Three more people per second...ah...fuggetaboutit...Happy New Year !! 

THE GREAT DIVIDE | TALKING BACK TO POWER

China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence
NY Times
By JOSEPH KAHN

WANZHOU, China, Dec. 24 - The encounter, at first, seemed purely pedestrian. A man carrying a bag passed a husband and wife on a sidewalk. The man's bag brushed the woman's pants leg, leaving a trace of mud. Words were exchanged. A scuffle ensued.

Easily forgettable, except that one of the men, Yu Jikui, was a lowly porter. The other, Hu Quanzong, boasted that he was a ranking government official. Mr. Hu beat Mr. Yu using the porter's own carrying stick, then threatened to have him killed.

For Wanzhou, a Yangtze River port city, the script was incendiary. Onlookers spread word that a senior official had abused a helpless porter. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people had swarmed Wanzhou's central square, where they tipped over government vehicles, pummeled policemen and set fire to city hall.

Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party, obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches accruing to the powerful and well connected.

"People can see how corrupt the government is while they barely have enough to eat," said Mr. Yu, reflecting on the uprising that made him an instant proletarian hero - and later forced him into seclusion. "Our society has a short fuse, just waiting for a spark."

Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989.

Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control.

China does not have a Polish-style Solidarity labor movement. Protests may be so numerous in part because they are small, local expressions of discontent over layoffs, land seizures, use of natural resources, ethnic tensions, misspent state funds, forced immigration, unpaid wages or police killings. Yet several mass protests, like the one in Wanzhou, show how people with different causes can seize an opportunity to press their grievances together.

The police recently arrested several advocates of peasant rights suspected of helping to coordinate protest activities nationally. Those are worrying signs for the one-party state, reflexively wary of even the hint of organized opposition.

Wang Jian, a researcher at the Communist Party's training academy in Changchun, in northeast China, said the number and scale of protests had been rising because of "frictions and even violent conflicts between different interest groups" in China's quasi market economy.

"These mass incidents have seriously harmed the country's social order and weakened government authority, with destructive consequences domestically and abroad," Mr. Wang wrote in a recent study.

China's top leaders said after their annual planning session in September that the "life and death of the party" rests on "improving governance," which they define as making party officials less corrupt and more responsive to public concerns.

But the only accessible outlet for farmers and workers to complain is the network of petition and appeals offices, a legacy of imperial rule. A new survey by Yu Jianrong, a leading sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, found that petitions to the central government had increased 46 percent in 2003 from the year before, but that only two-hundredths of 1 percent of those who used the system said it worked.

Last month, as many as 100,000 farmers in Sichuan Province, frustrated by months of fruitless appeals against a dam project that claimed their land, took matters into their own hands. They seized Hanyuan County government offices and barred work on the dam site for days. It took 10,000 paramilitary troops to quell the unrest.

Also in November, in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province, in central China, two policemen were killed when enraged construction workers attacked a police station after a traffic dispute. Days later, in Guangdong Province, in the far south, riots erupted and a toll booth was burned down after a woman claimed she had been overcharged to use a bridge. In mid-December, a village filled with migrant workers in Guangdong erupted into a frenzy of violence after the police caught a 15-year-old migrant stealing a bicycle and beat him to death. Up to 50,000 migrants rioted there, Hong Kong newspapers reported.

Wanzhou officials initially treated their riot in October as a fluke. They ordered Mr. Hu to declare on television that he is a fruit vendor, not a public official, and that his confrontation with Mr. Yu was a mistake. The police arrested a dozen people and declared social order restored.

But the uprising alarmed Beijing, which told local officials they would be sacked if they failed to prevent recurrences, according to Chinese journalists briefed on the matter. Luo Gan, the member of the Politburo Standing Committee who is in charge of law and order, issued national guidelines warning that "sudden mass incidents" were increasing and calling for tighter police measures.

More than a dozen people interviewed in Wanzhou, part of Chongqing Municipality, described the city as tense. All said that they still believed that Mr. Hu was indeed an official and that the government concocted a cover story to calm things down. They say the anger excited by the riot awaits only a new affront.

The Chance Encounter

Like many farmers in the steeply graded hills along the Yangtze, Mr. Yu, 57, supplements his income hauling loads up and down city roads - grain, fertilizer, air conditioners, anything that he can balance on a bamboo pole and hoist on his slender shoulder. Sweaty and dirty, porters put their low-paying profession on parade. They are often referred to simply as bian dan, or pole men.

Mr. Yu's lot is better than some others. He has another sideline collecting hair cuttings off the floors of beauty salons and barber shops, packing them in big burlap bags and selling them to wig-makers down south.

On Oct. 18, he spent several hours collecting hair from upscale salons along Baiyan Road, a busy shopping street that runs near the government square downtown. His load was light - two bags of loose locks - and he scurried down the sidewalk to lunch.

"Hey, pole man, you got dirt all over my pants!" he heard a woman shout. When he turned to face her, the man by her side, Mr. Hu, was glaring at him.

"What are you looking at, bumpkin?" Mr. Yu recalls Mr. Hu saying.

Mr. Yu is mild mannered, with a slightly raffish grin stained yellow from chain smoking. Mr. Hu, wearing a coat and tie and leather shoes, looked like he might be important. Mr. Yu said he should have let the moment pass. He did not.

"I work like this so that my daughter and son can dress better than I do, so don't look down on me," he recalled saying. Then he added, "I sell my strength just as a prostitute sells her body."

Mr. Yu said he was drawing a general comparison. Mr. Hu and his young wife, Zeng Qingrong, apparently thought he had insinuated something else. She jerked his shirt collar and slapped his ear. Mr. Hu picked up Mr. Yu's fallen pole and struck him in the legs and back repeatedly.

Perhaps for the benefit of the crowd, Mr. Hu shouted that it was Mr. Yu, sprawled on the pavement, who was in big trouble.

"I'm a public official," Mr. Hu said, according to Mr. Yu and other eyewitnesses. "If this guy causes me more problems, I'll pay 20,000 kuai" - about $2,500 - "and have him knocked off."

Those words never appeared in the state-controlled media. But is difficult to find anyone in Wanzhou today who has not heard some version of Mr. Hu's bluster: The putative official - he has been identified in the rumor mill as the deputy chief of the local land bureau - had boasted that he could have a porter killed for $2,500. It was a call to arms.

Mr. Hu's threat, spread by mobile phones, text messages and the swelling crowd, encapsulated a thousand bitter grievances.

"I heard him say those exact words," said Wen Jiabao, another porter who says he witnessed the confrontation. "It proves that it's better to be rich than poor, but that being an official is even better than being rich."

Xiang Lin, a 18-year-old auto mechanic, had seen China's rising wealth when he worked near Shanghai. But when he returned home to Wanzhou, he felt frustrated that his plan to open a repair shop foundered. He was drawn downtown by the excitement.

"Don't officials realize that we would not have any economic development in Wanzhou without the porters?" Mr. Xiang asked.

Cai Shizhong, a taxi driver, was angered when the authorities created a company to control taxi licenses, which he says cost him thousands of dollars but brought no benefits. The police also fine taxi drivers left and right, he said.

"If you drive a private car, they leave you alone because you might be important," Mr. Cai said. "If you drive a taxi, they find any excuse to take your money."

Peng Daosheng's home was flooded by the rising reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam. He was supposed to receive $4,000 in compensation as well as a new home. But his new apartment is smaller and less well located, and the cash never arrived.

"The officials take all the money for themselves," said Mr. Peng, who spent eight hours protesting that night. "I guess that's why that guy had $2,500 to kill someone."

It took the police more than four hours to remove Mr. Hu and Mr. Yu from the scene. The crowd surrounded police cars and refused to budge, afraid the police would cover up the beating, and even punish Mr. Yu.

"People knew the matter would never be resolved fairly behind closed doors," Mr. Yu said.

Even after the police formed a cordon around two cars - one for Mr. Hu and his wife, another for Mr. Yu - the crowd smashed the windows of the car carrying the couple. It was nearly 5 p.m. before the vehicles crawled through the assembled masses.

A Loss of Control

The police may have hoped that removing the main actors from the scene would defuse the tension. Instead, the crowd rampaged. At 6 p.m., a police van was surrounded and the policeman inside was beaten with bricks. Seven or eight people tipped the car over, stuffed toilet paper into the gas tank and set it ablaze, according to witnesses and a police report.

When a fire truck arrived, the fire fighters were forced out and their truck commandeered. A driver smashed it into brick wall, then backed up and repeated the move to render the truck immobile.

"They lost control at once," recalled Mr. Cai, the taxi driver, who wandered through the crowd that day. "Suddenly the police were nobody and the people were in charge."

The local government never published an estimate of how many people took part in the protest. But unofficial estimates by Chinese journalists on the scene ranged from 30,000 to 70,000, enough to stop all traffic downtown and fill the government square.

By 8 p.m., the rally focused on the 20-story headquarters of the Wanzhou District Government, with its blue-tinted windows and imposing terrace facing the square. The crowd chanted, "Hand over the assassin!" Riot-police officers in full protective gear - but carrying no guns - held the terrace. Officials with loudspeakers urged the crowd to disperse, promising that the incident would be handed according to law.

But the mob now followed its own law. An assembly line formed from a nearby construction site. Concrete building slabs were ferried along the line, then shattered with sledgehammers to make projectiles. Front-line rioters hurled the rocks at the police - tentatively at first, then in volleys.

Under the barrage, the police retreated. Protesters charged the terrace, shattered the windows and doors of government headquarters and surged inside.

Official documents were scattered. Protesters dumped computers and office furniture off the terrace. Soon, a raging fire illuminated the square with its flickering orange glow.

Li Jian, 22, took part in the plunder. A young peasant, he had found a city job as a short-order cook. But he longed to study computers, said his father, Li Wanfa. The family bought an old computer keyboard so the young man could learn typing.

"He wanted to go to high school but the school said his cultural level was not high enough," Mr. Li said. "They said a country boy like him should be a cook."

The police arrested young Mr. Li scurrying through the melee with a Legend-brand computer that belonged to the government, according to an arrest notice.

Yet even at the height of the incident, rioters set limits. They did not attack any of the restaurants or department stores along the government square, focusing their wrath on symbols of official power.

By midnight, the crowd dwindled on its own. When paramilitary troops finally arrived on the scene after 3 a.m., there were only a few thousand hard-core protesters left.

"Most people went home," said Mr. Peng, the man whose home had been flooded by the dam. "But the armed police were fierce. They beat you even if you kneeled down before them."

The Tensions Persist

The local government praised its own handling of the riot. An assessment published three days afterward in The Three Gorges City News, the daily paper of the Wanzhou Communist Party, also declared the uprising had no lasting ramifications.

"The district government displayed its strong governing ability at a crucial moment," the report said. "This incident was caused by a handful of agitators with ulterior motives who whipped up a street-side dispute into a mass riot."

The uprising did dissipate as quickly as it emerged. Baiyan Road now bustles with afternoon shoppers. After work, dancers bundled against the damp chill use government square as an outdoor ballroom, a synthesized two-step beat filling the night air.

Yet the underlying tensions did not disappear.

When the Wan Min Cotton Textile Factory declared bankruptcy in mid-December, scores of policemen occupied the factory grounds to prevent a riot. The next day, a handful of workers from the factor went to city hall to protest. Several hundred uniformed police surrounded them.

Mr. Xiang, the auto mechanic, was arrested for throwing stones and taken into custody. One day, returning from the cold showers inmates were required to take in the unheated jail, guards told him to kneel. One elbowed him in the back and several others kicked him in the gut.

As he lay prostrate, a prison supervisor said: "Nothing happened to you here, did it? You're a smart kid."

He could not eat for two days.

"We were all brothers inside," he said of his fellow detainees. "The officials despise the ordinary people and are not afraid to bully them."

Then there's Mr. Yu. He missed the riot that occurred in his name, but has been under pressure ever since. The government kept him isolated in a hospital for nearly two weeks, even though bruises on his legs and the stitches he needed above his eye had healed.

His daughter and son were told to take a vacation, paid by the government, to avoid contact with the news media. "They told us not to talk or it would hurt the city," Mr. Yu said in his first interview.

Yet he said what really shook him was the reaction to the statement he made to Wanzhou television on Oct. 20, two days after the riot. The government told him to appear - he was still under guard - and had prepared questions in advance.

"They told me to emphasize the importance of law and order," he said. "I was told just to answer the questions and not to say anything else."

What he said on the evening news sounded innocuous enough. "Let this be handled by law," Mr. Yu told viewers. "Everyone should stay at home."

So he was unprepared for the backlash.

Relatives of those arrested criticized him for propagandizing for the government, saying their kin felt betrayed. Neighbors warned him not to plant rice this year because his enemies would just rip it out. His wife says she wants to move because she has heard too many threats.

Mr. Yu is understandably confused.

"First an official tries to break my legs because I am a dirty porter," he said. "Now the common people want to break my legs because I spoke for the government."

The Squeeky Wheel and the FCC

Activists Dominate Content Complaints
December 06, 2004
By Todd Shields

In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.

The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes.”


What Powell did not reveal—apparently because he was unaware—was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.

This year, the trend has continued, and perhaps intensified.

Through early October, 99.9 percent of indecency complaints—aside from those concerning the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show broadcast on CBS— were brought by the PTC, according to the FCC analysis dated Oct. 1. (The agency last week estimated it had received 1,068,767 complaints about broadcast indecency so far this year; the Super Bowl broadcast accounted for over 540,000, according to commissioners’ statements.)

The prominent role played by the PTC has raised concerns among critics of the FCC’s crackdown on indecency. “It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio,” said Jonathan Rintels, president and executive director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists’ advocacy group.

PTC officials disagree.

“I wish we had that much power,” said Lara Mahaney, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based group. Mahaney said the issue should not be the source of complaints, but whether programming violates federal law prohibiting the broadcast of indecent matter when children are likely to be watching. “Why does it matter how the complaints come?” Mahaney said. “If the networks haven’t done anything illegal, if they haven’t done anything indecent, why do they care what we say?”

Powell, who said during the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas in April that he was unsure how many complaints come from organized groups, addressed the question in an op-ed piece in The New York Times last Friday.

“Advocacy groups do generate many complaints, as our critics note, but that’s not unusual in today’s Internet world…that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups’ concerns,” Powell wrote.

Powell’s fellow Republican commissioner, Kathleen Abernathy, last week said that the agency does not let the number or the sources of complaints determine its indecency findings. “As long as you’re following precedents and the law, it shouldn’t matter,” Abernathy told Mediaweek.

At issue is a process that once relied upon aggrieved listeners and viewers contacting the FCC, but that increasingly is driven by organized groups with a focus on programming content. The FCC does not monitor programming for fear of assuming a role as national censor; it relies on complaints to initiate its indecency proceedings.

So far this year, the system has resulted in millions of dollars in settlements and proposed fines against broadcasters.

In such a system, even the number of complaints becomes an object of contention. For example, the agency on Oct. 12, in proposing fines of nearly $1.2 million against Fox Broadcasting and its affiliates, said it received 159 complaints against Married by America, which featured strippers partly obscured by pixilation.

But when asked, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau said it could find only 90 complaints from 23 individuals. (The smaller total was first reported by Internet-based TV writer Jeff Jarvis; Mediaweek independently obtained the Enforcement Bureau’s calculation.)

And Fox, in a filing last Friday, told the FCC that it should rescind the proposed fines, in part because the low number of complaints fell far short of indicating that community standards had been violated.

“All but four of the complaints were identical…and only one complainant professed even to have watched the program,” Fox said. It said the network and its stations had received 34 comments, “a miniscule total for a show that had a national audience of 5.1 million households.”

Even as some question whether the FCC should let the views of 23 people lead to fines, others take the agency to task for routinely failing to account for many of the complaints it receives. “Over 4,000 people filed a complaint against Married by America. Where do the complaints go?” asked the PTC’s Mahaney.

The PTC has worked hard to achieve its influence over broadcast content. Founded in 1995 by longtime conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III, it set out to make an impact in 2003, including what it called “a massive, coordinated and determined campaign” for more action by the FCC against broadcast indecency. “We delivered on that promise,” Bozell said in the group’s annual report.

The document listed tools developed by the PTC, including continual monitoring and archiving of broadcast network programs and “cutting-edge technology to make it easier for members to contact program sponsors, the FCC, or the networks directly with a simple click of the button.”

The result, the group said, was “a more than 2,400 percent increase in online activism.”

Passport Is Dead ! RIP...

Microsoft ends Passport push

By Joseph Menn
Published: December 31 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 31 2004 02:00

Microsoft is abandoning one of its most contentious attempts to dominate the internet after rival technology companies banded together in opposition and consumers failed to embrace it.

The world's biggest software company said it would stop trying to persuade websites to use its Passport service, which stores consumers' credit card and other information as they surf from place to place.

The acknowledgment came after Ebay posted a notice on its site on Wednesday, saying it would stop using Passport in January and rely on its own service.

Another early backer, Monster Worldwide's job-hunting site, Monster.com, dropped Passport in October.

Because it would keep track of credit card numbers and passwords as people moved from website to website, Microsoft had predicted that Passport would smooth the way for widespread use of web services based on a person's identity instead of those linked to information stored on a specific PC.

But Passport attracted the ire of privacy advocates, trade regulators on two continents and technology security experts, who in 2003 found a hole that could have led to massive identity theft.

As for major merchants, they were concerned about letting Microsoft stand between them and their customers. They feared that the company which controlled more than 90 per cent of the world's desktop computers might one day charge a toll on e-commerce transactions.

In the end, Passport may have been doomed by competition. Soon after Microsoft unveiled the service, a consortium of companies, including Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, formed the Liberty Alliance. It issued guidelines for online customer authentication services, which encouraged the development of Passport rivals.

Adam Sohn, marketing director for Microsoft MSN internet services, said the pull-back was driven by Microsoft's decision to focus on building tools that other companies could use to create their own internet programs, instead of offering the programs itself."

AARP & SS Privatization

In Ads, AARP Criticizes Plan on Privatizing
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: December 30, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 - AARP, the influential lobby for older Americans, signaled Wednesday for the first time how fervently it would fight President Bush's proposal for private Social Security accounts, saying it would begin a $5 million two-week advertising campaign timed to coincide with the start of the new Congress.

The organization, which played a huge role in the passage of Medicare drug legislation last year, said it was prepared to spend much more in the next two years to block the creation of private accounts financed with payroll tax revenues.

"This is our signature issue," said Christine M. Donohoo, chief communications officer for AARP, which represents 36 million Americans 50 and older. "We will do what it takes."

The full-page advertisements, to appear next week in more than 50 newspapers around the country, say the accounts would cause "Social Insecurity."

"There are places in your retirement planning for risk," the advertisements say, "but Social Security isn't one of them."

One advertisement shows a couple in their 40's looking at the reader. "If we feel like gambling, we'll play the slots," the message says.

Another advertisement shows traders in the pit of a commodities exchange. "Winners and losers are stock market terms," it says. "Do you really want them to become retirement terms?"

AARP's confrontational stance on Social Security contrasts with its strategy on Medicare legislation in 2002 and 2003.

Senior officials of the group continually talked to the White House and to Republicans in Congress about proposals to add drug coverage to Medicare. But to date, AARP leaders said, they have had few conversations with the White House about Mr. Bush's plans for Social Security.

Lawmakers of both parties said the Medicare bill might not have passed without a last-minute endorsement by AARP, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization. The endorsement outraged some members of the group and some Democrats in Congress. But now, it appears, AARP will be working with Democrats against Republican proposals for private accounts.

AARP strongly supports new incentives for people to save for retirement, but says such savings should supplement the existing system.

Marie F. Smith, the group's president, and William D. Novelli, its chief executive, set forth the organization's position this month in letters to members and to lawmakers.

Private accounts would worsen the problems of Social Security, they said, adding: "Taking some of the money that workers pay into the system and diverting it into newly created private accounts would weaken Social Security and put benefits for future generations at risk. AARP is opposed to private accounts that take money out of Social Security."

Under President Bush's proposal, workers could divert some payroll taxes to personal accounts that could be invested in stocks and bonds.

At a news conference last week, Mr. Bush defended his proposal as a way to encourage "an ownership society," increase savings and provide "capital for entrepreneurial growth." By investing in private accounts, he said, workers could earn a higher rate of return than they get from the Social Security trust fund, and they could pass on the accumulated assets to their heirs.

Ms. Donohoo said AARP's advertisements were intended to "mobilize seniors" and to educate younger people about the program, which pays monthly benefits to more than 47 million Americans.

The advertisements will generally run three times in each newspaper from Jan. 4, when Congress convenes, to Jan. 20, when Mr. Bush is to be inaugurated for a second term.

Some advocates of private accounts, like the libertarian Cato Institute, are also gearing up. But Jamie W. Dettmer, a Cato spokesman, said: "We do not have plans to do advertising or lobbying. Our experts will write op-ed articles, appear on television and radio and testify before Congress if they're invited."

At a White House economic conference this month, Mr. Bush previewed his message to Congress on Social Security. "The crisis is now," he said. "You may not feel it, your constituents may not be overwhelming you with letters demanding a fix now, but the crisis is now."

On the other hand, Ms. Donohoo of AARP said that "rather modest changes" could ensure the solvency of the program for several generations. "It's not a crisis," she said.

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Campaigning Abbas Says No Peace with Israel Barrier

Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:21 AM ET

By Wafa Amr

QALQILYA, West Bank (Reuters) - Taking his campaign to succeed Yasser Arafat to the foot of Israel's West Bank barrier, interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday there would be no peace until Israel tore it down.

Abbas, demonstrating a new knack for popular politicking after decades as a reticent deputy to Arafat, drew cheers from thousands at stops in two cities hemmed in by Israel's barrier in his pursuit of election on Jan. 9 as Palestinian president.

"No (Middle East) peace can transpire with (Jewish) settlements and the wall," Abbas said with his back to the towering concrete divide that virtually encircles the town of Qalqilya near the West Bank's boundary with Israel.

"We tell our neighbors: 'No matter how many settlements, walls or obstacles you build, it will not bring you security or peace," said the veteran moderate who wants talks on Palestinian statehood on Israeli-occupied land after years of fighting.

Israel says the barrier, a mix of electronic fences and walls that encroaches on West Bank territory by differing amounts over the 200 km built so far, is meant to keep suicide bombers out of its cities.

Palestinians call the barrier -- whose planned course would encompass Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- a disguised move to annex or fragment territory Palestinians seek for a viable state.

WORLD COURT CONDEMNDATION

The World Court has called the barrier illegal for being built on captured land.

Thousands of farmers have been separated from fields and the barrier has hampered trade between villages and market towns like Qalqilya, where 40,000 people are ringed by concrete except for one small outlet.

Abbas has raised hopes for peace by quickly becoming the overwhelming favorite to replace Arafat in the election, riding a swing in Palestinian sentiment in favor of negotiations since the iconic former guerrilla leader died at 75 last month.

The hearty welcome given Abbas at his first campaign rally in Jericho on Tuesday carried over on Wednesday to Qalqilya and Tulkarm. Crowds repeatedly interrupted his speeches with cheers and people of all ages ran excitedly after his convoy.

Abbas, 69, smiled and raised his arms to those who hailed and sometimes swarmed him to shake his hand, reveling in a crowd like a natural politician contrasting with his longtime image as a sober functionary in Arafat's inner circle.

Heavy security was draped around Abbas because of feared threats from militants opposed to peacemaking.

However, local members of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group in the mainstream Fatah faction that nominated Abbas for president, greeted Abbas and said they would vote for him.

Abu Salem, commander of the Brigades in Tulkarm, said gunmen would be receptive to Abbas's call for an end to armed violence, which has abated in most areas since Arafat died in November.

Abbas repeated his campaign theme that he would follow in Arafat's footsteps by vowing to seek a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital and the "right of return" of refugees to what is now Israel.

Israel and U.S. mediators boycotted Arafat as an alleged mastermind of bloodshed but have sized up Abbas as someone they could deal with because he has branded violence a mistake.

Internet Phone Services Regulation Update

Court Bars Regulation of Web Phone Service
NY Times
By MATT RICHTEL

Published: December 29, 2004

A federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling yesterday that prohibits the state of Minnesota from regulating Internet-based phone calling as if it were a traditional telecommunications service.

The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, in an appeal brought by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, is a victory for companies like Vonage that provide phone calls over the Internet. Those companies have argued that they are different from traditional telecommunications providers, in part because they supply the computer software used to make and receive calls but do not own and operate the physical network that carries the calls.

In a lower court decision in this same case, the Federal District Court of Minnesota ruled in October 2003 that Vonage should be properly defined not as a telecommunications service but as an information service, a designation that would free it from some state regulations.

Last month the Federal Communications Commission issued its own rules on the subject, stating that Internet phone services should not be governed by the same state regulations as traditional telephone companies. The F.C.C. decision left open the possibility that the states could still tax Internet phone businesses.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission then asked the appeals court to consider whether the F.C.C. ruling pre-empted the lower court's decision. But the appeals court wrote in its two-page order issued yesterday that the F.C.C. rules actually supported the district court's injunction against the commission.

The case is part of a larger debate about how telecommunications should be regulated in the digital age. As more communication takes place on the Internet, advocates of deregulating telecommunications are arguing that the new era demands a new set of rules.

But those in favor of continued regulation, including the state of New York and many other states, have argued that Internet calls are effectively the same as traditional telephone calls and deserve the same level of government oversight."

International Financials Provide Warnings about America's Future

China Expands. Europe Rises. And the United States . . .
By FRED KAPLAN

IT'S a risky business to predict the decline of the American empire. Ask Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian, who issued such a forecast in his 1987 book, "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers," only to witness an almost immediate American resurgence.

Yet the signposts, at the end of this year, are ominous. As an economic power, the United States no longer sets the rules, much less rule the game. As a military power, it vastly outguns the rest of the world, but has a harder time translating armed might into influence.

On March 1, the European Union announced that it was raising import tariffs on a long list of American products, and would go on raising them each month until Congress repealed a subsidy for American exporters that had been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization. Congressmen railed against this intrusion but finally gave in. Americans realized that, in the global economy they largely created and for 60 years dominated, they could no longer do whatever they wanted.

Last month, China's president, Hu Jintao, embarked on a 12-day tour of Latin America, and wound up making commitments to invest $30 billion in the region. China is now Brazil's second largest trading partner and Chile's largest export market. In trade, technology, investment, education and culture, China has been displacing the United States all across Asia, and is now starting to do the same in America's backyard.

There is nothing necessarily alarming about an expansive China or an emergent Europe, except perhaps that they coincide with a growing American dependence on both.

The United States government spent $650 billion more this year than it raised in revenue, and financed the deficit largely by borrowing from foreign central banks, mainly those of Japan and China. They have been willing creditors because American consumers send much of the money right back by purchasing foreign-made products. It's a neat balancing act, to a point. But the American accumulated debt to foreign investors has now swelled to $3.3 trillion - 28 percent of gross domestic product, nearly double the share of four years ago.

In the 1990's, the United States admonished Mexico and Argentina to get their economic houses in order. This month, the Chinese premier gave Washington a strikingly similar lecture.

These imbalances are not inherently disastrous. The Chinese get something out of the deal, a ready consumer market for their overheated production lines. If they stop lending to the United States, it would cause a deep recession here, but then Americans could not buy as many of their goods, and the recession would ricochet right back to Asia.

It's a variation on the old joke: If you owe the bank $1 billion, the bank owns you; if you owe the bank $1 trillion, you own the bank.

But what if another trillion-dollar customer walked into the bank? The bankers might be more willing to foreclose on the debtor, knowing that they could pick up business from the new tycoon.

The European Union, in many respects, is looking more and more like this new tycoon. Its currency, the euro, has risen in value by 35 percent against the dollar in the last three years.

Again, that is not necessarily bad. In theory, a falling dollar makes American exports cheaper, attracting demand that then boosts the dollar; a rising euro crimps European exports, which then lowers the euro; equilibrium is restored. In reality, this process unfolds slowly and shakily: in October, for instance, American exports rose, but American imports soared, too.

A more serious consequence of the dollar's fall is that the euro has become more rewarding for foreign investors, and they are reacting accordingly. In 2001, Middle Eastern oil-producing countries kept 75 percent of their currency reserves in dollars; now the figure is 61 percent, with much of the rest in euros. Chinese and Russian central bankers are also shifting reserves. This trend, at some point, could set off a spiral: the dollar declines, causing further sell-offs, leading to a further decline, and so on.

When the dollar has fallen in the past, the United States was a net creditor and there was no serious rival currency. Neither condition holds true now. As The Economist recently put it, "Never before has the guardian of the world's main reserve currency been its biggest net debtor."

Financiers and diplomats are beginning to ask: How much longer will the dollar remain the world's principal reserve currency? One could also ask, how much longer can the United States remain, as Madeleine Albright put it, "the indispensable country" of world politics?

This year, the United States spent nearly as much on its military as all other countries combined. No other nation possesses, or aspires to, anything like the reach of American armed forces.

Yet, if someday the United States finds that it can no longer count on foreigners to bankroll its deficits, it may also find that it can no longer afford a globe-spanning military. The war in Iraq has already stretched America's forces to the limit. In the 1970's and 1980's, when Pentagon strategists spoke of a two-front war, they envisioned having to fight simultaneously in, say, Germany and Korea. Today, they mean Mosul and Falluja.

About 40 percent of the American troops in Iraq are from the National Guard and Reserves, "weekend warriors" who never figured on serving long combat tours. As a result, Guard recruitment has fallen by 30 percent. If there is no large Guard and Reserve, there is no large Army. In short, not only has the Iraq war been harder than many imagined, it has also made going to war elsewhere a less practical option - and a less credible threat.

The economic trends are worrisome because they stem not just from market forces but also from politics. As T. R. Reid notes in his new book "The United States of Europe," the euro "was specifically designed to challenge the global hegemony of the dollar." Similarly, China's rivalry with the United States in Asia and Latin America isn't a side effect of economics; it's an explicit ambition.

These challenges will take decades to unfold, and may not succeed. China may recoil from its manufacturing boom and its excesses; Europeans could revert to age-old continental tensions. The United States may revive itself through changes in policy.

Meanwhile, power is not transferring so much as dispersing. It may turn out, if trends continue, that no country or bloc of countries possesses the combination of economic and military power needed to reward the good, deter or punish the bad and impose international rules, order and security.

A multipolar world can be a chaotic place. The danger is not so much that the United States may lose power, but that the globe's new rivals may fail to strike and manage a balance of power. End-of-the-year Cassandras traditionally predict doom, gloom and anarchy. This year they're looking less preposterous.

Fred Kaplan is the national security columnist for Slate.

See No Evil...

House Ethics Panel Chief May Be Replaced
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A04

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is leaning toward removing the House ethics committee chairman, who admonished House Majority Leader Tom DeLay this fall and has said he will treat DeLay like any other member, several Republican aides said yesterday.

Although Hastert (Ill.) has not made a decision, the expectation among leadership aides is that the chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), long at odds with party leaders because of his independence, will be replaced when Congress convenes next week.

The aides said a likely replacement is Rep. Lamar S. Smith, one of DeLay's fellow Texans, who held the job from 1999 to 2001. Smith wrote a check this year to DeLay's defense fund. An aide said Smith was favored for his knowledge of committee procedure.

Republicans are bracing for the possibility that DeLay, who is the chamber's second-ranking Republican and holds enormous sway over lawmakers, could be indicted by a Texas grand jury conducting a campaign finance investigation that the party contends is politically motivated.

The effort by DeLay and his allies to preserve his leadership post, even if he faces criminal charges, is one of the most sensitive issues facing Republicans as the new Congress begins. If Hefley is replaced by Smith, it is another signal by House leaders that they will stand by DeLay. "It certainly seems they're circling the wagons," said a GOP staff member who declined to be identified.

Toothless Tigers & Tort Reform

Robert B. Reich

Web Exclusive: 12.22.04

The White House says the Food and Drug administration is doing a
"spectacular" job. Really? The FDA didn't respond to warning signs that
block-buster painkillers like Celebrex and Vioxx increased the risk of
heart attacks. Worse yet, its own drug-safety officer says the agency
suppressed his research showing the apparent dangers of Vioxx.
Belatedly, the FDA is now looking into the potential risks of Naproxin,
an ingredient in many over-the-counter pain relievers. The FDA also
failed to warn the public that antidepressants increase the risk of
suicide among children who take them.

"Spectacular?" I don't think so. In fact, one might conclude that the
Food and Drug Administration is failing in its core mission to protect
consumers from harm. It's a toothless tiger.

Meanwhile, new legislation is winding its way through Congress that
would prevent people who are hurt by drugs approved by the FDA from
winning large damage awards against companies that made them. FDA
approval would shield drug makers from having to pay anything more than
$250,000 even when it's proven that they negligently caused someone more
than $250,000 of harm. Congressional sponsors understand this cap on
damages will end lawsuits against drug companies because personal-injury
lawyers won't want to take on the risks and costs of such cases. If this
bill passes, companies like Pfizer and Merck, now facing a flood of
lawsuits because of Celebrex and Vioxx, won't have to worry.

So we've got an FDA that's not protecting consumers from harm, and
pending legislation that makes it almost impossible for people who are
hurt by drugs approved by the FDA to sue for damages. The question must
be asked: How is the public going to be protected if the FDA remains
weak and if private lawsuits are cut off?

You might ask the same question all over government these days. Pick an
agency - not just the FDA, but the Securities and Exchange Commission,
the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission,
and so on. They're supposed to protect the public. But they're all
understaffed, their budgets have been whacked, and many of them are in
the pockets of the very companies and industries they're supposed to
regulate.

At exactly the same time, Republicans are clamoring for what they call
"tort reform." Tort reform is a nice way of saying that people who are
harmed by companies shouldn't be able to sue them and collect damages.

They can't have it both ways. Either regulatory agencies have to be made
tougher and more independent, and given the resources they need to
protect the public, OR we've got to rely on courts and private lawsuits
to make sure companies have every financial incentive to protect the
public. Absent both - tough regulators and the threat of private
lawsuits - the public is at serious risk. If you're worried about
Celebrex and Vioxx, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Purchasing - Returns - Blacklisting: The Retail Cycle

The War Against Retail Return Abuses
By Evan Schuman
December 17, 2004
eWeek

With the holiday season comes fruitcake, traffic jams and an anticipated onslaught of must-be-returned gifts from well-meaning (and possibly colorblind) friends and relatives.

But sprinkled amongst those gift-receipt-clutching consumers are what the industry considers thieves: people who deliberately use return policies to steal. The tactics vary, from “free customer rentals”—where someone purchases an outfit, wears it to an event, and then returns it the next day—to those who purchase two items that look similar but are priced very differently and then switch the boxes so they return the cheaper item and get the refunded money from the higher-priced item.

The issue is anything but trivial for retailers. A Harris Poll released this week found that 91 percent of consumers interviewed considered return policies and processes as important to their decision about where to make a purchase. It also found that almost one-fifth of U.S. adults have held onto unwanted merchandise four or more months, before trying to return it to the retailer, according to the survey sponsored by Newgistics.

“It’s an issue that a lot of consumers care about,” said Blake Zeff, communications director for U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who “wants retailers to cut down on these (return) policies, these excessive policies.”

A California-based company called The Return Exchange looked at the situation and saw an opportunity to use a standard Windows-based SQL Server database approach to apply customized rules to identify customers whose buying patterns made them look like return abusers.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: A customer walks in and attempts to return a product. The clerk asks for identification and enters that into the system so that all of that customer’s purchases can be linked.

The identification information and the return data is automatically sent (either using dial-up, a broadband VPN or a direct T1 connection) to a database that The Return Exchange has set up exclusively for that particular retail chain. That database can be accessed—on The Return Exchange’s server—by anyone in that company’s IT department.

When that database (called Verify-1) sees what it considers to be a return abusive pattern, it will reject that return, in the same way that a POS would reject a stolen credit card. The clerk then would give the customer an 800 number to The Return Exchange, which would then investigate the case.

Retailers are reporting billions of dollars of annual losses from return abuses and The Return Exchange sees this as a way to combat such fraud.

But U.S. Senator Schumer sees it differently. He held a news conference this week in front of an East Side Sports Authority store and identified them and a handful of other retailers—including Express, KayBee Toys, The Sports Authority and Guess—as essentially blacklisting customers who return a bit too much.

“There’s a familiar saying this time of year ‘many happy returns’ but sadly, in some stores, that just isn’t the policy,” Schumer said. “We all know the disappointment of buying a friend or family member a gift only to find out they already have one or don’t want it. But some of us aren’t being extended the right to return any more gifts – and the least the stores can do is tell us why.”

That “tell us why” part is the essence of the controversy. Schumer plans on introducing legislation in the Senate next month that will require retailers to prominently disclose their precise return prohibition formula before customers can make purchases.

Household Cleaners & Asthma

Asthma in kids linked to exposure to household cleaning products and chemicals
Dec. 23, 2004


Researchers from Bristol University, UK, have indicated that household chemicals such as bleach, paint stripper, carpet cleaners are causing childhood asthma and wheezing.

The researchers followed 14,000 kids from birth. They discovered that families which frequently used household cleaning products had much higher incidences of asthma and wheezing among their children.

The researchers said there is a clear link between childhood asthma and wheezing and frequent use of household cleaning products.

According to the research, children were twice as likely to develop breathing problems if their mother/father frequently used these products (in comparison to households that used them the least).

In this study, the following household products were the most likely to cause childhood breathing problems if used frequently:

-- Disinfectant

-- Bleach

-- Carpet Cleaner

-- Window Cleaner

-- Dry Cleaning Fluid

-- Aerosols

-- Turpentine or White Spirit

-- Air Freshener

-- Paint Stripper

-- Paint Or Varnish

-- Pesticides Or Insecticides.

For more information on asthma click here."

American Progress Report:
Social Security: The Truth is Out There

Social Security Funding/Marketing

December 13, 2004

The truth continues to trickle out about President Bush's Social Security scheme, with reports now indicating the president is "seriously mulling" cutting future promised retirement benefits for millions of young workers by as much as 6 percent, even after potential gains from private accounts are included. Attempting to sell Americans on the idea of increased personal risk and diminished rewards, President Bush reiterated over the weekend the myth that Social Security is "in crisis" and that risky personal savings accounts are the only way to save the system. Newsday reports that by reflexively rejecting a wide range of "minor tweaks" that could help save the program, "Bush has painted himself, and the nation, into a corner." Furthermore, the president rejected raising payroll taxes or reducing benefits for current retirees, ensuring he intends to "finance the estimated $2 trillion cost of overhauling" with "enormous new government borrowing." One GOP lawmaker called that plan "irresponsible" at a time of runaway debt and increased spending.

GRAHAM CALLS BORROWING "IRRESPONSIBLE": A Congressional Republican proponent of Social Security reform, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), warned President Bush on Sunday against borrowing that could balloon the deficit to more than $700 billion. Graham said a reliance on borrowing would be "irresponsible and could undermine Bush's tax- and deficit-cutting goals." He urged the president to "be flexible." In the 2000 debates, President Bush said he would pay the cost of overhauling Social Security by using "one-half of the surplus" created during the Clinton years. Of course, the president's tax cuts for the wealthy have turned that surplus into a massive deficit.

DIMINISHING RETURNS: The president had promised his proposed privatized accounts would give workers a "better rate of return," but David John, "an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has met frequently with White House officials as they prepare their proposal, said he has 'absolutely no doubt' that Bush will have to reduce the planned growth of benefits." Last week, top White House economic adviser Greg Mankiw admitted the Social Security overhaul would "include major cuts in guaranteed benefits for future retirees."

THE CRISIS MYTH: President Bush continued pushing the idea that there is a "crisis in Social Security" – a misconception repeated uncritically by major news stations. But a 2004 report prepared by several Bush appointees said that while "the financial difficulties facing Social Security" should be addressed "in a timely manner," the program's assets are in little danger of running out before 2042. To "build public support and circumvent critics in Congress and the media," the president is planning to dust off the strategy he used "to sell his Iraq and terrorism policies during the first term." That means narrowing the circle of influence, whipping up a frenzy about the "disastrous consequences of inaction," enlisting the help of "well-funded conservative groups" and leaving the details for later.

WALL STREET WINDFALL: So who wins from Social Security privatization? Bush administration allies on Wall Street are trying to discredit the idea that investment firms will benefit from Bush's plan, citing a new study which says firms stand to make "as little as $39 billion for investment firms over the next 75 years and no more than $279 billion." But that decidedly ambiguous estimate comes from a study sponsored by the Securities Industry Association, which stands to benefit from privatization, has campaigned for it in the past and lists an agenda almost identical to President Bush's. A study published in September by University of Chicago business school professor Austan Goolsbee "predicted Wall Street could collect $940 billion or more over 75 years, an amount he called the largest windfall in American financial history."

Star Wars Missile Defense is Probably Not Feasible In Our Lifetime

Thus spake the learned group of physicists assembled to evaluate the technical and operational possibilities. Their summary conclusions:

"Here are the principal findings of the APS study group on boost-phase intercept systems for national missile defense:

Defending the 50 states against liquid-propellant ICBMs from North Korea may be feasible, but would push the limits of what is possible physically, technically, and operationally.

Defending the 50 states against liquid-propellant ICBMs from Iran would be much more challenging. *

Defending the 50 states against solid-propellant ICBMs from North Korea or Iran is unlikely to be practical when all factors are considered.

Defending only the West Coast against ICBMs from North Korea would be easier than defending all 50 states.

Defending only part of the US against ICBMs from Iran would not be easier than defending all 50 states.

A boost-phase defense could contribute to a layered defense, provided the second layer can handle the unpredictable debris generated by the boost-phase layer.

Effective countermeasures against boost-phase- intercept missile defense are possible, and they should be taken into account.

Defending against shorter-range missiles launched from hostile ships off US coasts would be feasible with interceptors similar to current Navy missiles, provided that the missile-carrying ships are able to stay within about 40 km of threatening ships.

Must read, or at least check in for the discussion on Social Security going on Kevin Drum's Blog

Visit it now.

Celebrex, Vioxx & the COX-2 Drugs

Bad Day for Pfizer, Astra, Lilly and Patients
Fri Dec 17, 2004 02:18 PM ET
By Ben Hirschler, European Pharmaceuticals Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors in pharmaceuticals were dealt a triple whammy on Friday as Pfizer Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Eli Lilly and Co all shocked the market with bad news about key products.

Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, saw its stock fall as much as 17 percent after trial data for its popular arthritis drug Celebrex showed an increased risk of heart attack.

The medicine is of the same type as Merck & Co Inc's Vioxx, which was pulled from the market in September after tests showed it too posed a cardiovascular threat to patients.

Pfizer said it had no plans to recall Celebrex but investors feared there was mounting evidence that the danger seen with Vioxx may be common to all drugs in the so-called COX-2 class.

"This does not bode well for COX-2s in general," said Ira Loss, an analyst at Washington Analysis.

Reflecting the concerns, shares in GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Novartis AG, which are developing newer COX-2 medicines, also fell.

Pfizer's bombshell came just hours after AstraZeneca reported that its lung cancer drug Iressa -- already launched in the United States, Japan and other non-European markets -- had failed to help patients live longer in a major clinical study.

The news was the third setback for the Anglo-Swedish company in two months and sent its shares skidding more than 9 percent lower to a fresh 21-month low.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly announced it was adding a warning to the label of its attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder medicine Strattera, advising patients with jaundice or a liver injury to stop taking the treatment. Its shares lost 6 percent.

"The pharmaceutical industry has been taking one hit after another," said Jason Leander, senior market strategist at Lind-Waldock, a division of Refco LLC.

The American Stock Exchange's pharmaceutical index was down 4.1 percent in its biggest one-day drop since May 19, 2003.

Note: Another case of where the cure is worse than the problem?

Essential Krugman: Alternate Experiences with Privatized Social Security

Buying Into Failure
NY Times Op-Ed
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 17, 2004

As the Bush administration tries to persuade America to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k), we can learn a lot from other countries that have already gone down that road.

Information about other countries' experience with privatization isn't hard to find. For example, the Century Foundation, at www.tcf.org, provides a wide range of links.

Yet, aside from giving the Cato Institute and other organizations promoting Social Security privatization the space to present upbeat tales from Chile, the U.S. news media have provided their readers and viewers with little information about international experience. In particular, the public hasn't been let in on two open secrets:

Privatization dissipates a large fraction of workers' contributions on fees to investment companies.

It leaves many retirees in poverty.

Decades of conservative marketing have convinced Americans that government programs always create bloated bureaucracies, while the private sector is always lean and efficient. But when it comes to retirement security, the opposite is true. More than 99 percent of Social Security's revenues go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. In Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. And that's a typical number for privatized systems.

These fees cut sharply into the returns individuals can expect on their accounts. In Britain, which has had a privatized system since the days of Margaret Thatcher, alarm over the large fees charged by some investment companies eventually led government regulators to impose a "charge cap." Even so, fees continue to take a large bite out of British retirement savings.

A reasonable prediction for the real rate of return on personal accounts in the U.S. is 4 percent or less. If we introduce a system with British-level management fees, net returns to workers will be reduced by more than a quarter. Add in deep cuts in guaranteed benefits and a big increase in risk, and we're looking at a "reform" that hurts everyone except the investment industry.

Advocates insist that a privatized U.S. system can keep expenses much lower. It's true that costs will be low if investments are restricted to low-overhead index funds - that is, if government officials, not individuals, make the investment decisions. But if that's how the system works, the suggestions that workers will have control over their own money - two years ago, Cato renamed its Project on Social Security Privatization by replacing "privatization" with "choice" - are false advertising.

And if there are rules restricting workers to low-expense investments, investment industry lobbyists will try to get those rules overturned.

For the record, I don't think giving financial corporations a huge windfall is the main motive for privatization; it's mostly an ideological thing. But that windfall is a major reason Wall Street wants privatization, and everyone else should be very suspicious.

Then there's the issue of poverty among the elderly.

Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government must "provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum pension." In other words, privatization would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to save them.

The same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions Commission warns that those who think Mrs. Thatcher's privatization solved the pension problem are living in a "fool's paradise." A lot of additional government spending will be required to avoid the return of widespread poverty among the elderly - a problem that Britain, like the U.S., thought it had solved.

Britain's experience is directly relevant to the Bush administration's plans. If current hints are an indication, the final plan will probably claim to save money in the future by reducing guaranteed Social Security benefits. These savings will be an illusion: 20 years from now, an American version of Britain's commission will warn that big additional government spending is needed to avert a looming surge in poverty among retirees.

So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement system that works, and can be made financially sound for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead, it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that, when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor protected the elderly from poverty.

Frank Rich on "The Passion"

Mr. Rich has a potent Op-Ed in the NYT about Gibson's film.

"As we close the books on 2004, and not a moment too soon, it's clear that, as far as the culture goes, this year belonged to Mel Gibson's mammoth hit. Its prurient and interminable wallow in the Crucifixion, to the point where Jesus' actual teachings become mere passing footnotes to the sumptuously depicted mutilation of his flesh, is as representative of our time as "Godspell" was of terminal-stage hippiedom 30 years ago. The Gibson conflation of religion with violence reflects the universal order of the day — whether the verbal fisticuffs of the culture war within America, as exemplified by Mr. Donohue's rant on national television or, far more lethally, the savagery of the actual war that radical Islam brought to our doorstep on 9/11."

Charter Schools -or- Social Security. The Pitfalls of Privatization

A Second Report Shows Charter School Students Not Performing as Well as Other Students

NY Times
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

Published: December 16, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - A federal Education Department analysis of test scores from 2003 shows that children in charter schools generally did not perform as well on exams as those in regular public schools. The analysis, released Wednesday, largely confirms an earlier report on the same statistics by the American Federation of Teachers.

The department, analyzing the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test for fourth graders, found charter students scoring significantly lower than regular public school students in math, even when the results are broken down for low-income children and those in cities.

In reading, the report said, over all there was no statistically significant difference between students in charters and in regular public schools. However, when students in special education were excluded, charter students scored significantly lower than those in regular public schools.

When broken down by race, the results show charter students generally lagging behind those in regular public schools in reading and math, but the differences were not statistically significant, the report said.

The report, which included responses to a questionnaire administered with the test, shed light on the nature of charter schools and their performance. They showed, for example, that the only charter schools that outperformed regular public schools in reading were those that had been in operation for less than a year. Otherwise, test scores generally declined the longer a school had been operating as a charter.

Also, schools that were not chartered by a school district but functioned as independent districts tended to do worse than those over which districts exercised some oversight.

The data were released at an unusual news conference, at which the deputy education secretary, Eugene W. Hickok, who is resigning, pronounced the Education Department a defender of charter schools and described the results as encouraging.

"In case there's any doubt, we are big supporters of charter schools," Dr. Hickok said. "So as I read these studies on charter schools, I read them through that lens."

He noted that in specific areas, charter students did not do significantly worse than those in regular schools, and said the results portrayed only a "snapshot in time," not a measure of growth. He noted that charters tended to enroll more black students, and were disproportionately located in cities.

Given those differences, he said, the scores were "not a bad sign." He added, "While the study does point out some differences, it also points out that in many ways charter students are holding their own."

After the release of the report, the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the test, sponsored a discussion with Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, which supports charters, and Bella Rosenberg, an author of the teachers' union report. That report, released in August and based on the same test scores released Wednesday, prompted a storm of criticism from charter advocates.

Ms. Allen, citing studies that purport to show stronger results for charters in comparisons that are statewide, rather than national, said, "Charter school students in the aggregate are in a dead heat with students in regular schools."

She also rejected the survey questions that found that charters with district supervision performed better than those without.

"Autonomy is not accurately measured by asking are you part of a school district or not," she said. "It does not take into account the wide variety of ways" in which charters operate, she said.

Ms. Rosenberg differed. "If our much-maligned regular public schools are failing," she said, "then charter schools, the very schools that promised to deliver higher achievement in return for, and as a result of, freedom from rules and regulations, are failing too, and often at significantly worse levels."

In a statement, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, described the new report as a refutation of the teachers' union report, although the results were largely the same. He highlighted findings showing that in comparing students of the same race, charter students were not doing significantly worse than students in regular schools.

But Ms. Rosenberg rejected that analysis, borrowing a line from President Bush in calling it "a standard of success otherwise known as the soft bigotry of low expectations."

"We don't tolerate that from regular public schools," she said, "and we certainly shouldn't tolerate it from a movement whose schools flourished because it promised elected representatives - and more poignantly, poor and minority parents - that charter schools could and would do better, not the same or worse."

For the first time, the survey also collected national data comparing the performance of students in charters managed by nonprofit organizations with those run by commercial companies, the largest of which is Edison Schools. Those results showed no difference in performance between the two types of schools.

Adam Tucker, a spokesman for Edison, said that while the quality of companies that managed charter schools varied widely, he doubted the survey's findings. He cited a study by the Brookings Institution, which found that schools run by commercial companies did somewhat better than other charter schools.

Dr. Dobson's View of Our World Revealed

From incoming correspondence:

Another email circulating Dr. James Dobson going before some govt. agency to fight against the movement to remove Christian "stuff" from the airwaves. Subject: A VERY SERIOUS PETITION FOR OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH.

<------------------------------------->
Note: Yeah, Dobson is one of those special people who deserve their own special place in the hereafter. I would be thrilled to be able to fashion it for him! It would be a world where everything was random. Not "bad" or "good", just random. He would probably call it Hell.

He has taken over from Faldwell, Robertson, Reed, et al as a "evangelical leader from the right" using the same tactics as they did: a radio/TV "ministry", articles in newspapers/books/magazines. Unfortunately he expouses social ideas to the right of Attilla the Hun !! Spank children, women need to "allow and support" males as the head of the family, homosexuals are evil, Christians have a special obligation to "save others", etc, etc. Although as a professional man, he generally reserves his more intolerant ideas for his radio program, chosing to be somewhat more controlled when his comments can be transcribed or put in print.

I don't know if there is an email message emanating from him, or one the intolerant ninnies who support him; but it would not be a surprise that select email broadcasters would send around some propaganda favoring his worldview. Here's some more info on the guy:

He is the founder of "Focus on the Family"...(insert George Orwell's warning about misappropriation of the civil language)...a 21st Century recreation of life as seen by 15th Century English noblemen. Here's a choice transcription of a talk he gave on 07 February 1998 before the Council for National Policy that shows where he is coming from:
<------------------------------------->
[Full Text of Dr. Dobson's Address]

"What this is saying, in other words, is that the moral law of the universe antedated the physical universe, it came first. It was not as though the children of Israel wandered into the wilderness and the Lord looked at their behavior, and they're worshipping idols and they're doing all these wrong things, and he says, "Hmmm. Those folks need some rules," and so he calls Moses up into the hills and said, "Here are the Ten Commandments. This will help those people do better."

It is not that way at all. That moral foundation, that moral law, is eternal because it's an expression of God's own nature and it pre-dates the universe and it will outlast the physical laws. You can no more defy that moral law than you can jump off a ten-story building, because if anything, the moral law outranks the physical law. The physical law is going to pass away. His book says, "The heavens and the earth shall be rolled up like a scroll, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, there'll be new physical laws, but the moral law is eternal."

He said his Word shall live forever. So that moral law has great significance and it says in the end of that chapter, "For whoever finds me, finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But whoever fails to find me harms himself and all who hate me, love death." The moral law of the universe.

What this is saying to me, and I hope to you, is that the universe has a boss. It has a boss and he has very clear ideas of what is right and what is wrong. It doesn't matter a whole lot what you think or what I think. What matters is what he thinks, because that moral law has been there from eternity and will be there to eternity, and if that is true, then we have an obligation to understand it and to respect it.

Now, I'm not talking today about dogma. I'm not talking about denominations. I'm not talking about churches. I'm talking about a law that's written on the heart of every human being. And this is the end of the Sunday School lesson. Romans 2:14 says ­­I'm going to paraphrase this ­­it says: "When the Gentiles," the non-Jews, "act in accordance with the law, having not heard the law, it shows that they have a law in themselves, written on their hearts, for their consciences either condemn or approve their behavior.

Now you can override that law and you can sear that conscience, and you can get beyond it, but it is there. It is there in all of us. It is programmed into the human spirit. You do not have to be taught that it is wrong to murder. You don't have to be taught that it's wrong to steal and to lie and to extort and to bribe and to oppress the poor and to express racial hatred and to be promiscuous, both homosexually and heterosexually. There's no difference between those two. Promiscuity is immoral. It's wrong, as is adultery. That law is eternal and it is written on the heart of man.

Now, the world doesn't accept that view. I want to tell you, that understanding that I just gave you ­­and forgive me for kind of being in a didactic mode, but that understanding provides the basis for my whole life, my whole world view, my understanding of where we are as a nation and what's going on in Washington and all the state houses of government. That's the foundation.

But as you know, there are many people that don't accept it today. We have already heard from David Noble and others who talked about other world views, primarily post-modernism. Post-modernism essentially rejects that explanation I just gave you. Post-modernism says there is no God and there is no eternal standard, there are no rules. You make them up as you go along, and what seems right is right.

There are no transcendent values that will stand from time to time. When human life becomes inconvenient, you can get rid of it, because it was not created by God, because there is no God, and it's all subjective and whimsical and you make up your ideas as the circumstances arise. And that post-modern notion, that there is no moral law to the universe, has taken hold and taken hold root like a cancer that's spread through this entire nation, and it continues to spread."
<------------------------------------->

Social Security: What the Conversation Is, and Should be About !!

From: talkingpointsmemo.com
(December 15, 2004 -- 03:45 AM EST

Focused as I've been on the Kerik meltdown, I've given little attention to what will certainly be the defining issue of the next two years, for Democrats as much as the president: Social Security.

As Paul Krugman, Kevin Drum and many others have been making clear in recent days, the entirety of the president's argument is based on a series of well-constructed lies. The president's advisors were never more truthful than they were when they compared the coming round of disinformation and fear-mongering to their public campaign in support of the Iraq war in 2002.

The Social Security "crisis" is manufactured; there is no crisis. To the extent there are long-term financing problems, the president's plan will gravely worsen them. The problem we face isn't over Social Security, which continues to run up huge surpluses (just as it was intended to under the early-80s reform), but that our non-Social Security budget continues to run massive structural deficits. Or rather, it has returned to running massive structural deficits after getting into the black in the late 1990s through the combined exertions of a Democratic president and a Republican congress. Social Security isn't the problem, but rather George W. Bush's reckless fiscal policy.

In any case, as I say, the whole thing is lies. This isn't about the program's problems but about its success. That's why the president and his allies want to phase it out. It's not about financing but about ideology.

I'm going to try to dive more deeply into the dishonesty of the president's plan and explanations of different aspects of the debate, though much of it will simply be steering readers to the most concise and straightforward explanations from other sites and sources.

Much of what we'll be focusing on here is strategy: how to defeat the president's plan, which will rip-off men and women across the country who, in President Clinton's much mocked but still apt phrase, "work hard and play by the rules."

So, a few points on strategy.

One thing that Democrats must understand is that they cannot win this battle legislatively. At one level what I mean by that is simply the math we can all see. The president has comfortable majorities in both chambers and in his first term (when he was a minority president and had smaller majorities) he commanded historic levels of party discipline. If he can hold those caucuses together, he can pass this and sign it and that's it. Doesn't matter what Democrats do.

This is, of course, obvious, as simple as the math, as I noted. But the implications for strategy are not necessarily that obvious.

As I wrote a month ago, the Democrats have to start seeing themselves as a true party of opposition in large part because of the way President Bush has reshaped the capital into something much more like a parliamentary system. There's no point in Democrats trying to improve legislation at the margins, because they won't be given any real opportunity to do so. The logic of the situation dictates coming up with an alternative plan not only to make the differences clear to voters now but to set the issue stage for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

So point one is party unity. The Democrats don't just need to keep their caucuses overwhelmingly together on this issue. They need to avoid even a single defection in the House or the Senate. From what I hear from knowledgable sources this is already pretty close to doable in the House; and probably no more than three or perhaps four are even in play in the Senate.

Such unity has the obvious advantage of giving Republicans less breathing room in putting together majority votes in both houses. But it does much more than that. Making the elimination of Social Security a strictly Republican gambit raises the political stakes dramatically. Many Republicans will be far more cautious without bipartisan cover. Democrats must deny them even the thinnest of fig leaves. Making it a strictly Republican affair will also provide valuable clarity in the coming election, rather than the muddled picture created by Democratic defections on the 2001 tax bill.

Still another important benefit is the boon it will give to Democratic morale and energy in opposition. The coming debate over Social Security could become an engine for unity or disunity for Democrats. And the leaders of the party should be doing everything they can right now to lay the groundwork for making it the former rather than the latter. And party unity is the place to start.

If everyone isn't on the same page, that disunity will exacerbate the NewDem/Labor-Liberal divide -- something Dems simply can't afford right now. If they can achieve unity, they can demonstrate to themselves that they have points of common purpose that transcend their divisions. And that realization will itself make those divisions more manageable.

Luckily, such unity should not be that hard to achieve -- for two reasons. First, very few Democrats support privatization. Second, those relatively few in the centrist wing of the party who are open to the idea in the abstract are scared off by the budget-busting debt the president wants to take on to pay for his plan.

The worst thing that can happen for Democrats is that a few of their members of congress get played for fools by signing on to President Bush's plan in the hopes that they can secure some small improvements in the legislation or reflected glory for themselves -- slightly less money carved out of Social Security, bumping up the payroll tax cap, etc. Whatever miniscule benefits could be achieved in such a fashion would be greatly outweighed by the way that it would lessen the chances for fixing the damage after the next election.

The question will be how to enforce discipline at the margins. And here Democrats should take a page from the Republican playbook in 1994 (on health care) and 1998 (on impeachment).

I think Democrats should consider pulling together the major funders of the party, the official committees, the major organizations, basically the entire infrastructure of the Democratic party and making clear to individual members that if they sign on to the president's plan to phase out Social Security, those various institutions and individuals won't fund their campaigns. Not in 2006, not ever.

Similar committments can come from voters, activists and volunteers. And free rein to primary challengers. If a couple folks lose their seats because of underfunding or tough primaries, so be it. (In a subsequent post, we'll discuss how this compares to what the House Republicans did in 1998).

It's that important. And there is an importance to unity on this issue that transcends the particular debate over Social Security.

Next, as we've discussed before, this isn't a debate about 'reform', 'privatization' or 'saving' Social Security. It's about phasing out the Social Security program, or not. Framing it any other way concedes half the battle before the fighting even begins.

(There is a subsidiary question here of whether Dems take a stand-pat stance in general, or come up with their own 'plan' to go up against the president's. That's a question we'll return to.)

Third, beware the risks of arguments about risk.

Republicans want to make this an argument about people who believe in markets and people who don't. That's not true. But Democrats can make it seem true by framing too much of the debate on 'risky scheme' lines. Letting the argument be framed that way is a losing proposition because most Americans instinctively believe in markets and largely for good reason.

The issue here isn't markets. Most Democrats favor plans that would make it easier for middle- and lower-income families to save and invest money for retirement. That would make the overall retirement picture much better.

The issue is balance and commonsense. A breadwinner with dependents who gets a lump sum salary at the beginning of the year and invests it all in a few hot start-ups doesn't believe in the market; he or she is just a fool. A wise investment portfolio is balanced between riskier and more conservative investments. The best way to make this argument (and the most valid one) is to make it clear that Democrats want people to be able to invest. That really is the path to wealth. But Social Security is different. It is, among other things, a baseline of guaranteed retirement security and income for everyone. You get it whether you retire in boom times or bust times, whether life has dealt you good cards or bad cards. The two things are simply different.

A related danger is placing too much, or rather an incorrect emphasis on the windfall of money Wall Street would make because of phasing out Social Security. This is true, of course. And it helps impugn the motives of those pushing for the abolition of the program. But fundamentally it doesn't matter.

If privatization really were a good thing for most Americans, the fact that some people would make money on it wouldn't be a reason to oppose it. The reason to oppose it is that it's a very bad deal for most Americans. The fact that lots of Wall Streeters will get rich racking up fees on these tiny accounts only serves to show why they're pushing so hard for it.

Again, it's a matter of emphasis that I fear too many Democrats miss. Focusing too much on the Wall Street windfall risks placing the emphasis of the Dems opposition on something that is, fundamentally, beside the point. It can also make the opposition appear to be based simply in bitterness or resentment.

And this brings me to my final point. Focusing on the Wall Street stuff evades the key issue. And Democrats have built up a habit of doing that a lot on many issues -- thinking they can skirt against the wind, play up ancillary issues, and generally muddle through without facing up to the heart of the matter. The reasons they've developed this habit are many and for another post. But in the case of Social Security it is almost sure to lead to defeat.

This isn't about financing. It's about whether Americans get to keep Social Security, a program of guaranteed retirement insurance, which unlike the other key elements of a good retirement plan -- investments and pensions -- cannot be taken away.

Social Security has been overwhelmingly popular for well over half a century. Nothing suggests that popularity has diminished, save scare-mongering telling people that they won't be able to enjoy its benefits.

Democrats should run into this fight, not away from it.
-- Josh Marshall

DEA Ruling Makes FDA Approval of Medical Marijuana Impossible
State and Federal Legislation Now Only Hope for Patients

12-13-2004 | Marijuana Policy Project


WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a blow to those who have urged medical Marijuana advocates to seek FDA approval of Marijuana as a prescription drug, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has acted to block the only proposed research project that could lead to Marijuana's FDA approval. In its letter to Lyle Craker, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the DEA appeared to slam the door completely shut on the FDA approval process.

Barring favorable action by the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision leaves medical Marijuana patients with no hope for protection from arrest for the foreseeable future except through state and federal legislation, officials of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) said today. 

Portable MP3 Player Anyone?

Evaluating the Rivals to IPod Mini

NY Times
By DAVID POGUE
Published: December 16, 2004

IN February, Apple followed up its wildly popular iPod music player with the iPod Mini. This smaller, sleeker $250 player could hold 1,000 songs and came in five brushed-aluminum colors. But for only $50 more, you could buy a regular iPod that could hold four times as much music. Logical observers could draw only one possible conclusion: that Apple was out of its number-crunching mind.

The San Jose Mercury News called the iPod Mini "cool, colorful and too expensive." PC Magazine wrote that "you are paying dearly for the miniaturization." And Business Week Online declared it doomed, another of the occasional "fits of delusion" by Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive.

But the Mini was an enormous hit, and back-ordered for months. Its appeal was never about logic; it's about emotion, style and status. It's so small, cool and comforting in the hand that to hold one is to want one. Inevitably, the Mini inspired other companies to send in the clones. This month you'll be able to choose from four impressive iPod Mini competitors, courtesy of Dell, Rio, Creative and Virgin Electronics.

Some of the similarities are broad, like the charging cable that also auto-loads a copy of your music collection from your PC. Some are tiny: the iPod-like "Don't steal music" sticker (on the Dell's screen), the choice of colors (Creative's Zen Micro comes in 10) or the fingerprint- and scratch-prone mirror-chrome back panel (on the Rio Carbon).

There are also some very important differences. For example, the iPod Mini works with the Macintosh and Windows. But if you want to buy pop music legally online, you must use Apple's iTunes Music Store. That's not such a horrible fate; Apple's store is widely admired. Still, iPods can't play songs bought from other online music stores.

The rival players present the opposite situation: they accept songs bought from almost any online store except Apple's (Napster, Wal-Mart and so on), because all of these stores and players use Microsoft's copy-protection format. Of course, both the iPod and its rivals also play unprotected files like WAV and MP3 and songs you've ripped from your own CD collection.

All of the rival players can synchronize your music collection with Windows Media Player 10. (Thanks to a software plug-in, the Rio Carbon can also sync with the iTunes jukebox program on the Mac or Windows - except for songs you've bought from the iTunes Music Store, of course.)

If all this compatibility talk turns your brain to mush, here's a difference that's easier to understand: The upstart players hold more music than the Mini (about 250 songs more). Each contains a five-gigabyte hard drive instead of a four-gigabyte one. And each rival either costs less or offers more features.

For example, if you buy a Dell Pocket DJ instead of the iPod Mini, you'll save $50. This $200 player is almost the same size as the Mini (both are half an inch thick; the Dell is 3.5 by 2.1 inches, the Mini is 3.6 by 2), and its rounded silver metal case feels equally solid in your hand.

Or how about the Creative Zen Micro? For about $250 online, you get a player that's shorter but thicker than the Mini (3.3 by 2 by 0.7 inches) with a voice recorder, an FM radio and even an FM radio recorder. The sound quality of your recordings is pretty poor - clearly, Creative doesn't want you to make recordings at live concerts instead of buying them - but these are handy features.

As a bonus, this player has a pop-out battery. (After several hundred charges, the other players' batteries must be replaced at the factory.)

The $250 Virgin Electronics player, whose real name is the Virgin Electronics Player, is bigger than the Mini (3.8 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches). But its all-plastic case is as light as a feather (some may say it feels cheap). An FM radio is built in, although you can't record from it. In a masterstroke, Virgin incorporated two headphone jacks, so you can listen (or dance) with a friend. And you can crank the volume way past 11, as the saying goes; in fact, it can go dangerously loud.

You've got to love the creators' hilariously blunt writing. The hourglass cursor says, "busy busy." You're directed to press the Home button "if you're feeling lost, or maybe just a little homesick." And Virgin is frank enough to say in its manual, "Nope, you can't play songs you purchased from iTunes."

Only one company learned from the iPod's secret identity as a piece of jewelry. The domed, tapered Rio Carbon looks like a shining puddle of molten silver. At 3.3 by 2.5 by 0.6 inches (at its thickest), it's actually more mini than the Mini. An alien stumbling upon the smooth, shiny Carbon in the rubble of our civilization might mistake it for one of those worry stones that you're supposed to rub for stress relief.

The company pegs the battery life at a jaw-dropping 20 hours between charges, double what the Mini gives you. And even though it has a built-in voice recorder, the Rio Carbon can be found online for $40 less than the Mini.

Four great players, each with some superpower that the iPod Mini lacks. It's curtains for Apple, right?

Not so fast. On something that's as personal and frequently used as a music player, little things make a big difference, and it's in the Little Things department that the iPod Mini really shines.

For example, when your player contains a thousand songs, you need a way to scroll through them quickly. You can run your finger around the iPod's famous click wheel fast to jet down to the W's and then slowly to pinpoint "What a Wonderful World."

But the Rio's thumb wheel has no such variable speed; it's four songs per turn, period. Working through any list longer than about 12 songs is an excruciating exercise. The Dell's "rolling log" control does zip farther through a list the faster you spin it, but it's awfully hard to speed up or slow down when you're basically twirling a section of a drinking straw. The Virgin's up-down buttons scroll at two different speeds, but that's still more frustrating than the Mini's "any speed you like."

Each player comes with its own disappointments. The backlighting of the Dell, for example, is dark blue, offering precious little contrast with the tiny black type. The volume controls (separate + and - buttons) sit on the top of the unit, looking and feeling identical to the Off button right next to them. And often, pushing inward on the rolling-log thing - which ought to mean "execute this command" - opens yet another menu instead.

The Virgin's buttons are recessed too far, its backlighting is even dimmer than the Dell's, and making the thing work with your PC can involve an ugly ritual of firmware downloads and restarts. (The company admits to muffing this process, and promises to improve it.) More important, the lesson of the iPod's looks seems to have sailed straight over Virgin's heads; this is one aesthetically challenged player.

On the Creative Zen Micro, the iPod's wheel has been replaced by a touch-sensitive vertical strip. In theory it ought to offer variable speed scrolling, but in practice it's a sticky, balky nightmare. You'll find a similar lack of polish when you want to use the Zen Micro's hard drive to transport computer files (a terrific feature of the iPod and all of its rivals) and discover that you must tell the software in advance how much space you'll need for them. How could you know that ahead of time?

The sculptured Rio Carbon looks cool on a tabletop, but it's all wrong for your palm. You wind up with the hard, flat chrome surface against the curve of your fingers, and the domed front pointing up at your face. Truth is, this player's case has been designed upside down.

Furthermore, the Carbon's too-tight carrying case blocks all access to the controls. There's no physical Hold switch to prevent button presses in your pocket or purse. Finally, note that if you opt to use your own headphones (those with a metal ring around the miniplug), you get loud crackling in your ears with any movement of the cord. The company cheerily suggests that you solve the problem with Scotch tape. (Rio also says that it will fix this problem on the next batch of Carbons.)

Remember, too, that for once in its life, Apple is the sole superpower; the iPod makes up 92 percent of the hard-drive player market. If you're an iPod Mini owner, you're part of a whole ecosystem of Web sites, shareware programs, armbands, portable speakers, carrying cases, FM car transmitters and so on. If you buy one of its upstart rivals, you're pretty much stuck with what comes in the box.

All right, so the iPod Mini's rivals aren't as elegant or as polished, they're not as thoughtfully conceived, and they may not fill you with as much pure, overwhelming technolust. Apple's message seems to be, "Perfection has a price."

Thousands of people, however, don't require perfection; they'd much rather save the 50 bucks. Thousands more would really like a built-in radio or microphone. On the Web, you'll even encounter a small army of militant iPod haters, people who despise the whole phenomenon: white earbuds, good reviews, status-symbol status and all.

For these demographic groups, the arrival of rivals to the Mini is a welcome development. Choose the Dell if you want an almost-Mini for $50 less; the Creative Zen Micro if the radio and microphone appeal to you; or the Rio Carbon for long battery life and stylishness that rivals the Mini's. They may not play your emotions quite the way the original does, but every now and then there's something to be said for logic.

Note: Or you could select the Rio Chiba at $100 for a 256mb micromini flash memory player. Add in a 512mb SD card for another $50, a super-stylish Vaja leather case for another $50, and you'd have a super MP3 player which is all solid-state, elegant, with excellent sound and ripping/playlist software, practically insuring you can have it for next five years without a problem. Want to study a foreign language? Easy...rip the CD, and install it on the Chiba, and carry it around for a few weeks, practicing the speech, and voila...it's easy to learn another language. Cheers!

In Your Time by Bob Segar 1994

In Your Time

Words and Music by Bob Seger

In your time
The innocence will fall away
In your time
The mission bells will toll
All along
The corridors and river beds
There'll be sign
In your time

Towering waves
Will crash across your southern capes
Massive storms
Will reach your eastern shores
Fields of green

Will tumble through your summer days
By design
In your time

Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You'll sail the perfect line

And after all
The dead ends and the lessons learned
After all
The stars have turned to stone
There'll be peace
Across the great unbroken void
All benign
In your time
You'll be fine
In your time

Academia on the Left & Right

The Wages of Anti-Intellectualism:
Jonathan Chait writes that the reason you find so few Republican academics isn't discrimination, it's that the GOP has become so self-consciously anti-intellectual. The argument involves making the important point that even in the hard sciences one finds few Republicans, and, in light of the present administration's endless assault on science, one hardly expects that to change in the future. The flipside is that American liberalism has increasingly ceased to be a strongly ideological movement and has instead adopted an ethic of technocratic managerialism underpinned by a vague consequentialism.

A few weeks ago, a pair of studies found that Democrats vastly outnumbered Republicans among professors at leading universities. Conservatives gleefully seized upon this to once again flagellate academia for its liberal bias.

Am I the only person who fails to understand why conservatives see this finding as vindication? After all, these studies show that some of the best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject the GOP. Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an indictment of the Republican Party?"

Essential Krugman: Personal Accounts Revisited

Borrow, Speculate and Hope
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: December 10, 2004

"The National Association of Securities Dealers," The Wall Street Journal reports, "is investigating whether some brokerage houses are inappropriately pushing individuals to borrow large sums on their houses to invest in the stock market." Can we persuade the association to investigate would-be privatizers of Social Security?

For it is now apparent that the Bush administration's privatization proposal will amount to the same thing: borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope.

Privatization would begin by diverting payroll taxes, which pay for current Social Security benefits, into personal investment accounts. The government, already deep in deficit, would have to borrow to make up the shortfall.

This would sharply increase the government's debt. Never mind, privatization advocates say: in the long run, they claim, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees' benefits. Financial markets won't believe this claim, as I'll explain in a minute, but let's temporarily grant the point.

Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all.

How, then, can privatizers claim that they could secure the future of Social Security without raising taxes or reducing the incomes of future retirees? By assuming that workers would invest most of their accounts in stocks, that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.

We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren't), but let's cut to the chase: in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That's because the government would, in effect, confiscate workers' gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers' benefits.

Once you realize that privatization really means government borrowing to speculate on stocks, it doesn't sound too responsible, does it? But the details make it considerably worse.

First, financial markets would, correctly, treat the reality of huge deficits today as a much more important indicator of the government's fiscal health than the mere promise that government could save money by cutting benefits in the distant future.

After all, a government bond is a legally binding promise to pay, while a benefits formula that supposedly cuts costs 40 years from now is nothing more than a suggestion to future Congresses. Social Security rules aren't immutable: in the past, Congress has changed things like the retirement age and the tax treatment of benefits. If a privatization plan passed in 2005 called for steep benefit cuts in 2045, what are the odds that those cuts would really happen?

Second, a system of personal accounts, even though it would mainly be an indirect way for the government to speculate in the stock market, would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street's point of view that's a benefit, not a cost.

There is, by the way, a precedent for Bush-style privatization. One major reason for Argentina's rapid debt buildup in the 1990's was a pension reform involving a switch to individual accounts - a switch that President Carlos Menem, like President Bush, decided to finance with borrowing rather than taxes. So Mr. Bush intends to emulate a plan that helped set the stage for Argentina's economic crisis.

If Mr. Bush were to say in plain English that his plan to solve our fiscal problems is to borrow trillions, put the money into stocks and hope for the best, everyone would denounce that plan as the height of irresponsibility. The fact that this plan has an elaborate disguise, one that would add considerably to its costs, makes it worse.

And maybe the fact that serious financial experts, the sort qualified to be Treasury secretary, understand all this is the reason why John Snow has just been reappointed.

Dioxin's Are Badddd News!

Dioxins Poisoned Viktor Yushchenko, But What Are They?
Health News
December 12, 2004

Doctors have confirmed Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned by dioxins. But what are dioxins and what effect do they have on humans?

"Dioxins" refers to a group of chemical compounds that share certain chemical structures and biological characteristics. Dioxin is the common name used to refer to the chemical tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin or TCDD. These chemicals are produced during combustion processes, such as waste incineration, forest fires and backyard trash burning, and during manufacturing processes such as herbicide manufacture and paper manufacture. e.g. dioxin was a contaminant of the herbicide Agent Orange used as a defoliant by U.S. forces in Vietnam.

High level dioxin exposure has been associated with an increased risk of developing cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, increased heart disease, increased diabetes, and decreased liver function.

Dioxin exposure also causes a skin condition called "Chloracne," and experts believe this is the condition responsible for the disfigurement of Viktor Yushchenko's face. Chloracne is a severe skin disease with acne-like lesions that occur mainly on the face and upper body. It can take several years for this condition disappear, but it does not pose a health hazard. High level Dioxin exposure can also cause death.

Phishing Websites Can Exploits Browser Flaw

Browser phishing 'flaw' could hook users

Robert Lemos, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: December 8, 2004

A function built into all major browsers could be co-opted by attackers to fool Web site visitors into surrendering sensitive information, a security firm warned on Wednesday.

The issue, which security firm Secunia labeled a flaw, could allow a malicious Web site to refer visitors to a legitimate site--such as a bank's Web site--and then control the content displayed in a pop-up windows. The issue affects Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the Mozilla Foundation's Mozilla and Firefox browsers, Opera's browser, the open-source Konqueror browser and Apple Computer's Safari, the firm stated in advisories on its site.

"No browsers warn or check if the other site is allowed to change the content of the pop-up window," Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer for Secunia, said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "If the pop-up window is opened because the users clicked on a specific functionality, the user has no reason to suspect that the content in the window has been changed by a malicious site."

Microsoft said that the attack uses a legitimate feature of browsers to fool users. "Our initial investigation has revealed that the report describes a by-design behavior in all popular web browsers that allows a website to open or re-use a window without displaying the address bar, which is a trust mechanism built into web browsers," the company said in a statement sent to CNET News.com. Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera could not immediately be reached for comment on the issue.

Microsoft stressed that Windows XP users who have installed Service Pack 2 have some anti-phishing tools. Any window that asks for log-in, financial or personal information should be encrypted and display a lock icon in the status bar at the bottom of the window, Microsoft said in a statement.

However, Secunia said that the browser makers [may] miss the point. Most users won't notice small details like that if they believe they are at a legitimate site.

"The browser vendors fail to take into consideration the change of malicious activities on the Internet and the fact that security holes, which can be exploited to automatically install malicious code, isn't the only thing to be concerned about," Kristensen said.

Secunia advised Web surfers to have only one Window open when you browse sensitive sites such as banks and Web stores.

Arson: The Next Big Thing to Worry About?

100 Investigators Gather, Seeking Clues to Vast Arson in Maryland

NY Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER and JAMES DAO
Published: December 8, 2004

INDIAN HEAD, Md., Dec. 7 - As more than 100 investigators arrived in southern Maryland to search for clues in what they called one of the most widespread single instances of arson in their experience, two of the volunteer firefighters who first responded to the blazes on Monday described houses bursting into flame in quick succession after their arrival.

Twenty-six houses in the muddy new subdivision of Hunters Brooke were involved and at least 10 were destroyed, W. Faron Taylor, a spokesman for the Maryland fire marshal's office, said.

At their peak, there were fires in 16 or 18 houses simultaneously, said Scott Creelman, a chief of the Potomac Heights Volunteer Fire Department who is also a fireman in the District of Columbia. He added: "It took more than one person. There's no way one person could have done all that."

Because the development is on a rare, environmentally sensitive wetland known as Magnolia Bog, there has been widespread speculation that the fires could have been the work of a radical environmental group called the Earth Liberation Front, copycats or a spinoff group. The organization said it could neither confirm nor deny involvement of its members in the fires.

Stop Loss: Is it legal?

via Progress Report: Dec. 6th, 2004
MILITARY – SOLDIERS SUE OVER STOP-LOSS

The New York Times reports eight U.S. soldiers currently serving in Iraq and Kuwait will file a lawsuit today in federal court in Washington "challenging the Army policy known as stop-loss." Marketed as a policy to "promote continuity within deployed units," the Army last spring mandated that "if a soldier's unit is still in Iraq or Afghanistan, that soldier cannot leave even when his or her enlistment time runs out. Since then, a handful of National Guardsmen who received orders to report for duty in California and Oregon have taken the policy to court, but the newest lawsuit is the first such challenge by a group of soldiers." The policy being challenged by the eight soldiers "has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out."

Essential Krugman: On Social Security

Inventing a Crisis
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: December 7, 2004

Privatizing Social Security - replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts - won't do anything to strengthen the system's finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it.

I'll have a lot to say about all this when I return to my regular schedule in January. But right now it seems important to take a break from my break, and debunk the hype about a Social Security crisis.

There's nothing strange or mysterious about how Social Security works: it's just a government program supported by a dedicated tax on payroll earnings, just as highway maintenance is supported by a dedicated tax on gasoline.

Right now the revenues from the payroll tax exceed the amount paid out in benefits. This is deliberate, the result of a payroll tax increase - recommended by none other than Alan Greenspan - two decades ago. His justification at the time for raising a tax that falls mainly on lower- and middle-income families, even though Ronald Reagan had just cut the taxes that fall mainly on the very well-off, was that the extra revenue was needed to build up a trust fund. This could be drawn on to pay benefits once the baby boomers began to retire.

The grain of truth in claims of a Social Security crisis is that this tax increase wasn't quite big enough. Projections in a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (which are probably more realistic than the very cautious projections of the Social Security Administration) say that the trust fund will run out in 2052. The system won't become "bankrupt" at that point; even after the trust fund is gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. Still, there is a long-run financing problem.

But it's a problem of modest size. The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would require additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of G.D.P. That's less than 3 percent of federal spending - less than we're currently spending in Iraq. And it's only about one-quarter of the revenue lost each year because of President Bush's tax cuts - roughly equal to the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with incomes over $500,000 a year.

Given these numbers, it's not at all hard to come up with fiscal packages that would secure the retirement program, with no major changes, for generations to come.

It's true that the federal government as a whole faces a very large financial shortfall. That shortfall, however, has much more to do with tax cuts - cuts that Mr. Bush nonetheless insists on making permanent - than it does with Social Security.

But since the politics of privatization depend on convincing the public that there is a Social Security crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent one.

My favorite example of their three-card-monte logic goes like this: first, they insist that the Social Security system's current surplus and the trust fund it has been accumulating with that surplus are meaningless. Social Security, they say, isn't really an independent entity - it's just part of the federal government.

If the trust fund is meaningless, by the way, that Greenspan-sponsored tax increase in the 1980's was nothing but an exercise in class warfare: taxes on working-class Americans went up, taxes on the affluent went down, and the workers have nothing to show for their sacrifice.

But never mind: the same people who claim that Social Security isn't an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis - you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

There's no honest way anyone can hold both these positions, but very little about the privatizers' position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success.

For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it.

Deficits...schmefasitz...

U.S. Fiscal Credibility in Question as Deficits Press
Tue Dec 7, 2004 11:38 PM ET
By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global financial markets and world policy-makers are demanding the Bush administration produce a convincing plan to curb record deficits in its second term lest the U.S. dollar face further punishment.

The dollar scraped new lows against the euro on Tuesday, amplifying calls from Europe for the United States to reduce massive shortfalls in its budget and current account, the broadest measure of trade.

U.S. officials stoutly maintain the solution to world trade imbalances is a shared one -- with faster growth in Europe and more U.S. savings.

But economists say that despite a public vow to cut deficits, the budget situation is unlikely to improve dramatically, particularly with White House commitments to costly Social Security and tax reform.

The Supreme Court Hears Arguments about Intrastate Liquor & Wine Sales

Justices Question Ban on Wine Sales From Out of State
NY Times: Dec. 7th, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - If the Supreme Court argument Tuesday on interstate wine sales proves to be a reliable roadmap to the eventual decision, consumers who want to order wine directly from out-of-state wineries will soon be able to do so with the court's blessing.

The justices appeared notably unmoved by the arguments offered by New York and Michigan in defense of laws that prohibit the direct shipment of wine from other states while permitting in-state wineries to ship their products to their customers' homes.

The 50 states are divided almost in half on a question that has grown increasingly contentious in the age of Internet advertising and sales. Twenty-six states permit direct shipment from out-of-state wineries; 24 ban it. The federal appeals courts are divided, too; one court upheld New York while another, almost simultaneously, declared Michigan's law unconstitutional.

The states' central argument, presented by Solicitor General Thomas L. Casey of Michigan and Solicitor General Caitlin J. Halligan of New York, was that the 21st Amendment gave states such blanket authority over the "importation" of alcohol as to trump the constitutional principle that applies everywhere else in the national marketplace: that states cannot discriminate in favor of their own products.

"Mere protectionism is permitted" by the amendment that repealed Prohibition, Mr. Casey said.

"This case goes to the very core of the 21st Amendment," Ms. Halligan added in her turn.

"It also goes to the very core of the Commerce Clause," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy responded. That clause, which empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce, has been interpreted since early in the country's history to include the implication that states may not, on their own minus Congressional authorization, discriminate against one another.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that in the 21st Amendment he found "not a word in any brief that I saw of any intent to get rid of the antidiscrimination principle."

Nor did the justices demonstrate more patience with the fallback, that if the 21st Amendment did not simply obliterate the Commerce Clause, the laws could nonetheless be justified by the twin goals of preventing minors' access to alcohol and ensuring that the states could collect taxes from out-of-state shippers.

Kathleen Sullivan, arguing for the 13 consumers who successfully challenged the Michigan law in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, pointed out that Michigan permits its 40 in-state wineries and 7,500 liquor retailers to make home deliveries. That showed "a pattern of exceptions that belies any implication" that the state's real goal was to protect minors, she said.

Ms. Sullivan, a professor and former dean at the Stanford Law School, said several states that permit direct shipments from out-of-state wineries tracked the taxes owed by requiring the wineries to obtain permits and report monthly.

Her points made an impact, and Justice David H. Souter observed to Mr. Casey, Michigan's lawyer: "Your opponents argue that there are no clear countervailing interests here, so by process of elimination you get down to nothing but protectionism. What's your answer?"

The law really does enable the state to protect minors, Mr. Casey replied.

"You say that, but how?" Justice Souter persisted.

Mr. Casey's response that state regulators could punish a state-licensed business left Justice Souter clearly unsatisfied.

The two state laws under review in Granholm v. Heald, No. 03-1116, the Michigan case, and Swedenburg v. Kelly, No. 03-1274, the New York case, are not identical. While Michigan flatly prohibits direct shipment by out-of-state wineries, New York theoretically permits it, as long as the winery maintains a physical presence in the state, including a warehouse to store its wines before sale. No out-of-state winery has qualified for this exception, and although the law has been on the books since 1970, the state has not issued the regulations necessary to make the exception operative.

Clint Bolick, arguing for the plaintiffs in the New York case - small wineries in Virginia and California, along with three New York wine drinkers - said small wineries could not afford to set up offices around the country as the price of reaching customers in other states.

"Our clients cannot compete with liquor distributors," Mr. Bolick said. "They can compete in the market. The Commerce Clause protects a level playing field."

He noted that of 3,000 wineries in the country, 600 sell their products in New York's retail liquor stores.

Mr. Bolick is strategic litigation counsel of the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm with libertarian leanings that began a campaign against the state laws several years ago. His lawsuit in New York succeeded in Federal District Court, but that ruling was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which took an expansive view of the 21st Amendment.

Mr. Bolick said the amendment should be understood to permit states to regulate alcohol "by one set of rules, not two." He added that New York was engaged "not in legitimate regulation, but in economic protectionism."

The Supreme Court's own view of the 21st Amendment has shifted over the years from one that was much like the states' position to one that has increasingly taken account of the Commerce Clause. In a 1984 case from Hawaii, Bacchus Imports Ltd. v. Dias, the court invalidated an exemption from a 20 percent excise tax the state gave to its local liquor industry.

"It is by now clear that the amendment did not entirely remove state regulation of alcoholic beverages from the ambit of the Commerce Clause," Justice Byron R. White said in his majority opinion, which concluded: "We are convinced that Hawaii's discriminatory tax cannot stand."

The Bacchus case was much discussed during the argument. The three dissenters in that case, Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor, along with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, are still on the court, while no member of the majority is. Nonetheless, there was no indication from Justices Stevens or O'Connor - Chief Justice Rehnquist was not in court because of his treatment for cancer - that they did not accept the Bacchus precedent as binding.

"If you can't grant a tax exemption," Justice Stevens said to Ms. Halligan, the New York lawyer, "it seems to me a fortiori that you can't prohibit importation."

When Mr. Casey, Michigan's lawyer, said the Bacchus decision was wrongly decided and should be overruled, Justice O'Connor responded: "It's a little hard to plan on overruling it, so why don't you address how to distinguish it, because it has a lot of language that cuts against you."

In addition to the states, the wineries and the wine drinkers, the wholesale liquor industry is acutely interested in the outcome. States regulate alcohol distribution by what is known as a three-tier system: producer to licensed wholesaler to licensed retailer. For the wholesalers, the stakes in this dispute are enormous. If consumers are enabled to buy directly from out-of-state producers, so, theoretically, might retailers be.

"Under the same rationale, the in-state licensing system has to fall," Justice Kennedy observed at one point.

Former NY Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik's Comments with Hugh Hewitt

Oct. 27th, 2004

" I think this is a campaign, {Election 2004}, where John Kerry is desperate. I think he is looking to say anything that will get him a vote, and he jumped right on these headlines yesterday by the New York Times, that there were 380 tons of weapons, of explosives missing, without realizing the facts You know . . . Keep in mind, and I know this broke last night, and it really hasn't got as much play as the Times' article yesterday, NBC had embedded reporters in with the 101st airborne when they went into that camp the day after the fall of Baghdad. The weapons were not there.


What John Kerry doesn't know or doesn't understand is that we seized more than 280,000 tons that were detonated already. We seized another 160,000 tons that are pending detonation. You know, Hugh, every day that I was in Iraq, every single day, for the four months I was there, every aftrenoon at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, there were massive explosions out by the international airport. It was the U.S. military blowing this stuff up. People have to realize that all of Iraq was a weapons cache. The whole country was saturated with explosives. And this is what President Bush meant when he talked about the threat. This was a part of that threat. We have been addressing the issue since we got there".

Note: I feel safer now that Kerik's in charge of the Dept. of Homeland Security, aren'tt you?

Another look at the Animal Farm
from e/Magazine

Down on the Filthy Farm
by Jim Motavalli

An investigative report in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer November 27 makes it plain why large corporate animal farms are terrible neighbors—and why communities that welcomed them in often regret their decision.

• Economic benefits illusory. In rural Paulding County, the 125,000 turkeys, 3,700 cows and 13,000 hogs far outnumber the 20,000 residents. And they don’t pay their way. Only 25 percent of the money from the county’s large dairies reaches the schools. A whopping 75 percent goes to road maintenance (not even covering the extensive damage done by transported cows). But Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Fred Dailey welcomes the big operators. “In Ohio, they’re all family farms,” he says. And all farms “are beneficial to us…if they operate in a manner that doesn’t cause environmental problems.” Oh, but they do cause environmental problems, say activists and, increasingly, public health officials.

• No local windfalls. Only about one percent of the grain used in the Paulding County dairies is bought locally, according to an Ohio State study. Few local residents work in the megafarms, because the pay at $7.50 an hour is too low. Instead, most of the jobs are filled with Mexican migrant workers.

• Mountains of manure. The biggest problem for local residents is the open lagoons of liquefied manure, which are frequently mismanaged. Three dairies in Paulding County have violated the Clean Water Act, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. For longtime residents like Bob and Diane Thornell, the coming of corporate hog farms means exile from their own 40-acre farm. Both have been diagnosed with brain damage. Ron and Vicki Kadesch were forced to abandon the 80-acre farm they’d lived on for 16 years after a 680-cow dairy farm (complete with manure storage lagoon) moved in nearby.

According to Farm Sanctuary, huge hog farms are the biggest problem. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that large farms now dominate the hog industry, with operations housing over 5,000 animals accounting for nearly three-quarters of U.S. pig production. “In 1994,” reports Farm Sanctuary from USDA figures, “73 percent of pigs raised in the U.S. were on small farms, and 27 percent were on large farms. In 2001, those numbers were switched, with 73 percent of pigs raised on large farms and 27 percent on small farms.” As the farms get bigger, they turn increasingly to intensive confinement systems, which crowd animals tightly together.

And the giant farms are a disaster all around. The Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) reports, “The livestock industry’s claim that a productive animal is, by nature, a healthy one is extremely deceptive. The reality is that drugs, hormones, and other chemicals are routinely administered to animals in intensive confinement systems to mask stress and disease and to speed growth. In addition, farm animals have been selectively bred for productivity at the expense of their well-being, and they quickly become worn out. Hundreds of thousands of these animals die every day. Physical disorders brought on by exhaustive production demands are common.

“What’s more,” HSUS adds, “dust and toxic gases accumulate in crowded, enclosed systems, causing respiratory diseases and death. Agricultural animal disease annually costs $17 billion in the U.S. Such huge losses are considered acceptable because factory farm profits depend on overall output and the optimal use of space and equipment—not on the well-being of individual animals.”

The large farms are a growing human health concern. The New York Times reports, “A growing number of scientists and public health officials around the country say they have traced a variety of health problems faced by neighbors of huge industrial farms to vast amounts of concentrated animal waste, which emit toxic gases while collecting in open-air cesspools or evaporating through sprays. The gases, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, are poisonous…Livestock trade officials and Bush administration regulators say more study is needed before any cause and effect can be proved. But Dr. Kaye H. Kilburn, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies the effects of toxic chemicals on the brain, said evidence strongly supported a link between the farms and the illnesses.”

Hog farms have their defenders, of course, including the Heartland and Hudson Institutes. Dennis and Alex Avery of the latter claim that corporate hog farms have not damaged North Carolina’s waterways. “Between 1985 and 1995, they report, “the hog population in [two North Carolina counties] increased tenfold, from 500,000 to 5.5 million animals. By 1997, this area accounted for 10 percent of the total U.S. swine inventory."

The Raleigh News & Observer ran a Pulitzer Prize-winning five-article series in 1995 titled, “Boss Hog: North Carolina’s Pork Revolution,” which raised concern about the “9.5 million tons” of hog waste coming from the “megalopolis of seven million animals that live in metal confinement barns” in eastern North Carolina. But the two Averys, citing Duke University studies, say that “there is still no evidence whatsoever that water quality has gotten worse in North Carolina.” By suppressing the results of these studies, they charge, “the government of North Carolina effectively stole the great economic opportunity of hog farm expansion from some of its poorest citizens.”

But South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux have also realized that the revenue from corporate hog farms isn’t worth the pollution that comes with it. According to a report in Agribusiness Examiner, the Sioux were triumphant last year after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved with the tribe’s rejection of what would have been the third-largest hog farm in the world, sucking up 1.7 million gallons of water from the Ogalalla Aquifer daily. What’s more, an appeals panel determined that Bell Farms was without legal standing to continue operation on the reservation, meaning that 48,000 hogs and their waste were to be moved off the reservation. Native American activist Winona LaDuke calls this “the first such industrial plant closure in history.” But it probably won’t be the last.

Jobs still are a problem area.

Far Fewer Jobs Were Added in November Than Forecast
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
NY Times
Published: December 4, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The economy added 112,000 payroll jobs in November, far fewer than the month before and not enough to keep up with average increases in the adult population, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The gain was well below Wall Street forecasts, and employment in manufacturing was flat for the third consecutive month. The modest pace of job creation, along with a small decline in the number of hours worked, reinforced the image of an economy that is expanding more slowly and in which companies remain skittish about hiring more people.

Many analysts were stunned last month when the government reported a spectacular jump of 337,000 jobs in October. But on Friday, many said that last month's jump was mostly an aberration from the more enduring trend of slow growth in jobs and wages.

The report cast a shadow on expectations for holiday spending this year, given that consumers face higher gasoline and heating prices without much rise in real personal income.

Three years after the last recession officially ended in November 2001, the rebound in jobs remains slower than in any previous economic recovery since World War II. Unemployment inched down by 0.1 percent last month, to 5.4 percent, but the United States still has at least 200,000 fewer jobs than it did before the recession began. At the same time, the adult population has grown by about 4 million.

So far this year, the economy has added about 2 million jobs, an average of about 185,000 jobs a month. Economists estimate that the nation needs to generate about 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with the increase in population, which means that employment is keeping slightly ahead of job seekers.

An IBM-PC, eh? Is that what you want?

I.B.M. Said to Put Its PC Business on the Market
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and STEVE LOHR
NY Times
Published: December 3, 2004

International Business Machines, whose first I.B.M. PC in 1981 moved personal computing out of the hobby shop and into the corporate and consumer mainstream, has put the business up for sale, people close to the negotiations said yesterday.

While I.B.M. long ago ceded the lead in the personal computer market to Dell and Hewlett-Packard so it could focus instead on the more lucrative corporate server and computer services business, a sale would nonetheless bring the end of an era in an industry that it helped invent. The sale, likely to be in the $1 billion to $2 billion range, is expected to include the entire range of desktop, laptop and notebook computers made by I.B.M.

The retreat from the business may be the ultimate acknowledgement that the personal computer has become a staple of everyday life, a commodity product, yielding very slim profits. The companies that make the most money from PC's these days are Microsoft and Intel - whose software and chips are the standard for most of the personal computers sold, regardless of the maker.

According to the people close to the negotiations, I.B.M. is in serious discussions with Lenovo, China's largest maker of personal computers, and at least one other potential buyer for the unit. Lenovo was formerly known as Legend.

A spokesman for I.B.M., Edward Barbini, said last night, "I.B.M. has a policy of not confirming or denying rumors."

If I.B.M.'s personal computer business ends up being sold to Lenovo, it would continue the migration of high-technology manufacturing to China and Taiwan.

In the 23 years since I.B.M. lent its prowess in mainframe computers to the production of desktop machines, it has been widely criticized for having destined the machines to commodity status by giving Microsoft and Intel the rights to those essential standards. And although Apple Computer holds less than 4 percent of the personal computing market worldwide, it has been able to command relatively high prices and richer profits because it has controlled the software and hardware that goes into its machines.

A sale of the personal computer business would be a step away from I.B.M.'s traditional emphasis on the size of its revenue as a measure of its corporate power. The PC business represents about 12 percent of I.B.M.'s annual revenue of $92 billion.

For nearly a decade, though, some industry analysts have urged I.B.M. to get out of that business as it made only a modest profit or lost money. For this year, analysts have expected a pretax profit of less than $100 million.

I.B.M. executives long resisted that course, arguing that personal computers were technology products its corporate customers wanted. It held on to the business on the theory that it helped hold on to customers.

But in the most recent quarter, I.B.M. ranked a distant third in worldwide PC sales, with 5.6 percent of the market, according to Gartner, the market research firm. Dell was the leader with 16.8 percent of the world market, and Hewlett-Packard, which has absorbed Compaq Computer, had 15 percent.

A sale now, if it happens, would be consistent with the strategy pursued by Samuel J. Palmisano, who became I.B.M.'s chief executive early in 2002. He has sold hardware businesses where profits were slender and growth prospects were limited, like its hard disk drive business, which was sold to Hitachi.

Instead, Mr. Palmisano has bet on expanding the company's services business, automating a full array of operations - from product design to sales-order processing - for corporate customers. I.B.M. now casts itself as a company that does not simply sell technology but serves as a consulting partner to help its customers use technology to increase the efficiency and competitiveness of their businesses. As part of that strategy, he bought PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting for $3.5 billion, in a deal that closed in October 2002.

"Palmisano's getting out of businesses that aren't growth opportunities and concentrating on what I.B.M. does best," said Mark Stahlman, an analyst at Carris & Company. "PC's are not where the growth is."

To trim costs, I.B.M. has steadily retreated from the manufacture of its PC's. In January 2002, it sold its desktop PC manufacturing operations in the Untied States and Europe to Sanmina-SCI, based in San Jose, Calif. I.B.M. now confines its role in PC's to design and product development out of its offices in Raleigh, N.C., with all the I.B.M.-brand desktop or notebook computers made by contract manufacturers around the world.

Leslie Fiering, a research vice president at Gartner, has predicted consolidation in the PC industry over the next few years.

"Exiting the market may be the only logical choice for global vendors bleeding profits and struggling for share," she wrote in a recent research report. And she noted that Hewlett-Packard, a broad-based technology company where PC's are only part of a much larger business, might face pressures similar to I.B.M.'s.

"The PC divisions of H. P. and I.B.M." Ms. Fiering wrote, "are vulnerable to being spun off if their drag on margins and profitability are deemed too great by their parent companies."

In the meantime, she said, Asian vendors like Lenovo "appear well positioned to leverage their strong local-market standing and low-cost operating models into a global presence."

Asia has increasingly become a major hub for technology manufacturing. More and more chip making is done in the contract factories, like Taiwan Semiconductor, and at new foundries in China.

Still, in the semiconductor industry, Intel and I.B.M. still have big factories in the United States, and Advanced Micro Devices, Intel's most prominent rival in chip making, has a leading-edge plant in Germany.

Personal computer making has followed the same path to Asia, especially in the case of notebook machines made in China and Taiwan. Lenovo has had long ties with I.B.M. It got its start in 1984 as a distributor of personal computers from I.B.M. and AST, the Taiwan PC maker.

" Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand, strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, `WOO HOO --- what a ride!' " -from Steve Sutton-

The UCC National Office Responds to Concerns
about the Still Speaking Ad

Only recently did United Church of Christ learn of networks' ultimate
refusal of church ads

In March, disputed television ad ran -- without incident -- on many CBS, NBC
affiliates

For immediate release
Dec. 2, 2004

CLEVELAND -- Despite recent statements by CBS and NBC executives that, earlier this year, their networks made clear that they would reject a television ad by the United Church of Christ for being "too controversial," church leaders disagree. Media buyers had no difficulty placing the ads on NBC and CBS stations during the campaign's test-market phase.

In March, after networks had expressed their non-approval to media buyers, the UCC's 30-second spot was placed - without incident - on numerous stations in six test markets, including the markets' six NBC network affiliates and five of six CBS affiliates. (The test markets included Tampa / St. Petersburg, Fla.; Raleigh / Durham, N.C., Lancaster / York, Pa., Cleveland / Akron / Canton, Ohio; Springfield / Holyoke, Mass., and Oklahoma City.)

"The networks clearly offered mixed signals," says the Rev. Robert Chase of the UCC's communication ministry. "At no time were we under the impression that the networks' decisions were final. Our understanding was that such
negotiations between media buyers and networks were not unusual and were nothing to be concerned about. From the church's viewpoint, we simply could not believe that this advertisement would be considered controversial or issue-oriented, because quite clearly it is not."

Chase says that media buyers heard the networks' reservations earlier this year, but when the church had no difficulty placing the ads on the networks' stations, it appeared that the rejections were not solid. Chase says the local affiliates' non-objection, coupled with the lack of controversy generated in the test markets, led media buyers to assure church leaders that they would have little problem getting network approval in time for the Dec. 1 national release.

On Nov. 30, the day before the ads began airing nationally, the United Church of Christ learned that the two networks' decisions were final. Larry Hollon, who leads the national advertising effort for The United Methodist Church, said yesterday (Dec. 1), the networks' rejection of the UCC's ad was baseless, even "chilling."

"The reasons given by the networks for rejecting this message should bring a chill to everyone who supports freedom of religious expression because they are saying that a fundamental tenet of Christian belief is politically
unacceptable for the public dialogue," Hollon told his denomination's newspaper, the United Methodist Reporter. "The belief that God loves every person without condition is so basic to Christian teaching that if a denomination cannot make this assertion what can it say? Such decisions shut out the Christian community from the national conversation."

"How ironic that a gentle message of inclusion is considered unacceptable while ads for beer are accepted and programs in which people eat insects and worms are considered entertaining," Hollon said. "In a divided and fearful
world this message is not only needed. It could lead to healing."

The disputed ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

The debut 30-second spot features two muscle-bound "bouncers" standing guard outside a fabled, picturesque church and selecting which persons are permitted to attend Sunday services. Written text interrupts the scene,
announcing, "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we." A narrator then proclaims the United Church of Christ's commitment to Jesus' extravagant welcome: "No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are
welcome here." (The ad can be viewed online at www.stillspeaking.com.)

In focus groups and test market research conducted before the campaign's national rollout, the UCC found that many people throughout the country feel alienated by churches. The television ad is geared toward those persons who,
for whatever reason, have not felt welcomed or comfortable in a church.

But, according to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples, among other minority constituencies, and is, therefore, too "controversial."

God is Still Speaking !
More on the United Church of Christ Ad...

Globe and Mail
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | December 2, 2004

Two broadcast networks are refusing to air an ad from the United Church of Christ because the spot, intended to make the point that the Protestant denomination is welcoming, briefly shows two men who are holding hands being turned away from an unnamed church.

CBS and NBC both described the spot as too controversial. In a letter to the denomination, a CBS official said, ''Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact that the Executive Branch [the Bush Administration] has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast."

The United Church of Christ has 1.3 million members nationally and 94,000 in Massachusetts. Like other mainline Protestant denominations, it has been struggling with declining membership, and the national church is launching an advertising campaign in an effort to reach out to people who do not go to church.

In an interview yesterday, the president of research for NBC, Alan Wurtzel, said the spot ''violated a longstanding policy of NBC, which is that we don't permit commercials to deal with issues of public controversy." Wurtzel, who is in charge of broadcast standards at the network, said such issues should be handled by the news department and not in advertising.

''The problem is not that it depicted gays, but that it suggested clearly that there are churches that don't permit a variety of individuals to participate," Wurtzel said. ''If they would make it just a positive message -- 'we're all-inclusive' -- we'd have no problem with that spot."

A CBS spokesman, Dana McClintock, said, ''We have a longstanding policy of not accepting advocacy advertising."

Earlier this year, CBS rejected a Super Bowl ad critical of President Bush produced by MoveOn.org.

In the letter from the CBS official to the United Church of Christ, the network said it refuses advertising that ''touches on and/or takes a position on one side of a current controversial issue of public importance."

McClintock did not specify what CBS believes the church ad is advocating, but the network's letter cited the depiction of the exclusion of gays and minorities and said, ''in our view, this commercial does proselytize," which violates another network prohibition against proselytizing for ''any single religion."

That reasoning was rejected by church officials and their supporters.

''All ads are advocacy; what else is an advertisement if not an opportunity to advocate for your toothpaste or your cause?" said the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, president of the Massachusetts conference of the United Church of Christ, the largest Protestant denomination in the state. ''The ads are about hospitality and a wide welcome. And how that is controversial -- I find that extraordinary. We are stunned."

Taylor said the ad is not intended to criticize other denominations. She said she showed the ad to members of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of Protestant and Orthodox churches, where it drew no criticism.

Homosexuality is one of the most hotly debated subjects in the world of religion. Some denominations -- including the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and Reform Judaism -- support same-sex marriage, which became legal in Massachusetts this year. Others, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many evangelical Protestant and Orthodox Christian churches, oppose homosexual activity.

NBC and CBS said they had accepted another spot from the United Church of Christ that did not show people being turned away from a church.

The ABC broadcast network does not accept any religious advertising, but the company accepted the spot for airing on ABC Family, a cable channel.

The FOX broadcasting network has accepted the spot.

''The spot that was submitted meets with our standards," said spokesman Scott Grogin.

The ad was test-marketed in the spring in several markets, including Springfield, where it aired on network affiliates, including WWLP-TV (Channel 22), an NBC affiliate.

''There was not a bit" of controversy, said the Rev. Ian R. Lynch, pastor of First Congregational Church in Brimfield. ''There's nothing overt in the ad that says anything about homosexuality, and now that's what seems to be the big issue. We're wanting to be hospitable, and it's a sad statement that that's controversial."

The rejected ad is a 30-second spot that depicts two burly male bouncers standing guard outside a church and choosing who will be allowed to pass a velvet rope and enter. Among those turned away are two men holding hands and several nonwhite people.

The ad's text says: ''Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we." It then cuts to a scene of an ethnically diverse crowd of smiling people, including two women, one of whom has her hand on the other's shoulder, as a voice-over says: ''The United Church of Christ. No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here."

The ad makes no printed or verbal mention of homosexuality.

''Network television does not like controversy," said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. ''They don't want to do anything that could possibly incite boycotts or advertiser pullouts. And I could see why network TV would be uncomfortable airing an ad with a benign message, because what happens when a less benign message, perhaps from a fringe religious group, comes along?"

CBS and NBC notified the United Church of Christ of their concerns about the spots in February and March. The denomination says it has been attempting since then to negotiate with the networks, but the denomination also chose to make the rejections public yesterday, on the same day it launched its national campaign to shore up its identity.

The spots will air on multiple cable channels and could air on local network affiliates. The campaign also has radio and print components highlighting the denomination's desire to welcome newcomers.

Half of the 424 United Church of Christ congregations in Massachusetts have signed up to promote the campaign by placing ads in local publications or placing lawn signs or banners at their churches. Old South Church, in Copley Square, hopes to place ads in MBTA stations.

''We're running the ads in the Arlington Advocate and on local Comcast and on regional RCN," said the Rev. Lisa W. Stedman, interim minister at Pleasant Street Congregational Church in Arlington, referring to the same spot rejected by the networks. ''I'm stunned that the networks think this is too controversial, given the wide array of things that they do run on television."

The network rejection drew fire from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry, a Massachusetts group of clergy and congregations supporting same-sex marriage, which called the rejection ''an attack on freedom of religion in this country and [an] outrageous case of censorship."

''How are gay and lesbian people to secure equal rights if the television stations refuse to allow them to be depicted partaking in the most elementary aspects of our society, such as attending worship services?" asked Rabbi Devon Lerner, coalition cochairman. ''Ironically, while CBS and NBC consider gay families entering churches to be too controversial to air, CBS and NBC have no problem airing misleading stereotypes of gays and lesbians in sitcoms and airing sensational clips of gays and lesbians during news features."

Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American Way Foundation, issued a statement declaring, ''It is beyond troubling, it is downright dangerous that the American ideal of inclusion is too 'controversial' for a network news broadcast because it conflicts with the political agenda of the White House."

A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission said the networks are within their rights to reject the ad.

''There are no FCC rules on advertising, with the exception of indecency," said David Fiske, the FCC spokesman. ''The networks have always had some form of department that deals with advertising and program standards, and they make those decisions."

But the rejections occurred as the networks are particularly sensitive to criticism.

''We live in extremely delicate media times right now, and I think that the networks are under more scrutiny than ever before," said J. Max Robins, editor-in-chief of Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

Gee...who would benefit from a DDos attack on BitTorrent?

BitTorrent servers under attack
Robert Lemos, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: December 1, 2004

A flood of data has hammered several of the tracking servers for BitTorrent downloads, according to LokiTorrent, a Torrent network hub.

The attacks apparently targeted the central BitTorrent directories used by people to find movies, music and other content on the file-swapping network, according to information posted Wednesday on LokiTorrent, a BitTorrent tracking Web site.

"We had a massive DDoS attack lasting almost 10 hours today," said the posting on the site. "It seems we were not alone in this attack, as many other torrent sites also fell victim to them. Us being up again does not mean these attacks may not happen again, but at least it means we had taken steps to prevent further attacks."

BitTorrent technology lets people download files from several member computers in a peer-to-peer network. Once a fragment of a file is cached on a PC, that machine then makes it available to other users, to speed downloads. Though distribution is shared, the technology still relies on central tracking servers to direct a downloader's software to different pieces of a file, which could be hosted on several users' PCs.

The distributed nature of BitTorrent makes the technology somewhat harder to attack but also makes defending the tracking servers that much more important.

This is not the first time online attackers have focused on distributed technologies. Web site caching service Akamai was hit by a massive data attack earlier this year.

It is unknown how widely the BitTorrent attack affected other networks. Neither a representative of LokiTorrent nor the creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen, could immediately be reached for comment.

CBS, NBC refuse to air church's television advertisement
From powellb@ucc.org
Date Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:32:49 -0500

United Church of Christ
Barb Powell, press contact
(216) 736-2175
powellb@ucc.org
http://www.ucc.org

For immediate release
Nov. 30, 2004

CBS, NBC refuse to air church's television advertisement

United Church of Christ ad highlighting Jesus' extravagant welcome called 'too controversial'

CLEVELAND -- The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."

The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ (UCC) seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial."

"It's ironic that after a political season awash in commercials based on fear and deception by both parties seen on all the major networks, an ad with a message of welcome and inclusion would be deemed too controversial," says the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president. "What's going on here?"

Negotiations between network officials and the church's representatives broke down today (Nov. 30), the day before the ad campaign begins airing nationwide on a combination of broadcast and cable networks. The ad has been accepted and will air on a number of networks, including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, History, Nick@Nite, TBS, TNT, Travel and TV Land, among others.

The debut 30-second commercial features two muscle-bound "bouncers" standing guard outside a symbolic, picturesque church and selecting which persons are permitted to attend Sunday services. Written text interrupts the scene, announcing, "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we." A narrator then proclaims the United Church of Christ's commitment to Jesus' extravagant welcome: "No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here." (The ad can be viewed online at www.stillspeaking.com )

In focus groups and test market research conducted before the campaign's national rollout, the UCC found that many people throughout the country feel alienated by churches. The television ad is geared toward those persons who, for whatever reason, have not felt welcomed or comfortable in a church.

"We find it disturbing that the networks in question seem to have no problem exploiting gay persons through mindless comedies or titillating dramas, but when it comes to a church's loving welcome of committed gay couples, that's where they draw the line," says the Rev. Robert Chase, director of the UCC's communication ministry.

CBS and NBC's refusal to air the ad "recalls the censorship of the 1950s and 1960s, when television station WLBT in Jackson, Miss., refused to show people of color on TV," says Ron Buford, coordinator for the United Church of Christ identity campaign. Buford, of African-American heritage, says, "In the 1960s, the issue was the mixing of the races. Today, the issue appears to be sexual orientation. In both cases, it's about exclusion."

In 1959, the Rev. Everett C. Parker organized United Church of Christ members to monitor the racist practices of WLBT. Like many southern television stations at the time, WLBT had imposed a news blackout on the growing civil rights movement, pulling the plug on then-attorney Thurgood Marshall. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. implored the UCC to get involved in the media civil rights issues. Parker, founding director of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, organized churches and won in federal court a ruling that the airwaves are public, not private property. That decision ultimately led to an increase in the number of persons of color in television studios and newsrooms. The suit clearly established that television and radio stations, as keepers of the public airwaves, must broadcast in the public interest.

"The consolidation of TV network ownership into the hands of a few executives today puts freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression in jeopardy," says former FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani, currently managing director of the UCC's Office of Communication. "By refusing to air the United Church of Christ's paid commercial, CBS and NBC are stifling religious expression. They are denying the communities they serve a suitable access to differing ideas and expressions."

Adds Andrew Schwartzman, president and CEO of the not-for-profit Media Access Project in Washington, D.C., "This is an abuse of the broadcasters' duty to inform their viewers on issues of importance to the community. After all, these stations don't mind carrying shocking, attention-getting programming, because they do that every night."

The United Church of Christ's national offices -- located in Cleveland -- speak to, but not for, its nearly 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members. In the spirit of the denomination's rich tradition, UCC congregations remain autonomous, but also strongly in covenant with each other and with the denomination's regional and national bodies.

CORPORATE POWER
& BROADBAND ACCESS

American
Progress Report: Dec. 1st, 2004

Verizon's Villainy

In an attempt to bridge the digital divide and enhance their economic prospects, cities across the nation, including Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis and Philadelphia, are planning to deploy universal low-cost wireless Internet access. Meanwhile, moneyed telecommunications corporations and their army of lobbyists are doing everything in their power to ensure it doesn't happen. In Pennsylvania, for example, the legislature passed a bill with a deeply buried provision – inserted after intensive lobbying by Verizon Communications – which would make it illegal for any city or other "political subdivision" in the state to provide low-cost Internet access to its citizens unless a corporation like Verizon gave them permission. Gov. Ed Rendell has until midnight tonight to sign or veto the legislation. Email Gov. Rendell and tell him he should stand up to corporate lobbyists and veto the bill.

VERIZON'S OFFENSIVE PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFENSIVE: Eager to squelch what is quickly becoming a public relations disaster, Verizon said yesterday that it is considering allowing Philadelphia to deploy its wireless network even if the bill is signed into law. This is a transparent effort to tamp down the controversy while still enabling the company to "handcuff other cities and towns in Pennsylvania." For example, a Verizon representative refused to say whether the company would allow the town of Kutztown, PA to go ahead with plans to offer broadband Internet access over wires. More broadly, the citizens of Pennsylvania – not multinational corporations – should be in charge of their government.

THE $3 BILLION CORPORATE GIVEAWAY: The language restricting cities from providing low-cost Internet access was a just a small provision in "a 30-page bill drafted by industry lobbyists." While restricting competition, the bill provides massive giveaways for telecommunication companies to roll out broadband networks. These provisions are worth as much as $3 billion to Verizon alone.

THE BROAD EFFORT TO KILL LOW-COST INTERNET ACCESS: The movement to restrict low-cost broadband Internet access are not limited to Verizon's efforts in Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, BellSouth and Qwest Communications pushed for "severe restrictions on municipal broadband service in Louisiana and Utah." (For more on these corporations' cynical efforts to limit low-cost wireless internet access, check out freepress.net.)

CORPORATE BROADBAND ACCESS LEAVES MIDDLE CLASS BEHIND: Broadband Internet access is "destined to become this century's basic infrastructure – what highways, water systems and power grids were to the last century's development." But corporate control of broadband development has excluded most of the middle class. Among those living in households earning $150,000 and above, nearly 60 percent have broadband Internet access. But among those living in households earning between $25,000 and $34,999, just 13.4 percent have broadband access. Barbara Grant, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street, said the city's efforts were intended "to bridge the digital divide for residents who wouldn't have access to the Internet, particularly school children."

MUNICIPAL INTERNET ACCESS IS COST EFFECTIVE: In Philadelphia, planners estimate that offering city-wide wireless Internet access will cost taxpayers $10 million to set up and $1.5 million a year to operate. Commercial broadband access provided by companies like Verizon typically costs from $35 to $60 a month. That means if Verizon were to provide broadband access to all 590,000 Philly households, it would charge at least $247 million a
year, (but more likely at $50/month the commercial providers would charge
$354 million a year !!)