Little over a year ago, when Wampum was just a wee blog, a still unknown member of Congress in the dead of night secretly attached an amendment to the Homeland Security Bill due to be brought to the House and Senate floors in the closing hour of the 104th Congress. The addition, with included language identical to that which Senator Bill Frist twice failed to even get out of the HHS committee, slipped by nearly undetected in the House, where only a few legislators realized the gravity of the situation before the bill passed by a healthy margin. By the time the Senate took up the bill, the alarms were raised, and while phone calls, faxes and letters poured into Senators offices and the blogosphere, including right here, rallied to the call, the debate spread to the floors of the chamber, with Democratic Senator after Senator calling for the body to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our society, children potentially injured by the addition of neurotoxic mercury to vaccines. [nota bene: For those who assert that Washington Democrats don't have the backbone to stand up to Bush and the neocons, I offer the CSPAN archives for last December.]
The midnight rider sought to indemnify the manufacturers of a vaccine preservative, thimerosal, just as dozens of liability cases against the manufacturers, the largest of all pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly, were successfully proceeding through the courts. While Congress had passed liability protection for childhood vaccine manufacturers in 1986, the courts in various cases had ruled that mercury was a "contaminant", not a vaccine ingredient, and thus allowed the lawsuits to proceed. The amendment to the Homeland Security Bill would supercede the courts, making the mercury in the vaccine preservative an "ingredient", and thus not subject to liability.
The argument should be openly investigated and debated by Congress. But the sleazy manner in which it was tacked on to completely unrelated legislation certain to pass unexamined in both chambers prompted a handful of honorable Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, to withhold their yea votes on the entire bill until extracting a promise that the Eli Lilly rider, and other questionable last minute provisions, would be stripped away when Congress reconvened in January.
And thus it went...
But alas, like the orc hordes of Mordor, the big-Pharma lobbyists and their Conservative media mouthpieces have returned, this time armed with questionable science and the vilification of even those few Republicans who now question their motives. Monday, that bastion of scholarly scientific inquiry, the editorial desk of the Wall Street Journal, took up now-Senate Majority Leader Frist's payback to his pharmaceutical campaign contributors, and called for the passage of Frist's bill to overhaul the National Vaccine Compensation Fund.
The WSJ editorial is just rife with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, both of recent research on thimerosal as well as the impact of the pending lawsuits on future childhood vaccine production. While ignoring the NIH's admission that a thimerosal-autism link is biologically plausible and the CDC's original study, which found children injected with thimerosal had a 2.5 time greater chance of the condition, the editors instead offered up as evidence controversial studies tainted with claims of methodological inconsistencies, small sample size, and conflict of interest, i.e., funding by and other ties to vaccine manufactures. But as I read through my old posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and that was just November, 2002) on the thimerosal controversy, I became clear that the Senate Majority Leader hands (or those of his staff) were all over yesterday's editorial. In fact, some of the language so closely mirrors Frist's own press releases that either the WSJ is guilty of plagiarism, or the wording was used with the original author's permission. [My spouse is curious to know whether Frist is moonlighting for any other publications and if he's being fairly compensated as a journalist.]
While picking up the often-used brush to paint the parents of autistic children as psychologically unstable, grasping, greedy and irrational, the WSJ also knowingly misrepresents the possible consequences of the current thimerosal litigation:
their [parents] understandable passion shouldn't be allowed to trump undeniable evidence and damage childhood immunizations that are essential to public health. Vaccine makers stopped using thimerosal a few years ago, but the autism lawsuits threaten those companies with enough damage that their ability to supply vaccines is in jeopardy.
Eli Lilly stopped producing childhood immunizations years ago, because they weren't profitable, and although it is involved in development of new smallpox and anthrax, both of those are protected under Executive Order and do not fall under the National Vaccine Compensation Fund legislation. And there is no evidence that immunization rates in the US have dropped due to the lawsuits. Senator Frist's bill, however, would extend unlimited protection to Lilly and other thimerosal manufacturers, while stripping children potentially covered by the NVICP of their rights, even the limited compensation for themselves and their families. His goal? Well, besides the obvious sop to unlimited funds for Republican candidates by the pharmaceutical industry, Frist gets his grubby hands on the multi-billion dollar vaccine fund, a ploy to shift funds to his own pet projects.
Amazing that the Wall Street Journal editorial desk, with it's fixation on money, would leave out that part.
Josh Marshall points us to an astroturf effort by the Bush-Cheney campaign regarding the president’s “Healthy Forest” initiative. The Bush Cheney web site requests letters to the editor on the subject and suggests the following language:
On December 3, 2003, President Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 to help to prevent catastrophic wildfires and strengthen America’s long-term forest health. The legislation, based on the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative, will reduce the risk of catastrophic fire to communities, help save the lives of firefighters and citizens, and protectAs a nation, we have watched helplessly as parts of America were devastated by wildfires that displaced families, ruined communities and took lives. In the past two years alone, 147,049 fires burned nearly 11 million acres. The President understands the necessity to manage forest and rangelands to protect the land and prevent further destruction caused not only by fires, but also disease and infestation of insects.
It also worked in Las Vegas as this letter from Kevin Manix appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal.
The Missourian carried a version of the letter from Dennis Minner.
In Arizona, Tim Keeland got the astroturf accepted as a grassroots effort.
I do not know whether the effort of Chad Snader was astroturf or crab grass. The following appeared on the web site of a Delaware paper:
On Dec. 3, President Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 to help to prevent catastrophic wildÞres and strengthen America's long-term forest health. The legislation, based on the president's Healthy Forest Initiative, will reduce the risk of catastrophic Þre to communities, help save the lives of ÞreÞghters and citizens, and protect threatened and endangered species.As a nation, we have watched helplessly as parts of America were devastated by wildÞres that displaced families, ruined communities and took lives. In the past two years alone, 147,049 Þres burned nearly 11 million acres. The president understands the necessity to manage forest and range lands to protect the land and prevent further destruction caused not only by Þres, but also disease and infestation of insects.
I do not know but I certainly agree that "As a nation, we have watched helplessly as parts of America were devastated by wildÞres."
While I've been noticeably absent from the pages of Wampum since taking a seasonal CSR position (yes, I'll finally say it, at Maine behemoth LL Bean), I have been intently following a few sectors of the economy during my few hours off. With the madness of "peak" now over, I spent this weekend synthesizing much of the data I've stored away over time. And between such, and that which I saw first hand at the nation's largest mail/phone order business, I'm frankly pretty concerned about the health of the Bush's so-called economic recovery.
Bean itself did fairly well this holiday season, due mostly, I would argue, to a fluke of Nature, i.e. early December blizzard which kept shoppers out of the malls and near their telephones, and I'm sure many Bushies would like to point to such as evidence that consumers are in fact regaining their confidence and "all is well". However, consumer confidence, while low in the polls, never did translate much to action; healthy retail sales, fueled by low mortgage rate-spurred home refinancing and child-tax credit checks, prevented a relatively moderate and short recession from turning into a full-fledged economic meltdown. And while many "high end" retailers, including Bean, did relatively well this season, many stores frequented by average Janes and Joes, found their cash registers wanting.
Anyone keeping a close eye on some specific economic indicators shouldn't be all that surprised. While overall personal income has increased over the past five months, hourly wages for non-exempt workers has remained flat, even retreating slightly with CPI factored in.
For my less "visual" readers, here are actual numbers:
Month | (current dollars) | (constant 1982 dollars) |
November 2002 | ||
December 2002 | ||
January 2003 | ||
February 2003 | ||
March 2003 | ||
April 2003 | ||
May 2003 | ||
June 2003 | ||
July 2003 | ||
August 2003 | ||
September 2003 | ||
October 2003 | ||
November 2003 |
I waded back into the BLS archives, and from 1994 on, the period which such data is available online, this is the first time such a period of stagnation of wages in current dollars has occurred. In addition, as I mentioned back in October, this is the smallest annual increase in 1982 dollars in that period as well.
So while the Census Bureau reports that "personal income" has increased over this time, it's not coming from worker bee wages. And the possible alternative sources of income, the recent tax rebates, capital gains from the bubbling stock market, cash-outs on mortgage refinancing, etc., are disconcertingly short lived or volatile.
The Census Bureau also reports on personal spending, which, while rebounding slightly this month (though not as much as market analysts expected,) has been relatively flat in recent months. There's a host of reasons for this besides the stagnation in average wages discussed above. One of the elements which has kept consumer spending chugging along is showing a distinctive cooling trend; new home purchases. For the past three months, new homes sales have defied analysts' assessments and declined substantially, most likely in response to climbing interest rates. Fewer new homes, fewer durable goods, such as refrigerators and washing machines, needed to outfit those homes. Last week, durable goods orders tumbled 3.1%, and while this leading indicator is highly volatile, the decreases were across the board, a much, much more worrying trend. Non-defense capital orders, that piece which economists track as a sign of business "consumer" spending, fell more than 6%, the largest drop since July 2000.
Besides low mortgage rates, the other impetus for consumer spending, the Bush tax bribe rebates are now spent. Unless Republicans in Congress are willing to hand out more checks, the stimulatory effects are now history. And from the spin out of the White House these days, "trickle down", aka voodoo, economic principles, are back in vogue. Of course, should foreign investors pull out of US markets due to the sliding dollar, we may see the son take the same position as his father did in the 1980 Republican primaries.
I honestly don't know if these trends are enough to derail the fragile, still mostly jobless, recovery, but I'm significantly more worried today than I was a month ago (and I was feeling rather uneasy as that point, with soaring natural gas prices and Bean's sales falling below projections for much of November.) I guess my nails will remained chewed down for the next month or so as the cards play out.
[update: slight revision in awkward wording]
The SRS looks to take 27.5% of the vote, winning Mr. Seslj a seat in the Parliment. The SPS looks to take 7%, above the 5% cut-off, and therefore Mr. Milosevic too wins a seat in the Parliment.
Data via Libé, from a projection by the independent election supervising body. Photo EPA.
The thing I take away from this is that after three years of post-Milosevic government, less than half of the Serbian electorate was convinced that something more complex than a return to the prior regime, minus its most egregious military excesses, was the better choice. Anger at the West. Anger at corrupt politicians. Anger at a stagnant economy. This is so possible in Iraq in 2007, and it seems uncannily close to the present moment here in the US, with the obvious re-allignment of the scarecrows and signposts.
Social democrats take note.
International Medical Surgical Response Team East (IMSURT-E), attached to Metro Boston Team Disaster Medical Assistance Team (MA-1 DMAT), under the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), deployed to Bam Saturday. The 60 member team will set up and operate a free-standing self-sufficient field hospital for the next three weeks.
People wanting to contribute directly to IMSURT-E's logistics tail drop me a note. I'll find out RSN.
ebw at abenaki dot wabanaki dot net
Twenty years ago I knew a lot of Persians. Bay area communist Pahlavi-exiled Persians. Los Angeles royalist Khomeini-exiled Persians. I knew a lot about Persian politics. A lot.
Today I know the operator of the Iran Network Information Center.
Today's Al-Jazeera:
Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian claimed that in Bam, a city of 90,000 people "65 to 70 percent of the population have either been killed or injured."
You can contribute to the Paris-based medical charity Medicines Sans Frontieres (MSF) http://www.msf.org/.
Earlier today, Eric posted Things you Wish Your Candidate Would Say. Eric wants a candidate who is serious about trying to address the public health crisis in West Africa. I, too, wish that some candidate would address that crisis in a serious way.
I do not know if Eric intended that to be a one time post, but the idea of posting things we wish the candidates to say is a great one. I can not resist taking up the theme. I encourage you to leave your ideas of what the candidates should say in the comments.
I wish a candidate would say:
The next generations of Americans will face unprecedented economic competition from abroad. Our children will either have to become highly productive or they will have to compete with the third world to see who will work for the lowest wages.Our children will not become highly productive without healthy brains. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that one in ten of our children suffer lower IQs as a result of lead poisoning. Six million children have lost an average of more than 7 IQ points as a result of lead exposure. The leading cause of lead exposure in children is lead based paint in older homes.
When I am President, we will remove lead based paint from every house, apartment and condominium. We will no longer allow our children to suffer brain damage from exposure to lead in old paint.
That will be expensive, a one time cost of about $32 billion. I propose to delay implementation of scheduled tax cuts for those making in excess of $300,000 per year until all of our children are safe from lead poisoning.
The benefits of such a policy include almost $60 billion of savings in special education spending as well as the benefit of having children with healthy brains.
When I am elected President, we will have seen the last generation of American children with brain damage from exposure to lead-based paint.
Removing lead-based paint is good environmental policy, good social policy, good education policy, good health care policy, and good economic policy. Why are the candidates not discussing it?
"I'm going to nationalize significant portions of the pharmacutical industry and militarize an equivalent portion of the medical industry, and we are going to invade West Africa, and drop a serious chunk of change in direct costs, peace keeping costs, and development costs, with the French and others ... because that is the prudent, and humane policy choice."
The Sunday Herald (Scotland) has a must read this season of giving link on public health in West Africa.
N.B. I got to thinking about this when reflecting on what Rev. Sharpton attempted to do earlier in the campaign when "off-rez", or could have attempted during any of the debates, and what Gen. Clark (Ret.) accomplished for International Law while in The Hague, and how much quality campaign policy exposition time is wasted on the moral equivalent of Sam Donaldson's hair, or John Wayne's teeth.
It is probable that tomorrow Slobidan Milosevic will win a seat in Serbia's Parliment, as will Vojislav Seslj.
To recap: 6.5 million voters, 250 deputes, some 4,000 candidates, distributed across19 party and ad hoc coalitions. Three years ago 18 parties found common purpose in ending the Milosevic autocracy. Beyond that goal -- to the problems of national reconstruction after the NATO War and the UN Sanctions, their center could not hold.
Mr. Milosevic heads the list (trans: top of the ticket) for the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS). Mr. Vojislav Seslj heads the list for the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Mr. Seslj also holds the distinction for standing in this election from a cell in The Hague.
Photo: AFP.
Mr. Seselj surrendered voluntarily to the ICT in February 2003, where he will also answer to charges of war crimes. Mr. Milosevic was involuntarily transfered to the ICT in June 2001, which had as a side effect the fracture of the 18 party coalition into two principle segments -- the Serbian Democratic Party (DSS) lead by Vojislav Kostunica and the Democratic Party (DS), lead by Zoran Jindjic, who served as Prime Minister until his assassination on March 12th 2003 in Belgrade.
So, why is this happening? Why is the smart money on the Parties of deposed war criminals to at the very least seat their leaders tomorrow? Are Serbians depraved? Are Serbians stupid? Is this the Balkan form of Holocaust Denial?
Three years of internicine bickering, visible corruption, and the vulnerabilities of Parties and candidates who are "reformist" and "pro-western" to critiques of opportunism, self-agrandizement, lack of social solidarity, and corruption after a period of prolonged militarized isolation. Which means that about the time GWB's second term draws to a close, if similar or worse conditions of reconstruction are achieved in Iraq, there may be quite a few Baathists and Integralists who are as popular as, if not more popular than, "reformist" and "pro-western" candidates in the first genuinely free elections -- that is, elections in which the "bad guys" are allowed to run, perhaps even allowed to win -- in Post-Occupation Iraq.
Here in the US the opposition party is divided -- is the weakness of the incumbent party its economic record, or is the weakness of the incumbent party its military record? What really distinguishes this electorate from the Serbian electorate, or the eventual Iraqi electorate?
In Serbia, a platform that has had its military plank removed by NATO (N.B., under the command of Wes Clark), relieving it of a liability, but otherwise unchanged, and adamantly opposed to the current administrations of the EU and the US, looks to be competitive with a platform that had no military plank to exercise, or be exorcised, and presents a profoundly differing economic plan from the prior regime's. The return of the Serbian War Party, pacified.
In Iraq, a platform that has had its military plank recently removed by the US/UK (N.B., under the command of George W. Bush), relieving it of a liability, but otherwise unchanged, and adamantly opposed to the current administrations of the US and the UK, may be competitive with a platform that had no military plank to exercise, or be exorcised, and presents a profoundly differing economic plan from the prior regime's. The (future) return of the Iraqi War Party, pacified.
In the US opposition, a platform that defines itself primarily by the removal of the military plank from the current administration's platform is highly competitive with a platform defines itself primarily as offering a profoundly differing economic plan from the current administration.
Everyone who writes for wampum acts on the premise that the incumbent party can be defeated on its economic record. A premise that may not be tested. After a morning of chasing children about and fixing meals and running appliances and stealing moments to string together disjoint concordances, I think I understand why war criminals are going to elevated from international detention to national chambers of deputies, and some part of why our party is feverish and shivering from political influenza.
Many on the left are unable to see the good in George W. Bush. Sure, his record on job creation is the worse since Herbert Hoover. Our fiscal house is now a mess when it was immaculate prior to Mr. Bush taking office.
Yes, Mr. Bush mislead the Congress and the American people in order to wage a war that did not need to be fought while moving resources away from the fight against the enemy who needs to be defeated now.
It is undeniable that No Child Left Behind will leave many children, including one of mine, behind. While the president promised to be a uniter, his every action seems calculated to widen the partisan divide. Still, if you turn your head a little and squint in just the right way, it is possible to see the good in Mr. Bush’s policies.
Last summer, Mr. Bush was selling his tax cut by using averages in what I can only describe as a creative way. While many simply thought Mr. Bush’s use of statistics showed his mendacity, I was able to see the merit in his way of looking at things. As a result, I plan on wearing a Pirates cap at my Hall of Fame induction at Cooperstown.
Recently, my wife sent me to the store for some last minutes stocking stuffers and a supply of AA batteries. It was close to sunset and the store was to our west. I had slept poorly the night before and had a crick in my neck that caused me to tilt my head slightly. As I crested a hill, the sun sinking in the west caused me to squint to see oncoming traffic. In that moment, I had an insight.
In Mr. Bush’s recent interview with Diane Sawyer, the following exchange took place:
DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —PRESIDENT BUSH: So what's the difference?
Undeterred, I called an old friend in Chicago. He is a die hard Cubs fan. “Congratulations on winning the World Series,” I exclaimed. After assuring him that I had not lost my mind, I explained that there was a possibility that the Cubs could win the World Series and that there is actually no difference between that and a championship.
I have since learned that my friend has a “no cursing program.” I wasvery happy to hear that. I now know that there is no difference between what he actually said before slamming down the phone and “Merry Christmas to you and yours.”
I highly recommend staring into the sun with your head tilted when making New Year’s resolutions. There really is no difference between planning to diet and exercise and actually losing weight.
If we can just convince Mr. Bush and Karl Rove that there is no difference between having a reelection program and actually being reelected, I can stop staring into the sun when trying to make sense of public policy.
Last year, Skippy put out a request from blogtopians for favorite Holiday carols. At that time, I listed a couple, with this one on the top of my favs. This year, it seems even more relevant than ever, so will post it again, while I wish all our readers a Happy, and Peaceful, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza and Winter Solstice.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS (WAR IS OVER)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...
Frontpage on NYTimes.com this morning is a troubling story of a Maine teen tried and convicted in federal court, now doing time in a federal prison more than 500 miles from his family. His crime? Torching a boatyard. But not just any boatyard. This one housed the engine of the Bush family yacht. Poppa Bush, that is, the [seasonal] King of Kennebunkport.
The story is troubling on many levels. The boy, just 14 when the arson crime occurred, was ready to plead guilty in state court. He is now one of only two juveniles in all of New England serving time in federal prison, housed in a facility where most of his peers are mentally ill or developmentally challenged.
While arson is a serious crime, this instance was no different from hundreds of others which occur in Maine and around the country every year. In fact, at the same time the youth was attempting to plea bargain, a resident of a neighboring town was on trial for burning his restaurant down.
What is particularly disconcerting about these events is that while the "powers that be" deemed the case to be of the most serious import, none of the events were even covered in the local press. A search of both the Portland Press Herald and Boston Globe archives didn't even turn up a mention of the fire at the boatyard, let alone the conviction of the boy or his nineteen year-old accomplice (ironically charged in state court.) How is it that the younger boy is such a threat to society that he joined only a few hundred other juveniles incarcerated in federal prisons, yet the crime itself wasn't even deemed "news" by the local press. I live only thirty minutes from Kennebunkport (home of my ancestral tribal village) and I never heard of the boatyard fire until I read it in the Times.
It's been speculated that G.W. Bush invaded Iraq in part because of Hussein's purported assassination attempt on his father. It's certainly clear he's not the only one in the family willing to use the resources at his disposal for petty vengeance.
Let's be cosmopolitan this morning and read XINHUA in French:
Saddam Hussein a été capturé par les troupes américaines seulement après avoir été fait prisonnier par les forces kurdes, drogué et abandonné aux mains des soldats américains, rapporte l'hebdomadaire dominical londonien Sunday Express.Selon Sunday Express citant un responsable des services secrets militaires britannique, Saddam est tombé aux mains du Front patriote kurde après avoir été trahi par un membre de la tribu al-Jabour, dont la fille a été violée par le fils de l'ancien président irakien, Uday, ce qui a entraîné une vengeance sanglante.
Selon le journal, l'histoire complète des évènements qui ont conduit à la capture de Saddam hussein, le 13 décembre, près de son fief de Tikrit dans le nord de l'Irak, "montre que la version colportée par les conseillers américains est incomplète".
Un ancien responsable des services secrets irakiens, dont le Sunday Express ne cite pas le nom, a raconté que Saddam Hussein a été fait prisonnier par un dirigeant du Front patriotique kurde qui a combattu contre les forces américaines pendant la guerre en Irak avant de conclure avec elles un accord.
L'accord aurait apparemment procuré un avantage politique à ce mouvement dans la région.
Une source anonyme des services de renseignement occidentaux au Moyen-Orient a déclaré au journal: "Saddam n'a pas été capturé à la suite d'une action des services secrets américains ou britanniques. Nous savions que quelques-uns voudraient se venger de lui, c'était juste une question de temps". Fin
Trans: The claims made in the arabic press six days ago, and universally dismissed by right-minded people everywhere -- that Saddam was drugged when apparently captured, appear to be true, not false.
Trans: The KPF has held Saddam for some time prior to the "we got him" moment.
If either element of the Sunday Express' story holds up, things will be interesting over at the corral.
Newsweek of a few minutes ago is still reporting the nitty gritty story of a Kurdless capture.
Here's an interesting link: click.
Stuart Taylor and Even Thomas have an article in Newsweek in which they argue that Americans have an enormous fear of being sued.
We have been hardened and made more fearful. Friends and neighbors are more wary now. Almost anyone has to ask: if I say or do something that might be taken wrong, will I wind up in court? Mentors and teachers are restrained from offering either comfort or discipline—might that touch be misconstrued, those stern words somehow made “actionable”?
Ryan Warner is a volunteer who runs an annual softball tournament in Page, Ariz., that usually raises about $5,000 to support local school sports programs. But not this year. A man who broke his leg at a recent tournament sliding into third base filed a $100,000 lawsuit against the city, and Warner fears he may be named as a defendant. “It’s very upsetting when you’re doing something for the community, not making any money for yourself, to be sued over something over which you had no control,” he says. So Warner canceled the tournament.
Perhaps we need a law that says that volunteers like Ryan Warner can’t be held liable for negligence when they are volunteering for a socially beneficial activity. Congress and President Clinton certainly thought so because, as Public Citizen (pdf) points out, they enacted just such a law.
Given that Ryan Warner was immune from suit by virtue of a federal statute, one could argue that his fear of litigation was unreasonable. Unreasonable fear is still fear. The question is why are Americans so afraid of being sued?
There are a number of reasons but surely one such reason is that the tort reform lobby and the media has chosen the scare the bejesus out of the public to promote a tort reform agenda. What is worse, they continually lie to generate the fear.
Among the groups most frightened about the prospect of being sued are doctors and hospitals. How could they not be afraid when they hear stories like the one Taylor and Thomas tell?
In California recently, a couple won a $70 million judgment against Stanford University Hospital and two other health-care centers for failing to prevent their child from becoming disabled by a rare birth condition.
Given that the total of all medical malpractice judgments and settlements is a little over $4 billion per year (see here and here), the medical profession is killing a fly with a cannon.
Nonetheless, how can you blame doctors for being afraid when they are told a jury handed out $70 million as a result of a birth defect that the doctors had no way to prevent?
I put part of the blame squarely where it belongs, on Taylor and Thomas because they are promoting such fear by lying.
Public Citizen has looked into the “$70 million” case and found it to be false in a number of respects. It is true that the baby, Michael Cook, had a birth defect. That is the only truth in Taylor and Thomas’s rendition of the case. Public Citizens notes:
Michael was born with the rare metabolic disorder phenylketonuria (PKU), which prevents certain amino acids from being properly metabolized. According to medical experts, the disorder occurs once every 10,000 to 15,000 births and can be detected by a test that is required by law for all newborns. If diagnosed early, it can usually be controlled with a low-protein diet. The medical standard of practice is to test newborns about 24 hours after birth, but Michael’s test was conducted too early, only four hours after birth. Medical experts testifying at the trial stated that if the test had been performed as required by the standard, it would have detected Michael’s condition, and he could have gone on to lead a healthy life. Instead, Michael was not diagnosed until he was six years old, after the disease had permanently impaired him. Michael’s doctors testified that he now functions at a three-year-old level, is fed through a tube, and will never be able to work or live on his own.
Still, $70 million is a lot of money, even for a permanently disabled infant. It is so much that it is barely believable that a jury would make such an award in California where there is a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages. The reason that is unbelievable is that Taylor and Thomas are lying. Public Citizen tells us that the $70 million was actually $8.3 million:
Since this was a structured judgment rather than lump sum payment, with periodic payments over Michael’s lifetime, the present value of the award was only $8.3 million ($6.3 million for medical expenses and $1.8 million for lost wages) – the cost to purchase an annuity to provide the payments to Michael over his lifetime.
I do not mean to pick on Newsweek. Scare tactics are a standard procedure when the issue is tort reform.
Take Mort Zuckerman, the editor in chief and publisher of Newsweek’s competitor, U.S. News and World Report for example. Last summer Zuckerman wrote a column about the litigation crisis in which he gave two examples of how juries give out awards in silly cases. I discussed the column here.
Zuckerman wrote (the link is now broken):
a woman throws a soft drink at her boyfriend at a restaurant, then slips on the floor she wet and breaks her tailbone. She sues. Bingo--a jury says the restaurant owes her $100,000! A woman tries to sneak through a restroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She falls, knocks out two front teeth, and sues. A jury awards her $12,000 for dental expenses.
Or maybe you heard about the guy who was trying to steal someone’s hubcaps and got hurt when the car rolled over his hand. He sued the owner of the car and won $74,000. That is a fabrication.
Or perhaps you heard about the guy who won half a million dollars ($1.5 million in some versions) for mental anguish after he locked himself in the garage of a house he had robbed and had to remain in the garage for eight days living on dog food. Yeah, right, juries are often just so sympathetic to criminals.
Or perhaps you heard of these:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson’s son.Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor’s beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.
Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma … purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner’s manual that he couldn’t actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.
The media and the tort reform lobby constantly tells us that juries give out large awards in cases that are so absurd that they do not even pass the laugh test. People like Mort Zuckerman, Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas report them as true.
Zuckerman would not award anything to the plaintiff in the cases he (falsely) reports. Taylor and Thomas would never award $70 million in a case in which the doctors made no error. Their friends would not make those awards.
Zuckerman, Thomas and Taylor, however, are prepared to believe that juries would make absurd awards because they are just so sure that they and their friends are so much smarter than people on juries. They are elitists.
People who think juries are stupid either have no experience with juries or think mighty highly of themselves. If juries make such absurd decisions, why are the reported cases so often fabrications? Why can not Zuckerman or Thomas or Taylor show us some examples of ridiculous awards that are actually true?
There is a huge, well funded interest group trying to pass tort reform. There are any number of journalists sympathetic to tort reform. If there are lots of crazy jury awards that stand up on appeal, why do we usually hear only the bogus ones?
Tort reformers and the media just make stuff up. They want you to believe that juries are irrational. They want you to believe that evidence, fairness and justice are irrelevant in the “litigation lottery.” They want to scare you.
They then use the fear their lies have generated to argue that we need tort reform legislation. It really is one big scam.
Update:
I meant to link to this excellent report entitled The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law by Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest and the Commonweal Institute. It traces the origins of the tort reform movement. Who is behind the effort? The usual suspects. My failure to link to that report in the main body of the post was purely the result of negligence on my part. Should I fear a suit?
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has backed down from his plan to cut the budget for developmentally disabled Californians including autistic children.
Many thanks to Pacific John for letting us know in comments. The Gropinator has more.
The Los Angeles Times reports as follows:
In a startling reversal, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose proposed budget cuts in services for the developmentally disabled had caused a statewide outcry, agreed Wednesday to abandon the plan…Schwarzenegger sent shockwaves through the Legislature and the developmentally disabled population when, a few days after taking office Nov. 17, he singled out these Californians for his first round of cuts aimed at saving about $274 million over 18 months.
A torrent of angry protests by the disabled, their supporters, care providers and advocates greeted the proposal for cuts. Among the protests were a demonstration at the Capitol last month by thousands of protesters and a second demonstration of several hundred Tuesday in Los Angeles.
Being an action hero, the Governor denied that the protests had any effect on his position:
Administration officials denied that outside pressure had caused the governor to reverse himself. They told The Times that he had taken a second look at the cuts and told his administrators to abandon them and come back with alternatives.In a statement, the governor said he wanted to "find a thoughtful way to bring efficiencies to these services without capping the programs and shutting out families in need." He said he believed he had found a "better solution," but did not divulge it.
When I previously wrote about Schwarzenegger’s proposal, I noted that since the passage of the Lanterman Act thirty five years ago, Californians had chosen to be a leader in humane treatment of the developmentally disabled. I wrote:
Thirty five years ago, Californians proved themselves to be among the most caring, humane and decent people in the country. They were willing to pay the price to help the least fortunate among them. They were then willing to choose to be on the side of the angels.The only remaining question is whether that has changed in the last thirty five years.
For many jobs, the ability to deal with failure is a skill necessary for success. Hank Aaron is in the Hall of Fame and is the all time leader in home runs. On the way to that success, he made 8,593 outs.
Every trauma surgeon has some patients die on the operating table. The clients of public defenders often end up either pleading guilty or being convicted of a crime. To be successful, people in those professions must learn to deal with failure.
It has been my observation that successful people in such professions define some outcomes that may on the surface seem like as failure as successes.
Hank Aaron may have felt that a one for four with a home run was a successful game. A trauma surgeon whose efforts extend the life of a very badly injured patient for even a short while can take pride in the result. A public defender who negotiates a plea to reduce the time a client will spend in jail has won, even if the client goes away for years.
My guess is that something of the sort is necessary for people like Martha Pryor of Oklahoma. While reading some newspapers, I found the following:
Meet a 7-year-old boy who waits:J is blonde with blue eyes. He is about 4 feet tall and weighs about 70 pounds.
Loving and affectionate, J likes to please others. He is an active and energetic boy, who likes to be outside, where he can ride his go-cart or tractor. He is currently trying to improve his athletic skills, and likes being the bat boy on his foster brother's baseball team.J is a good eater. He especially likes pizza and chicken nuggets. He requires help with hygiene and does need "pull-ups" at night.
J has no ongoing health problems. He is diagnosed with mental retardation. His IQ has been tested at 40, showing moderate mental retardation. He also is autistic. J has delays in motor skills and appears to lack coordination. He also has difficulties with language. He does not speak in full sentences and uses very few words.
J is in the first grade. He is in special education, where he receives speech, occupational and physical therapy. His biggest problem is a very short attention span. J has been diagnosed with ADD and takes medication to help his concentration level. J also does not have a sense of danger and will engage in dangerous activities without thinking about the consequences. He requires close supervision.
Anyone wanting to learn more about adopting this child or any of the children throughout the state in need of a safe and loving environment can call DHS adoption specialist Martha Pryor at (580) 490-6060 or (877) OK-SWIFT.
Although there are people with enough love in their hearts and enough selflessness to volunteer to help special need children, I suspect that Martha Pryor has more kids seeking a family than volunteers seeking to adopt mentally retarded or autistic kids. My guess is that a large percentage of such kids are never adopted.
People in Martha Pryor’s job have to gain sufficient satisfaction from finding loving homes for a few of the special needs kids to make up for the inability to locate homes for all of the kids.
The same is true of raising an autistic child. It is a hard job. The successes are all too infrequent. It is very important to define each small step forward as a success and to relish each such success. The successes may be small and infrequent but they are the only things allowing the defeats to be endured
It has been said that the definition of a fanatic is one who, having lost sight of his objective, redoubles his effort. The American Life League qualifies under that definition.
Yesterday, two expert advisory committees to the FDA voted overwhelmingly to approve the emergency contraception pill known as “Plan B” for over the counter sale. Plan B is a “morning after” pill. Plan B consists of two large doses of the very same hormone contained in the usual birth control pill.
Plan B is very effective. It prevents pregnancy in 89% of the cases if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. Plan B was originally approved in 1999 but required a doctor’s prescription. That requirement prevented Plan B from being readily available when needed.
According to Barr Laboratories, who purchased the right to manufacture and sell Plan B, making Plan B available on an over the counter basis would prevent 1.5 million unwanted pregnancies per year and would reduce the number of abortions by 700,000 per year.
One might think that a reduction of almost three quarters of a million abortions per year would please the American Life League. One would be mistaken. The American Life League is adamantly opposed to Plan B being sold over the counter.
The controversy arises out of the mechanisms used by Plan B to prevent pregnancies. Reuters reports:
Plan B contains high doses of progestin, one of the hormones used in birth control pills, to interfere with ovulation or prevent fertilization of an egg, according to the manufacturer.But some research has suggested the pills also stop a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus, which upsets some abortion opponents.
The right to life groups have seized on the possibility of Plan B preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted to make their argument against over the counter sales. The American Life League believes that preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterine wall is the equivalent of an abortion. That position follows from the belief that life begins at conception.
The Times reports:
Judy Brown, president of the American Life League, said, "The pill acts to prevent a pregnancy by aborting a child." Ms. Brown added that while Plan B may be called emergency contraception "the emergency in this case is a baby."
Let us assume for the purpose of discussion that the American Life League wants to minimize the number of abortions. What policy, from the American Life League’s point of view, is best suited to promote that goal?
In order to answer that question, we need to make some assumptions. First, let’s assume that Barr Laboratories is correct that over the counter sales will prevent 1.5 million unwanted pregnancies and 700,000 abortions a year. Let us also assume that the reported figure of 89% effectiveness is accurate.
Since we are looking at this from the American Life League’s point of view, let us assume that preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted is the equivalent of an abortion.
There are three possible mechanisms by which Plan B works. The key point is that the mechanisms work in sequence.
If Plan B works by preventing ovulation, there is no fertilized egg to prevent from being implanted. For Plan B to destroy a life, as defined by the American Life League, Plan B must first fail to prevent ovulation, and then fail to prevent fertilization. Only if both those failures occur does the possibility of preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg come into play.
Let’s do some math.
How many fertilized eggs would be prevented from being implanted (the equivalent of an abortion from the American Life League’s point of view) by over the counter sales of Plan B?
Assume that each of the three mechanisms work in 50% of the possible cases. I chose that figure because three sequential 50% chances to prevent a pregnancy will result in an overall effectiveness of 87.5%, very close to the reported 89% effectiveness of Plan B.
The first possibility is that Plan B works by preventing ovulation. Under our assumptions, that will occur in 750,000 of the 1.5 million cases. The second possibility is that Plan B will work by preventing fertilization. That only occurs in the cases in which Plan B fails to prevent ovulation. Thus, fertilization will be prevented in half of the remaining cases for a total of 375,000 additional cases.
Only when both ovulation and fertilization occurs will a fertilized egg be prevented from being implanted in the uterine wall. That is another 375,000 cases.
Thus, over the counter sales of Plan B will prevent 700,000 abortions and will result in fertilized eggs being prevented from implanting in the uterine wall 375,000 times.
The American Life League believes that life begins at conception. It also believes that both abortion and preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall is the equivalent of killing a baby. If we accept those views, then approval of over the counter sales of Plan B will prevent the killing of 325,000 babies. Nonetheless, the American Life League opposes over the counter sales of Plan B.
The American Life League has lost sight of its objective but has not diminished its efforts.
Kevin at Lean Left thinks that God Likes a Challenge.
Mad Kane had social engagements on two consecutive nights. While Mad was being a social butterfly, Julia got to do the dishes. Of the three evenings in question, Julia’s was the second best experience.
Meanwhile, Jim relates his experiences with panhandlers. Jim’s post reminded me of a panhandler I once met.
While walking on the street, a disheveled man asked me for a dollar for "coffee." I asked the man if he really planned to use the money to buy booze. "Oh no," he replied, "I just want a cup of coffee." It was 2:00 pm in Atlanta in August and about 95 degrees. I doubted the coffee story.
"Too bad," I said, "I was going to buy you a bottle of scotch if you had been honest with me but I do not give to people who lie."
For the first time, he looked directly at me and said, "how about a bottle of gin?"
Impressed with his sudden conversion to truth telling, I gave him a $10.
Dwight Meredith, who has been "guest blogging" here at Wampum, will no longer be acting in that capacity.
He is now Wampum's permanent co-host.
Hurray!
I suspect many readers of (pre-Dwight) Wampum often wondered about the bee I had in my bonnet over energy prices and supply over the last year. In the Spring, when most Americans fretted about their mutual funds or were glued to news on US adventurism in Iraq, I poured over press missives on natural gas and oil prices and began accosting the local gas man seeking information.
Even earlier this Fall, I was still fixated on gas prices and reserves, puzzling over the government's predictions of gas prices increasing more than 12% over last year's unusual high levels, despite assertions that depleted stocks had rebounded. In fact, in an unusually frank admission, the EIA conceded that high gas prices had a negative effect on the economic recovery earlier this year, as demand by industry decreased 2.3% due to energy costs.
Some residential gas customers are moderately protected against price spikes due to regulation by state and federal agencies. The EIA predicts that barring an unusually cold heating season, natural gas customers on average will pay about $50 more this winter (or 6.25%) to heat their homes. Manufactures and utilities are not so lucky. For fertilizer and chemical companies, natural gas is not only an energy source to run the machines, it's a raw material in the production process, and thus manufacturers pay commodity prices, even when those prices jump exponentially. Last winter, Dow chemical laid off thousands of workers when natural gas prices passed $7/mill btus, as production became too expensive. Landscapers and farmers have witnessed fertilizer prices climb, cutting in on already slim profits. And that was before the events of this past week.
On Saturday evening, the NYTimes ran this article on the recent surge in natural gas prices. Apparently, as Americans were distracted by Halliburton's overcharging at the Iraqi pump, natural gas traders, harkening back to the glory days of the California energy crisis, may have illegally manipulated gas markets, leading to a 50% increase in the two weeks after Thanksgiving. Prices at the opening of the winter heating season currently sit above $7/mill btus, equal to last year's mid-season high. Analysts now fear that without intervention, prices by January-February could rise above $13/mill btus. Such a level could fatally smother the already wobbly recovery in the US manufacturing sector, as more companies follow Dow's lead and cut both production and staff to make up for profits lost to gas suppliers.
The current EIA projections for industrial demand for natural gas in 2004 are an increase in 1%, a number formulated with a burgeoning economy in mind. If EIA concedes that the $7/mill btus level suppressed industrial demand during 2003, one can only imagine the revised forecasts based on an amount nearly double the current number. More than a few members of Congress are concerned enough to call for investigations into price manipulation by energy traders (aka Enron), but with an Administration firmly entrenched in Big Energy's pocket, even Orrin Hatch might not want to hold his breath.
Whenever I read a news report about a civil suit, I try to predict who will win. Evaluating cases has become a habit. Over my years practicing law, I have had to make countless decisions as to whether or not to take a case. Often, those decisions must be made based with only limited information available.
The decision to take or reject a case directly impacts my financial well being. It is very important that I get those decisions right. When I read about a suit in the papers, I can not resist the temptation to perform a similar analysis. It is a guilty pleasure.
News reports rarely contain a complete or accurate statement of the facts. There is no time to take a close look at the legal issues involved and there is no opportunity to interview and assess the credibility of the witnesses. Predicting winners based on news reports is obviously an inexact science.
Nonetheless, sometimes it is possible to get strong clues from news reports. Let’s look at a concrete example.
Julia points us to a Jeffrey Toobin article in the New Yorker about a suit over the rights to Winnie the Pooh.
First, a brief sketch of the facts of the case:
In 1930, a literary agent named Stephen Slesinger acquired the merchandising rights to the Pooh story from A. A. Milne, who created the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood to entertain his real-life son, Christopher Robin Milne. In 1961, Shirley Slesinger, Stephen’s widow, signed those rights over to the Walt Disney company in return for four per cent of the revenues that Disney received from Pooh merchandise. Thirty years later, the Slesinger family sued Disney for breach of contract, claiming that the company had stinted on the royalties.
So, who is going to win? Before you decide, let me give you a few more items of information. The case has been pending at the trial court level for twelve years. It is the oldest current case in Los Angeles Superior Court. Dozens of lawyers have worked on the case and each side has recently hired a high profile lawyer. Daniel M. Petrocelli (who represented the Ron Goldman family in the civil suit against OJ) has been hired by Disney and Johnny Cochran has been retained by the plaintiff.
To get a feel for who is going to win the case, three more pieces of the puzzle are helpful. First, it would be nice to know why the case has been delayed for so long. Secondly, you should carefully assess what the lawyers for each side are saying. Third, look to see who wants a trial and who wants further delay.
In the Winnie the Pooh case, it appears that the delay was caused by discovery disputes:
But most of the delays seem to be the result of lawyers fighting with each other. At one point, early in the case, a second judge was appointed just to handle arguments about the discovery process. Another time, Disney was sanctioned by a judge for disposing of the files of a company executive who negotiated a 1983 revision of the original contract with the Slesingers.
“The question in this case,” Cochran said the other day, “is ‘Does the Mouse keep its word?’”
How about the defendant’s attorney?
The latest turn has Disney accusing the Slesinger team of misconduct for, among other things, rummaging through the company’s garbage. After first dismissing the charge—“I don’t like ketchup on my exhibits,” one lawyer scoffed—the Slesingers’ attorneys conceded that they did take documents from what they called a “publicly accessible” trash container. “There’s been a massive coverup here, and egregious misbehavior,” Petrocelli said.
The third factor is to determine who wants to go to trial and who wants to delay. That is the clearest indication of who thinks they have a good case. Cochran is again straightforward:
“We need to get all this stuff out of the way about who went through what trash,” he said. “This is a case that should go to trial, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“And we’re going to a full hearing about what they did, with witnesses, on January 20th.”
The lawyer who wants a trial thinks he is going to win. The lawyer who wants to spend lots of his client’s money talking about issues other than the merits of the case is trying to avoid a trial. Usually, when a lawyer does not want to go to trial, it is because he has a lousy case.
All told, I expect that Cochran will push the case towards trial and, at the last moment, the parties will reach a settlement. The terms of the settlement will have the plaintiff singing a song about “a tubby little cubby all stuffed with cash.”
Nathan Newman notes a new study of race and hiring practices. The study he cites is here in PDF. Nathan also quotes the BNA Labor Report about the study:
The study that sent specially trained pairs of black and white job applicants to temporary employment agencies in Los Angeles and San Francisco found a "significant preference" for white applicants over slightly higher qualified African Americans...The agencies favored white applicants by a ratio of 4-to-1 in Los Angeles and more than 2-to-1 in San Francisco.
As examples, it said a white applicant was granted an interview, while the black counterpart was not; a white applicant was offered a job with a higher salary or for a higher duration; and a white applicant was the only one to be offered coaching or suggestions for resume improvement.
This is why I have such a hard time taking opponents of affirmative action seriously: they never seem to deal with the reality that racism is very much a problem in this country. If you are opposed to affirmative action, you must first tell me what you are going to replace it with. Because today, right now, if you are not white, you are going to have a harder time getting a job, a raise, or an interview because and only because you are not white. Tell me how you are going to deal with that, and only then will I pay attention to what you have to say about affirmative action.Because affirmative action is the only program that has any concrete effect on overcoming that prevalent racism. If you are going to remove it without putting something in its place, then all you are doing is acquiescing to that racism. I do not consider that a valid option.
Taking a break from working on the Koufax Awards, I decided to read the transript of today’s Presidential Press conference.
Matt Yeglesias points us to one part of the press conference in which the answer did not relate to the question.
Mr. Bush was also asked about Iraqi possession of WMD. His answer was as follows:
Here's what I took away from September the 11th, 2001 -- that any time a President sees a gathering threat to the United States, we must deal with it. We can't pick or choose like we used to, could in the past. In the old days, oceans protected us from harm's way, and a President could stand back and say, well, maybe this gathering threat is an issue, maybe it's not. After September the 11th, that complacency, I guess may be the right word, no longer is relevant. And, therefore, I began to assess threats.And the threat of Saddam Hussein was a unique threat in this sense: the world recognized he was a threat for 12 years, and 17 resolutions, I think it is -- I believe it was 17 resolutions -- for the resolution counter, give me a hand here -- 17? Seventeen resolutions. And he ignored them. He just treated the U.N. as an empty debating society, as if their resolutions meant nothing. This is a person who has used chemical weapons before, which indicated to me he was a threat. He invaded his neighbors before. This is a person who was defiant, he's a deceiver, and he was a murderer in his own country. He was a threat.
And so I went to the United Nations, as you recall, September the 12th, 2002, and said to the United Nations, let's work together to disarm this man; you recognized he had arms, we recognize he's got arms, let's disarm him. And 1441 came about, it's when the world spoke through the United Nations Security Council with one voice, and in a unanimous voice said, disarm, or there will be serious consequences. In other words, they agreed that Saddam was a threat.
And so we moved to disarm him. In other words, there were serious consequences because he was defiant.
Since then, David Kay has reported back that he had weapons programs that would have put him in material breach of 1441. What that means, of course, is that had David Kay been the lead inspector, and had done the work that he did prior to our removal of Saddam, he would have reported back to the U.N. Security Council that Saddam was, in fact, in breach of the Council resolutions that were passed.
Earlier in this cycle Al Sharpton went off-reservation, and spent a week in West Africa working a set of issues that is more important than ... well, who sits in the Oval Office for a term or two. I tried to get him to guest blog that week, which allowed me to chat with Frank Watkins, who was his campaign manager at the time, but I missed the window of opportunity. I thought then that what he was doing was simply more interesting than what Howard Dean had done a week or so earlier on Lawrence Lessig's blog.
I mention this because this week another candidate has gone off-reservation. Wes Clark is in the Hague, which isn't holding a Democratic primary or caucus before, during, or after, Super Tuesday. While Wes Clark does not suffer the same degree of white-out that Al Sharpton endures in the media, all the news cycles this week belong to the incumbant. If he could blog from the Hague, it could be interesting. Profoundly interesting in fact, because we could put the thumbnail sketch of the process that puts Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in UN custody and facing indictments at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the process that puts Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in US custody and facing ... something that no one has bothered to give much thought to until today. A pair of thumbnail sketches should be revealing.
Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic of committing the following offences in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995:
See Florence Hartmann's contribution on Bosnia in The Crimes of War for a summary.
Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic of committing the following offences in Croatia between 1991 and 1992:
Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic and four of his colleagues of committing the following offences in province of Kosovo between January and June 2001:
For the full text of each of the indictments and accompanying documents at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, click on the respective links: Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo. In a nutshell these are: that after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, almost all captured Bosnian Muslim men and boys, altogether several thousands, were executed (Bosnian indictement); Milosevic planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the persecution of the Croat and other non-Serb civilian populations (Croatian indictement); the killings occurred in a widespread or systematic manner throughout the province of Kosovo and resulted in the deaths of numerous men, women, and children (Kosovo indictement).
What Wes Clark is doing this week is important. Important like working to improve the human condition in West Africa. He's working to improve the human condition in that part of the world that is subject to, or perhaps celebrates in is a better turn of phrase, the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal(s) of the United Nations. It is worth recalling that in May 2002 the US formally renounced participation in the new International Criminal Court.
Credits: The BBC (London), The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The RTBF (Bruxelles). Photo AFP.
Oblig personal note on the capture, not arrest of Saddam Hussein :: a distraction from policy to personality. I'll continue to blog on Le Procès Milosevic.
Didn’t some conservatives once argue that lefties have no sense of humor? Well, put down your coffee, I am about to explode that myth. What follows is surely the funniest post of the year. No, I do not fancy myself to be the blogger equivalent of Robin Williams, Richard Pryor or even Henny Youngman. I may not be able to write funny stuff but the lefty community is filled with comedic talent. I will link below to the posts that have, so far, received nominations for the Koufax Award for the Most Humorous Post of the year. Please click the "more" button to get to the links.
This listing does not mean that the nominations for Most Humorous Post are closed. If you know of or have written a post you think is funny, particularly if it was posted early in the year, leave a comment or send an e-mail and I will link to it.
Before I get to the funny stuff, there are a couple of details that need to be cleared up about the rules of the Koufax Awards. First, Best Group Blog is a new category and it is not surprising that there has been some confusion. Please be advised that John Lott and the Sock Puppets do not qualify as a group blog. A group blog requires more than one actual person.
Secondly, to qualify in the categories of Most Humorous Blog and Most Humorous Post, the humor must be intentional. Thus, Instapundit does not qualify for the former and the Kim Du Toit essay does not qualify for the latter. (I shamelessly stole those jokes from the comments. Thanks folks).
Now on to the nominations:
One of my personal favorites is The Horror of Blimps by Scylla posted at Teeming Extras. I found it when Mary Beth linked to it early in the year. I then linked to it under the title “Handle With Care.” It really is funny enough to be dangerous.
The Poor Man, Andrew Northrup, is just hilarious. His posts receiving nominations for Most Humorous Post include Shorter Right-Wing Punditry’s Reaction to the Valerie Plame Affair: In Internal Dialogue, So, So Sad, The Cornier Too and The Science of Deception.
Jesse Taylor of Pandagon won the 2002 Sandy for Most Humorous Post with his Peggy Noonan parody. He is back this year with his Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003 post.
Speaking of last year’s winners, Adam Felber of Fanatical Apathy won last year for Most Humorous Blog. This year, his posts entitled Rough Justice IV and The UN Spring/Summer 2003 have been nominated for Most Humorous Post.
Few bloggers can match Julia for wit or snark. Her “shorter” entry, Shorter David Brooks is nominated for Most Humorous Post.
Speaking of the “shorter” format, its originator, Daniel Davies (known as D-Squared), has been nominated in this category for Heavy Paratroopers (be sure to read the comments).
What would a listing of the year’s most humorous posts be without an entry from Neal Pollack? Take a look at Your Gonna Frey.
Atrios is usually fairly cryptic in his humor. An exception is his “give me turkee” post.
DKos alum, Billmon of Whisky Bar, has been nominated for Sitcom as well as for a post featuring a picture of Paul Wolfowitz. I have not been able to locate the latter post. Can anyone help?
The Mighty Reason Man of Very, Very Happy began his blog this year. He has multiple nominations in this category including Nicotrol For Right Wing Blog Addicts, Riding in Cars with Weiners, Parts 1 and 2, Holy Christ, Donald Luskin Has Lost His Mind and The Corner Unleashed. With that many nominations, it appears that we also have a candidate for Most Humorous Blog.
It is not really a single post but no listing of funny posts would be complete without mentioning Ted Barlow’s classic collection of light bulb jokes. Here is the Light Bulb Joke Warehouse.
John Holbo received a nomination for his essay Dead Right.
A new blog, World O’Crap has been nominated for Hercules in New York.
Mac Thomason of War Liberal prescribes a dose of “Republicen” for what ails you in
And Now, a Paid Commercial Announcement from Bristol Myers Squibb.
When Neal Pollack called for “Make Fun of Dick Cheney Day, Noho-Missives responded with MC Dick Cheney.
Last year Digby won a Sandy for Best Commentor. Bowing to the will of his public, he then created his own blog, Hullabaloo. Digby is such a good writer and has such great insight that he will undoubtedly be nominated in any number of categories. This category is no exception as he has been nominated for Maidenly Vapors.
Greg at The Talent Show has fun with action figures.
Ever wonder how the economy could go from slow growth to the third quarter explosion in GDP? Tom Burka of Opinions You Should Have lets you in on the secret in Historic GDP Hike Due to Use Of Ronco Dial-O-Matic Food Slicer, Says Ronco. Tom has also been nominated for Killing Moslems Makes Them Angry And Possibly Even Violent, Says Report.
One of my favorite new blogs is Sadly, No. l was pleased to see it receive a nomination for the parody of Kin Du Toit’s silly essay. Sadly, No’s post is entitled The Dickification of the Western Female.
While on the subject of Du Toit’s post, please do not miss Winston Smith, the Philosoraptor’s, post The duToitification of the Western Conservative.
Emma of Notes On The Atrocities is nominated for her satire of Mary Matalin’s comments on George Bush in Baghdad. The post is entitled Bush Said To Be Unconvincing as Real Self; Will Be Played By Stand-In.
To The Barricades is an unabashed liberal blog. The Pessimist snagged a nomination in the Most Humorous Post category for the poem parody Gunga Dean.
Gummo Trotsky writes at Tug Boat Potemkin. His post Can Libertarians Do Yum-Cha? received a nomination.
The Tooney Bin provides some satirical advice to presidential candidate Wes Clark in An Open Letter to the Clark Movement: Rough Draft.
See Why is nominated for this parable.
Congratulations to all nominees. You have been recognized by your readers and peers as being among the best of the year. Other than being a Koufax finalist or winner, there are few higher accolades in lefty blogging. If I have left anyone out or if a nomination has come in after this post was written, please let me know and I will try to rectify the situation.
Does anyone now care to argue that lefties have no sense of humor?
In the Post announcing the 2003 Koufax Awards, I wrote:
Those are the eleven categories. If there is another one that you think should be added (or retained, a couple have been dropped from last year) please let us know and perhaps we will add one.
The purposes of the awards include 1) having fun hosting them, 2) you having fun participating in them, 3) providing the opportunity for lots of people to say lots of nice things about lots of other people, 4) recognizing people who, without compensation, have amused us, informed us or made us think and 5) helping build a feeling of community on the left.
All of those purposes seem to be promoted by adding some additional categories. This post will identify the new categories.
That said, it is not feasible to add twenty or more new categories. Mary Beth and I already have more than 250 comments, an uncounted number of emails and eleven categories to manage. If twenty more categories are added, we will not be announcing the winners until July. I would like to limit the number of additional categories to four. That will allow the recognition of some additional people without expanding the awards to unmanageable proportions.
After reviewing the comments and emails, and considering what I think is best, I have decided on the following four categories:
Best Commentor
One consistent suggestion has been that the contributions of those who post on the comment boards of other people’s blogs should be recognized. Last year the Awards included a Best Commentor category won by Digby, now of Hullabaloo. I removed that category this year because it is very had to locate and link to the commentors.
Nonetheless, the community wants the category of Best Commentor and it is hereby added. When making nominations, please let us know where the nominee posts. If you are nominated for “Best Commentor” please send a link to a comment or two you would like to see recognized.
Best Right Of Center Blog
Many comments suggested an award for our favorite conservatives. As Jeanne put it:
How about "Best conservative blog"? There are so many bad ones, I'd like to show a little appreciation to the rare few who demonstrate some style and grace in the ways they disagree with us.
Most Underappreciated Blog
Many comments suggested an award for people who do not normally receive a lot of recognition. One suggestion was for the best blog with less than a certain amount of traffic. Others made different suggestions trying to design an award for which Atrios, Kos, Hesiod, CalPundit and the other heavyweights would not be eligible.
One purpose of the awards is to show appreciation for those who have done good work in the last year. Thus, I decided to to make the award for the “Most Underappreciated Blog.” My nominee is Ross of The Bloviator from whom I learn more things of greater importance than almost any other blogger. Please leave a comment or send an email with your nomination.
Best Expert Blog
The fourth and final additional category was inspired by the comment of DavidNYC who runs The Swing State Project. David writes:
I want to suggest a new category: Best Specialist (or Specialty) Blog. This would be for someone who has a particular specialization (whether advanced degree, high-level job, or even auto-didact) and blogs primarily on that topic. This would be different from single-issue blog. Maybe another way to put it would be "Best Expert Blog". (For example, my blog, the currently on-hiatus Swing State Project, might be single issue, but it sure ain't expert.) My nominations for this category would be Prof. Juan Cole and Prof. Jack Balkin.
I think that is a great idea. Please provide us with your choices for Best Expert Blog.
Those are the new categories. We now have a total of fifteen categories. I will begin posting links to the nominees shortly. Please keep the nominations coming in.
The time has arrived to begin the nomination process for the 2003 Koufax Awards. This is the second year of the awards. In the fast moving world of blogs, that qualifies them as a tradition. The purpose of the awards is to recognize and applaud the best of the left. It is supposed to be fun for us and for you. Please take the awards in the spirit in which they are offered.
Mary Beth and I will be accepting nominations during the month of December. Nominations may be submitted either by comment to this post or by email to either of us. The email addresses are at the right. Each week for the next few, we will attempt to post links to nominated posts and blogs so that we may have an informed electorate.
Some categories recognize specific posts. We request that, if possible, your nominations for those categories contain a hyperlink. Someone has to locate the link and if last year’s experience is any indication, locating all of the links for nominated posts is a lot of work. Help us out if you can. If you can not, describe the post as best you can and I will try to hunt it down.
On that note, please allow us to emphasis that we encourage you to nominate your own material. No one knows your posts better than you. If you have written something you think is particularly good, please let us know about it. If you feel uncomfortable publicly nominating your own material, please send an email. The source of the nomination will be kept confidential.
Shortly after the turn of the year, Mary Beth and I will tabulate the entries and narrow the nominees to about five or six finalists per category. We will post those finalists and open the voting for the awards. We expect the award winners to be announced in late January.
As Mary Beth and I will be tabulating the votes, nominations for PLA or Wampum, although appreciated, will not be counted. That is a shame as Flashback Friday would win my vote for Best Series.
There will be 11 categories this year. Those categories (links are to last year’s awards) are:
Best Blog
Atrios won last year. The category seeks to recognize the best overall work across the entire year. Which lefty blog do you consider indispensable?
Best Writing
Jeanne D’Arc of Body and Soul won last year. The category seeks to recognize the best writing across the entire year.Best Post
Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review won last year with his post entitled Al Gore and the Alpha Girls. The category is intended to identify the one post of the year that stands above all others for originality, insight, and writing. This is one of the categories in which it is most appropriate to nominate your own material.
Best Series
The Best Series Sandy was won last year by Atrios for his exhaustive coverage of the Trent Lott controversy. The category includes both regular features such as Mary Beth’s Flashback Fridays (alas, not eligible) as well as the best coverage of a single issue (such as Atrios’ posts about Trent Lott last year). This is another category where we want you to send us your best stuff.Best Single Issue Blog
Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left was awarded the 2002 Koufax for Best Single Issue Blog for her coverage of all things legal. Blogs that focus exclusively or almost exclusively on politics, economics, law or other specific areas are likely candidates for this award.Best Group Blog
This is a new category and hopefully self explanatory. A group is defined as two or more regular contributors.
Most Humorous Blog
Fanatical Apathy by Adam Felber won the 2002 award for most Humorous Blog. Who has consistently made you laugh this year?Most Humorous Post
The 2002 Award for Most Humorous Post went to Jesse Taylor of Pandagon for his Peggy Noonan parody. What post this year made you laugh out loud? If you have read or written anything particularly humorous this year, please send us a link.Best Design
Ampersand of Alas, A Blog won in 2002. The category is self explanatory. If any of you creative types care to design something that could be posted on the site of finalists and winners of a Koufax Award, please send it to us. We would love to actually have something to award.
Best New Blog
Roger Ailes won last year in a tight race. This year figures to be even tighter due to the explosion of new, good lefty blogs. A new blog is one that first posted on or after July 1, 2003. If your blog qualifies, send us a link. The growth in lefty bloggers has made it hard to keep up with them all and we would appreciate the help.
Best Special Effects
The award of best Special Effects is intended to go to the blog that makes the best use of anything other than words. Flash movies, charts, cartoons, pictures, diagrams all are appropriate. Blah 3 won last year for its use of flash movies.
Those are the eleven categories. If there is another one that you think should be added (or retained, a couple have been dropped from last year) please let us know and perhaps we will add one.
Everyone should take the Koufax Awards in the spirit in which they are intended. Do not take winning or not winning too seriously. Last year, someone objected to the awards on the ground that they were a popularity contest. We plead guilty as charged. How could they be anything else since voting is involved?
The idea behind the awards is to recognize the contributions of a number of people who give of their time, effort, insight, skill and humor without compensation. It is a chance to say a lot of nice things about a lot of people. We hope to help build and promote a feeling of community among lefty bloggers. This is supposed to be fun for us and for you. Anything that makes it less fun is inappropriate.
Send us some nominations.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has upheld the soft money ban of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Justices O’Connor, Stevens, Ginsberg, Souter, and Breyer formed the majority. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy dissented. The New York Times report is here. I have not yet located a html version of the entire decision.
The decision increases the importance of the new so called 527 political groups. Read about them here.
Here at Wampum, one of our favorite charities is Cure Autism Now. Mary Beth stayed up all night during the blogathon to raise money for CAN. I was one of her sponsors. CAN does great work and provides hope that a cure for autism can be discovered.
If you do not believe me, you could ask former President Gerald Ford. In 2001, Ford received a “Special Giving Award” at a charity event known as the Family Celebration. The event raised over a million dollars for 18 charities including CAN. The Betty Ford Foundation was the recipient of $150,000 from that event.
You might think that it was nice of President Ford to help raise money to help autistic kids. Sure, the life of an ex-President is pretty cushy. President Ford receives a combined pension of almost a quarter of a million dollars per year from his government service. He gets free office space, secretarial help and Secret Service protection. Sure, President Ford has cashed in on being an ex-President by sitting on eight corporate boards and receiving $80,000 per speech. At least he is willing to donate his time to help raise money for autistic kids by receiving an award at a charity event, right?
Wrong. The L.A. Times reports that President Ford was paid $200,000 for accepted the “Special Giving Award.” Steve Lopez, also writing in the L.A. Times suggests that it was actually a “Special Taking Award.”
The award certainly was special. As noted above, President Ford charges $80,000 to give a speech to business groups. When it comes to money that would otherwise go to help autistic kids, he gets $200,000. Attending a charity event for autistic kids must be two and half times harder than talking to business executives. It must surely be rough for Jerry to interrupt his golf game and have to listen to people talk about the plight of autistic kids.
Jerry Ford is a disgrace.
Leah at corrente has an idea about who the Democrats (Tom Daschle actually) should appoint to the 9/11 commission to replace Max Cleland. Cleland is leaving the commission for a position on the Export-Import Bank.
Leah suggests that Daschle appoint one of the outspoken members of the 9/11 victims’ families profiled here.
That is a good idea and it would be a very astute political move. If Daschle is not willing to appoint someone without more traditional credentials, another politically smart move would be to appoint a prominent Republican who is very independent minded and would be supported by the families.
Former Republican Senator Warren Rudman comes to mind. The administration promised the families that they would be allowed to select one of the Republican commissioners in exchange for the families’ support for the Commission. When the families chose Rudman, the White House reneged on the deal. See here (scroll down to “9/11 Commission”).
Appointing a Republican would blunt the GOP argument that all Democratic criticism is based on mere partisanship. Appointing the person the families selected, and Bush reneged on, would point out Bush's duplicity.
Rudman also knows something about Homeland Security and it my sense that he places truth above party loyalty.
In addition, if Rudman criticized the White House for delay or obfuscation, think about all the great articles that would begin “Even Republican former Senator Warren Rudman accused the White House of ….”
Avedon points us to a David Corn article on Mr. Bush’s casual relationship with the truth. Corn notes that in a November speech at a military base, Mr. Bush said the following:
Working with a fine coalition, our military went to Afghanistan, destroyed the training camps of al Qaeda and put the Taliban out of business forever.”
That was a false statement. Days before Bush’s speech, a U.S. helicopter crashed near Kabul, and five American soldiers were killed. These troops were hunting Taliban remnants. Two days before the speech, a rocket was fired at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul; Taliban insurgents were the prime suspects. On November 16, a U.N. aid worker was assassinated, apparently by the Taliban. In Kandahar, the Taliban was threatening to harm Afghans who participated in local elections.
there was no reason to claim the Taliban was stone-cold dead when he could have truthfully declared that the U.S. military (under his command) and its Afghan allies had routed the Taliban.
Corn believes that Bush was:
ignoring facts and saying whatever sounds good to juice up the public. It was hype, extreme rhetoric, utterly divorced from events on the ground. This statement was a report from Planet Bush, not the world as it exists — a demonstration of Bush’s penchant to embrace (and peddle) self-serving fantasy over the obvious truth.
A more likely reason for Mr. Bush's penchant for telling little lies is that he is just a person who "would climb a tree to tell a lie when he could sit on the ground and tell the truth."
Via Common Dreams I located this Star Tribune editorial about tax breaks for the largest SUVs:
Thanks to provisions in President Bush's tax-cut package of last May, anyone with a plausible claim to business purpose can deduct the full cost of eligible SUVs and trucks. ..To qualify for this treatment, the vehicle has to weigh at least 6,000 pounds, fully loaded. Roughly three dozen models clear that bar, including the iconically oversized Ford Expedition, GMC Yukon, Lincoln Navigator, Cadillac Escalade, Dodge Durango and, of course, the Hummer and Hummer H2.
A purchaser paying the maximum tax rate can save a bundle -- almost $19,000 off a $54,000 Escalade, for example. That creates a powerful incentive for buyers to choose the biggest, heaviest and most gas-guzzling models, which were selling quite well without any help, over more modest SUVs or even sedans…
And so the biggest SUVs acquired yet another undeserved advantage over other vehicles -- including those that are actually used for business purposes. A self-employed consultant or small-business owner who buys a sedan or minivan or under-three-ton truck this year can write off only a little over $10,000, and has to spread the deduction over five years.
Jim Capazzola wonders what is the easiest job in the world? After considering a number of options, he determines that Heloise of Hints from Heloise has it. After all, she often simply prints letters from readers without comment.
To win a bet, I once had a hint published by Heloise. Did you know that the cap from a large highlighting pen works perfectly as a cork for a soda bottle?
There are other candidates for easiest job in the world. First base coach for a major league baseball team comes to mind. Travel on chartered flights, stay in the best hotels, have the best seat in the house every night and do not forget to remind the runner not to get picked off.
Have you ever read Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough? Before the brouhaha over takeover of RJR Nabisco, members of the board of directors were paid $50,000 per year, were wined and dined, transported in private jets and generally treated like royalty. It appears that their only duty was to rubber stamp any plan proposed by management. Surely that was the easiest job in the world.
The takeover effort, with potential director liabilities, difficult to evaluate proposals and lots of angry people changed that job significantly.
An ob/gyn once told me that his job of delivering babies was 90% boredom and 10% terror. Being a director at RJR Nabisco in the 1980s must have been something like that. It was the cushiest position around until events suddenly transformed it into a high stakes, huge pressure, make a lot of enemies no matter what you do position.
Jim does not have a comment feature. We do. What you think is the easiest job in the world? Alternatively, considering the difficulty, the pay, the perks and the prestige, what is the most difficult job in the world?
I had planned on being more active on Wampum this weekend, but Mother Nature, in the guise of a major Nor'Easter, intervened. Thus, I just finished a 68 hour work week at "two of the same initials and a legume", filling in for worker bee team members who lived too far from the worksite to brave blizzard conditions. Underemployment bested by guilt.
However, I learned of an interesting factoid this week while staffing the phones. Recently, Congress passed a law which allowed credit card companies two months leeway in crediting an account. Which means, in essence, that if you accidentally order, say a size 10.5 Bean, er, generic "Legume" boot versus a size 10, and do a "quick exchange", where the new item is sent at the same time you send back the old one, good ole MBNA can sit on both purchases for two months, meaning while they immediately charge your card for the replacement item, they don't have to credit your account back for the old one, even if it's the seller receives it three days after the original purchase date.
This Congress voted for this obvious abuse of consumer rights. Or should I say the Republicans who run Congress voted for this. The question is will the DCCC take the time to look at the devil in the details such as this bill and run on the pocketbook ticket. I can personally tell you that more than one consumer was very irate to hear that it would take two freakin' months to have their credit card "credited", all the while they had to pay interest on that item. Democrats need to address the bread and butter issues such as this; money + fairness = good D policy.
Another issue I've been itching to talk about has been the stagnating non-exempt hourly rate, which once again, in November indicated that inflation is growing faster than worker bee earnings. From January to July 2003, non-exempt hourly earnings increased by 45 cents. Since July 2003, earnings have grown by a whopping 3 cents. Yet in the meantime, inflation, while not rampant, has still increased significantly more than wages.
So the question truly still remains: "Are you better off today than you were 3 years ago?".
The American Digest has a post up arguing that “Bush hatred” may lead to an attempt to assassinate President Bush. While I have never been shy about criticizing the policies and character of President Bush, I certainly do not wish some whacko to take a shot at him. The Digest writes that:
We can only hope that the Secret Service and all those entrusted with his protection have taken extraordinary precautions to protect him and prevent such an event from ever taking place.
As evidence to support the thesis that “Bush hatred” is “is headed towards only one singular event: An attempt on the life of George W. Bush by an American citizen” the post quotes the lyrics of a song by Eminem:
"F--k money. I don't rap for dead presidents.
I'd rather see the president dead.
It's never been said,
but I set precedents and the standards
and they can't stand it. ...
We as Americans. Us as a citizen.
We've got to protect ourselves ...
We do not expect members of the loyal opposition to allow their rhetoric and their "cultural standard bearers" such as Eminem ("I set precedents and the standards...") to poison the political system to the level that some of their misguided ilk take it upon themselves to take a shot at Bush "for the sake of the greater good."
As a member of the “loyal opposition,” I can state with certainty that Eminem is not my standard bearer. The lyrics quoted do not express my view nor do some of Eminem's lyrics (located through Google, I have not actually listened to any of his work) that make him appear to be both a homophobe and a misogynist.
There was a time when an actual standard bearer of a major political party used inflammatory rhetoric which could have led a whacko to attempt an assassination. In 1994, President Clinton planned a trip to North Carolina. The highest ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, who once declared that President Clinton “was not my commander in chief.” remarked that if Clinton came to North Carolina he “would need a body guard.” Thank goodness that Helms’ rhetoric did not inspire an attempt on Mr. Clinton’s life.
I also found the American Digest post to be selective in its condemnation of speech from which a twisted mind could find justification for an assassination attempt. The right wingers seem unduly focused on what they see as irrational hatred of George Bush by the left. There are a few people on the left who have an irrational hatred of Bush but before complaining about a mote in the left eye, perhaps the right wing should take care to remove the beam from the right eye.
A few examples:
An Amarillo newspaper ran a letter from someone purporting to be a United States serviceman who likens war protesters to an infectious disease and suggests that they should be hanged. Link via Atrios.
A number of newspapers ran a column by Kathleen Parker in which Ms. Parker reports of letter from a friend who thinks that six of the Democratic presidential candidates “should all be lined up and shot.” That is far more suggestive of an assassination attempt than the Eminem lyrics but the American Digest has no comment on right wing hate leading to assassinations. Link Via Atrios.A right wing blogger details his ‘fantasy” that the “Christian Liberation Front” will mount an attack on Washington and kill more than a thousand people including 21 Democratic Senators and five Supreme Court Justices so that Republicans can attain total control over the government that they have been unable to achieve at the ballot box. That is far more suggestive than the Eminem lyrics.
Another right wing blogger reacts to Eminem’s lyrics by suggesting that in his world, Eminem would be found “With Multiple Gun Wounds to Head, Noose Around Neck and at Least a Dozen Knives Sticking Out of Back.” That seems a poor way to protest lyrics on the ground that they suggest violence.That same blogger, upset at a recent court decision, asks whether “slicing open the gut of a black-robed traitor and strangling him with his own guts for being a terrorist-loving swine ALSO "protected expression", by any chance? If so, look out, because somebody's got an appointment with the Imperial Broadsword.”
The American Digest post argues that rhetoric such as Eminem’s lyrics will “poison the political system.” I suggest that the examples of right wing hate rhetoric noted above could have the very same result. I deplore such rhetoric on any side. I suspect that the American Digest would too if it could just remove the beam from its right eye.
Our friend and the current Chairman of the Aroostook Band of Mic'mac Indians just wrote us (and most of the elected and traditional leadership of all the Wabanaki Tribes, in Maine and Atlantic Canada) this note:
Hello all, I'm not sure if you all get the channel CBC but there will be a show about the Micmacs in canada and dealing with the fishing rights they are fighting for. The tall guy with the long hair (Noel Polchies aka Cyril) is my cousin. Later all.
I could rail on how d · u · m · b it is to jam the CBC, Americans are stuck with regime-captive pseudo-news on Iraq, etc., prevented from knowing how the everyday in a country a lot more social democratic than the US looks and feels, and Jay Treaty Indians are unable to see the broadcast news "face" of half of their people. In Houlton, where Billy lives (an inch south of Preque Isle, if Atrios is looking), there is CBC. In Portland we aren't allowed to access Canadian broadcast news.
Vermont is boardered on the east by New Hampshire, which has no Federally Recognized Indian Tribes.
Vermont is boardered on the south by Massachussetts, which has one Federally Recognized Indian Tribe, located on the western end of Martha's Vinyard, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).
Vermont is boardered in the west by New York, which has nine Federally Recognized Indian Tribes. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe (Akwesasne) is near Vermont, but the rest of the reservations are in central and western New York, about as remote to Vermont as Martha's Vinyard.
"Although Vermont does not have any Indian land, we lose tax revenues from sales made from Indian lands near our borders. It would be extremely unfortunate if the problem were allowed to grow. I will be pleased to lend my support to this bill."
Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) to Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-OK), June 1997, supporting a bill aimed at limiting the ability of Indian tribes' businesses to escape some state and local taxes.
To which Indian lands was Howard refering? How much sales tax revenues has Vermont lost to the Mohawks and the Wampanoags? I know the Wampanoags sell tee-shirts, polos and coffee cups -- all with the Tribe's seal. Maybe the Mohawks sell roadmaps.
What, other than Federally Recognized Indian Tribes, does New Hampshire lack?
What, other than Federally Recognized Indian Tribes, does Vermont lack?
Yes, this is a quiz.
Variations of this one circulate every year at this time.
non-traditional: lakota boy, "Mom, can I have a dog for Christmas?" lakota mom, "No, you can have a turkey like everybody else."
traditional: lakota boy, "Mom, can I have a dog for Christmas?" lakota mom, "Dog again?."
Mom made a couple of trips a year to the pet food butcher to buy horse fillet. We were traditional.
So now that everyone is smiling, well except for Rover and Paint, I'll fire up the Way Back Machine and we can look at some Durable Goods, er, ... cases. In particular. Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676 (1990).
The holding in Duro is simple to state:
Indian tribal courts may not assert criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians.
Duro relies upon Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), a landmark Rehnquist majority decision. Thurgood Marshall and Warren Burger dissented. This is where the Civil Rights Movement and Federal Indian Law parted company.
The holding in Oliphant is also simple to state:
Indian tribal courts may not assert criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.
Now the average riders of the purple pages of Blog-o-Land may not even dimly appreciate that Federal Indian Law is actually God's Will On Earth. One simply has to start where a Bologna canon law jurist named Sinibaldo de' Fieschi did in 1246, when writing to Guyak: Before rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven the Creator had selected a vicar on earth, to whom the Creator had committed the care of all souls. From this, reason that (a) there is a natural law, (b) it is contrary to natural law for heathens to bedevil Christians. Guyak's reply to Sinibaldo is a landmark in the history of epistalary humor -- come at once to serve and wait upon us. At that time, I shall recognize your submission. Guyak was, inter alia, the Guyak Khan, grandson of Gengis Khan. Sinibaldo's working name was Innocent IV and is also known for his attempts to tame the Hohenstaufen. His reply to Guyak was to the effect that the Mongols could no longer plead ignorance of the law, their souls were unfit and their lands and goods were forfit.
This is the origin of the doctrine of Christian Discovery. Four hundred years later Spanish and Portugese Captains would shout their letters to empty beaches and establish the legal pretext for the forfiture of the lives, lands, and goods of heathen Indian Chiefs, who like Guyak, could no longer plead ignorance of the law, and were in armed resistance to the lawful evangelism of peaceful Christian Princes. Six hundred years later American jurists would fashion "domestic dependent nations" from this, making no pains to conceal their debt to the Bolognese jurist. The Marshall Trilogy remains law to this day. Rehnquist just elided the Christian bits.
After Duro, which created a jurisdictional vacuum, the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) of 1968 was ammended in 1991. This is the "Duro fix", it places the (minor) criminal jurisdiction over all Indians in the tribal courts.
Now here's the subtle question: Did Congress restore criminal jurisdiction, or did it delegate criminal jurisdiction?
Bureau of Indian Affairs officers arrested Billy Jo Lara on the Spirit Lake Nation Reservation for public intoxication. Lara is an Indian, but not a member of the Spirit Lake Nation. When BIA officers reminded Lara of the order excluding him from the Spirit Lake Nation Reservation, Lara struck an officer with his fist. Lara pleaded guilty in tribal court to three violations of the Spirit Lake tribal code, including violence to a peace officer. Later, Lara was charged in federal court with misdemeanor assault of a federal officer. Lara moved to dismiss the indictment, claiming the federal charges violated the prohibition against Double Jepardy and impermissible selective prosecution.
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
Distinction between powers that Indian tribe derives from its retained sovereignty and powers delegated to tribe by Congress is of constitutional magnitude and thus is matter ultimately entrusted to Supreme Court, and not Congress; accordingly, 1990 amendments to Indian Civil Rights Act, 25 U.S.C. § 1301, are ineffective insofar as they attempted to overturn Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676 (1990), which held that tribe's retained or inherent sovereignty does not provide it with criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians; tribal authority to prosecute Indian who is not member of tribe derives from power delegated by Congress rather than from tribe's retained sovereignty, and thus federal prosecution of Indian for offenses for which he had previously been prosecuted by tribe of which he was not member is barred by double jeopardy clause, because authority for both prosecutions is derived from same sovereign source.
Petition for certiorari was filed on 7/22/2003. Petition granted on 9/30/03. Duro is coming back. The thing is, it isn't the fix that should be upheld, it is Duro that should be overturned, and with it Oliphant, and while we're at it, Marshall. Did we overlook anything??? Oh, yes. God.
This Flashback Friday was cooked on Indian Time, which is why it appears on a Saturday.
Ross at the Bloviator is recommending flu shots:
I can't stress this strongly enough. It should be considered for anyone 6 months of age and older. This flu season is already shaping up into a doozy, and the peak flu times are still ahead.
My wife and I have read all of those recommendations. We have read about the deaths in Colorado. We know the doctors’ and CDC’s position on the issue and yet, we still hesitate to have our kids get the shot. Last year, we hesitated, delayed and dithered until flu season passed and our kids got neither a flu shot nor the flu. We have been trying to decide on whether or not to have them get vaccinated this year for months. We just can not decide.
We hesitate because the standard flu shot contains thimerosal. A number of people think that mercury in thimerosal causes autism. We have worked long and hard to try to help our son climb out of the well of full spectrum autism. Although our successes have been limited, we have had some successes. We do not want to lose them by exposing him to more mercury.
The CDC, the doctors, the FDA and the entire public health establishment tells us that the flu vaccine is safe. Why all the worry? Well, the CDC, the doctors, the FDA and the entire public health establishment assured us that the infant vaccine regimen was safe and they had not even bothered to add up a row of numbers to determine how much mercury they were putting into my son.
They broke their bond of trust with us then. How can we trust them now?
Even now, more than seven years after they began injecting Bobby with mercury, they still argue that it has not been proven that mercury causes autism. While that may be true for the moment, I would feel better if they came forward with affirmative proof that it does not.
Ross is probably right and you should get your kids vaccinated. Nonetheless, if I had a six month old boy, I would be really worried. If anyone one knows of a place to get thimerosal-free flu shots in the Atlanta area, please leave a comment or an email.
In the meantime, all this blogging is keeping me from some really important worrying.
To govern is to choose. One choice that every government must make is how to treat those members of the society who, through no flaw of character or judgment, need the assistance of the remainder of society. Throughout much of history, many societies discarded or placed out of sight (in institutions) people who were mentally retarded, autistic or had other developmental disabilities.
Thirty five hears ago, the people of California faced a choice. They could continue to discard such persons or they could decide, as a society, to help them.
Under the leadership of an actor turned politician, Ronald Reagan, the people of California opted for the more humane course. They passed and Governor Reagan signed the Lanterman Mental Retardation Services Act. That act, along with its amendments gave rights to the mentally retarded, autistics and others. The act provides, in part, as follows:
The State of California accepts a responsibility for persons with developmental disabilities and an obligation to them which it must discharge…In order for the state to carry out many of its responsibilities as established in this division, the state shall contract with appropriate agencies to provide fixed points of contact in the community for persons with developmental disabilities and their families, to the end that such persons may have access to the facilities and services best suited to them throughout their lifetime. It is the intent of this division that the network of regional centers for persons with developmental disabilities and their families be accessible to every family in need of regional center services.
the right to treatment and habilitation services that meet individual developmental needs, such services to be provided in the least restrictive setting;the right to live as normal, productive and independent a life as possible;
the right to be provided a full measure of dignity, privacy and humane care; and
the right to participate in an appropriate, publicly-supported educational program.
California had chosen and it had chosen to opt for humanity and decency. It had chosen to be on the side of the angels.
Thirty five years later, California again faces a choice. Once again it has a Governor who is an actor turned politician. Once again, the issue is the treatment of the autistics, the mentally retarded and other developmentally disabled people.
Two events have forced that choice to be revisited. First, California faces a fiscal crisis. Secondly, the number of autistic kids in California has risen dramatically over the past decade. With the increase in the incidence of autism, the cost to California of it decision to provide assistance to the developmentally disabled has also risen.
Governor Schwarzenegger campaigned on the promise to protect the children of California. As Joan Ryan has written:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to be the protector of children. He launched his political career, brief as it still is, on an initiative for after-school programs. During the campaign, he chastised then-Gov. Gray Davis for failing to enroll more low-income children in the state's health insurance program. Taking care of children was his one consistent message.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to cap services for the disabled has critics charging that California would be abandoning a 35-year-old promise to its most vulnerable residents and supporters arguing that the cash-strapped state can no longer provide help to all.As part of his proposal to trim $3.8 billion from this and next year's budgets, Schwarzenegger has proposed suspending the Lanterman Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan, a Schwarzenegger hero.
"It was the first move to provide services in a community setting," said Marty Omoto, legislative director of the California Coalition of United Cerebral Palsy Associations. "Prior to that, the only services were provided through state hospitals."
If the act is suspended, instead of providing care to all people with disabilities who ask for it, the state could cap enrollment at 21 regional centers that serve 190,000 people with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and other disabilities. Waiting lists would be established for services at the centers, operated by the Department of Developmental Services.
It is true that California has a budget crisis. It is also true that the increase in the incidence of autism and other factors have increased the costs of the regional centers from $600 million in 1998 to $1.7 billion this year.
Politics is at its core a social activity. Autistics and mentally retarded individuals are often not very good at social activities. It is hard for them to be effective politically. Perhaps cutting spending on programs for the developmentally disabled is more expedient that cutting services for those more able to complain and more able to inflict political pain on the Governor. Perhaps cutting funding for the developmentally disabled is savvier politics than raising taxes. Governor Schwarzenegger obviously thinks so. He has made his choice and by that choice he shall be judged.
The question is whether the people of California will follow his lead. Thirty five years ago, Californians proved themselves to be among the most caring, humane and decent people in the country. They were willing to pay the price to help the least fortunate among them. They were then willing to choose to be on the side of the angels.
The only remaining question is whether that has changed in the last thirty five years.
In the law, there is a type of charge that is known as “easy to plead, hard to prove.” Typing up a complaint that makes serious allegations against someone and then filing it in the courthouse is easy. The hard part comes when it is time to prove those allegations in a fair forum in an adversarial proceeding.
One of the differences between practicing law and being a right wing pundit is that for the pundit, the time to actually prove the charges never occurs. A charge is made in a column or on TV and the accuser is never called upon to produce the supporting evidence. If challenged, the pundit ignores the charges previously made and simply makes new, even more outrageous charges.
Take Gary Aldrich for example. Aldrich made his chops as a right wing pundit in a book in which he charged that the Clintons decorated the White House Christmas Tree with “sex toys and self-mutilation devices.”
Instead of being required to produce some evidence to support such a ludicrous claim, he was accepted into the ranks of right wing punditry. Now, in his latest Town Hall column, he charges Bill and Hilary Clinton with being communists out to destroy both capitalism and democracy. No, really, he does:
Nothing I have discovered has discouraged me from concluding that Hillary Clinton and her sometimes brilliant, sometimes useful-dupe husband are less than dedicated Marxists…They support an ideology that will eventually destroy Democracy and Capitalism, if not stopped now.
Let others hint and imply, I worked in “the nest,” and I know. I was there, met their friends and saw their backgrounds. I heard them talk and express a visceral hatred toward Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and anyone who ever worked for them.
Maybe we can help Mr. Aldrich produce some evidence of Marxist policies in the White House. A Marxist president would, perhaps, support a command and control economy by having the central government control the price at which goods and labor can be sold. Unfortunately for Mr. Aldrich’s argument, that president was Richard Nixon not Bill Clinton.
Perhaps one might think that a dedicated Marxist would increase social spending as measured by increases in non-defense discretionary spending. In Clinton’s first three years non-defense discretionary outlays fell 0.7% while under George W. Bush such spending rose more than 20%.
Mr. Aldrich says that Mr. Clinton’s ideology would destroy capitalism. Free trade is at the heart of capitalism. Clinton pushed and passed both NAFTA and GATT. George W. Bush has imposed tariffs on a number of items ranging from steel to women’s undergarments.
One might expect a Marxist President to establish new government departments. Mr. Clinton created no new cabinet level agencies. The Environmental Protection agency was created under Richard Nixon. The Departments of Energy and Education were created under Jimmy Carter. The Department of Homeland Security was created under George W. Bush.
Perhaps Mr. Aldrich thinks that Bill Clinton intended to destroy democracy by not taking action against those who attack us. It was not Bill Clinton who cut and ran after terrorists attacked and killed more than 200 American soldiers. It was Ronald Reagan. It was not Bill Clinton but George W. Bush who, before 9/11, failed to continue flights of the Predator drone aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan. The purpose of the flights was to locate and kill Osama bin Laden.
One of the hallmarks of a communist government is the suspension civil liberties. Many people of Mr. Aldrich’s ilk point to the deaths of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho as an example of government suppression of the rights of individuals. Ruby Ridge occurred in 1992 when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas and George H.W. Bush was President.
It was not Bill Clinton but George W. Bush who claims the power to arrest any American citizen he cares to designate and indefinitely hold that citizen without charges, without a right to a trial, without access to a lawyer and without any other legal process.
Gary Aldrich is quick to make accusations. It would be nice if at some point he could actually marshal a few facts to support those allegations. In the world of right wing punditry, any charge, no matter how outlandish, requires no proof whatsoever as long is it is leveled at Bill Clinton or other Democrats. During the 1990s I often heard from right wing pundits that Bill Clinton did not have any principles. Now we are told that he is a “dedicated Marxist.” I do wish they would make up their mind.
Political pundits seem to habitually overestimate the effects of momentum gained by wins in early presidential primaries and caucuses. Neither the results of the Iowa caucuses nor the New Hampshire primary are a particularly good indicator of the line up for the general election.
In 1988, the Iowa caucuses were won by Bob Dole and Dick Gephardt. The general election was between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. In 1992, Tom Harkin swept the caucuses but was never a factor in the race.
The list of winners of the New Hampshire primary who did not secure the nomination of their party is quite lengthy. Estes Kefauver won on the Democratic side in 1952 and 1956 but Adlai Stevenson was the nominee both times. Henry Cabot Lodge won the GOP primary in 1964 but Barry Goldwater was the nominee. Ed Muskie won in New Hampshire in 1972, Gary Hart in 1984, Paul Tsongas in 1992, Pat Buchanan in 1996 and John McCain in 2000. None secured their party’s nomination.
The latest pundit to overestimate the effect of early momentum is Terry Jeffries. Writing at Town Hall, Jeffries takes the idea of early momentum to new heights.
According to Jeffries, Howard Dean’s nomination will become inevitable not if he wins Iowa or New Hampshire but if he wins the District of Columbia primary:
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is almost certain to win the nation's first Democratic presidential primary next month, picking up momentum that could make him unstoppable.But that primary won't be in New Hampshire. It will be in D.C.
But those who dismiss this primary as meaningless are fooling themselves. In 1996, when I was Pat Buchanan's campaign manager, Pat used victories in early (and also smugly dismissed) Republican caucuses in Alaska and Louisiana to develop the momentum to beat expectations in the Iowa Caucuses and win the New Hampshire primary.
I do not know whether or not Howard Dean will win the Democratic nomination for president. I am reasonably sure that whether he wins or loses, the results of the D.C. primary will play a bit part.
Trying cases to juries often involves choosing between alternative theories of the case. The great trial attorney Bobby Lee Cook once said that there are only two defenses to a murder charge. The first is “I didn’t do it.” The second is “the s.o.b. deserved it.”
While either of those arguments may prevail, it is necessary to choose between them. To argue in the alternative (e.g. “I didn’t do it, but if I did the s.o.b. deserved it”) merely convinces the jury that neither is true.
I was reminded of the necessity of choosing a theory of the case by a recent column by Stephen Moore. Moore argues in favor of higher speed limits. I found Moore’s argument unconvincing for two reasons.
First, Moore seems to be engaged in hyperbole (or perhaps a bad case of honest assessment). He begins his column as follows:
I've always argued that the two most important reforms that the Republican Congress has passed to make life here in the United States better were the capital gains tax cut and the repeal of the federal 55mph speed limit law.
Secondly, Moore undercuts his credibility by making inconsistent arguments. He has trouble remembering the argument he made in the second paragraph of his column by the time he reaches the end. In the second paragraph, Moore argues that that the increase in the speed limits has provided beneficial savings of time:
Today almost all states have gotten rid of the "double nickel" limits and have raised their speed limits on local and interstate highways to 65 or 75 mph. This has led to shorter commuter times for those of us who travel or commute by car and more time on the job, at work or at our kids' soccer games.
Also, higher speed limits haven't increased deaths because speeds have not increased significantly on the highways. People were already driving well over the posted limits even when we had 55 mph limits. The 55 mph speed limit law was probably the most disobeyed law in American history.
Is it really too much to expect a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute to be able to hold a thought for the length of an entire newspaper column? Apparently so.
Is global warming real? Do human activities cause global warming? Those are questions of science. To Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, those were not the right questions. The right questions involved how to manipulate both science and public opinion to avoid political damage while promoting the financial interests of GOP supporters.
Last spring a memo about global warming, written by Luntz surfaced. The
Guardian reports as follows:
The US Republican party is changing tactics on the environment, avoiding "frightening" phrases such as global warming, after a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable.The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has "lost the environmental communications battle" and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.
"The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science," Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.
"Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
"Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."
As one report has noted:
Non-profit organizations with ties to energy interests are promoting a controversial new study as proof that prevailing views of global warming are wrong.The scientists who wrote the study contend that the global warming of recent decades is not without precedent during the past 1,000 years, as other scientists have claimed. In fact, they say the Earth was even warmer during what is known as the "medieval warm period" between A.D. 900 and 1300.
The paper has touched off a worldwide storm of e-mail among climate scientists, some of whom have proposed organizing a research boycott of two journals that published the study.
The links among authors of the new study, the non-profit groups and the energy interests illustrate a three-way intersection of money, science and policy. Energy interests underwrote the study and help finance the groups that are promoting it.
The study also illustrates a strategy adopted by some energy companies in the late 1980s to attack the credibility of climate science, said John Topping, president of the Climate Institute and a former Republican congressional staffer who founded the institute in 1986.
By relying on the news media's inclination to include both sides of a story, the industries were able to create the impression that scientists were deeply divided over climate change, Topping said. "It was all very shrewdly done," he said.
The Luntz strategy has been largely successful as the scientific debate over global warming rages, glaciers melt, and policy changes are stalled.
I fear that the same phenomenon is now occurring with respect to the issue of whether or not mercury in vaccines causes autism.
I first wrote about autism and thimerosal last year in a post entitled Autism, Pure Rage and Thimerosal. In that post, I expressed anger over the fact that the public health system (including government agencies such as the FDA and the CDC as well as private concerns such as Lilly) had allowed my autistic son and 30,0000,000 other American children to be exposed to levels of mercury that exceed EPA safety standards. The mercury exposure was the result of the inclusion of the preservative thimerosal (which is about 50% mercury by weight) in a number of infant vaccines.
At the time I wrote that post, my son was seven and half years old, was unable to speak and was still in diapers. Now, a year later, my son is eight and a half years old, remains almost completely non-verbal and we still change diapers every day. I remain enraged by the possibility that his autism could easily have been prevented had the public health system done its job.
My anger resurfaced when I read an article by Annette Fuentes entitled Autism in a Needle. I located that article via Elayne Riggs. Jim Capazzola also has some thoughts on the issue that are well worth reading, here and here.
When I first wrote about thimerosal, I noted that science had not conclusively determined whether or not mercury in vaccines causes autism. I pleaded, perhaps naively, for more and better studies.
There have been a number of studies linking thimerosal to autism. A hair sample study suggests that autistic kids have trouble excreting mercury and, therefore, that the mercury may stay in their brain.
Fuentes reports on a study that shows that the type of mercury used in thimerosal is toxic:
Boyd Haley, chair of the department of chemistry at the University of Kentucky and an expert on toxic metals. “Some parents of autistic children called me and asked me to look at thimerosal. We did some experiments with human brain tissue and it was dramatic,” Haley said. “It penetrates the proteins in the brain. It is toxic to neurons and enzymes.”
Our previous studies comparing … (vaccines) with and without thimerosal have shown a statistically and clinically significant increase in neurodevelopmental disorders in those vaccinated with thimerosal-containing vaccines. Our current study not only shows that those vaccinated with thimerosal containing … (vaccines) have higher rates of speech disorders, autism and heart arrest overall, but also that the relative risk of each of these disorders correlated with increased doses of mercury contained in childhood vaccines…
the symptoms of mercury poisoning mirrored those of autism and concluded that early exposure to mercury from thimerosal had caused many cases of autism, while genetic and environmental factors made some children more vulnerable than others.
First, certain parties are very interesting in preventing a causal link from being found. The first such group includes the very people who should be protecting our kids, namely the FDA, the CDC and various other groups in the public health area. Fuentes reports on a memo that suggests that our government agencies are more interested in covering their rears than in finding the truth:
Last year, the staff for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) obtained an internal e-mail written June 29, 1999, by former FDA scientist Peter Patriarca. In that e-mail Patriarca offered his colleagues a “pros and cons” assessment of the thimerosal statement shortly before its release:
Will raise questions about FDA being ‘asleep at the switch’ for decades, by allowing a potentially hazardous compound to remain in many childhood vaccines, and not forcing manufacturers to exclude it from new products. Will also raise questions about various advisory bodies about aggressive recommendations for use. We must keep in mind that the dose of ethyl mercury was not generated by ‘rocket science’: conversion of the % of thimerosal to actual ug [micrograms] of mercury involves 9th grade algebra. What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? Why didn’t CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations while rapidly expanding the childhood immunization schedule?
The second group with a vested interest consists of the drug companies that make thimerosal and vaccines. A finding that thimerosal causes autism would not only expose such companies to massive potential legal liabilities, it would also cut off the market in other counties for vaccines containing thimerosal. As Fuentes has pointed out, “for U.S. pharmaceuticals . . . the global market for vaccines containing thimerosal is a goldmine.”
The second ingredient, politicians willing to carry the drug company's water is also present. The drug companies give lavishly to the GOP. Last year’s attempt to sneak liability protection for manufacturers of thimerosal into the Homeland Security Bill amply demonstrates that a number of politicians are quite willing to carry water for the drug companies regardless of the science. See here, here, here, here, here, and here for details.
The question remains, are the parties interested in keeping the denial of a link between autism and thimerosal plausible actually influencing the science?
A number of studies suggesting the absence of a link have been funded directly or indirectly by the drug companies. Some of the studies suggesting that no link exists are so badly designed to answer any question relevant to the debate that it may appear that the purpose of the study was less to advance knowledge in the area than to provide a quick headline and a talking point.
Then there is the example of Dr. Thomas Verstraeten. According to Fuentes, Dr. Vesrtraeten was asked to perform a study for the CDC in 1999:
The CDC launched its own study of thimerosal safety in vaccines in fall 1999, tasking Dr. Thomas Verstraeten to analyze the agency’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, which gathers information on vaccine safety from several health maintenance organizations. Verstraeten’s first report in February 2000 found a statistically significant risk for neurological developmental disorders at age 3 months as the amount of thimerosal that babies received increased. And he found a risk of autism 2.48 times greater for infants getting higher amounts of thimerosal in vaccines, compared to infants who received thimerosal-free vaccines. A June 2000 analysis by Verstraeten found a link between thimerosal and language, speech and developmental delays during the child’s first 6 months. Verstraeten’s initial findings were never publicly released, and SAFE MINDS obtained copies of his reports only through Freedom of Information Act filings in 2001.
The same researcher, the same data base but completely different results. One can not help but wonder if Dr. Verstraeten was hired to work for Glaxo in a scientific capacity or as an advocate.
I do not mean to suggest that all the studies suggesting a link between autism and thimerosal are pure and that all of the studies suggesting no link are corrupt. Some of the researchers in the studies suggesting no link have axes to grind as well. The line between science and advocacy appears to have been blurred. I am skeptical of both sides.
That in itself is a real shame. I have no personal stake in the outcome of the research. I am not now nor shall I ever seek any compensation from anyone as a result of Bobby having been given vaccines containing thimerosal. Research in the area is of only academic interest to me because our path is set and no scientific findings are likely to change our course.
Nonetheless, I know first hand the costs of autism. I do not wish a single child or a single family to unnecessarily incur those costs. The way to minimize those costs is through honest scientific research. Discovery must trump advocacy.
The reasoning and (lack of) morality of the Luntz memo on global warming should not be applied to autism research. With regard to the current state of the science, I think, as Mr. Luntz put it, that "the scientific debate is closing … but not yet closed.”
To the extent that any parties to the debate succeed, as Mr. Luntz advised, to “continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate," so as to prevent science from discovering truth, the price will be paid by autistic children, their families and the larger society. That is not a prospect likely to help any autistic kids.