Magpie

Saturday, September 24

We had our fingers crossed ...

... that the anti-Iraq war demonstration today in Washington, DC would attract the 100,000 people that organizers hoped for. It did. And then some.

Tens of thousands of opponents of the war in Iraq march up 15th NW in Washington, DC.
[Photo: Cox Washington Bureau/Rick McKay]
Here's what Reuters said:

The crowds swelled throughout the day, and by late afternoon organizers of the anti-war demonstration said 300,000 people had assembled -- exceeding an anticipated 100,000. Washington police declined to comment on the size of the rally.

And here's what the Washington Post reported:

Protest organizers estimated that 300,000 people participated, triple their original target. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who walked the march route, said the protesters achieved the goal of 100,000 and probably exceeded it. Asked whether at least 150,000 showed up, the chief said, "That's as good a guess as any."

The SF Chronicle has an gallery of photos of the antiwar protests around the US here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:47 PM | Get permalink

Maybe we've missed something ...

... but it looks like the story of how poor people were once again left behind in the evacuations for Hurricane Rita — as they were in the evacuation of New Orleans — is conspicuously missing from media reports now that Rita has moved inland.

Even before Rita hit, the only news story to deal in any depth with the continuing inability of federal, state, and local governments to provide ways for poor citizens to get out of town when a disaster threatens was this AP story by Deborah Hastings about how poor residents of Houston found themselves left out of evacuation plans. Since that one story, the silence continues to be deafening.

We guess that since Rita didn't hit Houston, and wasn't as bad in most places as had been feared, it just doesn't matter that money was once again what counted most in terms of whether people were able to get to safety before the storm hit.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:12 PM | Get permalink

What's a few billion dollars between friends?

Earlier this week, we posted on how the feds have no clue as to how much money is being spent on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It should be no surprise, then, that Dubya's administration can't say where the funds allocated for Hurricane Katrina relief are going, either. Earlier this week, Congressional Democrats asked the White House Dubya's administration for a detailed accounting of how it's spending the US$ 62.3 billion allocated for Katrina relief. The answer they got wasn't very encouraging:

"We asked for specific information on how they (FEMA) are awarding contracts and who contracts are going to," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

"Instead of telling us who is doing what and how, we got a few spreadsheets."

The information provided by the administration lists broad allocations of funds for a range of government programs, such as $2.3 billion for "housing assistance," $3.1 billion for "missions" under a category called "operations," and $3.5 billion for "missions" under a category called "administration of field operations."

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:05 PM | Get permalink

Not just a few bad apples.

The rot in the US military is reaching all parts of the tree.

According to a report from Human Rights Watch, members of the elite 82nd Airborne 'routinely used physical and mental torture' on Iraqi prisoners during 2003 and 2004. The report is based on testimony of one officer and two noncommissioned officers, one of whom came to Human Rights Watch only after spending 17 months of unsuccessfully trying to get the army chain of command to take seriously his concerns about how prisoners were being treated.

According to their accounts, the torture and other mistreatment of Iraqis in detention was systematic and was known at varying levels of command. Military Intelligence personnel, they said, directed and encouraged army personnel to subject prisoners to forced, repetitive exercise, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness, sleep deprivation for days on end, and exposure to extremes of heat and cold as part of the interrogation process. At least one interrogator beat detainees in front of other soldiers. Soldiers also incorporated daily beatings of detainees in preparation for interrogations. Civilians believed to be from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted interrogations out of sight, but not earshot, of soldiers, who heard what they believed were abusive interrogations.

All three soldiers expressed confusion on the proper application of the Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict in the treatment of prisoners. All had served in Afghanistan prior to Iraq and said that contradictory statements by U.S. officials regarding the applicability of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (see Conclusion) contributed to their confusion, and ultimately to how they treated prisoners. Although none were still in Iraq when we interviewed them, the NCOs said they believed the practices continue.

The soldiers came forward because of what they described as deep frustration with the military chain of command?s failure to view the abuses as symptomatic of broader failures of leadership and respond accordingly. All three are active duty soldiers who wish to continue their military careers. A fax letter, e-mail, and repeated phone calls to the 82nd Airborne Division regarding the major allegations in the report received no response.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004, senior officials in the Bush administration claimed that severe prisoner abuse was committed only by a few, rogue, poorly trained reserve personnel at a single facility in Iraq. But since then, hundreds of other cases of abuse from Iraq and Afghanistan have come to light, described in U.S. government documents, reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, media reports, legal documents filed by detainees, and from detainee accounts provided to human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch. And while the military has launched investigations and prosecutions of lower-ranking personnel for detainee abuse, in most cases the military has used closed administrative hearings to hand down light administrative punishments like pay reductions and reprimands, instead of criminal prosecutions before courts-martial. The military has made no effort to conduct a broader criminal investigation focusing on how military command might have been involved in reported abuse, and the administration continues to insist that reported abuse had nothing to do with the administration?s decisions on the applicability of the Geneva Conventions or with any approved interrogation techniques.

These soldiers' firsthand accounts provide further evidence contradicting claims that abuse of detainees by U.S. forces was isolated or spontaneous. The accounts here suggest that the mistreatment of prisoners by the U.S. military is even more widespread than has been acknowledged to date, including among troops belonging to some of the best trained, most decorated, and highly respected units in the U.S. Army. They describe in vivid terms abusive interrogation techniques ordered by Military Intelligence personnel and known to superior officers.

While the HRW report doesn't name the three soldiers, the NY Times has identified one of them as Capt. Ian Fishback, who sent letters regarding his allegations earlier this month to the offices of US senators John Warner and John McCain, both of whom serve on the Armed Services Committee. of his allegations in letters this month to top aides of two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. Aides to the senators told the Times that Fishback's allegations of torture are credible enough to warrant investigation.

Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave Human Rights Watch and Senate aides his long account only after his efforts to report the abuses to his superiors were rebuffed or ignored over 17 months, according to Senate aides and John Sifton, one of the Human Rights Watch researchers who conducted the interviews. Moreover, Captain Fishback has expressed frustration at his civilian and military leaders for not providing clear guidelines for the proper treatment of prisoners.

In a Sept. 16 letter to the senators, Captain Fishback, wrote, "Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."

You can read the full Human Rights Watch report, including the testimonies of the three US servicemembers, if you go here [PDF file].

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:18 AM | Get permalink

Friday, September 23

Maybe Texas isn't such good photo-op territory after all.

As late as this morning, Dubya was saying that his pre-Rita visit to Texas was necessary. Check out these questions from the press after the prez visited FEMA HQ in Washington:

Q Sir, what good can you do going down to the hurricane zone? Might you get in the way, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: One thing I won't do is get in the way.

Q But I mean, how -- what good can you actually do? I mean, isn't there a risk of you and your entourage getting in the way?

THE PRESIDENT: No, there will be no risk of me getting in the way, I promise you. We're going to make sure that we're not in the way of the operations. What I am going to do is observe the relationship between the state and local government, particularly out in Colorado Springs. That's what I want to see.

See, NORTHCOM is the main entity that interfaces, that uses federal assets, federal troops to interface with local and state government. I want to watch that relationship. It's an important relationship, and I need to understand how it works better.

Q But critics might say this is overcompensation for the response to Katrina.

THE PRESIDENT: We will make sure that my entourage does not get in the way of people doing their job, which will be search and rescue immediately. And rest assured, I understand that we must not and will not interfere with the important work that will be going forward.

This afternoon, we have this change in plans:

President George W. Bush, yet to shake off criticism of his leadership during the Katrina crisis, decided at the last minute to cancel a planned visit to Texas to avoid getting in the way of emergency workers.

Spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush would fly directly to his second planned stop at the US Northern Command headquarters in Colorado.

We guess maybe Dubya was told that he would get in the way. Or, more likely, Dubya's handlers figure that there's going to be another PR nightmare after Rita hits the Texas coast, and that the last thing the prez needs is to have his picture taken on the scene of the disaster.

[All emphasis was added.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:07 PM | Get permalink

Putting politics over compassion. Or efficiency. Or economy.

Today's LA Times has an excellent piece on how Dubya's distaste for 'big government' is leading to bad policy decisions regarding the Katrina relief effort. Instead of using existing government programs to help Katrina survivors, the prez is instead insisting on one-shot assistance plans that cost more money and deliver worse results.

For example, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development was ready to issue housing vouchers worth up to US$ 10,000 to Katrina survivors almost immediately after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. But intervention from the White House caused HUD to drop the offer, which was replaced by the much-derided plan to house Katrina surviors in trailer parks. Similarly, Dubya has been blocking a plan to temporarily expand Medicaid in order to provide emergency medical benefits to survivors of the hurricane.

At least in the case of housing, critics say that the president's unwillingness to rely on existing programs could raise costs. Instead of offering $10,000 vouchers, FEMA is paying an average of $16,000 for each trailer in the new parks it is contemplating. Even many Republicans wonder why the government would want to build trailer parks when many evacuees are now living in communities with plenty of vacant, privately owned apartments.

"The idea that ? in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society ? we would put them in [trailer] ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle that I'm aware of," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

"If they do it," Gingrich said of administration officials, "they will look back on it six months from now as the greatest disaster of this administration."

You know the prez is really screwin up when even Newt Gingrich disagrees with him.

Via Talking Points Memo.

More: And those trailers that FEMA wants to put Katrina evacuees into? Delivery may take a year, and there's no place to put most of them, anyway.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:01 PM | Get permalink

Another Dubya administration resignation.

AP reports that Food and Drug Administration head Lester Crawford has quit, citing age as a reason.

We have to wonder how much his presiding over the Vioxx disaster and the FDA's continued dithering over whether to approve over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception had to do with Crawford's decision.

Thanks to Paper Chase for the tip.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:49 PM | Get permalink

What lessons were learned from Katrina?

Pretty damned few, apparently.

Once again in Texas, the poor are being left behind.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:42 PM | Get permalink

Bumpersticker.

Seen on NE Killingsworth in Portland, OR:

If you can read this, you aren't the president

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:29 PM | Get permalink

Where's Karl?

Well, as of the time that Hurricane Rita hits the Gulf Coast, Rove will be in North Dakota at a GOP fundraiser. Why does Rove's location matter? Well, you may recall that Dubya recently put Rove in charge of the Gulf Coast relief and reconstruction effort.

You connect the dots.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:23 PM | Get permalink

Free Opera!

Lis Riba [who is a magpie herself] points out something we'd missed: The excellent Opera browser is now being distributed for free. No more ad banners on the free version, and no more paid registrations for the 'real' version.

Before switching to Firefox, we used an earlier version of Opera and liked it a lot. We're in the middle of downloading the current Opera version now and are going to run it side-by-side with Firefox and see how they compare. We'll let you know what we find.

Meanwhile, you might want to go here and download Opera yourself. They have a version for almost any OS you can name.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 PM | Get permalink

Is the net closing on Bill Frist?

Yesterday, we posted about the interesting timing of US Senate majoritiy leader Bill Frist's sale of his family's shares in HCA, the health care giant owned by his family.

Today, we see that the US Attorney for southern New York State has issued a subpoena against HCA, requiring the company to produce documents. According to Reuters, HCA believes that the subpoena relates to an investigation of Frist's stock sales.

Thanks to Tennessee Guerilla Women for the tip.

More: The Securities and Exchange Commission (which regulates US stock markets and securities) has asked HCA for copies of all documents subpoenaed by the US Attorney.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:43 AM | Get permalink

Katrina = 9/11.

CJR Daily points out how Dubya has equated the response to Hurricane Katrina to his administration's response to 9/11. Here's part of a speech the prez made on Wednesday:

You know something? I've been thinking a lot about how America has responded and it's clear to me that Americans value human life and value every person as important.

And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with.

You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina and our hearts break. They're the kind of people that look at Katrina and wish they had caused it.

We're in a war against these people. It's a war on terror. These are evil men who target the suffering. They killed 3,000 of our people on September the 11th, 2001. And they've continued to kill.

See, sometimes, we forget about the evil deeds of these people. ...

They want to topple government. Just think Taliban and Afghanistan. That's their vision. And we can't let them do that.

Almost all of the US media missed this — even CNN, which ran substantial portions of the speech. All but the NY Times' David Sanger, says CJR Daily, who laid it out right at the top of his story:

President Bush on Wednesday for the first time linked the American response to terrorism and its response to Hurricane Katrina, declaring that the United States is emerging a stronger nation from both challenges, and saying that terrorists look at the storm's devastation "and wish they had caused it."

Mr. Bush's speech, at a luncheon for the Republican Jewish Coalition, appeared to be part of a White House strategy to restore the luster of strong leadership that Mr. Bush enjoyed after the Sept. 11 attacks, and that administration officials fear he has lost in the faltering response to the hurricane.

Let's hope that, now that the Times and CJR have pointed out what Dubya is doing, that more of the media will pick up on the story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, September 22

Getting the money to pay for Katrina. And Rita.

Congressional right-wingers have come up with a plan that would save US$ 500 billin by cutting programs that mainly affect seniors rather than ending tax breaks for the wealthy. [By the way, Talking Points Memo points out that a huge part of those supposed savings are due to a math error.]

The folks at Center for American Progress have been able to do better, coming up with a list of tax cuts that would save nearly US$ 700 billion. Here's come up a their list of budget cuts that progressives could be pushing as an alternative to the right-wingers' plan:

Taxes

$327 billion: Roll back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans [without sunsets, 2005-09; CBPP]

$65 billion: Clarify the definition of offshore tax shelters [Joint Committee on Taxation]

Transportation

$12 billion: Eliminate roughly half of the 6,371 special earmarked projects of the 2005 transportation bill [MSNBC]

Medicare

$43 billion: Permit mail order prescription drug purchases, which offer lower overheard costs, bulk purchasing and fewer dispensing errors [Lewin Group]

Energy

$8.5 billion: Roll back the tax breaks, loan guarantees, and other subsidies for the electricity, coal, nuclear, natural gas and oil industries in the 2005 energy bill [San Francisco Chronicle]

Defense

$200 billion: Eliminate several Defense Department weapons programs that are either unnecessary (such as the F/A 22 Raptor and the DD(X)) or counter to our national security interests (like space weapons and “bunker buster” nuclear bombs) [L. Korb, “A Realistic Defense for America”]

Agricultural Subsidies

$30 billion: Eliminate export subsidies [Oxfam]

$2.5 billion: Reduce cotton subsidies [Environmental Working Group]

$845 million: Reduce maximum payment limits on what producers can receive from $360,000 to $250,000, and related subsidy reductions [CRS, “Agriculture: Prospective Issues for Congress”]

We think these proposals make a lot of sense and deserve serious public discussion. Pass them on!

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:12 PM | Get permalink

More tap dancing at the White House.

We finally got a look at yesterday's White House press briefing with Dubya's press handler, Scott McClellan. McClellan was asked a whole slew of questions about how the administration plans to respond to Hurricane Rita, and McClellan did his best to both not answer the questions and to lower public expectations that anything will have improved since the feds bungled the response to Katrina.

Here's part of the briefing, with comments added to point out stuff we think is really important.

Q So the lessons learned from Katrina will be applied in the case of Rita?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of Katrina, that was a storm that was unprecedented in size and scope and devastation. It is something that we want to make sure all the lessons possible are learned, and we want to make sure that we know exactly what worked and what didn't work. And that's why we are working closely with Congress as they move forward on their investigation. [Which the Democrats have refused to participate in because the GOP wouldn't set up an independent investigation like that done by the 9/11 commmission.] That's why the President has tasked his Homeland Security Council to make sure that there is a comprehensive review of the preparedness and response relating to Katrina, so we're doing that. [So, all that McClellan will acknowlege is that the response to Katrina was looked at, not that naything was fixed, or that the response to Rita will be better.]

Now, in terms of Rita, I just talked about the steps that we're taking. And we're going to make sure that we are doing everything we can to have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments as we prepared and respond to Hurricane Rita.

Q Well, Scott, continuing with what Steve said, how is what you're doing for Rita different from what you did from Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things -- one, the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita. [But McClellan offers no specifics.] We hope Rita is not devastating, but we must be prepared for the worst. Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do.

Homeland Security and FEMA officials are working closely with state and local governments so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. They are redoubling efforts to make sure we have a full understanding of what the needs are so that we can make sure that those needs are met. [But McClellan gives no indication of what any of those needs are. Get ready for a 'nobody could have anticipated this' response when the feds mess some stuff up.] And I went through several steps that were already taken to address these issues.

Q So that's -- you think that that's going to be an improvement over what was done in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, in terms of Katrina, we're still focused on the immediate needs of the people in the region and working to make sure that they are getting back up on their feet, that we're moving forward on the recovery, that we're moving forward on the rebuilding to help people rebuild their lives and rebuild their communities. We are determined to learn the lessons of Katrina, and that's why we have been assessing what's been working and what hasn't been working and taking steps to address those issues. That's why we're also working closely with Congress, and the President is committed to making sure that there's a thorough investigation so that we can learn those lessons. [Wait a minute. We thought those lessons had already been learned, not that they will be learned. It looks like McClellan is lowering the bar.]

Q Well, can you distinguish what you're doing differently?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I just talked to you about where the President's focus is and what we are doing. We want to make sure that we're -- [McClellan is repeating himself]

Q And these are things you didn't do in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: We want to make sure that we are better prepared and better positioned to respond to Hurricane Rita and that's what we're doing. That's why I outlined the several steps that we are taking. And that's why I just told you that the President is focused on making sure that we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local officials, and that we have -- [And he's doing it again here]

Q Which you didn't have before, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- as seamless as possible coordination with state and local officials.

Q In other words, better than the last time?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just answered that question, Bill. [McClellan ignores the question.]

Q No, not really.

MR. McCLELLAN: I just said -- I just said the very words that you're bringing up.

Q Has the President secured from the governors or other local officials the legal authority that we didn't have during Katrina, in order to take action? The President has indicated --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let's keep in mind a couple of things. One, Katrina, as I said, was a storm that was one of the worst and largest in our nation's history, if not the worst and the largest. And the size of it was massive. It covered some 90 -- the devastation covered 90,000 square miles in that region. [More bar-lowering here.]

You had some unique challenges when you came to New Orleans. The landscape in New Orleans is different from what we're talking about in Texas. You have a major urban city in New Orleans that was below sea level, and you had challenges presented with the relatively small number of roads that go in and out of the city and the flooding that occurred. [And the bar gets lower.]

Remember, the initial storm was the hurricane, and the second storm for New Orleans was the flooding that came after the hurricane. [McClellan wants us to believe that there was no connection between the hurricane and the flood, and that the feds had to respond to two disasters in New Orleans, not just one. He's setting up the spin that the administration will use if Rita is very bad and the federal response is once again poor.] So you have a different landscape that you're addressing in terms of Texas. And so I think you have to keep those things in perspective, as well.

Q But the President has indicated that active duty military has better capabilities for communication in a time of great distress, and there was a lot of problem with police and first responders being able to communicate. So being able to use that as something he sort of --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, as I said, in addition to coordination, communications is an area that we're very focused on in the preparation and response for Hurricane Rita.

In terms of the military issue, yes, the President believes it's something we need to look at as we apply lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. And that's what -- that's what we are committed to doing. [McClellan won't say whether the communication problems have been solved.]

Q Just so I'm clear, no governor has yet given the federal government any specific authority to step in if certain conditions are present?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, if you're talking about law enforcement matters, remember, the military, by law, is prohibited from -- active duty forces from engaging in law enforcement activities. Now, that is a role that the National Guard is trained to do and very capable of doing, along with state and local law enforcement. [McClellan, of course, ignores the Republican agitation for a law making it possible to send in the military right away. One of the reasons such a law is supposedly needed is because the military is the only institution capable of responding to major disasters. Now that it suits the administration to say something else, McClellan is doing just that.] As I mentioned, the Governor of Texas has already activated some 5,000 National Guard troops and has them preparing to be able to respond to Hurricane Rita. And so I think you have to keep all that in mind.

But I also pointed out the extensive efforts being undertaken by our United States military. And I think General Honore has briefed some -- on some of that. He briefed the President on that at length yesterday. There are a number of different branches of the military -- I think all branches of the military that had representatives that are involved in the preparation for Hurricane Rita, and that each one of them briefed on their respective areas and what they were doing -- whether it was the Navy, or the Marines, or the Air Force, or the Coast Guard, or the Army.

Q One more, just -- has the President told either of the governors that he would utilize the Insurrections Act if he thought there was lawlessness that occurred in New Orleans? Has he given an early warning?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not sure that that issue has come up. I think that everybody has been focused on the evacuation efforts and the preparations and the pre-positioning of assets and resources and rescue teams.

Q All the lines -- all the lines of authority are set now, right? Everybody knows what they can do?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there are responsibilities at all levels. As you are aware, one of the issues that -- and this is the issue that Kelly brought up -- is, what do you do in a situation where you have a storm the size and scope of Katrina that, in some instances, essentially, overwhelms those state and local first responders, because the state and local first responders tend to be the first ones on the scene helping that, along with Coast Guard search and rescue teams. So all levels of government have responsibilities. [This is important: McClellan basically just said that the feds are getting ready to blame state and local governments if the response to Rita falls flat on its face.]

And what the President talked about last week was one area we need to look at is, when this happens, in a situation like Katrina, is should military have an additional authority or additional role to be able to address some of these challenges, because they have the logistics, and they have the communications in place to be able to come in and help in a situation like that. [Lookie! McClellan is trying to have it both ways on whether the military needs more authority.]

Q And they have --

MR. McCLELLAN: The military? Yes. I don't think anyone questions their capabilities and the ability of our troops.

Q No, I mean, now it's all settled as to who does what, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we are assisting the state and local efforts to prepare and respond to Hurricane Katrina -- I mean, Hurricane Rita, sorry. [And it all comes out here.]

If we were living in any of the places likely to be hit by Hurricane Rita, McClellan's remarks wouldn't be making us feel any less nervous.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:21 PM | Get permalink

From the 'Another Amazing Coincidence' Department.

From this story in today's Boston Globe:

The Senate majority leader,[Republican] Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation, about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent....

Frist, a surgeon who was elected to the Senate in 1994, had been criticized for keeping the holdings while dealing with legislation affecting the medical industry and managed care. [Frist spokesperson Amy] Call said the Senate Ethics Committee has found nothing wrong with Frist's holdings in the company in a blind trust.

"To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock," Call said.

Asked why he had never done so before, she said, "I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past."

Yes, Frist's sale of all that stock just before its value took a nosedive is another amazing coincidence!

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:53 AM | Get permalink

Maybe this should have been closer to the front of the paper?

Doesn't it seem funny to you that this story appeared on page 23 of today's Washington Post?

The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.

The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 2005. But the GAO investigation found many inaccuracies totaling billions of dollars.

That's right. Nobody knows what Dubya's various military and 'anti-terror' adventures are costing the country. Given the crunch that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are putting on the federal budget, you'd think that this story would be important enough to have appeared more prominently in the paper, wouldn't you? Like maybe on page 1?

But then we're not one of those professional editors at the Washington Post, are we?

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:58 AM | Get permalink

Hurricane Rita: Dubya's administration is hosed either way.

Think about it:

If the federal response to Rita is inadequate, Dubya and his administration won't seem merely incompetent, they'll be seen as criminally negligent. They should have learned how to correct their mistakes after Katrina, but they didn't. Dubya and his gang talked a good line when faced with the political fallout of Katrina, but they were unable to deliver where it counted: In the area devastated by Rita. Any federal failures connected to Hurricane Rita will carry a huge political cost — and Dubya will most likely pay the highest price.
If the feds manage to do a good job handling the aftermath of Rita, many people [this Magpie included] will wonder how the federal responses to hurricanes that hit only a few weeks apart could be so different. Given how incompetent the Republicans keep telling us that big government is, how could the feds possibly have changed fast enough to respond effectively to Rita? Unless, of course, they could have responded effectively to Katrina, but chose not to. You can bet that many uncomfortable questions about how race and politics figured into how Dubya's administration dealt with the two evacuations and relief efforts will be asked.

While we hope that as few people as possible are affected when Hurricane Rita comes ashore, we aren't at all unhappy with the fact that, as near as we can tell, the hurricane will bring Dubya nothing but grief. It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:25 AM | Get permalink

Another brilliant idea from Dubya's administration.

In the past, the feds have had problems with employees putting all sorts of things on government credit cards. Audits by the Government Accountability Office have found, for example, purchases remote control helicopters, plane tickets for vacations, Palm Pilots, and [in one case] a dog. And those were just charged by employees at the Pentagon. Other federal employees have used their government-issued credit cards to pay for prostitutes, attend sporting events, and buy breast enlargement surgery.

Given the extent of these problems, the federal goverment cut in half the number of employees who could use credit cards and instituted greater controls on card use, such as setting a US$ 2,500 credit limit for most cards.

Using Hurricane Katrina as an excuse, however, Dubya's administration has drastically raised the credit limit on government-issued credit cards, raising that limit to US$ 250,000. That change was part of the Katrina recovery bill approved by Congress last week, and had the [ostensible] purpose of making it easier for the government to get aid to hurricane survivors. About a quarter of a million federal employees have cards that are affected by this change.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the "outrageous increase" was "slipped" into the bill. He is seeking to insert language in a Katrina health bill that would reduce the limit in most cases to $50,000.

Even with the lowered limit, the cards could still be abused:

Purchases are billed directly to the government, making it difficult to recover losses from wayward federal employees intent on fraud because of the time lag from the purchase date to subsequent billing.

Cronyism also is a danger, as officials have more leeway under the higher limit to purchase more expensive supplies from politically connected companies without the benefit of open bidding and competition. Even if they're detected, time-strapped agency directors often don't pursue disciplinary action, according to audit reports.

Enquiring magpies would love to know exactly who was responsible for 'slipping' the US$ 250,000 credit limit into the bill. And we'd really like to see what's on some of those credit card bills that are going onto the taxpayers' tab.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Molly Yard (1912–2005).

US feminist leader and activist Molly Yard died in her sleep at a nursing home in Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. She was 93 years old.

A young Molly Yard

Molly Yard's photo in [we believe] the 1933 Swarthmore College yearbook.
Yard had a long history of work for women's rights, civil rights, and social justice. One of her earliest jobs was as special assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt, and Yard worked in the re-election campaign for US senator Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950 ? a campaign in which Douglas fell to Richard Nixon's red-baiting. But she was best known for her work in the US women's movement. Yard joined was the political director of the National Organization for women in the 1970s and 1980s, and was one of the leaders of the campaign to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Yard was later president of NOW, from 1987 to 1992.

From the obituary for Yard from the Feminist Daily Newswire:

Yard recognized the importance of Title IX, the landmark 1972 legislation prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs. As NOW's political director from 1985 to 1987, and then as president of NOW, she helped lead the victorious fight to restore Title IX after the devastating 1984 Supreme Court decision in the Grove City case. "Molly was so dedicated to equal educational and sports opportunities for women and girls, that even after her stroke and her presidency of NOW, she led the Feminist Majority's Task Force on Title IX to ensure it would never be gutted again. Time after time in the 1990s, she helped beat back attempts to weaken Title IX," said [former NOW president Eleanor] Smeal.

NOW President Molly Yard [center] leading the 1989 March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC.
[Photo: AP/Doug Mills]
From Yard's obituary in the NY Times:

In 1987, Eleanor Smeal, Ms. Yard's mentor and NOW's departing president, suggested she run for the position. In her mid-70's, Ms. Yard demurred at first.

"I thought if I were 10 years younger, I would love to do it," she told People magazine in 1987. "Then I remembered Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony never stopped, even in their 80's."

Ms. Yard's reputation as a forceful negotiator stood her in such good stead that she did not have to be physically present to get results. In 1987, Patricia Blau Reuss, who was the legislative director for the Women's Equity Action League at the time, told The Washington Post what it was like to lobby members of Congress with Ms. Yard as a bargaining chip:

"We would say, 'Look, you either deal with me or you have to answer to Molly,'" Ms. Reuss said. "They always relent."

You can read the full Feminist Daily Newsire obituary for yard here. The full Times obituary is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, September 21

This is really not good.

Hurricane Rita is now a category 5 storm. That's as strong as they get.

You can check the latest updates on Rita here at the National Hurricane Center's Tropical Prediction Center.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:34 PM | Get permalink

'Why the hell not?'

Mystery writer, musician, and iconoclast Kinky Friedman is running for governor of Texas in next year's election. His low-budget campaign has produced the damndest online campaign ad we've ever seen. [QuickTime or Windows Media Player req'd.]

Why the hell not?

Friedman's campaign website is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:58 PM | Get permalink

Attention Firefox users!

Firefox released a new version of its browser for download last night. Firefox 1.0.7 closes a number of security problems — you can read the details here.

If you haven't already done so, you should get the new version right away.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:46 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, September 20

Up in flames.

The UK Daily Mirror reports that US authorities are getting ready to destroy hundreds of tons of food aid donated by the UK to aid survivors of Hurricane Katrina. According to the paper, the food has been condemned by the US Agriculture Department because it doesn't meet US requirements for imported meat.

The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.

Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.

The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US....

The aid worker, who would not be named, said: "This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.

"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."

We should remind everyone that the Daily Mirror is not the most trustworthy of UK news sources. Given that fact, we checked Google News for more stories on the food condemnation, and we also searched the websites for the US Agriculture Department and Food and Drug Administration, both of which are cited in the Mirror article. We found nothing at any of these sites to confirm the story. However, we also found nothing to contradict it.

It may turn out that this story is just an urban legend. Time will tell.

Via TalkLeft.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:58 PM | Get permalink

You gotta wonder.

If a Saudi human rights group can't get in to see the prisoners at Guantanamo, just how much does Dubya's administration have to hide?

The head of the Saudi National Organization for Human Rights, Dr. Bandar bin Mohammed Hajjar, said in a statement that the U.S. ambassador in Riyadh rejected a request by the group to send representatives to Cuba to meet the prisoners and inspect their detention conditions.

121 Saudi nationals are currently being held by the US military at Guantanamo.

Via UPI.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:48 PM | Get permalink

'Trying to be sensitive'? We don't think so.

A few weeks ago, we posted about how the right-wing Concerned Women for America were pissed at Starbucks because of some of the quotes the coffee giant was putting on its cups. Well, it appears that one of those cups — the one below, in fact — has been upsetting folks again.

Too queer for Baylor

[Photo: Thomas James Hurst/Seattle Times]
AP reports that coffee cups with Maupin's quote have been removed from a Starbucks at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Aramark, which runs the Starbucks at Baylor, says that the quote was inappropriate for the school.

"I think they were trying to be sensitive," Baylor spokesman Larry Brumley said. "Obviously, Baylor is a Baptist-affiliated institution, and Baptists as a denomination have been pretty outspoken on the record about the denomination's views about the homosexual lifestyle."

Silly us. We would have said that removing the Maupin cups was an example of homophobia.

Via SF Chronicle.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:41 PM | Get permalink

Now things start to make sense.

Tom Tomorrow explains everything:

Burrowing from within

The rest of the tale is here.

Via Working for Change.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:30 PM | Get permalink

You'd think even Dubya could do better than this.

The prez has appointed his homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, to head the 'independent' investigation of why the feds bungled their response to Hurricane Katrina. Given that the Homeland Security Department was largely responsible for screwing things up ... well, we're going to resist the temptation to talk about foxes and henhouses.

Via Reuters.

More: Gal Beckerman ponders Townsend's background and wonders why most of the press hasn't looked into it. Beckerman has this important question:

The woman who told Knight-Ridder in July that "it was beyond my wildest dreams that I would be working for this president," might be able to do half the job just fine — finding out what went right — but will she really be able to look the president in the eye and tell him what went wrong?

Via CJR Daily.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 PM | Get permalink

No comment.

From Think Progress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:01 AM | Get permalink

Yes, we have no bananas.

If you're middle-aged, and think that bananas used to taste better when you were little, you might be right. The type of banana eaten by North Americans today is the Cavendish, which only came into prominence in the 1960s. Before then, lunch boxes and cereal bowls contained a different banana — the Gros Michel — which was bigger and tastier than today's Cavendish. But the Gros Michel is now extinct, the victim of a fungus called Panama disease. That fungus has already wiped out Cavendish plantations in Australia and much of Asia, and it's only a matter of time until it ends Cavendish production in Africa and on the huge plantations in Latin America. Even worse, other varieties of banana are vulnerable to the fungus as well. Scientists are now scrambling to find — or create — banana varieties that won't fall victim to Panama disease.

Banana-bereft suburban breakfast tables notwithstanding, [Director of the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement at the Catholic University of Leuven Rony] Swennen says that the real danger the spread of these pathogens poses is in the developing world, especially East Africa. In the densely populated countries around Lake Victoria?Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda?bananas are primary nutrition, accounting for near-total carbohydrate consumption in some diets (in Uganda, the word for food, "matooke," translates from Swahili as "banana"). The bananas eaten in East Africa are not the dessert-style fruit consumed in the West; they are far more versatile (there?s even a beer brewed from bananas sold in Kampala). But like the Cavendish, African bananas are threatened. The Ugandan National Banana Research Program says that plants that once yielded fruit over a 50-year life span are now so much less resistant to disease that they become unproductive and require replacement after as few as five years. Bananas are also essential to the region?s other crops: They provide cover for tropical forests, allowing staples such as beans and sweet potatoes to grow in their shade. Without bananas, Swennen says, 20 million people would face "massive destabilization."

The reason bananas are so susceptible to disease has to do with their ancient origins. Almost no plant has been cultivated longer by humans. The earliest banana production began in Southeast Asia, but of the hundreds of varieties found in that region, only about 10 or 15, according to Swennen, were brought to Africa. (Bananas are a perfect crop for subsistence farming, since once a family has a healthy plant, no more seeds need to be planted?or bought; instead farmers simply replant shoots, called "suckers," from existing trees.) Bananas mutate easily, and of the few Asian banana varieties that originally made it to Africa, more than 200 new varieties have emerged. But these varieties remain genetically similar, so they?re prone to parallel afflictions. The situation in Latin America is even worse. "Only a few moved from Africa to there," Swennen says, "so you?ve got even lower variability."

Via Popular Science.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:31 AM | Get permalink

Monday, September 19

Money, money. Who's got the money?

At least US $1 billion is missing in Iraq, perhaps as much as US$ 2 billion. That money was intended to provide arms for the Iraqi army, but instead it's gone off abroad ... somewhere ... leaving the Iraqis to fight an insurgency with antiquated and knock-off weaponry. The losses occurred during the time that the US-appointed interim government led by Iyad Allawi was in office.

Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to [Iraqi Finance Minister Ali] Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank....

The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.

Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry.

Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and "rogue elements" within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.

Given that building up an Iraqi army to replace American and British troops is a priority for Washington and London, the failure to notice that so much money was being siphoned off at the very least argues a high degree of negligence on the part of US officials and officers in Baghdad.

The Iraqi government also reports huge losses from the electricity, transport, interior and other ministries during the same period of time.

The unexplained loss such large sums, apparently under the noses of US officials responsible for overseeing the finances and expenditures of the interim government, makes us feel real certain that Dubya's inspector-generals will make sure that all of the money spent on rebuilding the US Gulf Coast goes exactly where it's supposed to.

Via UK Independent.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:25 PM | Get permalink

If it walks like a duck ...

US media has been reluctant to attach the label 'Civil War' to the carnage in Iraq. Veteran journalist Christopher Allbritton has, until now, been reluctant to use that label himself. But, from his vantage point in Iraq, Allbritton says it's time to call the Iraqi civil war what it is.

I've been reluctant to call it a civil war because I just haven't been able to. I felt unsure and perhaps a little unwilling to see that it's gone as far as it has. And others say the existence of a political process means it&'s not yet a civil war. I now think that's simplistic. After watching this place for two years, I'm now prepared to call this thing a civil war, aligning myself squarely with the America-haters at DefenseNews.

"For over a year now, there has not been a day in which Iraq did not witness sectarian killings where the victims were either Shiite, Sunni or Kurds," said Ghassan Attiyah, chairman of the Baghdad-based Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy. "I'm not talking here about random shooting. I am talking about targeting people individually on the roads and killing them for being from one group or another."

In the [DefenseNews] article, Qassem Jaafar, a Doha, Qatar-based Middle East security analyst, listed the symptoms of a civil war:
A weak central government with incompetent security apparatus.
Spread of sectarian and ethnic killings.
Existence of armed sectarian and ethnic militias.
High threat perception among the sectarian and ethnic groups of the country.
Insistence of each group on its demands.
Foreign interference and support to feuding groups.

All of these elements are present now in Iraq, and the constitution process didn’t help matters.

Allbritton has tended to be far more conservative in his evaluation of the US role in Iraq than we have, so his willingness to say that the violence and unrest has reached civil war proportions shouldn't be taken lightly. You can read the rest of his post here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:12 PM | Get permalink

We're sure the schools will be separate but equal.

Since Hurricane Katrina shut down the public schools in New Orleans, the city's students (as well as some from other areas affected by the disaster) have been taken in by school districts in surrounding states — particularly in Texas, where more than 40 thousand displaced students are now in the states' schools. And, with the exception of one well-publicized incident, displaced students appear to be getting along well with their Texas peers.

Given that it's going to be awhile before the New Orleans schools re-open, authorities in Texas and other states are having to figure out how to integrate the displaced students into the general school population. While it's been okay for districts to temporarily place students made homeless by Katrina into separate schools, that solution isn't workable for the long run since current federal rules forbid school districts from shunting homeless students into separate schools or classes or forcing them to wear wristbands or carry special identification cards.

Courtesy of Dubya's administration and the Republican right wing, however, things may be about to change. Using the incident at Jones High as an excuse, the Education Dept. and Texas' two US senators are pushing legislation to waive the federal rules aimed at keeping states from giving homeless students a second-class education.

On Monday, [Sen. Kay Bailey] Hutchison [R-Texas] introduced a bill with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to allow school districts across the country to open separate schools for hurricane victims. The bill would take away the ability of evacuating parents to protest their children's placement in particular schools. It would also allow schools to issue "identification cards or other identifying insignia" for students affected by Hurricane Katrina....

But advocates for the homeless fear the waiver would relegate evacuated students to second-class status. "It basically allows schools to discriminate pretty broadly against kids who are homeless as a result of the storm," says Barbara Duffield, an advocate for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. The waiver would suspend parents' right to protest their children's placement, while making it easier for students to be moved during the school year or denied transportation, Duffield said. She calls the prospects of Katrina-specific school identifications "absolutely horrifying." "It's like a scarlet letter K or something," she says.

Of course, it's a total coincidence that most of the student who'd be sent to separate schools are black. And Texas' long history of discrimination against non-whites has nothing to do with it. Race just isn't involved, nosirree. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Via Salon.

[Paid sub. or ad view req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:39 PM | Get permalink

This looks worse and worse.

Each time we've looked at the projected track for Tropical Storm Rita, its track has bent farther north. Here's the latest 5-day projection:

TS Rita's projected track

[Graphic: NOAA/National Hurricane Center]
There's a larger version of the projection map here.

The most recent discussion posted at the US National Hurricane Center predicts that Rita will become a 'major hurricane' as it moves into the Gulf of Mexico.

If we were in New Orleans, we'd be nervous. And if we were located anywhere close to Houston, we'd be really nervous.

More: From Reuters: "Mayor Ray Nagin on Monday suspended a program to bring residents back to New Orleans and told all those now in the stricken city to leave because of fears a new storm may hit in the next few days." More here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:27 AM | Get permalink

'International Talk Like a Pirate Day' is back.

To mark the occasion, we thought about going here and translating Magpie into pirate-speak. But then we figured it would be much funnier to translate this. And it was.

But the real pirate keeper is this this little treasure. Enjoy, ye lubbers!

More: Then, of course, there are real pirates.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:58 AM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

A bird that moonwalks!

Moonwalking manakin

Kim Bostwick loves slow-motion instant replay. Not because she's a huge sports fan, but because special high-speed video cameras have allowed her to solve a long-standing mystery: how unusual jungle-dwelling birds called manakins use their feathers to produce remarkable rhythmic buzzes and hums.

"Manakins have weird, pretty extreme behavior," says Bostwick, an evolutionary ornithologist who makes a memorable appearance in the first episode of [the PBS program] 'Nature's Deep Jungle.' "They are very, very interesting birds."

There's much more info about manakins here, including video clips of some of their other strange behaviors.

The moonwalking manakin video clip from PBS is here. We found another video that gives a closer look at the manakin's 'moonwalking' motion. You can view that one here.

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:16 AM | Get permalink

The military was ready to help on the Gulf Coast.

But Dubya's administration didn't tell them to start moving.

Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush went on national television to announce a massive federal rescue and relief effort.

But orders to move didn't reach key active military units for another three days.

Once they received them, it took just eight hours for 3,600 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi with vital search-and-rescue helicopters. Another 2,500 soon followed from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas.

"If the 1st Cav and 82nd Airborne had gotten there on time, I think we would have saved some lives," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Reagan from 1985 to 1989. "We recognized we had to get people out, and they had helicopters to do that."

Since the feds started taking heat for their slow and inept response to Hurricane Katrina, one of the most frequently given ~~excuse~~ reason for that response has been that the legal barriers that supposedly make it difficult to use the military for disaster relief inside the US. Because of those barriers, say Dubya and FEMA, troops couldn't be moved into the disaster area until all the proper legal steps were followed. And that, they say, slowed the federal relief effort.

Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, who served under President Clinton, believes that the Bush administration is mistaken if it thinks there are impediments to using the military for non-policing help in a disaster.

"When we were there and FEMA was intact, the military was a resource to us," said Witt. "We pulled them in very quickly. I don't know what rule he (Bush) talked about. ... We used military assets a lot."

Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration who also was a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terror attacks, said clear legal guidelines have been in place for using the military on U.S. soil since at least 1996, when the Justice Department was planning for the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

"It's not like people hadn't thought about this," Gorelick said. "This is not new. We've had riots. We've had floods. We've had the loss of police control over communities.

"I'm puzzled as to what happened here," she said.

One of the few positive results of the the Katrina disaster is that it's given the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau to show what a fine group of journalists work there. The bureau's stories on the disaster have consistently been among the best being done by any media outlet. And we include big guns like the BBC in that assessment.

There's a lot more in the story we've been citing in this post. We suggest taking a look at the rest.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, September 18

Why is this legal?

Today's NY Times has an article about Robert Miller, who's made a name for himself helping investors in troubled companies make big bucks. The way he does this is by shutting down a company pensions fund in order to make balance sheets look better and provide bigger profits to investors. Not incidentally, shedding pension obligations makes a company much more attractive as an acquisition target — and investors can make real money as the result of an acquisition.

There's an obvious problem with Miller's approach to business: A whole mess of workers suddenly lose the pensions they'd been promised, and on which they'd based their retirement plans. But the less obvious problem is that US taxpayers get stuck with some or all of the cost of meeting the pension obligations that Miller tossed aside.

As chief executive of Bethlehem Steel in 2002, Mr. Miller shut down the pension plan, leaving a federal program to meet the company's $3.7 billion in unfunded obligations to retirees. That turned the moribund company into a prime acquisition target. Wilbur L. Ross, a so-called vulture investor, snapped it up, combined it with four other dying steel makers he bought at about the same time, and sold the resulting company for $4.5 billion - a return of more than 1,000 percent in just three years on the $400 million he paid for all five companies.

Two years later, as the chief executive of Federal-Mogul, an auto parts maker in Southfield, Mich., Mr. Miller worked on winding up a pension plan for some 37,000 employees in England. The British authorities balked at the idea, fearing that such a move would swamp the pension insurance fund that Britain was creating; it began operations only last April. But the investor Carl C. Icahn has placed a big bet that Federal-Mogul will pay off after the pension plan is gone; he has bought its bonds at less than 20 cents on the dollar and is offering money to help the insurance fund. He, too, stands to make millions.

Now Mr. Miller is at Delphi, the auto parts maker that was spun off by General Motors in 1999. If past is prologue, one of the most powerful turnaround tools at his disposal will be his ability to ditch Delphi's pension fund. He did not return numerous telephone calls seeking his views for this article, but in the past he has said that his first priority at Delphi was to "resolve" its "uncompetitive labor cost structure." That includes the roughly $5.1 billion gap between the pensions it has promised employees and the amount it has put aside to pay for them.

We have to wonder why the Times article rather uncritically accepts the argument [made, incidentally, by the abovementioned Wilbur Ross, who bought Bethlehem Steel] that gutting pension plans is a problem caused by poor government regulation and badly written legislation. To our mind, a more persuasive explanation is that making money at the expense of workers' pensions is a product of a rapacious US corporate culture in which the goal of maximizing profit trumps any and all ethical considerations and social responsibilities. We also find it curious [but not surprising] that the Times article begs the question of what role corporate influence and lobbying have had in ensuring that federal legislation was written badly and then indifferently enforced.

So like we said in the headline: Why is this legal?

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:50 AM | Get permalink

Google Earth really does see everything.

An Italian computer programmer has used satellite images from Google Earth to locate an unexcavated Roman villa near his home town.

Luca Mori describes his discoveries on his blog. While the blog is in Italian, he's provided translations for a couple of the posts. [Plus you can always have Google give you a machine translation of the site.]

Via Nature.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:37 AM | Get permalink