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Friday, August 31, 2007
In Labor Day weekends past, scores of Rhode Islanders would flock to the Rocky Point Amusement Park.
It was one-stop shopping, with the beach, rides, a fun atmosphere, and, of course, clam cakes and chowder. Sadly, small-scale and uncorporate amusement parks have all but gone the way of the Dodo, doing away with what was once a shared Rhode Island experience.
This explains the nostalgia that many locals have Rocky Point. As part of an effort to help explain the meaning of this bygone attraction to his young son, URI professor Dave Bettencourt has made a feature documentary, You Must Be This Tall, about it. Bettencourt joins Steve Aveson and myself this Sunday on Newsmakers to discuss the film.
You Must Be This Tall is slated to premiere September 7, at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket. For details on other screenings, click here.
The office of Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline has just released a statement indicating that Christopher Bizzacco, his wunderkind chief of staff, is being replaced by Operations chief Deb Brayton. Bizzaco, who is preparing to pursue an advanced degree, takes on a new title as senior adviser.
The Mayor praised Bizzacco as an “extremely bright and talented individual with a strong work ethic and fierce dedication to public service.”
“I’ve always known that Chris was a rising star with tremendous talent, enormous strength of character and outstanding leadership skills,” said Mayor Cicilline. “He has earned the deep respect of his peers and I am grateful that he will continue to be an invaluable member of my team as my Senior Advisor.
“I’m also extremely fortunate to have someone with Deborah Brayton’s vast experience leading my administration to the next level of excellence as we continue the transformation of Providence into a great 21-Century city,” said the Mayor.
With the possibility that Linc Chafee might run for mayor in 2010, some have speculated that the City Hall presence of Brayton, a Chafee veteran, is designed to help smooth the way for this.
Hurley of America, tabbed this week for a job by the Carcieri administration, is being accused by Service Employees International Union, Local 615, of taking part in unfair labor practices. The union, which represents 12,000 janitors across New England, says it is poised to strike as the janitors' contract expires today.
In a news release, Local 615 rejects an offer for Providence workers of a 15-cent raise and one sick day for up to the next five years, "a contract that does not reward their hard work."
Contracted janitors and their supporters are slated to demonstrate this afternoon at several downtown buildings, including Textron HQ.
It's episodes like the Joba-Youk incident that make me wish the American League didn't have the DH.
Meanwhile, the New York Times' Murray Chass -- often a tendentious Yankee homer, IMHO -- today insists he wasn't trying to bait Tito yesterday, and he weighs in with a pretty good column about the pros and cons of the wild card format.
The 1997 and 2003 Florida Marlins, the 2002 Anaheim Angels and — who can ever forget? — the 2004 Red Sox won the World Series as wild cards.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a second-place team emerging on top, especially when that team may have a better record than some other division champion, and not that there’s anything wrong with keeping teams in contention deeper into the season than they would otherwise be. And not that there’s anything wrong with putting more people in the parks in September and creating more revenue for more teams and increasing the television ratings.
All of those reasons are why Commissioner Bud Selig loves the wild card, which was created by necessity when the leagues went to three divisions. But Selig the baseball fan would have to acknowledge that the wild card detracts from the division races.
In 1993, Atlanta won 104 games and San Francisco 103 in one of the most stirring division races ever. Proponents of the wild card often cite that race as validating the creation of the extra playoff spot. The Braves went to the playoffs and the Giants went home, and it wasn’t fair to the Giants. They deserved better, especially because the playoff team from the other National League division, the Phillies, won 97.
But even with the wild cards, a good team can miss out on the playoffs by finishing a victory behind the best second-place team.
Speaking of the Senate . . .
US Senators John Ensign and Chuck Schumer, the respective chairs of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Commitee, are slated to preview the 2008 Senate races this Sunday on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
DC Democrats, of course, have had their own share of sex scandals over the years. But in terms of the recent record, Phillpe + Jorge raise this question:
One of the great mysteries for P+J is why, whenever there is a Washington controversy in which a major male political figure is discovered to be engaging in superior behavior in a most un-superior way (for example, in a public men’s room), it’s 90 percent likely that the figure is not just a Republican, but a “family values” kind of Republican.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, there is also a boatload of empirical evidence on the non-superior side of how hookers claim to do better business at national GOP conventions than Democratic ones.
So Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, appears to have been the latest swinger. He allegedly tried to signal to a plainclothes police sergeant in an adjoining toilet stall in the Minneapolis airport that he was looking for a bit of company. Court records indicate that Senator Craig pleaded guilty and paid a fine on a lewdness charge.
The senator, in a statement issued by his office, complained that the police had “misconstrued” his actions. Those actions, according to the sergeant in the adjoining stall, comprised of “tapping his toes several times and [moving] his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area.”
While the sergeant said that he recognized this wingtip tango as “a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct,” we’re quite certain that Senator Craig will reveal how his footwork was a well-known move used in Pocatello when someone is searching for a fourth for bridge. Either that or he has unusually long legs, and ends up playing footsies with guys in the next stall inadvertently, but on a regular basis.
Departing Representative Peter Ginaitt of Warwick, who has attracted bipartisan plaudits, leads the cast of guests on Newsmakers this week. (The show is broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12, and at 10 am on Fox 64.)
Ginaitt shared an interesting anecdote off-camera. After being elected during a special election in 1992, he put the usual legislative license plate on a family car. Since sore feelings remained from the state credit union crisis, one unhappy Rhode Islander focused his ire on Ginaitt's wife, spitting at the car while she was in it with their two young children. The episode led Ginaitt to take the legislative plate off the car.
After 16 years on Smith Hill, Ginaitt suggests it's the relative small number of ethically challenged lawmakers who give the General Assembly a bad name.
Speaking of dubious behavior in public office, things have been quite quiet, at least on the surface with Operation Dollar Bill, the federal probe of legislative influence-peddling.
After striking a high profile with this probe, US Attorney Robert Clark Corrente still needs to deliver.
The Yankees' new relief stud says the ball "slipped" when he threw two consecutive 90 mph-plus heaters over the head of Kevin Youkilis yesterday.
From Nick Cafardo in the Globe:
The rookie phenom said there was no way he was throwing at Youkilis because "I have too much respect for the game and too much respect for Youkilis. That guy plays the game right."
This kid is good. He's humble and very believable.
Cafardo notes:
Chamberlain, knowingly or not, seemed to kick the Red Sox when they were down. The Sox had already been buried for three games; their offense was nowhere to be found. They were no-hit by Chien-Ming Wang into the seventh inning after being no-hit by Roger Clemens into the sixth the night before. They had been enraged by a call in the seventh when umpires ruled Youkilis out of the basepath. Then the ultimate indignity of Youkilis having to avoid torpedoes coming at his head.
"I didn't know pitches were coming at someone's head at 98 miles per hour. I didn't see any other pitches out of the strike zone," Youkilis said.
Youkilis made the most sense when asked whether he felt Chamberlain was throwing at him: "I don't know. Only one guy really knows the answer."
This comes, of course, after Scott Proctor, while still with the Yankees, threw at Youk's head earlier this season.
I am skeptical about Chamberlain's explanation. Was he trying to embellish his rep in the storied Boston-New York rivalry?
N4N respects players like Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon, each of whom raised their game in this one-sided series against the Sox. Yet we also know about Jason Giambi's fondness for steroids (and how that seemingly helped the Yankees beat the Sox in 2003), and about A-Rod's churlish attempt to slap the ball away from Bronson Arroyo in 2004. Retaliation, within the parameters of baseball, when appropriate, is acceptable. Throwing at someone's head is not.
IMHO, there will be payback
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Regardless of what happens today, I stick to my view that the Sox will win the AL East, for the first time since 1995.
During my weekly bit with Dan Yorke on Wednesday, he asked if there would be "a situation" if the Yankees swept the Sox. I rejected that possibility, while acknowledging it would be a source of concern. Dan and I have a little bet going (made when the New Yorkers, I believe, were four or five games back), and I give him props for having the courage of his convictions.
When it comes to the Sox, there remain a lot of questions, beginning with Manny, when he will return to the lineup, and whether his back issue continues.
This Sox team is utterly unpredictable. They can go on the kind of offensive barrage, as against the White Sox, not seen since 1950. And they can go into offensive hibernation, as we've seen the last two days.
How far do they go in the post-season? Anything is possible, from the bad to the very good.
And if they don't make it, as Tom Caron said last night, they deserve their fate.
URI's Maureen Moakley and I discuss "casino creep" in Rhode Island, the gov's privatization push, the Burrillville teachers' strike, a drop in childhood poverty, Peter Ginaitt's departure, and the imminent release of Steve Laffey's book. The segment will be broadcast tomorrow morning, at 5:35 and 7:35, on WRNI (1290 AM).
Back in May, I wrote:
In contrast to the simplistic rhetoric of tough-on-crime politics, Providence is demonstrating how complex solutions can help to ameliorate complex problems.
Now, the big question is whether the city can sustain its success in having reduced violence — and for how long.
We know now the answer. As Bill Malinowski writes in today's ProJo, Providence has been marked by a burst of shootings, predominantly in the poor neighborhoods most affected by the illegal drug trade:
In terms of violence, the Providence police say August has been the worst month in at least five years.
A review of the gunfire by The Providence Journal reveals that since Aug. 1, there have been at least 26 shootings in the city that have been reported to the police. During that span, 20 people have been shot and 2 people, including Lucky Rodriguez, have been killed. The police have yet to make an arrest in the latest homicide.
The total number of shootings for August has accounted for more than half of the shootings in the city this year. In the previous seven months, 19 shootings were reported to the police.
“It kind of reminds me of 30 years ago, when there were a lot of mob shootings,” said City Council President Peter Mancini.
None of this is particularly surprising. The best efforts of police and their allies can only do so much in squelching violence. The situation speaks mostly to how we as Americans collectively tolerate things in poor neighborhoods that would never fly in more affluent ones.
UPDATE: Mike Lowell broke up the no-no with a single in the top of the 7th, but J.D. Drew killed a potential rally -- quelle surprise -- by grounding into a double play. Tito has been ejected.
Chien-Ming Wang has a no-hitter going through five innings, and Robinson Cano has two one-run homers.
Did I tell you that Wang is pitching a no-hitter?
NO HITTER! NO HITTER! NO HITTER!
After getting manhandled on the privatization issue by the General Assembly during the end of the last legislative session, Governor Carcieri appears to be playing hardball. As the ProJo reported yesterday, his administration has hired Hurley of America to replace scores of housekeeping employees at Eleanor Slater Hospital.
The move, announced [Wednesday], will save taxpayers an estimated $13 million over the life of the five-year contract, according to the governor’s office. And it will jeopardize an estimated 80 state jobs — primarily union janitors and housekeepers at the hospital’s Zambarano Unit in Burrillville and Cranston’s Pastore Complex.
What's wrong with millions in savings?
While the administration estimates saving approximately $13 million over the life of the contract, legislators and union officials are skeptical.
The numbers don’t include federal dollars that help finance the positions, according to Rep. Edwin R. Pacheco, D-Burrillville. Nor do they take into account the burden of eliminating dozens of jobs.
“You’re talking about putting people out of work — paying for their health care, their unemployment,” Pacheco said. “And people tenured are simply going to transition into new positions. Where are the cost savings?”
The administration and legislature disagree, meanwhile, on whether the governor has the legal right to make this move, and the matter appears bound for the courts.
We all know that Rhode Island's state government needs to operate more efficiently. Is it too much to ask for the gov and legislative leaders to get together in shaping a plan?
The Globe's Nick Cafardo has the details of how a representative of Major League Baseball questioned Terry Francona during last Wednesday night's game about whether he was wearing a jersey. Francona wears his familiar fleece pullovers because of circulation issues, and MLB has been on his case about this.
Let's get this straight:
1) MLB looks the other way when aging ballplayers hit record-breaking numbers of home runs. (And don't forget about juiced Giambi hitting two HRs off Pedro when it counted in 2003.)
2) It kicks Johnny Pesky, Mr. Red Sox, out of the Sox dugout.
3) During an important series, and with a Yankee runner on base, an MLB security person has the time to bother Tito.
Ridiculous.
With organized labor stepping up its profile in advance of the holiday weekend, in part by sponsoring WaterFire, it's fair to wonder what's next for the Providence chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World. In particular, can the IWW, which has mostly been dormant for the last 85 or so years, become a more effective force? I look at this question in this week's Phoenix:
A sense of taking it to the Man was in the air as some 200-plus supporters of Alexandra Svoboda rallied last Sunday afternoon in front of North Providence High School. A series of speakers expressed fierce solidarity with Svoboda, the 22-year-old woman who had been seriously injured during an August 11 protest in the town. The demonstrators whooped, cheered, banged on makeshift drums, and waved a variety of signs. Banners featuring the iconic black cat of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) fluttered in the humid August air.
IWW organizers called the event a success. It went off without a hitch, as a handful of state troopers and North Providence officers stood on the periphery, and received prominent front-page play on the next day’s Providence Journal. If nothing else, the demonstration marked an outpouring of support for Svoboda, who, after three leg surgeries, still faces the reconstruction of her injured knee. Coming about a week before Labor Day, it also marked a bit of vitality on the left end of the labor movement.
Still, considering how the IWW has mostly been a barely perceptible entity since its pre-World War I heyday, one has to wonder whether the protest at North Providence High will mark a contemporary high point for the union in Rhode Island.
While the extent of Svoboda’s injuries — her father says he is unaware of any athlete who has suffered similar leg damage — sparked widespread sympathy for the transplant from Nebraska, the 35-member size of the IWW’s local chapter does not exactly signal a robust movement.
Some in the local movement welcome an additional voice for workers’ rights, yet even those with a philosophical appreciation for the Wobblies’ original vision of “one big union” question the IWW’s staying power. As Robert Walsh, executive director of the National Education Association Rhode Island, says, “They’re kind of the new kid on the block. I don’t know if this is going to be a 15 minutes of fame kind of thing.”
Local IWW organizer Mark Bray, a 24-year-old Providence College grad student with a calm, methodical demeanor, is keenly aware of how the union has to deliver results, not rhetoric. While it’s premature to offer specifics, Bray says, IWW is pursuing several local campaigns, and it has attracted more interest from potential members after the August 11 conflict.
A big part of the union’s success will depend on its ability to extend an appealing message. Not coincidentally, while critics point to the IWW’s historic identification with the radical left, Bray says, “We are not a communist organization, or a socialist organization, or anything ‘ist’ ” Democracy in the workplace, he says, is “perhaps our most important value.”
The activist perceives a lot of opportunity for organizing workers without having to compete with other unions. “We’re trying to fill the gap in the labor movement, which was the original purpose of the IWW,” says Bray.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Mystery writer Walter Mosley recently offered this powerful piece in the Nation:
We are coming up on the two-year mark since the Katrina debacle in Louisiana and Mississippi. I hesitate to call this date an anniversary because the word implies, in some way, a celebration, a birth. What we are scratching on the calendar is more like a notch on a raw gravestone, a count of the days and years that have passed without a reckoning for those who died, those who lost loved ones and for a city that is still in critical condition.
Not only did our government fail to answer the call of its most vulnerable citizens during that fateful period; it still fails each and every day to rebuild, redeem and rescue those who are ignored because of their poverty, their race, their passage into old age.
The disaster named after the hurricane is not confined to the areas affected. Every emergency room, empty bank account and outsourced life’s work could be named. We live in a country rife with ignored and condemned poverty. The rich, high on their great corporate steeds, ride over us believing that they are out of the reach of global warming and its symptoms, of terrorism and dwindling natural resources. When government officials tell them to evacuate, they drive their cars, board their corporate jets or simply climb to higher ground with ease. At this very moment they are looking down on Baghdad and New Orleans, Pakistan and Sudan, you and me. The feeling of invulnerability that these people have is unfounded, but nonetheless it makes them reckless. They take chances and cut corners believing that everything will come out all right. Their delusions of grandeur and ultimate power put us in ever more dire straits.
If we call ourselves Americans (and mean it), then we are all victims of Katrina. If we breathe the air or eat fresh fruit, if we call on our cell phones, drink water from a plastic bottle or just nibble on a chocolate bar, then we are Katrina; we are the rising waters around the ankles of this world.
When the day comes to mark off the two-year point since the deluge descended on the Gulf of Mexico, we should take care not to make too much noise. We shouldn’t march in that shadow of time or even protest. Rather, we should sit alone in a room with our imaginations open to feel what they experienced on that day: the waters rising, rising and us climbing stairs and ladders, chairs and fire escapes; sitting on rooftops while bodies float by; calling out to passing boats and helicopters that go by in mute witness; being pressed to the roof by the rising tide and being engulfed shouting, shouting out for the ones we love underwater, unheard; the darkness swirling around us as we die with no one coming to save us, or themselves.
Two years have passed and Americans are still displaced, waters are still rising. Wars are raging and we are waiting for a day to vote for a man or a woman who works, not even in secret, for the rich. We wait for this man or woman to lead us out from the disaster like chattel. We feel sorry for the victims as so many felt sorry for Rodney King, not realizing that his defeat was our loss; the blows that rained down on him were also aimed at our freedom, our ability and feeling of responsibility to fight back. Two years have passed and the dead are still dead and the dying are still dying. The clouds gather like angry anthropomorphic gods, and we stumble and fall unable to make a stand or lend a hand or protest all the victims in ghettos, retirement homes, prison wards and dark skins.
Two years have passed and we are still exporting democracy while we continue living under the semi-benevolent oligarchy of international corporations and their candidates. This two-year point measures how far we have sunk under the weight of the rich and their political flunkies -- while so many of us still celebrate them as if they were pop stars. We experience the silence of drowning men and women. We call out and are not heard. We believe in systems and people who have no faith in us. We perpetuate the rising temperatures and waters and hatred and feelings of hopelessness. New Orleans’ defeat is also our defeat. Its closed schools are a metaphor for our minds and our futures. We see the storm’s passage but we don’t see it coming. But it is coming. And there are no leaders, no corporations, no benevolent billionaires who are going to save our grandmothers and our babies. We must unite outside of the systems that lie like fast food heaped on golden platters at our feet. We must organize at the ground level, where the water has already begun to rise.
Here's the scoop:
Promenade District Neighborhood Meeting
Forum for a community dialogue
When: Wednesday, August 29th 2007. 7PM
Where: Providence Public Safety Complex, Auditorium (1st Fl.)
325 Washington St. (Please park in garage directly across Dean St. from entrance)
"What is the neighborhood impact of the Shaw's Supermarket departure from Eagle Square?
What does the community want in its place and what role can we have as stakeholders to influence Super Value in its choice of a replacement tenant?"
Five years ago, the Providence City Council supported the Eagle Square development because of a commitment to bring a Shaw's Supermarket to our neighborhood and the belief that this would improve the standards and quality of life for the local community. It is clear by the recent concerns that have been raised over its departure, that the presence of Shaw's has indeed been an important face and venue for those who live in our community. The fact that the long-term commitment of this supermarket has not manifested itself means that the neighborhood and all of its improvements stand a real chance of being compromised by the outcome. Please join neighborhood residents, businesses, City Councilwoman Joan DiRuzzo and representatives from New England Expedition & Shaw's Supermarket for a community discussion of the impact this has on our neighborhood and how we can play a role in its outcome.
* Would you make an effort to shop at Shaw's if it stayed open on a trial basis?
* What would you like to see in the place of a Shaw's supermarket?
* How will the loss of a Shaw's anchor tenant affect the other Eagle Sq. tenants...the residential market, local businesses and the RIPTA services to Eagle Square?
* Why did this happen and what can we do to support the existing businesses in the Eagle Square Shopping Center?
* How can the venues at Eagle Square serve you better?
* What kinds of shops, services and businesses would you like to have in the Promenade District and how can we encourage developers to seek them out?
* How can we as a neighborhood community organize ourselves to be better connected with the local businesses so that we are aware of financial difficulties from the onset?
Please bring your thoughts to the table on August 23rd. We will try to treat this as a preliminary dialogue and hope to organize the interested parties through a contact email list so we can act in a timely manner to the situation. In order to have a productive discussion, please keep your thoughts brief and focused on the immediate situation and not the controversy that has been associated with Eagle Square.
Please RSVP to pdneighborhood@gmail.com For questions or directions:
(401) 338-1714
As noted here yesterday, N4N learned of the arrest late Monday of US Senator Larry Craig of Idaho via the Soxaholix Sox blog. That the arrest occurred nearly three months ago has led to questions about why it took the press so long to catch up with it.
As the trade publication Editor & Publisher reports,
Even Roll Call reporter John McArdle, who broke the story late Monday, admits he only received word of the arrest and subsequent guilty plea via a tip last week.
"You would think in the 24-hour news cycle, something like this would slip through," said McArdle, a four-year veteran of the Capitol Hill daily. "He wanted to keep it quiet, and he almost got away with it."
Even more surprising is that the unreported arrest occurred at a time when Craig was under scrutiny following previous allegations of gay relationships and sexual advances dating back to late 2006, when a blogger accused Craig of having relationships with men. The conservative senator has long denied the allegations.
McArdle said the latest incident, in which Craig was arrested June 11 for allegedly making advances to a police officer in a Minnesota airport bathroom, only came to his attention through a tip he received last week.
Here's a response, via Minnesota's CityPages (h/t Romenesko):
. . . over at MnSpeak, WCCO reporter Jason DeRusha offers four plausible answers.
DeRusha writes:
1. Airport Police are a pain in the neck... and extremely secretive. Even yesterday, no one would come back to the office to send us the report or give us the mug shot. "They close at 4 p.m." is what I was told.
2. Because airport police is separate from Minneapolis Police, or the Sheriff's office, media would have to go to the airport to request reports. The arrest information doesn't leave their property, and as the charge was a minor charge, I don't think it even went to the county attorney. It was like a ticket.
3. No one locally would raise an eyebrow about a "disorderly conduct" at the airport for a guy named Larry Craig even if they saw the report's front page.
4. The plea deal at the courthouse happened the week after the bridge collapse. So the usual suspects who would have tipped someone off, were too busy with other things to even concentrate on this.
Sounds plausible to me.
1) What kind of criminal demands the relatively paltry sum of $10,000? Is this some kind of real-life incarnation of Dr. Evil?
2) Since shopping is the official state religion of America, doesn't this brainiac know that the full force of the federal government is going to come down on him?
Just saying.
Via Anchor Rising, N4N learned that the American Spectator has an early look at Steve Laffey's Primary Mistake: How the Washington Republican Establishment Lost Everything in 2006 (and Sabotaged My Senatorial Campaign).
Unsurprisingly, the piece by associate editor W. James Antle III is rather sympathetic toward Laffey, who, as I've theorized, wrote the book to set the stage for a gubernatorial run in 2010. It also makes much of Linc Chafee's public musing on becoming a Democrat, even though he had ruled out making such a switch while in office.
The article doesn't offer much, though, in terms of tasty bits from the book. Here's one exception, such as it is:
A good portion of Primary Mistake is devoted to Laffey coming to terms with why, as an American citizen who met the constitutional requirements to serve in the Senate, people kept telling him he couldn't run. He recalls getting similar treatment when he first decided to run for mayor of Cranston: The party establishment told him he couldn't run because they already had a candidate. A successful businessman before going into politics, Laffey looked at the Cranston party elders the way he looked at his "three-year-old daughter, Audrey, when she throws all the shampoo bottles in the toilet" and said would spend a quarter of a million dollars of his own money to win the nomination. According to Laffey, the man GOP leaders had picked to be the nominee responded by bursting into tears and withdrawing from the race.
Here's the money shot of Antle's piece:
In the end, Laffey's story is really about the frequently ignored difference between the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Political parties are about winning elections and wielding power. Ideological movements are about ideas and values. Confuse the two and you wind up with something like the Chafee-Laffey primary contest.
In the time before the war in Iraq, Colin Powell famously instructed President Bush in the "Pottery Barn rule." In other words, you break it, you buy it.
As we know, the administration couldn't have botched things better if it had tried. Let's presume for a second that the war was justified. The administration threw out State Department recommendations for the post-invasion phase and naively assumed that this period would prove a cakewalk. There's much more, including this week's report about a US probe of fraud involving billions of dollars in weapons for Iraqi and American forces.
It's no wonder that many Americans would just like the war -- or US involvement in it -- to go away.
Most of the attention about the recent first seasonal episode of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher has gone to actor Tim Robbins's excoriation of Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes. Yet another member of their panel, an NPR journalist, made a provocative point: that American liberals are selective when it comes to human rights, caring more about this subject in the US and some other countries than in Iraq. I think she was on to something.
In related news, the New York Times reports today on how few of the Iraqis who have aided the US in their country are reaching American safe havens:
BAGHDAD — Despite a stepped-up commitment from the United States to take in Iraqis who are in danger because they worked for the U.S. government and military, very few are signing up to go, resettlement officials said.
The reason, Iraqis say, is that they are not allowed to apply in Iraq, requiring them to make a costly and uncertain journey to countries like Syria or Jordan, where they may be turned away by border officials already overwhelmed by fleeing Iraqis.
The United Nations has submitted more than 9,000 Iraqis to the United States for consideration as refugees since the State Department announced a new resettlement program in February, but only about 5 percent of the applicants are former employees connected with the U.S. war effort, according to figures provided by the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration, the agencies processing the cases.
This year, administration officials began publicly discussing the special dangers faced by Iraqis working with Americans here and acknowledging the need to grant them safe haven in the United States. To that end, the Bush administration has set up a special program for a small number of Iraqis, which gives preferential treatment to full-time employees of the U.S. Embassy, currently about 125 in Baghdad, and to 500 interpreters by allowing them to skip the lengthy U.N. refugee process once they leave Iraq.
But thousands more Iraqis work for the United States through contractors like Titan, a subsidiary of L-3 Communications; DynCorp International; Parsons Corp.; and Triple Canopy. In all, 69,000 Iraqis work on contracts with the Defense Department through Iraqi and foreign companies, according to the U.S. military. They are cleaners, construction workers, drivers, security guards, to name a few, and although they face the same reprisals as anyone working more directly with the U.S. government, they do not fall into the special category.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Media Matters for America has set up an online petititon to try to encourage Rush Limbaugh to apologize for some unfortunate remarks he made about the crisis in Sudan:
Here is what he said on a recent show:
Democrats "want to get us out of Iraq, but they can't wait to get us into Darfur," Limbaugh said.
He continued: "There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It's black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they're in trouble."
A caller responded, "The black population," to which Limbaugh said, "Right."
The Soxaholix, one of my favorite Sox blogs, today uses the arrest of Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), following complaints about lewdness inside a men's bathroom at an airport in Minnesota, to ask this question:
Bill: OK. So here's a question for ya — Why is it always the morality pahty that gets caught, literally, with their pants down?
Roger Williams Law School professor David Zlotnick's new study on mandatory minimum sentences has received a good amount of attention.
Back in 2005, Alex Provan and myself reported on how Zlotnick came to oppose mandatory minimums, and how, despite widespread opposition to the practice among judges, politics presents a sounder approach:
As a twenty-something federal prosecutor in Washington DC, during the crack epidemic in the late ’80s, David M. Zlotnick realized that mandatory minimum sentences gave him more discretion than judges who had been on the bench for decades. Since the US attorney’s office had the resources, it "prosecuted every five-gram crack-cocaine case." Zlotnick recalls how the poor black kids caught with these small quantities received "sentences of 10 to 15 years, as if they were kingpins of some sort, which seemed absurd to me.Ó Cases involving similar amounts of powder cocaine, which disproportionately involved white defendants, got far less scrutiny.
After four years as a prosecutor, Zlotnick became the first litigation director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (www.famm.org), a DC-based nonprofit founded in 1991 to challenge these sentences. And although FAMM was a relatively lonely voice at the time, a consensus has since developed among academics, judges, and others that mandatory minimums, which require specified prison sentences for particular offenses, represent a deeply flawed approach to criminal justice. Considering this, it’s no wonder that officials at Roger Williams University law school, where Zlotnick is now a professor, had a hard time finding public comments in favor of mandatory minimums when they organized a symposium in October on sentencing rhetoric.
Laws prescribing mandatory minimums for certain crimes, usually drug offenses, originated to reduce sentencing disparities and to assure that offenders would receive equal time for the same crime. In the 1970s, New York and Michigan became the first states to institute such policies. New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, for example, mandated a sentence of 15 years to life for selling or possessing two ounces of heroin or four ounces of cocaine. Michigan’s notorious "650 Lifer Law" consigned mid-level offenders convicted of delivering more than 650 grams of heroin or cocaine to prison for the rest of their years. By the mid-’90s, every US state had mandatory minimums or sentencing guideline laws. Rhode Island’s somewhat flexible minimum sentences, codified in the state’s Uniform Controlled Substances Act, date to 1988.
The current crop of federal sentencing laws was enacted in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which responded to the crack-fueled explosion of gun violence by instituting harsh penalties for trafficking small amounts of crack-cocaine. The most common minimums are based on the weight of the drug, or the presence of a firearm, since a defendant’s position in a criminal enterprise cannot be uniformly codified.
Rather than serving as a deterrent, though, mandatory minimums have disproportionately landed low-level offenders in prison, resulting in considerable increases in the growth of America’s prison population — and a growing racial disparity in the federal prison population — while having little effect on the availability of drugs.
In fact, although the overall US crime rate has fallen since 1991, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of people incarcerated has increased by 49 percent since then, largely as a result of changing sentencing laws. According to FAMM, the average federal drug sentence leaped from 65.7 months in 1984 to 95.7 months in 1991. (By 2003, Rhode Island’s own prison population has grown 625 percent over the last 30 years, according to the state Department of Corrections, with the state now spending $130 million annually to keep about 3500 people incarcerated.)
These trends have aggravated budget crunches, leading some states to change course. Most notably, in Michigan, the Republican sponsor of the original mandatory minimum measure later turned against it. Activists have redoubled their efforts, joined by voices from across the political spectrum, including federal judges and US Supreme Court justices who question the wisdom of these draconian measures.
Yet even though mandatory minimums have been widely repudiated, and a number of states have started to diminish their reach, the reluctance of politicians to appear "soft on crime" commonly precludes progress. In speaking with about 100 Republican-appointed judges, Zlotnick says he has found only one who currently supports mandatory minimums. "I would say the only place you hear support for mandatory minimums is the [US] Department of Justice, which claims they need mandatory minimums to leverage cooperation," he says, "and from right-wing politicians in Congress, who think it sells in Peoria."
Two days after the Sunday ProJo outlined how the advent of casinos in Massachusetts would devastate one of Rhode Island's top sources of revenue, we learn that "virtual blackjack" has been proposed for Twin River.
You didn't have to be a genius to see things heading in this direction. As I wrote back in June, it seems to be just a matter of time before Twin River and Newport Grand are expanded into full-fledged casinos.
Yet Dan Kennedy, who has kept a close focus on this issue in Massachusetts, asserts that the envisioned Middleboro casino "will never be built."
I like the outlook of RI EDC director Saul Kaplan, who says the state needs a greater focus on creating high-wage jobs. Still, considering the volatility of the casino landscape in southern New England, Rhode Island has a big stake in the outcome.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Tim Raymond sends along word of StartRI.com, a new local news aggregation site. One of the benefits of this site is how is breaks news down by community. Check it out.
Here's Tim's explanation of the site:
Our goal is to provide a “one stop shopping” news experience for Rhode Islanders that want to break out of that ‘one paper city state’ rut and also provide some love to the smaller local media sources that are producing great news articles and commentary but are maybe a little hard to find for the average Joe that doesn’t have hours each day to search it out.
Citing the demands of a new job, Representative Peter T. Ginaitt of Warwick, a Democratic member of the House since 1992, announced today that he is leaving the chamber, effective August 31.
According to a legislative press release, Ginaitt, the director of emergency preparedness for Rhode Island Hospital, is leaving to take on a similar job for the Lifespan hospital network.
Ginaitt, a registered nurse and retired captain of Warwick Fire Department, is chairman of the House Environmental and Natural Resources Committee, and vice chairman of the House Health, Education and Welfare Commission.
Take it from Ozzie Guillen (h/t Surviving Grady):
''They play hard, they hustle, they are in a pennant race, so they have to play like that,'' Guillen said. ''The last four days, they are the best team in the American League. I like Seattle, but I think Boston is the team to beat this year.''
From yesterday's New York Times:
Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere and a quarter of a degree to inflame the fight over global warming.
A quarter-degree Fahrenheit is roughly the downward adjustment NASA scientists made earlier this month in their annual estimates of the average temperature in the contiguous 48 states since 2000. They corrected the numbers after an error in meshing two sets of temperature data was discovered by Stephen McIntyre, a blogger and retired business executive in Toronto. Smaller adjustments were made to some readings for some preceding years.
All of this would most likely have passed unremarkably if Mr. McIntyre had not blogged that the adjustments changed the rankings of warmest years for the contiguous states since 1895, when record-keeping began.
Suddenly, 1934 appeared to vault ahead of 1998 as the warmest year on record (by a statistically meaningless 0.036 degrees Fahrenheit). In NASA’s most recent data set, 1934 had followed 1998 by a statistically meaningless 0.018 degrees. Conservative bloggers, columnists and radio hosts pounced. “We have proof of man-made global warming,” Rush Limbaughtold his radio audience. “The man-made global warming is inside NASA.”
Mr. McIntyre, who has spent years seeking flaws in studies pointing to human-driven climate change, traded broadsides on the Web with James E. Hansen, the NASA team’s leader. Dr. Hansen said he would not “joust with court jesters” and Mr. McIntyre posited that Dr. Hansen might have a “Jor-El complex” — a reference to Superman’s father, who foresaw the destruction of his planet and sent his son packing.
Blogs are still reverberating, but Mr. McIntyre, Dr. Hansen and others familiar with the initial data revisions are clarifying what is, and is not, at issue.
One thing not in question, Mr. McIntyre and Dr. Hansen agree, is the merit of shifting away from energy choices that contribute heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Mr. McIntyre said he feels “climate change is a serious issue.” His personal preference is to shift increasingly to nuclear power and away from coal and oil, the main source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Mr. McIntyre and Dr. Hansen also agree that the NASA data glitch had no effect on the global temperature trend, nudging it by an insignificant thousandth of a degree.
Everyone appears also to agree that too much attention is paid to records, particularly given that the difference between 1934, 1998, and several other sets of years in the top 10 warmest list for the United States are so small as to be statistically meaningless.
From a statement by US Representative Jim Langevin:
"When I traveled the District this summer, my constituents told me -- loud and clear -- that they are fed up with the President and his policies - in particular those policies implemented by the nation's top law enforcement officer. This resignation is the right thing for Attorney General Gonzales to do, as the public's confidence in him has been severely compromised. The position of Attorney General is too critical to suffer from lack of credibility. I look forward to the President nominating a professional who can get us past this dark chapter for the Justice Department."
Langevin joined his colleagues this summer in cosponsoring a no confidence resolution. H.Res. 417 urged the President to request that the Attorney General step down and to nominate a new candidate more capable of serving in this role.
Perhaps it was the scrutiny being cast on US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales by the likes of US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that led him to finally announce his plans this morning to leave the Bush administration. As the ProJo's Charlie Bakst wrote yesterday:
He [Whitehouse] is angry at President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over the war and what he considers the administration’s disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law. He told an East Providence community dinner he hosted Wednesday night that he doesn’t quarrel with the idea they deserve to be impeached. But he knows it won’t happen and, in any case, feels the “hugely divisive” process of impeaching the two men would divert attention from more important work, such as strengthening health care and ending the war.
On the other hand, this former U.S. attorney and former Rhode Island attorney general would welcome the impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom he has long criticized. He thinks the House may initiate the proceedings on, say, the grounds of having lied to Congress. Just the launch of an impeachment inquiry might be enough to send Gonzales over the side, Whitehouse said later. “That may be the thing that pushes him out.”
In his column, Bakst also notes how DC Democrats have failed to deliver on some of their campaign pledges from 2006:
Whitehouse called for getting the troops out of Iraq and filling in the so-called doughnut hole in the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. A Democratic Senate could make these and other things happen, he said.
But — and Whitehouse himself finds it maddening — the war rages and the hole is unfilled. He says it’s tough when Democrats lack the votes to overcome GOP filibusters and the president is a Republican.
I asked in an interview last week if Whitehouse was naïve last year, or misled voters about the difficulties, or has anything to apologize for.
He said no. He said he was frustrated that those and other things have not been accomplished. “But, you know, we are 7 months in. It’s a 6-year term. The fight is a long way from over. I’m not willing to concede defeat on either point. I believe that we’re actually going to be able to deliver on both of those. It’s just that you have to battle your way.”
Bakst also shares this interesting bit about Whitehouse's support of Hillary Clinton:
When Whitehouse came out for Clinton, whose husband named him U.S. attorney, I wondered how Obama felt. The celebrity senator from Illinois visited Rhode Island for Whitehouse twice last fall, including a jaunt when he was unable to get a flight out of Newark and had to ride here in a car.
Whitehouse says that when he decided this year to endorse Clinton, he phoned Obama and said, “I want you to know the context of this. I go back to being a Clinton U.S. attorney. They did TV ads, they came in four times, I am very, very personally committed there. I appreciate what you did for me.”
He says Obama replied, “Well, I hope you don’t forget what I did for you, because I came in twice, and one of them was pretty inconvenient.”
Whitehouse said, “Barack, I will always be indebted to you for that, but on this one I have to make the call that I have to make.”
Senators running for president frequently see each other in the Capitol. I’ve read that the body language between Clinton and Obama is cool; Whitehouse says he is “astounded” to see “zero” evidence of such tension.
For what it's worth, many RI progressives are delighted with Whitehouse's performance thus far in the Senate.
The ProJo today devotes generous front-page play to yesterday afternoon's IWW rally in North Providence, although the event got far less attention from local TV. Channel 10 was still showing a football game last night at 11, and Channel 12 ran a report about seven or eight stories into its 11 o'clock newscast. The ProJo, though, was ready for action, staffing the event with two reporters and at least two photographers. Although a few local residents lingered around the periphery of the scene, I didn't detect any problems.
The ProJo estimated the size of the crowd at close to 200. Among those who stopped by to check out the scene were conservative bloggers Andrew Morse and Rocco DiPippo, and comedian Frank O'Donnell, a North Prov resident.
Perhaps the biggest news to emerge from the event was that Alex Svoboda, who continues to recover from injuries she suffered during an IWW action earlier this month, has left a local hospital. I'll have much more on IWW in this week's Phoenix.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Dan Barbarisi has the details of the City Plan Commission's approval last night of the amended Comprehensive Plan, which will guide the future of planning and zoning in Providence.
On paper, some of this sounds pretty good:
The plan will form the groundwork for creating a Providence with walkable paths and green spaces along the rivers and waterfront. It designates “jobs-only” districts as a way to keep businesses in the city as traditional spaces are lost to housing. The plan also labels likely areas for future growth, and identifies “growth corridors” like Broad Street, Westminster Street and North Main Street, where future development will be encouraged. At the same time, it restricts heavy industrial development in the Port of Providence south of Thurbers Avenue, and encourages mixed-use development in the north areas of the port along Allens Avenue.
Yet it's | |