GALLERY: MUSEUM OF BAD ART

EMENDATION

READER Charles Andrews points out that we miscalculated the number of projected newly insured in our analysis of the CBO healthcare report. For non-Medicaid/CHIP recipients there would be an increase of 16 million, not 7 million as we said.

WHERE THE REPUBLICANS WENT TO CONNECT WITH THE PEOPLE

A little late in the news cycle but worth catching up on. . .

YOU DON'T WANT US TO ACTUALLY ANALYZE THE BILL BEFORE APPROVING IT?

Excerpt from a letter sent from chief actuary of the Department of Health & Human Services to GOP Senator McConnell.
 
Dear Senator McConnell:

This letter is in preliminary response to your inquiry of March 19 requesting an updated analysis by the Office of the Actuary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (as passed by the Senate) as it would be modified by the "Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation Act of 2010" (as released by the House Committee on Rules on March 18). The request was made jointly by yourself and 10 other members of the House and Senate Republican Leadership.

In your letter, you requested that we provide the updated actuarial estimates in time for your review prior to the expected House debate and vote on this legislation on March 21,2010. I regret that my staff and I will not be able to prepare our analysis within this very tight time frame, due to the complexity of the legislation. We will, however, continue working to estimate the financial, coverage, and other impacts of the health reform package and will provide these results to you as quickly as possible.

THE TIGER WOODS SIDE MARKET

EURWEB - A number of Tiger Woods sex toys have been created in the wake of his cheating scandal, and the golfer's lawyers have apparently had enough. One of the companies, Pipedream Products, just got a letter from Tiger's attorney demanding that it stop using the golf star's image to sell its line of sex toys. . . including blow-up Tiger dolls, giant condoms and a number of other devices.

WACHOVIA TO PAY $160 MILLION FOR LAUNDERING DRUG MONEY

NY TIMES - The Wachovia Bank, a unit of Wells Fargo, has agreed to pay $160 million to settle a federal criminal case accusing it of laundering Mexican drug money, Reuters reports.

Under the agreement, Wachovia will forfeit $110 million, representing the proceeds of illegal narcotics sales that were laundered through the bank, the United States attorney's office in the Southern District of Florida said. The bank will pay an additional $50 million fine to the Treasury Department.

REUTERS - "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations by laundering at least $110 million in drug proceeds," the United States attorney, Jeffrey Sloman, said Wednesday.

REASONS NOT TO STAY AT HYATT

BOSTON GLOBE - Hyatt has sold the Hyatt Regency Boston, one of the three local Hyatt hotels that fired their entire housekeeping staffs last year and replaced them with lower-paid subcontracted workers. The Chesapeake Lodging Trust, a lodging real estate investment trust of which Hyatt has a 4.9 percent ownership stake, purchased the 498-room property for $112 million, but Hyatt will continue to manage the hotel under the Hyatt Regency flag.

The Boston property has been the focus of a boycott organized by Unite Here Local 26, the hospitality workers union that is supporting the 98 fired housekeepers, who were not part of the union. The union estimates that the boycott has pulled $1 million worth of business from the downtown hotel, as well as $1 million from the other two area Hyatts, in Cambridge and at Logan International Airport.

RECOVERED HISTORY: SALVADORE ALLENDE'S INTERNET

METAFILTER - Cybersyn (or Synco, in Spanish) was computer network constructed in 1970 by an English/Chilean team headed by cyberneticist Stafford Beer (his papers). Cybersyn was an electronic nervous system for the Chilean economy, linking together mines, factories and so on, to better manage production and give workers a clear idea of what was in demand and where. The network was destroyed by the army after the 1973 coup. Later that year Stafford Beer drew upon the lessons of Cybersyn to write Fanfare for Effective Freedom, a eulogy for Allende and Cybersyn, and Designing Freedom, a series of six lectures he gave for CBC, outlining his ideas. Besides the first link in this post, the best place to start is this Guardian article from 2003. If you want to go more in-depth, read Eden Medina's Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile. And if nothing else, just take a look at the amazing Cybersyn control room.

GUARDIAN, 2003 -When the Allende administration was deposed in a military coup, the 30th anniversary of which falls this Thursday, exactly how far Beer and his British and Chilean collaborators had got in constructing their hi-tech utopia was soon forgotten. In the many histories of the endlessly debated, frequently mythologised Allende period, Project Cybersyn hardly gets a footnote. Yet the personalities involved, the amount they achieved, the scheme's optimism and ambition and perhaps, in the end, its impracticality, contain important truths about the most tantalising leftwing government of the late 20th century.

11,000 MILES IN A BOAT MADE OF 12,000 BOTTLES

BBC - A boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles has set sail on a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney to spread awareness about pollution in the world's oceans.

Environmentalist and banking heir David De Rothschild and a crew set out on the appropriately named Plastiki catamaran.

Their 11,000-nautical mile journey will go past the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a sea of waste about five times the size of the UK or twice that of Texas.

Four out of five plastic bottles end up in a landfill, according to the UN.

"It is time we beat waste and this is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue that needs to be addressed," Mr De Rothschild told the BBC earlier this month.

The 31-year-old adventurer, who has completed expeditions to both poles and various jungles, was already tweeting on Saturday, hours after the boat set sail on its three-month voyage.

"Traveling 2.0 Knots ummm! That's a lot of ocean ahead!" he said on his Twitter page. "Just saw our first bit marine debris - a plastic cup!"

FROM THE TWITTER LOG

Travelling 2.0 Knots ummm! That's a lot of ocean ahead! Big trawler not far ahead of us! just saw our first bit marine debris a plastic cup!

Little drama got caught up on a crab pot had to get under the boat to free up the rudder! First night action! Hard to see em until they onya

REASONS TO AVOID NYC: YOU MIGHT GET A TICKET FOR LOUNGING OVER TWO SEATS IN A NEAR EMPTY SUBWAY CAR

AN AUTOPSY OF ACORN

FEDERAL EDUCATION TAKEOVER FLUNKS ITS OWN TEST

USA TDOAY - The basic math and reading skills of USA students have slowly, surely improved over the past 30 to 40 years, new findings show, with sharp increases among many of the nation's lowest-performing students - especially in the past four years.

The bad news? Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, find that the stubborn, decades-long achievement gap between white and minority students shrank between the 1970s and the first part of this decade, but has barely budged since 2002, when the federal government compelled public schools to address it through No Child Left Behind .

In a few cases the gap has actually grown since 2002, according to NAEP.

Overall scores have risen across the board since then, with an average three-point gain on a 500-point scale - and 10 points since the 1970s.

But the results also show that gaps in reading between white and black 17-year-olds, which shrank 26 points from 1971 to 2004, actually grew by two points in 2008. In math, the black-white gap shrank 13 points between 1978 and 2004, but was essentially unchanged in 2008.

Results were equally flat on the Hispanic-white achievement gap, the findings show.

For more than a decade, states have focused on shrinking skills gaps between ethnic and socio-economic groups. In 2002, Washington explicitly pushed schools to address the problem, requiring them to improve scores in annual math and reading tests through No Child Left Behind, the congressionally mandated school reform law that is now up for reauthorization.

ONLINE READERS DON'T WANT TO PAY

WASHINGTON POST - Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," a new consumer survey suggests.

That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday.

The project's report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site.

About 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a favorite site that they check each day. The others are essentially free agents, the project said. Even among those who have their favorites, only 19 percent said they would be willing to pay for news online - including those who already do.

There's little brand loyalty: 82 percent of people with preferred news sites said they'd look elsewhere if their favorites start demanding payment.

"If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surmount significant consumer resistance," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, part of the Pew Research Center.

Last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002, according to the research firm eMarketer. Four of five Americans surveyed told the project that they never or hardly ever click on ads.

Despite a lot of choices, traffic on news sites tends to be concentrated on the biggest - Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN, AOL and The New York Times.

"There was this view that we're retreating into our own world of niche sites and that's not true," Rosenstiel said.

GROWING MOVEMENT FOR PUBLICLY OWNED BANKS

3.5 MILLION DIE EACH YEAR BECAUSE OF POLLUTED WATER

ALTERNET - The devastating earthquake in Haiti last January claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, making it one of the biggest single natural disasters this year.

But in contrast, some 3.6 million people - including 1.5 million children - are estimated to die each year from water-related diseases, including diarrhea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery. . .

A study by the Joint Monitoring Programme of the World Health Organisation and the U.N. children's agency UNICEF provided current trends on water and sanitation in 209 countries and territories worldwide.

STORES SPYING ON CUSTOMERS' BUYING HABITS

NY TIMES - The curvy mannequin piqued the interest of a couple of lanky teenage boys. Little did they know that as they groped its tight maroon shirt in the clothing store that day, video cameras were rolling.

At a mall, a father emerged from a store dragging his unruly young son by the scruff of the neck, as if he were the family cat. The man had no idea his parenting skills were being immortalized.

At an office supply store, a mother decided to get an item from a high shelf by balancing her small child on her shoulders, unaware that she, too, was being recorded.

These scenes may seem like random shopping bloopers, but they are meaningful to stores that are striving to engineer a better experience for the consumer, and ultimately, higher sales for themselves. Such clips, retailers say, can help them find solutions to problems in their stores - by installing seating and activity areas to mollify children, for instance, or by lowering shelves so merchandise is within easy reach.

Privacy advocates, though, are troubled by the array of video cameras, motion detectors and other sensors monitoring the nation's shopping aisles.

Many stores and the consultants they hire are using the gear not to catch shoplifters but to analyze and to manipulate consumer behavior. And while taping shoppers is legal, critics say it is unethical to observe people as if they were lab rats. They are concerned that the practices will lead to an even greater invasion of privacy, particularly facial recognition technology, which is already in the early stages of deployment.

Companies that employ this technology say it is used strictly to determine characteristics like age and gender, which help them discover how different people respond to various products. But privacy advocates fear that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will eventually cross the line and be used to identify individual consumers and gather more detailed information on them.

THE EXTREMIST CENTER

FAIR - On his weekend NBC show, Chris Matthews regularly posts a question to 12 regular pundit/journalists--what he calls "The Matthews Meter." This Sunday the question was: "Should Obama Move to the Center Instead of the Left as a Reelection Strategy?"

Matthews explained it on the show: "Let's go to the bottom line. We took it to The Matthews Meter, 12 of our regulars. What's the smartest political route for Obama right now, play to the center or to the left? Well, no contest here. Eleven say play to the center; just one says go left."

That's about as clear a statement of the political bias of the corporate press corps as you're likely to see. The advice for Democrats is always the same-- move to the right.

FAIR - Broadcasting & Cable spoke with the head of PBS's flagship New York station about the recent hire of Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former MTV and NPR host Alison Stewart for PBS's forthcoming program Need to Know, which is replacing Now and the Bill Moyers Journal:

WNET president Neal Shapiro . . . said he is not concerned that Stewart and Meacham, who has been a frequent guest on Charlie Rose as well as MSNBC's Morning Joe, will bring ideological baggage to the program.

"They are both are incredibly smart. And I think, given their intellect, neither are people you can pigeonhole left or right. I think they have a history of asking probing questions on all sides."

"Given their intellect" they can't be placed on the left or the right? Yeah, smart people are all centrists. . .

KERRY, LIEBERMAN, GRAHAM WORKING ON LIMITING EPA AND STATE AUTHORITY OVER GREENHOUSE GAS CONTROL

NY TIMES - Some Democratic senators and state and local air regulators are concerned that the latest draft of a Senate climate and energy bill would unduly strip authority from U.S. EPA and states.

Details emerged earlier this week that draft legislation from Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) would curb EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and would limit states' climate laws and regulations. But that decision is not sitting well with some Democrats. . .

An industry official who met Wednesday in a closed-door session with architects of the bill said the legislation would block EPA from requiring New Source Review and Title V operating permits from stationary sources based on their greenhouse gas emissions. The draft would also block the agency from regulating greenhouse gases as air toxics and from setting nationwide emission limits -- known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards -- based on the emissions' effects on climate change, that person said. Additionally, it would pre-empt state and regional cap-and-trade programs.

Industries are eager to streamline any forthcoming climate rules under a consistent federal program.

"We believe there should be one uniform congressional policy on greenhouse gases -- not state by state, not overlapping with other environmental requirements -- one program," the industry official said.

But state regulators are wary that the draft bill could overly restrict their authority.

"I hope the sponsors, in pursuing support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industrial groups, have not crossed the line on pre-emption," said Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Becker's group represents state and local air pollution control agencies nationwide.

"Climate change is such a monumental problem that action at all levels -- local, state and federal -- is essential if we are serious about achieving our ultimate goals," Becker added. "Future climate legislation should build upon this successful partnership, not supplant it, and preserve the rights of state and local governments to take more stringent actions where needed."

Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, said his group would oppose Clean Air Act limitations. "I think if there are Clean Air Act pre-emptions in it, it's a deal-killer," Snape said. "We're going to go after it as hard as we know how."

Snape's group has been a vocal proponent of preserving EPA's Clean Air Act authorities under any climate legislation. The organization was also among 26 environmental groups that sent a letter (pdf) to senators this week urging them to oppose a bill sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) that seeks to postpone EPA climate rules for stationary sources for two years.

WHAT'S REALLY IN THE HEALTHCARE BILL?

Sam Smith

As noted here before, the healthcare bill is a horrible mixture of the good and the bad. Because, in the end, it will improve healthcare for many people, it is probably best to pass it and deal with its problems later, but it still remains in large part a god awful measure. Here's a rundown on some of the good and the bad:

HOW MANY ARE BEING HELPED?

The Obamites brag about the bill providing new health care for 32 million people.

- In addition nine million of these, according to the CBO study, are presumed to be people moving to a another form of health care - i.e. from their employer based insurance (4 million) or presently non-group insured (5 million) moving to exchanges.

- Half of the improvement (16 million) would be due to improvements in Medicaid and CHIP. You don't need a 2000 page bill to do that.

- Subtract the Medicaid and policy shifters from the calculation and you end up with 16 million new people getting insurance. And this is not, for the most part, because the Democrats are providing it (although there will be tax credits to help some). A big reason will be a hidden tax known as the individual mandate. Thus Obama and the Democrats are claiming credit for giving people something when they are instead requiring them to do it with their own funds. This would be like claiming credit for increasing millions of people's incomes by reinstituting the draft.

- In sum, about 16 million people are being substantially helped and about the same number are being manipulated into thinking they are getting more than they are.For example, private insurance costs can be expected to soar, but tax credits are unlikely to rise at the same rate.

THE MANDATE

The individual mandate is unconstitutional. As constitutional attorney David Rivkin has explained, it goes far beyond the standard judicial excuse of regulating interstate commerce: "What's unique is the mandate [is] imposed on individuals merely because they live - not connected with any economic activity, not because they grow something, make something, compose something. Merely because they live. And this is absolutely unprecedented." Even when the government decided to ban drinking during Prohibition, it at least had the decency to pass a constitutional amendment.

Although the Democrats and the media don't want to talk about it, it's worth noting that even the Congressional Research Service would only go as far as to say that Congress "may have" the power to impose mandates but also called it the "most challenging question" of the measure.

If this provision is upheld in the courts, nothing would prevent the government from, for example, ordering people above a cetain BMI to buy memberships in private health clubs and to attend them at least three times a week.

THE INDUSTRY SUBSIDY

By requiring new insurance from inefficient private providers instead of through a government program, the administration is subsidizing the insurance cabal by billions of dollars. Further, even though the public option provision fell far short of what it should have been, Obama's back room deal with the industry to knife it is one of the strongest reasons why he should not be encouraged to run again for president.

THE STALL

An amazing number of provisions won't go into effect for four to nine years. One of the problems with this is that if, during this period, the GOP gains control of the Congress, there is nothing to stop them from stalling these programs further. In addition, the Democrats are playing an extraordinarily dangerous political game - taking immediate credit for things that may not happen for years to come. In fact, the first significant benefits to anyone will not occur for four years according to the CBO calculations.

For example, not until 2014 would employers be banned from denying coverage or providing higher premiums for women or older people. What if our civil rights laws had been written that way, say, giving restaurants four more years to ban blacks?

MEDICARE DRUG FUNDING

The reconciliation bill includes additional Medicare drug funding, closing the so-called doughnut hole in coverage.

NEW MEDICARE TAX

Business Week: "Already in the Senate bill, a higher Medicare payroll tax will be assessed on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year or families with income of more than $250,000. The reconciliation bill includes an additional 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income such as dividends on these high earners."

EMPLOYER MANDATE

Business Week: "Under the Senate bill, if an employer with more than 50 employees doesn't offer coverage and has just one employee who qualifies for a new tax credit, the company must pay a fee for every full-time employee on its roster. The reconciliation bill raises the penalty to $2,000 from $750, though it subtracts the first 30 employees from the calculation.

ABORTION FUNDING

Not currently addressed in the bill.

THE MEDICARE-MEDICAID METAPHOR

The liberal Center for Budget Policy & Priorities claims that "this legislation [will] produce the greatest gains in health coverage since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid 45 years ago." This is an insult to Medicare and Medicaid, which were, after all, public programs and not regulations. There is a huge difference between providing someone with something and ordering them to buy it.

WHO NEEDS A CONSTITUTION IF THE BUDGET IS BALANCED?

The legislation includes a flagrantly anti-constitutional provision, as described by the CBPP:

[] The legislation would establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to develop and submit proposals to slow the growth of Medicare and private health care spending and improve the quality of care. The President would nominate the board's 15 members, who would require Senate confirmation, for staggered six-year terms.

If the projected growth in Medicare costs per beneficiary in 2015 and thereafter exceeded a specified target level which it almost certainly would do in many years the board would be required to produce a proposal to eliminate the difference. The board could not propose increases in Medicare premiums or cost-sharing or cuts in Medicare benefits or eligibility criteria; it would focus on proposals for savings in the payment and delivery of health care services.

The board's recommendations would go into effect automatically unless both houses of Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation to modify or overturn them. If the board recommended changes that the President supported, the President could veto any congressional attempt to block them, and a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate would be required to override the veto.[]

This provision is contemptuous of the basic concept of our constitutional government.

CUTTING MEDICARE COSTS

One of the big sleepers in the bill is the plan to "institute efficiencies" in Medicare programs. In fact, Medicare is far more efficient than any private insurance plan in the country.

Consider this snippet from CBPP: "The legislation would reduce annual payment updates to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, hospices, ambulatory surgical centers, and certain other providers to account for improvements in economy-wide productivity. It would also reduce payments to home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and inpatient rehabilitation facilities." And just what will happen to service and its availability?

Remember: one person's efficiency is another's lack of service.

OTHER PROVISIONS

CBPP - Within months, insurers that offer coverage of policyholders' children (including in existing plans) would be required to allow adult dependents younger than 26 to be added to such coverage. In addition, new insurance plans would be barred from excluding children's pre-existing conditions from coverage and would have to cover certain preventive services at no charge to enrollees.

EXPANDED MEDICAID ELIGIBILITY

Saving the best until last. As the CBPP puts it:

"The plan would expand Medicaid up to 133 percent of the poverty line for all children and adults younger than 65 who are lawfully residing in the United States and not eligible for Medicare. This would mean that millions of low-income parents, as well non-disabled low-income adults who do not have dependent children (and who are generally ineligible for Medicaid today except in a small number of states with waivers), would become newly eligible for health coverage through Medicaid. Medicaid is the most cost-effective way to provide comprehensive and affordable coverage to people with very low incomes and thereby ensure that the low-income uninsured gain coverage. "

IN SUM

The bill will provide about 16 million poor people with significantly better health care. It will force millions more to buy health insurance, softened by tax credits that will not keep up with rising policy costs. 

It will put some restrictions on the insurance companies in return for providing them a multi-billion dollar annual subsidy.

It will declare the right of the government to order you to buy something whether you want it or not, and will it establish a budget commission with supra-constitutional powers. Both these provisions would be struck down by a rational Supreme Court (such as we haven't seen in some time) or the Constitutional shall have to be "deemed" substantially amended.

MAJOR FUNDRAISER FOR BUSH, CLINTON, OBAMA ADMITS CONNING BANKS OUT OF $292 MILLION

REUTERS - A wealthy businessman who raised money for leading Democratic Party politicians, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding three major banks out of $292 million in loan transactions.

Hassan Nemazee, 60, who once ran a private equity firm, admitted in Manhattan federal court to defrauding Bank of America Corp of more than $142 million, Citigroup Inc of $75 million and HSBC Holdings Plc of $75 million to pay his debt to Citigroup. . .

Nemazee admitted to three charges of bank fraud and one charge of wire fraud. Prosecutors said he had obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from the banks and used fake documents to show supposed ownership of collateral.

Nemazee was listed as one of the top bundlers of contributions to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics.

He typically donated more than $100,000 annually to Democratic Party political candidates, including Obama and now-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The judge allowed Nemazee to remain free on $25 million bail but under house arrest with electronic monitoring in his Manhattan apartment.

The office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI said Nemazee had used proceeds from his scheme to make donations to election campaigns of federal, state and local candidates, political action committees and charities.

The Democratic National Committee declined to comment, but an official said it had been previously announced that the affected donations would go to charity.

REAL NEWS PROJECT, OCTOBER 2007 - The engineer of George W. Bush's rescue from financial disaster-a man who would propel Bush on the path to elective office-has quietly moved into Hillary Clinton's inner circle of key financial backers. The engineer is longtime GOP backer Alan Quasha. His mysterious Harken Energy drew intense scrutiny from investigators and the media in the early 90's and again during Bush's first term because of its dubious financial practices and board members connected to the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Along with a business partner, Quasha has been forging new links with Clinton and her associates for several years. Among other things, they have raised substantial sums for her, and in 2005 they discreetly hired Clinton confidant and longtime Democratic Party money man Terry McAuliffe, providing him with a lucrative temporary perch until the Clinton campaign formally launched with McAuliffe as its chairman.

RUSS BAKER & ADAM FEDERMAN, REAL NEWS PROJECT - Another strong link between Quasha and Clinton is Quasha's business partner, Hassan Nemazee, a top Hillary fundraiser who was trotted out to defend her during the Hsu episode--in which the clothing manufacturer was unmasked as a swindler who seemingly funneled illegal contributions through "donors" of modest means. . .

"That Hillary Clinton's campaign is involved with this particular cast of characters should give people pause," says John Moscow, a former Manhattan prosecutor. In the late 1980s and early '90s he led the investigation of the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) global financial empire--a bank whose prominent shareholders included members of the Harken board. "Too many of the same names from earlier troubling circumstances suggests a lack of control over who she is dealing with," says Moscow, "or a policy of dealing with anyone who can pay.". . .

Russ Baker, Who What Why, August 2009 - On August 25th, Hassan Nemazee, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, was arrested and charged with forging loan documents in order to borrow $74 million from Citibank. . . Behind the Nemazee arrest lies a sprawling cautionary tale of presidents, would-be presidents, and the shadow world of wealthy operators who cozy up to them for their own gain. It reaches into the Bush operation as well as that of the Clintons, and is a microcosm of an influence bazaar that has gone global along with the economy.

Hassan Nemazee, who served as a finance director for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, began raising sizable sums for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-nineties. In 1998, in the midst of the Lewinsky affair, Nemazee collected $60,000 for Bill Clinton's legal defense fund in $10,000 increments from relatives and friends. . .

In 2005, Nemazee and his business partner, Alan Quasha, went deep into the Clinton circle to hire Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton confidante and former chairman of the Democratic Party, for Carret Asset Management, their newly acquired investment firm. During the interregnum between McAuliffe's party chairmanship and the time he officially joined Hillary Clinton's campaign as chairman, Nemazee and Quasha set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him. . .

In March 2007, Nemazee, at the behest of McAuliffe, threw a dinner for Ms. Clinton at Manhattan's swank Cipriani restaurant, which featured Bill Clinton and raised more than $500,000. In 2008, after Barack Obama gained the nomination, Nemazee raised a comparable sum for him.

Before moving into the Democratic camp, Nemazee had backed such Republican senators as Jesse Helms, Sam Brownback and Alfonse D'Amato. . . Nemazee's business partner, Alan Quasha, who specializes in buying up troubled companies, has also played both sides of the partisan divide. Quasha gave to both Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and in the 2008 race gave to Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani as well as Democrats Barack Obama and Chris Dodd.

The strikingly trans-partisan and trans-national nature of this high-stakes influence game is best exemplified by the relationship between Quasha's oil company, Harken Energy, and George W. Bush. Harken provided a home for Bush in the 1980's when his own oil businesses failed, offering him handsome compensation and a solid financial base from which to enter politics. Bush was named to the Harken board and received a range of benefits from the company while devoting most of his time to his father's presidential campaign and then his own outside career efforts.

Harken is a curious outfit. Its early funding sources were opaque, and its investors and board members had a dizzying array of connections into global power centers - and ties to the Saudi leadership and the former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Shah of Iran, as well as to the Swiss Bank, UBS, which has been charged by the US government with providing cover for Americans who were evading taxes.

Around the time George W. Bush joined its board, Harken received an unusual and sizable cash infusion from the Harvard Management Company, which handles Harvard University's endowment, the largest in the nation. . . Former employees of Harvard Management have recently made highly-publicized charges that the company engaged in Enron-style investment practices. . .

Nemazee's role as a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton can be better understood through his own Iranian connections. His father was a shipping magnate who was close with the Shah of Iran and served as the Shah's commercial attache in Washington; Nemazee was a founding member of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee, a lobbying group.

For more on Harken, see Baker's 2009 book, Family of Secrets

OBAMACARE AT WORK

A READER - I too have reservations regarding digitized medical records and who is able to see them. However, I was just reminded by my doctor's office of my appointment and asked if I have filled out my digitized medical history. I told the nurse that I don't feel comfortable filling out the forms and she informed me that the doctor therefore will not be able to see me.

STATES REDISCOVERING TENTH AMENDMENT

CALIF INDEPENDENT VOTER NEWS - - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's quest to convince the federal government to put-up-or-shut-up by paying California an additional $6.9 billion he says the state needs to carry out Washington D.C. imposed mandates is just one high-profile example of states increasingly asserting their rights.

The battle over when states rights trump federal government edicts is as old as the constitution, waxing and waning in favor of each camp for nearly 225 years. But recently, an increasing number of states are standing up to the federal government and asserting their independence through legislation, resolutions or rhetoric.

"It's widespread. We're seeing states all across the republic with different resolutions or legislation. Some deal with health care, some firearms some light bulbs. Civil resistance against federal drug policy began here in California. In a way, we're leading the charge, " said Bryce Shonka, California state coordinator for the Tenth Amendment Center, a Los Angeles-based clearinghouse and advocacy group for states rights issues.

As Shonka says, while Schwarzenegger's chief focus is securing money to balance California's budget, other states are declaring their independence differently. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 23 states have followed Montana and introduced legislation saying if a gun is manufactured in that state and stays in that state, then federal regulation, such as registration, doesn't apply. On March 12, Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed such a bill into law. Wyoming's governor signed a similar bill the day before.

Idaho's GOP Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter signed a law March 17 ordering the state attorney general to sue if Congress approves health care legislation. Similar bills are pending in 37 other states although its unlikely any would survive a court challenge. . .

While some say the push for states rights is largely a Republican, red state, Tea Party phenomenon, Shonka doesn't agree. He points to Oregon, Wisconsin, Maryland and New Hampshire – all states won by President Obama in 2008 – where resolutions were introduced last year aimed at bringing members of the National Guard home from Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's not at all a partisan issue. Having decisions made closer to home, everyone appreciates that sort of thing, " said Shonka. "Centralization was in full gear all throughout the last decade under Bush just as it is under Obama. When Obama was elected, the people on the right naturally were the ones more eager to oppose the federal government. "

One of the most common manifestations of states rights is passing legislation that exceeds federal law. "The governor has always said, under Presidents Bush and Obama, we're not going to wait for Washington to act," said Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary. "And that's why the real action has been happening in the states. "

Schwarzenegger and California's Democratic majority Legislature have passed laws stronger than federal statutes routinely, particularly on environmental matters. AB 32, the landmark 2006 measure designed to ratchet down state greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 is the most visible example. More recently, California approved stricter tailpipe emission standards. Twenty other states followed California and passed the same law. The Obama administration has now adopted the same emission standards for the country.

It's unclear what ultimate impact many states rights measures will have. Much of the legislation tracked by the Tenth Amendment Center is resolutions, which are non-binding and don't carry the force of law. A large percentage of the states' rights bills, regardless of subject, don't win legislative approval let alone a gubernatorial signature.

At the center of the arguments made by states' rights advocates is the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. "

That amendment is a weaker version of a similar sentence in the earlier Articles of Confederation:

"Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."

Over the past century, federal court rulings have expanded the federal government's reach – largely by applying the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause: Congress shall have the power "to regulate commerce. . . among the several states." . . .

The court subsequently shifted its stance on the Commerce Clause. A key 1942 Supreme Court ruling, Wickard v. Filburn, involved a farmer, Roscoe Filburn, who grew wheat to feed his chickens said the limits on wheat production imposed by the federal government to increase the price shouldn't apply to him because he sold none of the extra wheat. Using the Commerce Clause, the court reasoned that the extra wheat Filburn grew reduced the amount of wheat he would otherwise buy for chicken feed on the open market. Because there was a national trade in wheat, Filburn's extra production affected interstate commerce, allowing federal regulation.

Citing the Wickard ruling and the Commerce Clause, the courts struck down California's medicinal marijuana law in 2005. Growing marijuana for personal or medical use would "frustrate " the federal interest in ending commercial transactions in the interstate market, the court said. "In both cases, the regulation is squarely within Congress' commerce power because production of the commodity meant for home consumption, be it wheat or marijuana, has a substantial effect on supply and demand in the national market for that commodity, " the majority opinion says.

Taking the side of states rights, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote:

"The court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some states, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently. Whatever the wisdom of California's experiment with medical marijuana, the federalism principles that have driven our Commerce Clause cases require that room for experiment be protected in this case."

MORE ON THE DEVOLUTION OF POWER

BREVITAS

SCIENTIFIC BLOGGING - Being skinny confers no advantage when it comes to the risk of dying suddenly from cardiac causes, a study presented today at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session has found. According to the authors, non-obese heart failure patients - including overweight, normal and underweight patients - had a 76 percent increase in risk of sudden cardiac death compared to obese heart failure patients. Normal and underweight patients showed a startling 99 percent increase in risk for sudden cardiac death compared to obese patients. . . The analysis found that decreased BMI or body mass index was associated with a large increase in the risk of sudden cardiac death.

POPULATION MEDIA CTR - Faith Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, believes that if no big new discoveries are made, “the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis.” Coming from the band of geologists and former oil-industry hands who believe that the world is facing an imminent shortage of oil, this would be unremarkable. But coming from the IEA, the source of closely watched annual predictions about world energy markets, it is a new and striking claim. Despite repeated downward revisions in recent years in its forecasts of global oil supply in 2030, the IEA has not until now committed itself to a firm prediction for when oil supplies might cease to grow.

THE CEO OF the slowly collapsing New York Times got a bonus of $2.3 million. To get an idea of what that would mean to your income, multiply your salary by three.

RULES OF THUMB - If you're worried that you don't have any interests, browse in the nonfiction section of a library for five minutes. By then a book will catch your eye, whether it's about baking pie crusts or Icelandic crust formation. - Carolyn Lloyd, 15-year-old student,, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

BOOKSHELF: The Big Short: Inside the Wall Street meltdown

MORWENNA FERRIER, OBSERVER (On Sony's plans to bring good food to movie theaters) - Isn't shirking buttered popcorn and ice cream at the flicks a bit like shirking dessert at a Michelin-starred restaurant "because you're slimming?" In other words a complete waste of the treat? The point of big multiplex cinemas, surely, is that they offer spoonfed entertainment - big chairs, a big screen and a bit of quiet time. A trip to the cinema isn't supposed to be good for you, is it?

READER COMMENTS ON HEALTHCARE

-- Sad, sad, sad. Those people actually on Medicare know that there were no excesses that needed elimination. Actually Medicare is woefully inadequate as anyone actually on it can tell you. Cutting it back as part of "fixing" healthcare is nothing short of hateful and will lead to thousands of deaths which Congress and the President will be personally responsible for.

-- Translation of your latest disgusting coward's gibberish on this pure-poison healthcare bill: let's provide proof positive to the wealth-power giants and those who carry their water for them that there is no line in the sand they cannot cross with our bovine acquiescence ensured.

And to think i used to respect you. What a fool I was! What kind of brain looks at a bill that prevents states from pursuing single-payer and concludes we can pass this bill then pursue single-payer at the state level?

-- We know that Obama made many statements on his campaign website and throughout the campaign favoring the public option, and also that he made a back-room deal after his election to dump the public option. So what now? Smith/Kucinich argue to get the current terribly deficient bill passed and fight on from there. There is much to be said for this strategy, and surely some of the immediate measures, such as prohibiting refusal of insurance because of pre-existing conditions, will help some people. But Howard Dean pointed out on MSNBC that this provision only applies to young people (mostly healthy) and a few other groups, but not to older people.

Other provisions of the bill won't take effect until 2014 or later, but congressional elections are coming up in less than a year. How will the public view this bill once (or if) it is passed? Private insurance rates are already taking quantum jumps - I can attest to that. Will these jumps and a seemingly business-as-usual approach convince the public that Obamacare is an expenditure of public funds without any concrete results? If so, the Reps get the House and the longer-range strategy that Smith and Kucinich hope for will be stopped in its tracks.

If Obamacare can't make it through the Congress, then what? Are he and fellow Dems viewed as incompetent or will the Reps take it on the chin in November? Hard to say. I for one don't know, but I suspect that the only way the Smith/Kucinich hopes can be realized is if there are enough immediate improvements in health care/insurance to keep the public interested in continuing with it in November. - Frank Munley

- Sorry, but I can't possibly support an idea like this until they go back and "fix" the Medicare prescription program that was passed with this same argument. Since it passed, there has been no attempt to correct the problems in that bill despite the statements from both legislators and AARP telling us that we had to pass "something" right then and the flaws that were being left in could be fixed later.

It won't matter how many people complain about a bad health care bill. The response from Congress will be that we already spent too much time on the issue, we passed a bill, and there are more important things we need to do now.

ARNE DUNCAN FLUNKS MATH

SUSAN O'HANIAN - Vermont has identified ten schools as their "lowest 10%." Since we don't have charters, I hope President Obama comes to Vermont and personally hands out the pink slips.

Students at these schools undoubtedly perform better on standardized tests than many students across the country. Nonetheless, they are the lowest in Vermont. Some will always be the lowest in the state. So under the Obama/Duncan plan, some schools will always be stripped of their leadership and faculty. It is likely to be the same schools over and over losing the people who know anything about the students and the community.

A large percentage of students at one of the "low" schools in Vermont are immigrants, speaking something like 50 languages. 99% of the student population are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

Under the federal threat of imminent firing, what teacher will volunteer to work in a troubled school?

Right now, the solution is for states to refuse the federal money.

MIDDLE CLASS LOSING HEALTH INSURANCE THE FASTEST

JAMES RIDGEWAY, UNSILENT GENERATION - As Congress equivocates over health care the numbers of uninsured middle class people keep on growing.The numbers are doubtless increased due to the recession–which the press announces daily is at an end.

This new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ... shows that the number of middle-income earners who obtained health insurance from their employers dropped by 3 million people from 2000 to 2008. Just 66 percent of people in families earning roughly $45,000 to $85,000 are now insured through their employer—a drop of seven percentage points from 2000 to 2008.

Employer-sponsored insurance has long been the mainstay of health coverage for middle-class families, who typically do not qualify for government insurance programs. Among middle-income Americans, only about half of the decline in employer-sponsored coverage from 2000 to 2008 was offset by government insurance programs. For people who earned less money, declines in ESI were even steeper, but those numbers were mostly offset by increases in coverage through government insurance programs like Medicaid.

The result is that America's middle-class became uninsured at a pace faster than those with less or more income. In total, 13 million middle-income earners were uninsured in 2008—about 2 million more than in 2000. . .

The report - Barely Hanging On: Middle-Class and Uninsured - chronicles state-by-state health coverage trends. In the first decade of this century, nearly every state has seen increased numbers of uninsured residents, greater costs for individual and family policies for health insurance and significant erosion in private coverage.

ANOTHER REASON NOT TO FLY SO MUCH

CHICAGO TRIBUNE - All airline passengers in the U.S. will eventually be required to undergo a full-body scan before boarding planes, just as metal detectors became a standard and accepted part of the screening process at airports decades ago, the federal transportation security chief in Chicago said Monday.

The Transportation Security Administration plans to send hundreds of the scanners, which cost between $130,000 and $170,000 each, to all major U.S. airports. The scanners use low-dose X-ray to go underneath clothing and display weapons, explosives and other objects that might be hidden on the body, above the skin.

EPIC - In testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, EPIC President Marc Rotenberg urged Congress to halt the plan to deploy body scanners in the nation's airports. "Based on the documents we've obtained, the views of experts, the concerns of  American, and the extraordinary cost, Congress should suspend the program," said Mr. Rotenberg. In a recent letter to President Obama, EPIC and Ralph Nader recommended an independent review to assess health impacts, privacy safeguards, and the actual effectiveness of the devices. Through FOIA litigation, EPIC has obtained technical specifications, vendor contracts, and hundreds of complaints from US air travelers about the body scanners. A recent report from the GAO has also raised questions about the effectiveness and cost of the devices. For more information, see EPIC Whole Body Imaging and EPIC Air Travel Privacy.

MEDIA TICKLED BY MASSA, BORED BY ENSIGN

MSNBC FIRST READ - How did the Eric Massa mess dominate the news for an entire week, while the latest allegations surrounding John Ensign -- which include an ACTUAL FBI investigation -- have registered just a blip on the media radar? (Yesterday, it was reported that a grand jury has issued subpoenas for an inquiry into whether Ensign broke laws by financially helping the husband of his ex-mistress.) As the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen recently wrote, "Sen. John Ensign (R) of Nevada is caught in a truly humiliating sex scandal -- and remember, the media generally loves political sex scandals -- involving a shameless hypocrite, who ran on a 'family-values' platform, committing adultery with one of his own aides, who happens to be married to another aide. The scandal involves the immediate affair, plus alleged ethics violations, hush money, and official corruption. And yet, no media frenzy. No reporters staked out in front of Ensign's home. No op-eds speculating about the need for Ensign to resign in disgrace."

ANTI-SEMITISM ON RISE IN ISRAEL

SEVEN out of ten Israelis have a positive view of Obama, about twice as many as think Netanyahu should continue running the country. As Netanyahu's own brother-in-law implies, this is clearly a sign of anti-Semitism. According to Haaretz, "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's brother-in-law Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi called U.S. President Barack Obama an anti-Semite in an interview with Army Radio. 'It's not that Obama doesn't like Bibi,' he referring to Netanyahu using his nickname. 'He doesn't like the nation of Israel.'" When you get this all figured out, let us know.

WASHINGTON STATE WALGREENS SAYS NO MORE MEDICAID PATIENTS

SEATTLE TIMES - Walgreens will stop taking new Medicaid patients in Washington state as of April 16, saying it loses money filling their prescriptions. The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.

In a news release, Walgreens said its decision to not take new Medicaid patients stemmed from a "continued reduction in reimbursement" under the state's Medicaid program, which reimburses it at less than the break-even point for 95 percent of brand-name medications dispensed to Medicaid patents.

Walgreens follows Bartell Drugs, which stopped taking new Medicaid patients last month at all 57 of its stores in Washington, though it still fills Medicaid prescriptions for existing customers at all but 15 of those stores.

HEALTHCARE: WHAT NOW?

Sam Smith

The healthcare legislation is one of the most corrupt, inadequate, and cynical bills of purportedly noble purpose to move through Congress in the past 50 years. It greatly increases the public subsidy of the totally unnecessary health insurance industry. It does so in part by requiring a form of pizzo - mandatory payments to the health industry from lower income citizens not fortunate to have employer based insurance. It purports to end Medicare excesses but does little about the huge waste of private insurance or to restrict the overcharging for drugs by large pharmaceuticals.

The government's new subsidy to health insurance companies (either through helping people pay for their insurance or through the mandatory purchase of insurance) would be among the greatest government pork ever, similar to that in the bank bailout or in the subsidy of the defense industry by our military budget.

What is promised in return, as with the Mafia, is added protection. It lets you, a friend, your mother or millions others get treatment they could not otherwise afford.

This is what is so cynical, corrupt and rotten about the bill: when it does good it does it in the worst possible way.

But what would defeating the bill accomplish? How long would we have to wait for the godfathers of the Democratic Party even to propose another measure? This is the problem with living in a Mafia neighborhood. Even principle doesn't work the way it should.

A wiser course would be to let this sick measure wend its way to fruition and then strike it on other fronts. This is not giving up the battle, but choosing new battlegrounds.

Here are a few things that could happen:

- Joining with conservatives in some 36 states that are working to strike the clearly unconstitutional mandatory payment provision. If the Supreme Court knocks this provision down, the case for single payer immediately becomes stronger.

- In the words of Dennis Kucinich, "We can continue the discussion about comprehensive healthcare reform at the state level, because that's really where we're going to have to have a breakthrough in single payer."

- We can create state or national health insurance cooperatives, bearing in mind that surveys find that one of the most highly regarded businesses in America is an insurance cooperative: the United Service Automobile Association.

- We can work for single payers or for sensible steps in its direction, such as lowering the age of Medicare or letting people buy into the program. 

- Progressives can finally dump Barack Obama and start looking for a better candidate in 2012. Obama has not only been dead wrong on many issues, on this one he has been dishonest - making backroom deals to kill the public option he claimed to like.

The primary message after the passage of this legislation should be that Obama and the Democrats may have won a battle, but the war goes on.

BOYS LAGGING BEHIND GIRLS IN READING, TIED IN MATH

ABC NEWS - Girls are reading better than boys, according to a new study by the Center on Education Policy, and the pattern is giving girls a life-long advantage, experts tell ABC News.

Boys are lagging behind girls on standardized reading tests in all 50 states, the research suggests. In some states, the boys are trailing girls by as much as 10 percentage points.

While girls best boys in reading throughout the country, the genders are evenly split when it came to proficiency in math.

In past years, boys had a decided advantage over girls in math.

The study looked at trends beginning in 2002 and ending in 2008.

"The cause for concern is that this is an unmistakable and clear trend, a national trend," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy. "Mainly, we found no state in which boys did not lag behind girls in reading at the elementary level, the middle level and the high school level. So it's pretty clear: Boys are not doing as well as girls in reading."

CO-OP BUSINESS SOARS IN BRITAIN

GUARDIAN UK - The Co-operative Group has seen profits surge as it attracted thousands of bank account customers disillusioned with Britain's big banks.

The Co-op is paying its 5 million members - up 1.5 million over the last year - a dividend of L55m, 16% higher than in 2008. . . .

The group, which traces its roots to the founding of the co-operative movement in Rochdale in 1844, today reported a 38% jump in new current accounts as consumers deserted the bigger banks in droves in the wake of the financial crisis. It gained 140,000 new customers, taking the total to 1.2 million, and doubled its share of the current account market to 4%.

"We're already seeing a flight to trust," said Peter Marks, the chief executive. "People are weary of big business, especially in the financial services sector. They want to feel confident about where they're putting their hard-earned savings."

OBAMA MADE DEAL TO DUMP PUBLIC OPTION

MILES MOGULESCU, HUFFINGTON POST - For months I've been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. I've been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that's changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn's confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

"That's a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he's talking about the hospital industry's specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry's got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you're interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product."

Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal to him.

Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill.

MULTI-GENERATIONAL HOUSEHOLDS HITS 50 YEAR RECORD

WASH POST - The number of people living with several generations under one roof in the United States is at its highest point in 50 years, as families cope with ruinous job losses and foreclosures, researchers said.

During the first year of the recession, the number of Americans living in such multi-generational families rose by 2.6 million, or more than 5 percent, from 2007 to 2008.

The trend to bring extended families together in one home has been growing since 1980, driven by an influx of new immigrants as well as other social and cultural changes, according to the report. But the trend accelerated as the economic crisis sent many families reeling.

Now 49 million Americans -- 16.1 percent of the population -- live in homes with multiple generations. Many include adult children in their 20s.

RECOVERED HISTORY: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PALESTINE

JUAN COLE - The tiff between the US and Israel is less important than the worrisome growth of tension between Palestinians and Israelis as the Israelis have claimed more and more sites sacred to the Palestinians as well. There is talk of a third Intifada or Palestinian uprising.

I [have] mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century. . .

It begins by showing the British Mandate of Palestine as of the mid-1920s. The British conquered the Ottoman districts that came to be the Mandate during World War I (the Ottoman sultan threw in with Austria and Germany against Britain, France and Russia, mainly out of fear of Russia).

But because of the rise of the League of Nations and the influence of President Woodrow Wilson's ideas about self-determination, Britain and France could not decently simply make their new, previously Ottoman territories into mere colonies. The League of Nations awarded them "Mandates." Britain got Palestine, France got Syria (which it made into Syria and Lebanon), Britain got Iraq.

The League of Nations Covenant spelled out what a Class A Mandate (i.e. territory that had been Ottoman) was:

"Article 22. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory [i.e., a Western power] until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

That is, the purpose of the later British Mandate of Palestine, of the French Mandate of Syria, of the British Mandate of Iraq, was to 'render administrative advice and assistance" to these peoples in preparation for their becoming independent states, an achievement that they were recognized as not far from attaining. The Covenant was written before the actual Mandates were established, but Palestine was a Class A Mandate and so the language of the Covenant was applicable to it. The territory that formed the British Mandate of Iraq was the same territory that became independent Iraq, and the same could have been expected of the British Mandate of Palestine. (Even class B Mandates like Togo have become nation-states, but the poor Palestinians are just stateless prisoners in colonial cantons).

The first map thus shows what the League of Nations imagined would become the state of Palestine. . . The Mandate of Palestine also had a charge to allow for the establishment of a 'homeland' in Palestine for Jews (because of the 1917 Balfour Declaration), but nobody among League of Nations officialdom at that time imagined it would be a whole and competing territorial state. There was no prospect of more than a few tens of thousands of Jews settling in Palestine, as of the mid-1920s. . . . As late as the 1939 British White Paper, British officials imagined that the Mandate would emerge as an independent Palestinian state within 10 years.

In 1851, there had been 327,000 Palestinians and other non-Jews, and only 13,000 Jews. In 1925, after decades of determined Jewish immigration, there were a little over 100,000 Jews, and there were 765,000 mostly Palestinian non-Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine. . .

The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s impelled massive Jewish emigration to Palestine, so by 1940 there were over 400,000 Jews there amid over a million Palestinians.

The second map shows the United Nations partition plan of 1947, which awarded Jews (who only then owned about 6% of Palestinian land) a substantial state alongside a much reduced Palestine. . .

The third map shows the status quo after the Israeli-Palestinian civil war of 1947-1948. . .

The final map shows the situation today, which springs from the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and then the decision of the Israelis to colonize the West Bank intensively (a process that is illegal in the law of war concerning occupied populations).

I DON'T SEEM TO COUNT FOR MUCH

Sam Smith

I have just received my census form and I don't seem to count for much. I guess I was living in the past, thinking of that time when the friendly woman sat in our living room and asked about our plumbing, the age of our house and so forth. It was fun reducing a whole life down to a few key numbers.

Now, it appears that the Census Bureau is only interested in my age, my race and whether I sometimes live or stay somewhere else. It verges on the insulting. Do they no longer care how many toilets I have and whether they're inside or out?

I realize that on that earlier occasion I had lucked out and had become a surreptitious sample of six or so other people's lives. The fact that they might have found this insulting never occurred to me.

But surely, the government could pretend to have slighty more curiosity about me. They don't even want to know whether I live in a mobile home, only whether I own it or not.

As for the race thing - which takes up about 25% of the part Person 1 fills out, and 50% of the forms for others in the house - I get a sense that the Census is more interested in stereotyping me than in counting the ways I might be the same or different from 300 million other Americans.

Besides, having been an anthropology major, I don't believe in race. It's a concept invented by racists and the sooner we dump it for the cultural and non-biological term ethnicity the better off we will be.,

But wait: it turns out that Latinos (or Hispanics or those of Spanish origin) are counted by ethnicity: you can describe yourself as a Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, or Cuban.

And Asians get to call themselves Asian Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, or Cambodian. The Census Bureau calls these groups races, which suggests that the educational defects of  No Child Left Behind are already affecting the adult community.

Whites and blacks, however, get no such right. You can be black, African Am [a term I've never heard; is that like Pan Am?] or Negro. But you can't be Caribbean, African or Harvard Law School grad black. And if you're white, that's it. All whites are the same.

It's weird, but it reflects the absurdity of our definitions.

For myself, I plan to scratch out the word race, write in ethnicity, and insert the phrase "Anglo Irish."

Maybe it will upset them enough that will send someone around to count the number of toilets that we have.

TESTS SUGGEST HEALTH DANGERS IN GM CROPS

DAILY MAIL, UK - Fresh fears were raised over GM crops yesterday after a study showed they can cause liver and kidney damage.

According to the research, animals fed on three strains of genetically modified maize created by the U.S. biotech firm Monsanto suffered signs of organ damage after just three months.

The findings only came to light after Monsanto was forced to publish its raw data on safety tests by anti-GM campaigners.

They add to the evidence that GM crops may damage health as well as be harmful to the environment.

The figures released by Monsanto were examined by French researcher Dr Gilles-Eric Seralini, from the University of Caen.

Yesterday he called for more studies to check for long-term organ damage.

'What we've shown is clearly not proof of toxicity, but signs of toxicity,' he told New Scientist magazine. 'I'm sure there's no acute toxicity but who's to say there are no chronic effects?'

DOCTORS DEMAND BAN ON ARTIFICIAL TRANS FATS

GUARDIAN, UK - Leading doctors are demanding a complete ban on the use of man-made fats found in thousands of foodstuffs such as biscuits, ready meals and margarine, because they can damage health.

The UK Faculty of Public Health is urging ministers to eradicate artificial trans fatty acids, known as trans fats, from the British diet. The move is needed to reduce people's risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke, says the faculty, which represents 3,300 doctors and public health specialists in the NHS, local government and medical research.

Trans fats, found in many cakes, pastries, pies, chips and fast foods, are chemically altered vegetable oils used to bulk up foods and increase their shelf life. They have no nutritional value and boost levels of "bad" cholesterol, thereby increasing the chances of a heart attack. Trans fats also occur naturally in meat and dairy products, but these pose no risk.

The World Health Organization believes artificial trans fats are harmful to health and wants them to be minimized or eliminated altogether. They have also been blamed for causing fertility problems in women.

The UK should follow the example of Denmark, New York, California, Switzerland and Austria in banning trans fats, said Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, the faculty's president. Other countries and regions are planning to take similar action.

BOOK REVIEW BINGO

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MCCAIN & LIEBERMAN INTRODUCE BILL TO ALLOW DICTATORSHIP

OPEN CONGRESS - One of Congress’s most notoriously hawkish duos, Sen. John McCain [R, AZ] and Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I, CT], recently introduced legislation in response to President Obama’s decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day airplane bomber, in a criminal court. Their proposal, which they are calling the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act, would empower the U.S. military to arrest anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise, who is suspected of terrorist associations and detain them indefinitely, without right to a trial.

Terrorist suspects would be given over to military custody for interrogation:

(a) Military Custody Requirement- Whenever within the United States, its territories, and possessions, or outside the territorial limits of the United States, an individual is captured or otherwise comes into the custody or under the effective control of the United States who is suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities, and who may be an unprivileged enemy belligerent, the individual shall be placed in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

People would have to be given over to the military within a “reasonable time” (undefined) of their initial arrest. Miranda rights would be specifically waived, denying the detainee a right to a lawyer and a right to refuse to cooperate:

(3) INAPPLICABILITY OF CERTAIN STATEMENT AND RIGHTS- A individual who is suspected of being an unprivileged enemy belligerent shall not, during interrogation under this subsection, be provided the statement required by Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436 (1966)) or otherwise be informed of any rights that the individual may or may not have to counsel or to remain silent consistent with Miranda v. Arizona.

Once in custody, suspects would be interrogated by a “high-value detainee interrogation group” to determine whether the person is, in fact, “an unprivileged enemy belligerent” according to any of the criteria below:

(2) CRITERIA FOR DESIGNATION OF INDIVIDUALS AS HIGH-VALUE DETAINEES- The regulations required by this subsection shall include criteria for designating an individual as a high-value detainee based on the following:

(A) The potential threat the individual poses for an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the United States or upon United States citizens or United States civilian facilities abroad at the time of capture or when coming under the custody or control of the United States.

(B) The potential threat the individual poses to United States military personnel or United States military facilities at the time of capture or when coming under the custody or control of the United States.

(C ) The potential intelligence value of the individual.

(D) Membership in al Qaeda or in a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda.

(E) Such other matters as the President considers appropriate.

If there is any disagreement about a person’s unprivileged enemy belligerent according to the above criteria, the final determination goes to the President. Once determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent, a person, regardless of citizenship status, can be detained indefinitely, without trial, until terrorist threats against the U.S are determined to be over:

SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.

An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3( c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.

So far, the bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. It currently has nine co-sponsors, including the newly-elected Sen. Scott Brown [R, MA]. We’ll update on this blog if it gets a hearing or a mark-up in the committee.

CAN YOU FIND THE DEMOCRATS' JOB BILL HERE?

SAN FRANCISCO JURY ACQUITS POT GROWERS

NEWS FROM A MODEL FOR OBAMACARE

BOSTON GLOVE - Massachusetts Senate leaders indicated yesterday that they will push forward significant measures this year to control soaring health care costs in the state that probably will include caps on payments to hospitals and doctors.

Senator Richard Moore, an Uxbridge Democrat who is Senate chairman of the health care financing committee, said the Senate is committed to passing long-term solutions to control costs.

Last year, a state commission proposed radical changes to the way providers are paid, with the goal of slowing the rise in the use of medical services. It urged scrapping the current fee-for-service system and paying providers a per-patient annual fee, called a global payment, to cover all of a patient’s medical care.

WAL MART FIRES EMPLOYEE ON PRESCRIBED MARIJUANA

ABC NEWS - Even though Michigan resident Joseph Casias had a prescription from his doctor for medical marijuana, he was fired after a positive test for the substance by his employer, Walmart.

The news last November he'd been terminated was devastating for Casias, 29, who took great pride in his job, once earning the honor of Associate of the Year.

"It hurts. It hurts because I care. I care a lot about the store. I always wanted to make sure I do well," he told ABC News.

Casias started taking the medicine last June to cope with pain from sinus cancer and a brain tumor. He says the rare form of cancer causes him pain constantly and he almost died when he was first diagnosed.

FLYING TO RIO TO SOLVE URBAN PROBLEMS

AL KAMEN, WASHINGTON POST - Know anything about housing? Ever live in a city? Well, get those bags packed, pronto! You can join Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan and Deputy Secretary Ronald Sims, plus three assistant secretaries and aides -- 14 HUD people in all. They will be joined by 20 officials from other government agencies for a spectacular week long event in, yes, RIO!

No, it's not Carnival. That was a few weeks ago. Three HUD advance people are down there helping to prepare for the mammoth United Nations World Urban Forum, the world's biggest meeting on cities. Some 16,000 folks are signed up. Don't delay. Online registration ends Thursday. . .

We're told it is somewhat unusual for the secretary and the deputy to be out of the country together, but Donovan, who is taking his family along, will be at the earlier part of the conclave so he can then enjoy a couple of days of vacation time. Sims, also taking his spouse, will be on hand for the latter part.

Former president Bill Clinton is going to be there, along with heads of state from Uganda, Bahrain and the Philippines, a U.N.-Habitat announcement says. "They will be joined by mayors, business and industry leaders from every continent, and many of the world's leading urban movers and shakers.". .

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not available, especially in this economy, to many urban dwellers. Remember, it's early fall down there, with temps this weekend expected to be in the mid-80s. Dress appropriately.

KUCINICH TO VOTE YES ON HEALTH BILL

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER - U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich waited until Democrats had won last November's health care reform vote before casting his ballot against it on the House of Representatives floor.

"I have doubts about the bill," Kucinich said. "This is not the bill I wanted to support. . . However, after careful discussions with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, my wife Elizabeth and close friends, I’ve decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation."

Kucinich's move came after months of insisting he'd oppose the bill because it doesn't do enough to curtail insurance company abuses. Kucinich advocates bolstering Medicare and expanding its coverage to include all Americans.

But he acknowledged this morning that his choice now is to either vote "no" on principle, and thereby possibly block the biggest (though imperfect) advance in health coverage in decades, or compromise for the good of the estimated 30 million more Americans who could gain insurance.

"I have taken this fight further" than many other Congress members, Kucinich said, citing his two presidential campaigns in which he advocated universal coverage and his bill introduction and other attempts in the House to get single-payer insurance.

He told reporters that if they want to see first-hand the tough economic and health-care choices that many Americans face, they should "come to the 10th District in Ohio and you'll understand."

His recent criticism of the bill included a column he authored for last Sunday's Plain Dealer, in which he wrote:

"Even with the few modest improvements in the bill, the insurance companies will still have dozens of loopholes to deny care and continue to find ways to leave Americans with the unpayable bill."

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE LAW

BROOKLYN PAPER - Councilwoman Letitia James has filed a personal injury suit against an itinerant laborer after she allegedly injured herself walking into his legally parked truck.

The Democratic lawmaker, who makes $122,500 a year as the people's representative in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages for wounds she claims to have sustained on July 11 when she walked into a four-inch trailer hitch protruding from David Day's parked car.

James sustained "serious, severe and permanent [injuries] to her limbs and body" and "she will be caused to suffer . . . continuous pain and inconvenience," according to court papers filed last month in Brooklyn Supreme Court by James's attorney Robert Mijuca of the powerful law firm of Rubenstein and Rynecki.

FROM OUR OVERSTOCKED ARCHIVES

Some time ago, we ran as our lead article a piece by Rose McKinnon of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in which she argued:

(1) Health care should be universal. By this we mean that it should cover all people residing in the U.S. and should be treated as a right, rather than as a privilege; and must be available to all people, regardless of their ability to pay.

(2) Health care should be comprehensive, i. e., it must include all forms of care. It must not exclude drugs, dentistry, mental health care and preventive medicine, which to one extent or another, all of the present proposals exclude.

(3) Health care should be financed by national progressive taxation.

(4) Costs must necessarily be controlled in order to curtail the present run-away inflation; the increased demand a financing mechanism will generate would make such control imperative, and it is likely to involve government regulation of health-related industries.

(5) There should be no coinsurance, deductables, or other complex formulae, for these become almost incomprehensible, and tend to discourage the seeking of preventive care.

(6) The supply of health care must be expanded and a greater effort made to see that minority groups and women are adequately represented among every category of health care personnel; present imbalances must be eliminated.

(7) The health delivery system must be reorganized to produce a more efficient allocation of resources among and within geographical areas and cities.

(8) Last, and most important, there should be a much greater degree of public accountability within the health care system, so that those who receive care also have a part in controlling matters of quality, priorities and ethos (e.g.

The only thing unusual about the piece was that we published it almost forty years ago, in November 1971,when Dennis Kucinich was 24 years old. Those who consider him radical or impatient might want to bear this in mind.

URBAN AMERICA'S HUGE UNDERGROUND COSTS

NY TIMES - A significant water line bursts on average every two minutes somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.

In Washington alone there is a pipe break every day, on average, and this weekend's intense rains overwhelmed the city's system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.

For decades, these systems - some built around the time of the Civil War - have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.

In many cities, residents have protested loudly when asked to pay more for water and sewer services. In Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Sacramento . . . proposed rate increases have been scaled back or canceled after virulent ratepayer dissent.

23,000 CALIFORNIA SCHOOL EMPLOYEES LAID OFF

SAN MATEO DAILY JOURNAL, CA - More than 23,000 teachers and other school employees across the state have received notices of potential layoffs, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said yesterday.

Locally, a number of school districts issued pink slips while others have sent out notices of release to its temporary teachers.

More than 16,000 teachers in the state lost their jobs last year and another 10,000 classified school employees lost their jobs in the past two years.

WHY TEACHERS' UNIONS MATTER

SO MUCH FOR TRANSPARENCY

RAW STORY - Obama's requests for transparency have apparently gone unheeded. In fact a provision in the Freedom of Information Act law that allows the government to hide records that detail its internal decision-making has been invoked by Obama agencies more often in the past year than during the final year of President George W. Bush.

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies.

CSPAN PUTS 23 YEARS OF PROGRAMS ONLINE

We've tried it and it works great - TPR

NY TIMES - C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet. The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday.

ABOUT ONE IN FOUR CALKIFORNIANS LACK HEALTH INSURANCE

LA TIMES - Nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year, according to a new report, as soaring unemployment propelled vast numbers of once-covered workers into the ranks of the uninsured.

The state's uninsured population jumped to 8.2 million in 2009, up from 6.4 million in 2007, marking the highest number over the last decade, investigators from UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research said.

People who were uninsured for part or all of 2009 accounted for 24.3% of California's population under age 65 -- a dramatic increase from 2007 driven largely by Californians who lost employer-sponsored health insurance, particularly over the last year.

Among those over age 18, nearly 1 in 3 had no insurance for all or part of 2009, the UCLA researchers found. The ranks of uninsured children also grew. The study was based on phone interviews from 2007, updated with current insurance enrollment data.

Adults over age 65, who are covered by the federal Medicare insurance program, were not included.

As a result of the insurance gap, many already strapped Californians have put off needed medical care and usually wound up crowding emergency rooms, receiving costly care on the run. Hospitals and insurance companies often pass on those expenses to customers with insurance, increasing the cost of healthcare and driving up rates for those who have coverage.