REDEYE 3/13/13

Poverty around your next corner?
Liberal Opinion Week, 2/13 — Welcome to America, where half the nation lives right on the razor’s edge. A shocking new report out of the Corporation for Enterprise Development finds that 44 percent of Americans are just one financial shock away from complete ruin. Nearly half the nation doesn’t have enough savings to keep them out of poverty for more than 3 months should they suffer a job loss, an accident, a sickness or other financial shock.

US does toxic work in Mexico
NYT, 2/9 — United States companies are sending…lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk….
Since 2008, new United States’ limits on lead pollution have made domestic recycling complicated and costly. That has helped propel the recycling trade to Mexico, both legally and illegally .…
Soil collected by the [NY] Times in a school playground near a recycling plant outside Mexico City was found to have lead levels five times those allowed in the United States.
Lead poisoning causes high blood pressure, kidney damage and abdominal pain in adults and serious developmental delays and behavioral problems in young children….

Suicide spike reflects GI’s shame
GW, 2/8 — In 2012….more of America’s serving soldiers died at their own hands than in pursuit of the ‘enemy’….
[William] Busby’s story….was in many ways the archetype of the American soldier…..He came under attack several times, and in one incident incurred a blow to the head that caused traumatic brain injury. His body was so peppered with shrapnel that whenever he walked through an airport security screen he would set off the alarm. The mental costs were high, too. Each time he came back from Afghanistan, he seemed a little more on edge, a little more withdrawn.
Nights were the worst. He had bad dreams and….told his mother, “You would hate me if you knew what I’ve done out there…”
Hundreds of service members…have been grappling with suicidal thoughts….Colleagues in military psychiatry have developed the concept of “moral injury” to help understand the current wave of self-harm. [They] define that as “damage to your deeply-held beliefs about right and wrong. It might be caused by something that you do or fail to do….”
Contrary to assumptions, it is not the fear and the terror that service members endure in the battlefield that inflict most psychological  damage…but shame and guilt related to the moral injuries….as the guilt that follows the knowledge that a military action has led to the death of civilians, particularly women and children….
But experts say the crisis could last for at least a decade beyond the end of war….

Clinton leads olé for Burma junta
GW, 2/8 — [Myanmar/Burma is] a country ruled by a military-backed government that came to power in rigged elections. Its army is committing war crimes against ethnic minorities. International aid to tens of thousands of people displaced by attacks by its army is blocked by the government, and hundreds of political prisoners are in jail.
Last week Hillary Clinton cited Burma as one of her successes during her term as secretary of state….But the speed with which the international community moved to relax sanctions…and heap praise on every small reform came as a shock to those of…Burma who thought the international community was on [their] side.

Shh! Sales tax robs workers
NYT, 1/25 — WASHINGTON — Republican governors are moving aggressively to cut personal and corporate income taxes, including proposals that would increase reliance on state sales tazes….
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal is pushing to repeal the state’s personal and corporate income taxes and make up the lost revenue through higher sales taxes. Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska is calling for much the same thing in his state….
The approach would lead to cutbacks in education, health care and other vital services while shifting relatively more of the tax burden on those who can least afford it.
“These aren’t pro-growth policies — they’re shell games that reward the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else.”

REDEYE 2/27/13

Cops lie freely vs. poor workers
NYT, 2/3 — Thousands of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”
But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.
…But numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm….
The State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug enforcement units. “I thought I was not naïve,” [the judge] said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the  seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”
….At worst, the case will be dismissed, but the officer is free to continue business as usual….Criminal defendants are typically poor and uneducated, often belong to a racial minority…. “Police know that no one cares about these people,” Mr. Keane said.
Guerrillas are not truly terrorists
NYT, 1/27 — The effort to link guerrillas and terrorists does not come off….It is common for powerful armies to decry their weaker opponents as terrorists — this is how the [Nazi] Wermacht described European partisans during World War II. But in reality, the two categories have very little in common.
Rebel Rosa Parks planned bus action
NYT, 2/2 — Most of what you think about Rosa Parks may well be wrong.
On the verge of the 100th anniversary of her birth…comes a fascinating new book, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” by Jeanne Theoharis, a Brooklyn College professor. It argues that the romanticized, children’s-book story of a meek seamstress with aching feet who just happened into history in a moment of uncalculated resistance is pure mythology.
As Theoharis points out, “Rosa’s family sought to teach her controlled anger, a survival strategy that balanced compliance with militancy.”
Parks was raised mostly by her grandparents. Her grandfather…often sat vigil on the porch with a rifle in case the Klan came. She sometimes sat with him because…she put it, “I wanted to see him kill a Ku Kluxer.”
When she was a child, a young white man taunted her. In turn, she threatened him with a brick. Her grandmother reprimanded her as “too high-strung,” warning that Rosa would be lynched before the age of 20. Rosa responded, “I would be lynched rather than be run over by them….”
She spent nearly two decades before the bus incident struggling, organizing and agitating for civil rights….Parks was by no means the first person to perform an act of civil disobedience on a bus. She was very much aware of many of the people whose similar actions had preceded her own, even raising money for some of their defense funds. She also encouraged others to commit these acts….
Parks explained that “I had felt for a long time, that if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.”
That day came….She refused. This was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was a political calculation informed by a life of activism….
“The Rosa Parks who surfaced in the deluge of public commentary was, in nearly every account, characterized as ‘quiet.’ ‘Humble,’ ‘dignified’ and ‘soft-spoken,’ she was ‘not angry’ and ‘never raised her voice.’”
Parks, like many others…who over the years have angrily agitated for change in this country has been sanitized and sugar-coated for easy consumption.
Desperate workers fill lethal jobs
NYT, 1/28 — The patients come with burns from hot water, with hands and fingers crushed by steel tongs, with injuries from chains that have whipsawed them off their feet. Ambulances carry mangled, bloodied bodies from accidents on the roads packed with trucks and heavy-footed drivers.
The furious pace of oil exploration that has made North Dakota one of the healthiest economies in the country has had the opposite effect on the region’s health care….Swamped by uninsured laborers flocking to dangerous jobs, medical facilities in the area are sinking under skyrocketing debt [caused by] a flood of gruesome injuries….
Just three years ago…the hospital averaged 100 emergency room visits per month; last year that average shot up to 400.

REDEYE 2/13/13

Nukes kill civilians, don’t win wars
NYT, 1/14 — Leaving aside the morality of America’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, new research by historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and other scholars shows that Japan surrendered not because of the atomic bomb but because the Soviets…joined the war. Sixty-six Japanese cities had already been destroyed by conventional weapons — two more did not make the difference. Attributing surrender to the bomb was also convenient for Japan’s leaders, allowing them to blame defeat on a “miracle” weapon….
Mass destruction doesn’t win wars; killing soldiers does. No war has ever been won simply by killing civilians. The 1941-44 siege of Leningrad didn’t deter Soviet leaders from pressing the fight against Hitler. Nor did the firebombing of Dresden force Germany to submit.

Surprise! Poverty causes big debts
NYT, 1/15 — The usual explanations for reckless borrowing focus on people’s character, or social norms that promote free spending and instant gratification. But recent research has shown that scarcity by itself was enough to cause this kind of financial [sabotage].
“When we put people in situations of scarcity, they get into poverty traps,” said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “They borrow at high interest rates that hurt them, in ways they knew to avoid when there was less scarcity.”
The psychological burden of debt not only saps intellectual resources, it also reinforces reckless behavior, and quickly…. The average debt for households earning $20,000 a year or less…doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010….
People dig deeper precisely because they long to escape.

Workers will rally to their class
GW, 1/11 — In praise of the Fukushima 50:
On 14 March 2011, as the Fukushima nuclear plant went up in flames, 750 workers were evacuated. But 50 stayed behind to try to prevent the station from going into total meltdown. As the hours ticked by, they were joined by other employees of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. from across the country, as well as firefighters, engineers and soldiers. The group referred to as the Fukushima 50 actually encompasses hundreds of workers who tried to stop the disaster growing even larger. They did so despite the deaths of two colleagues, despite the injuries to more than 20 others, and despite the very real risk of radiation poisoning….

Congress rated below cockroaches
NYT, 1/15 — About a dozen members of Congress gathered in a Midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom on Monday, an intentional remove from the marbled corridors of the United States Capitol, to chew over some uncomfortable questions. Why are we so ineffective? Why can’t we manage….And why does America hate us?....
[A poll shows] “Congress is now rated…below cockroaches and colonoscopies….”
Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, bemoaned how each party ignores the truth when it does not suit its purpose. “Congress is a fact-free zone,” he declared.

For-profit hospitals can hurt health
NYT, 1/9 — Thirty years ago,…the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state.
Patients entering church-affiliated non-profit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering “proprietary” institutions. But patients in proprietary homes received, on average, more than four times the dose of patients as non-profits….
The economist Burton Weisbrod provided a straightforward explanation: “differences in the pursuit of profit.” Sedatives are cheap, Mr. Weisbrod noted. “Less expensive than, say, giving special attention to…patients who need it….”
 This behavior was hardly surprising. Hospitals run for profit are also less likely than nonprofit and government-run institutions to offer services like home health care and psychiatric emergency care, which are not as profitable as open-heart surgery….
One study found that patients’ mortality rates spiked when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit-making,…. Handing over responsibility for social goals to private enterprise is providing us with social goods of lower quality, distributed more inequitably….

Gambling is mainly a tax on the poor
GW, 1/11 — More than £5bn ($8bn) was gambled on high-stakes gambling machines in northern English cities and London boroughs with high levels of unemployment last year — four times the amount bet in richer rural areas in southern England….
The figures…appear to show that bookmakers have targeted the poorest areas with the highest unemployment and poverty….
“It’s a business model which sucks money from the poorest communities.”

REDEYE 1/30/13

Biofuel profit brings world hunger
NYT, 1/6 — Guatemala City — In the tiny tortillerias of this city, people complain ceaselessly about the high price of corn. Just three years ago, one quetzal — about 15 cents — bought eight tortillas; today it buys only four. And eggs have tripled in price because chickens eat corn feed….
Recent laws in the United States and Europe that mandate the increasing use of biofuel in cars have had far-flung ripple effects…as land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning out vehicle fuel.
In a globalized world, the expansion of the biofuels industry has contributed to spikes in food prices…in poor corners of Asia, Africa and Latin America….
Now that the United States is using 40 percent of its crop to make biofuel, it is not surprising that tortilla prices have doubled in Guatemala….
Guatemala’s lush land, owned by a handful of families, has proved ideal for producing raw materials for biofuels…..
In a country where most families must spend two-thirds of their income on food, the average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development….
Roughly 50 percent of the nation’s children are chronically malnourished, the fourth highest rate in the world.
Labeling you ‘obese’ serves profits
NYT — The meta-analysis….ought to stun anyone who assumes the definition of “normal” or “healthy” weight used by our public health authorities is actually supported by the medical literature….
Adults categorized as overweight and most of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality rate than so-called normal-weight individuals. If the government were to redefine normal weight as one that doesn’t increase the risk of death, than about 130 million of the 165 million American adults currently categorized as overweight and obese would be re-categorized as normal weight instead….
Baselessly categorizing at least 130 million Americans — and hundreds of millions in the rest of the world — as people in need of “treatment” for their “condition” serves the economic interests of, among others, the multibillion-dollar weight-loss industry and large pharmaceutical companies, which have invested a great deal of money in the next generation of diet drugs.
Bishops kill study of sex abuses
NYT, 1/10 — Paris (Reuters) — Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops…canceled a study into the sexual abuse of minors by priests, prompting the investigator to accuse them of trying to censor what was to be a major report on the scandals.
The independent study, examining church files that sometimes date to 1945, was meant to shed light on undiscovered cases after about 600 people filed claims against priests in 2010 following a wave of revelations of sexual abuse. The German scandals were part of a series of abuse sandals that also shook the Catholic Church in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States….
[The study’s chief] told German Radio that the bishops wanted to change previously agreed-upon guidelines for the project to include a final veto over publishing its results, which he could not accept.Solution in India: marry the rapist
(NYT, 1/2 — India has…a culture that believes that the worst aspect of rape is the defilement of the victim, who will no longer be able to find a man to marry her — and that the solution is to marry the rapist….
Of the more than 600 rape cases reported in Delhi in 2012, only one led to a conviction….
Black prisoners top 1850s slaves
NYT, 1/5 — ….The idea that progress toward racial harmony would or should be steady and continuous is fraying. And the pillars of the institution — the fundamental devaluation of dark skin and strained justifications for the unconscionable — have proved surprisingly resilient….
A CNN poll…found that nearly 4 in 10 of white Southerners sympathize more with the Confederacy than with the Union….
According to an October survey by the Associated Press: In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey….
As the best-selling author Michelle Alexander pointed out in her sensational 2010 book “The New Jim Crow,” various factors, including the methodical mass incarceration of black men…lead to the disintegration of the black family, the disenfranchisement of millions of people, and a new and very real era of American oppression.
As Alexander confirmed…”Today there are more African-American adults under correctional control —in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”

REDEYE 1/16/13

All pols plan Social Security cuts

NYT, 12/19 — As part of a deal being negotiated by President Obama and Speaker John Boehner…Social Security payments might be lower in the future for millions of Americans….

The White House seemed willing to make a concession to Republicans with a switch in the formula that ensures that Social Security payments keep up with the pace of inflation….

Because the payment reductions would accumulate over time, AARP and other groups argue that they would hit the oldest Americans disproportionately hard. They might also unduly burden women, who tend to live longer than men, and the lowest-income older people, who are the most dependent on Social Security….

U.S. helps Saudis aid vile dictators

NYT, 12/25 — At present, the Bahraini [government]….commits widespread human rights violations….Human rights defenders are languishing in prison….

Going out on the street, carrying nothing but a flag and calling for democracy could cost you your life here….Giving a speech about human rights and democracy can lead to life imprisonment….

But despite all these sacrifices, the struggle…seems hopeless because Bahrain’s rulers have powerful allies, including Saudi Arabia and the United States.

For Bahrainis, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the Saudis and Americans. Both are supporting the Khalifa regime to preserve their own interests, even if it costs the lives and rights of the people of Bahrain.

The United States speaks about supporting human rights and democracy, but while the Saudis send troops to aid the Khalifa government, America is sending arms….

Bahrain….is also home to the headquarters of the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which patrols regional shipping lanes [and] assists with missions in Iraq and Afghanistan….

‘Race,’ gender and class can kill you

NYT, 12/18 — Ottawa — A…farmer managed to murder 49 women before his arrest in 2002, largely because of “systemic bias by the police against the victims,….mainly members of Canadian aboriginal groups, and most were prostitutes….

The police were indifferent largely because of the women’s social status and ‘race….’ “They were poor, they were aboriginal…and they were not taken seriously.”

‘Crimes against humanity’

GW, 12/24 — To the editor: Your excellent reports on financial skullduggery…are linked by…their shared taproot in a global economic system that’s accountable only to profit, and therefore radically skewed against morality and justice.

It seems to me obscene that the four biggest earners in the world economy are human trafficking, the trade in weapons and illegal drugs and pornography….The arms trade is one of the vilest manifestations of imperialism.

How is it that we not only sanction these legalized cannibals, but also continue to tolerate an economic system that cheers them on?

Like all capitalists, China’s cheat

NYT, 12/26 — These have been especially nerve-racking times for Chinese officials who cheat, steal and bribe. Since [a] local bureaucrat, Lei Zhengfu, became an unwilling celebrity here, a succession of others have been publicly exposed….Most have been removed from office while party investigators sort through their bedrooms and bank accounts….

Highlights include a deputy district official in Shanxi Province who fathered 10 children with four wives; a prefecture chief from Yunnan with an opium habit who managed to accumulate 23 homes, including six in Australia; and a Hunan bureaucrat with $19 million in unexplained assets….

Today’s economy bleak for young

NYT, 12/19 — “I’d like to be able to support myself. That’s my only goal.”

Across the [U.S.], tens of thousands of underemployed and jobless young people, many with college credits or work histories, are struggling to house themselves in the wake of the recession, which has left workers between the ages of 18 and 24 with the highest unemployment rate of all adults.

Those who can move back home with their parents — the so-called boomerang set — are the lucky ones….

Young adults are the new face of a national homeless population….They tend to shy away from ordinary shelters out of fear of being victimized by an older, chronically homeless population….

Those who provide services to the poor in many cities say the economic recovery has not relieved the problem. “Years ago you didn’t see what looked like people of college age sitting and waiting to talk to a crisis worker because they are homeless on the street.”