics. For many, many years, if people were in a management position, they were promising people medical benefits for life,"
Anderson said. "The people from the Westchester area are in the same boat as I am. They just don't feel right about it."

Yorktown Heights resident Allan C. Burgess, 70, spent 42 years at IBM and was a program manager in the microelectronics division when he retired.

"As a manager, I told a lot of people that your compensation package includes your benefits. We used to say, 'It's womb to tomb.' We made a big deal out of the goodness of IBM's benefit package," he said.

A member of the Tri-State IBM Retirees Club, Burgess said the 30 or so people who gather each month in Shrub Oak invariably end up talking about benefits.

"The IBM medical issue is a topic of conversation at virtually every meeting," he said. "Especially in October and November when it comes time to choose your next inadequate plan for the next year."

Sarah Casey of Pawling, whose IBMer husband, William B. Casey, died, still gets help from IBM. "He retired with 40 years. We were supposed to get full benefits. That's a crock," she said. Times have changed, and so has Big Blue with its former blue-chip benefits.

"You went to IBM, it was there for life," Casey said. "Now it's a past-tense item. Nothing is guaranteed anymore."

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/tuesday/business/stories/bu032205s2.shtml

Issue 1 ( denied legal recognition of unmarried and gay couples) conflicts with domestic abuse law, judge says

Marriage amendment makes portion of law unconstitutional, he rules

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Brian Albrecht
Plain Dealer Reporter

Ohio voters who approved a constitutional amendment last fall that denied legal recognition of unmarried and gay couples probably didn't envision the measure being successfully used as a defense in domestic violence cases.

But that became a reality Wednesday when Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Stuart Friedman ruled that the amendment, approved by voters as Issue 1, made part of the state's domestic violence law unconstitutional.

Friedman said that because Ohio's domestic violence law recognizes the relationship between an unmarried offender and victim as one "approximating the significance or effect of marriage," it represents a direct conflict with the amendment's prohibition against such recognition and is thus unenforceable.

In the case involving Frederick Burk of Cleveland, who was arrested in February on a charge of domestic violence against a woman, Friedman reduced that charge (a fourth-degree felony with a possible prison term of six to 12 months) to simple assault (a first-degree misdemeanor with a maximum six-month jail term). One of Burk's attorneys, Dave Magee of the public defender's office, said Friedman's ruling may be the first in Ohio supporting the contention that the domestic violence law is unconstitutional.

Other judges have recently ruled against that argument, including Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine.

County prosecutors argued that Issue 1 was not intended to negate the statute, and that the domestic violence law does not create any new legal status for unmarried persons.

"Judge Friedman's opinion misses the point. The constitution is not an invitation to strip legal protection from the most vulnerable in our community," Cuyahoga County Prosecutor William Mason said in an interview.

The county appealed Friedman's ruling Wednesday afternoon with the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals.

Lewis Katz, a Case Western Reserve University law professor, said the legal battle could eventually reach the Ohio Supreme Court. He said that court may try to save the statute, and an effort will made by the state legislature to revise the law to make it constitutional.

Until then, he expects to see more lawyers raise the constitutional issue in domestic violence cases, and "judges bending over backwards to save the domestic violence statute from such attacks.

"My own guess is that Judge Friedman is correct because the language of Issue 1 is so clear, it's hard to get around that," he added.

Phil Burress of Cincinnati, a leader in the drive to pass Issue 1, said the domestic violence law needs to be amended "to bring about equal treatment," and noted that legislation to that effect has been introduced by Rep. Jim Raussen, a Cincinnati Republican.

"There's nothing wrong with the constitutional amendment," he added. "If there's any law contrary to the constitutional amendment, we will fix it."

Cathleen Alexander, executive director of the Domestic Violence Center in Cleveland, said Friedman's decision will bring an issue that needs to be resolved to the forefront.

But she also noted "the troubling part, until the state figures out how to address these unintended consequences, is that a victim can't avail themselves of the full protection of the domestic violence law."

That protection could include the automatic escalation of charges for repeat offenses and obtaining protection orders for victims, Alexander said.

Friedman said he was "greatly concerned" as to how his decision might affect judicial decisions setting bail and motions for temporary restraining orders in certain domestic violence cases.

But before announcing his decision, he emphasized that anyone who assumed the ruling was based on any kind of personal, legal or social agenda would be wrong.

And following the law, Friedman said, can sometimes mean taking a path to some "unfamiliar or even frightening" places.

© 2005 The Plain Dealer.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1111660454151111.xml

#12 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

12 Not-so-constant constants

IN 1997 astronomer John Webb and his team at the University of New South Wales in Sydney analysed the light reaching Earth from distant quasars. On its 12-billion-year journey, the light had passed through interstellar clouds of metals such as iron, nickel and chromium, and the researchers found these atoms had absorbed some of the photons of quasar light - but not the ones they were expecting.

If the observations are correct, the only vaguely reasonable explanation is that a constant of physics called the fine structure constant, or alpha, had a different value at the time the light passed through the clouds.

But that's heresy. Alpha is an extremely important constant that determines how light interacts with matter - and it shouldn't be able to change. Its value depends on, among other things, the charge on the electron, the speed of light and Planck's constant. Could one of these really have changed?

No one in physics wanted to believe the measurements. Webb and his team have been trying for years to find an error in their results. But so far they have failed.

Webb's are not the only results that suggest something is missing from our understanding of alpha. A recent analysis of the only known natural nuclear reactor, which was active nearly 2 billion years ago at what is now Oklo in Gabon, also suggests something about light's interaction with matter has changed.

The ratio of certain radioactive isotopes produced within such a reactor depends on alpha, and so looking at the fission products left behind in the ground at Oklo provides a way to work out the value of the constant at the time of their formation. Using this method, Steve Lamoreaux and his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suggest that alpha may have decreased by more than 4 per cent since Oklo started up (Physical Review D, vol 69, p 121701).

There are gainsayers who still dispute any change in alpha. Patrick Petitjean, an astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, led a team that analysed quasar light picked up by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and found no evidence that alpha has changed. But Webb, who is now looking at the VLT measurements, says that they require a more complex analysis than Petitjean's team has carried out. Webb's group is working on that now, and may be in a position to declare the anomaly resolved - or not - later this year.

"It's difficult to say how long it's going to take," says team member Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "The more we look at these new data, the more difficulties we see." But whatever the answer, the work will still be valuable. An analysis of the way light passes through distant molecular clouds will reveal more about how the elements were produced early in the universe's history.

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - KAI KRAUSE

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

KAI KRAUSE
Software: Concepts, Artwork & Interface Design; Byteburg Research Lab above the Rhein River

I always felt, but can't prove outright: Zen is wrong. Then is right. Everything is not about the now, as in the "here and how", "living for the moment" On the contrary: I believe everything is about the before then and the back then.

It is about the anticipation of the moment and the memory of the moment, but not the moment.

In German there is a beautiful little word for it: "Vorfreude", which still is a shade different from "delight" or "pleasure" or even "anticipation". It is the "Pre-Delight", the "Before-Joy", or as a little linguistic concoction: the "ForeFun"; in a single word trying to express the relationship of time, the pleasure of waiting for the moment to arrive, the can't wait moments of elation, of hoping for some thing, some one, some event to happen.

Whether it's on a small scale like that special taste of your favorite food, waiting to see a loved one, that one moment in a piece of music, a sequence in a movie....or the larger versions: the expectation of a beautiful vacation, the birth of a baby, your acceptance of an Oscar.

We have been told by wise men, Dalais and Maharishis that it is supposedly all about those moments, to cherish the second it happens and never mind the continuance of time...

But for me, since early childhood days, I realized somehow: the beauty lies in the time before, the hope for, the waiting for, the imaginary picture painted in perfection of that instant in time. And then, once it passes, in the blink of an eye, it will be the memory which really stays with you, the reflection, the remembrance of that time. Cherish the thought..., remember how....

Nothing ever is as beautiful as its abstraction through the rose-colored glasses of anticipation...The toddlers hope for Santa Claus on Christmas eve turns out to be a fat guy with a fashion issue. Waiting for the first kiss can give you waves of emotional shivers up your spine, but when it then actually happens, it's a bunch of molecules colliding, a bit of a mess, really. It is not the real moment that matters. In Anticipation the moment will be glorified by innocence, not knowing yet. In Remembrance the moment will be sanctified by memory filters, not knowing any more.

In the Zen version, trying to uphold the beauty of the moment in that moment is in my eyes a sad undertaking. Not so much because it can be done, all manner of techniques have been put forth how to be a happy human by mastering the art of it. But it also implies, by definition, that all those other moments live just as much under the spotlight: the mundane, the lame, the gross, the everyday routines of dealing with life's mere mechanics.

In the Then version, it is quite the opposite: the long phases before and after last hundreds or thousands of times longer than the moment, and drown out the everyday humdrum entirely.

Bluntly put: spend your life in the eternal bliss of always having something to hope for, something to wait for, plans not realized, dreams not come true.... Make sure you have new points on the horizon, that you purposely create. And at the same time, relive your memories, uphold and cherish them, keep them alive and share them, talk about them.

Make plans and take pictures.

I have no way of proving such a lofty philosophical theory, but I greatly anticipate the moment that I might... and once I have done it, I will, most certainly, never forget.

Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center

http://www.msiac.dmso.mil/

The Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center (MSIAC) assists the Department of Defense (DoD) in meeting its M&S needs "by providing scientific, technical, and operational support information and services."

Through the Help Desk, MSIAC also answers technical inquiries from non-DoD customers, who agree to pay for their service beyond the first two hours.

The group has experience in weapons technology including WMD, information management, modeling and simulation, operations analysis, chemical and explosive sciences, material sciences, spectrum engineering, wireless communication, life sciences, medical informatics and telemedicine,
transportation systems, and reliability, availability, and maintainability.

A wealth of resources are available from this website, including the Modeling & Simulation Resource Repository (MSRR), which is described as "the first place to go for answers to M&S" and Glossary of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Terms, information on special topics of interest within M&S, and links to related websites. The MSIAC's M&S Journal Online offers quarterly articles of interest to the M&S community free of charge.

From: http://scout.wisc.edu/

Eric Devericks - end big government

Tom Meyer - quality of life

John Trever - march madness

Borowitz Report - tom delay shocker

IN RARE PUBLIC APPEARANCE, GOD BLASTS TOM DELAY
'Enough is Enough,' Says Almighty

In a rare public appearance that leading theologians called "extraordinary," God held a press conference in Washington on Sunday to disavow the recent words and deeds of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

The normally reclusive Ruler of the Universe took the unusual step of speaking to reporters to blast Rep. DeLay for repeatedly invoking His name in political fundraising appeals.

"I usually don't like to shoot my mouth off about every little thing that bugs me," the surprisingly outspoken Supreme Being said. "But enough is enough."

After complaining about Rep. DeLay's unauthorized use of His name in fundraising pitches, God warned the Texas congressman to discontinue the practice at once "or else."

When asked if He intended to strike Rep. DeLay with a lightning bolt, God replied with a terse "no comment," but later said, "I've been known to smite people in the past, and I'm not prepared to take smiting off the table."

Hours after God's press briefing concluded, a spokesperson for Rep. DeLay issued a one-sentence statement saying that the congressman and the Almighty remain on good terms and that he hoped to have God's support in the 2006 midterm elections.

But Dr. Harland Minter of the University of Minnesota's School of Divinity said that Rep. DeLay would be well advised to heed God's words of warning: "It means a lot that God took the trouble to hold a press conference, especially on His day off."

Elsewhere, a new poll shows that a majority of Americans favor disconnecting Pat O'Brien's telephone.

Borowitzreport.com

BAGHDAD COUP D'ETAT FOR BIG OIL

Monday, March 28, 2005

Harper's Magazine investigation reveals how Big Oil vanquished the neo-cons ... and OPEC is the winner.

"For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of this 323-page plan for Iraq's oil ...."

Some conspiracy nuts believe the Bush Administration had a secret plan to control Iraq's oil. In fact, there were TWO plans. In a joint investigation with BBC Television Newsnight, Harper's Magazine has uncovered a hidden battle over Iraq's oil. It began right after Mr. Bush took office - with a previously unreported plot to invade Iraq.

From the exclusive Harper's report by Greg Palast:

Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent Iraqi expatriates -- many with ties to U.S. industry -- were invited to secret discussions directed by Pamela Quanrud, National Security Council, now at the State Department. "It quickly became an oil group," said one participant, Falah Aljibury. Aljibury is an advisor to Amerada Hess' oil trading arm and Goldman Sachs.

"The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry -- they'd hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days," Aljibury told me. On this plan, Hussein would simply have been replaced by some former Baathist general.

However, by February 2003, a hundred-page blue-print for the occupied nation, favored by neo-cons, had been enshrined as official policy. "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth" generally embodied the principles for postwar Iraq favored by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Iran-Contra figure, now Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams. The blue-print mapped out a radical makeover of Iraq as a free-maket Xanadu including, on page 73, the sell-off of the nation's crown jewels: "privatization [of] the oil and supporting industries."

It was reasoned that if Iraq's fields were broken up and sold off, competing operators would crank up production. This extra crude would flood world petroleum markets, OPEC would devolve into mass cheating and overproduction, oil prices would fall over a cliff, and Saudi Arabia, both economically and politically, would fall to its knees.

However, in plotting the destruction of OPEC, the neocons failed to predict the virulent resistance of insurgent forces: the U.S. oil industry itself. Rob McKee, a former executive vice-president of
ConocoPhillips, designated by the Bush Administration to advise the Iraqi oil ministry, had little tolerance for the neocons' threat to privatize the oil fields nor their obsession on ways to undermine OPEC. (In 2004, with oil approaching the $50 a barrel mark all year, the major U.S. oil companies posted record or near-record profits. ConocoPhillips this February reported a doubling of its quarterly profits.)

In November 2003, McKee quietly ordered up a new plan for Iraq's oil. For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of this 323-page plan, but when I threatened legal action, I was able to obtain the multi-volume document describing seven possible models of oil production for Iraq, each one merely a different flavor of a single option: a state-owned oil company under which the state maintains official title to the reserves but operation and control are given to foreign oil
companies.

According to Ed Morse, another Hess Oil advisor, the switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for Iraq was driven by Dick Cheney. "The VP's office [has] not pursued a policy in Iraq that would lead to a rapid opening of the Iraqi energy sector that would put us on a track to say, "We're going to put a squeeze on OPEC."

Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken a defacto seat there, allowing the cartel to maintain its suffocating grip on the U.S. economy.

*****

Read the full story in the April edition of Harper's Magazine, out this week: "OPEC ON THE MARCH: Why Iraq Still Sells Its Oil à la Cartel," by Greg Palast.

Watch Palast's report on the Harper's discovery on BBC television's premier nightly current affairs show, Newsnight, viewable on-line at:

BBC Newsnight - U.S. Secret Plan for Iraq's Oil

http://gregpalast.com/video/BBCIraqOilReport.mov

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."
View his writings at www.GregPalast.com.

Leni von Eckardt contributed investigative research to this project.

If Pres. Bush has his way the Social Security Trust Fund Will Not Increase From $1.7 Trillion to $3.9 Trillion

Wall Street Journal Article 27 Mar 2005 06:34 GMT

The current size of the Social Security Trust Fund is $1.7 trillion and is scheduled to increase to $3.9 Trillion through 2014.

The surplus cash should be invested in investment grade companies Real Estate. If it is reasonable to buy stock in a company then isn't it much safer to buy the building the company uses and lease it back to them. If the company goes bust you can lease the property to another company.

Also buy and lease back Federal and State facilities. A fund of Govt. leased properties would certainly be a safe and secure investment.

Consider the value of a single family home and how it has increased in value.

$2.2 Trillion Down
March 25, 2005; Page A8 Wall Street Journal

Everyone in Washington has now used this week's Social Security and Medicare Trustees' report to justify his or her political program. We suppose that's better than ignoring it. But as we look at the details, the most important figure in the report has received almost no attention.

That number is $2.2 trillion, which is the difference between the current size of the Social Security "Trust Fund" ($1.7 trillion) and what it will grow to become over merely a decade through 2014 ($3.9 trillion). More precisely, that is the amount of payroll tax revenue that workers will pay between now and 2014 that exceeds what will be spent over that same period on retiree benefits. The Trustees predict the payroll tax will continue to exceed benefits through 2017, but their report breaks out the numbers in detail only through 2014. In any case, $2.2 trillion is a lot of money, even in Washington.

And what will happen to that surplus cash during these next 10 years? Every dime of it will be spent by politicians on current government. Not a nickel will be saved; nothing will be invested in accounts with anyone's name on it. Instead of building assets, or contributing to an increase in net national saving and thus investment, all of it will finance current government consumption.

The reform debate so far has too often detoured into the cul-de-sac of "transition costs" and IOUs and what's going to happen in 2041 when the Trust Fund itself is empty -- or is it really 2042? Who cares? The far more urgent issue is how to capture today's surplus payroll tax revenue and put it to more productive use. If Social Security reform means anything, it ought to mean recapturing some or all of that money.

Yet politicians on both sides of the debate rarely talk about this. That's probably because over the years both Republicans and Democrats have been complicit in spending this Social Security surplus on their own pet causes. We can understand why Democrats would want to continue this ruse even today, since most of them want to pretend there's an account in a bank somewhere that taxpayers own.

But what's up with Republicans? Some of them may fear that if this secret gets out to enough voters, they'll have to stop using that excess revenue to make the budget deficit look smaller than it is. But if they believe in smaller government, they should consider this $2.2 trillion revelation to be truth-in-advertising that shows just how spendthrift Washington is.

Letting individuals keep and invest this excess payroll tax money, which they've earned, is the nub of the entire Social Security debate. And we suspect it's the only argument that reformers have that will trump the scare tactics and accounting obfuscation of opponents.

http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2005/03/821318.shtml

Full-Court Press Over Terri Schiavo

Congress pushed federal judges to save the brain-damaged woman, but they wouldn't go along

By T.R. Goldman
Legal Times
March 28, 2005

Despite political pressures so intense they produced an extraordinary piece of legislation from Congress, unrelenting press coverage, and a predicament freighted with emotion, it was the courts, not Congress, who seem to have had the last word on Terri Schiavo.

At the end of last week, after being rebuffed by federal judges at all levels, Schiavo's parents, Mary and Robert Schindler, and their supporters watched their legal options dwindle — and their anger at the judicial system grow.

For the politicians, protesters, and talk radio hosts, it hardly mattered that well-known legal scholars on both sides of the political divide believed that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore's March 22 decision not to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted was sound.

Or that a day after Whittemore's decision, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and the full court — a majority of whose members were appointed by Republican presidents — endorsed Whittemore's reasoning.

Or that the U.S. Supreme Court then tacitly affirmed Whittemore's decision by refusing to hear the case.

Instead, the series of legal decisions that played out over a dramatic four days last week only bolstered their sense that the judiciary is not only too independent, it is out of control. "The judges," Robert Schindler told reporters after a day of adverse rulings, "are running this country."

Added House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) on March 24, shortly after the Supreme Court denied certiorari: "Once again, they have chosen to ignore the clear intent of Congress."

But conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec saw it differently — as a triumph of the courts over the passion of the moment.

"It is with great credit that every level of the federal courts recognized that law rather than emotion and politics has to prevail," says Kmiec, who teaches at the Pepperdine University School of Law. "[W]e are also a nation of law, and there is a right way and wrong way to advance the protection of our fundamental rights. . . . And I say that as someone very much inclined to favor Terri Schiavo and her parents."

The sparring illustrated a relationship between Congress and the federal courts that has always been a complex and contentious one. To many court-watchers, however, the discourse between the two branches has reached a new level of hostility. With increasing frequency, Congress is trying to curb the power of the judiciary; with equal vigor, the courts are fighting back.

"Court stripping is in fashion," says Bert Brandenburg, a former Justice Department spokesman in the Clinton administration who now runs the nonpartisan Justice at Stake Campaign, which supports an independent judiciary.

"In many ways, people feel judges are the enemy," Brandenburg says. "It's the equivalent of a football game; everybody gets out of hand, and they turn on the referee."

ON THE OFFENSIVE

Congress has recently attacked the independence of the courts on a number of fronts.

A House-sponsored measure to defend the Ten Commandments declares that their display is protected under the Constitution's establishment clause. The bill, which has 118 co-sponsors, explicitly requires the courts to accept that assertion and forbids them to rule on its constitutionality.

Another bill, the Pledge Protection Act of 2004, amends the U.S. Code to deny jurisdiction to any federal court, including the Supreme Court, to decide any question about the interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance, "or its validity under the Constitution." The bill, which passed the House last September, 247-173, is awaiting action in the Senate.

And a pending constitutional amendment defining marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman expressly forbids any court — state or federal — from deciding whether the federal Constitution or any state constitution holds otherwise.

"There's a history dating back to the first decade of the nation in which Congress went after the courts in a major way," notes Indiana University law professor Charles Geyh, whose book, When Courts and Congress Collide, will be published later this year.

"But there's been a gradual erosion in America with our comfort with the rule of law and the perception that judges follow the rule of law. There are angry things now," Geyh says, referring to the Pledge protection and Ten Commandments bills.

To be sure, the courts have never been shy about asserting themselves, either. For instance, after Congress decided in 2003 to further restrict a federal judge's sentencing discretion, the Supreme Court upended the entire guideline system in a decision in January. And the courts have consistently rebuffed efforts by the George W. Bush administration to eliminate judicial review for enemy combatants.

That's not to say that Congress minds using the federal judiciary for its own purposes, often punting problems to the courts it finds too delicate to legislate by itself. Or more frequently, it passes slightly ambiguous legislation designed to appease conflicting constituencies — take the Telecommunications Act of 1996, for example — and lets the courts decide what it means.

Last month, at the behest of a powerful coalition of business interests, Congress reformulated the federal court docket, passing the Class Action Fairness Act, which will shift class actions away from state courts — where they traditionally have been tried — and into the federal court system.

The move was motivated, in part, because many business leaders believe they are more likely to get a fairer shake in the federal courts, where the number of Republican judges has grown dramatically since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. That same motivation was clearly part of the congressional strategy mandating that a federal judge rehear the Schiavo case.

As attacks against the judiciary have grown stronger, the controversy over judges has also reached a new level of intensity. Witness the threat by Senate Republican leaders to put an end to Democratic judicial filibusters by using an arcane Senate procedure.

Taken all together, the judiciary appears, at least to the public, to be under siege.

"You can be insulated. You have a lifetime appointment, and most judges don't frequent political circles," says Abner Mikva, a former D.C. Circuit judge, member of Congress, and White House counsel to President Bill Clinton. "But if you read newspapers — and almost all judges read newspapers — and you hear these angry congressmen shouting to strip the judiciary of jurisdiction, to strip them of their robes and whatever else, it begins to have an impact."

HOLDING FIRM

When Congress drafted the weekend legislation giving the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida jurisdiction over the Schiavo case, it took pains to tell the court that it was not creating any new "substantive rights," a phrase designed to lessen any problems the court might have with the law.

Yet Judge Whittemore skirted the issue of the law's validity altogether by simply sticking to the issue of whether Schiavo's parents, the Schindlers, merited a temporary injunction ordering that Schiavo's feeding tube be restored.

Whittemore concluded that the Schindlers weren't likely to prevail on any of the constitutional claims the new law allowed the family to bring.

"The court appreciates the gravity of the consequences of denying injunctive relief," wrote Whittemore, a Clinton appointee. "[But t]his court is constrained to apply the law to the issues before it."

Whittemore, in another move that spoke to judicial solidarity, backed the findings of Florida state courts, in which the issues surrounding Schiavo had been litigated for years. His decision meant that the appeals court could reverse him only if he had abused his judicial discretion — a difficult standard to reach.

And in fact, Whittemore's decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit the next day. As if to rebut the presumption that the Schindlers would find allies only in Republican judges, the lone dissenter was Charles Wilson, a Clinton appointee. Edward Carnes, who was picked for the bench by the first President Bush, and Frank Hull, another Clinton appointee, sided with Whittemore. The full 11th Circuit, which has a Republican-nominated majority, voted to uphold Whittemore hours later.

The appeals court agreed with Whittemore's legal rationale, but only after dismissing Wilson's contention that Congress clearly intended the court to grant a stay and restore Schiavo's feeding tube until it could revisit the facts.

For the Schindlers, that meant an emergency appeal to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who oversees the 11th Circuit. Kennedy deferred to the entire Court, which chose not to accept review of the case.

As the Schindlers' supporters vented their rage in media reports, the family made a final attempt before Whittemore March 24, citing new evidence in the case, but that claim too was rejected. At the same time, a Florida state judge denied Florida Gov. Jeb Bush the authority to take custody of Schiavo. (At press time, the 11th Circuit was scheduled to hear the Schindlers' appeal of Whittemore's last ruling.)

The courts, seemingly, had held their ground.

David Goldberger, a professor at the Ohio State University College of Law, says the inability of much of the public to accept a series of consistent state judicial decisions — all of which have found that Schiavo had made it clear she did not wish to live in a "persistent vegetative state" — is disturbing.

"A decision was made [in state court] that this is not what Terri Schiavo wants," he says, referring to the feeding tube which had been keeping Schiavo alive. "But people are saying, 'We don't care,' and this is what flummoxes me."

T.R. Goldman can be contacted at tgoldman@legaltimes.com.

http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1111781918698

The demise of the GOP revolution

Thursday, March 24, 2005 - Page updated at 11:46 a.m.

Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist

This week will go down in political history as the moment the conservative revolution died.

How can I say that? Conservatives control the entire federal government. If anything, they appear set to win even more power at the ballot box. But the premise of the revolution is dead and gone. Republicans have abandoned the last of the principles that swept them into power a decade ago.

They've so lost sight of why they are there that GOP Congressman Dave Reichert is now seen as a maverick for adhering to core conservative ideals.

Reichert, of Auburn, was one of only five Republicans who voted not to interfere in the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. She's been in a vegetative state for 15 years.

A pro-lifer, Reichert said he wasn't judging whether Schiavo lives or dies. He said it was none of Congress' business.

"This issue is between the family members, their doctors and God," he said.

Is Dave Reichert really the only Republican left who understands his job is running the country, not our lives?

So much for the era of big government being over.

It used to be that shrinking the government was the point of being a Republican. Reduce its physical size, but also how it meddles in personal affairs.

Now national Republicans have become the stereotypical liberals they denigrate, using government power to advance pet causes regardless of local or private concerns.

To remind myself what this revolution was supposed to be about, I looked up the "Contract With America." That was the GOP pledge in 1994, when the party won Congress to end 40 years of Democratic rule.

The contract vowed "the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money."

A decade later government is as bloated and profligate as ever, with record deficits. With Schiavo, Congress has reached a new low for butting in where it doesn't belong.

I don't know what should happen with Schiavo. I'm with Reichert — it's none of my business to even offer an opinion.

But I do know there is a constitutional right to die, recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in an opinion by an old-fashioned conservative, William Rehnquist.

And in wrenching cases where a wife cannot speak for herself, society grants authority over her to her husband, as overseen by local courts.

All trifling details when you're drunk on big-government power.

"I don't care what her husband says," said Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "As long as Terri Schiavo can breathe and her supporters can pray, we will not rest."

I am a husband. Someday I may hold my wife's beautiful life in my hands. It's inconceivable to me that a politician who knows nothing about us could announce in the halls of Congress that I should have no say in her fate.

The inconceivable is happening.

Yet the party of personal responsibility doesn't care, except Dave Reichert.

Of course, he's new. Maybe he hasn't heard the word that real conservatism is dead.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

The big, bad tax increase (TABOR, the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights)

Article Published: Tuesday, March 22, 2005

commentary

By Ed Quillen
Denver Post Columnist

With great fanfare last week, Republican Gov. Bill Owens and Democratic leaders of the legislature agreed to support the Colorado Economic Recovery Act, which will be on the ballot this fall as Referendum C.

It doesn't violate TABOR, the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights written into our state constitution. TABOR requires a public vote to raise government income above a certain level based on monetary inflation, population growth and last year's budget. And that's what we're getting: a public vote.

Nonetheless, our governor has been condemned by various fire-breathers in his own party because he supports allowing us to vote on whether the state government should be allowed to spend money that would otherwise be refunded to us.

It would appear that we're capable of making that decision, especially as that referendum draws closer and we have more information. But in certain GOP circles, this means Owens is committing an unpardonable act. He's more or less supporting a tax increase.

But as long as modern Republican orthodoxy opposes anything that can be construed as a "tax increase," any reform is going to face some tough sledding.

Consider that Colorado has a bunch of "enterprise zones" that get special tax breaks.

Over the years, I've run across some other sweetheart tax deals. For instance, billionaire Phil Anschutz got a sales-tax exemption after he bought the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, then bought the Southern Pacific Railroad and merged them.

He threatened to move some rolling-stock repair shops to another state, thus removing some jobs that paid pretty well, unless he could avoid paying sales tax on parts like locomotive motors. Fearing the loss of jobs, the state cut a deal.

Now the jobs are gone anyway. Anschutz sold his railroads to the Union Pacific, which moved the work to other shops, so the deal didn't accomplish much except to remind us peons where we stand.

Another billionaire tax break came in 1998, when the city of Lakewood arranged for $195,000 in tax rebates for Gateway Computer. Jefferson County agreed to refund $300,000 of Gateway's taxes, and the State Economic Development Commission offered $550,000 in direct grants and loans - that is, money from all Colorado taxpayers, including Gateway's competitors.

Gateway was then a $6 billion company. It seems to have faded since then, but I haven't paid much attention, since I don't patronize any company which thinks so little of its customers that it "Recommends Windows XP" Home or Professional on new computers.

Those are just two tax deals that I remember, along with the enterprise zones. There are doubtless many more, and I brought this up once when I was chatting with Ken Chlouber, who was seeking another term in the state Senate from this district.

"Don't you think our state revenue system would be a lot more fair if we got rid of all these special breaks?" I asked him. "Wouldn't that allow state and local governments to reduce the tax rates on everyone else, and would thus be a tax decrease for most Coloradans? I'm not talking about soaking the rich, just making them live by the same rules as the rest of us."

Ken didn't answer, so I pushed it harder. "Let's take a hypothetical little town with an annual budget of $100,000 for streets and parks and all that," I said. "It has 99 households in houses worth $100,000 apiece, and one rich guy in a $1 million house. And the rich guy pulled strings to pay no local taxes. So the 99 are paying $1,010 a year apiece in local taxes, and the rich guy is paying nothing. Make the system fair, where everybody pays what he should based on home value, and the normal household's annual tax drops to $917."

"Sounds about right," he said, "but somebody's going to have to pay more." I agreed. The rich guy who had hustled the system would now pay $9,170.

"Then that's a tax increase for him, from zero to $9,170. And I could never support a tax increase."

So, any effort to make our system more fair, to get rid of the corporate welfare and tax breaks for billionaires, can doubtless be construed as a "tax increase," just as our governor's agreement on a referendum is being criticized as support for a "tax increase."

If these folks keep it up, the dreaded "tax increase" might not be quite so scary someday.

Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E150%257E2774802,00.html

IS THAT BUSINESS I HEAR BOOMING?

http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0316iraqex.htm

Iraqex, the U.S.-owned "investment group set up to pursue business in Iraq," has changed its name to Lincoln Group, after its holding company, Lincoln Alliance Corporation. Lincoln Group has a $6 million, 3-year PR contract for the U.S.-led Multi-National Corps-Iraq, for which it "develops video, audio and print products to support MNC-I initiatives." It also publishes Iraq Business Journal, a "monthly publication on contract opportunities, life in Iraq and classifieds." The publication recently interviewed Grand Ayatolla Ali Al-Sistani, who said foreign investment is acceptable, as long as the investor is not with the "occupation forces" or taking "advantage of any instability." Lincoln Group is still looking for interns.

SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (reg. req'd.), March 16, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3373

#11 of 13 things that do not make sense

11 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

11 The Wow signal

IT WAS 37 seconds long and came from outer space. On 15 August 1977 it caused astronomer Jerry Ehman, then of Ohio State University in Columbus, to scrawl "Wow!" on the printout from Big Ear, Ohio State's radio telescope in Delaware. And 28 years later no one knows what created the signal. "I am still waiting for a definitive explanation that makes sense," Ehman says.

Coming from the direction of Sagittarius, the pulse of radiation was confined to a narrow range of radio frequencies around 1420 megahertz. This frequency is in a part of the radio spectrum in which all transmissions are prohibited by international agreement. Natural sources of radiation, such as the thermal emissions from planets, usually cover a much broader sweep of frequencies. So what caused it?

The nearest star in that direction is 220 light years away. If that is where is came from, it would have had to be a pretty powerful astronomical event - or an advanced alien civilisation using an astonishingly large and powerful transmitter.

The fact that hundreds of sweeps over the same patch of sky have found nothing like the Wow signal doesn't mean it's not aliens. When you consider the fact that the Big Ear telescope covers only one-millionth of the sky at any time, and an alien transmitter would also likely beam out over the same fraction of sky, the chances of spotting the signal again are remote, to say the least.

Others think there must be a mundane explanation. Dan Wertheimer, chief scientist for the SETI@home project, says the Wow signal was almost certainly pollution: radio-frequency interference from Earth-based transmissions. "We've seen many signals like this, and these sorts of signals have always turned out to be interference," he says. The debate continues.

"It was either a powerful astronomical event - or an advanced alien civilisation beaming out a signal"

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - TODD FEINBERG, M.D.

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

TODD FEINBERG, M.D.
Psychiatrist and Neurologist, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Author, Altered Egos

I believe the human race will never decide that an advanced computer possesses consciousness. Only in science fiction will a person be charged with murder if they unplug a PC. I believe this because I hold, but cannot yet prove, that in order for an entity to be consciousness and possess a mind, it has to be a living being.

Being alive, of course, does not guarantee the presence of a mind. For example, a plant carries on the necessary metabolic functions to be alive, but still does not possess a mind. A chimpanzee, on the other hand, is a different story. All the behavioral features we share with chimps in addition to life, such as intelligence, the ability to deceive, mirror self-recognition, some individual social identity, make chimps seem so much like us that many in the scientific community intuitively grant chimps "beinghood" and consciousness.

In addition to being alive, therefore, it appears that a living thing must be a being, must possess a self, to possess a mind. But silicon chips are not alive, and computers are not beings. I argue that this is so because the particular material substance and arrangement of the brain is essential to the creation of consciousness and "beinghood." Computers will never achieve consciousness because in order for a computer to be "conscious like us" it will need to be made of living stuff like us, to grow like us, and unfortunately, to be able to die like us.

What is Structured Blogging?

Structured blogging is about making a movie review look different from a calendar entry. On the surface, it’s as simple as that - formatting blog entries around their content.

To see what we’re talking about, check out the sample content on the blog.

http://structuredblogging.org/wordpress/

On another level, it’s a bit more complicated - what we want to do is create structure (in the form of XML) around each of these types of entries, to organize the data inside and to let machine readers - other programs, sites, and aggregators - better understand the content.

http://structuredblogging.org/wordpress/?page_id=3

Ted Rall - zoroastrian america

Kirk Walters - honor the dead

Larry Wright - brain dead

Virginia Lawmakers say ˜Virginia's Not for Lovers Anymore"

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/
For more than 35 years, residents of this state have advertised that "Virginia is for lovers." But that's likely to change this week when members of the House of Delegate meet to try to agree upon a new slogan. The problem: by appealing to "lovers," say some members of the legislature, Virginia is promoting sex out of wedlock. Even worse, the current slogan doesn't specify that the ideal definition of "lovers" involves a man and a woman.
(3/22/2005)

THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE - DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads

March 27, 2005

Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in '88 to let his comatose father die.

By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek, Times Staff Writers

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do not resuscitate."

On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in attendance."

"The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority leader, who declined requests for an interview.

"The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all need to survive. His father was on a ventilator and other machines to sustain him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.

There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them had a living will.

This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's personal brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from court files, medical records and interviews with family members.

---

It was a pleasant late afternoon in the Hill Country of Texas on Nov. 17, 1988.

At Charles and Maxine DeLay's home, set on a limestone bluff of cedars and live oaks, it also was a moment of triumph. Charles and his brother, Jerry DeLay, two avid tinkerers, had just finished work on a new backyard tram — an elevator-like device that would carry family and friends down a 200-foot slope to the blue-green waters of Canyon Lake.

The two men called for their wives to hop aboard. Charles pushed the button and the maiden run began. Within seconds, a horrific screeching noise echoed across the still lake — "a sickening sound," said a neighbor. The tram was in trouble.

Maxine, seated up front in the four-passenger trolley, said her husband repeatedly tried to engage the emergency brake, but the rail car kept picking up speed. Halfway down the bank, it was free-wheeling, according to accident investigators.

Moments later, it jumped the track and slammed into a tree, scattering passengers and debris in all directions.

"It was awful, just awful," recalled Karl Braddick, now 86, the DeLays' neighbor at the time. "I came running over, and it was a terrible sight."

He called for emergency help. Rescue workers had trouble bringing the injured victims up the steep terrain. Jerry's wife, JoAnne, suffered broken bones and a shattered elbow. Charles, who had been thrown head-first into a tree, was in grave condition.

"He was all but gone," said Braddick, gesturing at the spot of the accident as he offered a visitor a ride down to the lake in his own tram. "He would have been better off if he'd died right there and then."

But Charles DeLay hung on. In the ambulance on his way to a hospital in New Braunfels 15 miles away, he tried to speak.

"He wasn't making any sense; it was mainly just cuss words," recalled Maxine with a faint, fond smile.

Four hours later, he was airlifted by helicopter to the Brooke Army Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston. Admission records show he arrived with multiple injuries, including broken ribs and a brain hemorrhage.

Tom DeLay flew to his father's bedside, where, along with his two brothers and a sister, they joined their mother. In the weeks that followed, the congressman made repeated trips back from Washington, his family said. Maxine seldom left her husband's side.

"Mama stayed at the hospital with him all the time. Oh, it was terrible for everyone," said Alvina "Vi" Skogen, a former sister-in-law of the congressman. Neighbor Braddick visited the hospital and said it seemed very clear to everyone that there was little prospect of recovery.

"He had no consciousness that I could see," Braddick said. "He did a bit of moaning and groaning, I guess, but you could see there was no way he was coming back."

Maxine DeLay agreed that she was never aware of any consciousness on her husband's part during the long days of her bedside vigil — with one possible exception.

"Whenever Randy walked into the room, his heart, his pulse rate, would go up a little bit," she said of their son, Randall, the congressman's younger brother, who lives near Houston.

Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his head, face, neck and abdomen. They checked for lung damage and performed a tracheostomy to assist his breathing. But they could not prevent steady deterioration.

Then, infections complicated the senior DeLay's fight for life. Finally, his organs began to fail. His family and physicians confronted the dreaded choice so many other Americans have faced: to make heroic efforts or to let the end come.

"Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Skogen, one of his daughters-in-law at the time. "There was no decision for the family to make. He made it for them."

The preliminary decision to withhold dialysis and other treatments fell to Maxine along with Randall and her daughter Tena — and "Tom went along." He raised no objection, said the congressman's mother.

Family members said they prayed.

Jerry DeLay "felt terribly about the accident" that injured his brother, said his wife, JoAnne. "He prayed that, if [Charles] couldn't have quality of life, that God would take him — and that is exactly what he did."

Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., according to his death certificate, 27 days after plummeting down the hillside.

------

The family then turned to lawyers.

In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of San Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and maker of a coupling that the family said had failed and caused the tram to hurtle out of control.

The family's wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of negligence and sought actual and punitive damages. Lawyers for the companies denied the allegations and countersued the surviving designer of the tram system, Jerry DeLay.

The case thrust Rep. DeLay into unfamiliar territory — the front page of a civil complaint as a plaintiff. He is an outspoken defender of business against what he calls the crippling effects of "predatory, self-serving litigation."

The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation for, among other things, the dead father's "physical pain and suffering, mental anguish and trauma," and the mother's grief, sorrow and loss of companionship.

Their lawsuit also alleged violations of the Texas product liability law.

The DeLay case moved slowly through the Texas judicial system, accumulating more than 500 pages of motions, affidavits and disclosures over nearly three years. Among the affidavits was one filed by the congressman, but family members said he had little direct involvement in the lawsuit, leaving that to his brother Randall, an attorney.

Rep. DeLay, who since has taken a leading role promoting tort reform, wants to rein in trial lawyers to protect American businesses from what he calls "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits" that raise insurance premiums and "kill jobs."

Last September, he expressed less than warm sentiment for attorneys when he took the floor of the House to condemn trial lawyers who, he said, "get fat off the pain" of plaintiffs and off "the hard work" of defendants.

Aides for DeLay defended his role as a plaintiff in the family lawsuit, saying he did not follow the legal case and was not aware of its final outcome.

The case was resolved in 1993 with payment of an undisclosed sum, said to be about $250,000, according to sources familiar with the out-of-court settlement. DeLay signed over his share of any proceeds to his mother, said his aides.

Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically designed to override state laws on product liability such as the one cited in his family's lawsuit. The legislation provided sweeping exemptions for product sellers.

The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he objected to the DeLay-backed measure because it "tilts against American families and would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured by a defective product."

------

After her husband's death, Maxine DeLay scrapped the mangled tram at the bottom of the hill and sold the family's lake house.

Today, she lives alone in a Houston senior citizen residence. Like much of the country, she is following news developments in the Schiavo case and her son's prominent role.

She acknowledged questions comparing her family's decision in 1988 to the Schiavo conflict with a slight smile. "It's certainly interesting, isn't it?"

She had a new hairdo for Easter and puffed on a cigarette outside her assisted-living residence as she sat back comparing the cases.

Like her son, she believed there might be hope for Terri Schiavo's recovery. That's what made her family's experience different, she said. Charles had no hope.

"There was no chance he was ever coming back," she said.

*

Verhovek reported from Canyon Lake, Texas; Roche reported from Washington. Also contributing to this report were Times researchers Lianne Hart in San Antonio and Nona Yates in Los Angeles.

Froma Harrop: One person, or 45 millions? -- Questions for 'pro-life' folks

01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, March 23, 2005

I HAVE A QUESTION for all those "culture of life" people praying in front of Terri Schiavo's hospital: Where were you last week when President Bush and the Republican Congress were pushing to cut Medicaid? Medicaid is the medical lifeline for the poor. And, by the way, it is picking up some of Schiavo's hospital bills.

Are you aware of your inconsistency? Or are you just pawns of the Republican Party?

You fixate over a woman who has hung in a vegetative state for 15 years, but stand mute as 45 million of your fellow Americans go without any health coverage. Over 18,000 adult Americans die every year for lack of health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine, in Washington.

Perhaps you'd like to hear the story of another woman, Annette Arrico. A divorced mother, Arrico ran a tiny beauty parlor in Rhode Island, serving mostly elderly ladies. After expenses, she took home only $150 a week and could not afford health insurance.

Some years ago, Arrico found a lump in her breast. She knew that the lump meant trouble, but she tried to ignore it.

"I had all I could do to bring up our daughter," she said at the time.

Pushed by her daughter, Arrico finally saw a doctor, but by then it was too late to help her. She subsequently died.

There are thousands of Annette Arricos among us today. Lacking health insurance, they do not seek preventive care and avoid getting a diagnosis. That's why the mortality rate from cancer is up to two times higher for uninsured people than for those with coverage, says a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has spent the past year plumping up his "pro-life" credentials with grand displays of hypocrisy. He made a big show of inserting himself into the Schiavo case -- basically denying a husband's rights as his wife's legal guardian. While doing that, Bush presided over the unspeakable act of throwing 105,000 poor children off the state's health-insurance program.

Where were the religious leaders then, and where were their followers?

"I see many religious groups stepping forward and saying it's wrong to take a feeding tube from Terri," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics, at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don't hear anything about it being wrong not to vaccinate tens of thousands of children. The Congress still accepts the reality of uninsured children in America, which is beyond the moral pale."

But the "pro-life" advocates have nonetheless rallied to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner as they make political hay off the Schiavo tragedy.

That "leaders" of disability groups would add their praise is beyond comprehension. After all, Americans with disabilities get most of their funding from Medicaid. Frist, DeLay and Sensenbrenner were directing the attack on the program. The disabled might ask why their alleged spokesmen did not stop them.

Here is another question for the "pro-life" folks: Where were you two weeks ago, when the Senate voted to toughen America's bankruptcy laws? The bill made no distinction between debt run up in a casino and debt run up in a hospital. A recent Harvard study found that nearly half of the personal bankruptcies were caused by unexpected medical bills. Funny, but I don't recall any spiritual leaders rushing to protect families in a medical crisis from losing all in a bankruptcy.

Of course, the Schiavo case is ripe for political exploitation. The following memo was sent to Republican senators: "The pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue."

To the pliant members of the "pro-life" base: Follow your orders and get excited over a poor woman who can neither think nor emote and for whom doctors can do nothing. Interfere with a husband's decision to end medical treatment for a wife who has floated between life and death for 15 years.

Then sit back as your political masters try to cut the programs that help the sick, the frail and the dying. Let credit-card companies harass families overwhelmed by medical expenses.

You have every right to call yourselves "defenders of life." Just as long as no one else has to.

Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop [at] projo.com

http://www.projo.com/opinion/columnists/content/projo_20050323_23harr.1d4e0f6.html

Owens vs. the fuzzy math boys (Taxpayer's Bill of Rights)

Article Published: Saturday, March 26, 2005

bob ewegen

When does a $6.3 billion tax cut engineered by Gov. Bill Owens become a $3.1 billion tax increase? When Jon Caldara decides he wants a $9.4 billion tax cut.

Welcome to the latest episode of "As the Fuzzy Math Turns," the soap opera written by Caldara, Washington lobbyist Grover Norquist and other anti-gummint zealots now vilifying Owens for midwifing the bipartisan Colorado Economic Recovery Act that sailed through the state Senate 26-9 last week.

That bill doesn't raise a single tax anywhere in Colorado. All it does is use a provision of the 1992 Taxpayer's Bill of Rights to ask voters to let our beleaguered state keep the money that existing taxes bring in for five years - and use it to patch our crumbling highways, staunch the hemorrhaging of our once-proud higher education system and otherwise begin to recover from the ravages of the 2001-02 recession. In the sixth year it lets Colorado keep another $100 million to finance highways and other vital construction projects. If revenues reach the level they are expected to attain in 2010, the bill would also cut the state income tax from the current 4.63 percent to 4.5 percent.

Caldara, Norquist and their ilk reacted by stamping their tiny feet and sobbing that failing to make additional tax cuts was so a tax increase. But when Caldara's tortured logic clashed with Owens' hard facts on Channel 12's "Independent Thinking" show, Owens won by a knockout.

Owens came prepared with charts proving that taxes will have been cut $6.3 billion between his election in 1998 and 2010, even if the Colorado Economic Recovery Act is approved by voters this fall. Most of that total - $500 million a year - comes from cuts in the state sales tax rate from 3 percent to 2.9 percent and in the income tax rate from 4.75 to 4.63 percent. The changes were proposed by Owens and passed with bipartisan majorities in the 2000 legislature. The problem Owens and other responsible Coloradans see looming for the budget was not caused by that $6.3 billion tax cut but by an additional, unintended, $3.1 billion tax cut that TABOR's 's notorious ratchet effect would force in the next six years because of the 2001-2002 recession.

TABOR was designed to limit increases in state spending to no more than the rate of population growth and inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index. But the measure mindlessly applies that growth formula to last year's revenue limit or last year's actual revenue collections - whichever is lower. Revenues fell 17 percent in the recession - and unless voters release that ratchet, the state can never recover from that loss.

Another chart by the governor showed that if there had not been a recession, Colorado's revenue ceiling would have been a comfortable $9.1 billion this year. The TABOR ratchet locks it in at just $8.3 billion. Even if voters approve the Colorado Economic Recovery Act, Colorado's revenue ceiling will be just $10.5 billion in 2010. That's still $450 million below the level that TABOR would have automatically allowed if the ratchet didn't lock in the massive revenue losses of the recession.

Do your own math. Owens has already passed a $6.3 billion tax cut. Caldara wants to slash another $3.1 billion from our schools and highways. Which one is looking out for the future of Colorado?

To their enduring credit, eight Republican senators joined all 18 Democrats to give the Colorado Economic Recovery Act its overwhelming victory Thursday. The magnificent eight who stood up for their governor and their state were Norma Anderson, Lew Entz, Steve Johnson, Ken Kester, Dave Owen, Nancy Spence, Jack Taylor and Ron Teck.

Their courage was in stark contrast to the cravenness of House Minority Leader Joe Stengel. Stengel showed up at the March 17 news conference announcing the bipartisan compromise and pledged to support it, even bragging to me about how much he had done to forge the agreement. But after a few days of pressure from the Caldara crowd, Stengel folded like a two-dollar accordion and began attacking the compromise. In 33 years of covering the Capitol, I've never seen a party leader double cross his own governor and his fellow lawmakers the way Stengel did this week.

The legislature has always divided its mascots between elephants and donkeys. Thanks to Stengel, we can now add an additional symbol - the weasel.

Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has covered state and local government since 1963.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~146~2782833,00.html

Deja Vu, All Over Again

Posted on Thu, Mar. 24, 2005

Wheels

GM needs another Alfred P. Sloan? Cue the Sloan clone on hand to chart GM’s future for the next half century.

By Ed Wallace

Special to the Star-Telegram

"It was Wagoner’s job to fix GM’s cash-flow problems and restore investors’ confidence. He performed it so well that within five years GM was again minting money."

It was a period when Washington felt it could dictate peace and prosperity around the world, ignoring the international consortium of nations whose purpose exemplified that ideal. The public demanded an end to immigration, believing that because they tended to drive down wages in any industry that employed them, aliens were taking away Americans’ jobs. Worse, fearing that among those recent immigrants might be one or two willing to commit terrorism against their new neighbors, citizens demanded the federal government do more to ensure public safety.

On the economic front, demand for automobiles stayed weak. One of Detroit’s largest automakers constantly lowered its automobiles’ retail prices, trying to force a positive response from the public. All car companies struggled under the higher costs of raw materials; all continued to tell analysts and the media that the car market would soon improve dramatically. Yet the unsold days’ supply of new cars ballooned, forcing General Motors to close down some factories to realign the natural demand and sales with production.

GM’s stock, which had fallen over the previous year, hit $27 a share and sent America’s economic markets reeling. GM’s almost insatiable thirst for working capital, raised through the bond market, and here also they were coming up short. Far too many competing car lines chased far too few customers; besides the normal success of Chevrolet and GM’s primary upscale line of vehicles, nothing else seemed to be hitting with the public. That in turn forced GM’s president to write a proposal for the complete reorganization of the company.

If this sounds a great deal like the first three months of 2005, you’re hearing right. However, it’s also a condensed version of what America and General Motors faced in July of 1920.

Today it will be the job of Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, to try to re-conceptualize his organization — to pull off an Alfred Sloan.

True "Blue": Sloan Clone

Sloan not only saved GM, in its darkest days following the end of the Great War, but in the process he created the modern American corporation. Sloan founded GM’s legacy as the world’s most powerful company, a position of respect that GM still semi-enjoys today. Many may disagree with that assessment, but it’s a fact that when GM put out its profit warning for 2005 this March 16th, it roiled financial markets in both Europe and America and sent many investors scurrying into the Treasury’s bond market, looking for more secure investments. True, other corporations, such as Ford, issued similar warnings on their 2005 earning forecasts that week. But their announcements caused nary a ripple in the stock market, save in the price of their own shares.

In many ways Rick Wagoner is the closest GM has come to recreating Alfred Sloan in 50 years. Certainly, over the past few weeks, those who follow the trade publications have seen much speculation; it’s been said that GM’s directors would be remiss in their duties as corporate governors if they hadn’t seriously considered removing the upper management now, in order to secure the company’s future. The analysts have pointed out many perceived missteps on the part of Wagoner and his staff; the disastrous marriage between GM and Fiat, for example, recently cost the Detroit automaker $2 billion for a quickie divorce. However, the jury is still out on what Wagoner had to do with that ill-conceived union; no one’s pointed out that it was Jack Smith, who was CEO when GM joined up with Fiat, had the final say.

Similarly, not one article has reminded readers that Wagoner was elevated to the position of CFO as a 39-year-old. That happened during GM’s early nineties financial crisis, when the company was forced to post a $22 billion loss. Improper accounting for employees’ pensions during the eighties had started that crisis, and falling sales in a lingering recession precipitated it. It was Wagoner’s job to fix GM’s cash-flow problems and restore investors’ confidence. He performed it so well that within five years GM was again minting money.

Genius Corporate Engineer

In 1920, Alfred Sloan planned to fix GM by consolidating its business and jettisoning non-income producing entities, with one exception. Sloan saw real long-term value in keeping Frigidaire — even though, in the few years since GM had acquired it, the company was already down by $2 million on its investment. The refrigerator division would never make the kind of return on investment Sloan would one day demand of the car divisions; but, thanks to Sloan’s vision and GM’s work, refrigerators today cost about 10% of their 1925 price, and every residence has one.

Sloan was also handicapped by the fact that only DuPont had started work on developing modern standards for corporate finance, including a centralized structure for financial decisions, leaving individual divisions to handle their own areas of expertise. To improve GM’s cash flow Sloan had brought in DuPont’s Donaldson Brown, whose theories on finance were so brilliant that absolutely no one but Sloan could understand anything he said. When Brown spoke before GM’s board of directors, Sloan would stand up after the speech and translate what Brown had said into layman’s terms.

And so, as all the critics were forecasting GM’s probable demise in 1920, Sloan drew the blueprint for the modern corporation. He closed down or sold all non-performing properties, except Frigidaire; and all that was left to decide was how to make GM’s cars appeal to the public again. Yes, just like today, the common complaint was that GM’s products all looked alike.

For Every Purse and Purpose

In the public’s memory, Sloan’s most brilliant idea was a concept that took him four more years to come up with: "A car for every purse and purpose."

The basic idea, known to any American over 40, was simple: Each division would target a different financial demographic. Chevrolet would build the vehicles sought out by first-time car buyers; once a blue-collar worker became a supervisor, he might well want to use his pay raise to move up to a Pontiac. White-collar managers would find themselves at home in GM’s Oldsmobile products; Buick was forever known as a doctor’s car. Moreover, even though it would be another 15 years before Cadillac’s position in the GM lineup was settled, the Caddie would become the car that American titans of industry would demand as their personal transportation. This vision launched so successfully that for the next 50 years, Americans could tell how successful their neighbors were by the GM car they drove.

Even though he hadn’t been responsible for running the company for well over a decade by then, when Sloan died in 1964 GM lost its bearings. By the mid-seventies, Oldsmobile no longer made cars for the upper middle class; it was at its zenith supplying the Cutlass — the car of choice for hundreds of thousands of recent college grads and young married couples. Pontiac’s automobiles had more aggressive flair, but they didn’t fit any known demographic. And Buick’s products often became the cars beloved by those who couldn’t afford a Cadillac; Chevrolet catered to all tastes and budgets, but owning a Cadillac still meant something special.

General Motors realized that those circumstances were making it progressively harder to determine real social status by choice of GM car division. And the automotive press blamed foreign competition, or the fact that GM’s cars looked alike, for falling sales — but that’s not what happened. The real story is that many Americans no longer viewed the car in the driveway as symbolizing their status to the neighbors. Instead, a new microwave oven, a 30-inch color TV, personal computers, a VCR, a mobile phone, a high powered stereo system and other electronic devices, which hadn’t even existed in 1970, were how one now impressed one’s friends. GM had failed to follow Alfred Sloan’s plan for a clearly progressive automotive caste/status system, and by then convenience and luxury technologies were competing against automobiles for the hearts and minds of the American consumer.

A Proven Plan + Vision

That’s why today Rick Wagoner must create a new business model for General Motors. Just like Sloan did, he’s brought high-powered talent into GM to fill critical financial or visionary positions. Also like Sloan did, he’s spun off losing divisions and shuttered at least Oldsmobile. All that’s left to do is create "must-have" automobiles; but these vehicles must appeal to one of the five tiers of the modern American demographic, which are no longer determined by one’s wealth or position in life. GM must again lead automotive design, not follow the pack.

As tough as they may sound, GM’s problems today are not nearly as serious as they were in 1920. Then too, I’d bet money that Wagoner knows Alfred Sloan’s life and business philosophy better than anyone else: Wagoner is young enough to run GM has long as Sloan did — and he knows it. His actions could influence this company for the next 50 years. He just needs to remember two things: Never have all five GM divisions made money at the same time, and the public’s automotive taste is fickle.

Fortunately, Wagoner is the smartest guy to run GM in almost a half century, and he’s a devout follower of Sloan. That’s two strong traits in his favor.

Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four’s Good Day and hosts the talk show Wheels Saturdays from 8:00 to 1:00 on 570 KLIF. E-mail: ed-wallace@charter.net

http://www.dfw.com%2Fmld%2Fdfw%2Fbusiness%2Fcolumnists%2Fed_wallace%2F11230580.htm

ENRON: PATRON SAINT OF BUSH'S FAKE NEWS

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/arts/20Rich.html

Former [[sw:Enron]] CEO [[sw:Ken Lay]], "the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the stock market," is back in the news as his trial date nears. According to Frank Rich, "The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years." How? "Enron 'was fixated on its public relations campaigns.' It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many)." Rich also writes about Susan Molinari, who
"is invariably described as 'a former Republican Congresswoman' or a CNBC political analyst'" on news shows. But her current jobs are "C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum's lobbying firm, and president of Ketchum Public Affairs" - the same Ketchum responsible for Armstrong Williams and
video news releases narrated by faux reporter Karen Ryan.

SOURCE: New York Times, March 20, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3411

#10 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

10 The Kuiper cliff

IF YOU travel out to the far edge of the solar system, into the frigid wastes beyond Pluto, you'll see something strange. Suddenly, after passing through the Kuiper belt, a region of space teeming with icy rocks, there's nothing.

Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper cliff, because the density of space rocks drops off so steeply. What caused it? The only answer seems to be a 10th planet. We're not talking about Quaoar or Sedna: this is a massive object, as big as Earth or Mars, that has swept the area clean of debris.

The evidence for the existence of "Planet X" is compelling, says Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. But although calculations show that such a body could account for the Kuiper cliff (Icarus, vol 160, p 32), no one has ever seen this fabled 10th planet.

There's a good reason for that. The Kuiper belt is just too far away for us to get a decent view. We need to get out there and have a look before we can say anything about the region. And that won't be possible for another decade, at least. NASA's New Horizons probe, which will head out to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, is scheduled for launch in January 2006. It won't reach Pluto until 2015, so if you are looking for an explanation of the vast, empty gulf of the Kuiper cliff, watch this space.

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
Mathematical trader; Author, Fooled By Randomness

We are good at fitting explanations to the past, all the while living in the illusion of understanding the dynamics of history.

My claim is about the severe overestimation of knowledge in what I call the " ex post" historical disciplines, meaning almost all of social science (economics, sociology, political science) and the humanities, everything that depends on the non-experimental analysis of past data. I am convinced that these disciplines do not provide much understanding of the world or even their own subject matter; they mostly fit a nice sounding narrative that caters to our desire (even need) to have a story. The implications are quite against conventional wisdom. You do not gain much by reading the newspapers, history books, analyses and economic reports; all you get is misplaced confidence about what you know. The difference between a cab driver and a history professor is only cosmetic as the latter can express himself in a better way.

There is convincing but only partial empirical evidence of this effect. The evidence can only be seen in the disciplines that offer both quantitative data and quantitative predictions by the experts, such as economics. Economics and finance are an empiricist's dream as we have a goldmine of data for such testing. In addition there are plenty of "experts", many of whom make more than a million a year, who provide forecasts and publish them for the benefits of their clients. Just check their forecasts against what happens after. Their projections fare hardly better than random, meaning that their "stories" are convincing, beautiful to listen to, but do not seem to help you more than listening to, say, a Chicago cab driver. This extends to inflation, growth, interest rates, balance of payment, etc. (While someone may argue that their forecasts might impact these variables, the mechanism of "self-canceling prophecy" can be taken into account). Now consider that we depend on these people for governmental economic policy!

This implies that whether or not you read the newspapers will not make the slightest difference to your understanding of what can happen in the economy or the markets. Impressive tests on the effect of the news on prices were done by the financial empiricist Victor Niederhoffer in the 60s and repeated throughout with the same results.

If you look closely at the data to check the reasons of this inability to see things coming, you will find that these people tend to guess the regular events (though quite poorly); but they miss on the large deviations, these " unusual" events that carry large impacts. These outliers have a disproportionately large contribution to the total effect.

Now I am convinced, yet cannot prove it quantitatively, that such overestimation can be generalized to anything where people give you a narrative-style story from past information, without experimentation. The difference is that the economists got caught because we have data (and techniques to check the quality of their knowledge) and historians, news analysts, biographers, and "pundits" can hide a little longer. Basically historians might get a small trend here and there, but they did miss on the big events of the past centuries and, I am convinced, will not see much coming in the future. It was said: "the wise see things coming". To me the wise persons are the ones who know that they can't see things coming.

BEARS conference UC Berkeley

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/BEARS/

The Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium (BEARS) is a conference hosted by UC Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department in the College of Engineering. This website provides the agenda for the 2005 BEARS (held on February 10 and 11) along with information on the presenters and abstracts and video footage of their presentations. The conference highlights work from EECS scientists on "advances enabling computing and communications to connect diverse aspects of our world."

Topics include:

wireless networks, optical communication, the future of the internet, embedded software, machine learning, security, and trust.

From: http://scout.wisc.edu/

Tom the Dancing Bug - lucky ducky

Monte Wolverton - feeding tube

Mike Lane - rule of law

Americans Fear Social Security Debate Will Not Last Much Longer

March 13, 2005

Afraid Other Issue Might Eventually Pop Up On Nightly News

A poll of Americans this weekend found that over 88% of them were afraid that the Social Security debate would not go on much longer. 98% of Americans found the give and take about Social Security "utterly fascinating" and filled with "intrigue."

Americans need not fear, however, as President Bush indicated today that he planned to focus on Social Security for the "next five years," according to White House spokespersons.

Indeed, President Bush revealed that he "just likes talking about saving Social Security," and wasn't sure if he would ever send a bill to Congress for its approval.

"I'm just thrilled to be able to use my bully pulpit to bring Social Security back into the national debate," said Bush.

The American public was greatly relieved. "Everytime I turn on my television, I am afraid I'll find news of something else," said Charlotte Rambling of North Carolina. "For pure entertainment value, you just can't beat those Social Security discussions."

Arlen Ferdinand of Pockstown, Minnesota agreed. "The Michael Jackson trial has been a huge disappointment," he said.

President Bush has expanded his push to discuss Social Security in America to include every small town "in the union," and hopes to reach Alaska by 2007. By that time, the President hopes the dialogue he has with wealthy Americans and corporations back in Washington will allow him to hammer out at least one single detail of his plan. After that, he plans to make "at least one more circuit" of the country.

"This is an important issue," said Republican Bill Kringlesman of Tennessee. "I just hope the President finalizes his plan before I finish paying off my mortgage in 2052."

http://www.tomburka.com/

Christian 'Conception' Parties Raise Ire, Eyebrows

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/
Thousands of Christian couples plan to celebrate the occasion of their savior's creation by attending 'conception parties' tonight, intimate gatherings where the conception of the world's most famous baby is lovingly reenacted. Fans of the pro-life parties say that theirs is a way of livening up the culture of life. But some Christians say that they're uncomfortable celebrating the pregnancy of a teenage girl, even if the father was a heavenly one.
(3/25/2005)

By Cole Walters

FORT WORTH, TX—While the vast majority of Christians in the US will spend this weekend marking a tragedy—the crucifixion of Jesus Christ upon the cross on Easter Sunday—a small but determined minority plans to celebrate their savior with a bang. Against a backdrop of farmland, city streets, even mountain vistas, this merry band will spend tonight marking not Christ's death, but his conception.

They're called 'conception parties,' intimate gatherings where creation of the world's most famous baby is lovingly—and literally—recreated. And for a few lucky couples, the event will pay off in a big way. Since the biblical bashes burst onto the scene just five years ago, 13 couples have gotten pregnant as a result of attending the gatherings. Two of the lucky mothers went on to have children—both girls—who share Christ's December birthday.

A celebration of life

"It's just a lot of fun," says Fort Worth resident and party host Earl Silos. "We'll bake a ham, put out bowls of macaroni salad and potato salad. People can relax a little, take a load off." He says that he's expecting 25 married couples to attend tonight's festivities. Marriage is a condition of attendance, says Silos, who advertised the event at his church, on local Christian message boards and on telephone poles in his neighborhood.

Silos says that he got the idea from his brother-in-law, who has hosted a conception party in Pascagoula, MS, since 1999. Today, notes Silos, his brother-in-law's annual March 25th bash attracts upwards of 100 people, including many town notables. "He does it up with a deep-fried turkey, the whole she-bang. We're a little less fancy around here," notes Silos. "We keep most of the attention on the main event."

Christian critics

But not everyone is enamored of the idea of celebrating Christ's conception—especially in the form of physical reenactments that even participants admit can get out of hand. Some Christians say that they're reluctant to shine a spotlight on the event's surrounding Mary's pregnancy. Christ's mother was only a teenager, after all, and according to Matthew, a friend of the couple, was not actually married to Joseph. "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost," Matthew wrote in a tell-all account.

If Matthew's version is correct, Mary's actions would contradict the teachings of many abstinence-only education programs, which encourage women to remain pure virgins until their wedding nights.

A down hill slide?

For critics, the new popularity of conception parties is a disturbing reminder of their faith's pagan past. Among social conservatives there is also mounting concern that their iron grip on cultural discipline is already beginning to loosen. Earlier this month, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a practicing Mormon and a likely republican presidential candidate in 2008, raised eyebrows with his statement that "marriage should be between a man and a woman…and a woman, and a woman."

But for thousands of Christians who plan to don party dresses and suit jackets, tonight's parties represent nothing more than a chance to celebrate one of history's most magical moments. "Obviously none of us is going to be lucky enough to get pregnant by Him," says Earl Silos' wife Carol. "So this is the next best thing. We're celebrating what turned out to be the biggest night of Mary's life."

Tim Rutten: Regarding Media - Schiavo Case Bares Political Sea Change

March 26, 2005

It all began, strangely enough, on Palm Sunday, the first day of the Holy Week during which Christians annually commemorate Christ's Passion, death and burial.

That peculiar symmetry alone was enough to confer a special kind of drama on the tragic story of Theresa Maria Schiavo. But the week since the U.S. House of Representatives met in an extraordinary nighttime session to grant her parents standing to press for Schiavo's continued medical care in federal court has tested to their limits all three branches of government and — no less — the nation's news media.

Christians believe their founder's Passion was a redemptive act, the stillness of the tomb an interlude between death and resurrection. All the fever and fervor reported out of Florida this week notwithstanding, the question of what — if anything — has been vindicated by this wrenching affair will remain a source of recrimination and reassessment.

We'll leave the former to those so inclined. That latter might begin with something that's been unsatisfactorily explored in the torrent of print and electronic news coverage this story has received — a sense of these extraordinary events' political context. Just as the war in Iraq signaled the tectonic shift that George W. Bush's presidency has wrought in U.S. foreign policy, the drama played out in Florida and Washington this week signaled the domestic sea change that many believe was signaled by the president's reelection.

To understand why, it's helpful to go back to 1994. That year, the American Enterprise Institute published a symposium on the future of conservatism after Bill Clinton's electoral victory. The most prophetic contribution came from Vice President Dan Quayle's former chief of staff, William Kristol, who now edits the neo-conservative Weekly Standard and is a frequent commentator on Fox News. Basically, Kristol wrote that the conservative — read Republican — future would require a program that combined "a politics of liberty" and "a sociology of virtue."

That's pretty much what Karl Rove served up in the president's reelection campaign — liberty for the neo-conservative internationalists, who believe that U.S. security requires preemptive war and the extension of democracy on the barrel of a gun; virtue for the traditional-values voters who flocked to the incumbent's cause.

Because our media commentators remain locked in old left-right, liberal-conservative dichotomies, the novelty of all this goes all but unremarked upon. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) may call himself a conservative, but what the House did last Sunday night was something entirely new under the Republican sun.

Kristol is a skilled polemicist, but he also is too intellectually honest not to have laid out where the program he was proposing would inevitably lead. "Our politics should and will be overwhelmingly a politics of liberty," he wrote, "the pursuit of virtue will be primarily a 'sociological' matter; but at the intersection of politics and society — at the family — some judgments must be made…. The politics of liberty and sociology of virtue can be pursued for quite a while before we reach this point, but at some point neither our politics nor our sociology can ultimately be neutral as to the content of the 'laws of Nature and Nature's God.' "

That's neatly put, and it sounds precisely like the result the House majority, the president and the president's brother, the governor of Florida, tried to bring about this week. The problem is that one of the reasons America is the most religious nation in the developed world is that our government never has sought to impose a single "established" notion of virtue. We are agreed, for example, that murder for hire is a crime, but even people of good will and similar backgrounds tend to differ over fairly fundamental questions, such as when life begins or ends.

Consider, for instance, these two conservative Republicans, both of Irish Catholic heritage, reacting to the Schiavo case: Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter and an enthusiast of the Bush revolution, writes, "I don't 'know' that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can't know, but we can 'err on the side of life.' How do the pro-death forces 'know' there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles?"

By contrast, William F. Buckley, a founding father of the modern conservative movement, writes, "There was never a more industrious inquiry, than in the Schiavo case, into the matter of rights formal and inchoate. It is simply wrong, whatever is felt about the eventual abandonment of her by her husband, to use the killing language. She was kept alive for 15 years, underwent a hundred medical ministrations, all of them in service of an abstraction, which was that she wanted to stay alive. There are laws against force-feeding, and no one will know whether, if she had had the means to convey her will in the matter, she too would have said, 'Enough.' "

Small wonder, then, that the polls taken so far appear to show an overwhelming public discomfort with the attempt by the Bush administration and the House majority to determine a result that would define virtue for Theresa Maria Schiavo, her husband and her family.

Schiavo was baptized a Roman Catholic and, though she reportedly did not practice her faith at the time of her collapse, her parents and others have pressed legal appeals asserting that removal of her feeding tube constituted a violation of her religious liberty. But even within the church in which Schiavo was raised, the notions of what constitutes virtuous conduct under these circumstances are in flux.

In paragraph 2,278 of "The Catechism of the Catholic Church," for example, it states: "Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of 'over-zealous' treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient."

Until recently, the provision of water and nutrients by feeding tube has been deemed an "extraordinary measure" by Catholic theologians and medical ethicists. A year ago this month, however, Pope John Paul II, addressing a conference on the ethical implications of treating patients in a persistent vegetative state, made the first papal statement on the matter and said that withdrawal of feeding tubes constituted "euthanasia by omission."

Thus, this week, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, attacked U.S. District Judge James Whittemore's refusal to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted and compared her situation to that of an innocent person sentenced to capital punishment.

That same day, the website maintained by Florida's Catholic bishops posted a list of "themes" to be employed in weighing the Schiavo case. Among them was this: "The Catholic community begins discussion regarding the withdrawal and withholding of artificial nutrition and hydration with a presumption in favor of their provision. However, when the burdens exceed the benefits of providing them, they may be withdrawn or withheld. We note that what is too burdensome for one person may not be too burdensome for another."

So what's a Catholic to think, let alone those of other persuasions who might be curious about the matter?

We asked Father Richard McBrien, the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, to help sort it out, and he said: "The traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, as expressed by Pope Pius XII, by various bishops over the course of many years, and by numerous Catholic moral theologians, is that no one is ever required to use extraordinary means to preserve life. If a feeding tube is the only way that a person in a vegetative state can be kept alive, that is clearly an example of extraordinary means. In this case, the editorial in L'Osservatore Romano deviates from traditional Catholic teaching, while the statement of the Florida bishops is exactly in line with it. For the editorial writer to compare the withdrawal of feeding tubes from Terri Schiavo — or from any other person in similar circumstances — to capital punishment 'of the innocent' is theologically erroneous — and irresponsibly so, given the highly public nature of this controversy."

In other words, like the congressional intervention in the Schiavo case, the Vatican's appraisal — whatever its objective merits — is novel and not traditional, which is to say, innovative rather than conservative.

Tricky business this virtue stuff, particularly when you're trying to determine it for someone else. At the very least, we might all have been better served this week if more people had kept in mind another of the "themes" recommended by the Florida bishops:

"We urge people to refrain from excessive rhetoric and misguided zeal…. There are many unanswered questions in this case, and it is necessary to presume upon the best intentions of all involved until shown otherwise."

http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-et-rutten26mar26,0,2120814.column

OUTSIDE THE BOX - Big deficits make the U.S. less secure

Commentary: Terror attack's grave financial impact

By Robert. D. Hormats
Last Update: 9:25 AM ET March 25, 2005

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The current congressional debate over the federal budget has major security implications.

In an age of terrorism, big budget deficits and heavy dependence on foreign capital constitute a significant source of economic vulnerability -- increasing the chances of financial turmoil in the event of another attack.

Strengthening the country's balance sheet, on the other hand, will make the U.S. economy more resilient, frustrating attempts to undermine it through terrorism.

An attack on the United States now could produce much greater financial disruption than occurred after 9/11. Before 9/11, the federal government enjoyed a large budget surplus. That provided flexibility to mobilize enormous sums for relief and reconstruction, economic stimulus, war in Afghanistan, and homeland defense, with no adverse impact on financial markets. Foreign investor confidence and the dollar remained strong; large amounts of capital continued to flow into the United States.

The next time could be a lot different. Three years of big government deficits and growing debt provide less room in the budget to respond to a new disaster. And U.S. dependence on foreign capital has grown to record levels.

Overseas investors supply the United States with hundreds of billions of dollars annually; in 2004 the federal government relied on foreign central banks and investors to finance over half of its enormous deficit -- and they now hold over 43 percent of all Treasury bonds. Many foreigners already have become skittish about buying more dollar securities; they could become much more so after a new terrorist strike.

And far greater sums could be required to respond to the next attack. Osama bin Laden has made no secret of his desire to undermine the U.S. economy. He has boasted that 9/11 struck the U.S. economy "in the heart," claiming al-Qaida spent only $500,000 while the U.S. lost over $500 billion. His has proclaimed the goal of "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."

Consistent with this, some intelligence experts believe that in the future al-Qaida, or other radical groups bent on terrorism, will deploy weapons of mass economic disruption rather than weapons of mass destruction. A dirty-bomb attack on a major U.S. city might kill fewer people than 9/11 but do a lot more economic damage -- rendering a large portion of that city uninhabitable for decades due to radioactive contamination. That would disrupt sizable parts of the U.S. economy, produce massive job, insurance and business losses as well as precipitate a plunge in investor and consumer confidence. Large numbers of people subsequently could refuse to work or live in any big urban area.

A chemical, radiological or biological attack on a municipal transport system, a major port or a key rail facility would disrupt the U.S. transportation and commuter system -- and hence the overall economy -- for many months. (Some buildings affected by fall 2001's anthrax attacks took more than three years to reopen.)

A radiological attack would have an impact measured in years. In an age of thin inventories and just-in-time deliveries of components and raw materials, such disruptions -- particularly with respect to a larger port such as Long Beach, Calif., or New York/New Jersey would cause massive and prolonged dislocations throughout the entire U.S. supply chain. Regions dependent on fuel passing through the affected facility would be left with critical shortages.

Billions of dollars would be required to respond to the medical crisis and cleanup right after an attack, many more to restore or decontaminate vital infrastructure and still more to re-stimulate the economy. Coupled with a collapse in tax revenues due to a plummeting economy, these costs would cause an already massive budget deficit to swell.

Billions of dollars of foreign capital inflows could quickly dry up. Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan warned last year that the enormous amount of dollars held abroad -- including 70 percent of all foreign central-bank reserves -- constitutes a "concentration risk." He noted that "a diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances must occur at some point."

By increasing the budget deficit and producing economic turmoil, a new attack would elevate fears about holding U.S. dollar assets, potentially triggering a sudden drop in capital inflows or an abrupt withdrawal of funds. That would cause dollar to plummet and interest rates to skyrocket, further damaging an already traumatized economy.

These frightening scenarios are not inevitable. Significantly and steadily reducing the federal deficit would allow more room in the budget for any future emergency. Contingency arrangements with foreign central banks and treasuries to counter disorderly currency and financial markets would lessen the possibility of financial turmoil. And establishing robust local and state programs to ensure a quick response, rapid cleanup and prompt rehabilitation -- all functions that now are badly under funded -- would reduce economic disruption and more promptly restore confidence.

The sounder U.S. finances are, the less the potential for post-attack disorder. That would be a strong deterrent to potential terrorists -- a signal that they cannot produce the economic disruption they seek.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?siteid=mktw&dist=nwtwk&guid=%7B914DA71C%2D7664%2D46A9%2D8352%2D264832358826%7D

GAO TO INVESTIGATE ADMINISTRATION'S RELATIONSHIP WITH COLUMNIST GALLAGHER / PR EXECS UNDETERRED BY FAKE NEWS "FLAP"

GAO TO INVESTIGATE ADMINISTRATION'S RELATIONSHIP WITH COLUMNIST GALLAGHER

The Government Accountability Office will investigate whether the Bush administration violated any laws when it paid columnist Maggie Gallagher to help promote a marriage initiative, according to the Associated Press.

The GAO told Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., who had requested the inquiry, that it would investigate in a letter sent to their offices late Thursday. The GAO already is looking into the Education Department's $240,000 contract with syndicated columnist and TV personality Armstrong Williams, as well as the Bush administration's relationship with several public relations firms. The department had hired Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind law (PL 107-110). The two senators asked the GAO to expand its investigation to include Gallagher, who apologized in January to readers for not disclosing a $21,500 contract with the Health and Human Services Department to help create materials promoting the agency's $300 million initiative to encourage marriage. Gallagher said she was not paid to promote marriage but to write articles and brochures.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The Bush administration is manufacturing propaganda,plain and simple." -- Sen. Frank R. LAUTENBERG, D-N.J., after the Government Accountability Office announced it would investigate the
administration's relationship with columnist Maggie Gallagher.

From: CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE

PR EXECS UNDETERRED BY FAKE NEWS "FLAP"

by John Stauber

This afternoon I listened in on a conference call among some of the top PR execs in the business of producing video news releases (VNRs), more honestly called fake news. I can report they are proud and confident that the recent "flap" on the front page of Sunday's New York Times about the Bush administration's use of fake news will amount to nothing at all. These PR executives are elated that the New York Times piece was about government propaganda, and not about their much more widespread and lucrative production of corporate VNRs, the biggest and richest part of the fake news business.

For the rest of this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3374

Sager/Socolar, " Health Crisis Index Rose 37%, 1987-2003," 3-25 / Taking a Walk on the Supply Side: 10 Steps to Control Health Care Costs

Sager/Socolar, " Health Crisis Index Rose 37%, 1987-2003," 3/25

*"Health Crisis Index Rose 37%, 1987-2003": The report, by Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, directors of the Health Reform Program at the Boston University School of Public Health, constructs a Health Crisis Index by adding health care's share of the U.S. gross domestic product to the percentage of U.S.
residents without health insurance. According to the report, the index increased from 22.5% in 1987 to 30.9% in 2003, and economic recessions were associated with significant increases in health care's share of the economy and the percentage of uninsured. The report's authors say that the data show the
United States has been spending more to cover fewer people, and in a future recession the index likely will hit a ceiling where the United States is politically and economically unable to handle additional increases (Sager/Socolar, " Health Crisis Index Rose 37%, 1987-2003," 3/25).

From: KAISER DAILY HEALTH POLICY REPORT http://www.kaisernetwork.org/

Taking a Walk on the Supply Side: 10 Steps to Control Health Care Costs

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently projected that health care spending will double to $3.6 trillion by 2014, consuming 18.7 percent of the nation's economy. Inflation is expected to add up to 30 percent over the same period. Why does health spending continue to rise at a level that far outpaces inflation? There are as many expert opinions about this as there are experts.

Increases in health expenditures per capita across different countries are actually fairly similar—averaging about 3 percent a year adjusted for overall inflation. So it's likely that the basic drivers are new and better technology—which can at times lower cost but may also improve outcomes at higher cost—and the cost of labor in a service-intensive industry. But the U.S. does have much higher costs than other countries, and we might achieve savings by learning from international experience.

For too long, U.S. employers and policy officials seeking to reduce costs have focused on the "demand side," looking for short-term demonstrable savings, the quick fix. But if we continue to do what is expedient, we will get the same unsatisfactory outcomes: more and more complexity and fragmentation and spending that continues to grow rapidly as a percent of the nation's economy. It is time to devote serious research, demonstration, and policy development to the "supply side" of the health care market—a strategy that has worked in many other countries.

Here are 10 approaches that show promise for reducing health care expenditures. None of these would be easy to implement or painless for those directly affected. Each is a real-world example of what's possible if we put our minds to making changes that not only will save money but, in some cases, will likely save lives as well.

1. Reduce hospitalization of patients with high-cost conditions.

Ten percent of all Americans account for 70 percent of health care costs, or $1.2 trillion in 2005. But many hospitalizations and hospital readmissions could be averted through proper monitoring of patients with chronic conditions. Want some specifics?

Congestive heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalization among Medicare patients. Approximately 20 percent of heart failure patients are readmitted within 30 days of hospital discharge and half are readmitted within a year. But if these patients were given information on self-care, and if their conditions and medications were properly monitored, between one-quarter and one-half of these readmissions could be prevented. One study found that annual health care costs for frail elderly patients could be cut by 36 percent if advanced practice nurses saw patients and their families in the hospital and in their homes. The basic problem is that insurance often fails to cover the services required to achieve these savings. This model of "transitional care" is being tested by Aetna in a Medicare chronic care improvement project. If results are favorable, advanced practice nurses or patient education services for high-risk patients with congestive heart failure should become covered Medicare services, conditional on ongoing monitoring of quality and costs.

Asthma is another condition for which monitoring patients at home can save money. One study found that emergency room use and hospitalization of high-risk asthmatic children could be nearly eliminated with use of a simple handheld computer. The "Asthma Buddy" prompts patients to answer questions about their condition, peak flow rate, and medication use and then uploads this information on a daily basis to a trained medical monitoring team.

Monitoring of certain medications, including anti-coagulant and cholesterol-lowering drugs, can greatly improve patient adherence and long-term outcomes. One study found that, in just one year of pharmacist team monitoring, the number of high-risk patients with controlled cholesterol increased from 53 percent to 84 percent.

Another study finds that, in 2001, a third of diabetes patients were hospitalized two or more times for diabetes or related conditions, including many hospitalizations that could be avoided with better management of chronic care.

2. Reduce variation in charges for patients with similar conditions.

John Wennberg and colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School have found wide variation in Medicare charges for patients with the same condition, largely due to variation in the number of physicians involved, specialty consultations, and lengths of stay in intensive care units. This leads to increased spending, and it needn't be so.

For example, among the 25 Pennsylvania hospitals that treat the greatest number of heart attack patients, total charges for management of this condition vary from $11,000 to more than $88,000. Such variations are too large to be explained by geographic variations in wages or other inputs. There were no statistically significant differences in mortality rates between high-cost and low-cost hospitals. Pennsylvania is one of the few states that posts information on individual hospital charges and mortality rates adjusted for case-mix severity on a public Web site. Other states could and should follow this lead, including an explanation of how charges and outcomes are adjusted for case-mix severity and geographic differences in the cost of providing care.

Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers should pool data on provider charges and patient outcomes, establish median total charges for patients with certain conditions, and set maximum payment caps based on these rates instead of on units of service (e.g., hospital days, physician visits, procedures, or consultations). It makes no sense for insurers to pay widely different rates for comparable care and similar outcomes.

3. Reduce overuse of medical procedures.

There is extensive discussion about over-utilization of health care services, but little attention given to measuring the problem. Treatment for the same condition varies widely among providers, fueling increased costs. There are ways to address this.

Educating patients and including them in health care decisions can reduce overuse of medical treatments that are known to vary widely across the country. Systematically informing patients about risks and benefits of different treatments, such as surgery versus medical management, should be a condition for approval of procedures such as prostate surgery, spinal fusion surgery, bariatric surgery, treatment of gastric esophageal reflux, and end-of-life care. This could be done through patients and doctors' use of medical decision-making tools.

We can also look for efficiencies—and improved care—for patients taking multiple medications. Compared with patients in other countries, Americans are much more likely to be taking four or more prescription drugs. Yet, about one-quarter report that their physicians have never reviewed their complete drug regimen. Systematic and periodic review of medication use for nursing home residents, patients leaving hospitals, as well as patients living at home would reduce over-prescribing and drug interactions.

4. Stop paying for medical errors.

Medicare pays hospitals more when patients experience complications, even if those complications are caused by preventable medical errors such as hospital-acquired infections, falls, or medication errors. These "co-morbidity" adjustments should be eliminated in establishing payment rates. The savings could be substantial.

In one survey, one-fifth of sicker adults reported medical mistakes or medication errors that resulted in serious problems. An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 people die of errors each year. One study estimates that errors on 18 patient safety indicators resulted in excess hospital charges of $9 billion a year.

HealthPartners, a large HMO in Minnesota, has announced that it will stop paying for 27 medical mistakes from a list developed by the nonprofit National Quality Forum. These are mistakes that should never happen, such as surgery on the wrong site or serious harm from contaminated drugs or medication errors. By refusing to pay for "never-should-happen" mistakes, HealthPartners is drawing a largely symbolic line between what is acceptable and what is not. The fact is that these mistakes occur relatively infrequently. Even so, infrequently is too frequent. Refusing payment sends the message to hospitals that there are financial consequences to egregious errors and that they would do well to make systemic changes, such as automated prescription order programs, to ensure patient safety.

5. Negotiate pharmaceutical prices.

Pharmaceutical prices in the U.S. are twice as high as drug prices in many other countries. The U.S. spends over $200 billion a year on prescription drugs. But there are ways to control costs while ensuring access to needed medications.

One study found that if the Medicare program negotiated prices to the same level as other major industrialized countries, the "doughnut hole" or gap in prescription drug benefits for beneficiaries could be filled in completely without additional spending. Other strategies include basing insurance reimbursement on the lowest cost-effective drug, or "reference pricing." However, it should be recognized that there are trade-offs. For example, research and development might be reduced, and pharmaceutical prices in other countries might increase, as prices in the U.S. fall.

6. Standardize insurance products to reduce administrative costs.

Private insurance companies have "overhead" of about 12 to 15 percent of revenues. Simplifying and standardizing private insurance could reduce administrative expenses. Hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers incur major administrative expenses as a result of variations across insurers and public programs in terms of benefits covered, payment regulations, conditions of provider participation, and coverage policies. Standardizing products and promoting common practices across all private and public insurers could save hospital and physician administrative costs.

7. Use evidence-based medicine guidelines to determine when a given test or procedure should be done.

According to a 2002 survey, twice as many coronary angioplasties are performed in the U.S. as in any other country. The U.S. has nearly twice as many MRIs per capita as the median across OECD countries. Establishing and following clinical guidelines for medical procedures and tests could achieve significant savings and promote higher-quality care.

For example, one hospital system implemented clinical guidelines encouraging obstetricians to induce labor after at least 39 weeks rather than earlier. As a result of these and other improvements, total maternal and neonatal variable costs decreased from $1,622 per case in January 2003 to $1,480 in the first half of 2004. This result was $300 better than expected based on historical trends.

8. Ensure that every patient has a regular provider who is responsible for prevention, management of chronic conditions, and coordination of care.

Three-fifths of uninsured patients have no regular doctor, making them much less likely to receive preventive care or have chronic conditions properly managed. About 50 percent of the uninsured receive their usual care from high-cost emergency rooms.

What's more, Americans are more likely to report difficulty in obtaining same-day appointments with physicians than residents of other nations. Emergency room use is associated with inability to obtain same-day appointments.

Many state Medicaid programs have demonstrated savings from primary care case management. Medicare and private insurers should follow this lead and ensure that all enrollees have a regular provider who assumes responsibility for accessibility of care, periodic preventive services, management of chronic conditions, and coordination of care across health care settings. But sometimes it is necessary to spend more to achieve savings, and enhanced payment for primary care may be required to ensure that a team of health professionals dedicated to achieving good outcomes is in place.

9. Reduce duplication.

Lack of care coordination is a pervasive problem in the U.S. health system. In one survey, 22 percent of sicker adults reported having duplicate tests performed by different health professionals. One-quarter of sicker adults reported that test results or medical information were not available when they saw physicians. Often duplicate tests or missing information result from antiquated paper-based information systems.

10. Implement modern information technology.

All of these savings would be easier to achieve if health care providers used modern information systems. Such systems would lower administrative costs, reduce medical errors, and make it easier to retrieve test results and review medications. Electronic medical records could give physicians timely access to complete medical histories, in many cases eliminating the need to hospitalize patients.

An electronic clearinghouse on insurance eligibility and claims would make it easier to establish patients' insurance status and enroll the uninsured in coverage that meets their needs. A multi-payer database on utilization of health care services also would help to ascertain provider quality and efficiency. It could be used to move toward a more competitive system of pricing, reducing the wide variation in payment for the same care.

Combined, these 10 supply-side approaches could generate substantial savings. Some would lower costs and improve care. None would require patients to forgo effective care or incur higher out-of-pocket costs.

These steps would result in changes in the health sector that would likely affect the profitability of the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors. Other steps would reduce incomes of specialist physicians, which might reduce the attractiveness of pursuing medicine as a career. Some changes would eliminate jobs in the health sector and construction industry, as hospitals are downsized or closed rather than renovated or expanded.

It is important that savings be re-deployed to cover the uninsured and improve long-term care to a growing frail elderly population. Consideration should be given to dedicating savings to a Coverage and Value Enhancement Trust Fund to ensure that this happens. Savings also could be invested in information systems, creating high-skill jobs in the health sector and information industry. Primary care physicians and advanced practice nurses who are willing to work with patients to improve health behavior and manage their chronic conditions could be better compensated for their time and results. Roles for nurses, social workers, and other health personnel could be expanded to improve child development screening and services to children with behavioral or developmental problems. Disparities in health status, access, and quality of care could be reduced for minority patients, including provision of language translation services. The net result would be a health system that is more responsive to all Americans, yields fewer errors, improves health, and is accessible to all.

March 2005

http://www.cmwf.org/aboutus/aboutus_show.htm?doc_id=264016

Unintended Consequences of Medical Malpractice Damages Caps

The Pew Charitable Trusts
Project on Medical Liability

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news/news_subpage.cfm?content_item_id=2834&content_type_id=7&page=nr1
An analysis of the efficacy of caps on non-economic damages in medical liability cases shows that awards for non-economic damages pain and suffering, physical impairment, disfigurement, marital losses, anguish, and inconvenience do not significantly and systematically reduce overall awards to plaintiffs. In fact, limiting non-economic damages may be contributing to a rise in economic damage lost wages, medical expenses (past and future), rehabilitation expenses, and other financial costs. Most state caps address the non-economic portion of damages while leaving economic damages uncapped. Conventional wisdom holds that caps on non-economic damages will systematically reduce medical malpractice awards. In an analysis of approximately 550 jury verdicts from 22 states, however, medical malpractice cases in which very large awards were given and often sustained after posttrial and appellate review in states that enforce caps on non-economic damages often include a high component of economic damages.

#9 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

9 Dark energy

It is one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at ever faster speeds. It's an effect still searching for a cause - until then, everyone thought the universe's expansion was slowing down after the big bang. "Theorists are still floundering around, looking for a sensible explanation," says cosmologist Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "We're all hoping that upcoming observations of supernovae, of clusters of galaxies and so on will give us more clues."

One suggestion is that some property of empty space is responsible - cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to pin it down have fallen woefully short. It's also possible that Einstein's theory of general relativity may need to be tweaked when applied to the very largest scales of the universe. "The field is still wide open," Freese says.

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - IRENE PEPPERBERG

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

IRENE PEPPERBERG
Research Scientist, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Author, The Alex Studies

I believe, but can't prove, that human language evolved from a combination of gesture and innate vocalizations, via the concomitant evolution of mirror neurons, and that birds will provide the best model for language evolution.

Work on mirror neurons over the past decade has provided intriguing evidence, although no solid proof, for the gestural origins of speech. What can be called the mirror neuron hypothesis(MNH) suggests that only a small re-organization of the nonhuman primate brain was needed to create the wiring that underlies speech acquisition/learning. What is missing from the MNH is a model of the development of language from speech; it is here that I believe that a model based on avian vocalizations is most valuable.

First, some background. Passerine birds can be divided into two groups: the oscines, who learn their songs, and the sub-oscines, who have a limited number of what seem to be innately-specified songs; the former have a well-defined neural architectures and mechanisms for song acquisition; the latter lack brain structures for song acquisition, although they obviously have brain and vocal tract structures for producing song. The sub-oscines, in parallel with nonhuman primates, often use various activities or gestures (posture, numbers of repetitions of songs, feather erectness, types of flights, etc) to provide additional information about the meaning of their utterances. W. John Smith, for example, can predict a flycatchers actions by the combination of posture, flight, and singing pattern he observes. The songbirds, like human children learning language, will not learn their vocalizations if deafened, and need to hear, babble and practice songs before attaining adult competence; very recent work by Rose et al. demonstrate that even the syntax of their song is learned through early exposure to paired phrases, which are then combined to create the adult vocalizations. Such data, demonstrating how sparrows integrate information about temporally-related events and how they use that information to develop sequential vocal behavior, is a viable model for human syntax acquisition.

Now, no one knows if any birds have any mirror neurons, and how their mirror neurons would function if they did exist; some neural data on responses to self-song provide intriguing hints but go no further. I predict (a) the existence of such neurons in oscines and (b) that such neurons will have a robust role in oscine song development, but (c) that only more primitively-functioning mirror neurons (akin to the differences separating monkey and human MNs) will be found in sub-oscines.

Now, what about the so-called missing link between learned and unlearned vocal behavior? No one has found such a missing link in the primate line. But Donald Kroodsma has recently discovered a flycatcher (a supposedly sub-oscine bird) that apparently learns its song. The song is simple, but has variations among groups of birds that constitute dialects. No one yet knows if these birds have brain mechanisms for song learning, or what these mechanisms might be. But I predict that Kroodsma's flycatchers will have mirror neurons that function in intermediate manner, between those of the oscines and sub-oscines, and will provide a model for the missing link between nonhuman primate and human communication.

The winter 2004-05 issue of the UCAR Quarterly is on line at

http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly

In this issue:

Going to extremes
--A new modeling and statistical tools throw light on the murky realm
of weather extremes and climate change.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/extremes.html

Up close with Caribbean cumulus
--Cool heads prevail in warm-rain study that brings more downpours than
expected.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/rico.html

Face time across the miles
--Virtual meetings come of age with Access Grid, improved webcasts.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/virtual.html

A sabbatical at the foundation
--Mid-career rotations at NSF open eyes, recharge batteries.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/rotation.html

New division directors at NCAR
--Doug Nychka and Greg Holland take reins.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/directors.html

Slick roads meet their match
--NCAR tests new winter safety system near Denver.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/roads.html

President’s Corner - India in 2005 and the legacy of MONEX
--A key question affecting the future of India will be how the monsoons
change as climate changes.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/president.html

Science Bit - Liquid at work on Saturn’s largest moon
--A joint U.S.-European mission to Saturn has delivered striking images
of the planet’s largest moon, Titan.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter04/science.html

UCAR Community Calendar
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/calendar

Scott Bateman - washington gone wild

Mike Lane - persistent vegative state

Sandy Huffaker - big texas grin

Borowitz Report - blame game shocker

REPORTER RETIRES; BLAMES BARRY BONDS

Slugger Pushed Him Over the Edge, Baseball Journalist Says

A journalist who has covered baseball for his entire career called it quits today, blaming San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

Reporter Herb McCaugh, 52, who has written about the sport for the past twenty-three years, said that Bonds' persistent refusal to answer his questions had finally pushed him over the edge.

In an angry, expletive-laden press conference, McCaugh took a parting shot at Bonds, whom he called "the sole reason" for his decision to exit journalism.

"Barry, you wanted me to jump off the bridge, I finally have jumped," he said. "You wanted to bring me down, you've finally brought me and my family down. So now go pick a different person."

McCaugh said that Mr. Bonds' stubborn refusal to answer his questions made the reporter's children an object of scorn and derision at their school.

"For years, kids have teased my kids, asking them, 'How come your daddy couldn't get a comment out of Barry Bonds?'" McCaugh bitterly recalled. "Well, Barry, those days are now officially over. All I can say is, I hope you're happy now."

Reached in Scottsdale, Arizona, Bonds told reporters, "I've followed Herb McCaugh's career from the beginning and it's always the same pattern - whenever things get a little tough, blame Barry Bonds."

Told of Bonds' comments, McCaugh responded, "I can't believe it -- now that I've retired, he finally starts talking."

Elsewhere, the CIA said that it intercepted "terrifying chatter" which later turned out to be TV host Pat O'Brien.

Borowitzreport.com

Bush Abstinence Plan Pushes 'Virgin Birth'

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/

In his 2006 budget, President Bush is proposing a significant increase in spending on education funding, including curricula that teach teenagers about 'virgin births' or 'immaculate conception' as a cause of pregnancy. The curricula change is a major victory for social conservatives, who have pushed for years to get so-called miraculous gestation included in high-school health text books.
(3/24/2005)

Radical Republicans are reaching for absolute power to appoint Supreme Court justices

Dear MoveOn member,

Radical Republicans are reaching for absolute power to appoint Supreme Court justices who favor corporate and extreme-right interests over the rest of us - and we only have a few weeks to stop them.

Their plan is to throw out 200 years of checks and balances in the Senate, by silencing the minority party for the first time in American history. It's a maneuver so outrageous that even Republicans call it the "nuclear option." It will take 51 senators to defeat them, and the vote is probably less than a month away.

The Republican leadership is working overtime to keep their plan out of sight, because they know most Americans oppose their bid for absolute power. To fight back, we need to expose them on the nation's editorial pages, and demand that our senators stand up against one party rule.

The next week is critical. All our senators will be home and paying close attention to the local press. Moderate Republican and Democratic senators will be looking this week to see where their constituents stand - and letters to the editor are one of the most powerful ways to show them that we are ready to fight.

We've set up an online tool that makes submitting a letter easy. We provide you with talking points and a list of local outlets. You write your letter, choose where you want it to go, and click to send. Please take a few minutes to write your letter today:

http://www.moveonpac.org/lte?lte_campaign_id=19&id=5265-5514896-wJxEedpgF.CMmJQLHnLjHA&t=1
To make sure our voice is heard at this critical time, we've set a goal of submitting at least one letter to 1,000 separate newspapers nation-wide. We've put up a counter so you can track our progress.

An effective letter to the editor is short, just a couple of paragraphs. You don't have to be an expert. On the contrary, the goal is to show your local media, your neighbors, and your Senators that millions of ordinary citizens oppose the radical Republican grab for absolute power.

Especially while each Senator is back in their home state, their staff will thoroughly search the local and national press for letters from their constituents. For each letter they read, they know there are many other voters who feel the same way. This is an important chance for each one of us to make a huge impact.

Please take a few minutes to write a letter today:

http://www.moveonpac.org/lte?lte_campaign_id=19&id=5265-5514896-wJxEedpgF.CMmJQLHnLjHA&t=2

The "nuclear option" calls for Dick Cheney to use a parliamentary trick to overturn the 200-year-old right to filibuster judicial nominations. A filibuster is simply the right of a group of at least 41 concerned senators to extend debate and delay controversial votes. If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist can twist enough arms to get 51 votes in support of Cheney's ruling, the minority party will be completely silenced for the first time ever.

Below are some important points we've compiled to help get you started on your letter:

Radical Republicans want absolute power to appoint Supreme Court justices that will favor corporate interests and the extreme right over the rest of us.
To get it, they plan to use a parliamentary trick they call the "nuclear option" to overturn 200 years of bipartisan checks and balances that have kept the courts fair for centuries.
After eliminating the right to filibuster, Bush and the Republicans would have absolute, unchecked power over all three branches of the federal government for the first time in American history.
While the "nuclear option" is likely to come up in a fight over an Appeals Court nominee, make no mistake - the real targets here are the 4 Supreme Court seats likely to turn over in the next 4 years.
Republicans have taken millions of dollars from their corporate backers. Now as payback, they're trying to force through judges who will favor those same corporate interests by overturning laws protecting the environment, civil rights, and workers -- laws these companies have been trying to get rid of for years.
To write, address, and send your letter online, just click here:

http://www.moveonpac.org/lte?lte_campaign_id=19&id=5265-5514896-wJxEedpgF.CMmJQLHnLjHA

Thanks to your hard work, the momentum is on our side. Hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members have signed our petition for fair courts. Thousands of us have joined together in local teams to protect the courts, reaching out neighbor to neighbor to generate almost 40,000 phone calls for last week's national call in day. This week, MoveOn members raised a whopping $350,000 (blowing away our initial goal of $250,000) so we can run ads against the "nuclear option" in national and local markets.

To win, we need to show enough national suport to secure the votes of 51 broad-minded senators from both parties. Together, we can do exactly that.

Thanks for all that you do,

--Ben Brandzel, Eli Pariser, and the whole MoveOn PAC Team

March 24, 2005

PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Taxpayers' Bill of Rights is pushed beyond Colorado

Thursday, March 17, 2005

By Kathleen Hunter, Stateline.org Staff Writer

Colorado's 13-year-old experiment with writing strict tax and spending limits into its state Constitution is running into trouble at the same time its governor and anti-tax activists are trying to sell the idea to other states.

The groundbreaking Taxpayers' Bill of Rights written into Colorado's Constitution is putting the state in the strange position of facing a $234 million budget shortfall over the next two years - at the same time it must refund $345 million to state taxpayers.

The budget squeeze is pushing Colorado Gov. Bill Owens (R) and legislators to recommend softening the strict tax and budget rules dictated by what's commonly referred to as a TABOR amendment. But that snag hasn't stopped Owens from personally visiting Kansas and touting the merits of TABOR amendments to control government growth.

The measure - promoted by several nationwide anti-tax groups, namely the Americans for Prosperity Foundation -- is introduced for consideration in 16 states, with the best chances for passage in Arizona, California, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon and Wisconsin.

Colorado's TABOR amendment since 1992 has constitutionally limited increases in state revenue to population growth plus inflation. Excess revenue is refunded to taxpayers. Colorado also limits annual increases in the state operating budget to 6 percent.

The measure was intended to pace the growth of state government with the economy but has had the unintended consequence of actually shrinking Colorado state government relative to the economy.

For the first time this year, TABOR is forcing the state to reduce spending at the same time that it is refunding revenue to taxpayers - a counter-intuitive predicament largely resulting from the national economic crash that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that led to the worst budget crises in the 50 states since World War II.

Fallout from the economic decline included a 16 percent drop in state revenues in Colorado from 2001 to 2003, resetting the base from which TABOR's refund mechanism is triggered so low that some question whether the state can ever dig itself out of the hole.

Budget experts predict $1 billion will be funneled back to Colorado taxpayers between fiscal 2005 and fiscal 2008.

"It amounts to an annual tax cut," said Brad Young, a former Republican member of the Colorado House who chaired the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee. "Taxes are never low enough. ... The next step is you have to go to a vote of the people and ask to regain some of the money."

Owens, an ardent TABOR supporter, and state legislators already have begun floating proposals this year to relax the limits TABOR sets on revenue and to constrain the spending increases for education mandated by a separate constitutional amendment passed in 2000 that requires annual increases in state spending for K-12 education, the largest chunk of the state budget.

The Colorado House of Representatives has passed a proposal that would suspend TABOR refunds for 10 years in exchange for a slight decrease in the state income tax rate. The plan now goes to the state Senate for consideration. Even the business community, which originally supported the revenue limits, has come out in favor of a TABOR fix.

Legislators in 16 other states, meanwhile, are considering amending their state constitutions to also cap revenue growth at the rate of population growth plus inflation, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C., group that focuses on policies that affect the poor.

The states considering TABOR-like amendments this year are Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Twenty-seven states already place some sort of ceiling on revenue or spending, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

TABOR supporters, including Colorado's governor, claim that the measure has succeeded in limiting the growth of government and preventing tax increases. Without TABOR, Colorado state government would have grown much more during the economic boom of the 1990s -- as happened in many other states - and it would have been much more difficult for the state to cope with the economic downturn that began in 2001.

TABOR triggered the return of about $2.8 billion to state taxpayers from 1997 to 2001 -- refunds that have been hailed by the measure's supporters.

Opponents of TABOR say that political and market forces serve as an adequate check on state governments' growth and that formulaic limits that fail to account for economic fluctuations, rising health care costs and other demands paralyze future state lawmakers.

"Each legislature faces different problems and ought to be able to make judgments as to how to deal with those problems," said Iris Lav, deputy director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Because K-12 education and Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for 53 million poor and disabled Americans, make up two-thirds of Colorado's budget, state officials are extremely constrained as to where they can make cuts.

Young predicts that a growing number of constitutional amendments will be introduced in Colorado to protect various state programs, in addition to K-12 education, as special interests clamor to secure the remaining slivers of the funding pie.

"It leads to direct democracy over the budget," he said.

Send your comments on this story to letters@stateline.org. Selected reader feedback will be posted in the Letters to the editor section.

Contact Kathleen Hunter at khunter@stateline.org.

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=19214

Why Schiavo's Parents Didn't Have a Case

March 25, 2005

COMMENTARY

By Andrew Cohen, Andrew Cohen is CBS News' legal analyst.

Terri Schiavo's parents did not lose their federal case because they didn't try hard enough. They didn't lose their case because everyone conspired against them. They didn't lose it because Congress ticked off the judiciary over the weekend with its over-the-top custom-made legislation. They didn't lose it for lack of money or because they failed to file a court paper on time. They didn't lose it because the laws are unfair or because bureaucrats sometimes can be arbitrary and capricious.

The Schindlers lost their case and their cause — and soon probably their daughter — because in the end they were making claims the legal system has never been able or willing to recognize. They lost because they long ago ran out of good arguments to make — those arguments having been reasonably rejected by state judge after judge — and thus were left with only lame ones. And they lost because in every case someone has to win and someone has to lose. That's the way it works in our system of government. It isn't pretty, and sometimes it's unfair. But it's reality.

Especially during this final round of review, orchestrated by Congress' extraordinary attempt at a "do-over" for the couple, Schiavo's parents lost appeal after appeal specifically because they were asking the federal courts to declare that their constitutional rights had been violated by the Florida state court rulings in the case. They were arguing, in other words, thanks in part to their custom-made congressional legislation, that the federal Constitution gave them the right as losers in state court to get a new, full-blown trial in federal court.

If you ponder that notion you will realize just how astounding it is. If accepted, it would have meant the end of state courts as we know them. No decision at the state level ever would be final, because every losing litigant at the state court level would be able to walk into federal court and declare a federal constitutional violation. State court trials thus would become like practice sessions and the federal courts, which are supposed to be of "limited jurisdiction," resolving only certain kinds of disputes, would become free-for-alls.

It's true that there are many federal claims that run concurrent with state law. And sometimes, in rare cases, it is necessary for the federal courts to look behind the curtain of a state court ruling. And sometimes it is required. In capital cases, for example, the law requires a federal review of a state court death penalty conviction. In such cases, the government is seeking to kill someone on behalf of the people. In the Schiavo case, a private guardian (a husband) was seeking permission to fulfill his wife's wishes, as determined by the state court of Florida. Yes, there is a difference, one that has been recognized in law and tradition.

If we were to open the doors of federal courts to every losing side in a guardianship case, or a child custody case, or any other matter traditionally left to state courts, we would be changing the very nature of the balance between federal power and states' rights. And we would be doing so at the request of politicians who have spent a generation trumpeting states' rights over the intrusion of federal power.

So how has the federal judiciary reacted to this terrible idea? Predictably, those judges haven't been crazy about it. The federal trial judge in this latest case, U.S. District Judge James D. Whittemore, specifically rejected it. The argument by Schiavo's parents, he wrote, "effectively ignores the role of the presiding judge as judicial fact-finder and decision-maker under the Florida statutory scheme …. [Michael Schiavo] is correct that no federal constitutional right is implicated when a judge merely grants relief to a litigant in accordance with the law he is sworn to uphold and follow."

It is no wonder that the federal appeals court refused to reverse Whittemore's ruling. And it is no wonder that the conservative U.S. Supreme Court decided for a fourth time to stay out of the case. This harsh reality won't make it any easier for the Schindlers, but government cannot run on passion or emotion or sympathy. As the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: "There is no denying the absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo…. In the end, and no matter how much we wish Mrs. Schiavo had never suffered such a horrible accident, we are a nation of laws."

I don't blame the Schindlers and their lawyers for coming up with any and every argument they could think of. Grief expresses itself in many ways. By refusing to accept the Florida court decisions, Congress and the White House enabled this grief, falsely encouraged it and then used it, and the Schindlers, for political purposes. The federal courts, on the other hand, by refusing to change the Constitution for one family, acknowledged this grief and tried to deal with it as humanely as possible while still providing the finality that our legal system provides and that our society needs.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cohen25mar25.story

SOCIAL SECURITY - Little Change in Social Security Solvency

News Release

http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/trustee05-pr.htm
Little Change in Social Security Solvency
Trustees Recommend Timely Action

The 2005 Social Security Trustees Report shows little change in the
projected financial status of the Social Security program over last
year. The Trustees Report projects that the Social Security Trust
Fund will be exhausted in 2041 - one year sooner than last year's
projection. The Trustees recommend that projected trust fund deficits
be addressed in a timely way to allow for gradual changes and advance
notice to workers.

In the 2005 Annual Report to Congress, the Trustees announced:

o The projected point at which tax revenues will fall below program
costs comes in 2017 – one year earlier than the projection in last
year's report.

o The projected point at which the Trust Funds will be exhausted
comes in 2041 – also one year earlier than the projection in last
year's report.

o The projected actuarial deficit over the 75-year long-range period
is 1.92 percent of taxable payroll, slightly higher than the estimate
in last year's report and the same as in the 2003 Trustees Report.

o Over the 75-year period, the Trust Funds require additional revenue
equivalent to $4.0 trillion in today's dollars to pay all scheduled
benefits. This unfunded obligation is $300 billion higher than the
amount estimated last year.

"For nearly 70 years, Social Security has provided financial security
to American workers and their families," said Jo Anne Barnhart,
Commissioner of Social Security. "Our grandparents and parents were
confident that Social Security would be there for them. Current
retirees and near retirees can be just as confident. But for our
children and grandchildren, unless changes are made, this report
shows that their promised benefits are not secure. I am confident
that by coming together in a bipartisan way we can ensure that Social
Security continues to provide financial security for future
generations."

Other highlights of the Trustees Report include:

o Income to the combined Old-Age and Survivors, and Disability
Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds amounted to $658 billion in 2004.

o During the year, an estimated 157 million people had earnings
covered by Social Security and paid payroll taxes.

o The Trust Funds paid benefits of more than $493 billion in calendar
year 2004. There were 48 million beneficiaries at the end of the
calendar year.

o The cost of $4.5 billion to administer the program in 2004 was a
very low 0.9 percent of total expenditures.

o Total expenditures from the combined OASDI Trust Funds amounted to
$502 billion in 2004.

o The assets of the combined OASDI Trust Funds increased by $156
billion in 2004 to a total of $1.7 trillion.

o Interest earned on the invested assets of the combined Trust Funds
was $89 billion in 2004. The combined Trust Fund assets earned
interest at an effective annual rate of 5.7 percent.

o The changes in key dates for the combined Trust Funds are due to
updated economic data from last year's report.

The Board of Trustees is comprised of six members. Four serve by
virtue of their positions with the federal government: John W. Snow,
Secretary of the Treasury and Managing Trustee; Jo Anne Barnhart,
Commissioner of Social Security; Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary of
Health and Human Services; and Elaine L. Chao, Secretary of Labor.
The other two members, appointed by the President and confirmed by
the Senate, are John L. Palmer and Thomas R. Saving.

The 2005 Trustees Report is posted at
www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TR/TR05/index.html.

# # #

Note: Copies of most SSA press releases, as well as other Social
Security information and statistics,
are available at SSA's Internet site, Social Security Online, at

http://www.socialsecurity.gov.

Also look there for information on subscribing to SSA's
free electronic newsletter, Social Security eNews.

UNCOVERING THE ARCHITECT OF THE HOLOCAUST: THE CIA NAMES FILE ON ADOLF EICHMANN

National Security Archive Update, March 24, 2005

UNCOVERING THE ARCHITECT OF THE HOLOCAUST:
THE CIA NAMES FILE ON ADOLF EICHMANN

CIA Surprised by Adolf Eichmann Capture in 1960,
File Review Uncovered Eichmann Ties to CIA Assets

National Security Archive Posts CIA Names File on Adolf Eichmann
Released Under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act

For more information contact:
Tamara Feinstein - 202/994-7000

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington D.C., March 24, 2005 - The CIA was surprised by Israeli
agents' capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960,
and a subsequent CIA file review uncovered extensive ties between
Eichmann and men who served as CIA assets and allies, according to the CIA's
three-volume Directorate of Operations file and their Directorate of
Intelligence file, posted today by the National Security Archive at
George Washington University.

Obersturmbannfuhrer (Lt. Col.) Eichmann was originally a member of the
SD (Sicherheitsdienst or Security Service ), and went on to head
Gestapo Section IV B4 (responsible for Jewish affairs) where he helped plan
and implement the Holocaust. Eichmann was captured at the end of World
War II by allied forces, but managed to escape the internment camp where
he was confined in 1946. On May 2, 1960, Eichmann was apprehended by
Israeli secret agents in Argentina - where he had been hiding under an
assumed name - and smuggled back to Israel to stand trial for his crimes.
After a highly publicized trial in 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to
death and executed in 1962.

The 289-document names file on Eichmann was compiled by the CIA in
response to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. It is one of 788 names and
subject files released to the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial
Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG). The CIA names and
subject files total close to 60,000 pages, all of which are available to
the public at the National Archives and Record Administration in College
Park, Maryland. The names files are unique because they contain
post-war operational files from the CIA which are normally exempt from review
under the FOIA. (The National Security Archive has previously posted
names files on Reinhard Gehlen and Adolf Hitler.)

The Eichmann names file reveals CIA attempts to locate relevant
documents among captured German records, files in the Berlin Document Center
in Germany, and other sources like the International Tracing Service. To
help strengthen the close ties between the CIA and Israel's
intelligence agencies, the Counterintelligence Staff at the Directorate of
Operations (headed by James Angleton) combed through the archives and
submitted for further research other German officers names that were mentioned
in the Eichmann documents. The consequence was the discovery that some
of those linked to Eichmann also had ties to the CIA and the
CIA-sponsored West German intelligence service (BND).

Click on the link below to view documents from the CIA's Adolf Eichmann
names file:

http://www.nsarchive.org

AMERICANS STILL BELIEVE BUSH'S WAR PROPAGANDA

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=582744

This weekend is the second anniversary of the U.S. attack on Iraq.

The latest ABC News and Washington Post poll of public opinion shows that most Americans still believe, incorrectly of course, that Saddam's Iraq supported the 9/11 terrorists and had weapons of mass destruction. Interestingly, the poll's own analysis tries to downplay the significance of its findings, saying, "Most Americans favored overthrowing Saddam years earlier, long before al Qaeda became broadly known." Oh really? As we document in Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, the war could never have been sold to the American people had ABC, the Washington Post, and the rest of the mainstream media done their job of exposing the false claims of the Bush administration. Instead, they echoed those claims and censored and ignored critics of the war.

SOURCE: ABC News, March 15, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3376

#8 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

8 The Pioneer anomaly

THIS is a tale of two spacecraft. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972; Pioneer 11 a year later. By now both craft should be drifting off into deep space with no one watching. However, their trajectories have proved far too fascinating to ignore.

That's because something has been pulling - or pushing - on them, causing them to speed up. The resulting acceleration is tiny, less than a nanometre per second per second. That's equivalent to just one ten-billionth of the gravity at Earth's surface, but it is enough to have shifted Pioneer 10 some 400,000 kilometres off track. NASA lost touch with Pioneer 11 in 1995, but up to that point it was experiencing exactly the same deviation as its sister probe. So what is causing it?

Nobody knows. Some possible explanations have already been ruled out, including software errors, the solar wind or a fuel leak. If the cause is some gravitational effect, it is not one we know anything about. In fact, physicists are so completely at a loss that some have resorted to linking this mystery with other inexplicable phenomena.

Bruce Bassett of the University of Portsmouth, UK, has suggested that the Pioneer conundrum might have something to do with variations in alpha, the fine structure constant (see "Not so constant constants", page 37). Others have talked about it as arising from dark matter - but since we don't know what dark matter is, that doesn't help much either. "This is all so maddeningly intriguing," says Michael Martin Nieto of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "We only have proposals, none of which has been demonstrated."

Nieto has called for a new analysis of the early trajectory data from the craft, which he says might yield fresh clues. But to get to the bottom of the problem what scientists really need is a mission designed specifically to test unusual gravitational effects in the outer reaches of the solar system. Such a probe would cost between $300 million and $500 million and could piggyback on a future mission to the outer reaches of the solar system (www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0411077).

"An explanation will be found eventually," Nieto says. "Of course I hope it is due to new physics - how stupendous that would be. But once a physicist starts working on the basis of hope he is heading for a fall." Disappointing as it may seem, Nieto thinks the explanation for the Pioneer anomaly will eventually be found in some mundane effect, such as an unnoticed source of heat on board the craft.

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - JESSE BERING

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

JESSE BERING
Psychologist, University of Arkansas

In 1936, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the moribund philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, author of the classic existential text Tragic Sense of Life, died alone in his office of heart failure at the age of 72.

Unamuno was no religious sentimentalist. As a rector and Professor of Greek at the University of Salamanca, he was an advocate of rationalist ideals and even died a folk hero for openly denouncing Francisco Franco's fascist regime. He was, however, ridden with a 'spiritual' burden that troubled him nearly all his life. It was the problem of death. Specifically, the problem was his own death, and what, subjectively, it would be "like" for him after his own death: "The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness." I've taken to calling this dilemma "Unamuno's paradox" because I believe that it is a universal problem. It is, quite simply, the materialist understanding that consciousness is snuffed out by death coming into conflict with the human inability to simulate the psychological state of death.

Of course, adopting a parsimonious stance allows one to easily deduce that we as corpses cannot experience mental states, but this theoretical proposition can only be justified by a working scientific knowledge (i.e., that the non-functioning brain is directly equivalent to the cessation of the mind). By stating that psychological states survive death, or even alluding to this possibility, one is committing oneself to a radical form of mind-body dualism. Consider how bizarre it truly is: Death is seen as a transitional event that unbuckles the body from its ephemeral soul, the soul being the conscious personality of the decedent and the once animating force of the now inert physical form. This dualistic view sees the self as being initially contained in bodily mass, as motivating overt action during this occupancy, and as exiting or taking leave of the body at some point after its biological expiration. So what, exactly, does the brain do if mental activities can exist independently of the brain? After all, as John Dewey put it, mind is a verb, not a noun.

And yet this radicalism is especially common. In the United States alone, as much as 95% of the population reportedly believes in life after death. How can so many people be wrong? Quite easily, if you consider that we're all operating with the same standard, blemished psychological hardware. It's tempting to argue, as Freud did, that it's just people's desire for an afterlife that's behind it all. But it would be a mistake to leave it at that. Although there is convincing evidence showing that emotive factors can be powerful contributors to people's belief in life after death, whatever one's motivations for rejecting or endorsing the idea of an immaterial soul that can defy physical death, the ability to form any opinion on the matter would be absent if not for our species' expertise at differentiating unobservable minds from observable bodies.

But here's the rub. The materialist version of death is the ultimate killjoy null hypothesis. The epistemological problem of knowing what it is "like" to be dead can never be resolved. Nevertheless, I think that Unamuno would be proud of recent scientific attempts to address the mechanics of his paradox. In a recent study, for example, I reported that when adult participants were asked to reason about the psychological abilities of a protagonist who had just died in an automobile accident, even participants who later classified themselves as "extinctivists" (i.e., those who endorsed the statement "what we think of as the 'soul,' or conscious personality of a person, ceases permanently when the body dies") nevertheless stated that the dead person knew that he was dead. For example, when asked whether the dead protagonist knew that he was dead (a feat demanding, of course, ongoing cognitive abilities), one young extinctivist's answer was almost comical. "Yeah, he'd know, because I don't believe in the afterlife. It is non-existent; he sees that now." Try hard as he might to be a good materialist, this subject couldn't help but be a dualist.

How do I explain these findings? Like reasoning about one's past mental states during dreamless sleep or while in other somnambulistic states, consciously representing a final state of non-consciousness poses formidable, if not impassable, cognitive constraints. By relying on simulation strategies to derive information about the minds of dead agents, you would in principle be compelled to "put yourself into the shoes" of such organisms, which is of course an impossible task. These constraints may lead to a number of telltale errors, namely Type I errors (inferring mental states when in fact there are none), regarding the psychological status of dead agents. Several decades ago, the developmental psychologist Gerald Koocher described, for instance, how a group of children tested on death comprehension reflected on what it might be like to be dead "with references to sleeping, feeling 'peaceful,' or simply 'being very dizzy.'" More recently, my colleague David Bjorklund and I found evidence that younger children are more likely to attribute mental states to a dead agent than are older children, which is precisely the opposite pattern that one would expect to find if the origins of such beliefs could be traced exclusively to cultural learning.

It seems that the default cognitive stance is reasoning that human minds are immortal; the steady accretion of scientific facts may throw off this stance a bit, but, as Unamuno found out, even science cannot answer the "big" question. Don't get me wrong. Like Unamuno, I don't believe in the afterlife. Recent findings have led me to believe that it's all a cognitive illusion churned up by a psychological system specially designed to think about unobservable minds. The soul is distinctly human all right. Without our evolved capacity to reason about minds, the soul would never have been. But in this case, the proof isn't in the empirical pudding. It can't be. It's death we're talking about, after all.

Ted Rall - allow to die

Matt Davies - culture of life

Kevin Siers - economic development

Borowitz Report - bearish shocker

IN BEARISH SIGN, GREENSPAN RUNS OUT ON CHECK AT SIZZLER
Analysts See Fed Chief's Move Signaling Troubled Economy

The stock market, which has been trading sideways for months amid soaring oil prices and bulging budget deficits, received another body-blow today when it was revealed that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan ran out of a Sizzler restaurant in Secaucus, New Jersey Wednesday night without paying.

Greenspan, who had dined early in the evening to take advantage of the Sizzler's Early Bird Meal Deal, ate a large dinner consisting of potato skins and Hibachi Chicken, followed by several visits to the restaurant's tempting Sundae Bar, according to Shondra McMullen, the waitress who served him.

"When I was adding up his check, he started telling me about inflationary pressures and the real estate bubble and all, and I guess I kind of nodded off," Ms. McMullen said. "And when I woke up, the old guy was gone."

On Wall Street, market-watchers indicated that every time Mr. Greenspan has "dined and dashed" in the past, the stock market has fallen into a bearish swoon.

"I remember right before the market crash of '87, Greenspan ran out on the check at an Outback Steakhouse," said Dexter Tolan of Credit Suisse First Boston.

In an attempt to calm the markets, Mr. Greenspan released a statement today indicating that the economy was fundamentally sound and denying that he had pocketed a dozen ketchup packets at KFC.

Elsewhere, a new survey in Britain showed that fifty percent of those polled think Camilla Parker Bowles should get the title of Queen while another fifty percent think the title should go to Elton John.

Borowitzreport.com

Bush Uncensored: President Tries Out New, Less Scripted Speaking Style

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/

In an effort to defuse critics who've accused his administration of trying to manage the news, President Bush is planning to debut a new, more relaxed speaking style. Eschewing teleprompters and talking points for a sincere, off-the-cuff approach, Mr. Bush is hoping to win over the American people to his second term agenda by speaking from the heart.
(3/23/2005)

Petition to Congress to tell them they must stop using one person's tragedy for their own political gain

Dear MoveOn member,

On Sunday, Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, the Republican congressional leaders, convened an emergency meeting of Congress to pass a bill that that interferes with the Terri Schiavo tragedy. And although in five years no other issue has prompted President Bush to return to Washington during a vacation—including the tsunami—Bush flew back from his ranch in Texas to sign it.[1]

Bush, Frist, and DeLay claim that they're acting out of concern for Ms. Schiavo. But a memo intended only for Republican Senators—uncovered by ABC News—reveals Republicans' true concern: "The pro-life base will be excited...this is a great political issue...this is a tough issue for Democrats."[2] This story also takes the heat off Tom DeLay, who is facing a number of serious ethics charges and legal scandals.[3]

Americans can have different personal opinions about what should happen to Terri Schiavo—life is precious, and this case raises some important ethical questions. But we can all agree that that's what the courts are for: to make the call in difficult circumstances. That's why Congress' interference is such an ugly and shameful incident of political grandstanding. There's no legislative purpose here, just a blatant attempt to play politics with someone's life.

We need to tell the Republican leaders in Congress that this kind of pandering and demagoguery will not stand. Will you sign our urgent petition to Congress to tell them they must stop using one person's tragedy for their own political gain, and move on to the important business facing our country?

Sign now at:

http://www.moveonpac.org/grandstanding/?id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw
Even many right-wing activists are concerned about Congress's interference in this case. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizi told the L.A. Times, "It becomes a more crystallized proof point that we are no longer the party of smaller government. We have become a party of 'It doesn't matter what size the government is as long as it is imposing our set of values.'"[4]

The New York Times talked to David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization, who said, "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."[5]

Medical ethicists are also outraged at the armchair diagnoses of Republican doctors in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. As the Associated Press reported:

"It's disturbing that doctors who would never venture a comment about the health of anybody from a homemade video are sitting on the floor of Congress making declarations," said Art Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine. "My own impression, from a distance, is that they've subverted what they know to be good medicine for the aim of achieving a political goal."[6]

And reporters are now raising questions about a right-to-die law Bush signed as Texas governor, contradicting his position in the Schiavo case. Just last week, the law was applied for the first time, allowing doctors to remove a critically ill infant from life support against his mother's wishes. According to the Houston Chronicle, this marks the first time in American history that courts allowed a pediatric patient to die against the wishes of their parent.[7] As the Knight Ridder News service reports:

"The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head," said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University's Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. "This does appear to be a contradiction." Brody said that, in taking up the Schiavo case, Bush and Congress had shattered a body of bioethics law and practice."[8]

It's time to speak up about this kind of political posturing, and ask Congress to get back to work. Can you sign our petition to Republican leaders in Congress to stop grandstanding on the Schiavo tragedy?

http://www.moveonpac.org/grandstanding/?id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw
A large majority of the American public agree that Congress was wrong to interfere in the Schiavo case, and less than a quarter believe Congress acted out of real concern about Schiavo's life, according to an ABC poll.[9] And the nation's editorial boards agree. Check out this sampling from many of the nation's papers, compiled by the National Journal's Hotline:

"The U.S. legal system is not supposed to be one of legislative 'do-overs... Lawmakers may believe that they acted this weekend to save a life, but they also took a step that diminishes the rule of law" (Washington Post, 3/22).

"When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they devoted the largest section to spelling out the powers of Congress. Nowhere did they include the right to play doctor. Terri Schiavo's story is tragic enough without political malpractice" (USA Today, 3/22).

"The Bush administration and the current Congressional leadership like to wax eloquent about states' rights. But they dropped those principles in their rush to stampede over the Florida courts and Legislature...It may be a formula for short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and protect a great republic" (New York Times, 3/22).

"Congress' unwarranted and brash effort to seize judicial power in the case of Terri Schiavo is shameful truly a low point in its recent history" (Kennebec Journal, 3/22).

"What has happened here is that the GOP, famously the party favoring limited government intervention into people's personal lives, has inserted the federal government squarely in the middle of an incredibly personal medical issue. And they've done it all in the name of making sure that some of their core voters stay with them" (Athens Banner-Herald, 3/22).

"Terri Schiavo has the right to die ... Congress and President Bush should be ashamed for prolonging the suffering and trying to legislate what is clearly the authority of the courts to adjudicate" (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 3/22).

"Coming at a time when crucial health care services are being slashed, it is particularly upsetting to see this kind of expensive grandstanding on the part of congressional Republicans over one high-profile case. This is not compassion: This is cold-blooded political calculation" (Charleston Gazette, 3/22).

"One by one, the bedrock conservative convictions of the national Republican Party are giving way...yielding to the demands of a raucous religious right that has become the Republicans' most reliable electoral base" (Trenton Times, 3/22).

"Washington's empathy for Schiavo centers on vying for political points, not merely concern for one family's personal, medical plight. That makes this unwise intervention by elected officials even more distasteful" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/22).

"To have the legislative and executive branches of the federal government mobilize on a Sunday as fast as if we'd declared war in order to intervene in a family's medical dispute is, frankly, frightening. It's an unprecedented intrusion by the highest echelons of federal power into a private hospital room. It's dangerous. And more than a little Orwellian" (Augusta Chronicle, 3/22).
Let's tell Tom DeLay and Bill Frist to get back to business. Please join us by signing the petition at the link below, and sending this message on to your friends and family.

http://www.moveonpac.org/grandstanding/?id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw

Together, we can restore some common sense to a Congress that's out of control.

Sincerely,

--Eli Pariser and the whole MoveOn PAC Team
March 23rd, 2005
Footnotes:

1. Schiavo case exposes political divide in U.S., Reuters AlertNet
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N21351168.htm

2. GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Schiavo/story?id=600937

3. DeLay Under Fire Over Ethics, Associated Press
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=667&id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw

4. Some in GOP Fear Effort May Alienate Voters, L.A. Times
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=668&id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw

5. G.O.P. Right Is Splintered on Schiavo Intervention, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/politics/23repubs.html

6. Physicians in Congress criticized, Associated Press
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7263055/

7. Baby dies after hospital removes breathing tube, Houston Chronicle
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=669&id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw

8. Law Bush signed prompts cries of hypocrisy, Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=670&id=5254-5514896-FIGRYwd4hdOIXFiyIjQzlw

9. ABC News poll
http://www.pollingreport.com/news.htm

PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Uncensored version DeLay’s speech to the Family Research Council on Friday.

And so it’s bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position.

And let me just finish with this: This is exactly the issue that’s going on in America. That attacks against the conservative movement, against me, and against many others. The point is, it’s, the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement. And that is to go after people, personally charge them with frivolous charges, and link that up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only and that’s to destroy the conservative movement. It’s to destroy conservative leaders and it’s, uh, not just in elected office but leading. I mean Ed Feulner, today at the Heritage Foundation, was under attack in the National Journal. I mean they, they, this is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in, and, and you need to look at this and what’s going on and participate in fighting back.

Don’t, you know, the one way they stopped churches from getting into politics was Lyndon Johnson, who passed a law that said you couldn’t get in politics or you’re going to lose your tax exempt status because they were all opposed to him when he was running for president. That law we’re trying to repeal; it’s very difficult to do that. But the point is, is when they can knock out a leader then no other leader will step forward for awhile because they don’t want to go through the same thing. When, if they go after and get a pastor then other pastors shrink from what they should be doing. It forces Christians back into the church and that’s what’s going on in America: “The world is too bad. I’m going to go get inside this building and I’m not going to play in the world.” Uh, that’s not what Christ asked us to do. And, and so this, they understand that it is a political maneuver, and, and they are, uh, going to try to destroy the conservative movement and we have to fight back.

So, please, this afternoon, each and every one of you, if you know a senator give him a call. Tell him, they’ll say, “Our bill can pass in the House.” Tell him, “That’s fine. Your bill’s okay but the House bill is better and, uh, I want the House bill.” Particularly if you know Democrats, uh, don’t let them get off the hook, um, by hiding behind one House and the other is adjourned. We can do anything we need to do to pass any bill that we need to pass. So I appreciate what you’re doing. God bless you and thank you for the Family Research Council.

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=503

Superbug MRSA, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus

The superbug MRSA, which stands for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, has reached epidemic levels in UK hospitals. It is the commonest type of hospital-acquired infection in England, which strike around 100,000 people each year, accounting for 44% of cases.

The spiralling rate of MRSA infections has prompted widespread public concern about hospital hygiene. Cases of MRSA in England and Wales have increased by 600% in the past decade, and by 3.6% to 7,647 in 2003-04 alone, according to government figures. All hospital acquired infections cost the NHS £1bn a year.

First identified in the 1960s, MRSA is resistant to conventional antibiotics including penicillin and methicillin. Experts have so far uncovered 17 strains of the bacteria, with differing degrees of drug resistance.

MRSA most commonly attacks patients recovering from operations. It can cause serious infections in deep wounds, on medical devices such as artificial hip joints, or if it gets into the bloodstream where it can cause fatal blood poisoning.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/mrsa/story/0,15825,1443430,00.html

Economist Special Report Examines U.S. Prescription Drug Industry

Access this story and related links online:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=28882

The Economist last week in a special report examined the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which it maintains has gone "horribly wrong for the dozen or so manufacturers that make up 'big pharma.'"

According to the Economist, the "withdrawal of high-profile drugs, growing suspicion among consumers about drug companies' ethics and arguments with regulators and customers have all dented what until recently was one of the least-tarnished of industries." The report continues, "What happens in America is critical to the future of all the biggest drug firms" because of the large U.S. market share and higher prices paid for prescription drugs in the United States. The Economist examines many of the factors behind the current problems in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and concludes that the "world's biggest drug firms are going to have to change in fundamental ways" (Economist, 3/19).

THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION

http://www.slate.com/id/2114963/

Since President Bush entered office, there has been a 75% increase in the amount of government information classified as secret each year. "Yet an even more aggressive form of government information control has gone unenumerated and often unrecognized in the Bush era, as government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, Web sites, and official databases," writes Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "Once freely available, a growing number of these sources are now barred to the public as 'sensitive but unclassified' or 'for official use only.'" Examples of unclassified but unavailable information include the Defense Department's telephone directory, the National Archives' historical records, satellite orbital information, aeronautical maps, and environmental data.

SOURCE: Slate, March 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3412

Major oil companies on their prior-year performances

"Data released each year at this time by the major oil companies on their prior-year performances rarely generates much interest outside the business world. With oil prices at an all-time high and Big Oil reporting record profits, however, this year has been exceptional. Many media outlets covered the announcement of mammoth profits garnered by ExxonMobil, the US's wealthiest public corporation, and other large firms.

Exxon's fourth-quarter earnings, at US$8.42 billion, represented the highest quarterly income ever reported by a US firm. 'This is the most profitable company in the world,' declared Nick Raich, research director of Zacks Investment Research in Chicago. But cheering as the recent announcements
may have been for many on Wall Street, they also contained a less auspicious sign. Despite having spent billions of dollars on exploration, the major energy firms are reporting few new discoveries, and so have been digging ever deeper into existing reserves."

Learn more in the Asia Times.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC24Dj01.html

From: Future Brief

# 7 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

7 Tetraneutrons

FOUR years ago, a particle accelerator in France detected six particles that should not exist. They are called tetraneutrons: four neutrons that are bound together in a way that defies the laws of physics.

Francisco Miguel Marquès and colleagues at the Ganil accelerator in Caen are now gearing up to do it again. If they succeed, these clusters may oblige us to rethink the forces that hold atomic nuclei together.

The team fired beryllium nuclei at a small carbon target and analysed the debris that shot into surrounding particle detectors. They expected to see evidence for four separate neutrons hitting their detectors. Instead the Ganil team found just one flash of light in one detector. And the energy of this flash suggested that four neutrons were arriving together at the detector. Of course, their finding could have been an accident: four neutrons might just have arrived in the same place at the same time by coincidence. But that's ridiculously improbable.

Not as improbable as tetraneutrons, some might say, because in the standard model of particle physics tetraneutrons simply can't exist. According to the Pauli exclusion principle, not even two protons or neutrons in the same system can have identical quantum properties. In fact, the strong nuclear force that would hold them together is tuned in such a way that it can't even hold two lone neutrons together, let alone four. Marquès and his team were so bemused by their result that they buried the data in a research paper that was ostensibly about the possibility of finding tetraneutrons in the future (Physical Review C, vol 65, p 44006).

And there are still more compelling reasons to doubt the existence of tetraneutrons. If you tweak the laws of physics to allow four neutrons to bind together, all kinds of chaos ensues (Journal of Physics G, vol 29, L9). It would mean that the mix of elements formed after the big bang was inconsistent with what we now observe and, even worse, the elements formed would have quickly become far too heavy for the cosmos to cope. "Maybe the universe would have collapsed before it had any chance to expand," says Natalia Timofeyuk, a theorist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.

There are, however, a couple of holes in this reasoning. Established theory does allow the tetraneutron to exist - though only as a ridiculously short-lived particle. "This could be a reason for four neutrons hitting the Ganil detectors simultaneously," Timofeyuk says. And there is other evidence that supports the idea of matter composed of multiple neutrons: neutron stars. These bodies, which contain an enormous number of bound neutrons, suggest that as yet unexplained forces come into play when neutrons gather en masse.

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - SCOTT ATRAN

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

SCOTT ATRAN
Anthropologist, University of Michigan; Author, In God's We Trust

There is no God that has existence apart from people's thoughts of God. There is certainly no Being that can simply suspend the (nomological) laws of the universe in order to satisfy our personal or collective yearnings and whims—like a stage director called on to change and improve a play. But there is a mental (cognitive and emotional) process common to science and religion of suspending belief in what you see and take for obvious fact. Humans have a mental compulsion—perhaps a by-product of the evolution of a hyper-sensitive reasoning device to serve our passions—to situate and understand the present state of mundane affairs within an indefinitely extendable and overarching system of relations between hitherto unconnected elements. In any event, what drives humanity forward in history is this quest for non-apparent truth.

The March 2005 CLIMAS Southwest Climate Outlook is online.

This month's outlook provides recent drought conditions and the latest seasonal forecasts. This month's feature discusses recent precipitation and its effect on the Southwest drought.

To download a printer-friendly PDF file (3 MB) of the March 2005 Outlook, visit:

http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/climas/end/packets/marpacket2005.pdf

As always, you can view the latest Southwest Climate Outlook in html format at:

http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/climas/forecasts/swoutlook.html

Highlights from the March 2005 Outlook

Hydrological Drought – Hydrological drought continued to ease in the Southwest.

• Most of southwestern Arizona and southern New Mexico are now considered free of drought impacts.

• Arizona statewide reservoir storage is above average, while New Mexico statewide average storage is just over half of its average capacity.

Precipitation – Wetter-than-average conditions continue in much of the Southwest. Snowpack remains above average in many regional river basins despite slight decreases in some areas.

Temperature – Water year temperatures are above average. The past 30 days have generally been warmer than average.

Climate Forecasts – The long-lead temperature forecasts call for increased chances of warmer-than-average conditions in Arizona and far western New Mexico through September. Increased chances of above-average precipitation are predicted through June in New Mexico and western Arizona.

El Niño – Models predict that the current weak El Niño will persist through mid to late summer before neutral conditions began to dominate the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The Bottom Line – Continued improvement is expected in drought conditions through June in the Southwest.

Tom Tomorrow

Jen Sorensen - new browsers

Steve Kelley - private investment account

Borowitz Report - doughnut shocker

SHAQ TO TESTIFY ABOUT DOUGHNUT ABUSE IN NBA
Krispy Kreme Calls Government Hearings "A Witch-hunt"

Miami Heat star Shaquille O'Neal will testify before a Congressional committee investigating rumors of widespread doughnut abuse in the National Basketball Association, the chairman of the committee confirmed today.

With a new study showing that 200 out of 426 NBA players are overweight, the probe into doughnut abuse is "long overdue" said Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.

"The NBA is an important contributor to the U.S. economy," Rep. Davis said in Washington today. "If NBA players are getting easily winded after one minute of play, the public has a right to know why."

Rumors about Mr. O'Neal's alleged doughnut abuse started in training camp this year, when, according to one source, "Shaq showed up looking really big."

In Miami, a spokesman for the perennial NBA all-star said that Mr. O'Neal was amenable to testifying before Congress, "as long as there's a break for lunch."

But even as some NBA fans applauded Congress's decision to initiate the doughnut probe, a spokesman for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. called the congressional hearings "a witch-hunt."

"Whenever athletes get fat, it's always 'blame the doughnuts,'" said spokesman Carlton Lacroix. "But what about the role that pizza plays, or loaded nachos?"

For his part, Rep. Davis remains unconvinced by such arguments: "When NBA players come out on the court with white powder under their noses, that means only one thing."

Elsewhere, concerns about the solvency of Social Security have caused the entertainer Cher to extend her "Farewell Tour" through the summer of 2027.

Borowitzreport.com

Call on DeLay to resign / Delay Hypocrisy: The GOP Using The Schiavo Case For Political Gain.

Call on DeLay to resign

Dear Friend,

Last week, with all the ethics and pay-to-play violations swirling around Tom DeLay, we called on DeLay to resign from Congress. So far, more than 12,500 people have signed this on-line petition. Hundreds of new people sign each and every day.

I'm writing to ask you to sign on today by going to

http://www.withoutdelay.org .

I'm sure you've noticed that that Tom DeLay has tried to deflect attention away from the scandals that have embroiled him. In fact, yesterday the New York Times reported that DeLay claimed to a gathering of the ultra-conservative activists that the Schiavo case was "intertwined" with the "attacks" against his ethics.

You can reject the cold-hearted, calculated effort to change the subject, and DeLay's pay-to-play politics, by signing the petition to demand he resign. He's got to go.

Sign the petition: http://www.withoutdelay.org

When you sign, your message will also be automatically forwarded to your member of Congress to let them know you think it's time for DeLay to go.

As you probably know, DeLay, the Republican House Majority Leader, has been rebuked time after time by the Ethics Committee for pay-to-play politics and violating House rules. He's been in the news recently for taking trips on the dime of registered lobbyists, another violation of House rules. And, DeLay participated in raising illegal corporate contributions in the scheme to redraw congressional lines in Texas -- a raw partisan power grab that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Texas voters.

We're trying to double our numbers to reach 25,000 by the time Congress returns after recess in ten days. Then, we hope to turn up the heat on a targeted number of Republican members to also demand his resignation.

Sign today, and pass it onto others: http://www.withoutdelay.org

Thanks,

David Donnelly
Public Campaign Action Fund

P.S. As always, we depend on support from people like you to carry out our work. Please consider a contribution to support our organizing work and the upcoming campaigns in districts of GOP members of Congress.

Delay Hypocrisy: The GOP Using The Schiavo Case For Political Gain. Who Cries for Sun Hudson?

By Anthony Wade

March 19, 2005
www.OpEdNews.com

This is a story of two people who could not be more different, while at the same time, be so alike. More importantly, it is a story about a whore of a politician who genuinely does not care about either, but shows it in completely different ways. This is a story about hypocrisy and how Tom Delay and the Republican Party embody that principle.

The first person in this sad story is named Terry Schiavo. Most people have heard about Mrs. Schiavo because she has been in the headlines on several occasions, for her current predicament. Fifteen years ago, Mrs. Schiavo suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma, at the shockingly young age of 26. Today, Mrs. Schiavo is 41, still alive due to medical advances that sustain her through machinery. On one side of this story about Mrs. Schiavo is her husband and legal guardian, Michael. Michael Schiavo insists that Terri would never want to live this way, kept alive only by machinery. He has been fighting the legal battle to have her feeding tube removed, which would ensure her passing away. On the other side of this battle is the family of Terri Schiavo, who do not wish to see their daughter/sister die, and in fact view Michael as wishing to essentially "starve her to death."

Recently, Michael Schiavo won a court battle that allowed the removal of the feeding tube for his wife. Since the starvation process would take some time, Terri’s family immediately went back to try and fight the legality of this decision. What they got, was support from an unexpected source. Tom Delay and the GOP have now seized upon this story and are using it to further their own agenda and to paint their opponents, the democrats, in an awkward position. In a feeble attempt to stop the removal of the feeding tube, Delay tried to subpoena Terri to appear and testify before Congress. An obvious publicity stunt, since Terri Schiavo has not spoken in 15 years, the attempt failed and the tube was removed. Undeterred, Delay vowed to continue to fight this fight, declaring the court’s decision a "moral and legal tragedy" and accusing the judge of "trying to kill Terri for 4 1/2 years."

Delay of course has no idea what he is talking about since he has only been involved in this case for a few weeks, when it gained some political legs for him. There is a word for that where I come from. It is called hypocrisy. To further this allegation, ABC News obtained a GOP talking points memo which explained to Senate republicans why their involvement in the Schiavo case would be important. The talking points stated that the Schiavo case was an important moral issue and that the "pro-life base will be excited," and that it is a "great political issue -- this is a tough issue for Democrats."

Did you notice that there was nothing about Terri Schiavo in their rationale for taking up this cause? Instead, the GOP has outlined that they need to align themselves on the side of Terri Schiavo because:

1) It will excite the pro-life base
2) It is a great political issue
3) It is a tough issue for democrats

Is anyone else disgusted? When asked about the talking points, Delay denied they were GOP related and denounced them. Sure Tom, we believe you. After all, you have never been involved in anything unethical, right? Oh wait a minute, there were a couple of problems weren’t there? Let’s take a quick look at the ethics of Mr. Delay:

1) Delay’s Political Action Committee is under criminal investigation for using corporate monies to finance political campaigns.
2) Delay tried to bribe another congressman to vote for the Medicare Bill. He earned a public admonishment from the House Ethics Committee for this.
3) Delay used taxpayer monies to fuel a partisan hunt for missing democrats in Texas. He was rebuked by the House Ethics Panel for this.
4) Delay set up a children’s charity as a front to collect soft money from anonymous donors. Some of this money was then used for "dinners, a golf tournament, and rock concerts." This allowed companies who wanted to win favor with Delay to do so without revealing themselves as campaign donors.
5) In another rebuke by the House Ethics Committee, we saw executives at Westar Energy state that they believed their $56,500 contribution to the Delay PAC would get them a "seat at the table" when key energy legislation was going to be drafted. Delay also played in the Westar golf fundraiser, just as the 2002 House-Senate conference on major energy legislation was getting underway,
6) Delay took $100,000 from a Texas prison company as a bill was pending that dealt with the privatization of Texas prisons.
7) Delay received a "private rebuke" in 1999 for misusing his power to payback a trade group that had named a democrat to head their Washington operation. Delay had stopped two uncontroversial trade bills which hurt the trade group in question and told them that they would lose all GOP access unless they hired a republican instead.
8) Delay accepted donations to his own defense fund from two individuals he then named to the very House Ethics Committee that had already been so critical of him. Did you get that America? The House Ethics Committee correctly rebuked Delay three separate times. In response, Delay removed those that would dare be critical of him, and replaced them with people who had already donated money to his defense fund.
9) Delay took an opulent vacation in 2000, paid for by an Indian tribe and a gambling services company, both of which opposed legislation which Delay then voted against, two months later.
10) Delay accepted a trip to South Korea, which was paid for by a South Korean lobbying group, a violation of House rules. The cost of this trip was in excess of $100,000.
11) Delay proposed changes to the House Ethics Committee which "would prevent the committee from launching any investigation without the support of at least one republican – a restriction designed to protect the majority leader."
12) Delay tried to convince House leaders to abandon an 11 year old rule which required leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted. Delay was facing possible indictment at the time. The idea was dropped because it "sent the wrong message." Do you think?

Not content to mangle the ethics of the House of Representatives, Mr. Delay has now decided to venture into the realm of the ethics of social consciousness. The problem for him is ethics are ethics and if you do not have any, it will become apparent regardless of the forum. He expects us to believe that he has taken up the Schiavo cause for a reason he does not comprehend, ethics. The talking points reveal all we need to know, this is not about Terry Schiavo for Tom Delay. It is another opportunity to use someone for his own advantage. Michael Schiavo referred to it as a mockery and he is correct. He stated this week, "These people in Congress are walking all over my personal and private life. I'm telling you, the United States citizens, you better start speaking up, because these people are going to trample into your personal, private affairs." On this point, Michael Schiavo is right. He is right because Tom Delay could care less about Terry Schiavo. She is only a political weapon for him to wield. You can be sure of this because for every Terry Schiavo, there is a Sun Hudson, who never gets the attention of the Tom Delay’s of the world. Therein lies their hypocrisy.

Sun Hudson is the second person in our story. Sun was 17 pounds and six months old when the staff at Texas Children's Hospital removed his breathing tube and allowed him to die this week. Sun was born with a fatal form of dwarfism characterized by short arms, short legs and lungs too small. This condition is often found in utero, but Sun’s mother had no pre-natal care, so the condition went undiagnosed. Placed on a ventilator, doctors eventually recommended withdrawing treatment but Sun’s mother, Wanda, refused. Unfortunately for Wanda Hudson, Tom Delay’s home state of Texas has a law which allows hospitals to discontinue life-sustaining care, even if a patient's family members disagree. Where was the self-righteous Tom Delay in the case of Sun Hudson? His silence is deafening in its hypocrisy.

I do not pretend to have the answers to what is moral or correct in either of these situations. I just prefer to be consistent. If you believe all life is life and must be protected at all cost, then stand up for it at all times, not just when it is politically beneficial. In the battle over Terri Schiavo both sides claim things are not as the other side claims. Terri’s family says she is responsive to stimuli. Michael, her husband insists that his wife would not want to live like this and that this is about mercy.

In the case of little Sun Hudson, the doctors paid to defend the hospital’s decision to end his life said, "This isn't murder. It's mercy, and it's appropriate to be merciful in that way. It's not killing, it's stopping pointless treatment." It sounds like Michael Schiavo and these doctors can agree about a lot. Wanda Hudson had this to say after finally getting some media coverage, "I wanted y'all to see my son for yourself. So you could see he was actually moving around. He was conscious." It sounds like Wanda Hudson and the family of Terri Schiavo could agree about a lot as well.

That is the point isn’t it? There are two sides to these heart-wrenching stories. Both sides have their valid points and are deserving of their rights and privacy. Both sides are legitimate in their defense of what they truly believe in. The ethically bankrupt Tom Delay on the other hand, should be ashamed to politicize the issue of life and death. He should be embarrassed to drag his own hypocrisy into the arena of public opinion, just to "excite the pro-life base" or to give the democrats a "tough political issue to handle."

Terri Schiavo is a real person and deserves better than to be treated as a political football to further the cause of the GOP. That is hypocrisy. This is the same hypocrisy that says that George Bush believes in a "culture of life" while waging war to no end. It is the same hypocrisy that sees so many people in the right-to-life movement cross-enrolled in the National Rifle Association supporting armor piercing bullets for "hunters". It is the same hypocrisy that sees a man such as Tom Delay, devoid of ethics; decrying the ethical state of affairs in the Terri Schiavo case at the very same instant they are removing the tube from Sun Hudson, killing him.

Where is the outrage for Sun Hudson? Who cries for Sun Hudson? Wasn’t the life of Sun Hudson as important as the life of Terri Schiavo? The easy answer is yes. Unfortunately, the truthful answer is the life of Sun Hudson was just not as politically valuable. That should cause us all to at least pause for a moment and realize that the value of life should never be measured politically.

Anthony Wade, a contributing writer to opednews.com, is dedicated to educating the populace to the lies and abuses of the government. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.

Anthony Wade’s Archive: http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm

Email Anthony: takebacktheus@yahoo.com

http://www.opednews.com/wade_032005_delay_schiavo.htm

Congress hits a low in Schiavo debacle / Culture Vultures

Congress hits a low in Schiavo debacle
March 23, 2005

BY CAROL MARIN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

I don't blame anyone for being anguished over Terri Schiavo's case. But I am appalled at Congress for cynically capitalizing on it. Most horrifying of all was the disgraced and disgraceful Tom DeLay, whose mind-boggling address to a conservative family forum in Washington on Friday set the stage for Congress' Palm Sunday stampede of state's rights and the rule of law. A tape recording of it was obtained by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," the House Republican leader from Texas was heard to say.

DeLay, whose own legislative career may soon be on life support pending the continued investigation of his alleged ethical transgressions, unbelievably managed to insinuate his political plight into the suffering of Ms. Schiavo. "This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," he said.

Do DeLay's delusions of political persecution really go that far? A conservative on the cross? Maybe someone should mention to Mr. DeLay this isn't about him.

And does Illinois' own Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, let this all play out without a single expression of misgiving about the misuse of Congress in an issue that properly belongs to state courts?

One of the great tragedies for Terri Schiavo's family is that it had to go to court at all. But that happens sometimes in families.

As I think of it, I guess it could have happened in mine.

My father, years before he became ill, used to half-jokingly, half-seriously say, "Don't ever let anyone hook me up to some damn machine if I'm too sick to stop it. Step on the hose. Pull the plug."

If he said it once, he said it a hundred times. The problem was he would never write it down.

In September of 1989, my dad was placed on a ventilator in the intensive care unit of Evanston Hospital. His internist arrived after consulting with the heart specialist, the kidney man, the pulmonary expert and the neurologist. Every one of my dad's organs, it seemed, had its own doctor. And the doctors weren't all on the same page. The cardiologist said he could keep my dad's heart pumping for days, maybe weeks. The kidney man thought that part of his body was about to fail. Almost everything was shutting down, including my father's once-fine mind after a succession of little strokes. His eyes were closed, there was a tube down his throat, and we knew he wanted us, in his not-so-gentle words, to "step on the hose."

We were lucky. Heartbroken but united, my mother and sister and I were able to speak with one voice.

Another family, equally united, may have made an entirely different decision than we did. I honor and respect the differences among us.

But what happened in Washington this weekend deserves neither honor nor respect. It was a raw grab at a personal tragedy for political gain. Seven years and at least 17 state courtrooms have not produced a single dissenting judgement. Terri Schiavo, it has been ruled again and again, has the right to die as asserted by her husband and no chance of recovery if she continues to live.

This is not meant, in any way, as a criticism of her parents. If I were in their place, and if I believed as they believe, then I would do what they are doing.

But Congress? That's a different story.

Washington, it's clear, is a place where Republicans run scared of the religious right and Democrats just play dead.

To blatantly disregard and disrespect the considered rulings of state courts, to pass 11th hour legislation that allows one single, wrenching case to be re-done in federal courts, and to invoke due process when the real motive is to just delay is beyond shameful. Do the administration and those who agree with it only consider the work of state courts when they agree with them? Do they only believe in state's rights when they decide a state is right?

If that's the case, Congress, I guess, is just for the convenience of the moment and the clamor of the crowd.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/marin/cst-edt-carol231.html

Culture Vultures

Terri Schiavo's persistent legislative state.
By William Saletan

Posted Monday, March 21, 2005, at 7:16 PM PT

This weekend, three guys carrying bread tried to push past police officers guarding Terri Schiavo's hospice. It's good they were arrested, because if they'd fed her the bread, she would have choked. Anyone familiar with her condition knows she can't eat solids. The guys weren't there to feed her. They were there, in front of the cameras, to make a point.

A few days ago, two congressional committees subpoenaed Schiavo to testify before them. Testify? She's impervious and mute. "The purpose of the subpoenas is to preserve the evidence," explained a committee chairman. The evidence was Schiavo.

This is the problem with many of the people trying to save Schiavo. They aren't really talking about her. I don't mean the Republican strategists who told senators she was "a great political issue" that could excite "the pro-life base" and hurt Democrats. I mean real pro-lifers. President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay keep saying the case is about "defending life," "a presumption in favor of life," "building a culture of life," and the dignity of the human person. But presumptions and cultures are generalities.

Protesters at the hospice talk the same way. One claims to be there because "Terri represents a new category of people whose lives they are starting to say have no value." Another explains, "There's a cultural war going on." The individual, Terri Schiavo, has vanished into a larger point. What remains is the impersonality of personhood, the indignity necessary to protect dignity, the use of one life to make a point about life.

Supporters of congressional intervention in the case argue that Schiavo's husband, Michael, isn't the ideal person to decide her fate. Fair enough. I wish he'd authorize an MRI of her brain, and I'm not thrilled that he's nominally married to her while living with another woman. But it's hard to ask a guy who could still have a family to forgo that for a spouse who's been checked out for 15 years. Why doesn't he divorce her so her parents can keep her on the feeding tube? He says it's because she told him she'd never want to be kept alive in such a state. His critics haven't come up with a better explanation for his persistence. Nor can they explain why, if he's such a scumbag, he refuses their offer to relieve him of financial responsibility for Terri and to let him keep her trust fund.

But the questions about Michael are just the beginning. If you're going to scrutinize the fitness of family members to make medical decisions, you have to look at everyone. Take Schiavo's mom, who calls her daughter "my life." Schiavo's parents have circulated video clips purporting to show that their daughter responds to stimuli. Skeptics point out that the clips omit hours of unresponsiveness—suggesting that her "responses" may be random—and that doctors who examined her in person concluded that she wasn't really interacting with other people. Still, the videos tell a story. In one, Schiavo gags over an oral swab, and a male voice comments, "She don't like that, does she?" In another, her eyes fail to follow a balloon, and a voice says, "Terri, no, no. Come on." Then her eyes move, and the voice infers, "Oh, you see that, don't you, huh?" Schiavo's eyes bug out in a couple of videos, but only when her head slips—or is moved by her mother—from its resting place. A voice in the background tells her, "Good job!" The videos are agonizing not because they show a woman regaining awareness, but because they show the people around her laboring to interpret every twitch that way.

In some scenes, Schiavo's mother speaks to her, kisses her, and shifts her position. The longest video, made surreptitiously by Schiavo's parents in violation of a court order, depicts them fishing for reactions. In the five-minute clip, her mother repeats one word 40 to 50 times. The word is "mommy" or "ma." When Schiavo fails to respond to a cue, her mother prods, "Look over at mommy." "Come on," she tells her daughter. "Over here," she says. "Hey." Not until the mother gets right up in the daughter's face does the daughter make a sound resembling a moan. If the daughter is expressing something about her mother, it looks as close to misery as to joy.

The point isn't that Schiavo's parents are bad or that she's expressing anything about them. I'm no more qualified to draw such conclusions than you are. The point is that once people like you, me, and Tom DeLay start second-guessing the judges, doctors, and families who know a case firsthand, it never ends. The "culture of life" becomes a regime of ham-fisted political reinvestigation that does for ethics what medieval barbers did for health.

If Congress makes such decisions, here's the kind of judgment you'll get. At a press conference Saturday, one Republican congressman said his colleagues were intervening in the case "so that this young woman can continue to make her parents as happy as she has"—as though that were the purpose of her existence. DeLay accused Democrats of starving Schiavo to death. He called it "medical terrorism." One day DeLay said she'd die slowly of starvation; the next, he said Congress had to move fast because she'd die quickly of dehydration. Frist, who has asserted special credibility "as a physician," claimed that "neurologists who have examined her insist today that she is not in a persistent vegetative state"—neglecting to mention that neurologists who testified in court concluded the opposite. On the Senate floor, Frist claimed to have "been in a situation such as this many, many times," when in fact he had never made such an evaluation. On the basis of the family videos, he challenged the assessment made by doctors who had examined Schiavo in person.

When it's your turn to face an end-of-life decision, here's the kind of scrutiny you'll get. Two neurologists and a judge won't be enough, according to Frist: Congress will "go and collect more information, have neurologists come in." A second judge will be empowered to "make new findings of fact." DeLay wants to deprive judges of discretion because "when you affirmatively give the judge the discretion not to put the tube back in, they won't." Everyone has to be involved. "For one person in one state court to make this decision is too heavy," says DeLay. "It does take all of us to think this through."

And here's the culture you'll get. Schiavo's parents have filed a motion to divorce her from her husband. Protesters at the hospice have suggested that the husband should be starved and the judge should be beaten. On the Senate floor, Frist has challenged the husband's right to make the decision because he has "a girlfriend." What about the judge's confidence in the husband's account of Schiavo's stated wishes? Unless Schiavo "had specifically written instructions in her hand and with her signature," scoffs DeLay, "I don't care what her husband says." This from an out-of-state congressman who got his legal training in campaign-finance creativity and his medical training in pest control.

If I were Terri Schiavo and saw what was being done to my body, my honor, and my country in my name, I'd sooner die.

William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Protesters at the hospice talk the same way. One claims to be there because "Terri represents a new category of people whose lives they are starting to say have no value." Another explains, "There's a cultural war going on." The individual, Terri Schiavo, has vanished into a larger point. What remains is the impersonality of personhood, the indignity necessary to protect dignity, the use of one life to make a point about life.

Supporters of congressional intervention in the case argue that Schiavo's husband, Michael, isn't the ideal person to decide her fate. Fair enough. I wish he'd authorize an MRI of her brain, and I'm not thrilled that he's nominally married to her while living with another woman. But it's hard to ask a guy who could still have a family to forgo that for a spouse who's been checked out for 15 years. Why doesn't he divorce her so her parents can keep her on the feeding tube? He says it's because she told him she'd never want to be kept alive in such a state. His critics haven't come up with a better explanation for his persistence. Nor can they explain why, if he's such a scumbag, he refuses their offer to relieve him of financial responsibility for Terri and to let him keep her trust fund.

But the questions about Michael are just the beginning. If you're going to scrutinize the fitness of family members to make medical decisions, you have to look at everyone. Take Schiavo's mom, who calls her daughter "my life." Schiavo's parents have circulated video clips purporting to show that their daughter responds to stimuli. Skeptics point out that the clips omit hours of unresponsiveness—suggesting that her "responses" may be random—and that doctors who examined her in person concluded that she wasn't really interacting with other people. Still, the videos tell a story. In one, Schiavo gags over an oral swab, and a male voice comments, "She don't like that, does she?" In another, her eyes fail to follow a balloon, and a voice says, "Terri, no, no. Come on." Then her eyes move, and the voice infers, "Oh, you see that, don't you, huh?" Schiavo's eyes bug out in a couple of videos, but only when her head slips—or is moved by her mother—from its resting place. A voice in the background tells her, "Good job!" The videos are agonizing not because they show a woman regaining awareness, but because they show the people around her laboring to interpret every twitch that way.

In some scenes, Schiavo's mother speaks to her, kisses her, and shifts her position. The longest video, made surreptitiously by Schiavo's parents in violation of a court order, depicts them fishing for reactions. In the five-minute clip, her mother repeats one word 40 to 50 times. The word is "mommy" or "ma." When Schiavo fails to respond to a cue, her mother prods, "Look over at mommy." "Come on," she tells her daughter. "Over here," she says. "Hey." Not until the mother gets right up in the daughter's face does the daughter make a sound resembling a moan. If the daughter is expressing something about her mother, it looks as close to misery as to joy.

The point isn't that Schiavo's parents are bad or that she's expressing anything about them. I'm no more qualified to draw such conclusions than you are. The point is that once people like you, me, and Tom DeLay start second-guessing the judges, doctors, and families who know a case firsthand, it never ends. The "culture of life" becomes a regime of ham-fisted political reinvestigation that does for ethics what medieval barbers did for health.

If Congress makes such decisions, here's the kind of judgment you'll get. At a press conference Saturday, one Republican congressman said his colleagues were intervening in the case "so that this young woman can continue to make her parents as happy as she has"—as though that were the purpose of her existence. DeLay accused Democrats of starving Schiavo to death. He called it "medical terrorism." One day DeLay said she'd die slowly of starvation; the next, he said Congress had to move fast because she'd die quickly of dehydration. Frist, who has asserted special credibility "as a physician," claimed that "neurologists who have examined her insist today that she is not in a persistent vegetative state"—neglecting to mention that neurologists who testified in court concluded the opposite. On the Senate floor, Frist claimed to have "been in a situation such as this many, many times," when in fact he had never made such an evaluation. On the basis of the family videos, he challenged the assessment made by doctors who had examined Schiavo in person.

When it's your turn to face an end-of-life decision, here's the kind of scrutiny you'll get. Two neurologists and a judge won't be enough, according to Frist: Congress will "go and collect more information, have neurologists come in." A second judge will be empowered to "make new findings of fact." DeLay wants to deprive judges of discretion because "when you affirmatively give the judge the discretion not to put the tube back in, they won't." Everyone has to be involved. "For one person in one state court to make this decision is too heavy," says DeLay. "It does take all of us to think this through."

And here's the culture you'll get. Schiavo's parents have filed a motion to divorce her from her husband. Protesters at the hospice have suggested that the husband should be starved and the judge should be beaten. On the Senate floor, Frist has challenged the husband's right to make the decision because he has "a girlfriend." What about the judge's confidence in the husband's account of Schiavo's stated wishes? Unless Schiavo "had specifically written instructions in her hand and with her signature," scoffs DeLay, "I don't care what her husband says." This from an out-of-state congressman who got his legal training in campaign-finance creativity and his medical training in pest control.

If I were Terri Schiavo and saw what was being done to my body, my honor, and my country in my name, I'd sooner die.

William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Terri Schiavo Case: "Err on the Side of Life", JEAN KILBOURNE, Dr. QUENTIN YOUNG, Rev. G. SIMON HARAK

President Bush stated yesterday regarding Terri Schiavo: "This is a complex case with serious issues but, in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is always wise to err on the side of life."

JEAN KILBOURNE, JKilbourne@aol.com, http://www.jeankilbourne.com

The AP recently reported: "The Schiavos' lawyer said her 1990 collapse was caused by a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder.

It is a cruel twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death." [See: "Schiavo Case Highlights Eating Disorders, USA Today,
Feb. 25, 2005,

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-02-25-schiavo-eating-disorder_x.htm ;

"Terri Schiavo's Bulimia: Not on 'The Agenda,'" http://underthesamesun.org

Kilbourne is author of the book "Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel," and creator of the "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women" film series. She said today: "Congress holds a special session, Bush jets back to Washington from vacation, the case might go all the way to the Supreme Court. Imagine if all this energy and media attention focused instead on the self-loathing and hatred of their own bodies that our culture generates in women and the rampant eating
disorders that often result. Now that might save the lives of many young women for whom it is not too late."

Dr. QUENTIN YOUNG, pnhp@aol.com, http://www.pnhp.org

National coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, Young has chaired the Department of Medicine at Chicago's Cook County Hospital.

He said today: "It is stunning how little regard this president has for human life. His interest seems to extend to only one tragic brain-damaged woman. The U.S. is the only industrialized country to lack health care coverage for all citizens. Over 18,000 Americans perish every year because they lack health insurance. A lack of health insurance increases the chances a 55-year-old will die before they turn 64 by 40 percent. If the president wanted to save lives he would call for an emergency session to
make Congress vote to extend Medicare to every American."

Rev. G. SIMON HARAK, amc@warresisters.org, http://www.warresisters.org

A Jesuit priest and author of the books "Virtuous Passions" and "Nonviolence for the Third Millennium," Harak is anti-militarism coordinator of the War Resisters League. He said today: "One of the
first things we learn is that the more universal your ethical principles are, the more moral force they have. I hear of Bush's flying back to D.C. to sign the Schiavo bill, and I think of him flying back from his first presidential campaign to sign the death warrants of Texas prisoners. I think of Bush signing a bill in Texas to cut off funds for life support for people who want their children to live, but can't afford it. I hear of the government's concern for this individual, tragic case, and I think of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children whom we diseased and starved to death during sanctions, and now the hundred thousand more Iraqis who have died in this invasion and occupation. How universal, how convincing, is the concern?"

See "Counting the Iraqi Dead" from FAIR at:

See "McClellan Lies About Bush's 'Pull the Plug' Law" from Daily Kos:

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/21/162132/268

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

AP/St. Petersburg Times Examines Problems With Canadian Single-Payer Health Care System

Access this story and related links online:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=28854

The AP/St. Petersburg Times on Sunday examined the Canadian single-payer health care system, which many residents maintain is "badly in need of emergency care" because of long waits for treatment. Although U.S. residents who travel to Canada for low-cost influenza vaccinations "often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians," the Canadian government acknowledges that "there's a crisis: a lack of physicians and nurses, state-of-the-art equipment and funding," according to the AP/Times. Canadian residents who require surgery or specialist care currently must wait about 18 weeks for treatment, compared with 9.3 weeks in 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, a public policy think tank in Vancouver, Canada. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which supports tax reform and more privatization of the Canadian health care system, taxes currently account for about 48% of the annual income of an average Canadian family, in part to finance the health care system. "We can't afford a state monopoly on health care anymore," CTF Ontario Director Tasha Kheiriddin said, adding, "We have to examine private alternatives, as well." However, many Canadian residents consider the national health care system a "marker of egalitarianism and independent identity that sets their country apart from the United States," where 45 million residents lack health insurance, the Times reports.

Raisa Deber, a professor of health policy at the University of Toronto, said, "Canadians are very proud of the fact that if they need care, they will get care."

According to the AP/Times, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has promised to provide $33.3 billion over the next 10 years to address problems with the national health care system
(AP/St. Petersburg Times, 3/20).

RETIREE HEALTH INSURANCE BECOMING SCARCE, STUDY SAYS

If current trends continue, most Americans who work for private employers will never receive retiree health benefits, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute. An EBRI study found that from 1997 to 2002, the percentage of private employers offering health benefits to Medicare-eligible retirees -- those 65 and older -- dropped from 20 percent to 13 percent. The percentage offering health coverage to early retirees -- those younger than 65 -- fell from 22 percent to 13 percent.

Some baby boomers may have to "delay retirement because they will not be able to afford health insurance premiums or out-of-pocket medical costs," according to Paul Fronstin of EBRI. The study traces the trend back to a Federal Accounting Standards Board ruling in 1990 that requires companies to record retiree health benefit liabilities on their financial statements. That decision and rising health care costs caused many employers "to overhaul their retiree health benefit programs in ways that controlled, reduced or eliminated their costs," the EBRI study says.

From: CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE

Moses Didn't Write The Constitution

by Thom Hartmann
www.OpEdNews.com

Two main arguments are being put forward these days about state-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments. The first is that they are the basis of Anglo-Saxon law, leading to ancient British law, leading to American law. The second is that sometimes the displays of them are purely decorative, part of a larger display of other legal and/or religious symbols (as is seen in the Supreme Court chamber itself).

The decorative/art argument is a reasonable one, and probably the one the Supreme Court will adopt with relation to the Texas display. As the nations' most competent word police, conservatives have apparently focus-group tested the word "museum" and found that it works best to frame this argument (expect to see more of that word soon) and in the real context of a real museum the argument would have legitimacy. Religion - which the Ten Commandments symbolize - is, after all, a very real part of the history of America, for better or worse (just ask the women hanged as witches for over a century in Massachusetts).

But the real issue here is a "camel's nose under the tent" plan of religious conservatives and the new American Christian Taliban to convince the American people that the Ten Commandments are the very basis of American law, and thus should be both displayed in public places and taught in our schools.

The next step from this argument is the assertion that religion is the basis of America itself, and that twisted half-truth that the Founders and Framers did not write a "wall of separation between church and state" into the First Amendment of the Constitution. And then, conservatives will say, religion should inform the decisions of government; government should be subsidizing religion (as it is already with tax breaks and "faith based initiatives"); and religion-based legal perspectives (particularly on issues like abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality) are necessary, since the basis of American law is religion.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams disagreed.

In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."

The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

"Sir Matthew Hale [a conservative advocate for church/state "cooperation"] lays it down in these words," wrote Jefferson to Cooper: "'Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.'"

But, Jefferson rebuts in his letter, it couldn't be. Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:

"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."

Not only was Christianity - or Judaism, or the Ten Commandments - not a part of the foundation of British and American common law, Jefferson noted, but those who were suggesting it was were promoting a lie that any person familiar with the commonly-known history of England would recognize as absurd.

"We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is," wrote Jefferson. "...In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are."

In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.

"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these [Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land."

It was a long-running topic of agreement between Jefferson and John Adams, who, on September 24, 1821, wrote to Jefferson noting their mutual hope that America would embrace a purely secular, rational view of what human society could become:

"Hope springs eternal," wrote Adams of the preachers trying to take over government. "Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful as he pleases. Some hundreds of millions of Mussulmans expect another prophet more powerful than Mahomet, who is to spread Islamism over the whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for a millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the whole world before it is burnt up. The Hindoos expect another and final incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know not what."

But, Adams noted in that letter to Jefferson, the hope for a positive future for America was - in his mind and Jefferson's - grounded in rationality and government, not in religion. "You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and vast amelioration in the condition of mankind," he wrote. "Our faith may be supposed by more rational arguments than any of the former."

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a June 5, 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, "Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground [than the foundation of the Ten Commandments]. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts."

After all, only two of the Ten Commandments have long been enshrined in our law - don't kill and don't steal - and those have been part of human society since the stone age (and are even today part of the rules of "stone age" cultures, who have never had contact with modern religion). These two are clearly part of "nature's law," as Jefferson often noted.

Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most outspoken of the Founders who saw religious leaders seizing political power by claiming religion as the basis of American law to be a naked threat to American democracy.

One of his most well known quotes is carved into the stone of the awe-inspiring Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man."

Modern religious leaders who aspire to political power often cite it as proof that Jefferson was a Bible-thumping Christian.

What's missing from the Jefferson memorial (and almost all who cite the quote), however, is the context of that statement, the letter and circumstance from which it came.

When Jefferson was Vice President, just two months before the election of 1800 in which he would become President, he wrote to his good friend, the physician Benjamin Rush, who started out as an orthodox Christian and ended up, later in his life, a Deist and Unitarian. Here, in a most surprising context, we find the true basis of one of Jefferson's most famous quotes:

"DEAR SIR, - ... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten," Jefferson wrote, noting that he knew to discuss the topic would add fuel to the fires of electoral politics swirling all around him. "I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry poets] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened.
"The delusion ...on the [First Amendment] clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me [such as being elected President], will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion."

Let us hope that the Supreme Court will affirm that decorative displays of the Ten Commandments - or any religious iconography - are fine in the context of art or, as Sandra Day O'Connor said in a previous decision, as "ceremonial Deism." This will probably allow for the display in the Texas case, as they're part of a much larger display of Texas historical icons, and will also prevent both conservative hysteria or anti-religious witch-hunts in which every last symbol of religion is scraped away from our institutions. (The Greek goddess John Ashcroft covered up with fabric is, after all, an ancient religious symbol. We need rationality here.)

But, more importantly, let's hope that the Court will take this opportunity to affirm the absolute separation of church and state in the United States, and to note, as Jefferson so well pointed out and as this nation's Founding generation so well knew, that the Ten Commandments have nothing whatsoever to do with American law, or even its history. And, thus, they need not be displayed as major, focal-point monuments on public property (Judge Moore/Alabama); in classrooms next to the flag (a better display would be that subversive document, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States [which never once mentions "God"]); or taught in our schools (next on the Christian Taliban hit-list).

History - and our nation's Founders - teach us that religion is best left to religion, and governance best left to a government answerable to We The People, rather than to Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or their self-appointed contemporary spokesmen.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?," in which parts of this article first appeared.

http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_030405_moses.htm

# 6 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

6 Viking's methane

JULY 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin is on the edge of his seat. Millions of kilometres away on Mars, the Viking landers have scooped up some soil and mixed it with carbon-14-labelled nutrients. The mission's scientists have all agreed that if Levin's instruments on board the landers detect emissions of carbon-14-containing methane from the soil, then there must be life on Mars.

Viking reports a positive result. Something is ingesting the nutrients, metabolising them, and then belching out gas laced with carbon-14.

So why no party?
Because another instrument, designed to identify organic molecules considered essential signs of life, found nothing. Almost all the mission scientists erred on the side of caution and declared Viking's discovery a false positive. But was it?

The arguments continue to rage, but results from NASA's latest rovers show that the surface of Mars was almost certainly wet in the past and therefore hospitable to life. And there is plenty more evidence where that came from, Levin says. "Every mission to Mars has produced evidence supporting my conclusion. None has contradicted it."

Levin stands by his claim, and he is no longer alone. Joe Miller, a cell biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has re-analysed the data and he thinks that the emissions show evidence of a circadian cycle. That is highly suggestive of life.

Levin is petitioning ESA and NASA to fly a modified version of his mission to look for "chiral" molecules. These come in left or right-handed versions: they are mirror images of each other. While biological processes tend to produce molecules that favour one chirality over the other, non-living processes create left and right-handed versions in equal numbers. If a future mission to Mars were to find that Martian "metabolism" also prefers one chiral form of a molecule to the other, that would be the best indication yet of life on Mars.

"Something on Mars is ingesting nutrients, metabolising them and then belching out radioactive methane"

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - KARL SABBAGH

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

KARL SABBAGH
Writer and Television Producer; Author, The Riemann Hypothesis

I believe it is true that if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, of whatever form, it will be familiar with the same concept of counting numbers.

Some philosophers believe that pure mathematics is human-specific and that it is possible for an entirely different type of mathematics to emerge from a different type of intelligence, a type of mathematics that has nothing in common with ours and may even contradict it. But it is difficult to think of what sort of life-form would not need the counting numbers. The stars in the sky are discrete points and cry out to be counted by beings throughout the universe, but alien life-forms may not have vision.

Intelligent objects with boundaries between being and non-being surely want to be measured— "I'm bigger that you", "I need a size 312 overcoat"—but perhaps there are life-forms which don't have boundaries but are continuously varying density changes in some Jovian sea. Intelligent life might be disembodied or at least lack a discrete body and merely be transmitted between various points in a solid material matrix, so that it was impossible to distinguish one intelligent being from another.

But sooner or later, whether it is to measure the passing of time, the magnitude of distance, the density of one Jovian being compared with another, numbers will have to be used. And if numbers are used, 2 + 2 must always equal 4, the number of stars in the Pleiades brighter than magnitude 5.7 will always be 11 which will always be a prime number, and two measurements of the speed of light in any units in identical conditions will always be identical. Of course, the fact that I find it difficult to think of beings which won't need our sort of mathematics doesn't mean they don't exist, but that's what I believe without proof.

Breaking News from New Zealand - Stem Cell operation success

Stem Cell analysts around the world have been following the story of motor neurone sufferer Willie Terpstra. Six months ago she lost her ability to talk. She flew to China two weeks ago for the surgery she hoped will enable her to speak again.

The 50-minute operation, under local anaesthetic, which is banned in most parts of the world, involved transplanting millions of stem cells from aborted fetuses directly into Mrs Terpstra's brain.

Within 6 hours the 64-year-old drank a glass of fruit juice in one go - something she has not been able to do for six months.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?ObjectID=10116572

The latest from NASA's Earth Observatory (22 March 2005)

In the News:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/

* Latest Images:
Floods in Afghanistan

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16857

Fires on Hispaniola

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16856

Chíchén Itzá

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16855

Arid Coast of Peru

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16854

Topography of Ireland

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16853

Floods in Iraq

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16852

Fires in Laguna del Tigre National Park

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16851

Death Valley

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16850

* NASA News
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/
- NASA Researchers Use Imaging Radar to Detect Coastal Pollution

* Media Alerts
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/
- Envisat Enables First Global Check of Regional Methane Emissions
- Marine Researchers Deliver Blueprint for Rescuing America's Troubled
Coral Reefs
- Climate Change Inevitable in 21st Century
- U.S. Exports Nitrogen Pollution Beyond Its Borders, Europe's
Nitrogen Deposited Close to Sources
- No Relief for Pacific Northwest Drought
- Gray Wolves Maintain the Food Chain in Winter

* Headlines from the press, radio, and television:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Headlines/
- North Sea Crater Shows Its Scars
- Scientists: Road Salt May Harm Environment
- Hurricane Center to Offer Probability Map
- Tsunami Reveals Ancient Ruins in India
- Small Vibrations Lend New Insights on Earth's Crust
- No Stopping Global Warming
- NASA Researchers Use Imaging Radar to Detect Coastal Pollution
- No Drought Relief in Northwest
- New Asian Quake Threat Warning
- Study: Tsunami Threat High in Caribbean
- Grizzlies Encroaching on Polar Bear Country
- Group Warns of Shrinking Glaciers' Effect
- Levels of Great Lakes Rising

* New Research Highlights
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Research/

Steve Sack - political issue

Tom Toles - safety net

David Horsey - need fuel

Kirk Anderson - Creationism

Borowitz Report - rumsfeld shocker

RUMSFELD WARNS IRAQ NOT TO DO ANYTHING STUPID WITHOUT CALLING HIM FIRST
Scolds Iraqis in Televised Tongue-lashing

In a televised interview today, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that Iraq's nascent democracy was entering "a crucial stage" and warned the Iraqi people, "Don't do anything stupid without calling me first."

Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing on the Fox News Channel, looked directly into the camera to address the Iraqi people in a surprisingly stern tone of voice: "Listen up, you Iraqis, because I am only going to say this once."

The Defense Secretary then warned the Iraqi people against any "horsing around" or "monkey business" when it comes to choosing members of their first democratic government.

"I have personally busted my hump to bring democracy to that infernal country of yours and I don't want to see you putting any Tom, Dick or Harry in charge," he said.

Leaving little doubt that he intended to back up his words with action, Mr. Rumsfeld added, "I gave democracy to you and I can take it away - and don't think I wouldn't dare."

He then recited his home phone number for Iraqis to call "before you do anything stupid," adding, "If I'm not there, leave a message with Mrs. Rumsfeld."

Turning to other matters, Rumsfeld had harsh words for the nation of Turkey, who in March of 2003 refused to let the U.S. invade Iraq from the north: "They don't call your country 'Jive-ass Turkey' for nothing."

Elsewhere, the National Rifle Association criticized the practice of allowing terrorists to buy guns at gun shows, arguing that terrorists should "go get their own gun shows."

Borowitzreport.com

The Politicization of Terri Schiavo

The Progress ReportPosted March 21, 2005.

A brain-damaged woman's tragic case is being used as an opportunity for political grandstanding.

Just like countless other families, the family of Terri Schiavo has struggled for years with the intensely difficult decision of how to match her course of treatment to her wishes. Now President George W. Bush, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) are using the tragic case of Schiavo – a severely brain-damaged woman who has been incapacitated for the past 15 years – as an opportunity for political grandstanding. A memo,

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002213728_memo20.html

which the AP reports was distributed by Senate leadership to right-wing members, called Schiavo "a great political issue" and urged senators to talk about her because "the pro-life base will be excited." Over the weekend, DeLay and Frist held special sessions of Congress to facilitate passage of a bill that would allow a federal court to overturn years of Florida jurisprudence – encompassing seven courts and 19 judges – and intervene in the Schiavo case. (Underscoring that this was about the politics of the Schiavo case and not policy, the bill was written explicitly to apply only to Terri Schiavo.) President Bush played his part in the spectacle, flying to Washington from his ranch in Crawford to sign the bill, even though waiting a few hours for the bill to be flown to him would likely "have made no difference in whether Ms. Schiavo lives."

In a statement released early this morning, President Bush said he will "continue to stand on the side of those defending life for all Americans." But the facts make it hard to believe that Bush is standing on principle. In 1999, then Gov. Bush signed a law that "allows hospitals [to] discontinue life-sustaining care,

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3084934

even if patient family members disagree." Just days ago the law permitted Texas Children's Hospital to remove the breathing tube from a 6-month-old boy named Sun Hudson. The law may soon be used to remove life support from Spiro Nikolouzos, a 68-year-old man. Bush has not commented on either case.

At every opportunity, Tom DeLay has sanctimoniously proclaimed his concern for the well-being of Terri Schiavo, saying he is only trying to ensure she has the chance "we all deserve." Schiavo's medications are paid for by Medicaid. Just last week, DeLay marshaled a budget resolution through the House of Representatives that would cut funding for Medicaid by at least $15 billion, threatening the quality of care for people like Terri Schiavo. Because the Senate voted to restore the funding, DeLay is threatening to hold up the entire budget process if he doesn't get his way.

Bill Frist has been positioning himself in the media as a champion for Schiavo's interests. Yet, much of Schiavo's medical care has been financed by $1,000,000 from two medical malpractice lawsuits Schiavo won after her heart attack 15 years ago. Frist has been leading the charge to limit recovery for people like Schiavo who are severely debilitated. If Frist is successful, people like Schiavo would not be able to recover any punitive damages no matter how severe their injuries.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/21552/

Life, Death and Cynical Grandstanding

March 22, 2005

Robert Scheer:

I cannot remember a time when Congress and the president have acted with more egregious political opportunism and shameless trafficking in human misery than last weekend, leaping into the 15-year-long Terri Schiavo saga at the last possible moment as grandstanding defenders of the defenseless.

Although Schiavo's relatives on both sides of the issue are assuredly acting in good faith, national politicians certainly are not.

That was clear even before ABC News revealed the contents of a memo circulating among Senate Republicans that trilled over how exploiting this complex case in the most simplistic way would "excite" the GOP base and would be "a great political issue."

Otherwise, they would have taken up this tortuous issue in earnest long ago. Better yet, they should have trusted the Florida state legal system and doctors who have examined Schiavo's case over and over again.

Instead, facing a media storm dominated by heart-rending but inconclusive video clips of Schiavo, Republican demagogues led by Rep. Tom DeLay (D-Texas) — who is battling ethics problems — took the easy, cynical way out. They rushed through a bill, past cowed Democrats, that moves the case to federal court and applies only to Schiavo's parents.

Even more shocking, President Bush did what he would not do in August 2001 when terrorism warnings were "blinking red," in the words of the then-head of the CIA: He returned to Washington from one of his many sacrosanct vacations, in this case to sign this ill-conceived legislation.

Despite the shrill howls of outrage that have been inciting politicians from talk radio, 70% of Americans polled nationally by ABC News called congressional intervention in the Schiavo case inappropriate, with 58% holding that view "strongly."

It seems obvious that such a delicate life-and-death case should not be decided by radio shock jocks hunting for ratings, embattled politicians looking for wedge issues or even majority rule — in this case the 63% of Americans polled who believe that Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed. Instead, it is family members, doctors and, when needed as an impartial arbitrator, the courts that must carefully and dispassionately weigh the extremely complex medical, ethical and legal issues involved.

Which, in fact, is exactly what happened in the Schiavo case. Impartial doctors and judges methodically examined Schiavo and the legal case, respectively, for seven years, consistently backing the guardianship rights of Schiavo's husband and his decision to end artificial life-support treatments that kept her alive in what the Florida courts concluded is "a persistent vegetative state … with no hope of a medical cure."

Further, the federal courts already had the power to act if they believed a fundamental right had been abrogated. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal to intervene — as it had done in 2001 and earlier this year. But that didn't stop the Christian right and the politicians in its thrall from seizing on the Schiavos' plight to advance their "right to life" agenda. If only this agenda were consistent. For example, as governor of Texas, George W. Bush refused to review cases involving mentally retarded death row inmates. Nor can I remember any time Congress rushed back from a vacation to deal with real-time incidents of genocide in the Balkans, Rwanda or Sudan. This is selective compassion of the most pandering sort.

In the end, it is not about who is right in the depressingly ugly battle between Schiavo's parents on one side and her husband on the other. Those of us who have dealt with the slow death of a beloved relative in the hospital are all too familiar with the pain in facing the myriad decisions that can tear us apart.

What this case is really about is keeping politics and state-endorsed religion out of our private lives. Many seniors like me now must dread that our most personal and painful private matters might be turned into political footballs by those cravenly seeking approval from certain voting blocs, or that we could be imprisoned against our wishes inside a dead body because of somebody else's religious beliefs. This is why seniors polled by ABC were the most likely of any age group to support the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube.

The one bright spot in this sad story is that millions of Americans are now talking about how they want to be cared for medically and are writing or reviewing living wills.

As the polls show, while our Beltway politicians are making fools of themselves, those of us in the real world are trying to ensure that our most private moments are not turned into a humiliating circus.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer22mar22.story

The Terri Schiavo Case

Schiavo: 'Come down, President Bush'
By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, Times Staff Writer
Published March 20, 2005

PINELLAS PARK - Angered by the latest political developments in Washington, Michael Schiavo said Saturday that it isn't just the Florida governor who should visit his wife to learn about the case.

Jeb Bush's brother, President Bush, should visit Terri Schiavo, too, he said.

"Come down, President Bush," Schiavo said in a telephone interview. "Come talk to me. Meet my wife. Talk to my wife and see if you get an answer. Ask her to lift her arm to shake your hand. She won't do it."

She won't, Schiavo said, because she can't.

He made a similar offer to the governor last week, saying lawmakers interferring in his wife's life know nothing about the case. So far, Gov. Bush hasn't responded to the offer.

President Bush has indicated he will sign any federal legislation to keep Terri Schiavo alive.

Weary after an emotional visit with his wife, Schiavo said he is astonished that politicians want to interfere in such a private matter.

"Instead of worrying about my wife, who was granted her wishes by the state courts the past seven years, they should worry about the pedophiles killing young girls," Schiavo said, referring to a local case. "Why doesn't Congress worry about people not having health insurance? Or the budget? Let's talk about all the children who don't have homes."

He said U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is leading a charge to extend Terri Schiavo's life, is a "little slithering snake" pandering for votes.

"To make comments that Terri would want to live, how do they know?" Schiavo said of the members of Congress who want to keep his wife alive.

"Have they ever met her?" Schiavo said. "What color are her eyes? What's her middle name? What's her favorite color? They don't have any clue who Terri is. They should all be ashamed of themselves."

Schiavo said he was going to stay at his wife's side through the entire ordeal and said he wouldn't back down in his fight to have her wishes carried out.

"Terri died 15 years ago," Schiavo said, referring to the collapse and cardiac arrest that doctors say virtually destroyed her brain. "It's time for her to be with the Lord like she wanted to be."

[Last modified March 20, 2005, 01:09:07]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/20/Tampabay/Schiavo___Come_down__.shtml

Quote of the Day (Social Security) / TRUTH TRUCKS ROLL OUT (Social Security) / MORE WALL STREET PRIVATIZERS DEFECT

Quote

"Calling it a personal retirement account is stronger across the board. Whereas privatization hurts across the board."

GLEN BOLGER, a Republican pollster, on the public's response to a central issue in the Social Security debate.

TRUTH TRUCKS ROLL OUT--

Members of the Alliance for Retired Americans will take to the road March 21-April 1 to deliver 1
million petitions collected from seniors urging members of Congress to protect Social Security. The Alliance's Social Security Truth Truck will begin its 3,000-mile, six-state tour in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and end it in Harrisburg, Pa. At stops along the way, local Alliance members will talk about
what Social Security means to them. For more information, visit

http://www.retiredamericans.org .

From: Work in Progress

MORE WALL STREET PRIVATIZERS DEFECT--

For the third time in a month, a major Wall Street organization has backed out of a group supporting Social Security privatization. The Financial Services Forum, an association of 19 CEOs of large U.S.
financial services companies, withdrew last week from the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security, the group leading the effort to gain support for privatization. Financial services companies Waddell & Reed and Edward Jones recently pulled out of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, another corporate lobbying group that backs privatization. This latest defection from President George W. Bush's plan comes as union activists plan a National Day of Action March 31 to demonstrate at offices of Charles Schwab and other investment firms across the country and alert clients about the firms' support for Social Security privatization. This will be the largest single-day grassroots mobilization ever against privatizing Social Security. Events are set in dozens of cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, half the members of the U.S. Senate supported a nonbinding measure declaring Congress should not pass any Social Security plan that would require "deep benefit cuts or massive debt increase." Working families and their allies are circulating petitions urging Congress to oppose Social Security privatization. Download the petition at

http://www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity .

From: Work in Progress

Estes Park, Colorado - agnostic town trustee

Why won't you visit Estes Park, Colorado? Because of the town's recall election tomorrow for an agnostic town trustee, David Habecker, who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance because it violates his religious convictions, or because the godless man was allowed to stay in office in the first place?

The 7,000-person mountain town wonders about the tourism impact of requiring local pols. to swear allegiance to God.

http://www.therevealer.org

# 5 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

5 Dark matter

TAKE our best understanding of gravity, apply it to the way galaxies spin, and you'll quickly see the problem: the galaxies should be falling apart. Galactic matter orbits around a central point because its mutual gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass in the galaxies to produce the observed spin.

Vera Rubin, an astronomer working at the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington DC, spotted this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best response from physicists was to suggest there is more stuff out there than we can see. The trouble was, nobody could explain what this "dark matter" was.

And they still can't. Although researchers have made many suggestions about what kind of particles might make up dark matter, there is no consensus. It's an embarrassing hole in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is.

Maybe we can't work out what dark matter is because it doesn't actually exist. That's certainly the way Rubin would like it to turn out. "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances," she says. "That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."

"If the results turn out to be real, the implications are profound. We may have to rewrite physics and chemistry"

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?" - GARY MARCUS

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

GARY MARCUS
Psychologist, New York University; Author, The Birth of the Mind

If computers are made up of hardware and software, transistors and resistors, what are neural machines we know as minds made up of?

Minds clearly are not made up of transistors and resistors, but I firmly believe that at least one of the most basic elements of computation is shared by man and machine: the ability to represent information in terms of an abstract, algebra-like code.

In a computer, this means that software is made up of hundreds, thousands, even millions of lines that say things like IF X IS GREATER THAN Y, DO Z, or CALCULATE THE VALUE OF Q BY ADDING A, B, AND C. The same kind of abstraction seems to underlie our knowledge of linguistics. For instance, the famous linguistic dictum that a Sentence consists of a Noun Phrase plus a Verb Phrase can apply to an infinite number of possible nouns and verbs, not just a few familiar words. In its open-endedness, it is an example of mental algebra par excellence.

In my lab, we discovered that even infants seem to be able to grasp something quite similar. For example, in the course of just two minutes, a seven-month-old baby can extract the ABA "grammar" inherent in set of made-up sentences like la ta la, ga na ga, je li je. Or the ABB "grammar" in sentences like la ta ta, ga na na, je li li.

Of course, this experiment doesn't prove that there is an "algebra" circuit in the brain—psychological techniques alone can't do that. For final proof, we'll need neuroscientific techniques far more sophisticated than contemporary brain imaging, such that we can image the brain at the level of interactions between individual neurons. But every bit of evidence that we can collect now—from babies, from toddlers, from adults, from psychology and from linguistics—seems to confirm the idea that algebra-like abstraction is a fundamental component of thought.

Hi-tech team to monitor how terrorists and criminals use the net

"Five European governments are setting up a hi-tech team to monitor how terrorists and criminals use the net. The group will make recommendations on shutting down websites that break terrorism laws.

The plans for the initiative came out of a meeting of the G5 interior ministers in Spain that discussed ways to tackle these threats. The five countries also agreed to make it easier to swap data about terror suspects and thefts of explosives. The interior ministers of Spain, Britain, France, Germany
and Italy - the G5 - met in Granada this week for an anti-terrorism summit.

To combat terrorism the ministers agreed to make it easier for police forces in their respective states to share data about suspects connected to international terror groups."

Learn more at the BBC.com.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4360727.stm

From: Future Brief

Scott Bateman - life support

Ted Rall - best man

Mike Peters - gas

Borowitz Report - social security shocker

BUSH OFFERS RETIREES OPTION OF SERVING IN IRAQ
Social Security Participants Given Wide Choice of Iraqi Cities to Patrol

After receiving only muted support for his sweeping proposals to overhaul Social Security, President George W. Bush attempted to sweeten the pot today, offering all retirees the opportunity to serve in Iraq.

With most insiders calling the president's proposal for individual investment accounts dead on arrival in Congress, the White House hopes that Mr. Bush's offer of guaranteed military service to all retired Americans will find more favor.

Speaking at a rally in Detroit today, the president told his audience, "In the year 2054, the Social Security trust fund will be bankrupt, but the war in Iraq will be alive and well."

Under his new plan, the president said, upon reaching the age of 59 every participant in the Social Security program would be offered the opportunity to begin basic training for what Mr. Bush called "the adventure of their lives."

According to the president, retirees would be "totally free to choose" which Iraqi city they would like to patrol from a list of twenty cities including Baghdad, Tikrit, Fallujah, and oil-rich Kirkuk.

Mr. Bush added that the average retiree serving in Iraq would earn approximately $1500 a month, which would be boosted to $1800 if the retiree should somehow stumble across weapons of mass destruction.

In Washington, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said he was "intrigued" by the notion of spending his retirement years in Iraq but that he had decided to run the World Bank instead.

Elsewhere, antiwar protesters across Europe marked the second anniversary of President Bush ignoring antiwar protesters across Europe.

Borowitzreport.com

Proposed 'Terri's Law' Would Guarantee Food, Water and Shelter to all Americans

The Swift Report - http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/

A bill introduced into the U.S. Congress by Florida legislators this week is intended to protect the life of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead Florida woman whose husband seeks to remove her feeding tube. But legal analysts say that the bill, which would keep Terri alive by creating a guaranteed right to food, water and shelter, could have the unintended consequence of aiding the poor, including those who are not mentally incapacitated.
(3/11/2005)

Negroponte's Time In Honduras at Issue

Focus Renewed on Intelligence Pick's Knowledge of Death Squads in 1980s

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 21, 2005; Page A01

It has been two decades since John D. Negroponte left his post as ambassador to Honduras, but the man President Bush has chosen to become the United States' first intelligence czar is still being hounded by human rights activists such as Zenaida Velasquez.

Their paths first intersected in 1983, when Velasquez asked for the ambassador's help in tracing dozens of Hondurans, including her brother, allegedly kidnapped by agents of the U.S.-backed Honduran military. Little came of the meeting, and the disappearances continued for at least another year.

Over the years, Velasquez has gotten the CIA, an official Honduran ombudsman and an international human rights court to acknowledge that the Honduran army was responsible for her brother Manfredo's kidnapping and presumed killing. But Negroponte has repeatedly insisted that military-backed death squads did not operate in Honduras while he was ambassador.

Continued ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52001-2005Mar20.html

Accounts Added On to Social Security May Not Be Viable Sum

March 21, 2005

Ronald Brownstein:
Washington Outlook

The window already may be closing on the most likely compromise that could trigger an agreement between President Bush and Congress to restructure Social Security. And that narrowing opportunity increases the odds that the parties will carry this fight into the 2006 election and probably beyond.

Bush's top goal in the debate is to divert part of the payroll tax into private investment accounts. But with that idea facing enormous resistance, more people in both parties are considering "add-on" investment accounts that could be established outside of Social Security. Yet that possible compromise increasingly looks like a dead end too.

Though the White House takes heart from polls showing most Americans believe Social Security faces significant long-term problems, signs of opposition continue to mount for Bush's centerpiece proposal to fund investment accounts through the payroll tax.

Last week, an alliance of leading financial companies quit a coalition promoting the idea. More important, five Senate Republicans joined all 44 Democrats and independent James M. Jeffords of Vermont to support a resolution opposing any Social Security restructuring that would massively increase the federal debt.

That was an ominous sign for Bush because, absent a big tax increase, diverting payroll taxes into private accounts would require trillions in borrowing. If the senators supporting that resolution hold firm, they could sustain a filibuster to block any plan to fund — or "carve out" — private accounts from the payroll tax.

This opposition helps explain the interest in accounts that would be added on to Social Security, rather than carved out from it. Earlier this month, Jeffords and every Senate Democrat — except Nebraska's Ben Nelson — sent a letter to Bush opposing carve-out accounts. But in that letter, the 44 senators said they were open to negotiating add-on investment accounts that "would be established entirely separate and apart from Social Security." Rep. Clay E. Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.) has been promoting that idea, and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) proposed a variation on it last week.

Some of those closely watching the debate believe that if any Social Security deal is reached — admittedly a big if — add-on accounts will be at its core.

A deal could work like this: Government would provide tax credits to match retirement savings for low- and moderate-income workers, establishing what amounts to a universal 401(k) plan. That would meet Bush's goal of encouraging wider ownership of financial assets.

With those new funds available for retirement, the theory continues, the public might accept a package of tax increases and modest reductions in the guaranteed Social Security benefit. That would close the system's long-term financing shortfall while preserving Social Security's role as a safety net. Then everybody could shake hands in the Rose Garden.

The problem is that add-on accounts undermine a principal, if largely unspoken, goal for congressional conservatives and the White House. Despite the continued public support from Democratic senators, many liberal activists now worry that add-on accounts would threaten their priorities in this struggle too.

In fact, the letter from Senate Democrats promoting add-on accounts may be a lagging indicator in a rapidly changing political climate. Almost all Democrats supported add-on accounts when President Clinton proposed them. Al Gore endorsed them in his 2000 presidential campaign.

But among the activist base of the Democratic Party, enthusiasm for add-on accounts is markedly cooling. One set of critics notes that Clinton and Gore backed the idea when the federal budget enjoyed a huge surplus; now, with the government again so deeply in the red, skeptics are asking whether subsidizing more retirement saving should be a higher priority than expanding access to healthcare or reducing the deficit itself.

Others worry about the tactical implications of promoting add-on accounts. Today, there seems little chance that a plan to carve out accounts from Social Security can pass the Senate; and since the House has indicated it won't act until the Senate does, the idea is blocked at square one. But if the Senate approved an add-on account, the House GOP leadership might muscle its troops into passing a carve-out. The fear is that Republicans might then blend the two ideas in a conference committee, increasing the pressure on Democratic moderates to accept some diversion of payroll tax revenue into the investment accounts.

Even a final deal that would establish accounts entirely separate from Social Security now concerns many liberal activists. Their fear is that add-on accounts would operate as the nose under the tent, providing Bush a platform to renew his push for diverting part of the payroll tax into investments.

"I can hear the ad now: 'Why won't the politicians let you put your tax dollars into your account?' " says Tom Matzzie, Washington director of the online liberal group MoveOn.org. "It's a slippery slope."

Ironically, most conservatives see add-on accounts as a slippery slope down the other side of the hill. Almost all congressional conservatives view such accounts as a new entitlement that would expand the welfare state; that's the view among Bush's top economic advisors as well. And that conflicts with a key, if rarely articulated, conservative goal in this debate: shrinking the size of government and encouraging Americans to rely more on the market, and less on public programs, for economic security.

"I don't think you solve a problem with an old entitlement by creating a new entitlement," says one senior administration official.

Add-on accounts may look like a reasonable midpoint between the two sides in this struggle. But in a polarized capital where the only constant is conflict, it increasingly appears that add-ons don't add up for either party.

Ronald Brownstein's column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times' website at http://www.latimes.com/brownstein .

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook21mar21.story

The Democracy Lie

By Juan Cole, TomPaine.com. Posted March 19, 2005.

President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for spreading freedom across the Middle East. But where changes are genuinely occurring they have nothing to do with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Is George W. Bush right to argue that his war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is democratizing the Middle East? In the wake of the Iraq vote, anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon, the Egyptian president's gestures toward open elections and other recent developments, a chorus of conservative pundits has declared that Bush's policy has been vindicated. Max Boot wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Well, who's the simpleton now? Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?" In a column subtitled "One Man, One Gloat," Mark Steyn wrote, "I got a lot of things wrong these last three years, but looking at events in the Middle East this last week ... I got the big stuff right." Even some of the president's detractors and those opposed to the war have issued mea culpas. Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star, a Bush critic, wrote, "It is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right."

Before examining whether there is any value to these claims, it must be pointed out that the Bush administration did not invade Iraq to spread democracy. The justification for the war was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda—both of which claims have proved to be false. And even if one accepts the argument that the war resulted, intentionally or not, in the spread of democracy, serious ethical questions would remain about whether it was justified. For the purposes of this argument, however, let's leave that issue aside. It's true that neoconservative strategists in the Bush administration argued after 9/11 that authoritarian governments in the region were producing terrorism and that only democratization could hope to reduce it. Although they didn't justify invading Iraq on those grounds, they held that removing Saddam and holding elections would make Iraq a shining beacon that would provoke a transformation of the region as other countries emulated it.

Practically speaking, there are only two plausible explanations for Bush's alleged influence: direct intervention or pressure, and the supposed inspiration flowing from the Iraq demonstration project. Has either actually been effective?

First, it must be said that Washington's Iraq policy, contrary to its defenders' arguments, is not innovative. In fact, regime change in the Middle East has often come about through foreign invasion. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser intervened militarily to help revolutionaries overthrow the Shiite imam of Yemen in the 1960s. The Israelis expelled the PLO from Lebanon and tried to establish a pro-Israeli government in Beirut in 1982. Saddam Hussein briefly ejected the Kuwaiti monarchy in 1990. The U.S. military's invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein were therefore nothing new in Middle Eastern history. A peaceful evolution toward democracy would have been an innovation.

Has Bush's direct pressure produced results, outside Iraq—where it has produced something close to a failed state? His partisans point to the Libyan renunciation of its nuclear weapons program and of terrorism. Yet Libya, hurt by economic sanctions, had been pursuing a rapprochement for years. Nor has Gadhafi moved Libya toward democracy.

Washington has put enormous pressure on Iran and Syria since the fall of Saddam, with little obvious effect. Since the United States invaded Iraq, the Iranian regime has actually become less open, clamping down on a dispirited reform movement and excluding thousands of candidates from running in parliamentary elections. The Baath in Syria shows no sign of ceasing to operate as a one-party regime. When pressured, it has offered up slightly more cooperation in capturing Iraqi Baathists. Its partial withdrawal from Lebanon came about because of local and international pressures, including that of France and the Arab League, and is hardly a unilateral Bush administration triumph.

What of the argument of inspiration? The modern history of the Middle East does not suggest that politics travels very much from one country to another. The region is a hodgepodge of absolute monarchies, constitutional monarchies and republics, characterized by varying degrees of authoritarianism. Few regimes have had an effect on neighbors by setting an example. Ataturk's adoption of a militant secularism in Turkey from the 1920s had no resonance in the Arab world. The Lebanese confessional political system, which attempted to balance the country's many religious communities after independence in 1943, remains unique. Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution did not inspire a string of clerically ruled regimes.

Is Iraq even really much of a model? The Bush administration strove to avoid having one-person, one-vote elections in Iraq, which were finally forced on Washington by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Despite the U.S. backing for secularists, the winners of the election were the fundamentalist Shiite Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Nor were the elections themselves all that exemplary. The country is in flames, racked by a guerrilla war, a continual crime wave and a foreign military occupation. The security situation was so bad that the candidates running for office could not reveal their identities until the day before the election, and the entire country was put under a sort of curfew for three days, with all vehicular traffic forbidden.

The argument for change through inspiration has little evidence to underpin it. The changes in the region cited as dividends of the Bush Iraq policy are either chimeras or unconnected to Iraq. And the Bush administration has shown no signs that it will push for democracy in countries where freedom of choice would lead to outcomes unfavorable to U.S. interests.

Saudi Arabia held municipal elections in February. Voters were permitted to choose only half the members of the city councils, however, and the fundamentalists did well. The other half are appointed by the monarchy, as are the mayors. The Gulf absolute monarchies remain absolute monarchies. Authoritarian states such as that in Ben Ali's Tunisia show no evidence of changing, and a Bush administration worried about al Qaeda has authorized further crackdowns on radical Muslim groups.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak recently announced that he would allow other candidates to run against him in the next presidential election. Yet only candidates from officially recognized parties will be allowed. Parties are recognized by Parliament, which is dominated by Mubarak's National Democratic Party. This change moves Egypt closer to the system of presidential elections used in Iran, where only candidates vetted by the government can run. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most important opposition party, is excluded from fielding candidates under its own name. Egypt is less open today than it was in the 1980s, with far more political offices appointed by the president, and with far fewer opposition members in Parliament, than was the case two decades ago. As with the so-called municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the change in presidential elections is little more than window-dressing. It was provoked not by developments in Iraq but rather by protests by Egyptian oppositionists who resented Mubarak's jailing of a political rival in January.

The dramatic developments in Lebanon since mid-February were set off by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Lebanese political opposition blamed Syria for the bombing, though all the evidence is not in. Protests by Maronite Christians, Druze and a section of Sunni Muslims (Hariri was a Sunni) briefly brought down the government of the pro-Syrian premier, Omar Karami. The protesters demanded a withdrawal from the country of Syrian troops, which had been there since 1976 in an attempt to calm the country's civil war. Bush also wants Syria out of Lebanon, in part because such a move would strengthen the hand of his ally, Israel. Pro-Bush commentators dubbed the Beirut movement the "Cedar Revolution," but Lebanon remains a far more divided society and its politics far more ambiguous than was the case in the post-Soviet Czech Republic and Ukraine.

On March 9, the Shiite Hezbollah Party held massive pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut that dwarfed the earlier opposition rallies. A majority of Parliament members wanted to bring back Karami. Both the Hezbollah street demonstrations and the elected Parliament's internal consensus produced a pro-Syrian outcome obnoxious to the Bush administration. Since then the opposition has staged its own massive demonstrations, rivaling Hezbollah's.

So far, these demonstrations and counterdemonstrations have been remarkable in their peacefulness and in the frankness of their political aims. But rather than reference Washington, they point to the weakness and ineptness of the young Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who made the error of tinkering with the Lebanese constitution to extend the term of the pro-Syrian president, Gen. Emile Lahoud. Although some manipulative (and traditionally anti-American) opposition figures attempted to invoke Iraq to justify their movement, in hopes of attracting U.S. support, it is hard to see what these events in Lebanon could possibly have to do with Baghdad. Lebanese have been holding lively parliamentary campaigns for decades, and the flawed, anonymous Jan. 30 elections in Iraq would have provoked more pity than admiration in urbane, sophisticated Beirutis.

Ironically, most democratization in the region has been pursued without reference to the United States. Some Middle Eastern regimes began experimenting with parliamentary elections years ago. For example, Jordan began holding elections in 1989, and Yemen held its third round of such elections in 2003. Morocco and Bahrain had elections in 2002. All of those elections were more transparent than, and superior as democratic processes to, the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. They all had flaws, of course. The monarch or ruler typically places restraints on popular sovereignty. The prime minister is not elected by Parliament, but rather appointed by the ruler. Some of these parliaments may evolve in a more democratic direction over time, but if they do it will be for local reasons, not because of anything that has happened in Baghdad.

The Bush administration could genuinely push for the peaceful democratization of the region by simply showing some gumption and stepping in to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. There are, undeniably, large numbers of middle- and working-class people in the Middle East who seek more popular participation in government. Arab intellectuals are, however, often coded as mere American and Israeli puppets when they dare speak against authoritarian practices.

As it is, the Bush administration is widely seen in the region as hypocritical, backing Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and of the Golan Heights (the latter belonging to Syria) while pressuring Syria about its troops in Lebanon, into which Kissinger had invited Damascus years ago. Bush would be on stronger ground as a champion of liberty if he helped liberate the Palestinians from military occupation and creeping Israeli colonization, and if he brokered the return of the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms to Damascus in return for peace between Syria and Israel. The end of Israeli occupation of the territory of neighbors would deprive the radical Shiite party in Lebanon, Hezbollah, of its ability to mobilize Lebanese youth against this injustice. Without decisive action on the Arab-Israeli front, Bush risks having his democratization rhetoric viewed as a mere stalking horse for neoimperial domination.

Bush's invasion of Iraq has left the center and north of the country in a state of long-term guerrilla war. It has also opened Iraq to a form of parliamentary politics dominated by Muslim fundamentalists. This combination has little appeal elsewhere in the region. The Middle East may open up politically, and no doubt Bush will try to claim credit for any steps in that direction. But in Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere, such steps much predated Bush, and these publics will be struggling for their rights long after he is out of office. They may well see his major legacy not as democratization but as studied inattention to military occupation in Palestine and the Golan, and the retrenchment in civil liberties authorized to the Yemeni, Tunisian and other governments in the name of fighting terrorism.

Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. He runs a blog on Middle Eastern affairs called Informed Comment. This article first appeared on Salon.com.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21540/

Lobbying: Hedge Funds Hire Lobbyists for Inside Tips on U.S. Legislation

Posted on Friday, March 18 @ 18:58:33 EST

Bloomberg.com

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Senator John Breaux, who retired in January, is still walking the halls of Congress. Instead of brokering deals with lawmakers, he's serving as a pipeline for a New York hedge fund.

Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, is one of a growing cadre of lobbyists being hired by U.S. hedge funds to provide instant tips on the progress of potentially market-moving legislation, from the settlement of asbestos lawsuits to allowing oil drilling in an Alaskan refuge. It's a legal way of letting investors benefit from information gleaned from private conversations with lawmakers and aides. And it's a new twist in Washington lobbying because it has nothing to do with influencing laws or policy.

"Anything that affects a company's profitability from a legislative standpoint is information that's important," says Breaux, 61, who works for both the Clinton Group Inc. hedge fund in Manhattan and Patton Boggs LLP, Washington's top lobbying firm by revenue.

Hedge funds, which often pursue high-risk, high-yield investments for wealthy clients, are taking on lobbyists such as Breaux to provide political intelligence that allows the funds to buy and sell company stock on information before it's widely known.

The practice is taking place under the radar, because federal disclosure rules only require a person to register as a lobbyist and disclose clients when active efforts are made to affect legislation. And hedge funds aren't interested in talking about it: Companies among the 25 biggest funds, including the Clinton Group, which has no connection to former President Bill Clinton, declined to comment for this story.

`Everything Is for Sale'

"It's a burgeoning area of work," says Tony Podesta, 61, a Democratic strategist, lobbyist and the brother of John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton. Tony's firm, PodestaMattoon, has a hedge-fund client he won't name. "They would have a different view of this if we had to register," he says.

Federal rules prohibit Breaux from lobbying former colleagues for at least a year. There's nothing stopping him from a lunch, cocktail, workout or phone call to Capitol Hill that might yield a tradable tip for a hedge fund.

"In Washington, everything is for sale," says Gary Ruskin, 40, director of the Portland, Oregon-based Congress Accountability Project, a group founded by consumer and political activist Ralph Nader that monitors congressional ethics. "That includes investment advice."

Taking Risks

Banks and mutual funds have hired lobbyists and employed Washington staff for years. What sets hedge funds apart is their ability to act instantly on news and to employ trading options that allow them to make money whether stocks rise or fall. Hedge funds can take risks that mutual funds, entrusted with retirement savings, typically don't. These methods include short sales, which allow them to borrow securities in anticipation of paying for them when the price drops.

Lobbyists such as Breaux and Podesta use the connections they made while working in the government to get information or insight that's not readily available to most investors, such as whether a bill is going to reach the Senate floor or whether lawmakers are far from a compromise.

Podesta, a former counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, raises money for Democrats. So does his wife, Heather, a Washington lobbyist with Blank Rome Government Relations LLC. That gives them an avenue to power brokers.

Podesta says he talks to his hedge-fund client about every other week, providing tips or responding to requests on what a bill or new government regulation means. Recently, one investor group asked him about legislation that would ban U.S. companies such as Tyson Foods Inc. and Swift & Co. from resuming imports of Canadian cattle because of concern about the spread of "mad cow" disease.

Boosting Egos

"My answer was it probably will pass -- and it probably won't ever end up in law," he says. He was on track: The Senate passed the bill March 3 even as the White House issued a statement that President George W. Bush would veto it.

Jonathan Slade, 46, a Washington lobbyist whose clients include New York-based investment firm and hedge fund GoldenTree Asset Management LP, takes advantage of Wall Street's prestige on Capitol Hill. Slade says he likes to set up conference calls and meetings between congressional staffers and the hedge fund executives. It helps boost Washington egos, he says.

"They think it's cool talking to someone on Wall Street, especially if it is a big player," says Slade, who spent four years as a congressional aide before becoming a lobbyist in 1986 and is now a principal with the Washington-based Cormac Group. "They ask them, `What's Wall Street saying?' They love that."

`Nuance'

Lawmakers and congressional aides are free to share details on legislation with people they know, except on such matters as intelligence and homeland security. Stricter rules exist at agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which releases U.S. unemployment figures and bars employees from divulging numbers before they become public.

Lobbyists sometimes act as translators for hedge fund managers, guiding them through the "nuance" of Washington politics, says Alex Vogel, former chief counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and co-founder of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc., a Washington lobbying firm.

"Hedge fund managers are very good at understanding the way Wall Street reacts to things," Vogel says. "They are not as adept at understanding how Washington reacts." One focus for hedge funds is a $140 billion asbestos proposal by Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The bill would compensate U.S. victims of disease caused by asbestos exposure and halt as many as 300,000 pending lawsuits that have bankrupted 70 companies, including W.R. Grace & Co., a Columbia, Maryland-based maker of chemicals and building materials.

`Truth Squad'

Slade says he acts as GoldenTree's "truth squad" on asbestos, counteracting overly optimistic assessments about the chances of a settlement from companies that are trying to win over investors.

Last June, Slade, using a network of relationships he's built among lawmakers, staff and other lobbyists, told GoldenTree the settlement wouldn't pass Congress in 2004. That was three months before Frist publicly declared the legislation dead.

Specter says he plans to reintroduce the legislation in the current session.

"Wall Street constantly overreacts or under reacts to information," Slade says. "Legislation is a nine-inning game. The bill being introduced is like the second or third inning. Until you see X, Y, and Z, you can't take any of this seriously."

Gambling on Bonds

GoldenTree, which manages about $6.5 billion, won't comment. "Sorry, can't help," Chairman Leon Wagner said in an e-mail.

Right now, investing in the bonds of one of the bankrupt asbestos-products makers such as Toledo, Ohio-based Owens Corning, the largest U.S. insulation producer, is risky because there's no guarantee the bonds will pay out. A hedge fund might take the gamble, for example, of buying an Owens Corning note, due in 2009, that Friday was selling for 63 cents on the dollar on a bet that a settlement will allow companies to recover and pay their debts.

The hedge funds that have contacted lobbyist Steve Elmendorf, 44, who helped run Senator John Kerry's campaign for president, have told him they don't care which way the settlement goes, as long as they are prepared.

"They want to know whether to buy or sell," says Elmendorf, who has a hedge-fund client he won't disclose. He works for Bryan Cave Strategies LLC, a unit of Bryan Cave LLP, a St. Louis-based law firm.

'In the Loop'

Hedge funds using lobbyists for information should be aware that some firms may have "a dog in the fight" -- other clients pushing for a particular legislative outcome, says Robert Johnston, managing director for equity research at New York-based Medley Global Advisors, which advises Wall Street clients including hedge funds.

"There's no question that lobbying firms are very much in the loop on the key issues -- they're actually shaping the legislation," Johnston says. "It's probably wise to try to get lobbyists on all sides of the issue."

Some hedge funds are looking for more than information on the direction of a bill. Among the largest funds, at least 10 have hired firms to lobby to try to influence the outcome of a policy or bill, according to registrations compiled by Washington's PoliticalMoneyLine, an independent group that tracks campaign finance and lobbying.

Chicago-based Navigant Consulting Inc. says it's lobbying for the asbestos settlement for Dallas-based HBK Investments LP and three New York-based firms, D.E. Shaw & Co., Elliott Associates LP and Och-Ziff Capital Management Group.

Navigant reported $400,000 in fees within 12 months working for the funds and six other clients, lobby registration documents filed with the Senate show.

Soros Fund

"We felt we could play a useful role on the legislative front for companies that supported asbestos-reform legislation," Navigant lobbyist Rick Farrell says. "We believe there will be a successful outcome on the legislation this year." HBK, Shaw, Elliott and Och-Ziff declined to comment.

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, a Washington- and Boston-based law firm with more than 1,000 attorneys worldwide, filed to represent Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group LLC and billionaire George Soros's Soros Fund Management LLC on hedge- fund regulation.

Greenwich, Connecticut-based Tudor Investment Corp. and New York-based Moore Capital Management LLC have their own Washington offices.

For Breaux, Slade and other lobbyists, working with hedge funds is a welcome break. They don't have to push people to move or kill a bill.

"You are not paying me to lobby," Slade says. "You are paying me for information."

http://spinwatch.server101.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=587

Subject: A Much Bigger Deficit Problem

Beyond Social Security, a fiscal 'nightmare' brews

Tax cuts, demands of aging population may produce toxic mix

By Marilyn Geewax
WASHINGTON BUREAU
Sunday, March 20, 2005

WASHINGTON -- As President Bush and lawmakers continue a months-long debate over Social Security's problems, the nation's top budget experts are trying to call attention to other fiscal crises they say
are just as bad or worse.

They include:

* Medicare. Its deficit is projected to reach $27.8 trillion over 75 years, dwarfing Social Security's $3.7 trillion deficit.

* Income tax cuts. Bush and GOP congressional leaders say they're committed to making previously enacted cuts permanent instead of letting them expire as scheduled. That would shrink revenues by an
estimated $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

* The alternative minimum tax. There's increasing pressure to keep it from affecting more middle-class taxpayers, a move that could cut revenues by up to $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, has said that America's future is being built on "a burning platform" because Congress is promising far more benefits, services and tax cuts than it can deliver.

"We face large and growing structural deficits," he said last month at a seminar sponsored by the Concord Coalition, a nonprofit, bipartisan group that examines budget problems.

"We are clearly on an unsustainable path," Walker said. "There's absolutely no question that tough choices are going to be required. It's going to have to involve entitlement programs, other mandatory
spending, discretionary spending and tax policies."

This month, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan echoed these concerns in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability," he said.

Though a Republican president has limited the immediate focus to Social Security, Democrats are likewise ignoring the broader crisis, said Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and author of the book "The Coming Generational Storm."

Democrats, he said, have put forth no specific plan for holding down Social Security or Medicare costs.

Economists generally agree that for the moment, the annual budget gap of about $400 billion is not out of control.

The White House projects the deficit will fall from 3.5 percent of gross domestic product this year to 1.5 percent by 2009 -- well below the 40-year historical average of 2.3 percent.

But they caution that the budget picture will begin to change in 2008, when the oldest baby boomers hit age 62 and become eligible for retirement benefits. Over the next three decades, the number of
Americans age 65 and older is expected to shoot from 12 percent of the population to nearly 20 percent.

At that point, the Concord Coalition says, the government will be using 81 percent of the federal budget to cover its mandatory obligations -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- up
from the current level of about 54 percent.

Rather than reducing government retiree benefits, Congress greatly boosted them in late 2003 by passing Bush-backed Medicare legislation that offers a prescription drug benefit.

Social Security is facing an "imperceptible crisis compared with what is going on with Medicare," said Stephen Moore, a leading proponent of cutting taxes and creating personal accounts for Social Security.

Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, staunchly supports Bush yet believes the Medicare legislation was a mistake.

"With prescription drugs, the unfunded liability is infinite," he said. "Unless we rein that in, we are going to be facing a big crisis in debt."

Congress may also find it hard to resist the political push to reduce taxes. Republicans, who control the White House, Senate and House, already have promised to turn the temporary tax cuts passed in Bush's first term into permanent changes.

The 10-year cost of making all of Bush's tax cuts permanent would be $1.6 trillion, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

A similar problem looms with the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax calculation that excludes most of the exemptions and deductions the regular tax allows. Developed in 1969, it was intended to ensure that the very wealthy would pay at least some tax.

But Congress never tied the calculation to inflation, so the tax ensnares more and more families each year. Tax experts estimate that by 2010, the alternative minimum tax will force nearly 30 million
taxpayers, many of them middle-class, to pay much higher taxes.

If Congress were to eliminate the alternative minimum tax after making the other tax cuts permanent, it would slash revenues by another $1.19 trillion over 10 years, according to the Brookings Institution,
a research group.

Kotlikoff, the Boston University economist, said Bush and lawmakers are making a mistake by not looking at the overall budget "nightmare."

Kotlikoff, who says he is not partisan, believes the White House and Congress should be warning Americans about the need for dramatic changes in the tax system and entitlement programs.

Rather than focusing so much attention on just Social Security, "it would be better to say we have several problems and we have to fix them simultaneously," he said.

"They need to be solved jointly because everyone needs to see where everything is going" to appreciate the scope and nature of the budget problems, Kotlikoff said.

He said that if Congress were to adopt Bush's Social Security plan, then make all tax cuts permanent and do nothing about Medicare, the budget deficit would explode.

"Current policy is bankrupting the country," he said. "This is not a fight between Republicans and Democrats. This is a fight between adults and kids. What we have now is an ongoing policy of fiscal
child abuse."

mgeewax@coxnews.com

Find this article at:

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/ne
ws_24d3d26d93b9705e0039.html

#4 of 13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

4 Belfast homeopathy results

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then