Janitors Win Fight in Houston
Houston Janitors' VictorySunday, November 26, 2006; Washington Post Page F02 Houston Janitors' Victory After a month-long strike, Houston janitors won a new contract that will double their incomes and provide them health insurance for the first time. Although the new hourly wage, $7.75 by 2009, is below that of other cities, it represents the first victory in a Southern right-to-work state by the Service Employees International Union in its national effort to organize janitors. The union strategy in Houston, as elsewhere, was to pressure cleaning contractors by appealing to building owners and local politicians.
Onion: Kansas Outlaws Evolution
Spoof site has some fun with Kansas  
TOPEKA, KS—Any living being that undergoes genetic modification favoring survival could face jail time under the new law.  
It's settled then
Speaking in Latvia today, President Bush said, "There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete." 
To Follow Knowledge Like a Sinking Star, Beyond the Utmost Bound of Human Thought
By Alan Herzfeld I have written a few times now about stem cell research and the general one-liners about why it should go forward with federal support. I have alluded to personal stories of why individuals might support it, and how these kind of stories make it difficult for me to see how anyone could oppose the research, stifling the benefits that can be gained. Today, I do not want to make policy arguments. Today, I do not want to speak to global ideals. Today, I do not want to talk about the generations that will follow those alive today. Today I want to talk about my grandfather. Today is the fifth anniversary of my grandfather's death. He was a brilliant man. He tried to be the best at everything he did, and he usually succeeded. After fleeing Germany with his parents in the early 1930s, my grandfather went from being educated at the best schools in Europe to being apprenticed to an importer in Central America in the middle of the Great Depression. During World War II, he made a deal with the United States embassy to come to this country, join the Army, and become a citizen. My grandfather served as a soldier in Europe, although he never saw combat. He was about to be shipped to the Pacific when the war ended. After serving in occupied Germany, he came back to the U.S. to attend college on the G.I. Bill. He started school at the University of Oklahoma, and settled into life there. I was raised on stories of my grandfather winning spending money by playing bridge for a penny a point. From an early age, I was shown pictures of an obscure auto race in Oklahoma, and being told that my grandfather had taken the pictures with his most prized possession, a camera that he stretched his means to the breaking point to acquire. That story was usually followed by my father or his siblings talking about my grandfather blinding them with a surprise flash from a giant flashbulb on his camera as they were growing up. My grandfather graduated with a grade point average higher than many people I know can count. He took the national accounting examination, and won an award for having the highest score in the country. He had been given intelligence tests while in the Army, and again had scores among the highest that had been seen. His scores showed him to have the equivalent of a year of college already completed, even though it is unclear if he even finished high school. He was called back into service for the Korean War, but instead of being sent to Asia, he worked as an auditor for the Army. After he completed his service, my grandparents started their family. My grandfather was at first in debt to his father in law, and at the end of his life he was more than able to provide for generations of his family. In between, he raised four children, was the founding partner of a division in the Houston office of a major accounting firm, and did the best he could to set an example of how to live a good life. My grandparents retired to the northwest, and every year my family would visit at Thanksgiving. They lived in a great house on the shores of a lake, with a view that serves as the backdrop for a series of pictures of me and my father during the first decade of my life. Every time we visited, I would spend a day with my grandfather, working on one little project or another. One year, when I was about 12, he decided that we were going to make a box. There was nothing special about the box in and of itself, but it was a huge thing for me. We carefully made the plans on his computer, we picked out, marked, and cut the wood in his workshop, and methodically put the pieces of the box together. Everything was done meticulously, and everything down to the final detail was planned. At the end of the day, we had not quite finished sanding it, but my grandfather presented the finished product to me the next day. I still have the box, and I keep reminders of memorable events from my life in it. This was the kind of thing he always did. Everything was always so carefully planned and explained. My father tells me a story about how he once wrote some software that would help my grandfather make calculations. Instead of just taking the new tool and taking advantage of the new shortcut, my grandfather needed to have the software explained line by line. He had my father go through the code with him until he understood every single detail. He was never satisfied not understanding anything in his life, and he would never give up learning about something until he was completely comfortable with it. The next year, we flew back to the northwest for Thanksgiving. I was all ready to work on another project, and could not wait to see what it would be. When we got to the house, however, my parents and grandparents told me and my sister that our grandfather was too old to work with his tools, and that he could not work on that kind of project anymore. Instead, we did other things while we spent time with our grandparents, but it could never be the same as working on that box. Shortly after that, my father started making regular trips to the northwest to help my grandparents move out of that great house and into a condominium, again because my grandfather was "too old" to have such a large house, and it was not safe for him to live there anymore. What I could not understand at that point, and what my family was shielding me from for a little while longer, was the knowledge that my grandfather was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. This man, who had tested at the top of everything he had ever attempted, who recognized the importance of education and knowledge, was slowly losing his mind, his memory, and his very self. Over the next few years, the disease progressed. Slowly but surely, the mind disappeared. My grandfather had to be put in a home, as he needed constant care and my grandmother could no longer provide it. My father, his oldest child, took me, his oldest grandchild, to visit him in the home one time. To get there, we took an elevator down to a secure floor. It was secure by needing a simple key code entered to operate the elevator, but it was far too complicated for anyone with Alzheimer's to operate. To this day I have trouble squaring the man who wanted the complex code behind the calculation software explained line by line with the man who could not operate a simple numeric keypad. When we got there, we sat with my grandfather in the cafeteria. We spoke a little, my father introducing us. My grandfather nodded, acknowledging us but not really aware of who we were. He was excited to see us, so much so that the staff had trouble making him eat, but even that was only a small consolation for seeing what was happening to him. It was so hard to see this man who could do anything, and who planned everything so carefully and to th e tiniest detail, unable to feed himself or recognize his family.
While this was the hardest thing about my grandfather's condition for me to see, my father had a different perspective. To him, the hardest aspect was that my grandfather lost his own personal set of moral values. Being honest and acting morally was very important to him. When he came to the United States, my grandfather had the opportunity to change his last name to something more "American." He declined, saying that he was the latest in a trans-generational series of honest men, and that he would honor their memory by keeping his name and passing it on to his own children and grandchildren. Always honest, always moral, always acting with integrity, my grandfather earned the respect of everyone he ever crossed paths with. When he first found out the diagnosis, my grandfather decided that he would do anything he could to increase the general body of knowledge on Alzheimer's, and at the same time do everything he could to prolong both his life and his mind. To that end, he took part in drug studies, and did whatever he could to help future generations understand and possibly treat the disease. I do not know if his last conscious thoughts before his mind was too far gone were anger or sadness at his having this disease. I would like to think that he was sad to have it, but happy that he had so many years with his wife, that he had lived to see his children grow up and start their own families. If we poured $100 billion into Alzheimer's and stem cell research today, we would not have a cure tomorrow. If we had done so six years ago, my grandfather would still not be alive today. The races for cures to all of these diseases, be they Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or any of the myriad of other diseases that stem cell research hold the possibility of cures for, are marathons, not sprints. The answers are not just around the corner, but it is far past time to be asking the questions. I do not understand how anyone who has seen a family member or friend descend into the depths that Alzheimer's subjects even the strongest minds would not want the research to go forward in any way shape or form. I did not write this to make policy arguments or to call on our elected officials to pass legislation authorizing stem cell research. I wrote this to tell my grandfather's story. He fought the disease that afflicted him and took his mind with everything he had for as long as he could. By staying healthy and taking part in drug trials, he told me that he did not want to be an anonymous person that exists only on the winds whistling through the mountains of the northwest. Instead, he wanted to educate people and fight the disease. I can only hope that his story sparks the conversations that need to be had, and that he would have been proud of the way his story is presented to the world.
The Good and The Bad: Ballot Measures hold mixed results
The defeat of a visciously anti-choice measure in South Dakota of all places can be pointed to as a significant victory for progressives, as were local measures like a healthcare project in Wisconsin and defeat of a potentially devastating tax initiative in Maine that ADA played some part in. Measures, however, in several states which sought to further alienate gays and lesbians did pass. An affirmative action measure in Michigan and an initiative target oil companies in California also fell in conservative's favor. 5 states passed minimum wage hikes too though, so progressives have some very postive things to take from this election: A Democratic House (maybe Senate too) which will have Progressives in charge of many influential Committees, some positive progress on issues throughout the country as indicated by several ballot measure victories, and the over-arching momentum moving our country in a positive and progressive direction.
A Cleansing
Midnight in the DC suburbs, Virginia to be precise, and rain is cleansing the earth. It's hard not to think about the cleansing of Congress that has happened. Many races are still unclear. Here in Virginia, Democrat Jim Webb holds a tiny lead (barely over 2,000 votes) over Republican Senator George Allen. A few other key Senate races are too close to call and dozens of possibly defining House races out West are yet to be called or even counted. That being said, it seems that the House of Representatives will be controlled by Democrats, with a margin of somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 seats, while the partisan divide in the Senate will tighten. One thing is clear however, and that is that a change has been called for. Elitist economic policies, unilateral and stubborn foreign policy is getting us nowhere, and the vile stench of corruption needs to be scrubbed from the Hill. What will a new Democratic House take up as its priorities? What role will liberals play in those policies? We'll find out soon, but a quick look at the potential House Democratic Committee Chairmanships will show us solid liberals. Many of those Members are part of the Progressive Caucus and are even ADA members. ADA has some ideas about what we'd like to see Congress focus on. Members from around the country formed the ADA Agenda this summer and we hope to work with the new Congress to enact it. You can read the ADA Agenda for 2006-2007 HERE.
This is National Security?
The cost of the War in Iraq is now at least $75 billion a year.
Citizens for Tax Justice reports that tax cuts benefiting the top 1% of the country--households earning more than $1.2 million a year (who now receive $44,000 in tax cuts)--will cost the government $61 billion--nearly the entire cost of the War.
In 1861, Abraham Lincoln persuaded Congress to impose a tax on personal incomes to pay for the military in the Civil War. By 1864, people with incomes between $400 and $5,000 were taxed at a rate of 5%. People with incomes over over $5,000 were paying 10%.
Today, households earning more than $1.2 million pay only 3.5% of their annual income in taxes.
In 1898, under our first modern Republican President--William McKinley--Congress passed the first inheritance tax in American History to help finance the Spanish-American War.
Today, the Bush administration is fighting to *end* the inheritance tax--calling it a "death tax."
The guiding principle here is that while it's an honor to die for your country, it's an imposition to pay for it.
So how *are* we financing the War?
Well, we're borrowing a lot of money from other countries. That's what the deficit forces us to do. More than $ 1 trillion in American bonds is now held by foreign banks led by Japan and China. If Communist China stopped buying US bonds, or sold them outright, bond prices would fall and interest rates would rise wreaking havoc on mortgage rates and home sales throughout the United States.
I know that American conservatives are perfectly happy to buy goods "Made in China" but how do they feel about going deeper and deeper in debt to the Chinese government?
The other way to reduce the deficit is to cut spending. The Bush administration is big on that.
But what does the administration want to cut?
"First Responder" Homeland Security. Down 26% since 2003.
Local Law Enforcement. Bush wants to end it.
Support for Local Police. Bush fought to end it last year. Failing that, now he wants to cut it by 86%
Firefighters Grants. Cut them by 60%.
In Philadelphia, the National Park Service wants to cordon off the area around Independence Hall as if this somehow will blunt a terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, 300 people have died in our streets since January but federal funding to support local police is gone.
If this is the Bush administration's idea of security in the United States, what on earth must they be doing in Iraq? Ed Schwartz Institute for the Study of Civic Values http://www.iscv.org
Problematic Patterns in Iraq
Conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks on Iraq NY Times
November 2, 2006
Same Old Demons
By DAVID BROOKSPolicy makers are again considering fundamental changes in our Iraq policy, but as they do I hope they read Elie Kedourie's essay, "The Kingdom of Iraq: A Retrospect."
Kedourie, a Baghdad-born Jew, published the essay in 1970. It's a history of the regime the British helped establish over 80 years ago, but it captures an idea that is truer now than ever: Disorder is endemic to Iraq. Today's crisis is not three years old. It's worse now, but the crisis is perpetual. This is a bomb of a nation.
"Brief as it is, the record of the kingdom of Iraq is full of bloodshed, treason and rapine," Kedourie wrote.
And his is a Gibbonesque tale of horror. There is the endless Shiite-Sunni fighting. There is a massacre of the Assyrians, which is celebrated rapturously in downtown Baghdad. Children are gunned down from airplanes. Tribal wars flare and families are destroyed. A Sunni writer insults the Shiites and the subsequent rioters murder students and policemen. A former prime minister is found on the street by a mob, killed, and his body is reduced to pulp as cars run him over in joyous retribution.
Kedourie described "a country riven by obscure and malevolent factions, unsettled by the war and its aftermath." He observed, "The collapse of the old order had awakened vast cupidities and revived venomous hatreds."
In 1927, a British officer asked a tribal leader: "You now have a government, a constitution, a parliament, ministers and officials - what more can you want?" The tribal leader replied, "Yes, but they speak with a foreign accent."
The British tried to encourage responsible Iraqi self-government, to no avail. "The political ambitions of the Shia religious headquarters have always lain in the direction of theocratic domination," a British official reported in 1923. They "have no motive for refraining from sacrificing the interests of Iraq to those which they conceive to be their own."
At one point, the British high commissioner, Sir Henry Dobbs, argued that if Britain threatened to withdraw its troops, Iraqis would behave more responsibly. It didn't work. Iraqis figured the Brits were bugging out. They concluded it was profitless to cultivate British friendship. Everything the British said became irrelevant.
The Iraq of his youth, Kedourie concluded, "was a make-believe kingdom built on false pretenses." He quoted a British report from 1936, which noted that the Iraqi government would never be a machine based on law that treated citizens impartially, but would always be based on tribal favoritism and personal relationships. Iraq, Kedourie said, faced two alternatives: "Either the country would be plunged into chaos or its population should become universally the clients and dependents of an omnipotent but capricious and unstable government." There is, he wrote, no third option.
Today Iraq is in much worse shape. The most perceptive reports describe not so much a civil war as a complete social disintegration. This latest descent was initiated by American blunders, but is exacerbated by the same old Iraqi demons: greed, blood lust and a mind-boggling unwillingness to compromise for the common good, even in the face of self-immolation.
The core problem is the same one Kedourie identified decades ago. Iraq is teetering on the edge of futility. Perhaps a competent occupation could have preserved it as a coherent entity, but now the Iraqi national identity is looking like a suicidal self-delusion.
Partitioning the country would be traumatic, so after the election it probably makes sense to make one last effort to hold the place together. Fire Donald Rumsfeld to signal a break with the past. Alter troop rotations so that 30,000 more troops are policing Baghdad.
But if that does not restore order, if Iraqi ministries remain dysfunctional and the national institutions remain sectarian institutions in disguise, then surely it will be time to accede to reality. It will be time to effectively end Iraq, with a remaining fig-leaf central government or not. It will be time to radically diffuse authority down to the only communities that are viable - the clan, tribe or sect.
A muscular U.S. military presence will be more necessary than ever, to deter neighboring powers and contain bloodshed. And the goals will remain the same: to nurture civilized democratic societies that reject extremism and terror.
But the boundaries may have to change. The war was an attempt to lift a unified Iraq out of its awful history, but history has proved stubborn. It's time to adjust the plans to reality.
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