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You dont speak for me, Cindy
We have a War president.
Get behind him-
Or go to Hell.
Just because he's a redneck moron
Is no reason to doubt
He cares alot for everybody,
Even poor black folks.
No matter what his momma says-
About how better off they are in Texas.
Sorry you got hauled off, Cindy.
If you'ld have just kept your mouth shut
You'ld be home in Vacaville,
Grieving with the thousands of other mommas,
Whose kids have been killed and mauled-
And smacked harder than Hell-
So George Junior, The War President
Could avenge his poppa's blunders
And have his senseless and costly war.
Hail to the chief...cc

Americans can fill immigrants' jobs

By Patrick Osio Jr.
Editor of HispanicVista.com

September 26, 2005

We now have some idea where those workers referred to by the statement, "There are enough Americans who will do the work illegal immigrants do," are to be found. Hurricane Katrina literally pushed them out of the attic onto rooftops in New Orleans. But Katrina also exposed that our nation's poor are most often trapped where they are, unable, as in the case of Katrina, to move away from harms way let alone move in search of better economic opportunities.

The plight of New Orleans' poor was highlighted for the nation to see, but it could have been San Diego, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Chicago, New York and all other major cities in the nation where the poor have been committed to ghettos or barrios, or by whatever name used describing where the poor are kept in virtual economic captivity.

According to the U.S. Census, 12.7 percent of the nation's population (37.5 million) including children live in poverty. Even if one considers the possibility that the 10 million illegal immigrants including their children in the US are a part of that number, from the over 27 million Americans left there are enough potential workers that presumably could be the replacement work force for illegal immigrants. So as numbers go the statement that there are sufficient numbers of American who might replace illegal immigrants is true.

But before those who have for so long made that statement go on a celebration binge, let's review why America's poor are not the replacement work force.

People whose annual earnings are below, at, or slightly above poverty-level earnings are trapped unable to afford moving to cities or rural areas where earnings may be higher. But the vast majority of jobs provided to illegal immigrants don't pay better than those earned where poor Americans live. Since Louisiana doesn't have a state minimum wage, the federal minimum wage is in force at $5.15 per hour ($6.75 in California). On television interviews some of those trapped in New Orleans said they earn $6 per hour and had been at the same job for several years. Taking the $6 hourly wage, the annual earnings (40 hours x 4.3 weeks per month x 12 month is $12,384).

The national poverty level for two people in a family is $12,830; for a family of 3 the level is $16,090; for a family of 4 the level is $19,350 and for a family of five (a couple and 3 children) the level is $22,610. But, the national level does not consider cities where the cost of living is higher. For instance, it's cheaper to live in Las Vegas or Phoenix than it was in New Orleans where the poverty rate was close to double the national average and where 40 percent of the city's children lived in squalid poverty. This phenomenon holds true in most major cities, including San Diego, where a family of four needs $50,000 to meet basic needs.

In Louisiana laws were passed calling for a living wage, but the state's Supreme Court struck them down. In other states and cities passing such legislation is an exercise in patience, perseverance taking years to accomplish if at all. As was evidenced in San Diego's long struggle to win such an ordinance and will serve only as a Band-Aid.

When the idea of raising the state or federal minimum wage comes up, there is indifference by the public in general; and tremendous opposition by businesses and business supported elected officials. Thus, not only are such strapped Americans unable to move, but move to what? More of the same somewhere else? What economic benefit is there for someone trapped in low earnings to move where the pay may be 50 cents or a dollar per hour more?

The potential work force unable to move, creates the need for cheap labor in areas where there are not sufficient poor to fill those jobs, hence, illegal immigrants who in turn become the new generation of the strapped and trapped ghetto and barrio dwellers to begin their multi-generation struggle to break free from the bonds of poverty.

Over several generations in urban and rural areas, pockets of similarly below poverty level wage earning Americans became America's institutionalized poverty sector; and to stifle the nation's conscience welfare benefit are paid creating dependence and accompanying loss of dignity. What Hurricane Katrina has truly, much to our national shame, exposed is that we cannot continue to institutionalize an ever growing poverty sector with constant replenishment of new poverty members.

Why we should care about oil prices

By Sebastian Mallaby
THE WASHINGTON POST

September 27, 2005

When people talk about oil shocks, they worry mainly about consumers. Television serves up pictures of Mr. Frazzled Householder filling up his SUV; the slumped shoulders supposedly foretell a slump in the economy.

Of course, this image has its place: One of the questions posed by costly oil is whether U.S. households, whose saving rate turned negative in July, might suddenly panic and set money aside, slowing growth alarmingly. But the scariest thing about expensive oil is not that it is going to shock people into saving. It's actually the opposite.

Despite all the jitters about oil, consumers are not massively exposed to its gyrations. Gasoline makes up 3.9 percent of the basket of goods in the consumer price index for American cities; if the gas price jumps by a quarter, average city dwellers will experience a 1 percent hit to their living standard. By contrast, medical goods and services, which grow more and more expensive by the year, make up 6.1 percent of the basket; rent and mortgage payments account for 29.3 percent. If people cared desperately about the price of gas, they wouldn't buy mega-trucks in the first place. So the sticker shock may matter less than another consequence of costly oil: a bubble in global saving. Oil producers tend to save a good part of their windfall. Saudi Arabia and Russia are each on track to export about $100 billion worth of surplus capital this year, roughly double what they exported last year, when oil prices were lower. Most of these petrodollars find their way, directly or indirectly, to the United States. Other regions of the world are not importing more savings than they were a year ago, but the United States is set to boost capital imports from $668 billion last year to perhaps $800 billion this year.

Does this matter? In one sense, it's welcome: The influx of foreign savings keeps interest rates low, which means that mortgages stay cheap and home prices stay buoyant. This is another reason you shouldn't grieve for Mr. Frazzled Householder: The oil shock has pushed pump prices up, but it's also kept the payments on his mega-truck affordable. And yet, however seductive, these petrodollars are a curse. They are fueling an American debt crisis much as they fueled a Latin American one two decades ago.

After the 1973 oil shock, the Latins should have adjusted to the new reality. An essential import was now going to cost more; they should have cut spending in order to afford it. Instead, they and other developing regions borrowed low-interest petrodollars to pay for oil imports. By 1981, Argentina was borrowing the equivalent of 3.4 percent of gross domestic product, Mexico was borrowing 6.2 percent and Brazil was borrowing 6.9 percent. The following year Mexico's default unleashed the Third World debt crisis.

This time around, Latin America isn't borrowing to pay for oil. But the United States is borrowing the equivalent of 6.1 percent of GDP this year – roughly in line with Mexico's rate just before it defaulted. Of course, the United States is not going to default, too, because the special status of the dollar allows it to borrow in its own currency. If the debt burden grows onerous it can allow the dollar to slide, cutting the value of the debt relative to export earnings.

Still, the comparison shows that the United States has been seduced by low interest rates into borrowing truly staggering amounts. Paying off the debt is not going to be fun, either for households or for the federal government.

This is the real danger in the oil shock. The longer energy prices stay high, the greater will be the temptation to continue reckless borrowing. The oil shock creates an incentive to borrow – suddenly we can't afford what we could afford before – and it simultaneously creates a chance to borrow at beguilingly cheap interest rates.

Yet the longer Americans carry on borrowing, the more they build their lives on foundations that can't last. Easy money has fueled a housing boom that's allowed families to grow richer even while saving pretty much nothing. But if house prices fall or even level off, families' sense of financial security will crumble. The scramble to save might set off a recession.

In a rational world, the nation's leaders would be on to this. The Fed is doing its part: Alan Greenspan has warned that house prices may be headed for a fall, and last week the Fed yet again raised short-term interest rates.

But the Bush administration and Congress seem determined to make the oil shock worse than it need be. By embarking on a post-hurricane spending splurge, they are piling debt upon debt. They should pause a moment to recall the lesson of the 1970s.

Luis Posada Carriles cannot be deported, a US judge has ruled.

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Luis Posada Carriles cannot be deported, a US judge has ruled.

Then the United States is harboring a know terrorist.
From this time forward, the American government cannot
complain about any other country refusing to extradite
any terrorists fugitives to the United States.

Every broad sword has two edges. Both are just as sharp.

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The gift of life - Organ donor bill needs governor's signature

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

September 29, 2005

There are 1,573 people in San Diego County today who are desperately waiting for the gift of life – the donation of a new heart, liver, kidney, pancreas or some other vital organ they need to stay alive. Statewide, there are some 18,700 people waiting, hoping.

Sadly, the professionals say that one-third of these people will die waiting. There were 104 such deaths just in San Diego County last year. But a piece of common-sense legislation now on the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could help save many of them. If only he will sign it.

The bill is SB 689, authored by Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, and it would for the first time link information already collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles on volunteer organ donors to the state's privately operated registry of organ donors. It would dramatically increase the number of potential donors on the registry, where the information could then be used by transplant hospitals helping to save lives.

For years, California has relied on the "pink dot" organ donor system. Residents applying for driver licenses or a renewal could voluntarily sign a card expressing their desire to donate organs upon their death. They were given a pink dot with "DONOR" imprinted on it to stick on the face of their license.

The problem was that the pink dot was all there was. There was no list or registry of all those potential donors. And officials say that doctors, nurses, hospitals and administrators – the very people who needed to know – would become aware of that pink dot on a driver's license only about 10 percent of the time. Often, they say, even close family members would not be aware of their loved-one's willingness to be a donor, creating confusion and uncertainty in already-stressful circumstances.

Legislation in 2001 created a donor registry under the auspices of a state agency. But in the typically brilliant fashion of government, it was never funded. New legislation in 2003, also carried by Speier, re-created the registry under the management and financing of the four federally designated private organizations that operate the organ transplant system in California.

Since then, nearly 137,000 Californians have signed up as donors on the new registry. That's an impressive number, but still just a pittance of the 23 million licensed drivers in the state.

Speier's new bill would make the DMV a full partner in the system, not just an issuer of pink dots. The DMV would also collect voluntary $2 contributions from registrants to defray the costs.

The fear of registry officials is that Schwarzenegger may balk at signing the bill because of the $1 million estimated cost. But if only 10 percent of applicants participated in the $2 donation – and the experience of other states is that far more than that do participate – it would raise $1.2 million a year, more than paying for the program.

This is a state with a general fund budget of $90 billion. Even if the voluntary program doesn't raise a penny, $1 million is a small price to pay for such a life-saving reward. If only the governor will sign it.

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me@rescam.org

EU Wants Shared Control of Internet

By AOIFE WHITE, AP Business Writer
58 minutes ago

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.

A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important "because the Internet is a global resource."

"The EU ... is very firm on this position," he added.

The Geneva talks were the last preparatory meeting before November's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.

A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world.

At issue is who would have ultimate authority over the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic.

That role has historically gone to the United States, which created the Internet as a Pentagon project and funded much of its early development. The U.S. Commerce Department has delegated much of that responsibility to a U.S.-based private organization with international board members, but Commerce ultimately retains veto power.

Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.

They also want greater assurance that as they come to rely on the Internet more for governmental and other services, their plans won't get derailed by some future U.S. policy.

Policy decisions could at a stroke make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable. Other decisions could affect the availability of domain names in non-English characters or ones dedicated to special interests such as pornography.

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Laser Interferometer Space Antenna - LISA
Terrestrial Planet Finder - TPF
JPL-Caltech

October 2, 2005

Stumbling Storm-Aid Effort Put Tons of Ice on Trips to Nowhere
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - When the definitive story of the confrontation between Hurricane Katrina and the United States government is finally told, one long and tragicomic chapter will have to be reserved for the odyssey of the ice.

Ninety-one thousand tons of ice cubes, that is, intended to cool food, medicine and sweltering victims of the storm. It would cost taxpayers more than $100 million, and most of it would never be delivered.

The somewhat befuddled heroes of the tale will be truckers like Mark Kostinec, who was dropping a load of beef in Canton, Ohio, on Sept. 2 when his dispatcher called with an urgent government job: Pick up 20 tons of ice in Greenville, Pa., and take it to Carthage, Mo., a staging area for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Mr. Kostinec, 40, a driver for Universe Truck Lines of Omaha, was happy to help with the crisis. But at Carthage, instead of unloading, he was told to take his 2,000 bags of ice on to Montgomery, Ala.

After a day and a half in Montgomery, he was sent to Camp Shelby, in Mississippi. From there, on Sept. 8, he was waved onward to Selma, Ala. And after two days in Selma he was redirected to Emporia, Va., along with scores of other frustrated drivers who had been following similarly circuitous routes.

At Emporia, Mr. Kostinec sat for an entire week, his trailer burning fuel around the clock to keep the ice frozen, as FEMA officials studied whether supplies originally purchased for Hurricane Katrina might be used for Hurricane Ophelia. But in the end only 3 of about 150 ice trucks were sent to North Carolina, he said. So on Sept. 17, Mr. Kostinec headed to Fremont, Neb., where he unloaded his ice into a government-rented storage freezer the next day.

"I dragged that ice around for 4,100 miles, and it never got used," Mr. Kostinec said. A former mortgage broker and Enron computer technician, he had learned to roll with the punches, and he was pleased to earn $4,500 for the trip, double his usual paycheck. He was perplexed, however, by the government's apparent bungling.

"They didn't seem to know how much ice they were buying and how much they were using," he said. "All the truckers said the money was good. But we were upset about not being able to help."

In the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Kostinec's government-ordered meandering was not unusual. Partly because of the mass evacuation forced by Hurricane Katrina, and partly because of what an inspector general's report this week called a broken system for tracking goods at FEMA, the agency ordered far more ice than could be distributed to people who needed it.

Over about a week after the storm, FEMA ordered 211 million pounds of ice for Hurricane Katrina, said Rob Holland, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which buys the ice that FEMA requests under a contract with IAP Worldwide Services of Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Officials eventually realized that that much ice was overkill, and managed to cancel some of the orders. But the 182 million pounds actually supplied turned out to be far more than could be delivered to victims.

In the end, Mr. Holland said, 59 percent of the ice was trucked to storage freezers all over the country to await the next disaster; some has been used for Hurricane Rita.

Of $200 million originally set aside for ice purchases, the bill for the Hurricane Katrina purchases so far is more than $100 million - and climbing, Mr. Holland said. Under the ice contract, the government pays about $12,000 to buy a 20-ton truckload of ice, delivered to its original destination. If it is moved farther, the price is $2.60 a mile, and a day of waiting costs up to $900, Mr. Holland said.

Those numbers add up fast, and reports like Mr. Kostinec's have stirred concern on Capitol Hill, as more wearying evidence of the federal government's incoherent response to the catastrophe.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, expressed astonishment that many truckloads of ice had ended up in storage 1,600 miles from the Hurricane Katrina damage zone in her state, apparently because the storage contractor, AmeriCold Logistics, had run out of space farther south.

"The American taxpayers, and especially the Katrina victims, cannot endure this kind of wasteful spending," Ms. Collins said.

Asked about trips like Mr. Kostinec's, Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman, said: "He was put on call for a need and the need was not realized, so he went home. Any reasonable person recognizes the fact that it makes sense to prepare for the worst, hope for the best and place your resources where they may be needed."

Unlike an ordinary hurricane, which may leave a large population in still-habitable housing but without power for days or weeks, Hurricane Katrina destroyed neighborhoods and led to unprecedented evacuation, Ms. Andrews said.

"The population we ordered the ice for had been dispersed," she said, "which is good, because they are out of harm's way."

Ms. Andrews said FEMA realized it must improve its monitoring of essential items. The new report by the homeland security inspector general says that after last year's hurricanes million of dollars of ice was left unused in Florida because FEMA had "no automated way to coordinate quantities of commodities with the people available to accept and distribute them."

Ms. Andrews said, "There are programs in the works that will help us better track commodities, not just ice, but water and tarps and food." One system would use bar codes and a global positioning system, "so literally we will know exactly where every bag of ice is."

Some people, including Michael D. Brown, the former FEMA director, have questioned why the agency spends so much money moving ice.

"I feebly attempted to get FEMA out of the business of ice," Mr. Brown told a House panel this week. "I don't think that's a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh."

But ice, even Mr. Brown agreed, at times plays a critical role, like helping keep patients alive at places like Meadowcrest Hospital, in Gretna, La. After the hurricane hit, the air-conditioning went out and temperatures inside climbed into the 90's.

"Physicians and staff attempted to cool patients by placing ice in front of fans," Phillip Sowa, the hospital's chief executive, wrote in an online account of the ordeal.

Archie Harris, a Wilmington, N.C., ice merchant who serves as disaster preparedness chairman for the International Packaged Ice Association, said that while FEMA had been criticized mostly as being underprepared, on the ice question it was being criticized for being overprepared. "FEMA can't win right now," Mr. Harris said. "Can you imagine what people would say if they'd run out of ice?"

Not all of the ice delivery trips, by an estimated 4,000 drivers, ended in frustration. Mike Snyder, a truck driver from Berwick, Pa., took an excruciating journey that started in Allentown, Pa., on Sept. 16 and did not end until two weeks later, on Friday morning, when he arrived in Tarkington Prairie, Tex.

The electricity was out in the small community. When Mr. Snyder pulled up in front of a local church and unloaded his ice, residents were overjoyed to see him. "I felt like I did a lot of good," he said.

Truck drivers who pinballed around the country felt differently.

Having almost lost his Florida home to a hurricane last year, Jeff Henderson was eager to help when he heard that FEMA needed truckers to carry ice. He drove at his own expense to Wisconsin to collect a 20-ton load and delivered it to the Carthage staging area.

Then he, too, was sent across the South: Meridian, Miss.; Selma; and finally Memphis, where he waited five days and then delivered his ice to storage.

"I can't understand what happened," Mr. Henderson said. "The government's the only customer that plays around like that."

Mike Hohnstein, a dispatcher in Omaha, sent a truckload out of Dubuque, Iowa, to Meridian. From there, the driver was sent to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, to Columbia, S.C., and finally to Cumberland, Md., where he bought a lawn chair and waited for six days.

Finally, 10 days after he started, the driver was told to take the ice to storage in Bettendorf, Iowa, Mr. Hohnstein said. The truck had traveled 3,282 miles, but not a cube of ice had reached a hurricane victim.

"Well," Mr. Hohnstein said, "the driver got to see the country."

His company's bill to the government will exceed $15,000, he said, but the ice was worth less than $5,000. "It seemed like an incredible waste of money," he said.

The next time FEMA calls for help, it may find the response far less willing. After two Universe Truck Lines drivers spent more than two weeks on the road to no purpose, the company decided it had had enough. When a FEMA contractor called and asked if the company could take some ice stored in Fremont, Neb., to Fort Worth, Tex., Universe said no.

"Our trucks had been tied up for 17 days," Sean Smal, a Universe dispatcher, said. "We couldn't take another trip like those."

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Don't you just love the way our govt. spends OUR money?

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Here we go again!

Another political hack, no judical experience, limited law practice, figure head of two bar associations.

Come on Repukes, let's here you squeal how unfair this is. Maybe she should be made the head of FEMA as well.

CNN Poll: Do you think Supreme Court justices should have previous experience on the bench? 78% answered yes.

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