I read the news today, oh boy

Karen Hughes to Work on The World's View of U.S.:*

Former White House counselor Karen P. Hughes will take over the Bush administration's troubled public diplomacy effort intended to burnish the U.S. image abroad, particularly in the Muslim world, where anti-Americanism has fueled extremist groups and terrorism, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Hard to imagine someone less qualified for a job. It's as if they went and nominated for Condoleeza Rice to be Secretary of State... Oh.... OK, it's as if they went and nominated Alberto Gonzales to be -- get this -- Attorney General! Oh...

Social Security: On With the Show: President's 'Conversations' on Issue Are Carefully Orchestrated, Rehearsed:

The mostly white audience in this mostly black southern city clapped wildly as Bush took what he called the "presidential roadshow" to its 14th state Friday. He was greeted like Elvis -- adoring fans hooting and hollering, and hanging on his every word.

The few dissenting voices in the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts were quickly silenced or escorted out by security. One woman with a soft voice but firm opposition to Bush was asked to leave, even though her protests were barely audible beyond her section in the back corner of the auditorium.

The form, but not the substance of democracy -- call it Potemkin democracy. People who play along with this should be ashamed of themselves, reporters and newspapers who report it as anything other than a sham should be ashamed of themselves, too. I'd say the same about those staging these farces, but it's a waste of time.

Gambling Interests Funded DeLay Trip: Later in 2000, Lawmaker's Vote Helped Defeat Regulatory Measure

An Indian tribe and a gambling services company made donations to a Washington public policy group that covered most of the cost of a $70,000 trip to Britain by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), his wife, two aides and two lobbyists in mid-2000, two months before DeLay helped kill legislation opposed by the tribe and the company. [...]

Both the DeLays and the Hirschmanns reported their meal expenses during the trip as $2,000 per person, or roughly $200 a day.

Pigs at the trough.

2 Died After '02 Beatings by U.S. Soldiers

Two detainees held at the U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, died within a week of each other in December 2002 after military police guards and military intelligence interrogators brutally beat them and left them chained to the ceiling in standing positions, according to Army documents obtained by a human rights group. [...]

The documents detail abuse at Bagram that was far more severe than that seen at Abu Ghraib, however. Soldiers are accused of placing Dilawar in a "standing restraint" position as punishment, something that the documents reveal was part of the Bagram Control Point's standard operating procedure. They are accused of using their knees to deliver dozens of blows to Dilawar's lower body, what the soldiers apparently called "compliance blows" to get him to cooperate. An autopsy showed that Dilawar's legs were so damaged that amputation would have been necessary. (emphases added)

"Compliance blows" doesn't sound like bad-apple-talk, it sounds like Pentagonese, don't you think?

When the news about two deaths in Bagram broke back in early 2003, seemingly more as rumor than as fact, it generated a lot of heated discussion. You have to hand it to the Pentagon, they've boiled us frogs pretty well; by now, this stuff can't make it past page A14. But bless Josh White and the Post for writing and running the story at all.

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* All stories from the March 12 Washington Post: Peter Baker (Karen Hughes), Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker (Social Security Show), James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith (DeLay), Josh White (beatings). posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:00:00 PM -- |    

 
Wal-Mart, GOP: Truckers don't work hard, long enough
The beat goes on:

Public safety advocates called on Congress today to defeat a measure being pushed by Wal-Mart and other retail and short-haul truckers that would extend truckers’ workdays to 16 hours – an excessively long day that research shows would lead to a dramatic increase in highway crashes. U.S. Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) plans to introduce the measure, H.R. 623, as an amendment to the highway bill tomorrow on the House floor. [...]

Almost 5,000 people die annually in the United States in crashes with trucks. The National Transportation Safety Board estimates that 30 to 40 percent of truck crashes are caused by tired truckers. The Wal-Mart amendment would require truckers to work 10 extra hours per week, adding up to a maximum of two extra months of work per year with no extra pay. Working more than 60 hours per week in any job increases the odds of a sleep-related crash by 40 percent, research shows.

The Public Citizen press release (via "All American Patriots") explains that last year "Parents Against Tired Truckers, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, and Public Citizen won a case in DC Circuit Court, in which the court held that a Bush administration rule permitting up to 11 hours of consecutive driving was "fundamentally flawed in every area challenged by the parties and unsupported by scientific evidence."

Boozman -- whose district includes Wal-Mart headquarters Bentonville, Arkansas -- designed H.R. 623 to undo that ruling. The amendment he drafted read as follows:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an operator of a property carrying commercial motor vehicle shall be permitted to operate such vehicle and perform other work-related activities at the end of the 14th hour from the time the driver begins duty, for a period of time for which the driver has been off duty during the 14-hour period, not to exceed a total of 16 hours.

This basically takes breaks off the clock, and lengthens the trucker work day by the length of those breaks. The trucking companies get more work for their 14 hour pay period; the public gets drivers who've been up 2 hours longer.

On Wednesday, however, Boozman blinked, claiming he was misunderstood and working for truck safety, not just for longer work days:

"...I withdrew my amendment today, but pledge to keep working on this issue. I will attempt to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, as well as officials in the administration, to soothe their concerns and provide the nation’s truckers with a little relief,” said Boozman.

But all is not lost, Chairman Scott! According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Boozman "plans to offer his proposal again during House-Senate negotiations." Summarizing developments:

Bankruptcy bill: Life's a bitch.
H.R. 623: Then you die.
Boozman: It's too bright out here! I'm scuttling back under the fridge till it's dark again.

Today's Republican Party couldn't care less about you. Today's Wal-Mart is right behind them. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:45:00 AM -- |    

 
In peonage to Nosferatu
The Senate bankruptcy "reform" bill (S.256) appears to have cleared its last significant hurdles. The vote to end debate passed today with unanimous support of Republicans -- and unfortunately with support from quite a lot of Democrats as well. Joe Lieberman had already forfeited any future support from me. Now Joe Biden (D-MBNA) has as well, something I'm genuinely sorry about; he's a voice of reason on foreign affairs, even if he is a creature of his state's bloodsucking credit card companies. Let's review:

• Medical hardship amendments -- both denied (over half of U.S. bankruptcies come after medical emergencies)
  
• Senior citizen $75,000 home value exemption amendment -- denied
• Veteran and servicemember home value exemption and 36% cap on interest amendment -- denied
• Limiting interest rates on extension of credit to 30% -- denied
  
• "Asset protection trust" ensuring corporations can shelter millions -- retained

Meanwhile, some of the choice provisions of S.256, according to Harvard bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren:

• Make debtors pay more to creditors, both in bankruptcy and after bankruptcy, so that a bankruptcy filing will leave a family with more credit card debt, higher car loans, more owed to their banks and to payday lenders.
• Make it more expensive to file for bankruptcy by driving up lawyers’ fees with new paperwork, new affidavits, and new liability for lawyers, so that the people in the most trouble can’t afford to file.
• Make more hurdles and traps, with deadlines that a judge cannot waive even if someone has a heart attack or an ex-husband who won’t give up a copy of the tax returns, so that more people will get pushed out of bankruptcy with no discharge.
• Make it harder to repay debts in Chapter 13 by increasing the payments necessary to confirm in a repayment plan, so that more people will be pushed out of bankruptcy without ever getting a discharge of debt.

Congratulations, jerks. Paul Krugman suggests this bill heralds the return of good old bad old days America:

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.

I'm hard on some Democrats, but not a single Republican voted against ending the debate today, and precious few voted for any of the amendments above. Reid Stott replies to a boilerplate e-mail response by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA):

Senator Chambliss, you and your Republican cohorts have spit upon the sick, the old, and those who serve … your constituents … while sucking up to your banking and credit card industry friends who’ve been pushing this bill unsuccessfully for six years.

Don’t think we don’t see it, and don’t think it is covered up by this boilerplate reply. I hope your opponents beat you bloody with it: “Saxby Chambliss voted against the smallest protections for Georgia’s sick, elderly, and those who serve, so he could suck up to corporate interests.”

Because it is true.

This will hurt regular folks now. And it will hurt the Senators Saxby and Joe later on. Note to (uncompromised) Democrats: this will be a red state issue, too. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:30:00 AM -- |    

 
Biodefense vs. public health
Writing under the pseudonym "Revere," the authors of the group public health blog "Effect Measure" beg to differ about "biodefense":

3. The 'biodefense' agenda is likely to make us less safe, not more safe, even from bioterror weapons. Terrorists aren't sitting around reading molecular biology journals and planning intricate experiments that are not likely to succeed, even after months or years of effort. These kinds of experiments require years of training and equipment not found in apartments in Hamburg or ranches in Montana. If they are so inclined they fill up a truck or a car with explosives or buy a dozen assault rifles and hit a 'soft' target. The weapons are ready to hand. Novel pathogens are not . . . They aren't, that is, unless someone is obliging enough to make them for you, which is exactly what is happening under the guise of the biodefense research and development agenda. If you want to make a detector, a diagnostic reagent kit, a therapeutic drug, a vaccine--the first step is to make the organism. Now, something that never existed before is ready to hand. Forget about the high containment and high security laboratories are springing up to house this work. No matter what the containment, the weak link is always the human element. Even without considering the inevitable lab accidents (and they happen and even cause death to workers in the highest containment laboratories in the world), we shouldn't forget that the weaponized anthrax that brought American public health to its knees responding to 'white powder events' in 2001 almost certainly came from one of these laboratories."
(via Lindsay Beyerstein, aka "majikthise")

As the "3." indicates, this is just one of the points the author(s) make. The rest is actually even more persuasive: as the traditional public health system gets starved and/or stupided to death, biodefense dollars from Homeland Security and the Pentagon are weakening and distorting public health capabilities. We'll be able to rapidly characterize novel biological weapons, and perhaps develop countermeasures against them -- we just won't have beds ready for patients, or nurses to minister to them.

A related story ran in the New York Times in June of last year -- "In a Lonely Stand, a Scientist Takes on National Security Dogma," in which William Broad reported about the views of Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University:

Although the threat of biological warfare is real, the weapons used by terrorists are unlikely to be the next-generation agents that the high-security labs are intended to study, he says. Yet by increasing the availability of such pathogens, Dr. Ebright argues, the labs will "bring that threat to fruition."

"It's arming our opponents," he said.

In addition, he says, the laboratories could leak. They could put deadly pathogens into irresponsible hands and they will divert money from other worthy endeavors like public health and the frontiers of biology. Moreover, their many hundreds of new employees would become a pool of deadly expertise that could turn malevolent, unleashing lethal germs on an unsuspecting public.

Ebright pointed out that the SARS virus escaped Asian BSL-4 and BSL-3 facilities, causing deaths Of course, not everyone agreed with him that BSL-4 laboratories are a dangerous waste of resources:

Top private and federal experts have lobbied hard for new Level 4 labs as superstar research hubs, arguing that it is only in such highly protected settings that they can study the most dangerous threats and come up with ways to counteract them. The labs boast the highest degree of security, and they are so tightly cut off from the environment that they have been compared to submarines.

Dr. Richard O. Spertzel, a microbiologist who led the United Nations inspections for germ weapons in Iraq, defended the new laboratories as critical to national security, noting that some would be built on military bases behind barbed wire, adding another layer of protection.

"They're absolutely required," Dr. Spertzel said. "Speed is of the essence. We're way behind in protecting ourselves."

This article is mainly about the wisdom of "BSL-4" (biosafety level 4) superlabs, while the "Effect Measure" essay goes beyond that to the effect of the whole homeland defense budget on the public health system.

The "Effect Measure" authors also specifically mention the anthrax "blowback" that appears to have happened in the mailed anthrax attacks in fall of 2001. Ebright, for his part, considered anthrax a realistic threat worth preparing for. But lower biosafety level laboratories would be sufficient, since that disease is not contagious.

It's true that the miniscule amounts of anthrax needed for use in defensive research might be (and probably were) maliciously abused on a relatively small scale. It's also arguably true that only somewhat greater amounts could cause death on a scale dwarfing 9/11; one study (cited here) estimated one kilogram of anthrax released from a high building or low flying aircraft could plausibly kill about 120,000 people in a metropolitan area. One kilogram of suitably prepared anthrax is a tall order, of course, but it's not far-fetched to imagine a North Korea or an A.Q. Khan succeeding.

The study, by Lawrence Wein, actually concluded that the best countermeasures to a one kilogram anthrax attack wouldn't be elaborate systems of high-tech biodefense detectors, but instead prepositioned stockpiles of Cipro and/or other antibiotics, a plan to rapidly medicate the affected population before the disease runs its incredibly rapid course, and the "surge capacity" to handle huge caseloads. In this case, at least, the sensible biodefense recommendation was to strengthen our public health system. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:55:00 PM -- |    

 
Five bucks on the sidewalk
Roy Edroso (alicublog):

CAUSALITY FOR DUMMIES. I found five bucks on the sidewalk, which proves that the President's Mideast policy is having even farther-reaching effects than the Ole Perfesser thinks.

Not to ruin a good line, but I honestly don't know how much of the recent hopeful events in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Egypt and elsewhere to ascribe to Bush's foreign policy -- or how much good they do us. There's that Walid Jumblatt quote (2/23/2005) how the "process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq." There's also that Walid Jumblatt quote (2/12/2004) about how the "killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory." (Both via Jim Henley) Not inconsistent, I guess, but not an unalloyed pleasure to read either.

John Quiggin is surely right to point out alternative and often more plausible factors explaining some of the provisionally good news. And to point out how ongoing repressive and repulsive tactics in some of those same countries are being harnessed for the purposes of the Bush administration.

Of course I'm glad to see, say, Syria pushed around a bit by Lebanese for a change. But it might be that it's mainly to the credit of Lebanese actually putting themselves on the line for something, and less to the credit of bold statement-makers and carrier-landers elsewhere. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 AM -- |    

 
Talking Points Memo - Special Victims Unit
Josh Marshall's hands are full with the fantastic job he's doing covering Bush's threat to the Social Security program. But he wants to see more coverage of the incredibly bad bankruptcy bill now being considered in Congress. So he's expanding the Talking Points brand:

Professor Elizabeth Warren is an expert in bankruptcy law at Harvard Law School. And I've agreed to set her and three of her students at the law school up with a limited-duration blog here at TPM to follow the bankruptcy bill much as I am tracking the Social Security debate.

Marshall deserves praise for providing such a high-profile place to teach and learn more about this issue, and I'll be following Talking Points Memo: Special Bankruptcy Bill Edition. (Not that this is news to most readers, either, but Kevin Drum has been very vocal about the issue as well.)

I'd only disagree with Marshall that the bankruptcy bill is the "one other bill ... that deserves scrutiny." Luckily, though, Nathan Newman at Labor Blog seems to be zeroing in on Rick Santorum's bad minimum wage bill; you should have a look.


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UPDATE, 3/7: The bankruptcy bill issue has legs: Georgian Reid Stott -- who might fairly be described as a "militant independent" -- has published an eloquent and succinct letter to his Senators criticizing the bankruptcy bill in his blog "The Daily Whim." I hope Senators Saxby "Smear" Chambliss and Isakson send him something better than a boilerplate response. And I hope they vote against this bill. And I'm not holding my breath. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:18:00 PM -- |    

 
Wal-Mart intimidation alleged in Colorado union vote
A week ago I mentioned that a Loveland, Colorado Wal-Mart tire and lube shop had voted against unionizing in a 17-1 secret vote -- after narrowly voting for a referendum on the matter last November. Long-time labor advocate Nathan Newman suggested that high employee turnover might have accounted for the apparent change of heart. A news report suggests just how right he was -- and that there might have a less subtle reason as well. The Northern Colorado Rocky Mountain Bullhorn reports:

...[Lone union supporter Josh] Noble says another compelling reason led to the disappointing result: A Wal-Mart tire shop associate intimidated and even threatened pro-union coworkers.

"The guy who threatened to beat me up was Wal-Mart’s observer" to the election, he claims. [...]

The UFCW plans to appeal the outcome based on the alleged intimidation and Wal-Mart’s move to bring several anti-union workers into the department just before the vote. The union is also working with Noble to share his ups and downs with other Wal-Mart employees in Wyoming and Colorado interested in unionizing. (link added)

Wal-Mart will no doubt point out the ballot was secret, but in a small shop, it was likely to be easy to know exactly who the UFCW supporters were. There was next to no doubt, of course, about their observer or the planted anti-union workers.

The report also shows why at least one employee was still willing to stand up to the pressure. Enjoy your low prices, Wal-Mart shoppers:

Noble was supposed to serve as the union observer to the election but suffered a seizure that morning and was only able to make it into the store briefly to cast his vote.

In fact, Noble’s inability to afford medication required for his seizures is one reason he decided to take on the mega-chain in the first place. Although the 21-year-old has worked at Wal-Mart for three years, he says he still pulls in the same entry-level wage he earned when he was hired, despite repeated attempts at a raise and better benefits.

"Every time I have to go see my doctor it costs me $50; the pills I need to take cost more than I can afford, and it seems that Wal-Mart wants their employees to pay more than the employer," he told the Bullhorn in December, adding that nearly 10 percent of his paycheck goes directly to benefits that never seem to be enough for the healthcare he requires.

Thanks very much to Colorado blogger Stygius for telling me about this news.


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EDIT, 3/7: link added, UFCW explanation removed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:21:00 AM -- |    

 
Must... fight... outrage... fatigue
Here's what happened to one honest soldier in Iraq, Sergeant Greg Ford, who reported abuses like mock executions and interrupted asphyxiation to his CO ("Soldier Who Reported Abuse Was Sent to Psychiatrist," R. Jeffrey Smith, Josh White, Washington Post, 3/5/2005):

An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist's initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released yesterday. [...]

A witness in his unit told investigators that the captain later pressured a military doctor -- who had found the soldier stable -- into doing another emergency evaluation, saying: "I don't care what you saw or heard, he is imbalanced, and I want him out of here."

The next day, after the doctor did another evaluation, the soldier was evacuated from Iraq in restraints on a stretcher to a military hospital in Germany, despite having been given no official diagnosis, according to the documents. A military doctor in Germany ruled he was in stable mental health, according to the documents, but sent him back to the United States for what the soldier recalls the doctor describing as his "safety." (all emphases added)

It turns out many of the details of this story were reported last December by Amy Goodman, of Independent Media TV, who interviewed David DeBatto, an Iraq veteran and writer who broke the story. DeBatto says that doctors at a base in Germany told him "at least three or four" other soldiers got the same loony-bin treatment Ford did. The Post writers base their story on documents newly obtained by the ACLU that apparently corroborate DeBatto's findings; the documents will be posted on ACLU's web site on Monday.

Then there's this, from last Wednesday's Washington Post ("CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment," Dana Priest):

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards -- paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit -- dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.
As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic -- "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death -- the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive's family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one's registry of captives, not even as a "ghost detainee," the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said.

"He just disappeared from the face of the earth," said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case.

To me that sounds like manslaughter, at least, and obstruction of justice to boot. The kicker? That CIA case officer has been promoted.

And that's all after the recent Jane Mayer "Outsourcing Torture" article in the New Yorker, which described certain Egyptian methods so foul my mind still feels polluted weeks later. The point here being that we share in those methods, because the U.S. is carrying out "extraordinary rendition" -- turning over of people in its custody to another country without due process -- of terror suspects to Egypt. Emphasis on "suspects" -- but even if they were dead certain Al Qaeda members, some of this is stuff one would or at least should not wish on one's worst enemy. I read Mayer's piece and had no trouble imagining people willing to fight Egypt and anyone or anything remotely allied to Egypt by any means at all.

Wrong? Stupid? Why choose? It's both. Thanks, George. Thanks, Dick. Thanks, Don.

And thanks, 51%, for their "accountability moment." In "Outsourcing Torture," Jane Mayer spoke with John Yoo, co-author of the "torture memos" and the notion that the President has wide, unfettered power to wage war and order interrogations as he sees fit. Mayer writes:

[Yoo] went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was "proof that the debate is over." He said, "The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum."

Don't let that be the last word. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:45:00 AM -- |    

 
Burke on Summers
This comes from a couple of Sundays ago, but Timothy Burke's skewering of Larry Summers' gender aptitude remarks is still worth pointing out, I think. Burke notes that even if Summers were correct (which he does not concede), it still wouldn't explain why there are so few women scientists and mathematicians at Harvard. It's really an elegant, great little post, by turns funny and very challenging. Burke concludes:

If Summers wanted to get up and say, “Look, I don’t actually care what the genesis of the imbalance between men and women in the sciences is: it is in my judgment too expensive and labor-intensive for one institution like Harvard to heroically compensate for it”, then at least he would have started a conversation that could shed more light than heat. If you want to make a critical reply to that statement, you actually have to either demonstrate that it’s not that expensive or difficult to do, or that for some reason achieving gender balance is such a pressingly important objective that it outweighs many other priorities that might exist in the process of hiring and tenuring. These are both useful claims to constantly revisit, revise and challenge even when you agree with them.

My own response to Summers remarks was less well formulated; I simply had an instinctive feeling of discouragement on behalf of my own little girl. If this smart guy at the head of the best university thinks this way, then she really is in a society where the deck is stacked against her, regardless of her aptitude or ambition.

"Irresponsible" usually means something like "feckless," but it could arguably also mean "not willing to take responsibility." Summers' remarks fit both descriptions.


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EDIT, 3/6: "fit both descriptions" for "were irresponsible in both ways." posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:01:00 AM -- |