PHILADELPHIA -- Michael Vick flicked his wrist and fired tight spirals deep downfield.
A two-year layoff sure didn't hurt Vick's arm strength. He showed off his skills Saturday in his first NFL practice with the Philadelphia Eagles since completing his prison sentence.
"He throws the ball as hard as anybody I've ever seen," said wide receiver Danny Amendola, a second-year pro who spent last season on the Dallas Cowboys' practice squad.
Wearing a No. 7 red quarterback's jersey, Vick took part in limited drills with the offense. He worked in one-on-ones, seven-on-sevens and red zone offense. Vick mostly observed Donovan McNabb during the two-hour session.
When he got a chance on the field, the 29-year-old quarterback made the most of it. He had plenty of zip behind his throws and completed a few deep balls, including one to rookie wideout Jeremy Maclin down the sideline.
Vick put in extra time after practice, working on footwork and mechanics with offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg. He was the last player to leave the field, jogging off with his helmet still on.
Asked how he felt, Vick replied: "Great."
Vick didn't speak to the large contingent of reporters around his mostly empty locker. As he finished taking off his ankle braces, Vick drew a chuckle when he said: "This is weird."
Vick was the fourth quarterback to line up under center in the early portion of the practice. Vick took only one snap and completed his first pass over the middle against no defense. He playfully pumped his fist before McNabb, who lobbied the Eagles to sign Vick, and gave him a hug.
In the morning walkthrough, Vick worked with the scout team offense.
"We have to get him in football shape," Eagles coach Andy Reid said. Reid said Vick was fit enough to handle an NFL practice and the team would bring him along accordingly.
Vick practiced only at quarterback in the morning session, Reid said.
"That's what Michael is," he said. "Michael's a quarterback."
A three-time Pro Bowl pick during six seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, Vick served 18 months in federal prison for running a dogfighting ring and was reinstated last month by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell after being out of action since 2006.
He signed a one-year deal with the Eagles on Thursday for $1.6 million with a team option for a second year at $5.2 million.
With McNabb entrenched as the starter and Kevin Kolb backing him up, Vick may be used more as a gimmick player than a traditional quarterback. He's got the athletic skills to run the Wildcat formation.
"There's always the possibility you can do something," Reid said.
Vick always has been far more inclined to take off and run than stay in the pocket and find an open receiver. His career completion percentage is 53.8 percent, among the lowest for a starting NFL quarterback. He has 71 career touchdown passes, but 52 interceptions.
Vick has more career 100-yard rushing games (8) than 250-yard passing games (6).
Aiding his return to the NFL is the fact he'll be learning an Eagles' West Coast offense similar to what he ran in Atlanta.
"He's very fortunate he knows the foundation of this offense. That will speed things up," Reid said.
McNabb, a five-time Pro Bowl pick, has led the Eagles to five NFC championship games and one Super Bowl appearance in the last eight years. Vick said his friendship with McNabb and the team's strong management and tradition influenced his decision to choose the Eagles over other teams.
"I thought this was the perfect situation, perfect scenario," Vick said Friday at his introductory news conference. "I can come in and I can learn from Donovan, one of the premier quarterbacks in the game, one of the best at it. Everything that he's learned and the way he's been polished just comes from coach Reid. I want to get with those two and do as much as I can to become a complete quarterback and I have time to do it."
The Eagles were heavily criticized by animal rights' activists for signing Vick and dozens of protesters voiced their outrage outside the team's practice facility Friday. There was not much of a scene Saturday afternoon: Seven people stood outside the gates, four of them anti-Vick.
Any furor over Vick's signing has not stopped the NFL marketing machine. Vick's new Eagles' jersey -- available in white, black or midnight green -- was available on the league's Web site for $259.99.
WASHINGTON -- The air traffic controller handling the small plane involved in a deadly crash with a helicopter over the Hudson River was chatting on the telephone about a dead cat at the airport and initially failed to warn the pilot of other aircraft in his path, officials say.
The controller tried unsuccessfully to contact the pilot before the accident, officials said Friday, but the plane collided with a tour helicopter over the Hudson River, killing nine people.
The controller handling the plane and his supervisor at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at the time of the accident a week ago have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a report that the controller, who has not been identified, cleared the single-engine Piper for takeoff at 11:48 and 30 seconds a.m. EDT, then made a telephone call. He remained on the phone, including while further instructing the plane's pilot, until the accident happened.
The phone call, to an airport contractor, was a "silly conversation" concerning a dead cat that had been removed from the airport, a retired union official said, in an account supported by transportation officials also familiar with the contents of the call.
After takeoff, the plane flew southbound until the controller directed it to turn left toward the river, the report said. At 11:52 and 20 seconds, the controller instructed the plane to contact air traffic control at nearby Newark Liberty International Airport, which is part of the procedure for handing off oversight of the small plane.
The pilot apparently did not contact Newark, the report said.
Radar data show there were several aircraft immediately ahead of the plane, including the tour helicopter, "all of which were potential traffic conflicts for the airplane," but the Teterboro controller didn't warn the pilot, the report said.
It wasn't until controllers at the Newark airport alerted the Teterboro controller to the potential collision that he twice tried unsuccessfully to contact the pilot, the report said. The collision occurred at 11:53 and 14 seconds.
At the time the Newark controllers were alerting the Teterboro controller to the danger, they also recommended the plane turn southwest. About the same time the plane's pilot acknowledged the Teterboro controller's instruction to change radio frequency in order to contact Newark, the report said.
Video of the crash taken by a tourist sightseeing near the Statute of Liberty show the Piper changing direction seconds before its wing was clipped by the helicopter's rotors. The plane then broke apart in the air and both aircraft plunged into the Hudson.
Union officials representing air traffic controllers said the Teterboro controller couldn't have warned the Piper pilot of the helicopter in its path at the time the plane was directed toward the river. They said the helicopter was just taking off and hadn't appeared on the radar screen yet.
"He was out of communication with the guy by the time the helicopter ever popped up on anybody's radar scope," said Phil Barbarello, National Air Traffic Controllers Association eastern region vice president.
The FAA has said there is no reason to believe the controller's actions contributed to the accident. However, the agency said the phone conversation was inappropriate and such conduct is unacceptable. The safety board, in a pointed statement, said it was too early to reach any conclusions about controllers in the crash.
The supervisor's conduct also is being investigated because he was out of the building at the time. Controllers, including supervisors, are expected to be available throughout their work shift in case they are needed, even if they are taking a break.
The NTSB report said two other Teterboro controllers were taking a break at the time of the accident. The only controllers on duty were the controller who was talking on the phone and another controller who was handling arriving planes and ground traffic.
The phone call, made on a landline that controllers use to contact other parts of the airport, was to an employee of Baltimore-based AvPORTS, a contractor for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the airport, according to port authority officials.
"He was talking to the Port Authority about a dead cat on the taxiway ... it turned into a silly conversation," said Barrett Byrnes, a recently retired air traffic controller and former National Air Traffic Controllers Association representative who stays in touch with New York and New Jersey controllers. "There was a little banter."
Three officials close to the investigation verified that the banter was about a cat carcass on the airport grounds.
A federal task force began work Friday on improving safety procedures for pilots flying in the busy airspace around New York City and was given 10 days to report, the FAA said.
Seven months after moving into his office in the West Wing, Mr. Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House chief of staff in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on in Washington comes a high degree of risk.
Before 2001, America's military women had rarely seen ground combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines, as military policy dictates.
But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, often fought in marketplaces and alleyways, have changed that. In both countries, women have repeatedly proved their mettle in combat. The number of high-ranking women and women who command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their status in the military.
I've just learned that Ken Bacon has lost his battle with cancer. Most will remember Ken as the affable, erudite, bow-tied Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton Administraiton. His former press colleagues at the Wall Street Journal will remember him as one of the best reporters in the business. Those who worked with him at Refugees International will remember him as a man who decided to forego more of the same in politics and journalsm and turn his life towards making a difference, which he certainly did.
I worked for Ken Bacon at the Pentagon as his deputy, and I will remember him as one of the finest men I ever met and the best boss I ever had. Working with the press in any government department is a crazy business, but at the Pentagon, you also have a very large bureaucracy, issues of life and death and war and peace, and a staff consisting of some of the finest men and women, civilian and military, you could ever hope to meet.
Every one of us respected and loved Ken Bacon. He wasn't just unflappable -- he was funny, humane and smart to boot. He took the most complicated and emotionally-charged issues and made sure that what he told the world about them was honest, direct and factual. Every summer, he and his wonderful wife Darcy would return from their New England vacations with blueberries in every conceivable form -- fresh berries, pies, muffins -- which meant that every post-Labor Day start for all of the staff was a great start.
Above all, he loved and respected America's men and women in uniform, particularly the younger folks for whom he went out of his way to mentor and recommend for future jobs.
I will most remember Ken for the dignity and leadership he showed during the hell our office went through as the Monica Lewinsky-Linda Tripp scandal unfolded. A crisis and scandal not of our making and unbeknownst to us until it was trumpted across the press and around the world, Ken Bacon helped the rest of us through days and months of mud-splattering and witch hunts which affected all of us, military and civilian, in the Pentagon press office.
During this summer of untimely deaths, this is the one that hits me the hardest and hurts my heart the most. All who knew Ken Bacon will feel the same.
At President Obama's Colorado health care town hall Saturday evening, a questioner challenged him to an "Oxford style" debate.
"I'm going to call on this gentleman," Obama announced "because he's been waving, and he shouted at me a couple of times. I just want proof here that I'm happy to get a good debate going."
Political science student Zach Lahn responded, to laughter, "My question is this -- and also, I'd love to have a debate just all out, any time, Oxford style if you'd like. I understand... I'm willing to do that -- but my question is this..."
Last week I was in Vermont on Lake St. Catherine, a beautiful area where I attended summer camp for six years. I had made the reservations in February, although I had been worried about being away from my father for seven days. I took the leap of faith and made the plans. He died in April.
I'm not sure what I was looking for when I picked this spot. I know, as Thomas Wolfe has written, "you can't go home again." Maybe I was trying to reconnect with a time when everything seemed safer and simpler; when I could be around tall white birch trees and a lake that looked like glass in the early morning hours. The daddy long legs spiders no longer frightened me; I remembered the furry caterpillars with fondness.
I brought my laptop, as the thought of hundreds of e-mails waiting for me when I returned was daunting. There was no cell phone service without a twenty-minute drive. The adrenaline rush that always hits me when I get an electronic missive, asking for an immediate answer or action, was dissipated by that fact that there was not much that I could do. Each response included, "I am on a lake with limited access..."
There were enough hyperlinks from correspondence and listservs to keep me on the periphery of the stressful world I had vowed to put aside for a week. I saw Keith Olbermann's special comment railing at those working to sabotage health care reform, and the article in the New York Times about the rape of men in the Congo. But I had promised my son to keep off the e-mails when he was around, so I settled into a finite block of time to stay connected to what we had purposely left behind.
We tried our hands at rowing, canoeing, and kayaking. All my small craft training came back in a flash. We played tetherball, volleyball, and badminton. We struggled to get the dog to swim (Who said the doggie paddle is second nature for canines?). After two strokes she flipped on her back, thrashed in panic, and sank.
It was the first vacation I had taken since my honeymoon, when my son was conceived. In those sixteen years, there has been a lot of growth and change - most of it not easy. His dad and I have separated, but we were able to come together as a family and enjoy each other's company.
We worked out a routine. While they trolled the environs for the best place to fish, I stayed at the lake with our city dog; she couldn't stop eating the fragrant grass. I worked on my manuscript, made headway into two books, and polished off three months of unread magazines I had dragged with me. We bartered fishing time for shopping time. The boys trailed along to outlet stores and antique shops. I, in turn, sat in the car with the dog - scribbling down thoughts while they checked out streams best suited to throwing a line. The air was cold and crisp in the morning and became that way again at night, just as I remembered it. The moon was full and reflected on the lake. I had no complaints, except for my sunburn and mosquito bites.
We went to Manchester, where I had been twenty-three years earlier with my parents. At that time, I was trying to break up with a boyfriend, Iran-Contra was on television, and a neighbor's brother had just died of AIDS. When we visited my camp, the social hall and some bunks were still standing. Now, nothing was left except a lane that bore the name of the camp. The land had been divided up between individual buyers and the state park.
Driving around, it seemed that every Vermont town had a white clapboard church and a monument. There were physical remembrances of people, actions, and veterans ...pointing to the state's historical past. A bronze plaque recounted that Vermont was the first territory to abolish slavery. A statue of a Union soldier erected by Eugene McIntyre stated, "In memory of my comrades of the Civil War 1861 - 1865." Pearl Buck, who made Danby home for the last years of her life, was acknowledged as a "Mother, wife, writer, humanitarian, and civil rights activist" on a simple sign hanging near a burbling brook.
Like life, nothing is perfect. The lake had notifications about being treated with an aquatic herbicide to fight off an infestation of invasive watermilfoil. (I had wondered what had happened to the sandy bottom.) We spoke to a police officer, who gave us directions, about politics. He told us about the foreclosures in his closely-knit community. He had voted for McCain, but wished Obama well in moving the country forward. When I complimented people on their amazing Senators, some agreed effusively while others shrugged. A state with numerous colleges, the people we met ranged from young students with multiple piercings to a man attired in NRA duds from his hat to his shirt to his pickup truck. It bore a bumper sticker declaring the Second Amendment as the "best form of homeland security."
We met two "homeless" men within the space of an hour. One had the exact look of the wraiths that ride the New York City subway, disoriented and disheveled. The only difference was he spoke to us about the weather. The second was pushing bottles in a shopping cart. He engaged me in a conversation about a recent robbery in town, mentioning something about a chain saw used in the break-in. "They're gonna catch them," he told me. I nodded in agreement. He was a dead ringer for Billy Bob Thornton in "Sling Blade."
Upon our return to the city, as the air changed, so did my mood. There were no more silos or grazing animals to look at. Cell phone service returned, as did calls we were not yet ready to answer.
Sunday, while I sorted laundry and potted the Canadian plants that I had bought at a nursery between Pawlett and Manchester, I watched my usual round of the Sunday morning talk shows. Maybe it was too much too soon. I listened to the conversation about contentious demonstrations at health care town halls, but I was not prepared for what I saw on the next day's news. When I turned on "Hardball" on Monday night, it seemed like I had never left. Chris Matthews was still talking about "the Birthers." On Tuesday he interviewed the man who had attended the Obama event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with a gun strapped to his leg. The irate citizen who had been ejected from Sen. Arlen Specter's gathering was "interviewed" on MSNBC on Wednesday morning. The news cycle took on the air of a Fellini movie, American style.
I spent a week away without Chris Matthews. When I came back, everything was the same. Except me.
By the time President Obama left Montana on Saturday, the Bozeman media market had been saturated with an advertisement opposing his health care plan -- hard for anyone to miss since it ran 115 times in 36 hours on network and cable television channels.
"Say no to government-run health care," a narrator says in the advertisement by a conservative group that particularly went after the idea of a government insurance option.
Sporting a long gray beard, Brad Pitt visited Bill Maher Friday night to reaffirm the pro-gay, anti-religion, pro-marijuana agenda he recently laid out in Parade magazine.
"What is it about religion you don't like?" Maher asked.
"You know, I grew up in a religious family, in a religious community and it just doesn't make sense to me. It just doesn't work for me in the long run," Pitt said. "I never wanted to stop anyone else's religion and their beliefs until I started seeing it defining policy.... Like gay marriage. You have a group of people telling other people how to live their lives, and you can't do that. In fact, I'm talking like there are actually Christians watching your show..."
"No, there are," Maher said. "You'd be surprised."
Pitt went on the say, "Well, to the three that are watching, I just say you have to, you really have to check what country you're living in because the freedom that allows you to practice religion is the same freedom you're stepping on. That's not right. And I want to add... if there was a nation of gay married couples that were telling you you couldn't practice your religion, I'd be speaking up for you, too... So, let's stop the nonsense."
He also discussed his joint-rolling skills. "I'm an artist," he said. When asked why he gave it up, he said, "I'm a dad now. You want to be alert."
Halfway through the back-to-school shopping season, retail professionals are predicting the worst performance for stores in more than a decade, yet another sign that consumers are clinging to every dollar.
Fears about the job market have resulted in sluggish customer traffic over the last few weeks, spurring the gloomy sales projections. Parents who do shop are aggressively trading down, informing status-conscious teenagers that notebooks from the dollar store or shirts from Costco will have to do this year.
For a complete list of things that don't change, google "the past" and "still photographs of anything anywhere."
Women order smaller and less calorific meals if eating with a man than if dining with female friends," according to a group of people the Daily Mail calls "Scientists." Women responded: "Obviously. What? No, I'm not crying. Get out of my office!"
If having this insight qualifies you as a scientist, apparently any human being can be one, and I would like to be an astronaut please. Then I could wear a diaper and hang out with monkeys, who also wear diapers.
Furthermore, what real scientist would use the word "calorific" in this context? I'm pretty sure they mean "caloric" (containing calories.) Calorific means heat causing, although I would permit its use in a marketing campaign for a delicious cereal made of lard and topped with sprinkles.
According to the "scientists" who "conducted" this "study," men continue to eat as much as they want with no social consequences. They do not consume less (or even with basic table manners) if they are around women, and the Times even reported that guts are a growing trend in Brooklyn. Scientist Judd Apetow made a documentary a few years ago demonstrating how one of these hipsters managed to have sex with Katherine Heigl.
I actually know more than one man, and they want women to eat. And after years of reading Glamour Magazine and Men's Health, I have concluded that nothing is less attractive to a man than a woman with all kinds of issues, especially if those issues get in the way of loving life and fun. Men are mainly just happy you showed up. They want women to be whimsical and carefree and hang with the guys and drink beer and eat pizza. But also, don't get fat. This reminds me of how I want to be an astronaut but not go into space.
If I were to go into space, however, the good thing is that no "study" has yet shown the effects of monkeys on how much women eat. Now I'm out to snort some Splenda and practice not eating.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama headed to Grand Junction, Colo., Saturday in his drive to overhaul the health care system.
There, he held his second town hall-style meeting on health care in as many days. In a Montana airport hangar Friday, Obama faced a largely friendly crowd but also took a pointed question about his plans to pay for the massive overhaul.
While in the West, Obama will tour some national treasures. He and the first lady visited Yellowstone Saturday morning and will go to the Grand Canyon on Sunday.
Obama Goes After Politicians Spreading "Death Panels" Lie At Colorado Town Hall:
"What you can't do, or you can, but you shouldn't do -- is start saying things like we want to set up death panels to pull the plug on grandma." President Obama paused and grew emotional, "First of all, when you make a comment like that, I just lost my grandmother last year... I know what its like to watch somebody you love, who's aging, deteriorate... When you start making arguments like that, that's simply dishonest. Especially when I hear the arguments coming from members of congress in the other party, who, it turns out, sponsored similar provisions!"
Opening remarks below:
****
Hello, Grand Junction! It's great to be back in Southwest Colorado. And it's nice to take a break from the back and forth in Washington. I especially want to thank Nathan for his introduction. I appreciate your willingness to talk about such a painful experience, because it's important that we understand what's at stake in this health care debate. These are the kinds of stories I've read in letters and heard in town halls all across America.
On Tuesday, I was in New Hampshire talking about the people denied insurance coverage because of preexisting conditions. Yesterday, I was in Montana talking about people who've had their insurance policies suddenly revoked, even though they were paying premiums, just because they got sick. And today we're talking about the folks like Nathan and his family who have insurance but are still stuck with huge bills because they've hit a cap on their benefits or are charged exorbitant out-of-pocket fees.
And when you hear about these experiences, when you think of the millions of people denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, the thousands who have their policies cancelled because of illness, the countless folks like Nathan, I want you to remember one thing: there but for the grace of God go I. These are ordinary Americans, no different than anyone else, held hostage by health insurance companies that deny them coverage, or drop their coverage, or charge fees that they can't afford for care they desperately need.
It's wrong. It's hurting too many families and businesses. And we're going to fix it when we pass health insurance reform this year.
Now, this is obviously a tough time for families in Colorado and across America. Just six months ago, we were in the middle of the worst recession of our lifetimes. We were losing about 700,000 jobs each month. Economists of all stripes feared a second coming of the Great Depression. That's why we acted as fast as we could to pass a recovery plan to stop the freefall.
The recovery plan was divided into three parts. One third of the money in the Recovery Act went to tax cuts that have already started showing up in the paychecks of nearly 2 million working families in Colorado. We also cut taxes for small businesses on the investments that they make, and hundreds of Colorado small businesses have qualified for new loans backed by the Recovery Act - including eleven businesses in Grand Junction alone.
Another third of the money in the Recovery Act is for emergency relief for folks who've borne the brunt of this recession. We've extended unemployment benefits for more than 150,000 Coloradans. We've made health insurance 65 percent cheaper for families who rely on COBRA while they're looking for work. And for states facing historic budget shortfalls, we provided assistance that has saved the jobs of tens of thousands of workers who provide essential services, like teachers and police officers. We've prevented painful jobs cuts - and a lot of painful state and local tax increases.
The last third of the Recovery Act is for investments that are already putting people back to work. There are almost 100 shovel-ready transportation projects already approved in Colorado which are beginning to create jobs. Not far from here, for example, there's a project to pave and add lanes to State Highway 92. And most of the work is being done by local businesses, because that's how we're going to create jobs and grow this economy again.
By next month, projects will be underway at more than one hundred national parks all over America, including Colorado. These are projects restoring trails, improving infrastructure, making park facilities more energy efficient. Earlier today, I toured Yellowstone with Michelle and the girls. Tomorrow, we'll be visiting the Grand Canyon. And I recently signed into law a public lands bill that designated the Dominguez-Escalante Canyon as a National Conservation Area here in Colorado. These are national treasures - symbols of how much we owe to those who came before us. And as we grapple with enormous challenges - like health care - the work of generations past reminds us of our duty to generations yet to come.
So there is no doubt that the recovery plan is doing what we said it would: putting us on the road to recovery. We saw last week that the jobs picture is beginning to turn. We're starting to see signs that business investment is coming back. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. Even before this recession we had an economy that was working pretty well for the wealthiest Americans - working pretty well for Wall Street bankers and big corporations - but it wasn't working so well for everybody else. It was an economy of bubbles and busts. It was an economy that rewarded recklessness over responsibility. We cannot go back to that kind of economy.
If we want this country to succeed in the 21st century then we have to lay a new foundation for lasting prosperity. And health insurance reform is a key pillar of this new foundation. Because this economy won't work for everyone until folks like Nathan and his family aren't pushed to the brink by medical expenses; until companies aren't slashing payroll and losing profits to pay for health insurance; until every single American has the security and peace of mind of quality, affordable health care.
Health care touches all of our lives in a profound way. It's only natural that this debate is an emotional one. And I know there's been a lot of attention paid to some of the town hall meetings that are going on around the country - especially those where tempers have flared. You know how TV loves a ruckus.
But what you haven't seen are the many constructive meetings going on all over the country. Just yesterday I held a town hall in Belgrade, Montana. And we had a pretty good crowd. Some folks were big supporters of reform. Some had concerns and questions. And some were downright skeptical. I got a few tough questions, too. But I was glad to see that even though Montanans have strong opinions, they weren't there to shout at one another. They were there to listen to one another.
I think that reflects the American people far more than what we've seen covered on television these past few days. And I thank you for coming here today in that spirit. But before I take your questions, I want to talk about what health insurance reform will mean for you. First of all, there will be a set of common-sense consumer protections for folks with health insurance.
Insurance companies will no longer be able to place an arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive or charge outrageous out-of-pocket expenses on top of your premiums. This is what happened to Nathan and his wife. Their son was diagnosed with hemophilia when he was born. The insurance company then raised premiums for his family and for all his coworkers who were on the same policy. And the family was approaching their cap. So on top of the worry about taking care of their son, they've had the added worry of trying to find insurance that would cover him - plus thousands and thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs. Nathan and his wife even considered getting a divorce so that she could go on Medicaid. Thankfully, Colorado law doesn't allow coverage for small businesses to permanently exclude preexisting conditions like his son's, so they found insurance. But they're paying increasing premiums and they still face the prospect of hitting their new cap in the next few years.
I've heard stories like this all over the country. Like the teenager from Indiana diagnosed with leukemia. The chemotherapy and intensive care he received cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. His family hit their lifetime cap in less than a year. So the insurance wouldn't cover a bone marrow transplant and the family couldn't afford the half a million dollars they needed. The family turned to the public for help, but the boy died before he could receive that transplant.
If you think this can't happen to you or your family, think again. Almost 90 percent of individual health insurance policies have lifetime benefit limits. About a third of family plans in the individual insurance market have lifetime limits under $3 million. If you or your spouse or your child get sick, and you hit that limit, suddenly it's like you have no insurance at all.
And this is part of a larger story: of folks with insurance paying more and more out-of-pocket. In the past few years, premiums have nearly doubled. And total out of pocket costs have increased by almost fifty percent - that's more than $2,000 per person. No one is holding the insurance companies accountable for these practices. But we will. We're going to ban arbitrary caps on benefits. And we'll place limits on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.
Insurance companies will also be stopped from cancelling coverage because you get sick or denying coverage because of your medical history. A recent report found that in the past few years, more than 12 million Americans were discriminated against by insurance companies because of a preexisting condition. When we get health insurance reform done, those days will be over. And we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies. That saves money and that saves lives.
At the same time, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep seeing your doctor. I don't want government bureaucrats meddling in your health care - but the point is, I don't want insurance company bureaucrats meddling in your health care either. So if you're one of the nearly 46 million people who don't have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options. And if you do have health insurance, we will help make that insurance more affordable and more secure. Under reform, roughly 700,000 middle-class Coloradans will get a health care tax credit. More than a million Coloradans will have access to a new marketplace where you can easily compare health insurance options. 87,000 small businesses in Colorado will be aided by new tax benefits. And we do all of this without adding to our deficit over the next decade, largely but cutting waste and ending sweetheart deals for insurance companies that don't make anybody any healthier.
Here in Grand Junction, you know that lowering costs is possible if you put in place smarter incentives; if you think about how to treat people, not just illnesses; if you look at problems facing not just one hospital or physician, but the many system-wide problems that are shared. That's what the medical community in this city did; now you are getting better results while wasting less money. And I know that your Senator, Michael Bennet, has been working hard on legislation that's based on the innovations put into practice here.
The fact is, we are closer to achieving health insurance reform than we have ever been. We have the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association on board - because America's doctors and nurses know how badly we need reform. We have broad agreement in Congress on about 80 percent of what we're trying to achieve. And we have an agreement from the drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. The AARP supports this policy, and agrees with us that reform must happen this year.
Because we are getting close, the fight is getting fierce. The history is clear: every time we are in sight of health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they've got. They use their influence. They run their ads. They use their political allies to scare the American people. In fact, whenever America has set about solving our toughest problems, there have been those who have sought to preserve the status quo. And these struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear. That was true when Social Security was born. That was true when Medicare was created. It is true in this debate today.
But whether you have health insurance or not, we all know that we cannot continue down this path, with costs rising far faster than wages and cuts in care to make up the difference: a system that too often works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people. That's why reform is so important: to maintain what's best about our health care system - the relationship between doctors, nurses, and their patients - while fixing what's broken.
Because for all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary is if we do nothing. We will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket, rising three times faster than wages. The deficit will continue to grow. Medicare will go into the red in less than a decade. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against people simply for being sick.
So if you want a different future - a brighter future - I need your help. I need you to stand against the politics of fear and division. I need you to knock on doors and spread the word. I need you to fight for the security and stability of quality, affordable health care for every American. For we know that change never starts in Washington. It starts in places like Grand Junction. It starts with folks willing to fight for our future. It starts with you.
Thank you. And now, I'd be happy to take your questions.
Now, .gov websites have historically been backwaters at best, a bunch of awkwardly-designed, poorly defined sites that only met the bare requirements of a web presence. But of course the current administration is comprised in great part of digital natives, and it's remarkable how quickly they've remade the .gov world into not just a number of compelling websites, but into a broad set of platforms that are going to inspire as much technological innovation as Twitter, Facebook or the iPhone did when they unveiled their technology platforms.
Need proof? Well, let's take a look at some of the most compelling new sites that have launched in just the few short months since President Obama took office:
Data.gov, providing open access to feeds of valuable facts and figures generated by the executive branch.
USAspending.gov, allowing any of us to drill down into the details of spending from various federal agencies.
Recovery.gov, perhaps one of the best-known of the new sites, offering up details of how resources from the Recovery Act are being allocated.
And of course, there's WhiteHouse.gov. You know about that one.
What's remarkable about these sites is not merely that they exist; There had been some efforts to provide this kind of information in the past. Rather, what stands out is that they exhibit a lot of the traits of some of the best tech startups in Silicon Valley or New York City. Each site has remarkably consistent branding elements, leading to a predictable and trustworthy sense of place when you visit the sites. There is clear attention to design, both from the cosmetic elements of these pages, and from the thoughtfulness of the information architecture on each site. (The clear, focused promotional areas on each homepage feel just like the "Sign up now!" links on the site of most Web 2.0 companies.) And increasingly, these services are being accompanied by new APIs and data sources that can be used by others to build interesting applications.
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Mormon church's vigorous, well-heeled support for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California last year, has turned the Utah-based faith into a lightning rod for gay rights activism, including a nationwide "kiss-in" Saturday.
The event comes after gay couples here and in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, were arrested, cited for trespassing or harassed by police for publicly kissing. In Utah, the July 9 trespassing incident occurred after a couple were observed by security guards on a downtown park-like plaza owned by the 13 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The court case was dismissed, but the kiss sparked a community backlash and criticism of the church.
"I don't think that kiss would have turned out to be the kiss heard round the world if it were not for Proposition 8," said Ash Johnsdottir, organizer of the Salt Lake City Kiss-In.
Atali Staffler, a Brigham Young University graduate student from Geneva, Switzerland, said she joined the 200 or so people who filled a downtown amphitheater for the event because she has watched her gay father and many gay friends struggle to find their place.
The 31-year-old, who was raised Mormon but is not active in the church, said the church shouldn't be involved in Prop. 8.
"I encourage them to promote the values they believe in and to defend their religious principles in advertisements, but civil rights have nothing to do with religious principles," she said.
Twenty-two people, many of them strangers to one another, gathered under the scorching sun on Washington's National Mall to participate in the national smooch. They were gay and straight, couples and singles of all ages, with placards that read "Equal Opportunity Kisser" and "A Kiss is a Not a Crime."
"This is America. A kiss on the cheek is OK," said Ian Thomas, 26, of Leesburg, Va., who organized the Washington Kiss-In. "It's got to be OK. If not, we're in serious trouble."
About 50 people, mostly gay and lesbian couples, gathered at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta and kissed for about five minutes.
"You think that America is evolving into a gay-friendly nation," said Randal Smith, 42, "but what happened in Texas and Utah show us it's still a long way off."
National organizers say Saturday's broadly held gay rights demonstrations were not aimed specifically at the Mormon church. But observers say the church's heavy-handed intervention into California politics will linger and has left the faith's image tarnished.
"What I hear from my community and from straight progressive individuals is that they now see the church as a force for evil and as an enemy of fairness and equality," said Kate Kendell, executive director of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights. Kendell grew up Mormon in Utah. "To have the church's very deep and noble history telescoped down into this very nasty little image is as painful for me as for any faithful Mormon."
Troy Williams, who is gay and grew up Mormon, said ending the tension between gays and the church requires mutual acceptance and understanding.
"For both sides to peaceably coexist, we're all going to have to engage in some very deep soul searching," said Williams, a Salt Lake City-area activist and host of a liberal radio talk show.
Church insiders say Prop. 8 has bred dissent among members and left families divided. Some members have quit or stopped attending services, while others have appealed to leadership to stay out of the same-sex marriage fight.
But church spokeswoman Kim Farah said Friday that Mormon support for traditional marriage has nothing to do with public relations.
"It's too easy for those whose agenda is to change societal standards to claim there are great difficulties inside the Church because of its decision to support traditional marriage," Kim Farah said. "In reality the Church has received enormous support for its defense of marriage."
Mormonism teaches that homosexual sex is considered a sin, but gays are welcome in church and can maintain church callings and membership if they remain celibate.
The church has actively fought marriage equality legislation across the U.S. since the early 1990s and joined other faiths in asking Congress for a marriage amendment to the Constitution in 2006.
Last year at the urging of church leaders, Mormons donated tens of millions of dollars to the "Yes on 8" campaign and were among the most vigorous volunteers. The institutional church gave nearly $190,000 to the campaign -- contributions now being investigated by California's Fair Political Practices Commission.
After the vote, many gay rights advocates turned their anger toward the church in protests and marches outside temples that singled out Mormons as the key culprits in restricting the rights of gay couples.
That constituted a setback for the faith, argued Jan Shipps, a professor of religious history and a Mormon expert from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Mormonism, Shipps said, has struggled with its image since its western New York founding in 1830 for a host of reasons, including polygamy.
Leading up to Salt Lake City's 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the faith worked hard to craft a modern, mainstream image, touting its unique American history, culture and worldwide humanitarian work to thousands of reporters.
"This really undercut the Mormon image that had been so carefully nurtured during the Olympics," Shipps said.
Church representatives don't discuss public relations strategies or challenges publicly, but at a semiannual conference in April, church President Thomas S. Monson seemed to be clearly feeling a post-Prop. 8 sting.
In an era of "shifting moral footings," Monson said, "those who attempt to safeguard those footings are often ridiculed, picketed and persecuted."
That argument doesn't wash for Linda Stay, whose ancestors were early Mormon converts. Stay said she was doubly transformed by Prop. 8. She and her husband, Steve, finally quit the church -- along with 18 other family members and a few close friends -- and became gay right activists.
The St. George woman's family, which includes two gay children, will play a central role in a documentary film, "8: The Mormon Proposition" currently in production. Stay's son, Tyler Barrick, married his boyfriend in San Francisco on June 17, 2008, the first day gay marriage was legal in California.
Miami-area filmmaker Reed Cowan said the Stays' story is a painful representative of many Latter-day Saint families, including his own, that needed to be told.
"It used to be that I could defend my church and my heritage, but what they did here, they crossed the line and they made it very hard to defend their actions," said Cowan, whose family has cut him off since he began work on the film.
With the gay rights fight far from over, some believe Prop. 8 could continue to frustrate the church's image for years to come, much like polygamy -- the church's own one-time alternative form of marriage -- and a policy on keeping black men out of the priesthood, issues that have lingered years after the practices were abandoned.
"The church is certainly going to survive and thrive, there's no question about that," said the National Center for Lesbian Rights' Kendell, who is raising three kids in California with her partner of 16 years. "The issue is, what will be its image in the average American mindset."
To see the church characterized, because of its own actions, as one in a group of anti-gay religions and as a religion that forces members to choose faith over family is "a tragedy of generational proportion," she said. "And it seems to me, that it was entirely unnecessary."
CNN dove into the dangerous world of high heels when they interviewed Nicole Desilvis, a woman whose lifelong love of heels big and small has resulted in various health problems. Watch the video below for CNN's investigation into the health perils that come with wearing heels and the precautions you can take.
While some of Christie's and Sotheby's consignors are feeling the pinch of art collectors abroad, the owner of the below David Hockney diptych hit a homerun.
"Beverly Hills Housewife c. 1966-1967) by David Hockney hammered at $7.922 million dollars this past May 13th. It was a new world record for the artist.
Hockney was an English painter. Moving from a distorted, semiexpressionist form of pop art, Hockney developed a highly personal realistic style, producing images saturated with color that are witty and uniquely in the moment. Much of his work is also informed by his long-time residence in Southern California, for instance his many joyous paintings of swimmers in undulating, light-struck pools. His superb draftsmanship is evident in his drawings, paintings, illustrated books, and several series of prints, notably The Rake's Progress (1961-63).
Hockney is also known for his photographs, his mosaiclike photomontages, and his imaginative stage sets for ballets and operas. His customary subjects include still lifes, portraits, and aspects of homosexual life. Later in his career Hockney became interested in the historical relationship between representational painters and optical devices, maintaining in his book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (2001) and elsewhere that from about 1430 to 1860 many painters in the Western tradition used innovations in visual technology such as lenses, mirrors, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida to produce their strikingly realistic effects.
After news broke that music legend Bob Dylan was picked up by a New Jersey cop who failed to recognize him, President Barack Obama has invited the duo to the White House for what aides are calling a "bong summit."
Mr. Obama is attempting to mend fences after his initial remarks, in which he said the cop acted "stupidly," came under fire.
"In neighborhoods from Long Branch, New Jersey to Miami Beach, Florida, elderly Jewish men are wandering around mumbling to themselves," Mr. Obama had said. "This one just happened to be Bob Dylan."
In other music news, the late singer Michael Jackson is being kept in a deep freeze, and is now known as The King of Popsicle. More here.
For years, John Mackey, the libertarian founder of Whole Foods (who I've met and talked with a few times) has--luckily for Whole Foods's PR squad--kept his right-of-the-right views more or less under the radar.
Now, suddenly, everyone and their mother has called for a boycott of Mr. Mackey's Whole Foods. There's a Facebook group with thousands of members. There's been so much negative traffic and "I will boycott Whole Foods" messages on Twitter, Whole Foods hasn't even tried to put out the fires as they have with past controversies (such as his taken-out-of-context comment, only last week, that Whole Foods "sells lots of junk"; or his infamous commenting on his own blog and anonymous tirades against Wild Oats, which he was trying to buy out, and later did). There's been so many complaints from Whole Foods largely green-minded customers--the very ones who've made John rich (one of his homes is in Boulder, just two blocks from where I write this)--that yesterday they temporarily shut down the comments forum page on Whole Foods (not very democratic of 'em, hey?)
But I, for one, am not going to boycott Whole Foods. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why?
Whole Foods is a vast organization, with thousands of staff, many if not most of whom disagree with John's idealistic, superior Libertarian views. We live in a democracy, with a lowercase "D." We don't have to hate those we disagree with--we just have to beat them at the polls, and in the halls of Congress.
Whole Foods, thanks to his leadership, has shown the way for thousands of green-minded companies. He and WFM have shown Wall Street that green can make green. For that, I am grateful--there is a reservoir of gratitude that will not be easily overcome by his anti-union views, by Whole Foods never having supported elephant over seven years even as I see them advertise in countless less-than-green publications and forums.
Correction: Sleep-deprivation linked to infertility. (I had a feeling that would get your attention.) Did you ever consider that? How could you with all the other things to worry about: You've cut down on alcohol, caffeine, and even processed food.
You've scheduled more time to relax and tried to reduce the stress in your life.
You've started a consistent exercise routine and detoxified your house.
You've charted your monthly cycle, bought ovulation kits, and still...nothing.
But you've overlooked one very important element: sleep, which you don't get enough of.
The word "infertility" can quickly generate a response, especially among the 10 percent (more than 6 million) of women struggling with it. The topic routinely graces the covers of magazines and academic health reports.
Lately, the talk about toxins in our food, water, and air have been blamed for increasing the likelihood of infertility. But what if it's much simpler than that? What if infertility can be partly blamed on how many hours of sleep you get a night. OR hours you don't get?
A new report puts the spotlight on exactly this issue. The highlights:
Missing your required number of sleep hours a night can impact your ability to conceive.
The average woman (30 to 60 years old) gets only 6 hours 41 minutes of sleep during the work week, according to the National Sleep Foundation, when she really needs 7 to 9 hours.
Sleep has a powerful influence on the body's hormonal system, which controls a woman's cycle and regulates ovulation.
Too little sleep leads to low leptin levels, the hormone responsible for appetite and which can impact ovulation.
Insomniacs have a significantly higher level of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenocorticotropic, both of which can suppress a healthy fertility cycle.
The take-home message is clear: you could be doing "everything right" when it comes to preparing your body to conceive and bring a healthy baby to term. But with so much focus on external factors like your environment and what you put in your mouth, the time has come to add another aspect to this big equation: sleep.
All the healthy, pure food in the world and all the attention to getting your body into tip-top prenatal shape won't cure a hormonal system gone awry from missing sleep. So if you're thinking of having a baby, put sleep on the list. At the top. And if you're going to worry about your environment, remember to also think about the one in the bedroom.
Sweet Dreams, Michael J. Breus, PhD, DABSM The Sleep Doctor
At her home on Tom Sawyer Road here the other night, Bonnie Adkins agreed to begin spreading the word that President Obama's embattled health care plan needed help.
Ms. Adkins, who for the past two years devoted hundreds of hours helping Mr. Obama get to the White House, hosted a potluck supper that was advertised to Democrats in this eastern Iowa town along the Mississippi River. People were invited to bring a favorite salad or dessert -- and their cellphones -- to make calls drumming up support for the president's agenda.
He certainly doesn't paint like Picasso, but he is gaining media attention worldwide with his works of art.
Kieron Williamson, a 6-year-old British boy has talent. Working in watercolor, he paints wonderful scenes of harbors, landscapes, etc.
He began drawing when he was five after a family vacation. His work was noticed by a friend of the family who is an artist. She offered the child lessons.
Art experts have praised his work and look forward to seeing more in the future.
Kieron was quoted saying "I'm going to send one to Prince Charles. I've already sent one to the Queen, but I haven't had a reply yet."
What do you think of his work? Post your comments below.
Valerie Jarrett was at the Netroots Nation convention today. I went to go hear her speak and I left completely unconvinced. She is one of the top advisers to President Obama. She is a very good politico, for better and for worse. She is smart, composed and faux engaging and engaged. She seems to care but never really gives a straight answer. In a lot of ways, she's a lot like her boss.
I am not a doctrinaire. I understand the value of compromise, diplomacy, bipartisanship, etc. But if you compromise on everything, then what do you have left? It's a balancing act, of course. You have to know when to compromise and when to stand firm. So, that gets us to the question of the day? The central question of the Obama presidency.
Is Obama a Linconesque compromiser or is he just another politician who will sell out any principle just to get re-elected?
These days Abraham Lincoln is known for being the resolute leader that got us through the Civil War and freed the slaves. But you have to remember that he didn't free the slaves on day one (nor had he promised to), he didn't stand on principle on every issue and he was not some sort of mythical statue of a man that never budged. He slowly built to a place where he thought he had the political backing to free the slaves. So, I get that. And Obama might be doing just that on the issues we face today.
Or ... he's not building to a damn thing. If the New York Times is right about a story they ran on Thursday, then Obama is mainly dealing with the Finance Committee in the Senate and they have already agreed there will be no public option in the healthcare plan. That is a fundamental compromise that shows that you have no intention of actually challenging or changing the system. And that you are a run of the mill politician.
Why? Why is the public option so important? On the actual substance of the healthcare issue, the public option is critical in changing the insurance system we have now. If we don't use this to keep prices down through real competition, then the system will essentially be the same. Except with near universal coverage, taxes will of course go up (and private insurance companies will make even more money because we will subsidize more people to get insurance through them). And when the American people find out that taxes went up and their premiums did not go down, they'll be pissed.
And who do you think they'll be pissed at? The insurance industry and the Republican Party who killed the public option? Of course, not. They'll be mad at the people who did "healthcare reform." Then the industry and their wholly owned subsidiary, the Republican Party, will tell them that the reform pushed through by the Democrats led to higher taxes and higher premiums -- and real change will be made even harder, and maybe even impossible.
But that's still not the main reason why the public option is so important. It's because it is a standard bearer. It is a road sign. It tells you what Obama is all about. Is he willing to compromise something he knows is essential to get a deal done so that he can brag in the next election that he got "healthcare reform" passed? Or does he actually give a damn about policy and getting it right? That is the central question.
I don't know which way it's going to go, but right now the signs are not good. The New York Times story is very troubling because Obama is not going to spend all this time negotiating with the Senate Finance Committee and the industry players and then throw out the deal they worked on. And the industry and the Republican Party have been very clear -- if there is a public option, they're out. Obama is not go negotiate with them all this time if he did not already agree to that premise. That is very, very troubling.
And that brings us to Valerie Jarrett this morning. I was fine with all of her answers on other domestic and foreign policy issues and even on the issues I wholeheartedly disagreed with her on (and the issues she got heckled on). You're not going to get everything you want and you're certainly not going to get all of it instantly (meaning the first year of his term). But there is a bottom line. And as I have explained above, that bottom line is the public option.
So, here was her answer on that:
"Let me be very clear and I talked to the president yesterday about this, knowing I was coming here. The president wants the public option, he has made that clear everywhere he has gone."
That sounds clear, right? Wrong. No, she just said the president "wants" it. Big whoop dee doo. That doesn't mean a thing. It is political-speak for saying later, " We really wanted it, we fought hard for it but we just couldn't get it. But it is important to know that we got a great bill that is bipartisan, that everyone can live with and that will bring real change to America." And then you'll know that Obama was full of it.
There is all the difference in the world between "wanting" the public option and "insisting" on the public option. For example, the Republicans don't stutter. They say unequivocally that they will insist that there is no public option. Why must we always cave in to their demands? Especially when they are a statistically irrelevant minority (that doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to them, but it does mean we should stop following their orders and dictates on the most important issues). Why can't we insist on something for a change? Why can't we insist on the most important part of the plan?
Well, if we don't, it is obviously because we did not have the political will to do so. And that is 100% on Obama. If he caves on this, then he is your typical gasbag politician who promises one thing and does another. On the flip side, if he gets real healthcare reform passed with a public option, then I will be impressed and energized. I will dare to believe again.
I still think it's an open question. And it's one only Obama can answer. What's it going to be Mr. President? Do you really believe in change? Do you really believe in what you said during the campaign? That campaign that got us all excited thinking that maybe, just maybe, if we supported the right guy he really could change the system.
Eat. More. Fish. Easy for me to say, right? I live in Martha's Vineyard, an island, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. Fish we have. (McDonald's and Wal-Marts, thankfully we do not.) Here on the Rock -- the affectionate name we give our 90-square-mile of glacial moraine -- most year-rounders own a fishing pole or a clam rake, or are comfortable using their own two hands to pluck glistening mussels from their rocky, seaweedy palaces at mid-tide.
And you can pretty much bet that when the Obamas arrive next week, they'll be feasting on local fish or shellfish -- whether it's a lobster roll from Menemsha Fish Market or a plate of briny Sweet Neck oysters from Katama Bay -- because that's what summer folks on Martha's Vineyard do. Likely they'll fork into a freshly caught fillet of bluefish or striped bass, too.
But they won't be eating flounder. Because Wednesday I ate the last legal one caught in Vineyard waters.
I didn't do it on purpose. I was merely trying to be a good journalist and find out what Slow Fish is all about. Slow Fish is an offshoot of Slow Food, the world-wide movement devoted to encouraging local, sustainable, pleasurable eating. There are about 100 Slow Food members on Martha's Vineyard, and they've now also started a Slow Fish group, dedicated to "the pleasures of eating seafood in a sustainable manner."
I ambled on up to the Chilmark library Wednesday night to hear Warren Doty, a representative of Slow Fish and a director of the Martha's Vineyard /Dukes County Fishermen's Association, talk about how a successful sustainable fishery works. He chose flounder -- specifically summer flounder, better known as fluke -- as his example. (Winter flounder, confusingly, is not a healthy population.) The spawning stock biomass of fluke --t hat's the number of breeding fish in the water -- has recovered so steadily over the last ten years, due entirely to catch quotas and limits on catch size, that it's on target to reach the goal of 132 million pounds set by the fishery management for the year 2013.
I was curious about how all this works, because I make my living as a Food Writer. That's a fancy name for a Recipe Developer. Problem is, I used to feel pretty good providing folks with tasty recipes that work well. But these days, I feel like that's not enough. It's only fair that I also help people negotiate the treacherous waters of the grocery store. Because sometimes finding a good, sustainable, humanely-raised protein for dinner is more anxiety-producing than a trip to the dentist.
I know fish has plenty of issues. But with yet another bad beef recall this month (antiobiotic-resistant salmonella in your burger, anyone?), it seems like finding healthy, sustainable fish could be more within our reach than humanely-raised, pastured meat.
So I listened to Mr. Doty. And I ate. As it happens, Mr. Doty brought along a fluke from one of the last boats to come in the day before. And according to The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries , the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' 2009 summer flounder (fluke) fishery quota (702,614-lbs.) was reached on Tuesday, August 11th. Therefore, according to the website, "after 8PM on Tuesday, August 11th, commercial fishermen are prohibited from landing or possessing fluke through December 31, 2009." So the delicious fluke salad with bell pepper and cilantro that Mr. Doty made and served to us was the last of the season.
Fortunately, we've only caught 182,602 lbs of the allowable 653,575 pounds of bluefish for the year and only 653,201 pounds of the allowable 1, 107,118 pounds of striped bass for the year. So the Obamas are in luck. We hope they'll choose one of these fish over something like the poor bedeviled codfish, which is still being overfished on George's bank.
But what do the rest of us do on a given weeknight? I had to raise my hand at the end of Mr. Doty's presentation and ask. When we go into the fish market, how do we know what the best choice is? The answer is embarrassingly simple. We ask the fishmonger. And here's why.
Yes, we want to eat fish from sustainable fisheries, but, according to the Slow Fish folks, choosing local fish is also important. If we buy fish from local fishermen who own their own boats (up in Menemsha, where most of the Vineyard's fisherman dock, the limit on boat length is 72 feet), we're not just helping the local economy. These guys, unlike their giant corporate (or international) counterparts, are not overfishing or cleaning out huge stocks of fish. Just like buying local produce is often a better bet than organic produce shipped from half-way around the world, local fish makes sense. And your local fishmonger will be happy to tell you what that fish is.
But what if you don't live near a source of fresh fish? Your next best bet is to download a copy of one of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's custom Seafood Watch guides. There's one for every area of the country, and it will tell you which fish (farmed included) are your best choices. Even if you only add one night of fish to your dinner repertoire each week, you're cutting down on your carbon footprint, adding all those cancer and heart-attack preventing Omega-3 fatty acids to your diet (lower health insurance rates!), and casting a vote against bad beef. You can do that wherever you live.
Michael Jackson has not been buried, multiple family sources tell us. We're told he's above ground at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills and is being kept in a freezer.
We're told Katherine has frequently visited the temporary resting place.
MOSCOW - A ransom demand has been received for the return of a Russian-manned freighter that went missing last month in the Atlantic, Finnish investigators said Saturday.
It was not immediately clear if the ransom demand was legitimate, and the whereabouts of the Arctic Sea, its 15 crew members and its euro1.3 million ($1.8 million) cargo of timber remain a mystery.
The crew had said they were attacked in Swedish waters four days before the ship disappeared on July 28, but there has been no confirmation that the ship was actually seized.
"A ransom demand has been made ... let's say it's a largish amount of money," Markku Ranta-Aho, of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation, told national YLE radio. He said the demand was addressed to the Finland-based company that owns the Arctic Sea, but he would not give details or say where the ship might be located for fear of endangering the crew.
The French Marines said Saturday the ship was likely near Cape Verde. Widespread reports on Friday also had placed the ship near the island nation off West Africa.
Cape Verde authorities said they had no new information Saturday, though Russia's ambassador to the country, Alexander Karpushin, said there was no confirmation the ship had been found.
Russian maritime Web site Sovfrakht said the ship's tracking system had sent signals on Saturday from the Bay of Biscay, some 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) north of Cape Verde. It cautioned, however, that the Arctic Sea's Automatic Identification System equipment may not be on the ship itself anymore. The signals disappeared after about an hour, it said.
The French Marines rejected the Web site's claim. Spokesman Capt. Jerome Baroe said the signals had come from Russian warships moving from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.
Those ships are apparently different from the Russian navy vessels dispatched this week to search for the missing ship.
The Arctic Sea had set out from Finland on July 23 and was due in an Algerian port on Aug. 4. It vanished on July 28 after passing through the English Channel.
Efforts to pinpoint its location have been difficult in the vast Atlantic and with no communication from the ship's 15-member Russian crew.
Crew members had reported the ship was attacked on July 24 in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish island of Oland. They said a dozen masked men boarded the ship, tied them up, beat them, questioned them about drug trafficking and searched the freighter before leaving.
Such an attack would have been unusual in European waters, and raised questions because it was not reported until the freighter had passed through Britain's busy shipping lanes. There have been fears that some of the attackers might still be aboard, or that the ship came under attack a second time.
Radio messages from the freighter were later picked up along coasts of France and Portugal.
The European Commission suggested Friday the ship may have come under attack a second time off the Portuguese coast.
Portugal's Foreign Ministry said, however, the ship was never in Portuguese waters.
The ship's Russian operator, Solchart Arkhangelsk, said it had no information about a possible second attack.
It said the Arctic Sea's captain was 50-year-old Sergei Zaretsky, and the sailors were all from the northwest Russian port city of Arkhangelsk.
Speculation on what might have happened has ranged from suspicions that the ship was carrying secret cargo -- possibly narcotics -- to theories about a commercial dispute. Security experts have been wary of attributing its disappearance to bandits, noting that piracy is almost unheard of in European waters.
So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.
NEW DELHI (AP) -- Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan was detained for two hours for questioning at a U.S. airport before being released by immigration authorities, a news agency report said Saturday.
Khan, one of the Indian film industry's biggest stars, said he was detained because his name came up on a computer alert list at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Press Trust of India news agency said.
"I told them I am a movie star," Khan was quoted as saying.
The reported detention made top news on TV stations in India.
Khan said he was able to message a lawmaker in India who asked the Indian embassy in Washington to seek his release. Khan was let go after embassy officials intervened, the agency said.
In New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, said the U.S. Embassy was trying to "ascertain the facts of the case - to understand what took place."
"Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a very welcome guest in the United States. Many Americans love his films," Roemer said Saturday through an embassy spokesman.
Khan, 44, has acted in more than 70 films, and has consistently topped popularity rankings in India for the past several years. He is in the United States to promote his new film, "My Name Is Khan."
Credit card rewards programs are suddenly less rewarding.
Months before a new law takes effect restricting the credit card industry's ability to raise interest rates and charge fees, card issuers are scaling back programs that offer lucrative rewards such as frequent-flier miles and cash rebates. Now many customers have to pay additional fees or earn more points to redeem free plane tickets or claim cash-back perks.
One year ago at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas the mood of the crowd was one of excitement and elation over the possibility of a Barack Obama presidency.
A year later, with that possibility achieved, a sense of cynicism has begun to creep in. On Saturday morning, one of the president's closest advisers, Valerie Jarrett addressed the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh. And while attendees were largely supportive throughout the question and answer session, the reception was warm at best. The defining moment, in fact, came when Jarrett was hissed and heckled.
Roughly midway through the session, Jarrett was pressed to explain why the President was "continuing so many of [Bush's] policies many of which he criticized as candidate Obama." Knowing the mood and makeup of the audience - largely progressive activists from across the country - she acknowledged off the bat that it was "a fair question." But from there, things grew a bit rough.
Jarrett defended the work Obama has done outlawing torture, and releasing Office of Legal Counsel memos detailing how such interrogation practices came to be. At that point, a protester in the audience screamed out a question about why the White House was trying to keep additional photographs of detainee abuse from becoming public.
"I heard somebody shout out about the pictures," Jarrett replied. "Everybody knows what's in those pictures. And this is where it gets very delicate and I know it is a touchy subject for this audience. But what he is trying to balance as president, is keeping us safe, not giving ammunition to people who already have ample ammunition from what they've seen before to be adverse to us."
More shouts and protests followed. "I can't hear you," Jarrett said. "You know what you've got to do? You've got to figure out a way to get your question on here [pointing to the computer on stage that was receiving emails from questioners]. We are not going to have shout outs from the audience."
The moderator agreed. "This is not a town hall meeting like that," said Baratunde Thurston, of Jack and Jill Politics and The Onion. The crowd got the reference to the boisterous demonstrators at health care town halls. But they didn't stop. From the back of the room, someone shouted a question about why the private security contractor, Blackwater, was still being paid for work overseas.
"Well we are certainly trying to get rid of the no bid contracts," said Jarrett. "He has been very clear about that."
A group of individuals sitting at a table off to the side started hissing. "I hear the frustration and I hear the kind of hissing," said Jarrett. "I hear you. Settle down over there, settle down."
"I'm asking you to trust [the President]," she pleaded. "And I know that's hard. Because I know how pure you are to the cause. But he also has to keep in mind that he has to keep those folks safe."
At that point the protests ended. It was a minor glitch in an otherwise smooth, albeit little news making, a four minute portion of an hour-and-fifteen minute long event. Still, it provided something of a window into the small but mounting frustrations the progressive community has with the president they helped elect.
Ironically, when it came to policy questions, Jarrett hit all the right notes for the audience. On a public option for insurance coverage, which progressives hold near to their hearts, she insisted that it was and remains a philosophical commitment for the president.
"Let me be very clear and I talked to the president yesterday about this, knowing I was coming here," said Jarrett. "The president wants the public option, he has made that clear everywhere he has gone."
On Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act - two places in which the administration has taken some heat from its more liberal backers - Jarrett was firm in saying the White House wanted both laws repealed.
"He believes that DADT is wrong and he attempts to seek repeal in Congress," she said. "He believes the DOMA discriminates."
In fact, the only other place Jarrett got tripped up was when the topic, once again, turned from policy to politics. Asked by Thurston why the administration didn't push back hard against Blue Dog Democrats for not backing the president's health care agenda, Jarrett tried to play diplomat rather than offer the type of aggressive, red meat response that the crowd wanted to hear.
"I know that obviously that hit a note here," she said. "And, I know that there is a lot of frustration here and around the country. I'm telling you, I'm convinced this President has it right... He is not one to punish or do any of the things that perhaps you want to do in a moment of spontaneity or a moment of anger. But he is going to count on you. He is going to count on the American people to put the pressure on their elected representatives because that is the way the system works the best. It doesn't work the best when he decides to punish them from the Oval [Office]."
The crowd clapped softly. "Not quite as much applause [as the question got]," Jarrett said. "But trust me, this will work."
Words and images diminish in value, commercially speaking, because the Internet has turned everyone into a writer, publisher, anchor, newspaper editor and network producer. "Professional" content is now freely obtained online and repurposed by users. At the same time, "professional" content is losing "mind share" to the musings and videos of peers on social sites, blogs, YouTube and other digital media venues. Last week, media mogul Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp. waded into this situation by announcing a "new" old business model: By next year, he will be charging for access to all his websites and enforce copyright protections through the courts. First to be "fire-walled" and no longer free is the venerable Times of London. His Wall Street Journal already is partially walled off and, presumably, so will all his sleazy tabs like the New York Post, News of the World and his Fox TV empire with its websites. "Quality journalism is not cheap and industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting. The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels, but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news Web sites," he said.
More lemmings or visionaries? He forecasted that others will follow, and another two or so media outlets said they would do the same. Some, like Barry Diller, said Murdoch's new strategy is correct because people have always paid for content. But Murdoch and others are the King Kanutes of the business world, trying to hold back the tides. I would argue that people have not paid for journalism or television content because it has been a loss leader subsidized by advertisers for decades. (Newspaper subscribers pay the cost of delivery, not much more, with the rest of costs covered, and profits provided, by ads.) So the real challenge for media empires is not that people refuse to pay for content but that younger readers and viewers bypass the newspaper and TV advertisements and commercials by going online for news and entertainment. This has forced the advertisers to reduce their spending in order to follow the under-50 year old eyeballs into the digital world where they roam. Thus advertising revenues to media outlets have been plummeting worldwide and companies are being shuttered. This underscores the problem with Murdoch's media "solution". The only way it would work is if all the world's brand-name media outlets ganged up, monopoly-style, and decide to charge for their websites. Even so, piracy would flourish. Just one subscriber or viewer, listener or ticket-holder could steal content then peddle it all over the world or give it away then hide and resurface. Enforcement is difficult because taking and sharing content is now done by millions, which means that armies of litigators cannot collect damages because most people would be judgment proof, or without any assets to recoup. This is what happened to the music business model. New world new media Frankly, the world unfolds as it should and the media industry is adapting. Legacy media is cutting costs and growing digitally. New media has found different business models such as blogs which don't charge or pay for content then monetize their audiences by attracting advertisers if their traffic is huge. Tax supported and not-for-profit support for "good" journalism are taking up some slack. The world's citizen journalists, with their cellphone cameras, are filling the vacuum left by the ponderous or depleted media such as the footage the world saw during the latest uprising in Iran. Frankly, the party ended when the barriers to entry fell. The Internet meant that the Power and the Glory no longer belonged to those with millions to spend on presses and delivery or to the high priests and priestesses who wrote for them. Everyone I know in the media is working harder than ever for less money. Frankly, it's not a disaster, nor is it reversible which Mr. Murdoch may soon demonstrate.
Diane Francis blogs at Financial Post and CanWest newspapers
Last night, I did something that was both enjoyable and difficult: I watched Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Mr. Moyers is not afraid to call out both the hysterical right wing and their Astroturfing zealots for the way that are using their First Amendment Rights to stamp out other voices. He's also not afraid to call to carpet the mainstream television media - From Fox News to MSNB - for obsessively covering the town hall bullying in a way that makes it seems like a majority of Americans oppose healthcare reform, which is actually not the case.
But the reality is that watching Mr. Moyers and his guests Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation speak in an eloquent and informed manner is far less entertaining than watching Glenn Beck weep, Rush Limbaugh bloviate, Newt Gingrich thunder or the crew of Morning Joe posit conspiracies. Moyers and his guests care more about being thoughtful and informed than amusing; and so, they are less fun to watch. Meanwhile, the bombastic voices of the right are reliably shocking, titillating and sensational: they are entertainers of the highest order but not journalists.
Fortunately, we have an antidote in the form of Comedy Central, which brings us The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert pass themselves off as comedians, but they are really the most influential satirists of the day: they inform and illuminate through ridicule. (A good deal of credit goes to their very clever writers.) Certainly, you laugh, but what you laugh at is also worthy of serious thought.
This past week, I was particularly impressed at the way in both shows mocked the death panel fantasy, thereby helping to defang a fraudulent and distracting scare tactic. The Daily Show did a brilliant job showing Glen Beck rant both for and against healthcare system. It's a hilarious illustration of diametrically opposed demagoguery from the same mouth. Using a very different tactic, Colbert debated himself to illustrate just how farcical extremists on both sides of the health care debate really sound.
Without question, it would be preferable if all Americans had the time to make the substantial effort to get the facts directly. That's not practical: most of us simply lack the time. That's why good satire is so important. It's a quick and painless way to draw attention to issues that have crossed from the merely sublime to the truly ridiculous. That's not the same thing as good journalism, but it's a public service nevertheless.
I attended my local Tea Party yesterday, and it clarified for me, well, nothing I didn't already know, or at least assume, or at least fear.
It was an unusually hot day in downtown San Francisco, and Justin Herman Plaza was swarming with hundreds of mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-accept-the-results-of-last-fall's-election-anymore wingnut faithful -- not the thousands that KSFO radio host and marquee speaker Brian Sussman would claim on the air a few hours later, but a robust gathering just the same, pumped up on rabble-rousing rhetoric, pimped out in coordinated red shirts and witty placards, and above all pissed off; their very palpable anger, lacking a living, breathing, stammering, backpedaling town hall-cornered Democratic legislator to focus on, floating instead amorphously around the open plaza, looking for an animating principle and finding it in the inevitable Republican focus here in these first days of the Obama Age: the word "NO."
NO to health care reform. NO to "big government." NO to "creeping socialism." NO to this President. NO to gay marriage. NO to new taxes. NO to cap and trade legislation. NO to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NO to modernity...
Well, okay, maybe only half the crowd would still subscribe to those last two, but as one speaker after another traipsed on-stage and barked their frothing way through the faux-Gipper stations of the faux-libertarian cross, I wandered bewildered around the crowd's periphery, trying numbly to decipher just what exactly it is that everyone was so heated up about. The experience was, let us say, disheartening. You know this already, but it bears repeating: a lot of Americans simply perceive reality much differently than, um, other Americans do. Did you know, for instance, that:
Everyone who joins national health care will be issued a national I.D. card!
or that:
Federal bureaucrats will have perpetual access to our bank accounts!
not to mention that:
Obama's going to herd us all out of our private insurance plans!
Oh, 'herd us,' will he? you mutter under your breath, because by then you've lost your patina of reportorial detachment (which, to be honest, was pretty freaking fragile to begin with) and just start blatantly arguing back: Obama has said plain as day on numerous occasions that anyone who likes their current plan can stay in it as long as they want!
(Incredulous stare.) "You actually believe that?"
Seniors will all have to appear every five years before "death panels" who'll decide whether they live or die!
Come on, that's just a willfully conspiratorial misreading of that one Medicare provision for voluntary end of life counseling --
"Yes, you see?"
-- which they've already removed from the Senate bill anyway!
"Ha! Exactly! Thank you, Governor Palin!"
It's ex-Governaaarrrrggghh...
Because by then you're literally gasping for air and desperate to bolt out onto the Embarcadero, where you imagine a soul-cleansing fog might drift in off the Bay and erase your pained knowledge of the fact that so many sentient human beings actually believe that
Our health care will be rationed, like in England and Canada!
Yeah, great, except that both England and Canada spend less per capita on health care than we do and their citizens have higher life expectancy.
"No they don't."
Oh, yes they do.
"According to whom?"
The World Health Organization.
(Brief pause, then, with absolutist, pre-civil-war finality:) "You have your facts, I have mine."
Sigh.
I mean, come on, buddy -- nobody really "has" facts, do they? Facts exist in their own right, and we just tout them or shout them or flout them, in accordance with the dictates of our personal knowledge base and perceived ideological imperatives. "There was this guy with a sign that said 'No Government-Run Health Care,' and he had to be 75 years old," marveled one corporate type who'd wandered over on his lunch break. "I asked him if he was on Medicare and he said yes." Did you point out the contradiction? "Sure." And? "He just walked away."
Which was so not a surprise, the Medicare recipients who want nothing to do with government-run health care being one of the more amusing right-wing cliches of this long hot August. There were no doubt plenty of them yesterday among a crowd that was predominantly older, overwhelmingly white and, I'd wager, heavily evangelical, a combustive demographic that didn't exactly cotton to the gutsy girl who kept pacing around trying to yell "Health care for everyone!" loudly enough to drown out the repeated death threats and off-topic anti-abortion catcalls that greeted her homemade "Who Would Jesus Insure?" sign. Her question, in fact, was quite a bit more piquant than the ones I was asking. So I switched over.
If Jesus Christ returned to Earth, would he advocate free medical care for the poorest and sickest among us? "Yes, he would," said a pleasant, Jesus-placard-toting man named Dave Ward.
Wouldn't He have endorsed the public option if He'd seen fit to address health care issues specifically in the Sermon on the Mount? "Yes, I agree with that," said the lady with the 'Meet the New Face of Community Organizers' sign. , And, finally, "I think he would be for it," said Bay Area Patriot volunteer Gina White, making it three straight 'Yesses' in my survey of whether Tea Partiers are willing to acknowledge the philosophical contradiction that has marked their movement ever since Reagan seduced both Wall Street and the Bible Belt. "But let me just" -- she tried to continue, and when I rudely cut her off in order to launch into a lengthy condemnation of her conservative perfidy (yes, by then I'd completely lost it), she politely but firmly asked me to listen.
Which I did, and wound up talking at length with a smart, compassionate opponent of (come on, let's own the name already) Obamacare who was willing to embrace progressives' core moral argument for universal coverage while also questioning our specific strategy for achieving it and offering alternative insurance-reform suggestions that would probably require a few hours of diligent net-surfing in order to counter. All of which made me like Gina White in particular quite a lot and Bay Area Patriots in general maybe a teensy tiny little bit, but only further grayed out an essay that I'd imagined would be painted in stark black and white.
Which clarity is, still, for my money, clearly what's called for at this scary historical moment. Every night for the past few weeks I've been sacrificing a half hour of sleep to gulp down another few dozen pages of Rick Perlstein's brilliant Nixonland. There's nothing like a meticulous accounting of the brutal Vietnam-era cracking of our nation's Red/Blue fault line to put our present cultural circumstance in perspective. You think tempers are high in 2009? Try '68, dude. People were setting off bombs, burning down cities, riding around with shotguns looking for fellow citizens to murder. Forty years ago America really must have felt like it was coming apart at the seams. Instead we stitched ourselves up and moved on. As we will again. As we are already.
So, bottom line, let's pass a damn health care bill already. A real one, with a public option, or at least as close as Senators Baucus and Conrad will deign to permit the other three hundred million of us to to enjoy. No, the recalcitrant side of the aisle won't vote for it, and no, we shouldn't care. We should pass the best possible bill via reconciliation and ignore both Republicans' crocodile sobbing about Democratic unilateralism and tee-bagger invective about socialism this, Communism that, and whatever other detritus emerges from those poor bastards' collective post-President-Moron minority-party psychosis. We need to pass the bill and take our lumps if need be, let the fair-and-balanced pundits blather about liberal overreaching and the conservative comeback, even let the GOP pick up a few House seats in fall 2010 if it comes to that. Just please, please, let's pass the damn bill.
Then we'll sit back and watch. "We are being lied to!" yesterday's speakers yelled repeatedly. They're right, of course, but by whom and about what? Let's pass a good bill, pull up an easy chair, pop a cold one and enjoy the spectacle over the next few years as millions of fence-sitting independents suddenly realize that they and their kids have health insurance which they can't lose because of a job change or preexisting condition. How do you figure those politics will play out among swing voters in, say, Ohio and Florida in November 2012?
Yeah, that's what I think, too, which is why so many Republican leaders are calling the emerging bill, mangled by compromise though it will almost certainly be, the end of the world. They're right about that, too -- it's the end of their world, anyway. As for our world, it just turns. The times change, sometimes epochally and swiftly. FDR '32. Reagan '80. Obama Now. The birth pangs of a new age are often painful and bloody, but this latest American evolution, whose genesis we're collectively creating, will live and thrive. And over time, most of us, anyway, will see that it is good.
Not long ago, when I was in Rockford, Illinois, eating with students and professors at a college as part of a program about artificial food ingredients, our talk turned to local food (a future farmer sat next to me) and national chain restaurants (the nearby highway is lined with dozens). The professor across from me blew my mind with her naïve question: Do you have trouble getting good and local food in New York City?
Assuming she had never traveled there nor read about it, I could only stammer out a reply about how wonderful our various farmer's markets are, how specialty food stores are my jewelry stores, how the competition makes even small restaurants do better there than anywhere else (think pizza).
I stopped before I insulted her, but I kept thinking about the issue. In fact, when I travel the country, I find that only a few urban places offer anything like the good food in New York. It is not for nothing that Zagat started here.
Now we have groups like Green Edge Collaborative, (http://www.greenedgenyc.org/) which hosts events at restaurants or walks with urban wild food foragers; the Brookyn Food Conference (http://brooklynfoodconference.org/), which recently brought dozens of presenters in touch with thousands of interested people; and even our very own guide to restaurants featuring healthy and local food, Clean Plates NYC (www.cleanplatesnyc.com).
This latter, a nicely designed paperback with a serious online component, was put together by a nutritionist and a food critic to review seventy-five health-conscious restaurants (and list two hundred more) so you can more easily hunt down a gourmet vegetarian meal or find guilt-free chocolate cake. Most places noted feature not only local food but organic, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, and generally eco-friendly food. "Clean Plates NYC" focuses on nutrition and healthy choices, though.
The first third of the book is all about designing your own diet, so it is helpful on all counts. If you want to heal yourself or just maintain your health by consuming filtered water and making sane ingredient choices, without sacrificing taste and variety, here's your guide. It covers the fanciest four-stars as well as convenient fast food chains (yes, there are some who keep healthy eating in mind!) Of course, there are far more restaurants that could be included here, so I imagine revised editions are in the cards, if not online.
Back to my questioner in Rockford: Just on the block where I work, in the West Village, lie three of the top restaurants in the city, all of which feature local, whole foods (Mas, Blue Ribbon, and Market Table). Just outside my door. But I have to say, I do have trouble with those places--lunch is not cheap! So maybe she had something there.
The beaches are crowded, the restaurants full, but the Lebanese rumour mill talks of another war around the corner
Lebanon is truly the two-faced Janus of the Middle East. As the country revels in a tourism boom and Beirut's beaches and restaurants brim with visitors, beneath the surface there is deep unease about the potential for violent upheaval.
Arriving in Beirut, the country's politics - the prevalence of engaged discussion - slaps you in the face. Even while waiting in the departure lounge for my flight there, I caught several animated conversations - the names of leaders past and present floating through the air. The ongoing cabinet negotiations and uncertainty that followed the "victory" of the March 14 Alliance are front-page news that greets you on exiting Rafik Hariri international airport, built and named after the man whose unresolved death is a parable for the inherent weaknesses of the Lebanese pseudo-state.
Travelling into town from the southern suburbs the horizon is packed with cranes that are finishing off the rebuilding from the 2006 Israeli bombardment. The drive through the city is a trip of political portraits and tribal flags.
The astonishing volte face of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt away from what was simplistically characterised by many commentators as the anti-Syrian alliance is still rocking the boat of Lebanese attempts to form a cabinet. Initial promises by the March 14 group to form one within a week, and to have enough independence to stand apart from Hezbollah, have been shattered and some are questioning whether the young Hariri has enough of the political acumen that fuelled his father's success until his untimely demise.
Meanwhile beneath the political bickering a greater challenge may lie on the horizon. There is talk of "war shopping", of people storing up supplies in case growing Israeli rhetoric towards the country becomes a reality. Interestingly even Hariri stated recently that "We are neither against Iran, nor against Syria; we are only against Israel because it is our enemy."
This is despite the enduring legacy of the 2006 conflict, which is still very visible. Buildings are being rebuilt, Israeli aircraft regularly buzz the south and hundreds are maimed or killed each year by the millions of cluster munitions that were dropped during Israel's retreat.
Similarly to the 2008 Gaza conflict, the 2006 war was a "rocket war" where initial attempts to rescue captured soldiers escalated to the almost impossible task of destroying Hezbollah's rocket arsenal. According to recent reports this arsenal, although pushed north of the border by the expanded presence of international peacekeepers (Unifil 2), is estimated to be 40,000 strong with rumours that some rockets could hit Tel Aviv or even Israel's undeclared nuclear weapon facilities in the south. This would give Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, the potential to extract an "eye for an eye" if any US/Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear facilities was to occur.
This may be simple Hezbollah propaganda designed to ward off any attack, yet during the 2006 war the missile strike against the Israeli navy and the ground handling of anti-tank munitions speak of an adversary that should not be taken lightly. Perhaps this explains the increasing pressure from Israel. Last week the Israeli deputy foreign minister promised that if "one hair" on a representative of Israel or an Israeli tourist was hurt, there would be "dire consequences". This may be an attempt to warn Hezbollah off seeking revenge for the car bomb assassination of Imad Mugniyeh in Damascus last year.
Yet Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, admitted that he misjudged the Israeli response to the soldiers' capture in 2006 and he would be well advised not to treat the Israeli threats as empty. There is of course a historical precedent: the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was triggered by an assassination attempt on their ambassador to the UK by Abu Nidal.
An Israeli administration frustrated by the American attempts to rein in its settlement programme could find welcome distraction in an attempt to succeed where Kadima failed. Whether there is a war or not, the very fact that such potential still exists, only three years after a previous conflict wiped out the lives of so many, is testimony to the dangers of conflicts that are not resolved but rather simply put on ice.
Earth Days, the new film that opens this weekend from acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone, is being promoted as a history of the environmental movement in the United States. But it's more of a road trip, really: the road less travelled. The road not taken. The road to hell, blazed by grassroot good intentions that got asphalted and AstroTurfed.
Stone's skillful blend of archival footage and new interviews with the environmental movement's founders documents a movement still in its infancy when an oily alliance of extraction-happy industrialists and the Don't-You-Dare-Ask-Americans-To-Care contingent conspired to smother it in its crib.
The movement survived, but it didn't thrive. Next year marks Earth Day's fortieth birthday. Will it be a milestone, or a millstone? Earth Days depicts the birth of a movement that started with so much promise but ran aground on the shoals of shallow self interest, blithe indifference and callous greed. It's Stone's fervent wish that if enough folks turn out to see Earth Days, we might be able to get this boat floating again.
When Rachel Carson published her seminal Silent Spring in 1962, the chickens came home to roost and discovered that in the mad dash to feather our nests we'd done a fine job of fouling them, too. Carson's watershed work got the ball rolling, but it took the acid-inspired global vision of Stewart Brand, who published the ground-breaking Whole Earth Catalog in 1968, to popularize the notion that we've only got one Earth and we might want to stop stomping on it.
The movement really picked up steam in 1970, when 20 million people turned out across the nation to celebrate the first Earth Day. It was the first time in our history that we began to grapple with the reality that no country, no matter how big or how bold, has infinite resources.
The New York Times declared Earth Days "a bittersweet stroll down memory lane." But Stone intended it as a road map to get the environmental movement back on track by showing how it got derailed.
...it also illuminates the historical fact that positive changes in social attitudes, technological possibilities and political determination can take place very rapidly if the will exists to make it happen. We were halfway there a generation ago, but then we lost our way. As we at last begin anew to tackle our many environmental challenges, it's vital to know how we arrived at this predicament and what lessons from the past we can draw upon in facing an uncertain future.
That is why I made this film, and why I made it now.
Earth Days hits awfully close to home for me, and not just because Stone happens to live a stone's throw from me in our mass-transit accessible Hudson Valley hamlet. Growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I felt acutely alienated by our car-centric community; the only time my dad ever spanked me was when he caught me throwing rocks at passing cars. Some guy I hit pulled over and tattled on me, and my dad got so mad he paddled my auto-hating ass.
I didn't know it then--this was in the mid-sixties--but I was a kinderKunstler (that's "kinder" as in "kindergarten", not "kinder, gentler".) Of course, it would be decades before peak oil prophet James Howard Kunstler declared the American suburb "the single greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."
I don't know if history will prove Kunstler right, but Earth Days provides plenty of ammunition to back up the statement he recently made to pop culture pundit Stephen J. Dubner:
Sometimes whole societies make unfortunate decisions or go down tragic pathways. Suburbia was ours.
Earth Days is a thoughtful, entertaining film that documents pivotal peaks and low points in the environmental movement. You really ought to see it, if only to catch a glimpse of a rare species that's nearly extinct now: the pro-conservation conservative. To borrow a famous phrase from the first President Bush: Message--they cared. Will we?
WASHINGTON - A deal with Switzerland settling U.S. demands for the names of suspected tax dodgers from a Swiss bank has a lot of wealthy Americans with offshore accounts nervously running to their tax advisers -- and the Internal Revenue Service.
"They are very frightened," said Richard Boggs, chief executive of Nationwide Tax Relief, a Los-Angeles-based tax firm that specializes in clients with tax debts exceeding $100,000. "You have the super rich who are not used to being pushed around and they are finding themselves in unfamiliar territory."
The U.S. and Swiss governments announced a court settlement last week in efforts by the IRS to force Zurich-based UBS AG to turn over the names of some 52,000 Americans believed to be hiding nearly $15 billion in assets in secret accounts.
Justice Department and UBS lawyers told a federal judge in Miami in a brief conference call Wednesday they had initialed a final deal. But they did not disclose any details, such as how many of the 52,000 names sought by the IRS will be revealed.
Even before the settlement, the high-profile case -- coupled with other U.S. efforts to go after Americans hiding undeclared assets -- has scared hundreds of tax dodgers to turn themselves in. Boggs said his firm has been taking on 100 new cases a month, a big increase over previous years.
Peter Zeidenberg, a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Washington, said he, too, is he seeing more people with undeclared assets seeking information about their legal options.
His advice: "I don't think you have much of a choice but to come forward. ... I think the landscape is permanently changed."
The IRS long has had a policy that certain tax evaders who come forward before they are contacted by the agency usually can avoid jail time as long as they agree to pay back taxes, interest and hefty penalties. Drug dealers and money launderers need not apply. But if the money was earned legally, tax evaders can usually avoid criminal prosecution.
In March, the IRS began a six-month amnesty program that sweetened the offer with reduced penalties for people with undeclared assets. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said the response has been unprecedented.
Shulman wouldn't say how many people have applied so far. But the IRS said 400 people applied to voluntarily disclose undeclared assets in a single week in July, compared with fewer than 100 applications all last year.
The amnesty program, which ends Sept. 23, is part of a larger effort by federal authorities to crack down on international tax evaders.
"Each time someone walks through the door with a disclosure, we get more information. We get more information about other people. We get more information about other financial institutions," Shulman said. "If people have been hiding assets in the past, they should be nervous, and they should be a lot more suspect about doing it in the future."
The U.S. recently reached agreements with several countries, including Luxembourg and Switzerland, to share more tax information in the future, just as the IRS is strengthening its enforcement ranks.
President Barack Obama, in his proposed 2010 budget, asked Congress to pay for 800 additional agents, examiners and lawyers to go after people who hide money overseas. Obama also wants Congress to require overseas financial institutions doing business in the U.S. to share more information with the IRS.
Earlier this year, UBS admitted assisting U.S. citizens in evading taxes as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department. UBS agreed to disclose the names of about 300 American clients and pay a $780 million penalty. The IRS subsequently filed its case seeking the names of 52,000 additional U.S. taxpayers believed to be hiding assets in UBS accounts.
So far, four UBS customers whose names were given to U.S. authorities under the prior agreement have made deals to plead guilty to tax charges in federal court.
"The UBS case, the agreements we are signing, the legislative proposals and the enforcement efforts are all meant to send one message, which is that if you owe tax to the U.S., we are going to use every tool we have available to get that," said Michael Mundaca, acting assistant treasury secretary.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., applauded the administration's efforts, but said more can be done to catch tax evaders. Levin has introduced a bill that would direct the treasury secretary to maintain a list of nations that "impede U.S. tax enforcement" and give him authority to impose financial penalties against uncooperative countries.
Levin's initial list of 34 countries and other jurisdictions would include Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Hong Kong and Panama.
"We should have put a clampdown on these tax havens a long time ago," he said in an interview.
Raymond Baker of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based group that advocates tougher policies against international money laundering, said he is encouraged by the administration's efforts. But he's not ready to call it a crackdown.
"As we get past the UBS case, is the momentum for continuing to go after tax evaders going to be sustained?" Baker said. "I think it's too early to tell."
It would, however, be risky for a wealthy tax dodger to wait to see if the government's stepped up efforts continue, said Boggs, the tax adviser. He said his firm usually recommends a "strategic surrender" to the IRS.
"We basically are waving a white flag and telling the IRS that we have every intention of resolving this issue in the mutual best interest of the government and our client," Boggs said.
"Historically, the best outcomes that we have been able to negotiate have always involved good faith from the taxpayer," he said. "And good faith means getting to the IRS before they get to you."
Yet what she wrote is the talk of politics, causing crowds to rise up and shout out loud, with everyone from cable hosts to pundits to the President of the United States answering her "death panels" charge.
She may be a quitter, but it's good to be Sarah Palin.
That's because while the politicians are running around trying to do their job and be heard above the town hall brawlers, she weighed in on the most important issue facing this country and changed the debate with a Facebook post. Proving that dumping the governorship wasn't all madness. Her victory lap on "death panels":
I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee's decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200). It's gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress; however, that provision was not the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones.
As I noted in my statement last week, nationalized health care inevitably leads to rationing. There is simply no way to cover everyone and hold down the costs at the same time. The rationing system proposed by one of President Obama's key health care advisors is particularly disturbing. I'm speaking of the "Complete Lives System" advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president's chief of staff. ... ..
In purely political terms, the unleashing of "death panels" is the Republican shot that awoke the right. It also drove Pres. Obama to address it in his town hall, with Democrats repeating the phrase everywhere, laughing at it while trying to rebut it. It stuck anyway.
Keith Olbermann reduced Eugene Robinson to reading the full quote of his article last night on his show, because Palin had truncated it.
Tell me why everyone's running around responding to Palin's Facebook page? Because what she's hoisting into the ether is so potentially damaging they have to. That's how upside down everything is at this point.
In a Rovian turn of political cynicism, Palin blasted on Facebook one of the most divisively offensive statements that could be made in a health care debate, writing about "death panels" and implying that Trig, her son with Down Syndrome", would have to stand before one. The gargantuan nerve it takes to launch a lie so ludicrously unbelievable reveals such heinous disregard for reality and facts you've got to wonder if she's sane.
But then you watch the unraveling, the unleashing of the fury in the town halls we witnessed from Specter to McCaskill and beyond, wondering what spell was weaved over an already agitated American right wing who upon hearing "death panels" with "euthanasia" on top came completely unglued.
She took to Facebook a couple of days ago to push harder on "death panels", taking her argument straight at Pres. Obama.
The New York Times is running a story about who started the rumor and the roots of it. No one should be surprised the same actors were around during the Clinton days, but the fact that American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, former New York Attorney General, an opponent of Hillarycare as well, is at the center hardly matters amidst the noise. McCaughey's July article "Deadly Doctor", on Rahm Emanuel's father, cynically uses health care cost savings to scare the crap out of seniors. No one ever said Palin was in this alone.
But Dr. Emanuel's paper does not quite say what Ms. Palin claims it does. Rather, it is an exploration of how scarce resources - like organs or vaccines during a pandemic - can be morally allocated when not enough resources are available.
Sober analysis that hardly comforts, which is why Palin's pack sees a target.
The bit player in all this, Chuck Grassley, told an audience that he had to stay involved long enough so that the grass roots could organize, get on TV and make their stand. He said that if he hadn't stayed in the debate in Washington there would have been a health care bill in June. Serving as a double agent while spinning bipartisan baloney, Obama buying in regardless, Grassley now says the end-of-life counseling is out in the Senate, as far as he's concerned, which as is shown in Palin's latest Facebook post, she takes as her win.
Howard Dean made a good case on "Countdown" that Grassley doesn't decide and Republicans are digging themselves a hole, which others also believe. I'm not so sure.
A person everyone has judged isn't national office material managed to cause a ruckus and change the dynamics of debate, getting Pres. Obama to respond to what she'd unleashed in writing that ricocheted across America. Palin forcing the President to answer her, because she's backed by thousands and thousands of the furious loaded for bear with grievances.
All of this because of what was written by a woman who doesn't hold office or any spot of power and doesn't care about dividing America, because in the world from where she hails Sarah Palin already sees America divided. It's also in her interest to keep it that way.
For that matter, the only hope Republicans have is division and defeating anything Obama that now is symbolized, at least for them, by "death panels," which has less to do with health care and actual "death panels" than it does the intrusion of government in our lives, that old standard of the right rising from the ashes.
All this started by a woman who can't be president. Of course, she doesn't know she can't be president. But for now it doesn't really matter. She's the star of her own "death panel" realty show. And it's a huge hit.
The Los Angeles Timesreported last Sunday that Attorney General Holder will soon appoint a special prosecutor to investigate individuals alleged to have participated in the worst excesses of CIA torture, but not the policy makers and senior intelligence officials responsible for torture and detention policies. Holder's strategy appears to have little support, either from torture apologists or opponents. Meanwhile, the architects of Bush-era torture and detention policy are not rushing to defend low-level intelligence officers who could be facing costly legal jeopardy.
When this story first surfaced in mid-July, sources varied as to whether such a special prosecutor would undertake a wide-ranging investigation that could call the architects of torture policy into account, or would focus on a few individuals--bad apples--who violated the Bush administration's torture rules.
According to the LA Times story, Holder is now all but certain to appoint a special prosecutor who will focus the investigation on low-level intelligence officers and contractors who exceeded the Department of Justice and internal CIA policy guidelines on acceptable torture techniques. Presumably, he special prosecutor would not delve into the legality of overall torture and extrajudicial detention policy, or the secret legal rulings and authorizations behind the policy.
The story goes on to report that serving CIA officials are digging in, with a few putting off retirement in order to put themselves in the best position to mount a legal defense.
Bracing for the worst, a small number of CIA officials have put off plans to retire or leave the agency so that they can maintain their access to classified files and be in a better position to defend against a Justice investigation.
"Once you're out, it gets a lot harder," said a retired CIA official who said he had spoken recently with former colleagues. The inquiry would probably also target private contractors who worked for the CIA during the interrogations.
From the prosecution and investigatory perspective, torture prosecutions appear fraught from the beginning. A former Department of Justice official told the Times, "I don't blame them for wanting to look into it . . . But if they appoint a special prosecutor, it would ultimately be unsuccessful, and it would go on forever and cause enormous collateral damage on the way to getting that unsuccessful result."
Some observers, such as Daphne Eviatar, legal correspondent at The Washington Independent, hold out hope that Holder's special prosecutor can and will go beyond low-level intelligence operatives who may have been involved in torture. "It's not clear where such an inquiry would logically end," writes Eviatar. "Investigating CIA functionaries low on the totem pole -- which would involve re-opening cases previously dismissed by the Bush administration -- would ultimately require looking into the orders they received from their superiors."
Others in the know don't share Eviatar's hope for justice. Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told the Times, "An investigation that focuses only on low-ranking operators would be, I think, worse than doing nothing at all."
Indeed, the prosecution of low-level intelligence officers and contractors for torture has been called "the worst of both worlds" by the Balloon Juice blog. Taking off on this theme, civil liberties blogger Glenn Greenwald termed Holder's 'bad apples' strategy "Abu Ghraib redux," a reference to the infamous Abu Ghraib court martial that singled out extremely junior National Guard troops for atrocities against Iraqi prisoners, while letting the officers and policy makers who enabled their crimes completely off the hook.
Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan warned that the Obama administration would lose moral authority with Holder's anticipated move: "The Obama administration, however well-intentioned it may be, risks essentially legitimizing the torture it does not prosecute."
Already, Congress has taken note of the problems in Holder's 'bad apples' strategy. Jerrold Nadler (D-NV), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee, told Holder last week, "There simply is no legal, moral or principled reason to insulate those who authorized the torture of detainees, either through legal reasoning or other policy directive, from investigation," according to The Public Record.
Tellingly, those torture authorizers have not taken up the cause of lowly intelligence officers who might get caught up in the justice system.
John Yoo, the loudest and most prolific apologist for torture policy, did not rush to comment on the plight of CIA officers and contractors who might face prosecution for carrying out illegal policies that he helped formulate. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who earlier had been vociferously critical of Obama national security policy and then suddenly became quiet in the past month or so, hasn't used his good offices to defend low-level intelligence officers or even raise money for their legal defenses. George Tenet, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Steven Bradbury, and others who presumably were micromanaging torture from Washington also have been conspicuously silent.
Maybe they are lobbying behind the scenes for the Obama administration to look to the future, instead back at the past.
The right is winning the war against President Obama, and winning it handily. The formula explanation for the right's walkover of the White House is that a pack of GOP orchestrated health care town hall loudmouths and a well-heeled, well-financed, and over media exposed core of GOP attack hounds have rattled Obama, game changed the health care debate, and swayed public opinion against the administration.
That's partly true, but only partly. The right could not win without the White House's tactical stumbles, caution and compromise on core issues, and its gross underestimation of the potency of racial fears, hostility and paranoia. The stumble was to attack and keep attacking Rush Limbaugh and the shrill conservative gabbers. They totally dominate and abuse the airwaves. To pick a fight with them only inflated their importance, presence, and numbers. The attack allowed Limbaugh to cloak himself in martyr's cloth and claim that he was under siege by a bullying, intimidating, and vengeful White House. In radio listener surveys, Limbaugh's ratings soared, and radio affiliates, giddy at the surge in the ratings, played his show up even bigger.
The ratings snapped many shell shocked Congressional Republicans out of their post election daze. They quickly drew a hard and fast line in the sand against any and everything that Obama proposed, health care being at the top of their list. It stiffened the backbone of many cautious Republicans and made them determined not to be bullied, or at least appear not to be bullied, by a mere talk show host into standing up to Obama.
The way to fight the right counterinsurgency was to do exactly what Limbaugh and company did with the airwaves and grassroots conservatives. That is to arouse and organize the legions of young, progressives, blacks, and Hispanic voters who crusaded for Obama. They were passionate for him because they expected him to quickly repair the wreckage Bush made of health care, the economy, the war, civil liberties, the environment, and abortion. They expected Obama to make good on his promise to be a real change president. Instead they've watched in dismay the White House compromise and flat out backslide on ending the wars, single payer health universal health care, and deal cutting with insurance health insurers and pharmaceuticals.
They've grumbled at the White House giveaway of billions to Wall Street greed merchants, banks and brokerage houses, the refusal to press criminal charges against the CIA and Bush officials and operatives for their gross flaunt of international law on torture and wiretapping, and its infuriating pander to red dog Democrats and especially GOP Senators. They have made it clear they will say and do everything they can to kill any program or initiative of Obama's. This has sown disillusion and cynicism among many of his fervent backers.
Obama's worst mistake has been to misread the election results. Much is made that he got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore, revved up young whites, and totally exorcised race from the campaign. Obama's win supposedly was final proof that America had finally kicked the racial syndrome. This is the stuff of media talk and wishful thinking. Despite a GOP racked by sex and corruption scandals, an anemic presidential opponent, a laughingstock vice presidential candidate, a collapsed economy and an outgoing GOP president with a rating worse than Herbert Hoover's, McCain still crushed Obama by a twelve point spread among white voters.
The route was not just among old, Deep South unreconstructed or latent bigoted white male voters, but in virtually every voter demographic among whites, including a dead heat with Obama among a majority of younger white voters. This doesn't tell the whole story of the sharp racial divide Obama faces. A sizeable percentage of whites were disgusted enough with Bush's policies to stay home on Election Day, but not disgusted enough with him and his policies to vote for Obama. The Henry Louis Gate's affair and the right's town hall rabble rousing have made more whites wary of Obama's policies. Polls after the Gates outburst showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and even more ominous expressed grave doubts about his policies. A painful reality is that the crushing majority of whites who oppose Obama or disavow his policies for racial, party, or ideological reasons or personal prejudices, are fast forming the backbone of the radical right's counter insurgency against him.
The radical right has gotten its way in the media with its fist shaking town hall shock troops. But the White House has given the counterinsurgency a generous boost with its fits and starts, and conciliation on health care, and waffling on a total rollback of Bush policies. Obama hasn't lost the war yet, but without a huge battlefield counterattack, defeat may not be far off.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com
YANGON, Myanmar — Days after the world slammed Myanmar for sentencing Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to more house arrest, U.S. Senator Jim Webb arrived in the military-ruled country's capital Friday.
The visit – the first in more than a decade by a senior U.S. official – has drawn criticism from activists who say it confers legitimacy on a brutal regime, but the Obama administration gave the Virginia Democrat its blessing.
Relations between Myanmar, also known as Burma, and the U.S. have been strained since its military crushed pro-democracy protests in 1988.
Washington is Myanmar's strongest critic, applying political and economic sanctions against the junta for its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. And this week's sentencing of democracy leader Suu Kyi and an American citizen at the same trial threatened to drag ties even lower.
But President Barack Obama's new ambassador for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, recently said the administration is interested in easing its policy of isolation. Webb, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's East Asia and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, has suggested that "affirmative engagement" would bring the most change to Myanmar, concerning those who think a hard line is the best approach.
In a letter to Webb, who flew Friday in a U.S. military aircraft from Laos to Myanmar's administrative capital of Naypyitaw, dissident groups warned the junta would use the senator's trip for its own ends.
"We are concerned that the military regime will manipulate and exploit your visit and propagandize that you endorse their treatment on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and over 2,100 political prisoners, their human rights abuses on the people of Burma, and their systematic, widespread and ongoing attack against the ethnic minorities," the letter said. Daw is a term of respect for older women in Myanmar.
Possibly reflecting a similar wariness, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy said the party "has no interest in Jim Webb because he is not known to have any interest in Myanmar affairs." He did not elaborate. Nevertheless, Webb is slated to meet several politicians from the NLD on Saturday.
Official media, however, appeared to herald Webb's arrival. The nightly broadcast led with the visit, reporting that the senator met with Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein on Friday, and returned to the subject several times during the night.
On Saturday, Webb is to meet with Myanmar's leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, according to Myanmar officials who demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. He would be the first senior U.S. official to meet the reclusive junta leader.
Suu Kyi, who was sentenced to 18 months of additional house arrest on Tuesday, has spent 14 of the last 20 years in detention. Her latest sentence came after an uninvited American citizen, John Yettaw, secretly swam to her house and spent two days there. Both Yettaw and Suu Kyi were found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest. Yettaw received seven years in prison with hard labor.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The junta called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi's party won overwhelmingly.
___
Associated Press writer Foster Klug contributed to this report from Washington.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - The leader of an al-Qaida-inspired group in the Gaza Strip blew himself up during a shootout Saturday with Hamas security forces, ending hours of violence sparked by a rebellious sermon at a mosque near the Egyptian border.
At least 24 people were killed in clashes with the shadowy group, which posed one of the biggest challenges to Hamas since the militant group seized power in Gaza two years ago.
The fighting broke out Friday when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up.
Flares lit up the sky overnight as Hamas machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades slammed into the mosque. The militants inside returned fire with automatic weapons and grenades of their own.
The head of the radical Islamic group, Abdel-Latif Moussa, detonated an explosives vest he was wearing when fighting resumed after dawn Saturday, said Ihab Ghussein, a Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman.
"The so-called Moussa has committed suicide ... killing a mediator who had been sent to him to persuade him and his followers to hand themselves over to the government," Ghussein said.
He said the fighting ended later in the morning.
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said a total of 24 people, including six Hamas police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed and 150 were wounded.
The group's Web site vowed revenge: "We swear to God to avenge the martyrs' blood and we will turn their women into widows."
Hamas also confirmed the death in the fighting of one of its high-level commanders, Abu Jibril Shimali, whom Israel said orchestrated the capture three years ago of Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier who is still being held by Hamas.
The fighting appeared to confirm Hamas' iron rule in Gaza despite a punishing Israeli and Egyptian blockade that keeps all but basic humanitarian supplies from entering the impoverished seaside territory.
It also underscored the group's determination not to allow opponents with differing ideologies to gain a foothold in Gaza. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are together supposed to make up a future Palestinian state, but Hamas' bloody seizure of Gaza in 2007 created rival governments in the two territories -- located on opposite sides of Israel -- that are complicating Palestinian efforts to gain independence.
Jund Ansar Allah claims inspiration from al-Qaida's ultraconservative brand of Islam but no direct links have been confirmed.
The confrontation was triggered when the leader of the group defied Gaza's Hamas rulers by declaring in a Friday prayer sermon that the territory was an Islamic emirate.
Jund Ansar Allah and a number of other small radical groups seek to enforce an even stricter version of Islamic law in Gaza than that advocated by Hamas.
These groups are also upset that the Hamas regime has honored a cease-fire with Israel for the past seven months.
Hamas says it does not impose its religious views on others, but only seeks to set a pious example for people to follow.
Radical splinter groups such as Jund Ansar Allah call for a global jihad against the entire Western world, while Hamas maintains its struggle is only against the Israeli occupation.
"They are inspired by unbalanced ideologies and in the past they carried out a number of explosions targeting Internet cafes and wedding parties," said Ghussein, adding that the groups do not have any external ties.
The hard-line groups are perhaps the most serious opposition Hamas has faced since it seized control of Gaza and ousted its rivals in the Fatah movement in a five-day civil war in June 2007.
Hamas security blocked all roads to Rafah and declared the town a closed military zone. They said they have arrested about 40 members of the group so far.
Hamas is also investigating the launching of 11 homemade rockets from Gaza into Egypt on Friday. Only five of the rockets detonated, injuring a young girl, said Egyptian security forces.
Saeb Erekat, a senior peace negotiator with Israel and a member of the rival Fatah group in the West Bank, described the situation in Gaza as "alarming."
"Gaza is going down the drain in chaos and lawlessness," he told the AP.
Jund Ansar Allah first came to public attention in June after it claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to attack Israel from Gaza on horseback.
In July, three Muslim extremists from the group holed themselves up in a building in southern Gaza, surrendering to Hamas police only after a lengthy standoff.
It is unclear how many adherents Jund Ansar Allah or other similar extremist groups have in Gaza.
There is an unspoken subtext to all this Obama-bashing that has been heard at the health care town halls and in the Birther movement. And I'm not talking about the racism which others have already identified. I'm talking about anti-Hawaiianism. As a native New Yorker married to a woman from Hawaii, I have first-hand familiarity with the fact that most of my fellow American mainlanders maintain a nagging impression that Hawaii is not really very American-y. If Obama had been born in, say, St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, the Birthers would never have been allowed to say boo. This is where the Birther movement found fertile soil: Obama's being born in a third-world-sounding hospital called Kapi'olani Medical Center exploited America's embedded insecurity about the 50th state. Here are ten facts about Hawaii that the Birthers and the town hall crazies have exploited to create their case:
1) Walking through Honolulu International Airport, one repeatedly hears people refer to the flight to the mainland as "going to America." 2) The McDonalds there serve rice and spam. 3) There are those native Hawaiians who still claim that their land was illegally annexed, and therefore Hawaii is an illegitimate state. 4) The street names have way too many vowels; just try saying, "Kalanianaole Highway." 5) The health care system covers more than 95% of its residents. Does that sound like America? 6) You can watch NFL football games -- live -- at 8am on Sunday mornings. 7) It's the only state that grows coffee. (Suspiciously, Kenya is also a major exporter of coffee.) 8) Hawaii's population is 55% Asian. Does that sound like America? 9) Obama himself once mistakenly said that there were 57 states, so even he is a little insecure about this whole notion of there being 50 states. 10) At least Alaska has Sarah Palin and oil; now, that's America.
Tom Roston is a journalist who writes the blog, Doc Soup, on PBS's POV documentary website. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Elle, Spin, The Hollywood Reporter, New York, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn. You can email him at troston@gmail.com.
We started early on Thursday, barreling up the outside lane on Rt 17. passing the amazing vehicles in the right lane, VW's painted all over in merry Crayola colors, vans covered with chaotic designs lately called psychedelic, never seen in rural upstate New York, every window open, young drivers and passengers with Jesus-length hair blowing in the wind.
A ridiculous sight for 25 bucolic miles. What were they doing here in redneck country?
We must be doing 80 to whiz past them like that, or maybe 90. "Honey! Slow down." I scolded my husband, Al Romm, editor of the local daily paper out of Middletown. "We're in no hurry."
The Woodstock concert was not scheduled to start until late the next day, 4 pm Friday afternoon, August 15. But Al wanted to check his plans for covering this event, a simple rock concert, which was turning into a peculiar happening no one quite grasped. He was worried about the motorcycle courier.
"I'm not going even 60." He pointed to the speedometer. It read 53 mph. !?! So they must all be driving only 40 in a 65-mph-speed zone. Hippies, loaded with hippie drugs, they didn't want to be stopped for speeding. But we don't know that yet.
We don't know a lot of things. Neither one of us had ever smoked pot, and didn't even recognize the heavy, sweet smell of it that night wafting all over Max Yasgur's farm until one of the kids, rolling his eyes at a 44-year-old's ignorance, identified it.
He introduced his girlfriend as "my old lady." She was maybe 17. They were both stripped to the waist, lying in a zipped-open sleeping bag, like hundreds, thousands, of couples around them, soon to be soaked by the rains. (Has anyone tried to track births nine months later?)
Nor had we ever dropped acid, but at least we had heard a lot about LSD. But not mescaline or psilocybin or STP or all the other stuff I was soon to see laid out for sale "at bargain prices" on long tables up in the woods, under a big sign, DRUG STORE, sometimes handed out with a smile to 5-year-olds, their palms up, begging, "Free dope, anyone?"
Al had hired a courier to bring exposed film and hard copy back to the newsroom in Orange County -- no laptops in 1969. That motorcycle spent 3 days snaking through the miles of stalled, sometimes gas-less parked vehicles that were jammed ditch to ditch. It was the reason that the Times Herald-Record was the only paper in the world to publish daily stories, witnessed from the ground.
No other journalists got closer than helicopter windows. With traffic impassable for miles in every direction, we were soon to learn that most of our own reporters never made it in, either.
Our station wagon had a blow-up mattress in the back, and a hamper full of food, juices, and ice. "Don't drink anything you haven't opened yourself," warned our Middletown doctor, Ed Thaler, who happened to be Bob Dylan's doctor. "Don't accept food, either."
Dylan, a closet heroin addict at the time, although invited, never made it to Woodstock.
We were barreling up Rt. 17, the famous road off the NY Thruway to the Catskill Mountains, always sleepy mid-week, now clogged in the right lane with this alien, crawling traffic.
At Monticello, on the advice of the State Troopers I had called the night before, we did not turn West on 17B like everyone else headed for the farm of Max Yasgur. He was the pro-Vietnam War, conservative Republican libertarian who thought everyone could do their thing. So he had given the festival a home after a town down the road cancelled it four weeks before it was to open.
Al had written a nicely reasoned editorial condemning the last-minute withdrawal of the town permit. Readers from everywhere criticized him mercilessly. He couldn't walk down the street without hearing how wrong-headed he was.
"Dirty, immoral, lazy, unpatriotic longhairs"... those were about the nicest things they wrote and hollered.
Most everyone who had correctly headed West towards Yasgur's place was piling up along the road, in the ditches and across all the lanes, never to retrieve their cars for days. Instead, we drove North two more exits and curled around a narrow dirt road until we came to the farm. The troupers said we were the last car to make it in.
We parked behind the high, huge stage and enormous speaker and lighting towers, and began to wander around. Abbie Hoffman, the founder of the Yippies (Youth International Party), was also wandering, never sober, never smiling. He used to repeat their anthem, "Don't trust anyone over 30." He was now 32.
Now Abbie's greeting to us: "Welcome to Dante's Inferno."
Only the few reporters who had taken their days off and come early were on site. By Friday, the start of the concert, not one of any paper's scheduled reporters, music critics, or photographers, including ours, could drive closer than many miles, and because of the heavy rains, they didn't want to hike in, either.
Everyone who was there had the sense to gather at the Press Trailer, empty except for the five of us -- or was it six? -- from the TH-R. The copy we wrote almost won us a 1969 Pulitzer, we were told later by someone who was on the selection panel. "You missed by one vote."
What disappointed Al about our coverage was our B-minus critiquing of the incredible music. The paper's music reviewers never made it in.
On Thursday, the day before the music started, Al sent us out to scout the place. I found the Hog Farm camp, a large collection of good guys wisely hired by the producers to keep the peace, run by Wavy Gravy, the sweet saint who herded the motley crew, the only ones who knew how to handle bad drug experiences.
At one time there were 300 kids strung out, semi-conscious. The Hog Farmers laid them out on trestle tables, fed them granola and other whole grains, and talked to them, and talked and talked.
Whenever you saw a Hogger outside their campsite, he was slowly walking someone, sometimes holding them up, soft assuring chatter in their ear.
Every now and then Wavy Gravy would take the mike on stage and warn everyone of "bad brown acid." No one at Woodstock died of an overdose of anything, probably thanks to them.
My first photo in the paper, page 1, was of a girl on a stretcher being carried into the the First Aid tent. The Hog Farm was probably there within 10 minutes, comforting her, which would have made a truer picture of how bad drug reactions were handled.
On Friday, Al gave us all assignments. Mine: "Go back up to the entrance gate on Rte 17B. We hear there's a mob crashing in."
That gate was nowhere to be seen when I got there, nor were long stretches of the fence that had been installed. The ticket booths had never gone up. It had become a free concert.
The 350 New York cops that producer Michael Lang had hired to stop this kind of thing had been forbidden by their chief to work at Woodstock, but many showed up anyway, signing in with names like "Mickey Mouse," says Lang. Even with the local police, there were not enough.
No tickets were ever sold or collected there. The huge amount of money that was lost at Woodstock was lost right there.
Later, it was reported that the promoters even had to refund thousands of tickets to people who claimed they couldn't get there. I never met any of the producers -- nor the famous or infamous singers -- my beat was far away from the stage.
On Friday an entirely different crowd was pouring through that gate. The day before, anyone coming through had asked, conspiratorially, "How's the dope? Expensive? Where do I get it?" Having stumbled upon the Drug Store in the woods, I could direct them.
On Friday the only questions were, "How's the sound system? Can you hear the music OK?" This horde had come for the concert. More or less.
I'm not sure they enjoyed the music much. On the first night, Joan Baez, pregnant, was the last act, starting well after midnight, her perfect voice wafting in the dark together with the marijuana across embracing bodies. After she finished a song, there was little applaus -- only a few pathetic claps here and there.
A bit unsettled, she asked, "Is anyone out there?" Well, yes, they were, in the thousands -- stoned, zapped, laid out on the pasture turf, soon to be mud, grinning, sappy, asleep. (The film has wild applause after all songs. Was it dubbed in?)
Yet, no one died of a drug overdose. Or of blood poisoning either, which easily could have done them in. That was thanks to Ed Silvers, the local Professional Engineer hired by the promoters to turn 600 farm acres into a festival venue. He had 2 weeks to do it all -- water, sewers, emergency hospital, toilets, telephones.
Max's farm had certain deficiencies as the new Eden. For starters, there was no water on site. Should they bring in tankers? Ed ended up drilling six wells -- that's right, six, with endless temporary piping, and faucets every few feet for people to drink from and wash up with.
"But, Ed, why did the water stink of chlorine all the time? It tasted awful. Did you tap into a swimming pool?"
"It started raining the first night. The fields got muddy. I was watching those kids running barefoot through a cow pasture full of manure-that's pure poison, with lots of broken glass from soda pop bottles buried in the mud. I was very worried. I added more chlorine to the water so that every time you washed your feet and hands, you disinfected yourself."
Everyone complained about the taste and odor, but with all the scratches and cuts, some of them deep, requiring stitches, not a single case of infection was reported at Woodstock. We were in the hands of a Master Engineer.
And in the hands of experienced electricians. No one got electrocuted in the rain by the miles of hot wires strung up the speaker towers and laying on and under and around the stage. Not that the kids didn't try -- they kept climbing up and into everything.
The sound and infrastructure engineers knew all too well that at a rainy rock concert in Scotland, a singer had died horribly. She had stepped up to the wet mike and sweetly kissed it. Shocked by 120 volts and 10 milli-amps, she dropped. Not at Woodstock.
The entire steel skeletal under-structure of the vast stage was well-grounded, everyone's eagle eyes on it through all the rain.
We were also in the hands of professional police officers. "Considering that the State Troupers were all rednecks," Ed remarked, "They did very well keeping the peace."
Those troupers had started off bewildered, shaking their heads at the nudity, the long hair, the funny jewelry, the weird clothes, the open sex, the skinny dipping in the pond. But after a few hours on Day One, they were ready to legalize pot.
"If this crowd was drinking beer," several said to me, "They'd be violent. This pot stuff quiets down everyone. There's thousands here. We couldn't have handled it."
Exactly how many thousands were at Woodstock? By Sunday, the state police figure of 450,000 was rounded up by everyone to half a million, which anniversary stories relentlessly report.
At the time, Editor Al Romm looked around and said, "100,000 to 150,000." He was very good at numbers.
You can check that out. Next time you see a shot of a sports stadium crowd, say, 41,007 packed into the Met's new ballpark, Citi Field, compare it with the air photos of Woodstock. There were not 10 times as many in Bethel. Not even 5 times.
Only a few weeks after we land a man on the moon, we have 3 Days of Peace and Music, plus dysentery, diarrhea, food poisoning, and bad drug trips. And everyone wishes they had been there, or lies about being there.
Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll -- the "Politics of Ecstasy," LSD guru Timothy Leary called it. At Woodstock it was the Ecstasy of Politics.
For this was all about politics, the politics of peace, hardly mentioned except by some lonely New Leftists up in the woods, yet the engine for all that went on. These kids did not want to fight in the Vietnam War. There was a draft call the very week-end of Woodstock.
But, unlike their politically active brothers and sisters, the hippies (what a quaint term 40 years later) did nothing to shorten the war they passionately opposed. On the contrary, what would President Nixon like better than to have them go off to the mountains, get zonked, and leave him alone?
In time-tested American fashion, they were strengthening what they professed to detest.
Ethel Grodzins Romm covered Woodstock by accident when the reporters for the local daily paper of which her husband was editor couldn't make it onto the site.
She is the author of several books, wrote the writing column for Editor & Publisher and ABA Journal (American Bar Assn.). She has written for Esquire, N.Y. Times Op-Ed page, Penthouse, cover story for New York Magazine, among others. She is currently at work on a book on business management.
Romm has been running drafting, engineering, constructions groups and companies since World War II, when she was civilian Drafting Supervisor at Westover Army Air Base, MA. She was President and CEO of Niton Corp when it was a start-up. It is now part of Thermo Scientific.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver was buried yesterday. Not to be morbid, but she'll likely be followed in the not too distant future by her one surviving sibling. When Brother Teddy goes, a remarkable arc in American history will be have come to an end.
For the purposes of this blog, it begins with one symbol of America, John F. Kennedy. A man who famously declaimed, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country..." It was rhetoric to be sure, but moving nonetheless. In 2009, however, such sentiments would get you heckled. Americans are no longer interested in making any sacrifices; reform is treated not as a noble betterment to the collective good but as a threat to "our way of life."
Nothing symbolizes this better than the inevitable demise of Ted Kennedy. He has been a tireless champion of better healthcare for all, but his own failing health has robbed the Senate of a powerful organizing nucleus for orderly debate. He may not always have been a paragon of perfect virtue, but the Senator has spoken with a gravitas and conviction that Max Baucus cannot quite duplicate in his stead. The absence of such voices leaves us with the sort of anarchy that leads to frivolous and fallacious discussions of death panels and similar nonsense.
So with the de facto passing of the Kennedy's, we have truly reached an end. What comes next, it seems, is an age in which the operative question has changed. Today, it is: what can America do for me? This, by the way, is not the "me" voice of the Generation X but rather the the "mine" of the Baby Boomers. That's why I don't think that this is really a debate about healthcare at all; its more like a desperate last stand in support of a a status quo that gave us big cars, big houses and big credit. Unfortunately, it's just not realistic to carry in this spirit.
Sacrifice may not be a popular sentiment, but opposing the necessity for change will not relieve the requirements for broad reforms in many aspects of our lives. We already spend twice as much on health care as healthier countries and the excess is killing our economy. So even those who don't support reform out of a sense of civic obligation should realize that one way or another change is coming. Better to do it now, in an orderly fashion, then in the midst of even bigger crisis later.
There is a Whole Foods across the street from the Interdependence Project in New York's East Village, the Buddhist-inspired nonprofit organization which I direct. Some nights, after teaching or participating in a class on meditation and Buddhist psychology, or after yoga practice, I head there on my way home, to buy convenient, healthy food for one of those 10 pm diners New Yorkers know all too well. Since our organization works directly with issues of responsible consumption and environmental activism, it's always nice to be able to find local and organic produce, even if it traumatizes my slender wallet to shop regularly at "Whole Paycheck." Five-dollar pre-washed spinach from the North Fork of Long Island! It's late, I'm exhausted; what could be better?
Of course on the surface, a Buddhist shopping at Whole Foods makes a lot of sense (almost to a degree of neo-hippy caricature). I practice, study and teach a tradition of mental health and wellbeing, a path for people to systematically learn to take care of our own minds and extend that care-taking to others around us. A healthy diet and an interest in eating both local and organic foods are -- for me -- the physical extensions of that mental mindfulness practice.
However, the Buddhist teachings on the truth of interdependence don't allow us to stop at the level of individual health and wellbeing. The more we pay attention to reality, the more we see the total impossibility of taking care of our own bodies and minds without taking care of others. The more we see interdependence -- that our lives do not happen in a vacuum, separate from the lives of others -- the more we realize that our own health is inextricably bound up with the health of others. If you are healthier, then I am healthier, and vice versa. This is true physically, this is true psychologically, and this is true comunally.
A few years ago I wrote a book about updating the Buddhist philosophy of interdependence for the 21st century, called One City: A Declaration of Interdependence. In researching where the term interdependence has surfaced outside of Buddhist thought, I came across Whole Foods' mission statement on their website, which, serendipitously, is also called a "Declaration of Interdependence." Read it -- it's uplifting and full of good intentions on taking care of oneself and taking care of each other. An excellent corporate mission statement for sure. At that time, I was heartened by the thought that -- during the dark and separatist cynicism of the Bush era -- interdependence was still making deep inroads into corporate America.
Then this week I read Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, which struck me as a highly fearful and regressive take on the healthcare debate, which is undoubtedly one of the most interdependently pressing issues of our time. Mr. Mackey's Wall Street Journal piece might alternatively be titled "A Declaration of I, Me, and Mine."
The world view on display in that piece of writing is one of selfish individualism, mistrust for the very notion representative government itself, and continued support for a system of profit on anabolic steroids. The piece is also amazingly dismissive of the most interdependently-minded president we've had in a long time, taking the term "Obamacare" straight from Rush Limbaugh's play book. The cognitive dissonance between the worldview that seems to inform Mr. Mackey's views on healthcare, and the "Declaration of Interdependence" on his company's website are too much for me to continue to support, at least for now.
As a Buddhist practitioner, I work hard to identify and slowly transform my own internal hypocrisies. Most of them take the following form: I declare good intentions to benefit myself and others. Yet, I fall prey to deep-seeded destructive habits and fearful self-obsessions instead. As a practice, whenever I recognize a destructive habit or a cognitive dissonance, I set an intention to work mindfully and diligently to open myself to a larger, more compassionate and less fixated worldview. This work is slow and difficult, and I look like a hypocrite myself a large percentage of the time. But unless I choose to recognize my own hypocrisies, the work of positive transformation never begins at all. An extension of this practice is to not support the obvious hypocrisies of a friend (and my wallet, at least, has definitely befriended Mr. Mackey for years), especially when the friend is in a position of enormous power and influence.
So until Mr. Mackey learns that truly declaring interdependence means we take care of each other no matter what - a declaration best furthered in the healthcare debate by supporting a single-payer plan, or, at the very least, a strong public option - I am not going to support his cognitive dissonance on interdependence with any more of my hard-earned local-organic-neo-hippie-spinach money.
We are all interdependent. And therefore we must take care of each other and support policies that promote real interdependence. Especially those of us who go so far as to proclaim interdependence as a corporate mission statement. In the meantime, anybody have a good CSA in Brooklyn?
I turned 30 this week, and promptly began to fall apart. Fortunately, modern medicine is here to help with my arthritis, incontinence, and bone loss...for now.
An August 13th, New York Post article Blood is not Thicker than Alcohol reports that, "William Hance, was enraged not just that his sister, Diane Schuler, had guzzled vodka and smoked pot while driving his kids -- but that her husband, Daniel, concocted bizarre medical excuses to try to explain away his wife's condition and denied that she had a drinking problem, said a lawyer familiar with the situation."
This is the kind of heartbreak that alcohol and drug abuse engender.
Families who hide parental alcohol and drug abuse put children at risk. The case with Diane Schuler is the horrific extreme of how children can be affected by, in this case, a drunk driver.
But there are other ways of "driving drunk". There is the mother who simply 'forgets' to pick her children up on time, or to get them to school functions, friends or doctor's appointments. There's the Dad who doesn't come home at night because his relationship with a bottle takes precedence over his relationship with his family.
Then there are the silent sufferers, the kids who become little adults too soon. The ones who stand guard at the gate of the family ready to swing into action to get younger siblings up, dressed and fed when mom or dad are "out of it", to act in loco parentis not for physically absent parents but for parents who are absent because they have disappeared temporarily into a bottle or a drug.
The long term effects of this kind of constant preoccupation with whether or not the adults who are supposed to be in charge of our lives are on or off duty are what we have been discussing in previous blogs on codependency and will continue to discuss in that series.
Emotional Baggage
Kids who grow up in this atmosphere can become what psychologists call hyper vigilant, constantly scanning their environment for signs of changes in the emotional weather, constantly waiting to take their signals of what to do next from what is going on with their parents; the psychological equivalent of riding in the back seat of a car with a parent driving drunk. We discussed the over responsible little grown ups who step in to take charge when parents drop the ball, but the opposite also occurs when othe siblings, discouraged and disheartened with trying and getting nowhere just sort of give up and develop learned helplessness, because they learn that nothing they can do will change the situation for the better. Still others become anxious, depressed or even emotionally numb in an unconscious attempt to keep pain and anxiety under control.
In the absence of clear lines of authority siblings step in to fill the void. Sometimes older or stronger siblings take over in a benevolent manner, filling in the gaps left by parents......but sometimes they take advantage of the power vacuum and lord it over their more vulnerable counterparts. And sometimes they do both. When these alternating sibling dynamics run unchecked they can create confusion and competition; they can also create traumatic bonds, the kind that get forged under extreme stress.
Needless to say, denial of abuse can seer these qualities into place and make them deeply disturbing; because the problem is denied and explained away children cannot make sense of what is going on around them and their trust in their own powers of reasoning as well as in other people gets severely undermined because rather than the truth they hear...."Mom isn't drunk she has a 'medical condition', 'she's just tired', 'you kids are too much for her...or....dad is just 'tired from work,' 'worried about money' 'has that back problem (flu, old injury, headache...you name it) again." This teaches children to doubt themselves and create a false persona to deal with their own fear and the world around them. It teaches them, in other words, to live a lie.
A child who grows up with alcohol and drug abuse may experience: • Loss of Trust and Faith Due to deep ruptures in primary, dependency relationships and breakdown of an orderly world. • Distorted Reasoning Due to convoluted attempts to make sense and meaning out of chaotic, confusing, frightening or painful experience that feels senseless. • Easily Triggered • Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses When this person develops long term 'charactor armour' to defend against letting pain in. • Desire to Self-Medicate When this person attempts to quiet and control their turbulent, troubled inner world through the use of drugs and alcohol or behavioral addictions.This can be part of how addiction gets passed down through the generations.
Why do families deny that there is a problem with alcohol and drug abuse until the cost is so great that it takes a life time to undo?
Addiction is mortifying, it is deeply disturbing to watch someone you love become someone else, become a person you might laugh at, turn away from or avoid in any other circumstance. Addiction is terrifying, to really admit how scared you are about what is happening on a regular basis in your own family it just too frightening. Addiction is creepy, confusing, insidious and very, very sad. It makes one feel that if they cop to the extent of the problem, they will have to change their entire life. They will have to run away, lower the boom or take a life altering action that they fear will 'destroy the family', 'hurt the children' or 'turn everyone's lives upside down'. But everyone's lives are already upside down (and inside out).
Reaching Out There is another way. They can reach out, break their silence and get help. They don't even need to see a professional. Some of the best help available for addiction issues are twelve step programs. They are free, there is no sign up and twelve step meetings (AA for addicts, alanon for family members of addicts) are available at all times of day all over the world.
Whether what you are struggling with is addiction currently going on or the effects of growing up with addiction there is no need to struggle alone.
For more information log onto www.al-anon.alateen.org or www.aa.org. If you are a teacher, clergy, medical or mental health professional, family member or good neighbor and want to learn how you can identify when there is a problem and help a hurting child, even if it's only by listening or standing by log onto nacoa.org For more information on the effects of growing up with addiction read Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Balance, Tian Dayton PhD
Today is national relaxation day-- a day I recently discovered-- and there's really only one place I can think of wanting to spend it: Spa Castle, a self-described Korean "spa and water park" in College Point, Queens. This is a subject I feel pretty qualified to discuss: I travel to Spa Castle frequently, I also am given to spending long portions of dinner parties, train rides, and boring movies talking up its charms.
The lede for the New York Times piece that first introduced me to the Spa Castle lifestyle-- "THIS is the best night of my life!"-- proved pretty accurate for me. Unlike a standard spa or spa retreat, Spa Castle (sometimes called Inspa World, the spa's original name, and still in use indiscriminately throughout the place on signs, uniforms and packaging) is not primarily about getting Golden Caviar Pore Refining Facials, or Collagen Eye Treatments, or a cleansing fast, though you can do those things there. And it's not filled with huge water slides either - though you can rent a raft to whirl around a 20 foot long circular water swirl. It's about a relaxation journey in a foreign land.
Spa Castle was started and owned by a Queens architect and developer Steve Chon, who, according the New York Times is planning on opening 19 more spas, the next in Dallas. I've haven't seen any indication of Dallas, though the website (tagline: Welcome To Paradise!) has intriguing photos of an upcoming Spa Castle Pocono, to be developed over the next 3 to 5 years. "Spa Castle Pocono will be suburban place with culture, sport and recreation programs for a health life," the site proclaims "wheras Spa Castle N.Y. is an urban place for families and lovers." [sic]
Upon entrance ($35 dollars during the week, $45 on the weekend, open from 6:00 a.m. to midnight) you're instructed to put your money, clothes, cell phone and wristwatch in your locker. In exchange, they give you a uniform (grey for men, pink for women, yellow for kids) and a fake watch that serves as a your locker key and charge card while inside. It doesn't tell the time. There are a list of rules in the locker rooms, including a no-discrimination order illustrated by a sketch of 5 yellow ducklings turning their backs on a black duckling. You can dip in a series of plunge pools (from icy cold to scalding) and a daily rotating herbal health bath (think "ginger! for relaxation").
On the second floor there's Sauna Land. Some of the wonders: a Gold Sauna (made with 96% gold tiles, which apparently sucks out bad energy), a Color Therapy sauna where you sit in heated cubicles glowing red, blue, green, lavender, and so on with "mood boosting" effects, and a Jade Sauna (according to the signs, good for high blood pressure, paralysis and athlete's foot.) To cool off, there's an igloo lined with icy pipes and blue tile.
The whole of Sauna land resembles a series of giant sparkling gu drops. Hungry? There are 5 places to get food, ranging from a full Korean restaurant on the top floor to a swim-up bar where you can order ice cream sundaes and grilled corn while lolling about in warm, jet filled water. If you're tired, there are three designated sleeping areas. The most surreal of these is dark, and filled with massive leather recliners each connected to a small tv that hovers over you while lying down. The tvs don't have headphones or volume controls, but you can change the channel. I drifted off there while watching The Breakfast Club and the air was filled with a soft unintelligible hum from the neighboring tvs.
On the roof deck there are a series of swirl pools and baths. I like the 300 year old pine bath, which is, a nearby sign says, "like taking a bath in the forest." (White swimsuits should not be worn, the sign further cautions. They will turn brown.) It's not really like taking a bath in the forest-- but as you sit, and smell the piney spicy scent and feel the percolating bubbles and stare at the fake illuminated columns, you feel a bit like you're taking a bath in the woods of an alternate dimension.
A fellow Spa Castle voyager described the best part of the experience like so: "The palpable sense that when you are there you are living and moving about in an entirely different reality."
One thing I've noticed is that after a couple of hours at Spa Castle, people start acting so happy and relaxed (and let's face it, a little weird) that I start to feel glad there are so many employees standing around in uniform, soberly keeping an eye on things. Once when I was in Sauna Land, I overheated and took my uniform top off (I was wearing a swimsuit underneath). A guard politely followed me into the Sauna and firmly suggested I put it back on.
Another time, when it was nearing sunset, a man approached the pine forest bath, dipped his hand in and tasted the water. At night the roof deck is lit up with the same colors used in the color therapy sauna, and you start to look around noticing that everyone looks wildly happy. It's not like I really understand or believe in the technical benefits of color therapy, say-- but you start to have this gnawing sensation that it all makes sense. It's an interesting feeling -- I recommend it.
Back in September 2005, when I first began researching Guantánamo for my book The Guantánamo Files, the prison was still shrouded in mystery, even though attorneys had been visiting prisoners for nearly a year, following the Supreme Court's ruling, in June 2004, that they had habeas corpus rights. Researchers at the Washington Post and at Cageprisoners, a human rights organization in the U.K., had compiled tentative lists of who was being held, but, although these efforts were commendable, much of it was little more than groping in the dark -- a broken jigsaw puzzle based on media reports and interviews with released prisoners -- because the Bush administration refused to provide details of the names and nationalities of those it was holding.
In April 2006 -- four years and three months after Guantánamo opened -- the government finally conceded defeat, after the Associated Press took the Pentagon to court, and won. That month, the first ever list of prisoners (PDF) -- containing the names and nationalities of the 558 prisoners who had been subjected to the administration's Combatant Status Review Tribunals (one-sided reviews, designed to rubberstamp their prior designation as "enemy combatants") -- was released, and was followed in May by a list of the 759 prisoners held up to that point (including the 201 who had been released before the tribunals began), which included names, nationalities, and, where known, dates of birth and places of birth (PDF).
The government also released 8,000 pages of tribunal transcripts and allegations against the prisoners, which pierced the veil of secrecy still further, allowing outside observers, as well as lawyers, the opportunity to examine whether the government's claims that the prison was full of terrorists were true, and to conclude that, actually, the prison was largely populated by innocent men or low-level Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the 9/11 attacks, and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism.
These records revealed that an overwhelming majority of the men had not been seized by U.S. forces on the battlefield, but had been sold to them by their Afghan or Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments were widespread, and -- perhaps most shockingly -- the transcripts also revealed that a vast amount of the government's supposed evidence consisted not of verifiable facts, but of "confessions" made by other prisoners -- or by the prisoners themselves -- under unknown circumstances. A great deal of demonstrably unreliable information was attributed to unidentified figures in al-Qaeda -- in general, the "high-value detainees," including Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were being held in secret CIA prisons where the use of torture had been sanctioned by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in its notorious "torture memos."
Other information came from unidentified "sources" within Guantánamo, and in the last year, as judges have finally been able to examine these allegations in the District Courts charged with hearing the prisoners' habeas corpus cases, many of these sources have been revealed as deeply untrustworthy: talkative informants regarded with suspicion by many of those working behind the scenes in the military and other agencies; mentally ill prisoners; and others whose accounts have not stood up to outside scrutiny, and have been revealed as part of a supposed "mosaic" of intelligence that, as one judge, Gladys Kessler, declared in May, "is only as persuasive as the tiles which compose it and the glue which binds them together." As I explained at the time, Judge Kessler "then proceeded to highlight a catalog of deficiencies in the tiles and the glue," dismissing the "mosaic" as being "composed of second- or third-hand hearsay, guilt by association and unsupportable suppositions."
In addition, although few of the prisoners were willing to talk to a panel of the military officers about how they had been abused in U.S. custody, enough accounts emerged for lawyers and observers (who also drew on official reports about how torture techniques, used in U.S. military schools to train U.S. military personnel to resist enemy interrogation, had been reverse engineered for use at Guantánamo) to build up their own, more convincing "mosaic" of intelligence, demonstrating that abuse -- and, in some cases, torture -- was also widespread throughout Guantánamo, raising fears that even confessions that appeared legitimate were fatally tainted because they had been extracted using coercion.
It would be difficult to underestimate how important the release of these documents was to those engaged in a seemingly endless struggle to secure justice for those held without charge or trial, who had, in general, been rounded up indiscriminately, and had never been adequately screened to determine whether they constituted a threat to the U.S. or its allies. However, over three years on from the release of these lists -- and eight months into the Obama administration -- history is repeating itself at the U.S. prison in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. The difference, however, is that at Bagram the clock has stopped before any painful details of incompetence have been released, leaving lawyers and other observers still groping in the dark.
Fighting for the rights of the Bagram prisoners
On April 23, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, the State Department and the CIA, asking them to make public "records pertaining to the number of people currently detained at Bagram, their names, citizenship, place of capture and length of detention, as well as records pertaining to the process afforded those prisoners to challenge their detention and designation as 'enemy combatants.'"
On May 15, the CIA responded (PDF) by stating that it "can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request," because "The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified," and on July 28, the DoD also responded (PDF), stating, tantalizingly, that, although the National Detainee Reporting Center had provided the DoD's Office of Freedom of Information with "a 12-page classified report, current as of June 22, 2009," which contained the prisoners' "names, citizenship, capture date, days detained, capture location and circumstances of capture," the report was "exempt for release" because it was "properly classified in the interest of national security."
In response, Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, stated, "The Obama administration should make good on its own pledge of greater transparency and release these basic facts about who we are detaining and under what conditions," and Melissa Goodman, also a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, added, "There are serious concerns that Bagram is another Guantánamo -- except with many more prisoners, less due process, no access to lawyers or courts and reportedly worse conditions. As long as the Bagram prison is shrouded in secrecy, there is no way to know the truth or begin to address the problems that exist there."
In this, the ACLU's lawyers were undoubtedly correct. According to the best available estimates, at least 600 prisoners are held at Bagram, but unlike Guantánamo, no lawyer has ever set foot in the U.S. military's flagship Afghan prison, even though some of the prisoners held there were seized in other countries and "rendered" to Bagram, where they have been held for up to seven years. The prison was particularly notorious in its early days -- especially in 2002, when at least two prisoners died at the hands of U.S. forces -- but according to a survey conducted by the BBC in June this year, former prisoners, held between 2002 and 2008, stated that they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs, and provided no indication that conditions had improved from the beginning to the end of the six-year period.
Why foreign prisoners in Bagram deserve habeas corpus rights
To understand why Bagram needs independent scrutiny, it is necessary to distinguish between the prison's two distinct functions, each of which fails to conform to internationally acceptable standards of detention. The first concerns the foreign prisoners (perhaps as many as 30) seized in other countries and "rendered" to Bagram. In March, when enterprising lawyers at the International Justice Network finally managed to bring a habeas corpus petition on behalf of four of these men in front of a U.S. judge (having established that they were held at Bagram through discussions with family members based on letters delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross), the judge in question, John D. Bates, recognized the unacceptable discrepancy between the Guantánamo prisoners and those "rendered" to Bagram.
As I explained in an article at the time, "Judge Bates ruled that the habeas rights granted by the Supreme Court to the Guantánamo prisoners last June in Boumediene v. Bush also extended to the foreign prisoners in Bagram, because, as he explained succinctly, 'the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same.'" He added that, although Bagram is "located in an active theater of war," and that this may pose some "practical obstacles" to a court review of their cases, these obstacles "are not as great" as the government suggested, are "not insurmountable," and are, moreover, "largely of the Executive's choosing," because the prisoners were specifically transported to Bagram from other locations.
This was good news for three of the men -- Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian seized in Karachi, Pakistan, Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni gemstone dealer seized in Bangkok, Thailand, and Fadi al-Maqaleh, a Yemeni -- because, as I also explained at the time, "only an administrative accident -- or some as yet unknown decision that involved keeping a handful of foreign prisoners in Bagram, instead of sending them all to Guantánamo -- prevented them from joining the 779 men in the offshore prison in Cuba." However, at the time of writing, it is uncertain whether they will have their day in court, as the government has appealed Judge Bates' ruling.
Why the Afghans in Bagram must be held according to the Geneva Conventions
In the same ruling in March, Judge Bates reserved judgment on the case of the fourth man, Haji Wazir, an Afghan seized in 2002 in the United Arab Emirates, but ruled in June that habeas rights did not extend to him (or, by extension, to all the other Afghans held at Bagram), primarily because he agreed with the government's claim that to do so would cause "friction" with the Afghan government, because of ongoing negotiations regarding the transfer of Afghan prisoners to the custody of their own government.
As a result, the government presumably feels entitled to continue to hold the majority of the prisoners in Bagram -- who, from what we can gather, are Afghans seized in Afghanistan -- beyond any kind of outside scrutiny. However, while this may be acceptable in the sense that Bagram is a prison in an active war zone, it is, to my mind, only acceptable if the government also demonstrates that it is holding prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. As I explained in an article in June:
In one of his first acts as President, Obama signed a number of Executive Orders, in which he promised to close Guantánamo within a year and to ban torture, and established that the questioning of prisoners by any US government agency must follow the interrogation guidelines laid down in the Army Field Manual, which guarantees humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions. The Order relating to interrogations also specifically revoked President Bush's Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, which "reaffirm[ed]" his "determination," on February 7, 2002, that "members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces are unlawful enemy combatants who are not entitled to the protections that the Third Geneva Convention provides to prisoners of war."
As a result of Obama's stated reforms, it was my belief that:
the President would call an immediate halt to what I can only describe as the "Rumsfeldization" of the U.S. military, in which, following the directives of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld (and echoing what was happening with the intelligence agencies, where the FBI was sidelined by the CIA), the detention of prisoners was no longer a matter of holding them humanely until the end of hostilities, but became, instead, an ongoing process of interrogation, dedicated to securing "actionable intelligence," which, of course, degenerated into the use of torture when the presumed "actionable intelligence" was not forthcoming. [...]
It may be that the policies at Bagram changed overnight after Obama issued his executive orders in January, but the suspicion ... is that, as far as the administration is concerned, certain key innovations in the "War on Terror" -- in particular, holding prisoners for their intelligence value, rather than to keep them "off the battlefield" -- has become the post-9/11 norm, as a kind of unilateral reworking of the Geneva Conventions.
From what I have been able to gather about the workings of Bagram, I have no reason to conclude that the prison is now being run according to the Geneva Conventions, with prisoners kept "off the battlefield" until the end of hostilities (whenever that might be). Instead, as I reported in March, Judge Bates explained that the military's justification for holding the prisoners at Bagram involves a review process similar to the one that was used at Guantánamo, albeit one that is both "inadequate" and "more error-prone," and concluded that the U.S. military's control over Bagram "is not appreciably different than at Guantánamo." Creating such inadequate tribunals, it should be noted, is quite an achievement, as Guantánamo's tribunals were soundly condemned by former officials who worked on them, including, in particular, Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, who issued a series of explosive statements in 2007.
In addition, Judge Bates' précis of the review process at Bagram, which, as he also explained, "falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo," was, in fact, genuinely disturbing. He quoted from a government declaration which stated that the Unlawful Enemy Combatant Review Board (UECRB) at Bagram does not even allow the prisoners to have a "personal representative" from the military in place of a lawyer (as at Guantánamo), and that "Bagram detainees represent themselves," and added, with a palpable sense of incredulity:
Detainees cannot even speak for themselves; they are only permitted to submit a written statement. But in submitting that statement, detainees do not know what evidence the United States relies upon to justify an "enemy combatant" designation -- so they lack a meaningful opportunity to rebut that evidence. [The government's] far-reaching and ever-changing definition of enemy combatant, coupled with the uncertain evidentiary standards, further undercut the reliability of the UECRB review. And, unlike the CSRT process, Bagram detainees receive no review beyond the UECRB itself.
A challenging conclusion, Mr. President
In conclusion, then, it should be apparent that the government cannot maintain the Bush administration's status quo at Bagram, as it is failing on two fronts to hold prisoners according to the internationally acceptable standards of detention that existed before the Bush administration brushed aside the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war, and held criminal suspects beyond the law.
If the Obama administration will not put the foreign prisoners "rendered" to Bagram on trial, then the President needs to allow them to challenge the basis of their detention before an impartial judge; and if he reinstates the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war, and, with a stroke of the pen, consigns his predecessor's horrendous novelties to history, then he needs to do more than just pay lip service to the reinstatement of the Conventions, and needs to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is not perpetuating a Rumsfeld-lite form of detention, in which humane treatment is secondary to the quest for "actionable intelligence," because, once the rules are discarded, our recent history shows us that what follows, inexorably, is torture and abuse.
Every major economic downtown has its Scrooge, the opportunistic capitalist who preys on working people when they are hurting the worst. A ballot measure cleared for circulation by California Attorney General Jerry Brown moves Mercury Insurance CEO and founder George Joseph high up on the list of America's Top Corporate Predators.
Brown has released the official title and summary of the proposed Mercury Insurance ballot initiative that will allow insurance companies to raise rates when motorists who stopped driving for a time restart their coverage; when they file a claim, even if an accident is not their fault; or when they are late on a payment.
The anti-consumer measure is sponsored by auto insurance giant Mercury Insurance and its billionaire Chairman George Joseph, who over the years has funded numerous attempts to undermine Proposition 103, the voter-approved measure that bans unfair rate increases. Joseph has been been listed as among the top 400 richest men in the world, but I suppose you can never be too rich when there's opportunity to hit the middle class where it hurts in the name of profit.
Under state law, the Attorney General is responsible for analyzing a proposed ballot initiative and issuing a title and summary that will now appear on petitions presented to Californians by signature-gatherers for their approval. The Attorney General's full title and summary reads:
ALLOWS INSURANCE COMPANIES TO INCREASE OR DECREASE THE COST OF AUTO INSURANCE BASED ON A DRIVER’S COVERAGE HISTORY. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Allows insurance companies to raise the cost of auto insurance based on the absence of prior automobile insurance coverage. Allows insurance companies to lower the cost of auto insurance for drivers who have continuously maintained auto insurance coverage, even if they change insurance companies. Allows insurance companies to consider “claims experience” when calculating the amount of any such reduction or when determining which drivers will be eligible for it. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: The measure would have no significant fiscal impact on state and local governments. (09-0021.)
The initiative would penalize people who miss one payment or decide not to drive and let their insurance lapse. It would also allow insurance companies to penalize drivers simply because they file a claim, even if they are not at fault such as when they're at rear-ended while waiting at a stoplight. Currently, only accidents where the driver is at-fault can be used to increase his or her premium.
"Mercury is using the initiative process to go after middle class Californians by allowing insurance companies to raise rates on struggling families in the middle of an economic crisis," said Consumer Watchdog's Executive Director Doug Heller. "Auto insurers shouldn't be allowed to jack up your premium because you stop driving for a time, miss one payment or file a legitimate insurance claim when you are hit in an accident."
Hidden in the deceptive initiative is Mercury's plan to create an unfair "use it and lose it " system, which would raise driver's rates if they ever file a claim. This creates a perverse incentive to not file accident claims, even when you are not at fault, in order to avoid a major rate hike. People who pay for coverage should not be penalized for using their policy. It also means accidents are less likely to be reported, a public safety hazard. Most importantly, for Mercury, it means that insurance companies will have to pay fewer claims. That is why Mercury, the only donor to this effort, has already contributed $500,000 to the campaign.
"It's pretty easy to figure out what's going on here. An insurance giant and its billionaire chairman are going to spend millions on political consultants and signature gatherers to try to fool Californians. Mercury will say and spend anything to win new ways to charge higher premiums and pay fewer claims," said Heller.
Because the number of Americans letting auto insurance lapse during this economic crisis is skyrocketing, according to insurance industry data, Mercury's proposed penalty for restarting insurance coverage will also force many drivers to remain uninsured. This will raise the cost of uninsured motorist coverage for everyone else and leave California roads much less safe.
"Mercury's proposal is a triple threat. You will pay an insurance penalty if you ever have a lapse in coverage; you will pay a penalty if you ever file any kind of claim; and you will pay higher uninsured motorist premiums. That might be good for Mercury, but it’s no good for the rest of us,” said Heller.
Consumer Watchdog sent Mercury's George Joseph a letter about his dangerous attack on California families when the initiative was first filed. Click here to read the letter.
Consumer Watchdog has yet to receive a response. Shame on Joseph and Mercury. This is one company that the public simply cannot trust. -
A ballot measure cleared for circulation by California Attorney General Jerry Brown moves Mercury Insurance CEO and founder George Joseph high up on the list of America's Top Corporate Predators. 
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