Red Eye on the News

REDEYE 5/22/13

2013-05-08T23:59:56Z

Black and Latino workers hard-hit
Harvard Magazine, May 2013 — When the national unemployment average hit double figures in October 2009 — for the first time in more than a quarter century — it was major news. But unemployment among black men had already been in the double digits for most of the last deveral decades. Unemployment rates also topped 10 percent among Latino men during the Great Recession — but not among white males.
Unemployment rates alone do not reveal the full extent of the job crisis affecting many low-income communities....We show the combined rates of unemployment among males by racial and ethnic group. (Involuntary part-time workers are those who would like to work a 40-hour-per-week job but have had their hours curtailed or are unable to find full-time employment.) As the data indicate, economic cycles — particularly the deep recessions the United States experienced recently and in the early 1980s — affected rates of employment and underemployment among black and Latino males much more severely than among their white counterparts.

Jackie Robinson ‘can’t salute flag’
NYT, 4/7 — In the film [‘42’] we don’t get to see the Dodgers play the Yankees in that [1947 world]] series. But listen to [Jackie] Robinson, in his 1972 autobiography, ‘‘I Never Had It Made,’’ as he writes about Game 1 at Yankee Stadium:
‘‘Today as I look back on that opening game of my first World Series, I must tell you that....I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.’’

Business neglect = big ‘accidents’
NYT, 4/29 — To the Editor:
The loss of life is tragic no matter how it happens, but we cannot chalk industrial catastrophes up to ‘‘accident....’’ Incidents like the factory explosion in West, Tex., are often preventable. Corporate negligence and poor government oversight drastically increase the risk that they will happen....
Over time, these incidents create far more death and misery than that caused by bombings, which...are extremely rare.
Bombs mobilize our fears, but the daily devastation wreaked by corporate negligence is also tragic, and it will become only more so if we allow it to remain hidden.

Economists call system hopeless
NYT, 4/24 — Last week the International Monetary Fund hosted a conference of some of the world’s top macroeconomists to assess...the...crisis....
After five years of coping with the consequences of the disaster, there is still so much uncertainty about what polices are needed to prevent another financial shock from tipping the world economy into the abyss again a few years down the road.
‘‘We....really don’t have much of a clue.’’

Cops in schools: kids affected badly
NYT, 4/19 — ....A growing body of research suggests that...a larger police presence in schools generally does little to improve safety. It can also create a repressive environment in which children are arrested or issued summonses for minor misdeeds — like cutting class or talking back — that once would have been dealt with by the principal....
In the mid-1970s, police patrolled about 1 percent of schools. By 2008, the figure was 40 percent....
The presence of the officers did not drive down crime....Routine disciplinary problems began to be treated as criminal justice problems....
Children as young as 12 have been treated as criminals for shoving matches and even adolescent misconduct like cursing in schools....Young people who spend time in adult jails are likely to have problems with law enforcement later on. Moreover, federal data suggests a pattern of discrimination in the arrests, with black and Hispanic children more likely to be affected than their white peers.

REDEYE 5/8/13

2013-04-26T04:44:53Z

Bug shows cops seek male black youth
NYT, 3/22 — For years, the debate over the New York Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics has centered on whether officers engage in racial profiling. Now, a recording suggests that…a person’s skin color can be a deciding factor in who is stopped.
The recording…was of a…commanding officer….Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack….[who] said the way to suppress violent crime…was for officers to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk “the right people, at the right time, the right location.”
The officer who surreptitiously recorded the conversation…began pressing Inspector McCormack about who he meant by the “right people.” The conversation grew heated.
Civil rights lawyers have long maintained that the term “right people” is police code for young black and Hispanic men, who make up an overwhelming share of those stopped….
“The problem was…male blacks,” Inspector McCormack said. “And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”

Rosa Parks fought alongside reds
NYT, 3/31 — “People always say that I [refused to] give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired that I usually was at the end of a day.”
….Parks was politically active before and long after the Montgomery bus boycott, and her family was equally engaged. Her…husband, Raymond, participated in the Communist-led movement defending the Scottsboro boys….Parks also met the veteran organizer Ella Baker, who mentored her. Throughout her career, she never shied way from progressives, even those labeled Communist.

‘Cops in schools don’t help safety’
NYT, 4/12 — HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many people believe is better handled in the principals office.
Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high school, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools….
The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools….
Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests of misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior…that sends children into the criminal courts.
“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” aid Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland, who is an expert in school violence.

U.S. deportation often unconscionable
NYT, 4/8 — To the Editor:
“Immigrant Detainees and the Right to Counsel”…rightly highlights the injustice of mot providing those detained in civil immigrant proceedings with access to counsel. This particularly affects the most vulnerable, including sex trafficking victims….
Victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking and female genital mutilation face the possibility of severe harm and possible murder upon return to there home countries, whether or not they are detained while awaiting a hearing.
It is unconscionable that the United State deports 400,000 noncitizens a year without any guarantee of access to counsel and any way of knowing what harm awaits these noncitizens once they leave the Unites States.

‘Race’ + class = worst student lag
NYT, 4/13 — In 2009, the Program for International Student Assessment, which compares performance across advance industrialized countries, ranked American 15-year-olds 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math….One-third of entering college students need remedial education. Huge gaps by ‘race’ and class persist: the average black high school senior’s reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress continue to be at the level of the average white eighth grader’s….
As the education scholar Charles M. Payne had put it: “So much reform, so little change.”

REDEYE 4/24/13

2013-04-10T20:23:55Z

Immigrants facing mental harm
NYT, 4/2 — On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers ….
Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 days….
Two-thirds of the cases involve [minor] disciplinary infractions like…talking back to guards or getting into fights.

Unemployment a heart-attack risk
CardioSource: Journal Scan — The associations between…unemployment and the risks for [heart attacks] in U.S. adults were assessed in a…study of adults….
The median age of the study…was 62 years;…69.7% had one or more cumulative job losses, and 35.1% had spent time unemployed….
The authors concluded that unemployment status, multiple job losses and short periods without work are all significant factors for heart attacks….
Psychosocial stress has been…a risk factor for heart attacks, but it is difficult to separate stress/anxiety/depression from poor diet, smoking, hypertension, diabetes and a lack of exercise. This very large study demonstrated that single and cumulative job loss is [indeed] a factor for attacks.

Companies take revenge on docs’ exposés
NYT, 2/17 — The note sent by a doctor to several executives at Johnson & Johnson was blunt: an artificial hip sold by the company was so poorly designed that the company should slow its marketing until it understood why patients were getting hurt.
The doctor, who also worked as a consultant to Johnson & Johnson, wrote the note nearly two years before the company recalled the device in 2010. And it was far from the only early warning those executives got from doctors who were paid consultants. Still the company…plowed ahead, and those consultants never sounded a public alarm to other doctors who kept implanting the device….
…Lawyers have offered a portrait of executives who put profits ahead of patients, even scuttling a plan to fix the implants because it cost too much…..
…While experts say that doctors have an ethical obligation to warn their peers about bad drugs or medical devices, they often do not do so.
“Questioning the status quo in medicine is not easy….The standard in the medical community is not to report,” said…a cardiologist who, along with a colleague, warned other doctors in 2005 about a defective heart transplant.
There is a…reason doctors may choose to remain silent, experts say: their financial ties to a drug or device maker.
For years, such consulting payments have raised concerns about the impact of money on a doctor’s decision about which drugs to prescribe or how to interpret research findings….
“If someone is paying you or employing you, it is very difficult to blow the whistle….”
For a consultant, breaking those ties can carry a cost. For example, when Dr. Lawrence D. Dorr, an orthopedic specialist, warned fellow surgeons in an open letter in 2008 that a hip implant made by Zimmer Holdings was flawed, he became the subject of a whisper campaign that questioned his skills as a surgeon.
“The first thing that a company does [when accused] is put out a campaign that a surgeon does not know how to operate….”

Eurozone unemployment spreading
GW, 3/29 — Last Sunday…the terms of a bailout for Cyprus — the fifth in the Eurozone in less than three years — were finally agreed. Those who say the monetary union has been a success must have an interesting definition of failure….
The threat to the …crisis was clearly not over for those eurozone citizens affected by slow growth, rising unemployment and austerity programs. This meant most of them….

U.S. ‘right to counsel’ is a lie, puts kids in jail
NYT, 3/31 — A…landmark Supreme Court decision…gave poor defendants the right to counsel. It would be nice to celebrate….
Two recent books put a damper on the celebration, revealing just how random and impoverished justice can be, and how flimsy the right to counsel. In “Kids for Cash,” the investigative reporter William Ecenbarger tells the story behind a corruption scandal so brazen and cruel if defies imagination. Between 2003 and 2008, two Pennsylvania judges accepted millions of dollars in kickbacks from a private juvenile detention facility in exchange for sending children — girls and boys, some as young as 11 — to jail….
After the briefest of hearings — the average length was four minutes — kids were dispatched to detention centers in which the judges had a financial interest….
It was not a case of rogue judges acting alone. In a “festival of injustice,” prosecutors, public defenders, teachers and court employees saw it and did nothing…..
“Kids for Cash” and “The Injustice System” reveal the deep gap between cherished ideals and harsh reality in a country addicted to incarceration….

REDEYE 4/10/13

2013-03-27T22:18:37Z

Haiti cholera worse, aid drying up
NYT, 3/18 — Doctors Without Borders said…that the cholera crisis in Haiti was getting worse, for the most unnecessary and appalling of reasons: a lack of money and basic medical supplies.
The disease has killed 8,000 people and sickened 649,000 since October 2010….Doctors Without Borders says people are dying now, needlessly, because attention and money are running out. Aid groups are leaving. Staff members at some treatment centers haven’t been paid for months, equipment is wearing out and sanitary precautions are being abandoned. The death rate has reached an intolerable high 4 percent in some places….And the rainy season is about to make things much more difficult.
The dreadful backdrop to this emergency is an abdication of responsibility by… particularly the United Nations. The U.N. said last month that it would not pay financial compensation for the epidemic’s victims, claiming immunity. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that the U.N. introduced the disease, which was unknown in Haiti until is suddenly appeared near a base where U.N. peacekeepers had let sewage spill into a river….
… [The U.N.’s] handling of cholera is looking like a fiasco….
In December, the U.N. said it would contribute $23.5 million to the new 10-year plan — about 1 percent of what is needed.

US ‘land of opportunity’? A myth
NYT, 3/17 — Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic; while Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of incomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible….
…The upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity…
How do we explain this? Some of it has to do with persistent discrimination. Latinos and African-Americans still get paid less than whites, and women still get paid less than men, even though they recently surpassed men in the number of advanced degrees they obtain….
…[Note that] the achievement gap between rich and poor kids born in 2001 was 30 to 40 percent larger than it was for those born 25 years earlier….

Soon drones will control their own killing
NYT, 3/17 — If you find the use of remotely piloted warrior drones troubling, imagine that the decision to kill a [“]suspected [“] enemy is…made by a machine itself. Imagine that an aerial robot studies the landscape below, recognizes [“]hostile[“] activity…and then with no human in the loop, pulls the trigger.
Welcome to the future of warfare. While Americans are debating the president’s power to order assassination by drone, powerful momentum — scientific, military and commercial — us propelling…forward the day when…the same lethal authority [is ceded] to software.

Pain ‘unreal’ docs often tell women
(NYT, 3/17) — An estimated 25 percent of Americans experience chronic pain, and a disproportionate number of them are women….
In 2011, the Institute of Medicine published a report on the public health impact of chronic pain, called “Reliving Pain in America.” It found that not only did women appear to suffer more from pain, but that women’s report of pain were more likely to be dismissed.
This is a serious problem, because pain is subjective and self-reported, and diagnosis and treatment depend on the assumption that the person reporting symptoms is beyond doubt.
The oft-cited study, “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain in America” found that women were less likely to receive aggressive treatment when diagnosed, and were more likely to have their pain characterized as “emotional,” “psychogenic” and therefore “not real….”
...This can lead to treatment for mental health issues that might not even exist….

Companis take revenge on docs’ exposés

NYT, 2/17 — The note sent by a doctor to several executives at Johnson & Johnson was blunt: an artificial hip sold by the company was so poorly designed that the company should slow its marketing until it understood why patients were getting hurt.

The doctor, who also worked as a consultant to Johnson & Johnson, wrote the note nearly two years before the company recalled the device in 2010. And it was far from the only early warning those executive got from doctors who were paid consultants. Still the company…plowed ahead, and those consultants never sounded a public alarm to other doctors who kept implanting the device….

…Lawyers have offered a portrait of executives who put profits ahead of patients, even scuttling a plan to fix the implants because it cost too much…..
…While experts say that doctors have an ethical obligation to warn their peers about bad drugs or medical devices, they often do not do so.

“Questioning the status quo in medicine is not easy….” The standard in the medical community I not to report,” said…a cardiologist who, along with a colleague, warned other doctors in 2005 about a defective heart transplant.

There is a…reason doctors may choose to remain silent, experts say: their financial ties to a drug or device maker.

For years, such consulting payments have raised concerns about the impact of money on a doctor’s decision about which drugs to prescribe or how to interpret research findings….

“If someone is paying you or employing you, it is very difficult to blow the whistle….”

For a consultant, breaking those ties can carry a cost. For example, when Dr. Lawrence D. Dorr, an orthopedic specialist, warned fellow surgeons in an open letter in 2008 that a hip implant made by Zimmer Holdings was flawed, he became the subject of a whisper campaign that questioned his skills as a surgeon.

“The first thing that a company does [when accused] is put out a campaign that a surgeon does not know how to operate….”

REDEYE 3/27/13

2013-03-14T05:02:37Z

Imperialism’s new killers: Drones
GW, 1/18 — The greatest threat to world peace is....from drones and their certain proliferation....Drones are now sweeping the global arms market. There are some 10,000 said to be in service, of which a thousand are armed and mostly American. Reports say they have killed more non-combatants than died in 9/11.
I have not read one independent study of the current drone wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the horn of Africa that suggests these weapons serve any strategic purpose. Their ‘‘success’’ is expressed solely in body count, the number of so-called al-Qaeda-linked commanders killed. If body count were victory, the Germans would have won at Stalingrad and the Americans [in] Vietnam.
Neither the legality nor the ethics of drone attacks bear examination. Last year’s exhaustive report by lawyers from Stanford and New York universities concluded that they were in many cases illegal, killed civilians and were militarily counter-productive. Among the deaths were an estimated 176 children. Such slaughter would have an infantry unit court-martialed. Air forces enjoy such prestige that civilian deaths are excused as a price worth paying for not jeopardizing pilots’ lives....
How soon will it be before the United States finds itself ‘‘at war’’ with Iran and Syria, and sends over the drones? When it does, and the killing starts, it can hardly complain when the victims retaliate with suicide bombers....
Obama...and the U.S. are teaching the world that a pilotless aircraft is a self-justifying, self-exonerating, legal and effective weapon.
Bosses rob; Immigrants worst-hit
In January, Broward County...became the second in Florida to put into effect an ordinance to help workers recoup money they had earned but not been paid.
The ordinance passes despite strong opposition from business groups, which say it is...burdensome for business....
Such wage disputes are fast becoming an issue nationally....
The problem of unpaid wages is significant. Since 2009, the...Labor Department has collected more than $859 million in back wages for more than one million workers. But most cases go unreported, and worker advocates say that in some cities the practice is endemic.....
In Florida, the high number of immigrant workers complicates the issue. Because they tend to work in low-paid jobs and may lack English skills, know-how, money and legal status, immigrants are most vulnerable to being underpaid or not paid at all....
Business groups say they are committed to dismantling wage recover ordinances....
Worker advocates say that claims typically fall into a void....[Florida] has no wage and hour division. And while federal Labor Department officials have increased enforcement and staff, they are chronically overwhelmed.
Extra troubles for poorer workers
NYT, 2/28 — Mail has long been an issue in impoverished neighborhoods, where many people are homeless or transient and others live in apartment buildings or houses where the mailboxes have broken locks, or have to be shared with roommates and neighbors.
It serves as a daily reminder of the persistent barriers that separate poor people from everyone else, on a list that also includes access to bank accounts, cellphones and other basic services that are seldom given any thought by those with money and resources.
People who do not get mail say the absence of it can lead to bigger problems, like missing job interviews they never knew about, or being cut off from benefits because they failed to complete paperwork or keep appointments.
‘Race,’ class put workers in prison
Harvard Magazine, March — The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has nearly one-quarter of its prisoners.
Longer sentences for [non-violent] drug offenders and violent or repeat offenders, underlie this high rate. The United States currently had 41,000 inmates serving life sentences without parole...England has just 41....
Sixty percent of black male high school dropouts in the United States will go to prison before age 35....The American prison boom is as much a story about race and class...as it is about crime control....
Two factors greatly increase the odds of going to prison sometime during one’s life: being black or [Latino], and being poor.... ‘‘Small race and class differences in offending are amplifed at each stage of criminal processing, from arrest through conviction and sentencing,” Western writes. A criminal history accumulates that reflect not just criminal conduct, but the influence of race and poverty, and this in turn shapes later decisions about sentencing and parole release...[P]rison-policy scholars have observed that American criminal-justice policy is built on the rhetoric of personal responsibility — paying for one’s ‘bad’ decision — to the exclusion of asking why minority and low-income groups are so much more likely to make bad decisions, or how society fails them.

REDEYE 3/13/13

2013-03-01T04:04:09Z

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

2013-02-13T20:47:51Z

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

2013-01-30T20:59:48Z

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

2013-01-17T09:12:34Z

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

2013-01-02T21:25:02Z

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.”