MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: August 20, 2006

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August 26, 2006

NYC, Civil Rights Groups Blast TV's Survivor

Rina wrote a few days ago about how the next round of Survivor will feature teams divided by race. There has been a firestorm of response to the announcement, from bloggers predictably, but also from civil rights groups and government officials. Yesterday, New York's city council held a press conference to denounce the show. City councilmember John Liu:

"This idea is so ill conceived that it would be funny--but for the fact that racism does still sometimes rear its ugly head. This show has the potential to set back our nation's race relations by 50 years. Nowhere else do we tolerate racial segregation, and we certainly won't stand for it in this battle-of-the-races scheme to prop up sagging television ratings."

Another councilmember said that the producers didn't realize the damaging impact of their decision. In fact, the coverage of this twist all seems to say as much, that Mark Burnett, the king of reality television and a slave to controversy, "didn't really think it would have such an uproar."

Yeah, right. This is precisely the outcome he was hoping for. I mean come on, he got Rush Limbaugh to wax on about it on his show this week. And he really couldn't have been more offensive, stirring the controversy pot for the show and Mr. Burnett:

Hispanics, he said, "have shown a remarkable ability to cross borders" and "will do things other people won't do." Asians are "the best at espionage, keeping secrets." Blacks "lack buoyancy" and are "more likely to drown," while the white man's burden will weigh down the last team with "guilt over the fact that they run things."

CBS is defending the show, saying it will answer the critics "on the screen." The thing that people may not want to admit is that reality is a lot closer to this situation than we're comfortable admitting. Neighborhoods and schools are becoming more, not less, segregated and some seem to be fine with that. And if we're not then the fight is better fought in our communities, rather than aimed at Hollywood. This Survivor scenario seems to tug at the unease that manifests when true survival is at stake: Watts, Rodney King, O.J., Katrina, all times when we have had to look critically at how we deal with race in this country. We may not want to see people of different races competing for food, shelter, luxuries and their very existence on television. We don't have to, we can just take a hard look at our country to see the same. Most people won't, but you'd better believe they'll tune in September 14th.

August 25, 2006

State Farm Accused of Cheating Katrina Customers

Kerri Rigsby and Cori Rigsby, two independent insurance adjusters who worked exclusively for State Farm for eight years, say they have turned over to the FBI and Mississippi investigators thousands of documents proving that the insurance company systematically cheated victims of Hurricane Katrina. In an interview with ABC News, Rigsby and Rigsby describe what they call "widespread fraud" in State Farm offices in Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi.

The adjusters say that the insurance company brought in a shredding truck to destroy documents; however, State Farm maintains that shredding documents is standard procedure to protect customers' privacy. However, Rigsby and Rigsby also said that outside engineers were pressured to prepare reports stating that structural damage was caused by water (not covered in State Farm policies), not wind. Furthermore, they reported that when wind was listed as the cause of damage, the reports were hidden and new reports were ordered.

Hundreds of homeowners in the areas damaged by Katrina have complained that they cannot get paid by their insurance companies, and State Farm is often mentioned as an especially difficult company to get money from. One of the most frequent reasons cited for refusing to pay is that house damage was caused by water, not wind. However, it is not unusual to hear homeowners say that they were told this even if their house did not flood.

Bush Flip Flops on New Stem Cell Procedure

This week the genetic engineering of nonembryos has been all the buzz. That this procedure is a red herring is one issue. But more than that it seems President Bush is wearing the venerable flip flops on this one.

The procedure was actually born out of his own Presidential Council on Bioethics and when Republican Senators Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter co-sponsored a bill that would have allocated NIH funding to this type of research, he was all for it. In a press conference, on July 19 (the same day Bush vetoed the more significant stem cell bill), he had this to say after the Santorum-Specter bill didn’t pass through the House:

"I'm disappointed that Congress failed to pass another bill that would have promoted good research...It would have authorized additional federal funding for promising new research that could produce cells with the abilities of embryonic cells, but without the destruction of human embryos. This is an important piece of legislation...I'm disappointed that the House failed to authorize funding for this vital and ethical research."

But this week a White House spokeswoman told the New York Times that

"The new procedure would not satisfy the objections of Mr. Bush…Any use of human embryos for research purposes raises serious ethical questions. This technique does not resolve those concerns."

So once the science shows progress beyond mice, Bush backs off and shows how much he really supports "promising new research."

Rocky Mountain Low for Coors Executive

If you had a beer named after you and were the company's vice chairman, regularly appearing on TV asking your customers to drink, but responsibly, would you make sure not to drive drunk? Pete Coors wouldn't. In May he was stopped after rolling through a stop sign on his own block. He was arrested when a breathalyzer test showed his blood alcohol level to be .088 percent.

The court in Golden, Colorado, decided to make an example of the man whose company has made the town famous. An example, that is, of how to get no more than a slap on the hand for a drunk driving charge. Last Friday, Coors pled guilty to driving while impaired (though his blood alcohol level clearly put him in the more serious category of driving under the influence). His sentence? Twenty-four hours of community service and a suspended license for three months. The judge also waived the $200 fine, which would surely have broken Mr. Coors. With widely-publicized punishments like these, it's no wonder the number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities has skyrocketed this past year.

Shays Sets a Timeline for a Timeline, and Slams Rumsfeld

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, is breaking with his party to urge withdrawal from Iraq. Sort of. Shays, who is facing a tough electoral challenge from anti-war Democrat Diane Farrell, is expected to produce a timeline for withdrawal after holding a series of hearings next month. But Shays seems to think the main problem in Iraq is flaccid "political will on the part of Iraqis." The congressman believes establishing a timeline would firm up the Iraqis' will, but waffles when it comes to when the troops would actually be withdrawn. "It may be a timeline the American people don't want to hear," he said. "It may not be something that brings them [the troops] out quickly."

But Shays didn't mince words in his criticism of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. As Mother Jones Investigative Correspondent James Ridgeway reports in the current issue, Shays subpoenaed Rumsfeld in his committee's investigation of the Abu Ghraib abuses. Yesterday, Shays said Rumsfeld has made "huge mistakes" in Iraq, adding, "I haven't had faith in the secretary in a long time."

Fidel Castro's Visit to Texas

In 1959, after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro visited Texas. Houston residents gave him a standing ovation, the mayor gave him a handshake and ranchers, who had dressed their children in revolutionary garb, gave him a horse. Business leaders were so enthusiastic about Castro that they talked about making a movie of the Cuban revolution starring Marlon Brando. "Fidel Castro swept through Houston in glory bordering on pandemonium, with sirens failing to drown out the cheers of his admirers," the Houston Chronicle wrote at the time. Today, a Chronicle article looks back on the event. It quotes a Houston business leader who visited Castro in Cuba and recalled what must have been an especially Texan fascination with the revolution at the time: "It was almost like walking into the wild, wild West with a Spanish flavor."

The visit, in which Castro was accompanied by his brother Raul, had been orchestrated by then-Texan Senator and future President Lyndon Baines Johnson. At the time Castro was still viewed as a likely force for democracy. Still, the invitation to Texas would seem no less plausible today if it came from President George W. Bush, who has so much in common with the dictator. At Bush's Crawford ranch, the two revolucionarios could talk about limiting civil liberties, detaining and torturing people, usurping executive power and beating up on the media—and maybe adjourn for a bit of target practice. Who knows, maybe Bush will hit it off with Raul. The two men are, after all, both the inheritors of a dynasty.

The Rising Cost of Secrecy

The Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy is no secret (Cheney's office refuses even to provide figures on how much information it classifies), so it should come as little surprise that the government is now spending more than ever to shield information from public view. Still, the numbers just in from the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the government's national security classification system and recommends policy to the president, are staggering. During fiscal year 2005 the government spent $7.7 billion on classification, up from $2.7 billion in 1995 and “a 5.8 percent increase above the cost estimates reported for FY 2004,” according to the ISOO report. Add to that the $1.5 billion that private industry spends on classification and the total amount rises to $9.2 billion.

Beyond the fact that classifying information is enormously expensive -- in 2004 taxpayers spent $460 each time a classification decision was made -- there is evidence that some information is being classified needlessly. A 2005 report from the watchdog group Open The Government found that “at least 50 types of designations” are being used “to restrict unclassified information deemed 'sensitive but unclassified.' Many of these numerous terms are duplicative, vague, and endanger the protection of necessary secrets by allowing excessive secrecy to prevail in our open society.” As the Federation of American Scientists’ Steven Aftergood points out over at Secrecy News, “If the classification system were functioning properly to enhance national security, these billions of dollars might all be money well spent. But there is abundant reason to doubt that such is the case.”

Nagin's "Hole in the Ground" Comment Draws Claws

Mayor Ray Nagin probably shouldn't have called Ground Zero a hole in the ground (you can watch him say it on 60 Minutes this Sunday), but does Google News really need to post this article covering it, out of the 246 related ones it had to choose from:

The next few weeks will see a furious struggle to frame two important anniversaries, with the media spinning in overdrive to play up the importance of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and at the same time to downplay the significance of the five-year anniversary of September 11. The reasons are simple: Katrina helps Democrats, 9/11 help President Bush and the GOP.

This is Google News, not Google Opinion, or Google Soapbox. John McIntyre a conservative pundit who, wait for it, writes for Fox News, goes on:

Let me give a little piece of unsolicited PR advice to Mayor Nagin: comments like that will quickly have the country siding 95% with New York and against New Orleans. I get pissed just thinking about Nagin contemptuously describing the ground where Islamist's attacked and murdered over 2,500 Americans as simply "A hole in the ground." I'd love to see a full scale, accurate and honest documentary covering the entire Katrina crisis period of Mayor Nagin and the New Orleans city government and compare that to Mayor Giuliani and New York City's response to 9/11.

The rub here is that Giuliani and Nagin, no matter how they handled their respective disasters, and one could argue that the former had a lot more to work with, when it comes to catastrophes of this scope the buck stops with the President. Bush can't have it both ways, flexing his executive power to the point of theocracy one day then vacationing when crisis strikes. And Mr. McIntyre doesn’t mention two quite relevant things: first, there was ample warning, days in fact, before Katrina struck and Bush did nothing (and then later lied about getting advanced warning). And perhaps more egregious, he failed to learn from his behavior when the twin towers were struck. On both 9/11 and during Katrina our Commander in Chief was paralyzed, inept in the precise moments presidents are meant for.

August 24, 2006

We're Here to Pump You Up!

OK, one more penis pump story and the New York Times style section will be running a trend piece about them. Today's news brings us the story of Mardin Amin, a hapless 29-year-old Iraqi American janitor who was stopped at Chicago's O'Hare airport on August 16 because, prosecutors say, he told officials that the suspicious black rubber device they had plucked from his backpack was a bomb. In fact, it was a penis pump, and his lawyer attributes his less-than-clear enunciation to the fact that he was traveling with his mother and two small children.

Standing next to his mother, an embarrassed Amin whispered out of one corner of his mouth that it was a "pump"—as in a penis pump. The guard misunderstood the Iraqi man and thought she heard the word "bomb," Amin's attorney told a Cook County judge Wednesday.

"He told her it's a pump," attorney Eileen O'Neill-Burke said as a cluster of burly, snickering police officers watched the court proceedings. "He's standing with his mother. Of course he's not going to shout this out."

Two days later an Oklahoma judge was sentenced to four years in prison on four counts of indecent exposure for using a penis pump under his robes over a period of two years.

All this would be nothing more than snicker-worthy were it not for the fact that prosecuting Iraqi Americans for carrying penis pumps is apparently considered a legitimate use of airport security and law enforcement resources.

Out-wit, out-last, out-race! Literally.

CBS show Survivorannounced yesterday that it would divide this season's 20 contestants into tribes based on race: there'll be African American tribe, Asian American tribe, Hispanic tribe and White tribe. Which means that in an amazing twist, in addition to subsiting on grubs and subjecting themselves to humiliating displays of desperation, cast members will also have to be super self-conscious when hurling insults at other tribes. Apparently inspired less by neo-Darwinism than pure cluelessness, host Jeff Probst (a non-Hispanic White) appeared on "The Early Show" today to explain the organic process by which this amazing moment in American popular culture came about:

"It wasn't until we got to casting and started noticing this theme of ethnic pride . . . that we started thinking, wow, if culture is still playing such a big part in these people's lives, that's our idea, let's divide them based on ethnicity."

70% of Post-Katrina Contracts Awarded Without Full Bidding

Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted by FEMA in the awarding of Katrina recovery contracts, according to a U.S. House of Representatives study released today by House Democrats. Audits show that of $10.6 billion worth of contracts awarded, more than $7.4 billion were given with either no bidding or limited bidding. In addition, nineteen contracts worth $8.75 billion wasted taxpayer money in part through double-billing or non-use of purchased items.

While acknowledging that some of the contracts needed to be awarded on an emergency, no-bid basis, Democrats pointed out that, as time passed, the number of no-bid or limited-bid contracts actually increased. Bechtel, CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor--companies with strong political connections--were found by auditors to have wasted post-Katrina recovery money. These same companies were just awarded millions of dollars worth of temporary housing contracts by FEMA.

Yoga for Warmongers

As the Associated Press pointed out recently, yoga has expanded so far beyond the hippie realm that it has finally touched the polar opposite: the military. The August issue of Fit Yoga Magazine features a photo of two Naval aviators doing yoga in full combat gear on the tarmac of an aircraft carrier. They are, of course, doing a pose known as Warrior II. “And on their faces,” wrote Fit Yoga editor Rita Trieger, “their serene smiles relayed a sense of inner calm that only yogis can truly understand.”

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today suggests that if yoga can benefit warriors, maybe it should also be administered to other violent professions:

Yoga could really help predatory tow-truck drivers; maybe they could start with something familiar, like the locust pose. . . . Aggressive drivers and tailgaters might try the wind-relieving pose, which closely resembles an appendicitis attack — on your back with your arms clutching your knees — but feels much nicer.

One possibility the story leaves out, however, is using yoga to calm down the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and his fellow warmongers. A New York Times story revealed today that senior Bush administration officials, apparently having learned nothing from the intelligence failures that led to the invasion of Iraq, have been pressuring American spy agencies to give them more of a justification for taking on Iran. To help them ponder the ramifications of such an approach, I’d suggest the Plank Pose (considering an invasion would be akin to walking one), the Noose Pose, or the Corpse Pose, which is, of all the poses, the most relaxing.

FDA Approves Plan B for Over-the-Counter Sale

Finally. The emergency contraceptive, which can prevent pregnancy if taken up to 72 hours after sex, will be be available over-the-counter to women over 18 as soon as the drug's maker reprints the packaging. This comes nearly three years after an independent FDA advisory committee voted overwhelmingly that Plan B is perfectly safe for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions.

As part of the FDA approval, the drug's maker agrees to "conduct an education campaign ... to raise awareness and knowledge levels about emergency contraception." This is great news, because recent surveys have shown only one in five women is aware that there are effective methods of after-sex contraception.

Now for the bad news: Women under 18 will still have to get a doctor's note to purchase Plan B for themselves, even though all research says that the drug can be safely and effectively used by teens. The age restriction means that Plan B will not be sold in convenience stores, but only at businesses with a licensed pharmacist. In this way, it also affects women 18 and up. Not every town in America has a 24-hour pharmacy, but most have a 24-hour gas station. Pharmacist refusals are likely to remain a huge problem.

And even though the FDA has finally caved to common sense, the Center for Reproductive Rights lawsuit against the agency will continue. Depositions in the case show the White House intervened in the FDA's supposedly independent decision-making process, and the Center has subpoenaed members of the Bush administration. This ain't over yet.

FDA's Missing More Than 9,000 Drugs From its Rolls

Now that the FDA has finally approved over-the-counter emergency contraception it needs to turn its attention to elsewhere in the beleagured agency. A report released last week by the Department of Health and Human Services found that FDA's current list of 123,856 medications includes 34,257 that are no longer available and is missing another 9,187.

For 16 percent of missing [medications], drug firms confirmed that they did not submit the required FDA forms for listing the drug products. In nearly all of the remaining cases in which drug firms claimed to have submitted listing forms, evidence of submission was not provided or the documentation provided was inconclusive. However, in 9 percent of cases, firms’ claims to have submitted forms were corroborated by forms we found in FDA’s files. In these cases, FDA had failed to appropriately process the forms.

Currently all 120,000-plus drugs are tracked by a total of 15 staff who manually enter data from paper registrations each time companies file to sell or stop selling certain medications. (They've got to be in a windowless office in a basement somewhere too, right?)

The new system would require companies to provide updates electronically every six months on the drugs they have on the market. Wait, they aren't required to do this already? This is the country's regulatory arm of a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry and in 2006 its proposing that companies check in twice a year.

The FDA might just miss the brouhaha over Plan B; it distracted us all from the rest of their mess.

August 23, 2006

Two Female Editors=Cat Fight? (What, Does Hype Stalker Work for Forbes?)

Ok, not to make too much of this, because, as best as I can tell, Hype Stalker practices a sort of “I wish I worked for Gawker” style of snark. But still, here’s what the New York Press’ columnist had to say about Monika and I becoming the co-editors of this magazine:

Does anyone really think that Mother Jones appointing two editors-in-chief (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery) will actually work? (Cue the cat reorws and hisses!)

How about, Cue the misogynistic clichés?

Now, it is fair game to ask, how does a co-editorship work? (To which we say, among other things, it seemed to work just fine at The New York Review of Books for decades.) The question I have is, if the two editors in question were both men, or a man and a woman, would they be subjected to the equivalent of a “Chicks in Chains” stereotype? Or more to the point, bad writing?

Come what may, there will be no hair pulling in this big house. That’s a promise.

And while I’m on the subject, the Forbes story, on which Liz has blogged (here and here), just gets better and better. Do not miss the side-by-side comparison of the mind blowingly Neanderthalish Michael Noer article on how career women make lousy wives (!!) with Forbes writer Elizabeth Corcoran’s rebuttal, “Don’t Marry a Lazy Man.” Forbes notes the Noer article has prompted “a heated response, both inside and outside the building.” Yeah, from among others, probably any woman, married or unmarried, who’s got any personal or professional history with Michael Noer.

For more evidence on that front, follow the jump to a cached version of "The Economics of Prostitution"—another bit of (moldy) "academic analysis" by Noer that Forbes seems to have taken down from its website. Highlights include: "Wives, in truth, are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises--like fine wine. "

he Economics Of Prostitution
Michael Noer, 02.14.06, 12:00 PM ET

Wife or whore?

The choice is that simple. At least according to economists Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn, it is.

The two well-respected economists created a minor stir in academic circles a few years back when they published "A Theory of Prostitution" in the Journal of Political Economy. The paper was remarkable not only for being accepted by a major journal but also because it considered wives and whores as economic "goods" that can be substituted for each other. Men buy, women sell.

Economists have been equating money and marriage ever since Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker published his seminal paper "A Theory of Marriage" in two parts in 1973 and 1974--also, not coincidentally, in the Journal of Political Economy.
Get more information on working girl wages through the ages.

Becker used market analysis to tackle the questions of whom, when and why we marry. His conclusions? Mate selection is a market, and marriages occur only if they are profitable for both parties involved.

Becker allowed nonmonetary elements, like romantic love and companionship, to be entered into courtship's profit and loss statement. And children, in particular, were important. "Sexual gratification, cleaning, feeding and other services can be purchased, but not children: Both the man and the woman are required to produce their own children and perhaps to raise them," he wrote.

But back to whores: Edlund and Korn admit that spouses and streetwalkers aren't exactly alike. Wives, in truth, are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises--like fine wine. This may explain why prostitution is less common in wealthier countries. But the implication remains that wives and whores are--if not exactly like Coke and Pepsi--something akin to champagne and beer. The same sort of thing.

As with Becker, a key differentiator in Edlund and Korn's model is reproductive sex. Wives can offer it, whores can not.

To be fair, Edlund and Korn were merely building an admittedly grossly simplified model of human behavior in an attempt to answer a nagging question: Why do hookers make so much money? Prostitution is, seemingly, a low-skill but high-pay profession with few upfront costs, micro-miniskirts and stiletto heels aside.

Yet according to data assembled from a wide variety of times and places, ranging from mid-15th-century France to Malaysia of the late 1990s, prostitutes make more money--in some cases, a lot more money--than do working girls who, well, work for a living. This held true even for places where prostitution is legal and relatively safe. In short, streetwalkers aren't necessarily being paid more for their increased risk of going to jail or the hospital.

Notwithstanding Jerry Hall's quip when she was married to Mick Jagger, about being "a maid in the living room and a whore in the bedroom," one normally cannot be both a wife and a whore. "Combine this with the fact that marriage can be an important source of income for women, and it follows that prostitution must pay better than other jobs to compensate for the opportunity cost of forgone-marriage market earnings," Edlund and Korn conclude.

Ouch.

Another zinger: "This begs the question of why married men go to prostitutes (rather than buying from their wives, who presumably will be low-cost providers, considering that they can sell nonreproductive sex without compromising their marriage)." Guys, nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" more than "low-cost provider."

Of course, it's easy to pour cold water on some of the assumptions made in Edlund and Korn's mathematical model. But these so-called "stylized facts" are supposed to predict human behavior; they don't necessarily pretend to mirror it.

In particular, the assumption that there is no "third way" between wife and whore is problematic, if not outright offensive: "The third alternative, working in a regular job but not marrying, can be ruled out, since we assume that the only downside of marriage for a woman is the forgone opportunity for prostitution."

Be sure to let all your married friends know what they're missing.

Also, the emphasis on the utility of children is puzzling. In most Western democracies, fertility rates have plummeted as wealth has increased. Empirically, men not only buy fewer whores as they get richer, but they have fewer children.

Still, the economic analysis of marriage explains one age-old phenomenon: gold digging.

"In particular, does our analysis justify the popular belief that more beautiful, charming and talented women tend to marry wealthier and more successful men?" wrote Becker. His answer: "A positive sorting of nonmarket traits with nonhuman wealth always, and with earnings power, usually, maximizes commodity output over all marriages."

In other words, yes, supermodels do prefer aging billionaires. And Gary Becker proved it mathematically decades before The Donald married Melania.

Forbes Pulls Article on Working Women Not Being the Marrying Kind

Sometime this afternoon Forbes pulled Michael Noer's article on how career women make lousy wives. Here's the cached version if you have yet to see it.

Now there's a link on Forbes.com to the stripped down text of the piece paired with a rebuttal from Forbes reporter Elizabeth Corcoran entitled, "Don't Marry a Lazy Man." The website is also offering a discussion forum, which had more than 180 comments as of this evening.

All this strikes a different tone than the one surrounding the original article, which featured a slideshow called "Nine Reasons to Steer Clear of Married Women," complete with campy photos of women with tear-streaked faces. Maybe the folks at the magazine realized that with half of all U.S. business owned by women, quite a few actually read Forbes, and they may not like what they see. Curiously the page that hosted the original article now reads: Something's gone awry!

Maybe that's Steve Forbes talking?

More News of Sexual Assault in the Military

On the heels of the revelation that at least 80 military recruiters have been disciplined for sexual misconduct comes a new survey of students at The Citadel. It shows almost 20 percent of female cadets reported having been sexually assaulted at the military college.

Of the 27 sexual assaults against women at The Citadel mentioned in the survey, 17 were never reported to authorities. About half of the women who did not report assaults said they feared ostracism, harassment or ridicule if they did, the survey found.

A survey of the U.S. military academies released last year found that more than 50 percent of female respondents and 11 percent of male respondents experienced some type of sexual harassment since enrolling. That survey also found 64 incidents of sexual assault among the more than 1,900 females at the service academies.

Looks like it probably wasn't such a great idea for the Department of Defense to scrap its plans to create an Office of Victim Advocate. The special office was proposed in March after the DOD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Office reported 2,374 alleged assaults during 2005, up from 1,700 alleged assaults in 2004-- an increase of almost 40%.

The Citadel recently instituted a Respect and Values Program "to educate cadets on such topics as sexual harassment, alcohol abuse, the honor code and racism." Let's hope it helps.

Inhofe Bashes U.N. Peacekeepers, Sings Bush’s Praises

Senator James Inhofe, in a speech Monday to the Tulsa Metro Chamber, called the situation in Iraq "nothing short of a miracle." In the same breath, he ruthlessly attacked the United Nations, calling the organization an "absolute disaster," whose peacekeepers in Africa go "around teaching girls to be prostitutes." He is asking Washington to withhold money from the peacekeeping organization.

Yet, it appears that many Americans don’t agree--65% disapprove of the way President Bush is handling Iraq and a new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 57% want the U.N. to be in charge of the Peace Agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Roulette of Indian Gambling

Yesterday's L.A. Times had a fascinating look at how casino-rich California tribes prevent other tribes from opening casinos. It's the same dynamic that was on display in Ralph Reed's work for Jack Abramoff, where Reed assembled Christian anti-gambling coalitions in Texas and Louisiana to help defeat competition to the lucrative casino of Abramoff's client, Louisiana's Coushatta tribe (or, as Abramoff termed his Indian clients, "monkeys" and "troglodytes").

Having recently driven through both the remote Northern California coast, where the Yurok tribe is seeking approval to build a casino, and the busy Central Valley, where casinos and billboards for them dominate the landscape, I found the piece especially poignant. The example of the Yurok tribe below serves as a microcosm of the forces at play but the whole piece is worth a read.

In California's southeast corner, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Nation has 3,250 members and a 45,000-acre reservation that bridges California and Arizona. At California's northwest edge, the Yurok tribe has 5,000 members and a reservation that straddles the Klamath River, a mile wide on each side. They are the state's two largest tribes.

Schwarzenegger struck deals with the Yurok and Quechan last year that would have permitted each to build casinos on their own land. Last year, rich tribes' leaders and their representatives, operating from the office of state Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland), lobbied against the two tribes' deals. The legislative session ended without a vote on either.

"It's frustrating to have tiny tribes that have benefited so much from gambling stop a far larger tribe such as the Yurok," said Sen. Wes Chesbro (D-Arcata), who has tried to shepherd the Yurok compact through the Legislature.

The Yurok have an annual budget of $12 million — less than what one of its opponents, Agua Caliente, spent on a failed 2004 initiative campaign to gain unlimited gambling rights. Eighty percent of Yurok homes lack electricity, and 75% of the tribe's members have no jobs or phone lines, according to a recent report by the California Research Bureau, an arm of the state library. The tribe wants a 350-slot casino.

"It never entered my mind that we would be challenged," Yurok Chairman Howard McConnell said, sitting in his office in Klamath, near the mouth of the Klamath River and Redwood National Park.

Forbes to Readers: Don't Marry a Career Woman

Yesterday Forbes posted a helpful little gem telling men (apparently its only readers): Don't Marry Career Women. Michael Noer writes:

Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career. Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage....Recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it.

He's mostly saying that marriage, childrearing and housework ("your house will be dirtier" if your wife has a career) are stressful, and a wealth disparity between couples -- likely of any sex I might add -- adds to that stress. To this we can all sigh a collective, duh. That women make less, have to clean the house more, and are the kid raisers all at once isn't new information. I guess we only get from Noer that he and his business-minded audience may not be ready to step up.

Earlier this year Mother Jones looked at the oh so many ways the working woman gets screwed, and getting married is the least of her worries. Herewith, a sample:

-74% of female executives have a spouse who’s employed full time while 75% of male execs have a spouse who’s not employed.

-42% of female execs over 40 don’t have kids.

-For full-time working fathers, each child correlates to a 2.1% earnings increase. For working moms, it’s a 2.5% loss.

-40% of married professionals feel that men do less work around the house.

Sources for the above, and the rest, here.

As if Medicare isn't Confusing Enough: 230,000 Seniors Sent Checks They Can't Cash

Last week the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services mailed 230,000 Medicare recipients checks reimbursing them for monthly premiums on their prescription drug coverage.

By mistake.

Adding to the confusion the checks, totaling $50 million, came along with a letter telling seniors that the Social Security Administration would no longer deduct premiums from their Social Security check. Apparently the agency sent the wrong information to the Social Security Administration about various changes in coverage for beneficiaries, leading to the snafu. This week, CMS officials sent a second letter out telling folks not to cash the checks, which averaged $215, though they fail to mention any of this on their website.

Not only will they have to return the cash, as of January 1.5 million seniors (those with higher incomes) will have higher premiums to deal with.

Americans Aren't Buying Bush's Iraq-Terrorism Link

A New York Times/CBS News poll just found 51 percent of Americans see no link between the fight in Iraq and the broader anti-terror effort—a ten percent jump since June. The alleged connection was a central part of President George Bush’s 2004 campaign against Sen. John Kerry, when Bush repeatedly asserted ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. But that link has apparently evaporated, according to none other than Bush, who touched on the subject in a Monday press conference:

THE PRESIDENT: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?
THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?
Q: The attack on the World Trade Center?
THE PRESIDENT: Nothing. . .Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

What hasn’t changed is Bush’s view that bailing out of Iraq will cause it to devolve into a terrorist base. At the press conference he went on to say:

I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case. And one way to defeat that -- defeat resentment is with hope.

The United States is creating hope in Iraq? Yeah right. Though many Iraqis do seem to support Condi Rice’s “New Middle East," such as those who were rallying in the streets of Baghdad this month in solidarity with Hezbollah.

August 22, 2006

"People here in the U.S. don't understand these things about constitutional rights"

That's what a Jordan-born man says he was told by airport security personnel when they asked him to remov