Department of even more followups
Pay attention to the Smithfield Tar Heel walk-out, 11/17/06 --- On the heels of last November's successful walkout, "Justice at Smithfield" is reporting that the empire strikes back -- this time with help from the feds:

On Wednesday, January 24, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers (ICE) arrested 21 Smithfield workers from the Tar Heel plant. The arrests come on the heels of the company announcement that it will fire up to 600 people next month primarily those who walked out in protest last November over the firings of fellow employees allegedly for receiving social security no match letters. This is yet another attempt on the part of Smithfield to terrorize the workers who have been struggling for a collective voice on the job for over a decade.

There's no work force like a deportable work force. In a statement, "Justice at Smithfield" says the arrests violate the ICE's own guidelines: "The arrests, which are likely to increase, are also ... in violation of ICE’s own instructions which preclude the agency from facilitating the use of immigration laws of enforcement to intervene in the course of a labor dispute." Click the "Justice at Smithfield" link to see what kind of help they'd like; currently, it's e-mails to the CEO and chairman of the board.


"back over there or you're gonna get tased too", 11/17/06 --- The LA Times Andrew Blankstein reports Mostafa Tabatabainejad will be filing a federal lawsuit alleging civil rights violations:

[Attorney Paul Hoffman said] "The larger goal of the suit is to change the way UCLA police behave and treat people on campus, their discipline and their training."

A November 17 Daily Bruin article quoted the ACLU's Southern California managing attorney Paul Eliasberg saying the threat quoted in the post headline -- in response to asking for a badge number -- is "absolutely illegal": "[T]hat's assault."


=====
NOTES: LA Times UCLA followup via netzoo.
EDIT, 1/26: Smithfield links and e-mail campaign mention added. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:48:00 AM -- |  

 
Department of followups
An occasional review of further developments in stuff I've written about.

Babel, 12/4/06 --- I really liked the movie, so I'm pleased the Academy Awards people nominated it for Best Picture, Best Director, and two Best Supporting Actresses including Rinko Kikuchi, who I misidentified as Yuko Marata though crediting her with a "really memorable performance." It also got well deserved Oscar nominations for best original screenplay, film editing, and music score.


Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, 12/18/06 --- The appeal reads: "As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home." Last week that petition, signed by over a thousand military personnel, was delivered to Capitol Hill. From the LA Times account by Noam Levey:

When the campaign began three months ago, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow dismissed the first signatories as "65 people who are going to be able to get more press than the hundreds of thousands who have come back and said they're proud of their service." The 1,000 signatories still represent a tiny fraction of the military personnel who have served in and around Iraq since the 2003 invasion. But according to the group, those who have signed the appeal include about 100 officers. Approximately 70% of the signatories are active-duty military, while the rest are reservists or members of the National Guard, said Madden, who added that the group would not reveal the names of the signatories to protect them.

Employee Free Choice Act, 6/13/05 --- This perennial progressive wish list item may have the best prospects in years. The measure allows for union locals to be formed once enough signatures are gathered -- rather than via up or down votes notoriously susceptible to management pressure and bullying tactics. You can learn more about "card check" systems via American Rights at Work, and you can send your congressman a message you support this sensible measure via a AFL-CIO Working Families petition: "Some 58 million workers would join a union if they could. But, as Human Rights Watch has documented, employers routinely harass, coerce, intimidate and stall to block workers' freedom to choose union representation. In fact, every 23 minutes a worker is fired or penalized for supporting a union." The Senate bill is S. 842, and the House version is H.R. 1696; I'm happy to learn my congressman, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD-8), is a co-sponsor.


Security Council votes 12-0-3 for UN troops in Darfur, 8/31/06 --- One of the three abstentions was China. Now that nation is signaling a slightly different stance -- but still no real pressure. The New York Times is running the headline China's Leader to Visit Sudan and Seek End to Darfur Conflict, with Howard French reporting that Chinese officials announced President Hu Jintao will visit Sudan in early February and "press for a diplomatic solution to the conflict in that country’s western Darfur region." However, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that, "while China intended to use its diplomatic influence to encourage a settlement of the Darfur crisis, it would not press Sudan publicly or threaten it with sanctions."


Fair Share Health Care: canary in the ERISA coal mine, 12/15/06 --- Last Thursday The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld last year's ruling overturning Maryland's "Fair Share Health Care" law on the grounds that it conflicted with federal law, specifically the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The Baltimore Sun's Matthew Dolan et al report:

...A divided three-judge panel ruled that the state's Fair Share Health Care Act was incompatible with federal rules that promote uniform treatment of employees.

"In short, the Fair Share Act leaves employers no reasonable choices except to change how they structure their employee benefit plans," Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote for the majority, adding that such a constricted choice also violates the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA.

One of the three judges disagreed; Judge M. Blane Michael held that the law was "'a permissible response to the problem' of escalating Medicaid costs." While the article reports that most Maryland legislators don't want to revisit the legislation, Senate Leader Mike Miller is an important exception:

"We're going to try to work around what the [court's] majority said and comply with the law," Miller said. "But at the same time, we can't allow 60 percent of Wal-Mart employees' kids to go without health insurance and use the emergency rooms for care. There has got to be some relief for Maryland and the other states.

Emphasis added. And even though he counsels against appealing the verdict, I also agree with Sen. Thomas M. Middleton, a Charles County Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee: "First of all, Congress needs to loosen up the ERISA laws." More on the 4th Circuit's ruling another time, I hope. For now, I'll just reprint dissenting Judge Michael's final words:

Because a covered employer has the option to comply with the Act by paying an assessment — a means that is not connected to an ERISA plan — I would hold that the Act is not preempted.

Yes! Jiminy Christmas, that ought to be the ballgame -- at least one judge gets it.


=====
NOTES: Fair Share court ruling via Steve Fine ("fineline")
EDIT, 1/25: Judge Michael's final words and my comment added. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:02:00 AM -- |  

 
"Secrecy is the freedom zealots dream of"

Good line by Bill Moyers in the 1987 documentary "The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis," a very useful bit of history about Iran-Contra and the secret government it revealed. Moyers continues, "...no watchman to check the door -- no accountant to check the books -- no judge to check the law." The thesis:

The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to them when they can't win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution. ...

Via Tiny Revolution, King of Zembla, and the miracle of the internets, you can watch the whole 90 minutes right here, right now, if you like, or at least until whoever the copyright owner is complains.

There's a thin but strong thread connecting those events with today. Moyers mentions that Congress was due to release a report on Iran-Contra as the documentary was aired. But the minority report was chaired by one Richard Cheney and written by one David Addington, now Cheney's chief of staff. They asserted that there was nothing wrong about a President failing to follow the law when it came to national security. Rather, it was wrong of Congress to expect that, as Joan Didion summarized Cheney's views in the 10/5/06 New York Review of Books:

...the "mistakes" in Iran-contra, as construed by the minority report, had followed not from having done the illegal but from having allowed the illegal to become illegal in the first place. As laid out by the minority, a principal "mistake" made by the Reagan administration in Iran-contra was in allowing President Reagan to sign rather than veto the 1984 Boland II Amendment forbidding aid to contra forces: no Boland II, no illegality. A second "mistake," to the same point, was Reagan's "less-than-robust defense of his office's constitutional powers, a mistake he repeated when he acceded too readily and too completely to waive executive privilege for our Committees' investigation."

No reason to think he feels any differently now; no reason to think he's hiding anything less illegal.


=====
UPDATE/EDIT, 12/4/07: different access to video embedded. In case this one becomes unavailable as well, see key excerpts and a partial transcript here (wanttoknow.info). posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:09:00 AM -- |  

 
Luma Mufleh for President
If she weren't apparently ineligible, I'd be only half kidding. We could certainly do worse.

Via eRobin ("fact-esque"), who's right that a response (at the Firedoglake blog) by a local to Warren St. John's New York Times article detracts not one whit from what this woman is accomplishing, and doesn't oversell the obstacles she faces by very much, if anything. This is "Friday Night Lights" or "Hoosiers" despite a town, not with it. At least so far.

=====
UPDATE, 1/23: Good for her -- there's a Fugees Family web site. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Optical scan voting technology for Maryland
Shazia Anwar, director of the election technology reform group TrueVoteMD.org, wrote last week that the coming Maryland legislative session will be "the best political environment yet to get a good voter verified paper audit trail bill passed. Recent comments by various legislator leaders indicate that they intend to address the issue of a voter verified paper audit trail in the coming session."

In keeping with former governor Bob Ehrlich's skepticism about electronic voting, Republican leadership seems to be on board with making a change, judging by comments made by a party spokeswoman to AP's Kristen Wyatt and printed in Annapolis' The Capital in late December:

"The problem with the electronic voting machines is there is no way to recount any votes," [Audra] Miller said. Paper ballots or voting receipts "will give voters some semblance of assurance their vote was counted properly," she said.

The same article reports that House Speaker Mike Busch "said some sort of nonelectronic backup is certain" and quotes him saying that "We will deal with a verifiable paper trail." A January 2 Baltimore Sun article by Melissa Harris notes that newly elected Governor Martin O'Malley has "formed a team to study what do about problems with the Maryland's electronic voting system." Even Senate President Mike Miller (D) is a newly converted voice for change:

Miller said in an interview with The Sun last week that the legislature was considering the possibility of adding a paper trail to the state's touch-screen machines, which computer scientists and others have argued would reduce the chances of someone hacking into and tampering with election results.

"The reason we didn't move forward immediately last year was the cost factor," Miller said.

As suggested by Miller's comments, there's a lot of inertia for sticking with Diebold in some fashion. According to Harris, O'Malley's team was discussing three options: retrofitting current Diebold equipment with printers, switching to later model Diebold equipment with printers, or abandoning the current relationship with Diebold and switching to optical scan of paper ballots.

While any of these options would be welcome progress, I agree with TrueVoteMD that optical scan voting technology is preferable. As the Sun article points out, sticking with Diebold would once again make Maryland voters the guinea pigs in Linda Lamone's and Diebold's election day experiment/fiascos. First, other than a prototype, there's no retrofit option available yet for the current voting machine model. And second, no one else has yet adopted Diebold's newer voting machines featuring printers. As TrueVoteMD's director Shazia Anwar wrote in an e-mail last week:

The best solution to our current voting problems is to implement a precinct-based optical scanner system with a ballot-marking device for disabled voters. This will ensure the creation of a paper record of your vote that will be the official record during a mandatory audit and any recount. Computer experts and election reform advocates agree that this is the most secure system available, and it is also the most fiscally responsible solution, since it would require less machines (2000 optical scanners and 2000 ballot marking devices versus 24,000 electronic voting machines + printers) and thus less operating costs for our counties.

Have a look at TrueVoteMD's comparison of touch-screen voting machines fitted with printers versus optical scan technology. Among the drawbacks of touch screen-plus-printer:

• Replacing our current machines with a newer model that has a paper trail would be expensive, and the printers have major problems [...]
• Touch-screen voting machines require about 10 times more equipment than optical scanners, so annual operating costs are significantly higher. [...]
  
• Thermal print-outs are not durable enough to serve as the legal record of a vote. They smear, fade, discolor or disappear quickly. They are also fragile, easily torn, and cannot withstand the repeated handling necessary for audits and recounts.

Among the advantages of optical scan technology (emphases in original):

• Disabled voters can use a ballot-marking device or telephone-based interface that enables them to mark a ballot compatible with an optical-scan system.
• During peak voting hours, the number of voters who can vote simultaneously is limited only by the amount of space available in the polling place to mark a ballot privately. Cardboard privacy screens are inexpensive and easy to store and transport.
• Equipment failure does not prevent voters from casting ballots, because they can be stored for counting later if necessary.

Moreover, any problems with "fixed" Diebold voting machines -- printer jams, lack of paper, etc. -- are liable to make people blame that fix instead of the assumption that touch screen voting constitutes "progress."

The single acknowledged drawback for optical scan is that it will require larger printing runs for the required paper ballots, while the comparison acknowledges the "high tech" feel and the possibility of paper trail voter verification for touch screen-plus-printers. As TrueVote's suggested letter to legislators puts it:

Sometimes the most high-tech solution is not necessarily the best solution. Will you join us in working for a better solution for MD's voting system that will ensure more reliable election results while also allowing our counties to spend our tax dollars more wisely on the urgent needs that impact our daily lives? Please support the call for a change to a paper audit trail voting system by switching to a Precinct-based Optical Scan System so that we can have an accurate and verifiable system in place before the 2008 Presidential Election.

If you live in Maryland, I hope you'll consider clicking through to this letter and sending it.


=====
CROSSPOSTED at Free State Politics
NOTE: AP/The Capital and Baltimore Sun items via TrueVoteMD.

UPDATE, 1/23: eRobin rightly comments that speaking of "paper trail" or "receipts" is bad usage, and that what's needed should be called "voter-verified paper ballot with proper audits." "Paper trail" is what some vendors call the non-verified end of day printout for a given electronic voting machine. "Receipts" implies a physical receipt kept by the voter -- a bad idea, because it would make it possible to sell one's vote.

UPDATE, 1/26: Avedon Carol points out that even if you get optical scanners, you can't necessarily count on the returns being audited. That's true, but at least audits would be possible. Hopefully, plans are afoot to revive something like HB 244, a "model" electronic voting bill calling for voter verification and random audits that stalled in Maryland's legislature last year... yes: one of my district's delegates, Sheila Hixson, has introduced HB18 (PDF link). At first glance, at least, it looks very much like HB 244, calling for random routine audits of voter verified paper ballots. The bill appears to be agnostic about optical scan vs. touch screen+printer, that is, both are given as examples of voter verified systems. But it does specify audits. Since Hixson is chair of Ways and Means, and HB244 passed 93-0 last year, this bill is likely to succeed in the Assembly. The Senate was the problem last year, and may be again this year, although Senate Leader Mike Miller (D-PG/Calvert) seems less likely to be an obstacle. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:30:00 PM -- |