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Thursday, March 31, 2005

Tax dollars at work: Army transport vehicle is a deathtrap


by Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend and Big Brass Blog

It's unfortunate that when you sign up to serve your country, the military sends you out with resources like this. Troops are at risk from rocket-propelled grenades because the Army's new troop transport vehicle, the General Dynamics-built Stryker, is riddled with defects -- and the taxpayers' wallet is $11 billion lighter. The Washington Post (reg req'd, excerpts at Raw Story) has a obtained a copy of the classified Army study that spills the beans.

...the Army's Dec. 21 report, drawn from confidential interviews with operators of the vehicle in Iraq in the last quarter of 2004, lists a catalogue of complaints about the vehicle, including design flaws, inoperable gear and maintenance problems that are "getting worse not better." Although many soldiers in the field say they like the vehicle, the Army document, titled "Initial Impressions Report -- Operations in Mosul, Iraq," makes clear that the vehicle's military performance has fallen short.

The internal criticism of the vehicle appears likely to fuel new controversy over the Pentagon's decision in 2003 to deploy the Stryker brigade in Iraq just a few months after the end of major combat operations, before the vehicle had been rigorously tested for use across a full spectrum of combat.
It should be noted that Army has no data in this report that confirms the number of soldiers that have been wounded while riding in the Stryker deathtrap. Some of the facts revealed in the report are almost beyond comprehension; how can the Army explain this laundry list of negligent manufacturing and testing issues to taxpayers, let alone military families:

* an armoring shield installed on Stryker vehicles to protect against unanticipated attacks by Iraqi insurgents using low-tech weapons works against half the grenades used to assault it.

* The shield is so heavy that tire pressure must be checked three times daily. Nine tires a day are changed after failing, and the current figure is "11 tire and wheel assemblies daily."

* The main weapon system, a $157,000 grenade launcher, fails to hit targets when the vehicle is moving, contrary to its design.

* Its laser designator, zoom, sensors, stabilizer and rotating speed all need redesign - it does not work at night. Some crews removed part of the launchers because they can swivel dangerously toward the squad leader's position.

* The vehicle's seat belts cannot be readily latched when troops are in their armored gear, a circumstance that contributed to the deaths of three soldiers in rollover accidents.

* On the vehicle's outside, some crews have put sand-filled tin cans around a gunner's hatch that the report says is ill-protected.

It sounds like there was about as much attention paid by General Dynamics to the vehicle's design and engineering as a five-year-old's to a Lego creation. But the river of denial runs deep in the Army, even as its most precious resource, its soldiers, are placed in all-American harm's way.
Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the Army's director of force development, said that when he rode in the Stryker for the first time, he "marveled at how much nicer it was" than riding in a Bradley vehicle or an older troop transport, the M113, which he likened to being inside an aluminum trash can being beaten by a hammer. He said the Stryker was "amazingly smooth" and quiet by comparison.
I think troops would trade off a smooth ride for a rough one if it raised the chances of getting back to base alive.



posted by Guest at 12:07 PM | Email this post

The 'Acting White' myth and other influences

by Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend and Big Brass Blog

An article in the New York Times by Paul Tough a while back postulated that the phenomenon of black kids being scorned by peers (claiming one is "acting white") for excelling academically by their underscoring peers is a myth. It's no myth -- I've experienced it first-hand right here in the good old South.


From the NYT article:
When Bill Cosby spoke out publicly in May against dysfunction and irresponsibility in black families, he identified one pervasive symptom: "boys attacking other boys because the boys are studying and they say, 'You're acting white.''' This idea isn't new; it was first proposed formally in the mid-80's by John Ogbu, a Nigerian professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and it has since become almost a truism: when smart black kids try hard and do well, they are picked on by their less successful peers for "acting white."

The only problem with this theory, according to a research paper released in October, is that for the most part, it isn't true. Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and William Darity Jr., an economist at Duke and U.N.C., coordinated an 18-month ethnographic study at 11 schools in North Carolina. What they found was that black students basically have the same attitudes about achievement as their white counterparts do: they want to succeed, understand that doing well in school has important consequences in later life and feel better about themselves the better they do.

So where does the idea of the burden of "acting white" come from? One explanation the authors offer will make sense to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie: there's an "oppositional peer culture" in every high school -- the stoners and the jocks making fun of the nerds and the student-government types. When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis.

My mom was born in NYC to a West Indian father, who was a first generation American from Barbados and a Native American/black mom. She was a huge reader and read to us constantly and fostered a lifetime love of reading. By the time I went to kindergarten I was already reading ahead of grade, and my mother always taught us that academics were a priority. I attended Catholic school for K-6 here in Durham, and then went on to public school for 7th grade (this was in 1975). It was a culture shock.

I got slammed by the kids for "talking white" and "acting white" because I was doing well in school -- they said so. It was made worse by the fact that I didn't have a southern accent.

The sad truth is, in a school that was at least 75% black, I was pulled over by one of the elderly black teachers one day and she told me that she was so proud of me -- she said I was the first black student to make the honor roll in that school.

If that isn't a sad reflection of the state of things in the 70s, I cannot imagine what it is like growing up today, with the saturation of anti-intellectualism and materialism foisted upon and soaked up as "culture" by some in the black community.

The discussion has, over time, focused more closely on the impact of the "pimp/ho" subgenre of hip-hop culture. The glorification of violence and the negative, anti-educational-achievement role model it provides for minority youth, particularly young women is finally being called out. These images continue to be rewarded in the segments of the black community, and promoted shamelessly by corporations, who don't mind profiting from the situation.

It has been interesting to see Al Sharpton recently call for a 90-day ban on radio and television airplay for any performer who uses violence to promote albums and for filmmaker Spike Lee to speak out about the trend. These conversations are difficult ones to have because of the potential for finger-pointing and generational political football, nevertheless the discussion needs to happen. The influence of this sub-genre now crosses race and class lines; the problem cannot be roped off and considered part of the culture of the "other."
posted by Guest at 12:05 PM | Email this post

Old and New South, Red and Blue


by Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend and Big Brass Blog

As Gary said in his intro post, I'm an actual Durham native -- that seems to be a rarity in these parts at the present time, with all the Yankee immigrants over the last couple of decades.

I have Red State/Blue State "dual citizenship," since I have native New Yorkers on one side of the family and I lived in NYC during its unforgettable heydey of urban decline of the 70s and 80s. When I returned to my hometown in 1989, it was clear that Durham, and its southern identity, had changed dramatically.


The best of Southern Culture has been retained here -- brewed iced tea, good barbecue, a slower pace of doing things, a greeting of "Honey" or "Sugar" to you by people you don't even know -- it can be disconcerting to folks from other parts of the country that move here. Only last week I was at a business meeting with arrivals to these parts from Western and Northern states, and they freely admitted to being freaked out because they were addressed "Ma'am," and that people weren't in a hurry to get in line at the grocery store. Yes, the South is a different place, a lovely place to call home.

The South, even as the culture embraces bagels, scones, trendy coffee shops and NY-style pizza, still has some serious work to do as it adjusts to lives of its residents in the 21st century. For instance, NC has its first openly gay state senator, Julia Boseman, but the bible still beats hard over "values" issues here and elsewhere in the region.

* Woman Sues Over Tar Heel Anti-Cohabitation Law. North Carolina has a nearly 200-year-old -- and rarely enforced -- law that prohibits unmarried, unrelated adults of the opposite sex from living together. Debora Hobbs was "living in sin," and her boss forced her to pick her boyfriend or her job as a 911 dispatcher; Pender County, NC Sheriff Carson Smith says it was a moral issue as well as a legal question; he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together (convicted offenders face a fine and up to 60 days in jail). The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina filed a lawsuit on her behalf to challenge the law.

* North Carolina's General Assembly Considers Marriage Amendment. We are another state that has a large number of good old boys that are disturbed, afraid, mortified, and intimidated by the idea that two people of the same-sex want to marry. They feel the need to amend the state's Constitution to "protect" the institution. From Senate Bill 8/House Bill 55:
"Marriage is the union of one man and one woman at one time. This is the only marriage that shall be recognized as valid in this State. The uniting of two persons of the same sex or the uniting of more than two persons of any sex in a marriage, civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar relationship within or outside of this State shall not be valid or recognized in this State. This Constitution shall not be construed to require that marital status or the rights, privileges, benefits, or other legal incidents of marriage be conferred upon unmarried individuals or groups."
Major employers in the area include universities, medical centers, hi-tech, non-profits and municipal governments that offer partnership benefits to its gay employees, yet this effort to legislatively enshrine discrimination has significant public support. One can only hope that the economic impact of such a change will carry some weight in this battle, since no appeal to their humanity or concern for their gay and lesbian constituents will reach them.

Sometimes it's a relief to live here in NC; it's a relative bubble of tolerance compared to say, my wife's home state of Alabama. Progressive thinking is nowhere to be found when it comes to being gay and out.

* Is Alabama really the worst place to be a gay person in Bush's America?. Bob Moser, former editor of the great progressive paper in the Triangle, The Independent Weekly, wrote an eye-opening article for Out Magazine, Unsweet Homo Alabama, that shows you just how far the Deep South has to go.
...the vigil was commemorating the third anniversary of Billy Jack Gaither's murder, I figured there'd be quite a crowd. Gaither's slaughter in February 1999 was one of the nastiest hate crimes in recent history. Just up the road in rural Coosa County, the 39-year-old was slashed with a pocketknife, beaten with an ax handle, and burned on a pile of tires by two guys who did the deed because "he was queer."

...18-year-old Scotty Joe Weaver, the first of this summer's victims, to a chair in his trailer in rural Pine Grove, where he was beaten, strangled, stabbed, mutilated, and partially decapitated over a period of several hours. His body was then dumped in the woods and set on fire, just like Gaither's.
There doesn't look like there's going to be much change on the horizon. The state is sending a marriage amendment to the polls, and seeks to make gay adoption illegal. Ousted Alabama Supreme Court Justice, Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, is a likely candidate for governor in 2006. He had this to say:
"Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated. Such conduct … is destructive to a basic building block of society—the family. … It is an inherent evil against which children must be protected."
We're not talking about an intellectual conversation on gay civil marriage at this level. This represents the fundamental intransigence of the religious heart of the South that flummoxes Yankees either into stone silence or a torrent of redneck bashing. Progressive Southerners have to try to understand this dark side and own it, not dismiss it. I don't know how long it's going to take to change the mindset of intolerant people. I do have hope that we can work it all out peacefully, and laugh about it all over a tall glass of iced tea one day -- in my lifetime.


posted by Guest at 7:45 AM | Email this post

Guest Blogger: Pam Spaulding

Our appreciation to Rahul Mahajan for yesterday's posts on the two Souths (American and Iraqi). Taking over today is Pam Spaulding, of Durham, North Carolina (home of the Institute for Southern Studies). Check out her blog Pam's House Blend, where you can find out why right wingers are urging Christians to come out of the closet; why the Air Force thinks sexual assault is okay; why a 911 dispatcher got fired for living with her boyfriend; and what it's like to sell your soul to the American Taliban. Also enjoy the Conservative Values Monitor.

By the way, thanks to our previous guest bloggers for overcoming technical obstacles in the past couple of days, including whatever was wrong with Blogger on Tuesday. Let's hope Pam has smoother sailing.
posted by gary ashwill at 5:46 AM | Email this post

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Laura Bush's Concern for Afghan but not Iraqi Women


by Rahul Mahajan of Empire Notes



Apologies for not posting sooner. I picked today to have a computer meltdown. In keeping with the southern theme, here's a post about southern Iraq.

As you know, Laura Bush just made a special trip to Afghanistan, spending a full five hours meeting with a diverse array of residents, including Hamid Karzai and U.S. Marines stationed there. One of her main purposes in going there was to celebrate the great progress made in women's rights since the United States took over. Of course, according to the U.N. Development Program's recent National Human Development Report for Afghanistan, there has been little or no progress for women. Formal restrictions on going to school have been lifted, but the security situation has deteriorated so much that in some areas girls still can't go to school and women are even more restricted in their movements than before.

Conspicuously, Laura Bush will not be visiting Iraq to celebrate the achievements for women there. Although more than a few ignorant people though that Iraqi women under Saddam had the same lot as Afghan women under the Taliban, the truth is that women in Iraq before the regime change had more rights and more ability to get education and even work as professionals than women in most parts of the Arab world.

That has been changing. In Basra recently, a large group of Sadrist militants, assaulted a group of students because they were playing music, dancing, and because there was some mixing of the sexes. Numerous people, especially women, were beaten. This is a more extreme example of the kind of Islamist repression that has been going on every day in the south since shortly after the occupation starte. In fact, the south is quiet because of the bargain that the Shi'a clergy has made with the British and American -- that they won't attack occupying forces in return for a free hand with imposing their notions of morality and order on society. This has its positive as well as its negative aspects -- abuses by occupying forces against Iraqis in the south have generally been much less extensive than those in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" (with the exception of the August bombardment of Najaf, which was quite severe).

In this particular case, there has been a strong reaction to the attack. Some of the students have stood up in a way that very few have dared to do until now. It is a sign that people have had enough.

In general, women are far worse off now than before the regime change. In many areas, not only Muslim but Christian women are forced to wear hijab (many urban women didn't in the old days). Because of the complete lack of security, girls find it harder to go to school and women to go to work. And with Shari'a (Islamic law) sure to be codified in some (hopefully moderate) way in the new constitution, things may get even worse.

There are two reasons why this has happened. One is that the Shi'a clergy, kept heavily suppressed under Saddam, has had a lot more freedom under the occupation -- in fact, so weak is the political position of the United States that it generally has to give in when Ayatollah Sistani puts his foot down.

The other, perhaps more pernicious, is that the Iraqi resistance has grown increasingly Islamist. This is a natural, human impulse. They see their land and their religion under threat, they fight back, they even win a victory in Fallujah in April. The victory is attributed to God and their faith, just the way the U.S. Marines were preparing to do before the November assault on Fallujah. Defeats, of course, are not so attributed. Islam is the natural language of resistance for Iraqis. The more fighting there is between Iraqis and U.S. soldiers, the worse it will get.
posted by Guest at 9:03 PM | Email this post

Teaching Values


by Rahul Mahajan of Empire Notes


I'm currently in New York, looking for a place, but I've lived much of my life in Austin, Texas. Since this blog is about southern matters, I thought I'd start with some news from my hometown. According to the Austin American-Statesman, Austin schools will start "teaching values." Midway through a formulaic speech, the Austin Superintendent of Schools departed from his script and said
"We've got to counteract MTV, folks," Forgione said to an audience that quickly began nodding its agreement. "There's messages out there that are not acceptable, and our kids are picking them up."
They will be asking the help of local businesses and civic organizations in teaching what they have deemed to be "universal values," with a month devoted to each of the "touchstone values" -- caring, courage, fairness, honesty, integrity, perseverance, respect, responsibility, self-discipline and trustworthiness.

It's interesting that MTV is seen as the main thing to "counteract." Not that I care for the values implicitly espoused on MTV, but can't we find more serious targets?

Caring: Tom Delay. His extreme empathy for Terry Schiavo, whose life must be preserved at all costs, doesn't exactly jibe with his attitude toward the tsunami victims. On January 6, at a Congressional Prayer Service, where others were presumably uttering banalities about the horror of the tsunami, Delay thought it more appropriate to recite Matthew 7:21-27 about the wise man who built his house on a rock and the fool who built his house on sand -- i.e., saying that the tsunami victimes brought it on themselves.

Courage: Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and all the other fanatical war hawks who, like Cheney, "had other priorities" than going to the Vietnam War (which they also supported).

Fairness: The new bankruptcy bill, which keeps the loopholes used by the rich to avoid paying their creditors but destroys the ability of the poor and lower middle class to start over again.

Honesty: Where to start?

You get the idea. Ever since that ridiculous exit poll question last November, pundits, Democratic politicians, and the chattering classes in general have been losing whatever little intellectual ability they had left. Apparently, to them "moral values" are more important to voters than politics; few are the people who dare to suggest that politics is about moral values (many of us on the left do, but few of us really work through it and present it effectively). Even fewer are those who might say that the instillation of state-sponsored "moral values" in helpless, captive audiences might be a cure worse than the disease.

Initiatives like this one in Austin are, of course, nothing new. They're just a re-packaging of all the crap anyone my age or older who grew up in this country, especially in the south, had to deal with every day in school. The forced recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, the idiotic "inspirational" lectures in the school auditorium in which somebody always slipped in a reference to God, the course on "free enterprise," the insipid textbooks talking about America's progression from greatness to greatness, etc., etc.

The Democrats learned from the election not that they should present warmongering, torture, lies and hypocrisy as immoral, but that they should "me-too" the Republicans on most of the big issues and "soften" on one of the few issues where a majority of people identify Democratic -- abortion.

You'd think that those concerned with morality might pay some attention to the recent AP report concluding that at least 108 people have died in U.S. custody since the "war on terrorism" started -- a staggering figure even for your average police state.
posted by Guest at 12:15 PM | Email this post

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Guest Blogger: Rahul Mahajan

Many thanks to David Sirota for his contributions yesterday! Next up in our guest blogging lineup: Rahul Mahajan, whose Empire Notes blog is an indispensable read on the U.S. presence in the Middle East (among other things). Rahul, an activist in Texas for many years, has visited Iraq twice since the invasion and reported from Fallujah during the seige in April. He is the author of two books on U.S. foreign policy, The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism and Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond.
posted by gary ashwill at 9:04 PM | Email this post

Where to Find More...

by David Sirota of Sirotablog


For my last guest post, I wanted to point folks to other places who are working with the Institute for Southern Studies to promote the progressive cause (I'll assume I don't have to promote the Institute since, if you are reading this, you already know about it).

First and foremost, check out the Center for American Progress's review of its "New Strategies for Southern Progress" conference held last month. It is chock full of good stuff. Also, make sure to check out Thinkprogress (CAP's official blog) and the Progress Report. And finally, in a shameless act of self-promotion, visit Sirotablog and sign up for regular e-mail updates (the sign up form is in the upper righthand corner). I'm writing a book for Crown Publishers on the middle-class economic squeeze that is due out in 2006 - if you have suggestions or things I should see, please shoot them to me at david@davidsirota.com

[Bill Rehm 3/30/2005] Somehow, Blogger ate this post of David's last night, so I'm restoring it from our archive.
posted by Bill at 5:55 PM | Email this post

Bush Aide Says Opposing MLK Day Was Legit

by David Sirota of Sirotablog

This Washington Post profile of President Bush's top domestic policy adviser, Claude A. Allen, is illustrative of the kind of hard-right outlook that comes from the White House. According to the piece, Allen was a top spokesman for U.S. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), the man who became infamous for his racist views. When asked about whether, as an African-American, Allen had trouble working for Helms, the Post reports that "Allen counts the controversial Helms as a mentor, calling him a man of integrity and principle."

When pushed about how he felt about Helms high-profile opposition to things like Martin Luther King Day, "Allen said he differed with his boss on that one but" - GET THIS - "he added that Helms's stated objections - that King was linked to communists, that the holiday cost too much and that individuals should not be granted national holidays - were legitimate."

This is really disgusting, but remember, it shouldn't be surprising. President Bush, who grew up a rich blueblood son of privilege, has shown a total disdain for African Americans during his term. He was the first President in the modern era not to address the NAACP, and in 2004 he actually used Martin Luther King Day as a cheap excuse to force taxpayers to pay for his trip to Atlanta, where he visited King's grave for all of a few minutes, and then spent the rest of the holiday holding lavish fundraisers for himself with his big donors.

posted by Guest at 12:35 PM | Email this post

Elite vs. Everyone Else, Not "Red" vs. "Blue"

by David Sirota of Sirotablog

The media loves to talk about the divisions between the "red" and "blue" states, always trying to create some form of cultural and economic divide between the South and the rest of America. Not only is it insulting, but on many issues, it's just not accurate. The real divide in America is between the elite corporate establishment and the rest of us - and the best issue to see that on is trade, an issue I've written about a lot lately.


For instance, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that last week U.S. trade officials boarded a bus in North Carolina, drank Bud Light and munched peanuts while zipping by textile towns ravaged by NAFTA. Seemingly oblivious to the damage unregulated free trade has done to so many lives in teh South, the official s "felt satisfied that support for the controversial[the Central American Free Trade Agreement] was growing." They were headed to Georgia, and were going to make sure to "avoid the blue-collar Joes and Janes who typically pay the job-loss price whenever the U.S. market is further opened to imports. " They made sure not to meet with Debbie Horn, a 26-year mill veteran, who said, noted, "Working class people always have a hard time finding another job. The government needs to step in and not let so much imports come in."

The officials were undaunted, shamelessly throwing out rosy estimates by the Chamber of Commerce claiming CAFTA and free trade will create 20,000 U.S. jobs in its first year, and 100,000 over the decade. The Chamber, of course, is biased - they represent multinational corporations that stand to make big bucks off of free trade, because they will be able to find cheap labor abroad. And as Public Citizen notes, the Chamber's estimates are deliberately dishonest. During the NAFTA debate, for instance, the Chamber of Commerce promised that the U.S. would gain 170,000 new jobs per year. In fact, from 1989-2002, the U.S. lost over 2.3 million jobs as a result of NAFTA and increased trade with China, according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.

Luckily, some Republicans and Democrats in Congress are finally starting to understand that unregulated free trade might not be the right way to go. As author William Greider notes in his new column, a bipartisan group of senators (including some from the South) has introduced Senate Bill 295, which targets China with a 27.5 percent tariff, after China has been dumping textiles and other imports into the U.S. market.

Interestingly, the bill doesn't seem motivated by any concern for working-class people (that would be too revolutionary in a place like the corporate-owned U.S. Senate). Instead, it is a way for Corporate America to try "to bluff China and other Asian nations into letting their currencies appreciate and allowing the dollar to fall much further so the U.S. trade deficits will shrink, at least enough to avert a financial crisis." And that is fine for now - at least there is some acknowledgement that free trade has become a serious problem. But in order to capitalize on this, Greider correctly says progressives must use this bill to start asking the real questions: "If free-trade agreements are the road to greater US prosperity, how did the United States wind up in this deep hole? If the government is willing to invoke the tariff weapon to protect U.S. financial interests, why can't it use it to protect US workers and jobs?"

Sounds like a question Debbie Horn and her fellow mill workers might like to know the answer to.



posted by Guest at 10:37 AM | Email this post

Guest Blogger: David Sirota

With Chris Kromm out on vacation this week, we're bringing in an all-star lineup of guest bloggers. Up today is David Sirota, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, regular guest on the Al Franken Show, and columnist for In These Times who is deeply interested in issues that affect “red staters” in the South and beyond. David writes the excellent Sirotablog, and recently caused a stir when he pointed out that New Democrats who voted for the bankruptcy bill depend on campaign contributions from the banks and credit-card companies who pushed it.
posted by gary ashwill at 3:51 AM | Email this post

Monday, March 28, 2005

No Cheater Left Behind

Our intern Jacob Dagger writes:

*******

Back in December, the Houston school system was confronted with allegations of cheating on standardized tests -- not by students, but by teachers and administrators. When the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exams were monitored more closely last month, Houston scores declined, which seemed to confirm that cheating had taken place. Many attribute the alleged cheating to pressure caused by strict performance requirements under No Child Left Behind (NCLB); low test scores could cost schools federal funding.

It’s just the latest in a string of such scandals, but its location is particularly ironic: the success of the Houston school system was presented as strong evidence in support of President Bush’s 2001 NCLB Act.

For a more innovative (and effective) solution, we’d suggest the Houston school board hop on I-45 and take a drive up to Dallas.

Dallas’s ArtsPartners program, rather than taking the test-prep approach to grades, has integrated arts into the classroom, providing training to teachers, sponsoring museum visits that relate to subjects studied, and bringing artists into the schools. It receives funding from the school district, the city, the federal government and private grants. And by many measures, it is working:
“In Texas, there’s almost as much pressure for teachers to boost test scores as there is for coaches to win football games,” says Larry Groppel, who was named interim superintendent when Moses resigned to take a university job last summer. “Here in Dallas there’s probably more. If somebody wants to criticize ArtsPartners as fluff, they should look at the test scores.”

Indeed, initial analyses of standardized tests administered throughout the district show that students make bigger strides in literacy, particularly writing, when their teachers book performances, artist residencies, and other cultural activities through ArtsPartners. The effect is greatest in schools that receive help integrating these activities into their lesson plans. The scores of students who received the greatest exposure to ArtsPartners’ programs rose 10 points in a statewide reading test between 3rd and 4th grade compared to a three-point rise for a control group. What is more, the program seems to benefit students of every ethnic, socioeconomic, and academic grouping.
To be fair to Houston, some Dallas schools were caught up in the test-score scandal as well. To them, we’d say, back to the drawing board, literally.

NOTE: Minor edit 9:29 p.m. 3-28-05

posted by gary ashwill at 11:29 AM | Email this post

Slow-Burning Disaster

A few weeks ago came news that Duke Energy was considering the construction of the first new nuclear plant in two decades (since before the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union), to be built in either South or North Carolina. Now, nuclear power is undoubtedly a bad thing: aside from possible contamination through accidents or terrorism, links to nuclear proliferation, the problem of waste disposal, and the hazards to workers, communities, and the environment posed by uranium mining, there is always the past ruthlessness of the nuclear industry to consider (anyone remember Karen Silkwood?).

Yet somehow it seems more alarming to read that, after a lull in the past two decades, there are currently 74 coal-fired plants planned or under construction in the United States. In the next few years the world faces a tremendous upsurge in coal-burning energy production, as new plants come online in the U.S. and developing nations.

A crucial difference between nuclear and coal is that coal’s pollution enters the atmosphere (and eventually your lungs) in far larger volumes, as part of ordinary operation, every day. Coal plants are the single greatest contributor to global warming; according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, they produce 2.5 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year (cars, the second largest source, produce 1.5 billion tons). Also, mercury emissions from coal plants have been linked to the sharp increase in autism in recent years. As an asthmatic, I’m concerned that coal has been associated with a similar rise in asthma (although coal may be a minor contributor to asthma; traffic and indoor pollution, including cockroaches, are probably more important, while some point to margarine as a culprit).

Supposed “clean coal” technologies notwithstanding (and there’s lots of skepticism about them), it remains true that “there is no fuel dirtier than coal,” as Frank O’Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, told the Huntington, W.Va., Herald-Tribune.

Of course, in the long run neither nuclear nor coal will do; we need to accelerate the development of renewable energy sources and try to cut down on the fantastic amounts of energy we here in the U.S. are used to expending (as our friends at NC WARN remind us). But maybe we need to invest the public image of coal with the same sense of threat and emergency that most people associate with nuclear power. One encouraging example: last fall activists were arrested while protesting at a Maryland coal plant owned by the Atlanta-based Mirant Corporation, the sort of action that one’s more likely to hear about in opposition to nuclear power.

posted by gary ashwill at 7:13 AM | Email this post

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Double Standard

According to the L.A. Times, in 1988 Tom DeLay’s own father, comatose, brain-damaged, and kept alive by machines after a freak accident at home, was allowed to die by his family – without the interference of Congress or the President. Also, the DeLay family successfully sued the manufacturers of the “backyard tram” that had crashed, though the congressman would soon make a career of excoriating “frivolous, parasitic lawsuits” that “kill jobs”:

Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically designed to override state laws on product liability such as the one cited in his family's lawsuit. The legislation provided sweeping exemptions for product sellers.

The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he objected to the DeLay-backed measure because it “tilts against American families and would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured by a defective product.”
posted by gary ashwill at 8:00 PM | Email this post

Friday, March 25, 2005

Is the U.S. Becoming a "Failed State?"

If you haven't already, you should check out the excellent post this week at the Black Commentator: The U.S. is Becoming a "Failed State."

"Failed state" is a phrase used by the World Bank to describe nations that have been rendered impotent and ineffective by economic and/or military coercion. Or according to Henry C.K. Liu in the Asia Times,
“Failed states provide only substandard political goods, if any at all. Weak failed states involuntarily forfeit, and strong failed states do so voluntarily, the responsibility for delivering political goods, and leave it to non-state actors, i.e. the private sector through the market mechanism. Privatization of the public sector is more than the outsourcing of state functions. It is the selling off of state prerogatives.”
The U.S. is a long way from being a "failed state," but there's no doubt that's where the right wing wants to go when they say they want to "kill government" -- hollowing out the state as an instrument for protecting and advancing the public good, leaving only the cold market and free reign for the powerful.

The Social Security debate is a great example.
I doubt many on the right thought they could actually win full-scale privatization. But what was important was to 1) begin chipping away at one of the most popular bastions of the public sector, while 2) managing to win smaller changes that could siphon away public assets, bleeding the system. Same with vouchers and public education.

I remember speaking to an anti-apartheid activist from South Africa in 1990. When I asked about prospects for change, he said very clearly: "Apartheid will fall, the whites will let it fall. They don't need apartheid any more. They have capitalism."

As the Black Commentator notes, the right's war on government is having a similar effect on rendering the political gains of progressives in the United States superfluous:
Of what use is a congressional or state Black political caucus, or Black mayors and city councils, if the state is so enfeebled that it cannot deliver the goods? That’s precisely the strategic objective of those who would “Starve the Beast” – poison the fiscal well with deficits and tax cuts until the federal government cannot deliver popularly desired political goods such as health care, much less help the states and cities provide basic services. Corporations then step into the void – or as much of the needs-market as is profitable – to sell vital services. Elected officials are made superfluous. Black power – or the dream of it – becomes a dead letter.
So will all progressive politics, if we don't defend not just individual programs, but the entire idea of the public sphere.
posted by Chris Kromm at 1:36 PM | Email this post

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Welcome to Life in Texas City

After yesterday’s blast at a BP-Amoco oil refinery in Texas City that killed 15 and injured more than 100, many articles pointed out that the Gulf coast port was also the site of the infamous 1947 ship explosion that killed nearly 600. “Welcome to life in Texas City,” one resident told the AP. “I was born here and pretty much, it happens from time to time.”

Last March, another explosion rocked the same plant, and in September two employees were burned to death by superheated water. OSHA stepped in and cited the plant for safety violations, slapping the corporation with fines of $63,000 and $109,500, respectively, for the two incidents.

BP was enjoying a marvelous year financially due to spiraling oil and gas prices (which may go even higher as a result of the explosion), its profits increasing 50 percent from 2003, its overall revenues coming in at $295 billion. At that rate, I figure it took BP about 18 and a half seconds to make back the OSHA fines.

It turns out that the 15 victims were contract workers instead of regular employees. According to Confined Space, “The explosion may resurrect questions about the widespread use of contract labor in U.S. refineries and chemical plants”:
The rising use of contractors in oil refineries as a way to cut costs has been highly controversial. OSHA commissioned an investigation into the massive October 1989 explosion at a Texas Phillips 66 refinery that killed 23 workers. That explosion also involved contractors, and the resulting “John Gray” report found that they had not received adequate training and were not adequately familiar with how the plant operated....2200 out of the 3300 workers at the facility yesterday were contract employees.
posted by gary ashwill at 2:36 PM | Email this post

It Cuts Both Ways

Alabama district attorney and practicing Catholic Doug Valeska “has sent more people to Death Row than other DA in the state except those in more populous Jefferson and Montgomery counties.” Alabama bishops have joined a national campaign to end the death penalty, and the DA’s own priest has asked him not to seek execution in specific cases, but Valeska makes like Huck Finn:
“I’ll continue to seek the death penalty. If that means that I’m going to hell then God’s going to send me to hell,” Valeska said. “I have a problem with the bishops, their liberal stance.”
Since there was much loose talk by conservative Catholics and other right-wingers about denying communion to liberal politicians, particularly John Kerry, if they didn’t oppose abortion rights, it’s interesting to see a hang-‘em-high DA have to sweat a little when his own ideological leanings run afoul of church doctrine. (Denying him communion apparently hasn’t come up yet.)
posted by gary ashwill at 11:09 AM | Email this post

Will Corporate Greed Destroy the Wired Community Revolution?

This week's Independent Weekly -- one of the best alternative papers in the country, based here in North Carolina's Triangle -- has a great article by Fiona Morgan looking at the rise of "wired communities" across the country. Morgan starts off with a case study of Carrboro, N.C., a small ex-mill town next to Chapel Hill:
Carrboro offers free public access to the Web in and near the town center, making Weaver Street's inviting green lawn one of the few places in the Triangle where anyone with a Wi-Fi card in her computer can get online.

The town is in the vanguard of a movement to provide Internet access not as a luxury but as a public utility, administering its own free access points with the help of community-minded businesses and residents who contribute equipment and extra bandwidth on their own networks.

"Technology is an infrastructure like any other," says Carrboro Mayor Mike Nelson, "and local governments should view it that way. Just as we provide the community with sidewalks, roads, streetlights, we have to think of technology as an infrastructure we provide as well."
No wonder they call Carrboro "the Paris of the Piedmont!" The town joins Atlanta, Philadelphia, Portland, and other cities that view computer access as a basic need in today's wired world. Indeed, free WiFi is a class issue, bridging the still-gaping digital divide. As Morgan notes of Philly's experiment, "serving the economically disadvantaged has been a major goal of the city's plan."

And the technology is only getting better. WiMax, the next generation of wireless technology, can reach 30 miles -- dwarfing today's access radius of 300 feet.

Who could oppose such a wonderful, democratizing force for the public good?
As it turns out, civic WiFi has a formidable opponent: telecom giants who see free internet access as a threat to their burgeoning profits (pumped even higher in the recent orgy of mergers). Comcast and Verizon have been lobbying hard to undermine Philadelphia's model program, with the support of their paid-for lacky pundits. As Morgan writes:
[T]he telecom giants are still fighting Philly. A recent New York Times article quotes Adam Theirer, director of telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute, saying of muni wireless projects: "This is a growing trend, but an ominous and disturbing one. The last thing I'd want to see is broadband turned into a lazy public utility." Theirer authored a study just released by the libertarian think tank that criticizes Philadelphia's plan.

What the Times piece doesn't mention is that Cato's corporate sponsors include Comcast and Verizon. The public advocacy group Media Channel sent out a statement pointing that out.

BellSouth and Qwest Communications have also successfully pushed for restrictions on municipal broadband service in Louisiana and Utah. Similar campaigns have gone on in Kansas, Ohio, Texas, Indiana and Iowa. Even in North Carolina, the concept of publicly provided Internet access has been challenged in court.
It's now up to the public to defend this vital public asset from corporate greed.
posted by Chris Kromm at 8:45 AM | Email this post

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

The Other Shoe Will Drop

The Schiavo case fits perfectly Thomas Frank’s description of the right-wing bait-and-switch, wherein the social cons are whipped into a frenzy by some “cultural” crusade with little hope of succeeding, while politicians harness their energy, votes, and money to slash regulations, cut taxes, and make the world safer for corporations. It seems increasingly unlikely that federal courts will respond to the attempts by Congress and President Bush to intervene (though one should never say never); if that’s the case, and Terri Schiavo is finally allowed to die, we need to think about what the consequences will be. I’ve argued before that social conservatives won’t be satisfied with “phony wars” forever; and Randall Terry, the infamous anti-abortion extremist who has been acting as an advisor to Schiavo’s parents (a fact that has been curiously downplayed in the U.S. media), has made this clear:
The voters who put conservative Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress want results, not rhetoric. They want co-operation between the chambers, not competition. We put you in office for issues like this; what good is a majority if you don't use it?
posted by gary ashwill at 12:35 PM | Email this post

DeLaying the Inevitable

From the Houston Chronicle:
WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was on the defensive last week, busily responding to a series of news reports questioning his political fund raising and overseas travel.

But by week's end, DeLay, R-Sugar Land, was back in control of the news as the chief strategist behind legislative efforts to have Congress intervene in the right-to-die court case of Terry Schiavo.

“This is not a political issue. This is life and death,” DeLay insisted during the weekend.
Well, his political life and death, anyway.
posted by gary ashwill at 10:35 AM | Email this post

Another Day, Another Halliburton Scandal

The latest from the revolving door of cronyism known as military contracting in America:
Joe Allbaugh, the Oklahoman known for his flat-top haircut and loyalty to President Bush, has a new client: Halliburton, the Houston-based company once led by Vice President Cheney.

Allbaugh ... registered to lobby on behalf of Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Halliburton's construction and engineering subsidiary. Allbaugh's wife and partner at the Allbaugh Company, Diane Allbaugh, is also listed on the registration.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Halliburton said Allbaugh had not been commissioned to do any direct lobbying. "KBR hired Joe Allbaugh as a consultant to provide strategy support for our Government and Infrastructure business," the statement read. "Mr. Allbaugh has not been tasked with any lobbying responsibilities."
Ah, but it turns out that this isn't quite true:
But Allbaugh's lobbying disclosure form says the company will "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues."
Anyhow, by hiring Allbaugh, Halliburton has found someone as close to Bush as you can get who isn't named Rove:
Prior to joining FEMA, Allbaugh was one of Bush's closest campaign aides. He managed Bush's first run for the Texas governor's mansion in 1994 and later served as Bush's chief of staff in Austin. During the 2000 election, Allbaugh ... was the national campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney campaign [and] part of the triumvirate of Bush's closest advisers.

Currently, [Allbaugh] is a partner in two lobbying firms and chairman of New Bridge Strategies, a company set up by lobbyists with close ties to the Bush administration. New Bridge helps clients "evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq," according to its web site.

"This is a perfect example of someone cashing in on a cozy political relationship," said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. "Allbaugh's former placement as a senior government official and his new lobbying position with KBR strengthens the company's already tight ties to the administration, and I hope that contractor accountability is not lost as a result."
One can hope, but it doesn't seem likely, as Loren Steffy observes in yesterday's Houston Chronicle. Despite a few high-profile public scoldings, the Pentagon is completely asleep at the wheel in investigating contract fraud: Halliburton's latest big scandal, in which the company pocketed millions from inflating a fuel tanker contract in Kuwait, was so egregious it was disclosed by Halliburton itself. The Pentagon never said a word when Halliburton billed $5.5 million for a deal that was supposed to cost $685,000.

Steffy concludes:
"All of this is disturbingly normal. Pentagon policies fail to adequately police the spending of taxpayers' money, and rarely are contractors held accountable."
Given that Halliburton has had no trouble getting military contracts -- they hardly need a high-power lobbyist for that -- maybe the real intention of hiring Allbaugh was to ensure that this complacency in the face of mounting fraud and profiteering remains the status quo.

posted by Chris Kromm at 9:08 AM | Email this post

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Theater of the Absurd

Several Southern Imax theaters are refusing to show a science documentary called “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea” for fear it might offend audiences. At first glance, it’s hard to figure how the film insults Southern sensibilities. The New York Times calls it “an underwater epic about the bizarre creatures that flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in the ocean floor,” which pretty much describes half the Southern congressional delegation, so why would a few sea monsters scare us?

The Charlotte Observer explains:

CHARLESTON, S.C. - The IMAX theater in Charleston and several others in the South have passed on showing a science film on volcanoes because of concerns it might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs.

“We’ve got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area. If it’s not going to sell, we’re not going to take it,” said Lisa Buzzelli, director of the local IMAX theater. “Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution.”

Buzzelli said while the Charleston theater doesn't rule out showing “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea” in the future, she considers people's religious views when showing films. The film makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes. Buzzelli said the handling of evolution was considered in her decision.

IMAX theaters in Texas, Georgia and the Carolinas have declined to show the film, said Pietro Serapiglia who handles distribution for Stephen Low, the film's director and producer who is from Montreal.

“I find it's only in the South,” Serapiglia said.
The Times elaborates:
“Volcanoes,” released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and Rutgers University, has been turned down at about a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials rejected the film because of its brief references to evolution, in particular to the possibility that life on Earth originated at the undersea vents.

(...)

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie after showing it to a sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it was well done, “some people said it was blasphemous.”

In their written comments, she explained, they made statements like “I really hate it when the theory of evolution is presented as fact,” or “I don't agree with their presentation of human existence.”
I don’t know how these sample audiences are put together, but I would think most people interested in Imax science films, Southerners or not, are not going to be fazed by a mention or two of evolution, especially when it’s not really the main subject of the film. Is there, as the Charleston Imax Theater director says in the Times piece, “a lot more creation public than evolution public” in the South -- that is, a creation public that reacts angrily to even minor references to evolution? Or are fundamentalist activists (as part of organized efforts or just on their own) targeting such events, scrutinizing films for even passing statements that don’t meet their biblical standards? Are they skewing the results in much the same way the right-wing Parents Television Council dominates “public” obscenity complaints to the FCC?

Obviously religious conservatism and creationism flourish in the South, but it’s also possible that theater and museum officials are buying into stereotypes about Southern religious fanaticism and allowing themselves to be manipulated by a minority of committed activists.
posted by gary ashwill at 5:40 PM | Email this post

The Promise of Environmentalism

"Environmental issues, especially at the state and local levels, are bringing together conservatives and liberals who agree on little else, providing common ground in an increasingly polarized nation." That's the lede in a good Philadelphia Inquirer story today about the bridge-building potential of environmental issues.

Citing dozens of examples of eco-success stories in the red states, they note this news from the South:
In conservative Gwinnett County, Ga., where 66 percent of voters picked Bush, voters by the same margin approved a one-cent sales-tax increase to pay for $85 million to protect open space. In Indian River County, Fla., voters went overwhelmingly (61 percent) for Bush, and even more overwhelmingly (67 percent) for spending $50 million to preserve open space. Nationwide, 162 of a record 217 land-preservation ballot measures were approved, according to the Trust for Public Land, a land conservation organization.
There's a deep level of support for environmental issues in the South and other conservative corners of the country -- although in most communities, they aren't known as "environmental" issues. Usually they're viewed in terms of "public health," "conservation" or "quality of life."

And there's no reason progressives can't build on this support around the country.

One excellent example is hunters and fishers -- the "hook and bullet vote." Do you think they really want to wade around in 520% more toxic mercury a year or like seeing forests logged into oblivion? Progressives are belatedly reaching out to this constituency in the West; hopefully they'll do the same in the Midwest and South.

Environmental issues, when properly framed and organized around, have had a positive impact on race relations, too. Anne Braden, a matriarch of the Southern left based in Kentucky, has argued that the environmental justice movement which launched in the late 1980s was one of the most effective issues ever in uniting African-American, Latino and poor whites in the South. Grassroots multi-racial alliances sprouted up in response to toxic waste dumps and other environmental hazards that were deliberately inflicted on low-income communities by greedy corporations and complacent governments.

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus's essay "The Death of Environmentalism" has been generating good discussion about the environmental movement's shortcomings -- for example, its reliance on narrow political maneuvering and technical fixes instead of long-term strategy and broader vision. Along with others, they also decry the movement's single-issue focus and lack of creativity in forming the necessary politically alliances for success.

These points are well-taken. But it's also true that environmental organizing -- when done right -- has proved one of the most effective issues for getting low-income whites, African-Americans, Latinos politically involved and seeing their common interests. We need more of this kind of work in the South if the region is to enjoy a more progressive future.
posted by Chris Kromm at 12:52 PM | Email this post

Winning Back Workers

Our friend David Sirota has put up a string of good posts about the core economic issues like trade that have been deeply affecting working class communities -- and on which the Democratic Party has often been on the wrong side:
For the last several years, Democrats' complicity with Republicans and Corporate America on the issue of "free trade" has severely weakened the party's ability to attract working class voters. That's why I have said Democrats must oppose Bush's new nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Rob Portman -- it gives Democrats a platform to reform their support for free trade, and start once again speaking to the party's traditional blue collar base.
The Democratic Party -- and many left-leaning bloggers (who are largely pro-"free trade") -- often seem oblivious to the depths of the class divide, and how it's playing out in American politics. A few weeks back, Harold Meyerson had an excellent column in the Washington Post that tackled this problem head-on:
How do the Democrats win back the allegiance of the white working class? The problem may be deeper than even the most pessimistic Democrats fear it is ... It's not just that John Kerry got clobbered by working-class whites, whom he lost to George W. Bush by a hefty 23 points. It's not just that 66 percent of these voters trusted Bush to handle terrorism, compared with just 39 percent who trusted Kerry. It's that 55 percent of white working-class voters trusted Bush to handle the economy, while only 39 percent trusted Kerry.
Why did Democrats lose these white workers, including Southern workers?


The Democratic Leadership Council, Mudcat Saunders, and others say it's because they've gone too far to the left, especially on cultural issues. Some invoke the trifecta of "God, guns and gays" (an over-used and unhelpful formulation).

But a more convincing case can be made that it comes down to economics, as Meyerson notes:
Bill Clinton's repositioning of the party ... was supposed to have made it safe for working-class whites to vote Democratic again. Under Clinton, the Democrats became the party of fiscal responsibility. By ending welfare, Clinton sought to eradicate what many working-class whites saw, however incorrectly, as the Democrats' tilt towards blacks. No longer were the Democrats the party of racial preferences ... But if the Democrats are no longer quite the party of racial preferences, they are not quite the party of class preferences either.

To be sure, they oppose the privatization of Social Security and support the provision of universal health care, and every poll shows that the American people back their positions. But on a broad range of economic matters, Democrats have alarmingly little to say to working-class Americans.
As Sirota argues, the problem goes one step further: the Democrats are often seen as the party directly opposing the interests of working communities. For example, the Democrats ran ardent free-trader Erskine Bowles for U.S. Senate in North Carolina -- a state that has lost 163,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000 -- allowing the decidedly pro-corporate GOP candidate Richard Burr to position himself as the economic populist in the race, with predictable results.

This goes beyond "framing," "message" and the other techniques of persuasion being discussed in progressive circles -- this is about core values and core positions. It's also about more than a laundry-list of wonkish proposals, however important, for piecemeal reforms, like the watered-down prescription drug benefit that dozens of candidates rolled out last year. As Meyerson observers, it's about a fundamental re-alignment of progressive politics:
Democrats win when they deliver prosperity and security for working Americans, and in today's capitalism, those have become increasingly unattainable goals. Which is why, as they only now gear up their think tanks, Democrats need to promote alternatives to the kind of shareholder-driven capitalism into which our system has descended, to the detriment of millions of underpaid, insecure workers. They need to side with Main Street over Wall Street. Like the conservatives 40 years ago, the Democrats need to offend their own elites to build an America that reflects their best values, and in which working people can and do count on them for support.

posted by Chris Kromm at 4:52 AM | Email this post

Monday, March 21, 2005

Selective Scrutiny

Today's New York Times looks at the unfolding drama of non-profit organizations being targeted by the IRS and other government agencies for supposed "political" activity. The biggest lightning rod for administration scrutiny is the NAACP, which is refusing to hand over internal documents for a review of their tax-exempt status.

The IRS's interest in the civil rights group heightened after NAACP Chair (and co-founder of the Institute for Southern Studies) Julian Bond delivered a stinging critique of the Bush/Cheney record at the NAACP's 2004 convention. But the NAACP isn't the only one, says the Times:
Roughly a dozen nonprofit organizations have publicly contended that government agencies and Congressional offices have used reviews, audits, investigations, law enforcement actions and the threat of a loss of federal money to discourage them from activities and advocacy that in any way challenge government policies, and nonprofit leaders say more are complaining quietly.

The Treasury Department has concluded that "political considerations played no role," but the other examples in the story sure sound political:
  • Advocates for Youth, a group which has received government support for two decades to educate young people about reproductive health, in September 2002 was targeted by Congressional Republicans for questioning abstinence-only education. The General Accounting Office later informed Advocates they were under investigation.
  • The Global Health Council lost federal funding because it invited Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund to a debate about preventin HIV transmission among youth.
  • Three days after testifying before Congress that Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative" was too lenient on polluting power plants, an official with the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators/Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials says "the groups were asked by Senator James M. Inhofe ... to supply several years of tax returns, lists of contributors and other documentation."
The government's zeal in going after non-profits that question the administration rests on shaky legal ground, as the Alliance for Justice and others who advocate for the free speech rights of non-profits -- across the political spectrum -- have shown.

But it is doubly dubious at a time when the administration is under fire for using taxpayer money to covertly pay media mouthpieces to promote administration policy, and for its open efforts to politicize public administrative agencies.

Consider how the current administration has tranformed the Social Security Administration into an appendage of Bush's crusade for privatization, as documented by Rep. Waxman's (D-CA) Committee on Government Reform - Minority Office:
Changes in "The Future of Social Security" booklet. The 2000 version of this public primer on Social Security began: "Will Social Security be there for you? Absolutely." In the 2004 version, these reassuring lines are eliminated. Instead, the publication begins: "Social Security must change to meet future challenges."

Changes in agency press releases. [A]s the Trustees' projections of the solvency of Social Security have improved over the last four years, the agency's press releases have grown more dire. The 2001 press release was titled: "Social Security Trust Funds Gain One Additional year of Solvency." By 2003, the estimate of the program's solvency had increased by four years to 2042. Yet the 2003 press release is titled: "Social Security Not Sustainable for the Long Term."

Changes in other agency communications. The Social Security Administration provides its employees a narrated PowerPoint presentation for use before public audiences. The 2000 narrative told audiences, "There is no immediate financial crisis," and "the baby boom generation's pressure on the trust funds s not permanent." The 2004 narratives removes these statements. New additions to the agency's website warn the public of "a massive and growing shortfall" and benefits that "could be reduced by 33 percent."
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

So which is worse -- independent non-profits who cross fuzzy rules on political involvement, or administrative agencies with direct access to government power who commandeer taxpayer dollars to serve as propaganda arms for the administration's agenda?
posted by Chris Kromm at 9:06 AM | Email this post

Friday, March 18, 2005

Two Years

The latest Facing South newsletter is out, on the two-year anniversary of the ignoble Iraq conflict. Here's this edition's Institute Index:
Percent of U.S. soldiers that are from Southern states: 42
Percent of soldiers that are based in the South: 56
Number of U.S. soldiers that have died in Iraq: 1,520
Estimated number of soldiers wounded: 17,000
Percent in U.S. who think number of U.S. casualties has been "unacceptable": 70
Estimated number of civilian deaths in Iraq: 100,000
Cost of Iraq war to U.S. taxpayers, in billions: $157.9
Number of children that could have received health insurance for that amount: 94,000,000
Number of permanent military bases currently being constructed in Iraq: 11
You can read the rest here.

UPDATE: As several readers pointed out, in our email edition of Facing South three zeroes got shaved off the number of children that could be insured for Iraq war spending. The correct number is 94,000,000, not 94,000. Thanks to our reader-editors for the catch!
posted by Chris Kromm at 6:30 PM | Email this post

Tomorrow, They March

On Saturday, March 19, a historic event will happen in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Thousands of demonstrators from around the country will descend on the home of the Army's 82nd Airborne and Fort Bragg -- which has 46,000 active-duty soldiers -- to issue a simple demand: "Real Support for the Troops: Bring Them Home Now!"

What will make this demonstration different than the hundreds taking place around the country this weekend? The first is the location, a conscious decision by Southern peace activists to take their message directly to those who can understand it the most, the military families who are suffering the brunt of the war. According to USA Today, 53 soldiers from the base have died in Iraq.

Second, the march reflects a new leadership in the anti-war movement. Military families and veterans -- whose moral authority in opposing Bush's war is unimpeachable -- have been central to the organizing of the March 19 event in North Carolina. Here are some of the voices that will be present:

"Our family never agreed with the war or it's reasons, but since Casey was killed, so many of the reasons and rationalizations that Bush has given have proven to be lies. My goal is to bring our troops home to try and save another mother from going through what I am going through." -- Cindy Sheehan, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, whose son Casy, a soldier, was killed in Iraq in April 2004

"Every member of every family who has ever sent a loved one to war has suffered. They know their sons and daughters, husbands and wives are in harm’s way for nothing, for a war that should never have happened. And they know that their sons and daughters, husbands and wives are killing people who didn’t have to die either." -- Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, whose son Joe was deployed in 2002

"I am only a regular person that got tired of being afraid to follow his own conscience. For far too long I allowed others to direct my actions even when I knew that they were wrong." -- Camillo Meja, former Staff Seargant in the Florida National Guard who refused to return to Iraq and sente