Can CNN Be Saved?
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05douthat.html?th&emc=th
Listening to Jon Stewart helped destroy CNN. Now imitating him might be the network’s only hope of salvation.
It was October of 2004, the heat of the presidential campaign, when Stewart showed up on “Crossfire,” long CNN’s flagship political program, and delivered a now-legendary tirade.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” he told the hosts, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. He called them “political hacks.” He accused them of “helping the politicians and the corporations.” He compared their show to a professional wrestling match. “You’re doing theater,” he said, “when you should be doing debate.”
At it turned out, CNN was paying attention. Within two months, “Crossfire” was canceled, and the network’s president, Jon Klein, cited Stewart’s tirade as a tipping point. “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise,” Klein said. Henceforward, he announced, CNN would move away from “head-butting debate shows.” Let FOX and MSNBC have their “live guests” and “spirited debate.” CNN was going to report, not editorialize.
Big mistake.
Six years later, CNN is still the network Americans turn to when an earthquake strikes Haiti or a crucial health care vote takes place. But most days are slow news days, opinionated journalism is more interesting than the elusive quest for perfect objectivity and CNN is getting absolutely murdered in the ratings.
It was bad before this year; now it’s terrible. CNN’s prime-time hosts have lost almost half their viewers in the last 12 months. In February, the once-proud network slipped behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but Headline News (its sister network) and CNBC as well. Anderson Cooper sometimes gets beaten by re-runs of Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown.”
People at CNN see themselves as victims of a polarized political culture — and to some extent, they are. But high-minded self-pity only gets you so far. At a media event in Washington recently, I watched a CNN producer try to persuade a gaggle of skeptical right-wing journalists that the network’s hosts really are objective. (“You’d be surprised how some of them vote!”) Even if they were, it wouldn’t matter. The disinterested anchorman pose worked when TV news ran for 30 minutes every night at 6 p.m. It doesn’t work across hours and hours of prime time, with Campbell Brown blurring into John King blurring into Wolf Blitzzzzzz... .
What might work, instead, is a cable news network devoted to actual debate. For all the red-faced shouting, debate isn’t really what you get on Fox and MSNBC. Hannity has ditched Colmes, and conservatives are only invited on Rachel Maddow’s show when they have something nasty to say about Republicans. There’s room, it would seem, for a network where representatives from the right and left can both feel comfortable, and compete on roughly equal terms. Sort of like they did on ... “Crossfire.”
But not the “Crossfire” of 2004. CNN overreacted to Jon Stewart’s jeremiad, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. The show was years removed from its Michael Kinsley/Pat Buchanan glory days, and its liberal hosts at the time, Begala and James Carville, really were Democratic Party hacks. (The conservatives, Carlson and Robert Novak, were much more independent-minded, but the constant need to rebut partisan talking points took its toll on them as well.)
What cable news needs, instead, is something more like what Stewart himself has been doing on “The Daily Show.” Instead of bringing in the strategists, consultants and professional outrage artists who predominate on other networks, he ushers conservative commentators into his studio for conversations that are lengthy, respectful and often riveting. Stewart’s series of debates on torture and interrogation policy, in particular — featuring John Yoo and Marc Thiessen, among others — have been more substantive than anything on Fox or MSNBC.
Even the thrust-and-parry sessions of “The Daily Show,” though, are limited by the left-right binary that divides and dulls our politics. They’re better than the competition, but they don’t give free rein to eccentricity and unpredictability, or generate arguments that finish somewhere wildly different than where you’d expect them to end up. This is what you find in the riveting television debates of the past: William F. Buckley versus Gore Vidal, Vidal versus Norman Mailer, anything involving Ross Perot. And it’s what you get from the mad, compulsively watchable Glenn Beck, who’s an extremist without being a knee-jerk partisan: You know he’s way out there on the right somewhere, but you don’t know what he’s going to say next.
Stewart, Buckley, Beck ... none of these are exactly the models that you’d expect “the most trusted name in news” to look to for inspiration. And some CNN suits have probably never even heard of Gore Vidal.
But television is a business. And when you’re losing to re-runs, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Monday, April 05, 2010
New York Times Editorial: Foreclosure Prevention 2.0
New York Times Editorial: Foreclosure Prevention 2.0
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05mon1.html?th&emc=th
If all goes according to plan, the Obama administration’s new antiforeclosure effort will prevent many more foreclosures than its current one and do more to moderate the decline in home prices. That is a big if.
One of the big drawbacks to the administration’s original plan, launched a year ago, is that it focuses on reducing a troubled borrower’s monthly payment by lowering the interest rate. That ignores the fact that unemployed borrowers often cannot afford even reduced payments. And those who are “underwater” — who owe more than their homes are worth — often lack the ability and the incentive to keep up with payments.
Another problem with the original plan is that participation has been largely voluntary; lenders were offered incentives to join but were not compelled. The improved plan attempts to address the problems of borrowers who are unemployed or underwater. And for jobless homeowners, lenders that participate in the plan will be required to help in some cases.
For borrowers receiving unemployment benefits, lenders will be required to lower payments to no more than 31 percent of gross income for at least three months, provided the borrower is not more than 90 days’ delinquent. Unpaid amounts will be added to the loan’s principal, to be repaid later. After several months, the hope is that the borrower will have found new work and will qualify for a loan modification in which payments will stay at the reduced amount.
Unfortunately, if the borrower does not find new work, he or she may lose the house anyway. Foreclosure will have been postponed, but not prevented.
For borrowers who are deeply underwater and behind in their payments, lenders will be “required to consider” reducing the loan’s principal. They will also be encouraged to reduce principal for underwater borrowers who are still current in payments.
Those efforts would reduce the monthly payment and restore some home equity, but as with earlier antiforeclosure efforts, lenders are not required to help. Despite government incentives to modify bad loans, lenders might wait to see if bigger incentives are offered later. They may also prefer foreclosure to modifications because the long foreclosure process lets them postpone taking losses.
If lenders do participate, the new plan could prevent nearly 1.5 million foreclosures from now through 2012, compared with an estimated 650,000 under the old plan, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Many foreclosures will also be delayed, though not ultimately prevented, as lenders assess whether borrowers qualify for help under the new plan. Taken together, preventing and postponing foreclosures would help stabilize house prices in the near term and thus reduce the threat that foreclosures pose to the nascent economic recovery.
But foreclosures would still be a problem. Even if the new plan saves 1.5 million homes, an estimated 3.6 million homes will be lost between now and 2012. That portends a weak housing market for a long time, which, in turn, portends a long, slow recovery.
For now, lenders call the shots. If the new plan doesn’t work, the administration must find a way to compel them to rework troubled loans. The risks from the spree of bad lending and bad borrowing — foreclosures, falling house prices, economic hardship — are still there.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05mon1.html?th&emc=th
If all goes according to plan, the Obama administration’s new antiforeclosure effort will prevent many more foreclosures than its current one and do more to moderate the decline in home prices. That is a big if.
One of the big drawbacks to the administration’s original plan, launched a year ago, is that it focuses on reducing a troubled borrower’s monthly payment by lowering the interest rate. That ignores the fact that unemployed borrowers often cannot afford even reduced payments. And those who are “underwater” — who owe more than their homes are worth — often lack the ability and the incentive to keep up with payments.
Another problem with the original plan is that participation has been largely voluntary; lenders were offered incentives to join but were not compelled. The improved plan attempts to address the problems of borrowers who are unemployed or underwater. And for jobless homeowners, lenders that participate in the plan will be required to help in some cases.
For borrowers receiving unemployment benefits, lenders will be required to lower payments to no more than 31 percent of gross income for at least three months, provided the borrower is not more than 90 days’ delinquent. Unpaid amounts will be added to the loan’s principal, to be repaid later. After several months, the hope is that the borrower will have found new work and will qualify for a loan modification in which payments will stay at the reduced amount.
Unfortunately, if the borrower does not find new work, he or she may lose the house anyway. Foreclosure will have been postponed, but not prevented.
For borrowers who are deeply underwater and behind in their payments, lenders will be “required to consider” reducing the loan’s principal. They will also be encouraged to reduce principal for underwater borrowers who are still current in payments.
Those efforts would reduce the monthly payment and restore some home equity, but as with earlier antiforeclosure efforts, lenders are not required to help. Despite government incentives to modify bad loans, lenders might wait to see if bigger incentives are offered later. They may also prefer foreclosure to modifications because the long foreclosure process lets them postpone taking losses.
If lenders do participate, the new plan could prevent nearly 1.5 million foreclosures from now through 2012, compared with an estimated 650,000 under the old plan, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Many foreclosures will also be delayed, though not ultimately prevented, as lenders assess whether borrowers qualify for help under the new plan. Taken together, preventing and postponing foreclosures would help stabilize house prices in the near term and thus reduce the threat that foreclosures pose to the nascent economic recovery.
But foreclosures would still be a problem. Even if the new plan saves 1.5 million homes, an estimated 3.6 million homes will be lost between now and 2012. That portends a weak housing market for a long time, which, in turn, portends a long, slow recovery.
For now, lenders call the shots. If the new plan doesn’t work, the administration must find a way to compel them to rework troubled loans. The risks from the spree of bad lending and bad borrowing — foreclosures, falling house prices, economic hardship — are still there.
Karzai’s Words Leave Few Choices for the West
Karzai’s Words Leave Few Choices for the West
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05karzai.html?th&emc=th
KABUL, Afghanistan — As President Hamid Karzai made more antagonistic statements over the weekend toward the NATO countries fighting on behalf of his government, the West was taking stock of just how little maneuvering room it has.
There are no good options on the horizon, many analysts say, for reining in Mr. Karzai or for penalizing him, without potentially damaging Western interests. The reluctant conclusion of diplomats and Afghan analysts is that for now, they are stuck with him.
Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse, as Mr. Karzai draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and further destabilizing the country.
“The political situation is continuing to deteriorate; Karzai is flailing around,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul with long experience in the region. “At the moment we are propping up an unstable political structure, and I haven’t seen any remotely plausible plan for building consensus.”
The tensions between the West and Mr. Karzai flared up publicly last Thursday, when Mr. Karzai accused the West and the United Nations of perpetrating fraud in the August presidential election and described the Western military coalition as coming close to being seen as invaders who would give the insurgency legitimacy as “a national resistance.”
Despite a conciliatory phone call to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday, his comments over the weekend only expanded the discord.
On Saturday, Mr. Karzai met with about 60 members of Parliament, mostly his supporters, and berated them for having rejected his proposed new election law. Among other things, the proposal would have given him the power to appoint all the members of the Electoral Complaints Commission, who are currently appointed by the United Nations, the Afghan Supreme Court and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The Electoral Complaints Commission, which reviews allegations of voting fraud and irregularities, documented the fraud that deprived Mr. Karzai of an outright victory in the presidential election.
At the meeting, Mr. Karzai stepped up his anti-Western statements, according to a Parliament member who attended but spoke on condition of anonymity.
“If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the Parliament member.
A spokesman for Mr. Karzai, Waheed Omar, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
In a speech in Kandahar on Sunday, Mr. Karzai promised local tribal elders that coalition military operations planned for the area this summer would not proceed without their approval.
“I know you are worried about this operation,” he said, adding: “There will be no operation until you are happy.”
Given his tone in the last few days, it was unclear whether he was literally extending the elders veto power over the offensive, or merely trying to quell their fears and bring them on board.
Interviews with diplomats, Afghan analysts and ordinary Afghans suggest that the United States and other Western countries have three options: threaten to withdraw troops or actually withdraw them; use diplomacy, which so far has had little result; and find ways to expand citizen participation in the government, which now has hardly any elected positions at the provincial and district levels.
Threatening to withdraw, which Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the “nuclear deterrent” option, would put the United States and other Western countries in the position of potentially having to make good on the promise, risking their strategic interest in a stable Afghanistan. Few experts think the country would remain peaceful without a significant foreign force here. Moreover, withdrawal could open the way for the country to again become a terrorist haven.
Some Western critics of Mr. Karzai believe that the West has no choice but to threaten to leave.
“There is no point in having troops in a mission that cannot be accomplished,” said Peter W. Galbraith, former United Nations deputy special representative for Afghanistan, who was dismissed after a dispute with his superiors over how to handle widespread electoral fraud and what senior U.N. officials later said was his advocacy of Mr. Karzai's removal. “The mission might be important, but if it can’t be achieved, there is no point in sending these troops into battle. Part of the problem is that counterinsurgency requires a credible local partner.”
Diplomacy has so far failed to achieve substantial changes, although some analysts, like Mr. Biddle, who opposes the so-called nuclear option, believe that the West should demand concessions before spending any more money on development projects like digging wells and building schools.
“We do millions of things in Afghanistan, and any of those things can become a source of leverage,” he said. “Far too much of what we do in Afghanistan we just do without asking for anything explicit in return.”
That approach can backfire, some argue, hurting those the West most wants to help.
Greater power sharing, while promising, faces structural obstacles. Under the Constitution, provincial governors, local judges, district governors and most other offices are appointive rather than elective. In some areas, Afghan and American programs have begun to involve communities in local budgeting, but progress is slow and it would probably take several years to expand it to higher levels of government.
“There are no better angels about to descend on Afghanistan,” said Alex Thier, a senior Afghan analyst at the United States Institute of Peace. “Unless some drastic action is taken, Mr. Karzai is the president of Afghanistan, and he was just elected for another five years.”
That prospect leaves some Afghans uneasy. In interviews with more than a dozen people around the country, there was apprehension and dismay over Mr. Karzai’s clash with the international community, and the specter of renewed chaos it could lead to.
“Karzai delivered this speech based on his own difficulties with the foreigners,” said Gulab Mangal, a tribal leader in the Musa Khel area of Khost Province.
“When the international community criticized his brother, he started to raise these problems,” he said, referring to Ahmed Wali Karzai, a prominent figure in southern Afghanistan. “It shows the relation between Karzai and the international community is deteriorating day by day, and that should not be allowed to happen.”
Mehram Ali, a man from Wardak Province who was shopping in Kabul over the weekend, voiced a similar qualm. “We need the international community to keep supporting us and our government,” he said.
“In this recent situation we do need foreign soldiers to help us in bringing peace and stability for our country, and if the foreigners leave us, then the people of Afghanistan will face adversity from every direction, and Afghanistan will return to what it was like 10 years ago when we had the Taliban government.”
Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05karzai.html?th&emc=th
KABUL, Afghanistan — As President Hamid Karzai made more antagonistic statements over the weekend toward the NATO countries fighting on behalf of his government, the West was taking stock of just how little maneuvering room it has.
There are no good options on the horizon, many analysts say, for reining in Mr. Karzai or for penalizing him, without potentially damaging Western interests. The reluctant conclusion of diplomats and Afghan analysts is that for now, they are stuck with him.
Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse, as Mr. Karzai draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and further destabilizing the country.
“The political situation is continuing to deteriorate; Karzai is flailing around,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul with long experience in the region. “At the moment we are propping up an unstable political structure, and I haven’t seen any remotely plausible plan for building consensus.”
The tensions between the West and Mr. Karzai flared up publicly last Thursday, when Mr. Karzai accused the West and the United Nations of perpetrating fraud in the August presidential election and described the Western military coalition as coming close to being seen as invaders who would give the insurgency legitimacy as “a national resistance.”
Despite a conciliatory phone call to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday, his comments over the weekend only expanded the discord.
On Saturday, Mr. Karzai met with about 60 members of Parliament, mostly his supporters, and berated them for having rejected his proposed new election law. Among other things, the proposal would have given him the power to appoint all the members of the Electoral Complaints Commission, who are currently appointed by the United Nations, the Afghan Supreme Court and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The Electoral Complaints Commission, which reviews allegations of voting fraud and irregularities, documented the fraud that deprived Mr. Karzai of an outright victory in the presidential election.
At the meeting, Mr. Karzai stepped up his anti-Western statements, according to a Parliament member who attended but spoke on condition of anonymity.
“If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the Parliament member.
A spokesman for Mr. Karzai, Waheed Omar, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
In a speech in Kandahar on Sunday, Mr. Karzai promised local tribal elders that coalition military operations planned for the area this summer would not proceed without their approval.
“I know you are worried about this operation,” he said, adding: “There will be no operation until you are happy.”
Given his tone in the last few days, it was unclear whether he was literally extending the elders veto power over the offensive, or merely trying to quell their fears and bring them on board.
Interviews with diplomats, Afghan analysts and ordinary Afghans suggest that the United States and other Western countries have three options: threaten to withdraw troops or actually withdraw them; use diplomacy, which so far has had little result; and find ways to expand citizen participation in the government, which now has hardly any elected positions at the provincial and district levels.
Threatening to withdraw, which Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the “nuclear deterrent” option, would put the United States and other Western countries in the position of potentially having to make good on the promise, risking their strategic interest in a stable Afghanistan. Few experts think the country would remain peaceful without a significant foreign force here. Moreover, withdrawal could open the way for the country to again become a terrorist haven.
Some Western critics of Mr. Karzai believe that the West has no choice but to threaten to leave.
“There is no point in having troops in a mission that cannot be accomplished,” said Peter W. Galbraith, former United Nations deputy special representative for Afghanistan, who was dismissed after a dispute with his superiors over how to handle widespread electoral fraud and what senior U.N. officials later said was his advocacy of Mr. Karzai's removal. “The mission might be important, but if it can’t be achieved, there is no point in sending these troops into battle. Part of the problem is that counterinsurgency requires a credible local partner.”
Diplomacy has so far failed to achieve substantial changes, although some analysts, like Mr. Biddle, who opposes the so-called nuclear option, believe that the West should demand concessions before spending any more money on development projects like digging wells and building schools.
“We do millions of things in Afghanistan, and any of those things can become a source of leverage,” he said. “Far too much of what we do in Afghanistan we just do without asking for anything explicit in return.”
That approach can backfire, some argue, hurting those the West most wants to help.
Greater power sharing, while promising, faces structural obstacles. Under the Constitution, provincial governors, local judges, district governors and most other offices are appointive rather than elective. In some areas, Afghan and American programs have begun to involve communities in local budgeting, but progress is slow and it would probably take several years to expand it to higher levels of government.
“There are no better angels about to descend on Afghanistan,” said Alex Thier, a senior Afghan analyst at the United States Institute of Peace. “Unless some drastic action is taken, Mr. Karzai is the president of Afghanistan, and he was just elected for another five years.”
That prospect leaves some Afghans uneasy. In interviews with more than a dozen people around the country, there was apprehension and dismay over Mr. Karzai’s clash with the international community, and the specter of renewed chaos it could lead to.
“Karzai delivered this speech based on his own difficulties with the foreigners,” said Gulab Mangal, a tribal leader in the Musa Khel area of Khost Province.
“When the international community criticized his brother, he started to raise these problems,” he said, referring to Ahmed Wali Karzai, a prominent figure in southern Afghanistan. “It shows the relation between Karzai and the international community is deteriorating day by day, and that should not be allowed to happen.”
Mehram Ali, a man from Wardak Province who was shopping in Kabul over the weekend, voiced a similar qualm. “We need the international community to keep supporting us and our government,” he said.
“In this recent situation we do need foreign soldiers to help us in bringing peace and stability for our country, and if the foreigners leave us, then the people of Afghanistan will face adversity from every direction, and Afghanistan will return to what it was like 10 years ago when we had the Taliban government.”
Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.
Aftershocks Rattle Mexico-California Region Hit by Quake
Aftershocks Rattle Mexico-California Region Hit by Quake
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/us/06quake.html?th&emc=th
LOS ANGELES — A powerful earthquake southeast of Tijuana shook Southern California on Sunday afternoon, damaging buildings in northern Mexico and border cities in California and Arizona and rattling a seismically sophisticated population as far north as Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Chandeliers swayed, homes shook and the earth seemed to slide under the feet of people emerging from Easter church services for well over a minute. Three strong aftershocks with magnitudes of about 5.0 jolted Baja California, Mexico, early Monday morning, according to the United States Geological Survey, but there were no reports of additional damage.
The 7.2-magnitude quake struck just after 3:30 p.m. local time Sunday, and was centered 16 miles southwest of Guadalupe Victoria in Baja, and about 110 miles southeast of Tijuana, said the United States Geological Survey.
The quake killed two people in northern Mexico. Alfredo Escobedo, the Baja California state civil protection director, told the Associated Press that one man was killed in a house collapse outside Mexicali. He said the other man was killed when he panicked as the ground shook, ran into the street and was struck by a car. At least another 100 people were injured, most from falling objects, he said.
Mexicali, a large industrial city near the quake’s epicenter was reported to have suffered widespread blackouts, along with fires, gas leaks and phone line damage. Photographs posted on Twitter and some news sites showed buildings with crumbled facades and food on supermarket shelves sent crashing to the floor. Mr. Escobedo said a multistory parking structure collapsed at the Mexicali city hall but no one was injured.
Across the border from Mexicali in Calexico, Calif., police sealed off the downtown area, which is lined with buildings built in the 1930s and 40s. Broken glass and plaster littered some sidewalks and goods in several stores had been scattered across the floor.
A police officer said the City Council had declared a state of emergency. Some traffic lights were out, and in at least one hotel television sets were flung to the floor and lamps toppled over but the electricity was on and damage did not seem widespread and there were no reports of casualties.
Carlton Hargrave, 64, was standing in the entryway of Family Style Buffet when the quake hit. His restaurant, he said in a telephone interview, was “almost completely destroyed.”
“We’ve got tables overturned, plates broken on the floor, the ceiling’s caved in,” Mr. Hargrave said with a shaky voice over the sound of his feet crunching rubble and glass. “It was big. I mean, it was major.”
Reports from the remote area in Mexico where the quake hit were slow in coming. But an earthquake of that size would probably cause major property damage near the epicenter, experts said.
“In a 7.2, you are going to experience a lot of shaking,” said Morgan Page, a geophysicist with the Geological Survey. “So it would be surprising if there wasn’t a lot of damage. Mexico does have many vulnerable structures.”
Postings on Twitter told of people in shock in Mexico as well as in southern California.
“People were outside crying because the beams looked like they were going to collapse and a wall cracked (along with various things falling) and the power went out in some parts,” read one report from Calexico.
In the United States, the shaking was particularly acute in San Diego, where it set off alarms and sent the San Diego fire department responding to several calls, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
“We have some reports of scattered property damage,” Sgt. Ramona Hastings of the San Diego Police Department said in a telephone interview.
At a Sheraton hotel in downtown San Diego, the floor cracked opened and prevented the front doors from shutting. Officials ordered all guests and staff from the building, pending an inspection from structural engineers. Fire officials reported a water main break in front of a hospital and another water line break at a department store.
“There’s scattered stuff all over the place,” said Maurice Luque, a spokesman for the San Diego fire department. “There’s nothing colossal.”
Even for California residents who are veterans of previous and more punishing earthquakes, the temblor was impressive.
“House was shaking. Pic fell off bookcase. Lasted about 30 seconds. Worst I’ve felt here since Northridge,” Timothy Nash said in a Twitter message from San Diego.
The Northridge earthquake of Jan. 17, 1994 — a 6.7-magnitude temblor that was centered in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Reseda — lasted for about 20 seconds but proved to be one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the United States. There were 72 deaths attributed to the quake, and it caused an estimated $20 billion in damage.
Initial reports indicated that Sunday’s earthquake, while bigger in magnitude, caused nowhere near the damage.
While this earthquake exceeded the numerical magnitude of the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, the damage there was far greater because the epicenter was near the heavily populated capital city, Port-au-Prince.
The Baja earthquake was the largest in a series that have taken place in the region that presages it, beginning with a 4.2 quake on March 31. It was followed by strong aftershocks.
In Los Angeles, homes slid from side to side for well over a minute, a nauseating and seemingly endless wave that could be felt from the beach to the Hollywood Hills. Power failures caused by the temblor were reported in Yuma, Ariz.
Emilio Magaña, 39, a priest at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Calipatria, Calif., had just finished a morning of Easter services at different locations around rural Imperial County and was napping in his church in the middle of lettuce and carrot fields when the quake struck.
“I awoke to my bed shaking and heard some pictures from the walls falling down,” he said. “My nerves were a little rattled because it was a long earthquake. It lasted almost 2 minutes. It was one very long one, then short temblors. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Reporting was contributed by Randal C. Archibold from Calexico, Calif., and Rebecca Cathcart from Los Angeles, Brian Stelter from New York, Rob Davis from San Diego, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City.
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/us/06quake.html?th&emc=th
LOS ANGELES — A powerful earthquake southeast of Tijuana shook Southern California on Sunday afternoon, damaging buildings in northern Mexico and border cities in California and Arizona and rattling a seismically sophisticated population as far north as Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Chandeliers swayed, homes shook and the earth seemed to slide under the feet of people emerging from Easter church services for well over a minute. Three strong aftershocks with magnitudes of about 5.0 jolted Baja California, Mexico, early Monday morning, according to the United States Geological Survey, but there were no reports of additional damage.
The 7.2-magnitude quake struck just after 3:30 p.m. local time Sunday, and was centered 16 miles southwest of Guadalupe Victoria in Baja, and about 110 miles southeast of Tijuana, said the United States Geological Survey.
The quake killed two people in northern Mexico. Alfredo Escobedo, the Baja California state civil protection director, told the Associated Press that one man was killed in a house collapse outside Mexicali. He said the other man was killed when he panicked as the ground shook, ran into the street and was struck by a car. At least another 100 people were injured, most from falling objects, he said.
Mexicali, a large industrial city near the quake’s epicenter was reported to have suffered widespread blackouts, along with fires, gas leaks and phone line damage. Photographs posted on Twitter and some news sites showed buildings with crumbled facades and food on supermarket shelves sent crashing to the floor. Mr. Escobedo said a multistory parking structure collapsed at the Mexicali city hall but no one was injured.
Across the border from Mexicali in Calexico, Calif., police sealed off the downtown area, which is lined with buildings built in the 1930s and 40s. Broken glass and plaster littered some sidewalks and goods in several stores had been scattered across the floor.
A police officer said the City Council had declared a state of emergency. Some traffic lights were out, and in at least one hotel television sets were flung to the floor and lamps toppled over but the electricity was on and damage did not seem widespread and there were no reports of casualties.
Carlton Hargrave, 64, was standing in the entryway of Family Style Buffet when the quake hit. His restaurant, he said in a telephone interview, was “almost completely destroyed.”
“We’ve got tables overturned, plates broken on the floor, the ceiling’s caved in,” Mr. Hargrave said with a shaky voice over the sound of his feet crunching rubble and glass. “It was big. I mean, it was major.”
Reports from the remote area in Mexico where the quake hit were slow in coming. But an earthquake of that size would probably cause major property damage near the epicenter, experts said.
“In a 7.2, you are going to experience a lot of shaking,” said Morgan Page, a geophysicist with the Geological Survey. “So it would be surprising if there wasn’t a lot of damage. Mexico does have many vulnerable structures.”
Postings on Twitter told of people in shock in Mexico as well as in southern California.
“People were outside crying because the beams looked like they were going to collapse and a wall cracked (along with various things falling) and the power went out in some parts,” read one report from Calexico.
In the United States, the shaking was particularly acute in San Diego, where it set off alarms and sent the San Diego fire department responding to several calls, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
“We have some reports of scattered property damage,” Sgt. Ramona Hastings of the San Diego Police Department said in a telephone interview.
At a Sheraton hotel in downtown San Diego, the floor cracked opened and prevented the front doors from shutting. Officials ordered all guests and staff from the building, pending an inspection from structural engineers. Fire officials reported a water main break in front of a hospital and another water line break at a department store.
“There’s scattered stuff all over the place,” said Maurice Luque, a spokesman for the San Diego fire department. “There’s nothing colossal.”
Even for California residents who are veterans of previous and more punishing earthquakes, the temblor was impressive.
“House was shaking. Pic fell off bookcase. Lasted about 30 seconds. Worst I’ve felt here since Northridge,” Timothy Nash said in a Twitter message from San Diego.
The Northridge earthquake of Jan. 17, 1994 — a 6.7-magnitude temblor that was centered in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Reseda — lasted for about 20 seconds but proved to be one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the United States. There were 72 deaths attributed to the quake, and it caused an estimated $20 billion in damage.
Initial reports indicated that Sunday’s earthquake, while bigger in magnitude, caused nowhere near the damage.
While this earthquake exceeded the numerical magnitude of the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, the damage there was far greater because the epicenter was near the heavily populated capital city, Port-au-Prince.
The Baja earthquake was the largest in a series that have taken place in the region that presages it, beginning with a 4.2 quake on March 31. It was followed by strong aftershocks.
In Los Angeles, homes slid from side to side for well over a minute, a nauseating and seemingly endless wave that could be felt from the beach to the Hollywood Hills. Power failures caused by the temblor were reported in Yuma, Ariz.
Emilio Magaña, 39, a priest at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Calipatria, Calif., had just finished a morning of Easter services at different locations around rural Imperial County and was napping in his church in the middle of lettuce and carrot fields when the quake struck.
“I awoke to my bed shaking and heard some pictures from the walls falling down,” he said. “My nerves were a little rattled because it was a long earthquake. It lasted almost 2 minutes. It was one very long one, then short temblors. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Reporting was contributed by Randal C. Archibold from Calexico, Calif., and Rebecca Cathcart from Los Angeles, Brian Stelter from New York, Rob Davis from San Diego, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City.
Rescue of 114 at Chinese Coal Mine Called ‘Miracle’
Rescue of 114 at Chinese Coal Mine Called ‘Miracle’
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asia/06mine.html?hp
BEIJING — From the start, China’s latest coal mine disaster seemed likely to end like so many others in a country where an average of seven miners die every day: a failed rescue effort, grieving relatives and few, if any, survivors.
But for reasons still unclear, the March 28 accident at the Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province in northern China turned out differently.
More than a week after the half-built mine flooded with water, rescuers found most of the 153 men trapped underground still alive. By late Monday, 114 of them had been pulled to safety.
As miner after miner was carried out of the mine’s mouth, rescuers hugged each other and wept for joy. Scenes of the rescue were broadcast repeatedly on national television on Tomb-Sweeping Day, China’s national holiday to commemorate the dead.
Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, told the state-controlled China Central Television network that the miners’ will to survive coupled with an extraordinary rescue mission resulted in a surprising outcome.
“These trapped people have made it through eight days and eight nights — this is the miracle of life,” he said. “Secondly, our rescue plan has been effective — this is a miracle in china’s search and rescue history.”
David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told The Associated Press: “This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere.”
The accident occurred when workers digging tunnels broke through a wall into an old shaft filled with water, suddenly flooding the new V-shaped shaft with millions of gallons and submerging five of the miners’ nine work platforms.
The mine’s managers had ignored evidence of dangerous water leaks in the half-built mine days before the disaster, according to a preliminary investigation by the State Administration of Work Safety. Workers had been ordered to step up the pace of construction in order to meet an October deadline to begin production, the agency found. The Chinese government has managed in recent years to dramatically cut the death rate at its coal mines, but they remain among the world’s most dangerous.
Had rescue efforts failed, the accident would have been the deadliest since 172 miners perished when a mine flooded in eastern Shandong Province in 2007. More than 2,600 people died in coal mining accidents last year, many of them in Shanxi Province.
There were 261 workers underground when the Wangjialing mine began to fill with water. Of them, 108 quickly made it to safety, but 153 remained trapped in the watery pit and were feared dead.
A huge rescue operation ensued. A battery of pumps was installed, draining as much as half a million gallons of water a day from the mine in the hope that rescuers could safely enter it, the state-run media reported. By Friday, five days after the flooding, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet.
Friday afternoon brought a sudden glimmer of hope. Rescuers heard tapping on a metal pipe underground. They tapped and shouted into a pipe in response, and sent down hundreds of bags of glucose, a phone, pen, paper and two letters of encouragement inside a plastic bottle.
“Dear fellow workers, the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the whole nation have been concerned for your safety,” one letter began. It ended: “Hold onto the last.”
When they pulled one pipe up to the surface, rescuers found an iron wire tied to the end, an apparent signal from survivors, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Rescuers also spotted swaying lights at the opposite end of the shaft, another possible sign of life.
On Saturday afternoon, a team of divers was sent down, returning within a few hours, reporting that the black murky water made it hard to reach the workers’ platforms. Rescuers also said they battled build-ups of toxic gas in the shaft.
But later that day, as water levels continued to drop, rescuers in rubber rafts managed to squeeze through narrow passages and descend into the mine’s shaft.
By late Sunday night, 100 rescue workers had located survivors, most of them stranded on a single platform. according to the Chinese media, one miner spotted a raft and called out: “Can you get me out of here?”
Nine miners were carried out of the mine early Monday morning. Thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered as ambulances carrying survivors raced by to the nearest hospital. Most of the miners were in said to be in stable condition but at least seven were listed in serious condition, Chinese media reported Monday night.
Up to 300 rescuers were inside the mine by Monday morning. and the number of men saved grew throughout the day. China Central Television broadcast videos of rescuers carrying stretcher after stretcher away from the mine, each laden with a bare-footed miner wrapped in green blankets on stretchers, eyes covered with towels as a shield from the light.
One of the rescued miners said when water flooded the shaft, he had attached himself to a mine wall with his belt so he wouldn’t drown. He hung there for three nights, he said, then climbed into a mining cart that floated by.
Others told the China News Service that they ate bark off the pine mine supports and drank the murky water despite fears that it was contaminated.
A medical officer told reporters that the survivors suffered from severe dehydration, hypothermia, skin infections from prolonged exposure to the water, and unstable blood pressure.
Some were in shock, according to news reports. One was still gripping his miner’s lamp when rescued.
“I have not slept for several days,” one rescuer, Wei Fusheng, told the television station, weeping with happiness. “Our efforts have not been in vain.”
As of Monday night, there was no word on the status of roughly three dozen miners left inside the mine. Rescued miners reported that they had seen bodies of dead co-workers, but how many may have remained unclear.
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asia/06mine.html?hp
BEIJING — From the start, China’s latest coal mine disaster seemed likely to end like so many others in a country where an average of seven miners die every day: a failed rescue effort, grieving relatives and few, if any, survivors.
But for reasons still unclear, the March 28 accident at the Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province in northern China turned out differently.
More than a week after the half-built mine flooded with water, rescuers found most of the 153 men trapped underground still alive. By late Monday, 114 of them had been pulled to safety.
As miner after miner was carried out of the mine’s mouth, rescuers hugged each other and wept for joy. Scenes of the rescue were broadcast repeatedly on national television on Tomb-Sweeping Day, China’s national holiday to commemorate the dead.
Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, told the state-controlled China Central Television network that the miners’ will to survive coupled with an extraordinary rescue mission resulted in a surprising outcome.
“These trapped people have made it through eight days and eight nights — this is the miracle of life,” he said. “Secondly, our rescue plan has been effective — this is a miracle in china’s search and rescue history.”
David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told The Associated Press: “This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere.”
The accident occurred when workers digging tunnels broke through a wall into an old shaft filled with water, suddenly flooding the new V-shaped shaft with millions of gallons and submerging five of the miners’ nine work platforms.
The mine’s managers had ignored evidence of dangerous water leaks in the half-built mine days before the disaster, according to a preliminary investigation by the State Administration of Work Safety. Workers had been ordered to step up the pace of construction in order to meet an October deadline to begin production, the agency found. The Chinese government has managed in recent years to dramatically cut the death rate at its coal mines, but they remain among the world’s most dangerous.
Had rescue efforts failed, the accident would have been the deadliest since 172 miners perished when a mine flooded in eastern Shandong Province in 2007. More than 2,600 people died in coal mining accidents last year, many of them in Shanxi Province.
There were 261 workers underground when the Wangjialing mine began to fill with water. Of them, 108 quickly made it to safety, but 153 remained trapped in the watery pit and were feared dead.
A huge rescue operation ensued. A battery of pumps was installed, draining as much as half a million gallons of water a day from the mine in the hope that rescuers could safely enter it, the state-run media reported. By Friday, five days after the flooding, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet.
Friday afternoon brought a sudden glimmer of hope. Rescuers heard tapping on a metal pipe underground. They tapped and shouted into a pipe in response, and sent down hundreds of bags of glucose, a phone, pen, paper and two letters of encouragement inside a plastic bottle.
“Dear fellow workers, the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the whole nation have been concerned for your safety,” one letter began. It ended: “Hold onto the last.”
When they pulled one pipe up to the surface, rescuers found an iron wire tied to the end, an apparent signal from survivors, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Rescuers also spotted swaying lights at the opposite end of the shaft, another possible sign of life.
On Saturday afternoon, a team of divers was sent down, returning within a few hours, reporting that the black murky water made it hard to reach the workers’ platforms. Rescuers also said they battled build-ups of toxic gas in the shaft.
But later that day, as water levels continued to drop, rescuers in rubber rafts managed to squeeze through narrow passages and descend into the mine’s shaft.
By late Sunday night, 100 rescue workers had located survivors, most of them stranded on a single platform. according to the Chinese media, one miner spotted a raft and called out: “Can you get me out of here?”
Nine miners were carried out of the mine early Monday morning. Thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered as ambulances carrying survivors raced by to the nearest hospital. Most of the miners were in said to be in stable condition but at least seven were listed in serious condition, Chinese media reported Monday night.
Up to 300 rescuers were inside the mine by Monday morning. and the number of men saved grew throughout the day. China Central Television broadcast videos of rescuers carrying stretcher after stretcher away from the mine, each laden with a bare-footed miner wrapped in green blankets on stretchers, eyes covered with towels as a shield from the light.
One of the rescued miners said when water flooded the shaft, he had attached himself to a mine wall with his belt so he wouldn’t drown. He hung there for three nights, he said, then climbed into a mining cart that floated by.
Others told the China News Service that they ate bark off the pine mine supports and drank the murky water despite fears that it was contaminated.
A medical officer told reporters that the survivors suffered from severe dehydration, hypothermia, skin infections from prolonged exposure to the water, and unstable blood pressure.
Some were in shock, according to news reports. One was still gripping his miner’s lamp when rescued.
“I have not slept for several days,” one rescuer, Wei Fusheng, told the television station, weeping with happiness. “Our efforts have not been in vain.”
As of Monday night, there was no word on the status of roughly three dozen miners left inside the mine. Rescued miners reported that they had seen bodies of dead co-workers, but how many may have remained unclear.
Drones Batter Al Qaeda and Its Allies Within Pakistan
Drones Batter Al Qaeda and Its Allies Within Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05drones.html?th&emc=th
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A stepped-up campaign of American drone strikes over the past three months has battered Al Qaeda and its Pakistani and Afghan brethren in the tribal area of North Waziristan, according to a mid-ranking militant and supporters of the government there.
The strikes have cast a pall of fear over an area that was once a free zone for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, forcing militants to abandon satellite phones and large gatherings in favor of communicating by courier and moving stealthily in small groups, they said.
The drones, operated by the C.I.A., fly overhead sometimes four at a time, emitting a beelike hum virtually 24 hours a day, observing and tracking targets, then unleashing missiles on their quarry, they said.
The strikes have sharpened tensions between the local tribesmen and the militants, who have dumped bodies with signs accusing the victims of being American spies in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, they said.
The impact of the drone strikes on the militants’ operations — on freedom of movement, ability to communicate and the ease of importing new recruits to replace those who have been killed — has been difficult to divine because North Waziristan, at the nether reaches of the tribal area, is virtually sealed from the outside world.
None of those interviewed would allow their names to be used for fear for their safety, and all were interviewed separately in a city outside the tribal areas. The supporters of the government worked in positions where they had access to information about the effects of the drone campaign.
Along with that of the militant, the accounts provided a rare window on how the drones have transformed life for all in the region.
By all reports, the bombardment of North Waziristan, and to a lesser extent South Waziristan, has become fast and furious since a combined Taliban and Qaeda suicide attack on a C.I.A. base in Khost, in southern Afghanistan, in late December.
In the first six weeks of this year, more than a dozen strikes killed up to 90 people suspected of being militants, according to Pakistani and American accounts. There are now multiple strikes on some days, and in some weeks the strikes occur every other day, the people from North Waziristan said.
The strikes have become so ferocious, “It seems they really want to kill everyone, not just the leaders,” said the militant, who is a mid-ranking fighter associated with the insurgent network headed by Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani. By “everyone” he meant rank-and-file fighters, though civilians are being killed, too.
Tactics used just a year ago to avoid the drones could not be relied on, he said. It is, for instance, no longer feasible to sleep under the trees as a way of avoiding the drones. “We can’t lead a jungle existence for 24 hours every day,” he said.
Militants now sneak into villages two at a time to sleep, he said. Some homeowners were refusing to rent space to Arabs, who are associated with Al Qaeda, for fear of their families’ being killed by the drones, he said.
The militants have abandoned all-terrain vehicles in favor of humdrum public transportation, one of the government supporters said.
The Arabs, who have always preferred to keep at a distance from the locals, have now gone further underground, resorting to hide-outs in tunnels dug into the mountainside in the Datta Khel area adjacent to Miram Shah, he said.
“Definitely Haqqani is under a lot of pressure,” the militant said. “He has lost commanders, a brother and other family members.”
While unpopular among the Pakistani public, the drone strikes have become a weapon of choice for the Obama administration after the Pakistani Army rebuffed pleas to mount a ground offensive in North Waziristan to take on the militants who use the area to strike at American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani military says it is already overstretched fighting militants on other fronts. But the militants in North Waziristan — the Haqqani network backed by Al Qaeda — are also longtime allies of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. The group may yet prove useful for Pakistan to exert influence in postwar Afghanistan.
The army maintains a division of soldiers in North Waziristan, but, the militant said, the Pakistani soldiers do little to hinder militant operations, which, though under greater pressure from the drones, have by no means stopped.
Training sessions on how to make improvised explosive devices for use against American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan continue, the militant said.
At one eight-day “crash course” in March, the militant said he learned how to mix explosive chemicals and how to load a car with explosives that would be used in suicide bombings.
In public, the Pakistani government opposes the drones, citing a violation of sovereignty.
Under American pressure, however, the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, has provided important intelligence for targets, American and Pakistani officials have said.
But increasingly the Americans appear to have developed their own sources, the militant said.
An influx of young Arabs turned up in North Waziristan recently, presumably to replace some of the older Arabs who had been killed by the drones. But many militants assumed that some of these Arabs were actually American agents, he said.
“Al Qaeda is very careful who they take among the new Arab recruits because they are informants for America,” the militant said.
Perhaps the most disturbing strike for the Haqqanis was the killing of Sirajuddin Haqqani’s younger brother, Mohammad, on Feb. 16.
One government supporter in the area said he witnessed the attack. “I was walking when I saw two drones, one going in one direction, one in another direction. I had a feeling they were preparing,” he said.
There were “two blasts” when a car was hit about 1,200 feet in front of him, he said.
“There was total dust, everything was hazy,” he said. Suddenly, Haqqani fighters appeared out of nowhere. “All these vehicles rushed up, cordoned the site so no outsider could come. They took away the dead bodies.”
The question of civilian deaths is an almost daily worry, all four men said. “Civilians are worried because there is hardly a house without a fighter,” the militant said.
Two of the government supporters said they knew of civilians, including friends, who had been killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, they said, they are prepared to sacrifice the civilians if it means North Waziristan will be rid of the militants, in particular the Arabs.
“On balance, the drones may have killed 100, 200, 500 civilians,” said one of the men. “If you look at the other guys, the Arabs and the kidnappings and the targeted killings, I would go for the drones.”
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05drones.html?th&emc=th
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A stepped-up campaign of American drone strikes over the past three months has battered Al Qaeda and its Pakistani and Afghan brethren in the tribal area of North Waziristan, according to a mid-ranking militant and supporters of the government there.
The strikes have cast a pall of fear over an area that was once a free zone for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, forcing militants to abandon satellite phones and large gatherings in favor of communicating by courier and moving stealthily in small groups, they said.
The drones, operated by the C.I.A., fly overhead sometimes four at a time, emitting a beelike hum virtually 24 hours a day, observing and tracking targets, then unleashing missiles on their quarry, they said.
The strikes have sharpened tensions between the local tribesmen and the militants, who have dumped bodies with signs accusing the victims of being American spies in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, they said.
The impact of the drone strikes on the militants’ operations — on freedom of movement, ability to communicate and the ease of importing new recruits to replace those who have been killed — has been difficult to divine because North Waziristan, at the nether reaches of the tribal area, is virtually sealed from the outside world.
None of those interviewed would allow their names to be used for fear for their safety, and all were interviewed separately in a city outside the tribal areas. The supporters of the government worked in positions where they had access to information about the effects of the drone campaign.
Along with that of the militant, the accounts provided a rare window on how the drones have transformed life for all in the region.
By all reports, the bombardment of North Waziristan, and to a lesser extent South Waziristan, has become fast and furious since a combined Taliban and Qaeda suicide attack on a C.I.A. base in Khost, in southern Afghanistan, in late December.
In the first six weeks of this year, more than a dozen strikes killed up to 90 people suspected of being militants, according to Pakistani and American accounts. There are now multiple strikes on some days, and in some weeks the strikes occur every other day, the people from North Waziristan said.
The strikes have become so ferocious, “It seems they really want to kill everyone, not just the leaders,” said the militant, who is a mid-ranking fighter associated with the insurgent network headed by Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani. By “everyone” he meant rank-and-file fighters, though civilians are being killed, too.
Tactics used just a year ago to avoid the drones could not be relied on, he said. It is, for instance, no longer feasible to sleep under the trees as a way of avoiding the drones. “We can’t lead a jungle existence for 24 hours every day,” he said.
Militants now sneak into villages two at a time to sleep, he said. Some homeowners were refusing to rent space to Arabs, who are associated with Al Qaeda, for fear of their families’ being killed by the drones, he said.
The militants have abandoned all-terrain vehicles in favor of humdrum public transportation, one of the government supporters said.
The Arabs, who have always preferred to keep at a distance from the locals, have now gone further underground, resorting to hide-outs in tunnels dug into the mountainside in the Datta Khel area adjacent to Miram Shah, he said.
“Definitely Haqqani is under a lot of pressure,” the militant said. “He has lost commanders, a brother and other family members.”
While unpopular among the Pakistani public, the drone strikes have become a weapon of choice for the Obama administration after the Pakistani Army rebuffed pleas to mount a ground offensive in North Waziristan to take on the militants who use the area to strike at American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani military says it is already overstretched fighting militants on other fronts. But the militants in North Waziristan — the Haqqani network backed by Al Qaeda — are also longtime allies of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. The group may yet prove useful for Pakistan to exert influence in postwar Afghanistan.
The army maintains a division of soldiers in North Waziristan, but, the militant said, the Pakistani soldiers do little to hinder militant operations, which, though under greater pressure from the drones, have by no means stopped.
Training sessions on how to make improvised explosive devices for use against American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan continue, the militant said.
At one eight-day “crash course” in March, the militant said he learned how to mix explosive chemicals and how to load a car with explosives that would be used in suicide bombings.
In public, the Pakistani government opposes the drones, citing a violation of sovereignty.
Under American pressure, however, the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, has provided important intelligence for targets, American and Pakistani officials have said.
But increasingly the Americans appear to have developed their own sources, the militant said.
An influx of young Arabs turned up in North Waziristan recently, presumably to replace some of the older Arabs who had been killed by the drones. But many militants assumed that some of these Arabs were actually American agents, he said.
“Al Qaeda is very careful who they take among the new Arab recruits because they are informants for America,” the militant said.
Perhaps the most disturbing strike for the Haqqanis was the killing of Sirajuddin Haqqani’s younger brother, Mohammad, on Feb. 16.
One government supporter in the area said he witnessed the attack. “I was walking when I saw two drones, one going in one direction, one in another direction. I had a feeling they were preparing,” he said.
There were “two blasts” when a car was hit about 1,200 feet in front of him, he said.
“There was total dust, everything was hazy,” he said. Suddenly, Haqqani fighters appeared out of nowhere. “All these vehicles rushed up, cordoned the site so no outsider could come. They took away the dead bodies.”
The question of civilian deaths is an almost daily worry, all four men said. “Civilians are worried because there is hardly a house without a fighter,” the militant said.
Two of the government supporters said they knew of civilians, including friends, who had been killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, they said, they are prepared to sacrifice the civilians if it means North Waziristan will be rid of the militants, in particular the Arabs.
“On balance, the drones may have killed 100, 200, 500 civilians,” said one of the men. “If you look at the other guys, the Arabs and the kidnappings and the targeted killings, I would go for the drones.”
Obamacare has upsides for big employers: Chance to save millions by offloading retiree coverage
Obamacare has upsides for big employers: Chance to save millions by offloading retiree coverage
By John Pletz
©2010 by Crain Communications Inc.
April 05, 2010
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?articleId=33220
Big companies may find a lot to like in President Barack Obama's health care law — once they get over the tax changes burning a hole in their earnings.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Exelon Corp., Illinois Tool Works Inc. of Glenview, Peoria's Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co. of Moline all have warned they'll take non-cash charges of tens or hundreds of millions in the first quarter because they are losing a tax break for the drug-care benefits they give to retirees.
But in the long term, improvements in Medicare prescription coverage and the creation of private exchanges that would provide more affordable insurance to individuals could allow some of these same companies to stop providing insurance to retirees altogether, saving millions in expenses.
Private insurance exchanges
"There is no question that companies large and small will be better off with health reform than they would be without it," says Len Nichols, a professor of health policy at George Mason University in Washington, D.C.
Many companies already have stopped providing coverage in favor of letting retirees rely on Medicare and supplemental insurance or company subsidies. Between 2003 and 2007, the number of companies offering coverage to retirees over 65 dropped to 42% from 58%, according to consulting firm Towers Watson & Co. Those offering coverage to retirees under 65 — a large part at unionized companies such as Cat, Deere and Boeing — have dropped to 56% from 69%.
"The tax hit is a catalyst," says Roland McDevitt, Virginia-based director of health research at Towers Watson. "Employers already are struggling to support these plans, and I think there will be a lot of inclination to look at dropping them."
The savings can be immense. This year, Caterpillar moved 9,500 non-union retirees age 65 and older from a traditional insurance plan to a combination of Medicare and a $3,000 company subsidy, a move that saved $60 million last year and will cut more than $500 million in liabilities over the next seven years while boosting income by $334 million.
Those numbers dwarf the $100-million non-cash accounting charge Caterpillar says it will suffer because of tax-law changes limiting its ability to deduct government subsidies for providing retiree drug coverage.
Making similar changes at unionized plants such as those in Aurora and Pontiac would provide additional savings. That would require going back to the bargaining table, which Cat will have the opportunity to do later this year.
AT&T OUT FRONT
So far, only a few companies, such as AT&T Inc. (which includes the former Chicago-based Ameritech), have said publicly they will consider a change in benefits.
"I'd be surprised if AT&T were the only one, based on what I'm hearing," says Ken Porter, chief actuary at the Washington, D.C.-based American Benefits Council, a trade group that advises companies on employee benefits. Members include Abbott Laboratories, Boeing, Kraft Foods Inc., Motorola Inc. and Navistar Inc. The companies either say they are still evaluating the plans or decline to comment.
Retiree health insurance
Improvements in Medicare drug coverage under the new law will encourage companies to drop their plans. Until now, companies have been reluctant to simply push retirees into Medicare, especially for drug coverage, because of the notorious "doughnut hole" that leaves retirees on the hook for all drug expenses between $2,830 and $6,440. The hole will shrink steadily until 2020.
By then, Medicare will pay 75% of an average retiree's total drug spending, up from about 50% today, Towers Watson says. That's huge for employers because prescriptions account for more than half of retiree medical spending.
"The big advantage to employer-sponsored coverage was that it didn't have a doughnut hole, which was wildly unpopular. But that's going away," says Steve Riedl, a Chicago-based principal at Towers Watson.
For employers, another advantage of the health care bill comes from the proposed creation of statewide insurance exchanges. These exchanges won't be available until 2014.
In the meantime, the health care law provides $5 billion in subsidies for companies that provide under-65 coverage.
If the exchanges succeed in providing insurance to individuals at lower prices and with fewer restrictions than exist now, companies stand to benefit. Many companies — as well as state and local governments — provide coverage to under-65 retirees because these individuals often can't find affordable coverage on the open market. But the costs to provide such insurance are twice as high as for those over age 65.
"Having a viable market for pre-65 retirees to buy insurance would allow companies to drop these plans," says Rick McGill, a principal in Lincolnshire-based Hewitt Associates LLC's health-management consulting practice. "I think you'll see an uptick in employers saying, 'I create value by giving money to people to buy coverage instead of providing it.' Companies may not spend less per retiree, but potentially it could reduce their overhead costs."
By John Pletz
©2010 by Crain Communications Inc.
April 05, 2010
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?articleId=33220
Big companies may find a lot to like in President Barack Obama's health care law — once they get over the tax changes burning a hole in their earnings.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Exelon Corp., Illinois Tool Works Inc. of Glenview, Peoria's Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co. of Moline all have warned they'll take non-cash charges of tens or hundreds of millions in the first quarter because they are losing a tax break for the drug-care benefits they give to retirees.
But in the long term, improvements in Medicare prescription coverage and the creation of private exchanges that would provide more affordable insurance to individuals could allow some of these same companies to stop providing insurance to retirees altogether, saving millions in expenses.
Private insurance exchanges
"There is no question that companies large and small will be better off with health reform than they would be without it," says Len Nichols, a professor of health policy at George Mason University in Washington, D.C.
Many companies already have stopped providing coverage in favor of letting retirees rely on Medicare and supplemental insurance or company subsidies. Between 2003 and 2007, the number of companies offering coverage to retirees over 65 dropped to 42% from 58%, according to consulting firm Towers Watson & Co. Those offering coverage to retirees under 65 — a large part at unionized companies such as Cat, Deere and Boeing — have dropped to 56% from 69%.
"The tax hit is a catalyst," says Roland McDevitt, Virginia-based director of health research at Towers Watson. "Employers already are struggling to support these plans, and I think there will be a lot of inclination to look at dropping them."
The savings can be immense. This year, Caterpillar moved 9,500 non-union retirees age 65 and older from a traditional insurance plan to a combination of Medicare and a $3,000 company subsidy, a move that saved $60 million last year and will cut more than $500 million in liabilities over the next seven years while boosting income by $334 million.
Those numbers dwarf the $100-million non-cash accounting charge Caterpillar says it will suffer because of tax-law changes limiting its ability to deduct government subsidies for providing retiree drug coverage.
Making similar changes at unionized plants such as those in Aurora and Pontiac would provide additional savings. That would require going back to the bargaining table, which Cat will have the opportunity to do later this year.
AT&T OUT FRONT
So far, only a few companies, such as AT&T Inc. (which includes the former Chicago-based Ameritech), have said publicly they will consider a change in benefits.
"I'd be surprised if AT&T were the only one, based on what I'm hearing," says Ken Porter, chief actuary at the Washington, D.C.-based American Benefits Council, a trade group that advises companies on employee benefits. Members include Abbott Laboratories, Boeing, Kraft Foods Inc., Motorola Inc. and Navistar Inc. The companies either say they are still evaluating the plans or decline to comment.
Retiree health insurance
Improvements in Medicare drug coverage under the new law will encourage companies to drop their plans. Until now, companies have been reluctant to simply push retirees into Medicare, especially for drug coverage, because of the notorious "doughnut hole" that leaves retirees on the hook for all drug expenses between $2,830 and $6,440. The hole will shrink steadily until 2020.
By then, Medicare will pay 75% of an average retiree's total drug spending, up from about 50% today, Towers Watson says. That's huge for employers because prescriptions account for more than half of retiree medical spending.
"The big advantage to employer-sponsored coverage was that it didn't have a doughnut hole, which was wildly unpopular. But that's going away," says Steve Riedl, a Chicago-based principal at Towers Watson.
For employers, another advantage of the health care bill comes from the proposed creation of statewide insurance exchanges. These exchanges won't be available until 2014.
In the meantime, the health care law provides $5 billion in subsidies for companies that provide under-65 coverage.
If the exchanges succeed in providing insurance to individuals at lower prices and with fewer restrictions than exist now, companies stand to benefit. Many companies — as well as state and local governments — provide coverage to under-65 retirees because these individuals often can't find affordable coverage on the open market. But the costs to provide such insurance are twice as high as for those over age 65.
"Having a viable market for pre-65 retirees to buy insurance would allow companies to drop these plans," says Rick McGill, a principal in Lincolnshire-based Hewitt Associates LLC's health-management consulting practice. "I think you'll see an uptick in employers saying, 'I create value by giving money to people to buy coverage instead of providing it.' Companies may not spend less per retiree, but potentially it could reduce their overhead costs."
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Church's Problem Is the Cover-Up, Not PR - Bob Schieffer Weighs In on the On-Going Problem Catholic Leaders Have With Accountability
Church's Problem Is the Cover-Up, Not PR - Bob Schieffer Weighs In on the On-Going Problem Catholic Leaders Have With Accountability
By Bob Schieffer
Copyright by CBS News
April 4, 2010
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/04/ftn/main6362282.shtml
On this Easter Sunday, the Catholic Church faces more scandal surrounding child sex-abuse. As Bob Schieffer notes, the Church's problem is not PR but it's cover-up.
(CBS) I am not a Catholic; I am a Protestant. But I have long admired the Catholic Church as the repository of knowledge through so much of history, and with the Jewish faith, for shaping the values on which Western civilization is built.
We are all the product of those values, so we can only feel remorse as we watch the spectacle in which the church finds itself embroiled at, of all times, the holiest week of both great religions.
Eight years ago - and yes, it has been that long - I wrote that the cover-up of child molester priests had no place in theology but everything to do with bureaucracies that grow so old and large and out-of-touch that they lose all sense of accountability.
I said then that aging leaders had put their own survival ahead of the church's reason for being, and in the process had forgotten the church's own history. It was resistance to reform, after all, that led to Protestantism.
How the church organizes itself - whether priests should marry and so on - is the church's business, not mine. But child abuse is everyone's business.
The church's problem is not public relations as some of its leaders want to believe, but the cover-up of vile criminal acts.
Until the church bureaucracy truly comes to terms with that, at whatever cost, and again places its reason for being ahead of the survival of its leaders, the church as an institution remains at risk.
People will seek God in many ways, but never in ways that endanger their children.
By Bob Schieffer
Copyright by CBS News
April 4, 2010
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/04/ftn/main6362282.shtml
On this Easter Sunday, the Catholic Church faces more scandal surrounding child sex-abuse. As Bob Schieffer notes, the Church's problem is not PR but it's cover-up.
(CBS) I am not a Catholic; I am a Protestant. But I have long admired the Catholic Church as the repository of knowledge through so much of history, and with the Jewish faith, for shaping the values on which Western civilization is built.
We are all the product of those values, so we can only feel remorse as we watch the spectacle in which the church finds itself embroiled at, of all times, the holiest week of both great religions.
Eight years ago - and yes, it has been that long - I wrote that the cover-up of child molester priests had no place in theology but everything to do with bureaucracies that grow so old and large and out-of-touch that they lose all sense of accountability.
I said then that aging leaders had put their own survival ahead of the church's reason for being, and in the process had forgotten the church's own history. It was resistance to reform, after all, that led to Protestantism.
How the church organizes itself - whether priests should marry and so on - is the church's business, not mine. But child abuse is everyone's business.
The church's problem is not public relations as some of its leaders want to believe, but the cover-up of vile criminal acts.
Until the church bureaucracy truly comes to terms with that, at whatever cost, and again places its reason for being ahead of the survival of its leaders, the church as an institution remains at risk.
People will seek God in many ways, but never in ways that endanger their children.
Cardinal tells pope: Faithful not influenced by 'gossip'
Cardinal tells pope: Faithful not influenced by 'gossip'
Copyright by CNN News
April 4, 2010 4:26 p.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/04/vatican.easter/index.html?hpt=T2
(CNN) -- In a rare move, a senior cardinal spoke before the pope's Easter Mass address at the Vatican on Sunday, saying the pontiff maintains the support of Catholics around the world "who do not let themselves be influenced by the gossip."
"Today, with you are the cardinals from the Roman Curia, all the bishops and priests around the world," said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, former Vatican secretary of state and the dean of the College of Cardinals.
Speaking at the beginning of the Easter Sunday ceremony, Sodano did not specifically mention the sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed the Catholic Church in recent months.
But his remarks clearly referred to those who have criticized Catholic leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI himself, for not having done much more during his years as a top official.
Sodano said the pope has the support of those who work in schools, hospitals and care centers, including 400,000 priests.
"Also with you are the faithful who do not let themselves be influenced by gossip," Sodano said in Italian, using the word "chiacchiericcio," which means chatter or gossip. "May the Lord continue to sustain your mission at the service of the church in the world."
In his Easter message, the pope did not address the scandal that encompasses high-profile abuse cases in several countries including Ireland, France, the United States, Mexico and his native Germany. More and more people have come forward complaining that as children they were victims of abuse by religious leaders, and that the church did little or nothing to stop it.
Some Catholic leaders took the opportunity Sunday to condemn the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
"The lives of survivors of child sexual abuse, the faith of members of the church, and the credibility of church leadership have all been wounded grievously by the evil deeds of priests and religious who exploited their position to wreak havoc on the lives of helpless children. Those wounds were aggravated by serious mismanagement on the part of bishops and other leaders in the Church," said Irish Cardinal Sean Brady in his homily.
He apologized to victims and vowed to do his part to keep the safety of those in the church his overriding concern.
In a letter last month, the pope said he was "truly sorry" for the abuse suffered by victims at the hands of Catholic priests in Ireland.
Also Sunday, Belgium's top Roman Catholic bishop addressed the scandal. "Through a guilty silence, we often preferred the reputation of certain men of the church to the honor of these abused children," said Andre Joseph Leonard, archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel. "Here, as well, we must, by the force of truth, give dignity back to those who were so atrociously exploited."
German Archbishop Robert Zollitsch also brought up the scandal in his Easter address, saying, "We need to go down the path together and take into full view the unfathomable occurrences, the horrible crimes, the dark sides of the church and the dark parts in ourselves. But we cannot leave it at that alone. We need a new beginning."
In a message Friday on the Web site of the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Zollitsch expressed "sadness, horror and shame," as well as his "disappointment over the painful failure of the offenders, and that the victims weren't helped enough because of the misplaced concern about the reputation of the church."
The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising -- once headed by Pope Benedict XVI -- has been criticized for ignoring warnings to keep one of its priests away from children despite the man having been convicted of pedophilia.
The priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, was convicted of abusing minors in 1986, but was later allowed to continue his priestly work and to deal with children. A new allegation of abuse recently surfaced against Hullermann, dating from 1998 in the town of Garching.
Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, archbishop at the time, has apologized for allowing Hullermann to work in the town after his conviction.
The German Diocese of Regensburg confirmed last month that four Catholic priests and two nuns have been accused of sexually abusing children. Five of the cases are from the 1970s and one is from the 1980s. German lawyers representing alleged victims say there are more than 300 cases across Germany. Some of the cases date back to the 1950s.
A few priests have called for the pope to step down.
"The ever growing sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has now reached the doorstep of the Vatican. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, knew -- or should have known -- about pedophile priests under his authority," the Rev. Roy Bourgeois of Columbus, Georgia, said Friday.
While the Vatican has emphasized Benedict's concern about the scandal, the pontiff focused his Easter remarks on other issues. Citing the story of the Exodus, he said, "In our days too, humanity needs an 'exodus', not just superficial adjustment, but a spiritual and moral conversion. It needs the salvation of the Gospel, so as to emerge from a profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences," Benedict said.
He mentioned several of the world's leading international crises, praying for an exodus from war and violence in the Middle East and an end to suffering for Christian communities, especially in Iraq.
"May the risen Lord sustain the Christians who suffer persecution and even death for their faith, as for example in Pakistan," he said.
He cited the "dangerous resurgence" of drug crimes in Latin America and the Caribbean, the "appalling tragedy" of the earthquake in Haiti, and the "grave catastrophe" of the quake in Chile.
"In the strength of the risen Jesus, may the conflicts in Africa come to an end, conflicts which continue to cause destruction and suffering," the pope said, adding, "In particular I entrust to the Lord the future of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and Nigeria."
He prayed for all countries affected by terrorism and discrimination, and touched on the financial crisis as well. "To the leaders of nations, may Easter bring light and strength, so that economic and financial activity may finally be driven by the criteria of truth, justice and fraternal aid."
Concluding his annual "Urbi et Orbi" -- "To the City and to the World" -- address, Benedict added, "Easter does not work magic. Just as the Israelites found the desert awaiting them on the far side of the Red Sea, so the Church, after the resurrection, always finds history filled with joy and hope, grief and anguish. And yet, this history is changed, it is marked by a new and eternal covenant, it is truly open to the future."
Copyright by CNN News
April 4, 2010 4:26 p.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/04/vatican.easter/index.html?hpt=T2
(CNN) -- In a rare move, a senior cardinal spoke before the pope's Easter Mass address at the Vatican on Sunday, saying the pontiff maintains the support of Catholics around the world "who do not let themselves be influenced by the gossip."
"Today, with you are the cardinals from the Roman Curia, all the bishops and priests around the world," said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, former Vatican secretary of state and the dean of the College of Cardinals.
Speaking at the beginning of the Easter Sunday ceremony, Sodano did not specifically mention the sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed the Catholic Church in recent months.
But his remarks clearly referred to those who have criticized Catholic leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI himself, for not having done much more during his years as a top official.
Sodano said the pope has the support of those who work in schools, hospitals and care centers, including 400,000 priests.
"Also with you are the faithful who do not let themselves be influenced by gossip," Sodano said in Italian, using the word "chiacchiericcio," which means chatter or gossip. "May the Lord continue to sustain your mission at the service of the church in the world."
In his Easter message, the pope did not address the scandal that encompasses high-profile abuse cases in several countries including Ireland, France, the United States, Mexico and his native Germany. More and more people have come forward complaining that as children they were victims of abuse by religious leaders, and that the church did little or nothing to stop it.
Some Catholic leaders took the opportunity Sunday to condemn the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
"The lives of survivors of child sexual abuse, the faith of members of the church, and the credibility of church leadership have all been wounded grievously by the evil deeds of priests and religious who exploited their position to wreak havoc on the lives of helpless children. Those wounds were aggravated by serious mismanagement on the part of bishops and other leaders in the Church," said Irish Cardinal Sean Brady in his homily.
He apologized to victims and vowed to do his part to keep the safety of those in the church his overriding concern.
In a letter last month, the pope said he was "truly sorry" for the abuse suffered by victims at the hands of Catholic priests in Ireland.
Also Sunday, Belgium's top Roman Catholic bishop addressed the scandal. "Through a guilty silence, we often preferred the reputation of certain men of the church to the honor of these abused children," said Andre Joseph Leonard, archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel. "Here, as well, we must, by the force of truth, give dignity back to those who were so atrociously exploited."
German Archbishop Robert Zollitsch also brought up the scandal in his Easter address, saying, "We need to go down the path together and take into full view the unfathomable occurrences, the horrible crimes, the dark sides of the church and the dark parts in ourselves. But we cannot leave it at that alone. We need a new beginning."
In a message Friday on the Web site of the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Zollitsch expressed "sadness, horror and shame," as well as his "disappointment over the painful failure of the offenders, and that the victims weren't helped enough because of the misplaced concern about the reputation of the church."
The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising -- once headed by Pope Benedict XVI -- has been criticized for ignoring warnings to keep one of its priests away from children despite the man having been convicted of pedophilia.
The priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, was convicted of abusing minors in 1986, but was later allowed to continue his priestly work and to deal with children. A new allegation of abuse recently surfaced against Hullermann, dating from 1998 in the town of Garching.
Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, archbishop at the time, has apologized for allowing Hullermann to work in the town after his conviction.
The German Diocese of Regensburg confirmed last month that four Catholic priests and two nuns have been accused of sexually abusing children. Five of the cases are from the 1970s and one is from the 1980s. German lawyers representing alleged victims say there are more than 300 cases across Germany. Some of the cases date back to the 1950s.
A few priests have called for the pope to step down.
"The ever growing sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has now reached the doorstep of the Vatican. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, knew -- or should have known -- about pedophile priests under his authority," the Rev. Roy Bourgeois of Columbus, Georgia, said Friday.
While the Vatican has emphasized Benedict's concern about the scandal, the pontiff focused his Easter remarks on other issues. Citing the story of the Exodus, he said, "In our days too, humanity needs an 'exodus', not just superficial adjustment, but a spiritual and moral conversion. It needs the salvation of the Gospel, so as to emerge from a profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences," Benedict said.
He mentioned several of the world's leading international crises, praying for an exodus from war and violence in the Middle East and an end to suffering for Christian communities, especially in Iraq.
"May the risen Lord sustain the Christians who suffer persecution and even death for their faith, as for example in Pakistan," he said.
He cited the "dangerous resurgence" of drug crimes in Latin America and the Caribbean, the "appalling tragedy" of the earthquake in Haiti, and the "grave catastrophe" of the quake in Chile.
"In the strength of the risen Jesus, may the conflicts in Africa come to an end, conflicts which continue to cause destruction and suffering," the pope said, adding, "In particular I entrust to the Lord the future of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and Nigeria."
He prayed for all countries affected by terrorism and discrimination, and touched on the financial crisis as well. "To the leaders of nations, may Easter bring light and strength, so that economic and financial activity may finally be driven by the criteria of truth, justice and fraternal aid."
Concluding his annual "Urbi et Orbi" -- "To the City and to the World" -- address, Benedict added, "Easter does not work magic. Just as the Israelites found the desert awaiting them on the far side of the Red Sea, so the Church, after the resurrection, always finds history filled with joy and hope, grief and anguish. And yet, this history is changed, it is marked by a new and eternal covenant, it is truly open to the future."
It's Her Party Now
It's Her Party Now
By Mark Halperin
Copyright by Times Magazine
Monday, Apr. 12, 2010
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1977121,00.html
Sarah Palin doesn't really do compromise. Defiance is more her style. So when other Republicans began to go soft on their promises to "repeal and replace" Barack Obama's landmark health care reform, the former Alaska governor went reliably rogue. Wearing a trim black leather jacket and pencil skirt, Palin appeared at a rally for John McCain in Arizona and urged the GOP faithful not to quail now. "I see Fidel Castro likes Obamacare, and we don't," she taunted. "Doesn't that tell you something?"
Palin is consolidating her position as the most powerful person in the Republican party. She signed a deal reportedly worth millions to be featured in an eight-episode series about Alaska on TLC, and she'll add that gig to her richly compensated duties at Fox News, where she is an occasional political pundit. She has another book on the way, following the best seller Going Rogue, and numerous private speaking engagements. She remains hotly in demand.
At the same time, she is maneuvering for position as the race for 2012 warms up. Palin is making time to help a roster of Republican candidates between now and November. She laughs off the notion that rough language might incite further acts of aggression against Democrats; instead, she's put crosshair markings on her Facebook page to identify lawmakers she has targeted for defeat in the fall election. Quippy and tart, she mocks the "lamestream media" for distracting voters by distorting GOP positions. And by carefully controlling her own visibility, she has become more irresistible as cable-news and viral content.
Stumping in the Southwest over the weekend, Palin proved that she is one heck of a Sun Belt candidate. Within the conservative movement, she still has unmatched appeal. Joining McCain on the trail for the first time since the end of their unsuccessful 2008 campaign, Palin delivered the goods for the 73-year-old Senator, who is struggling to win his party's nomination for a fifth term. She earnestly and at times poignantly argued that McCain is a true Tea Party conservative. She said the movement is short on battle-tested, experienced veterans in Congress to take the fight to the Democrats alongside younger firebrands like Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and Palin herself. "We need new blood," she said, "but we also need heroes and statesmen."
The joint appearance was nostalgic and at times a little awkward. Palin gratefully credits McCain for her newfound fame, wealth and power. McCain is fascinated by Palin's ability to draw a crowd and make news; he also feels a sense of responsibility for the intense scrutiny and radical life changes that have befallen Palin and her family. Thousands of people came to the Pima County Fairgrounds, many of them apparently there to see Palin rather than the actual candidate--something Cindy McCain highlighted in her brief remarks, to nervous laughter. Notably, all the cable news networks (Fox News included) cut away from live coverage once Palin had concluded her remarks and McCain began his.
Later, in Phoenix, Palin headlined a McCain fundraiser at the Biltmore hotel, where she once clashed with his aides about whether she would be allowed to deliver her own concession speech on the final night of the 2008 campaign. (In the end, she wasn't.) Most of the campaign advisers who viewed Palin as untrustworthy and erratic have left McCain's orbit, and his current aides were delighted to apply her star power to their troubled cause. With Palin in the state, they collected e-mail addresses for follow-up contact, raised several hundred thousand dollars and attracted the kind of crowds and media coverage that McCain can no longer bring in on his own. And the Senator continued his conversion from a maverick unafraid to compromise with Democrats to a Republican determined to thwart Obama's agenda, starting with overturning the new health care law. "It's going to be repealed and replaced, and it's going to be done soon," McCain thundered. "It will not stand."
Palin then traveled some 250 miles northwest to join the Tea Party assault on Harry Reid in his ink-dot hometown of Searchlight, Nev. (pop. 738). Despite fears of unrest and a crowd of several thousand angry activists, the Searchlight event turned out to be a tame affair, mostly vague speeches about freedom and the evils of Washington. But the rhetoric was at times deviant and downright ugly: placards and T-shirts reading "Send Obuma [sic] back to Kenya" and "Pelosi is the White House's new Monica" were visible during Palin's brief speech, and she made no effort to censure their owners. "We're not going to sit down and shut up," she told the cheering crowd. "Thank you for standing up." The events in Arizona and Nevada failed to mask the widening splits in Palin's party about tactics and direction. One sign in Searchlight read: "No more RINOs [Republicans in name only]--Retire McCain." Another said: "Reid-McCain: Two sides of the same damn coin. Vote them out."
Meanwhile, Reid, whose poll numbers suggest his time in the Senate could be ending soon, was hardly cowed by the loathers swamping his hometown. Palin had no sooner left Searchlight than he appeared at a fundraiser in Las Vegas featuring Al Gore as the keynote speaker. The former Veep, who ran for President twice, takes Palin seriously. From the day McCain plucked her from obscurity, Gore has seen her as a potent, raw political talent who should not be underestimated. He didn't mention Palin by name in his remarks at the Reid event, but he did condemn Republicans who rail "against everything without any sensible policy prescription" alternatives.
Democrats know keeping control of Congress in November will be a challenge, but they believe that the passage of health care reform gives them a chance to hold their losses to a minimum. Palin doesn't see it that way. "We're taking our country back, and we're starting right here in Nevada," she told the Searchlight crowd, many of whom chanted for her to run for President. For Palin, health care's passage was not the end of a long battle but the start of an entirely new war. And she sounds more than happy to lead it.
By Mark Halperin
Copyright by Times Magazine
Monday, Apr. 12, 2010
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1977121,00.html
Sarah Palin doesn't really do compromise. Defiance is more her style. So when other Republicans began to go soft on their promises to "repeal and replace" Barack Obama's landmark health care reform, the former Alaska governor went reliably rogue. Wearing a trim black leather jacket and pencil skirt, Palin appeared at a rally for John McCain in Arizona and urged the GOP faithful not to quail now. "I see Fidel Castro likes Obamacare, and we don't," she taunted. "Doesn't that tell you something?"
Palin is consolidating her position as the most powerful person in the Republican party. She signed a deal reportedly worth millions to be featured in an eight-episode series about Alaska on TLC, and she'll add that gig to her richly compensated duties at Fox News, where she is an occasional political pundit. She has another book on the way, following the best seller Going Rogue, and numerous private speaking engagements. She remains hotly in demand.
At the same time, she is maneuvering for position as the race for 2012 warms up. Palin is making time to help a roster of Republican candidates between now and November. She laughs off the notion that rough language might incite further acts of aggression against Democrats; instead, she's put crosshair markings on her Facebook page to identify lawmakers she has targeted for defeat in the fall election. Quippy and tart, she mocks the "lamestream media" for distracting voters by distorting GOP positions. And by carefully controlling her own visibility, she has become more irresistible as cable-news and viral content.
Stumping in the Southwest over the weekend, Palin proved that she is one heck of a Sun Belt candidate. Within the conservative movement, she still has unmatched appeal. Joining McCain on the trail for the first time since the end of their unsuccessful 2008 campaign, Palin delivered the goods for the 73-year-old Senator, who is struggling to win his party's nomination for a fifth term. She earnestly and at times poignantly argued that McCain is a true Tea Party conservative. She said the movement is short on battle-tested, experienced veterans in Congress to take the fight to the Democrats alongside younger firebrands like Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and Palin herself. "We need new blood," she said, "but we also need heroes and statesmen."
The joint appearance was nostalgic and at times a little awkward. Palin gratefully credits McCain for her newfound fame, wealth and power. McCain is fascinated by Palin's ability to draw a crowd and make news; he also feels a sense of responsibility for the intense scrutiny and radical life changes that have befallen Palin and her family. Thousands of people came to the Pima County Fairgrounds, many of them apparently there to see Palin rather than the actual candidate--something Cindy McCain highlighted in her brief remarks, to nervous laughter. Notably, all the cable news networks (Fox News included) cut away from live coverage once Palin had concluded her remarks and McCain began his.
Later, in Phoenix, Palin headlined a McCain fundraiser at the Biltmore hotel, where she once clashed with his aides about whether she would be allowed to deliver her own concession speech on the final night of the 2008 campaign. (In the end, she wasn't.) Most of the campaign advisers who viewed Palin as untrustworthy and erratic have left McCain's orbit, and his current aides were delighted to apply her star power to their troubled cause. With Palin in the state, they collected e-mail addresses for follow-up contact, raised several hundred thousand dollars and attracted the kind of crowds and media coverage that McCain can no longer bring in on his own. And the Senator continued his conversion from a maverick unafraid to compromise with Democrats to a Republican determined to thwart Obama's agenda, starting with overturning the new health care law. "It's going to be repealed and replaced, and it's going to be done soon," McCain thundered. "It will not stand."
Palin then traveled some 250 miles northwest to join the Tea Party assault on Harry Reid in his ink-dot hometown of Searchlight, Nev. (pop. 738). Despite fears of unrest and a crowd of several thousand angry activists, the Searchlight event turned out to be a tame affair, mostly vague speeches about freedom and the evils of Washington. But the rhetoric was at times deviant and downright ugly: placards and T-shirts reading "Send Obuma [sic] back to Kenya" and "Pelosi is the White House's new Monica" were visible during Palin's brief speech, and she made no effort to censure their owners. "We're not going to sit down and shut up," she told the cheering crowd. "Thank you for standing up." The events in Arizona and Nevada failed to mask the widening splits in Palin's party about tactics and direction. One sign in Searchlight read: "No more RINOs [Republicans in name only]--Retire McCain." Another said: "Reid-McCain: Two sides of the same damn coin. Vote them out."
Meanwhile, Reid, whose poll numbers suggest his time in the Senate could be ending soon, was hardly cowed by the loathers swamping his hometown. Palin had no sooner left Searchlight than he appeared at a fundraiser in Las Vegas featuring Al Gore as the keynote speaker. The former Veep, who ran for President twice, takes Palin seriously. From the day McCain plucked her from obscurity, Gore has seen her as a potent, raw political talent who should not be underestimated. He didn't mention Palin by name in his remarks at the Reid event, but he did condemn Republicans who rail "against everything without any sensible policy prescription" alternatives.
Democrats know keeping control of Congress in November will be a challenge, but they believe that the passage of health care reform gives them a chance to hold their losses to a minimum. Palin doesn't see it that way. "We're taking our country back, and we're starting right here in Nevada," she told the Searchlight crowd, many of whom chanted for her to run for President. For Palin, health care's passage was not the end of a long battle but the start of an entirely new war. And she sounds more than happy to lead it.
The crazy imaginings of the Texas Board of Education
The crazy imaginings of the Texas Board of Education
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
April 4, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-0404-textbook-20100404,0,4181734,full.story
During the era of McCarthyism, red-baiters fed upon the image of "godless" communists infiltrating our educational system to brainwash the youth of America. As it turned out, that image was largely imaginary.
Ironically, though, we now really do have a coterie of Christian evangelicals who are attempting to infiltrate our educational system to brainwash our youth.
They are in Texas.
For reasons peculiar to the textbook industry and the Texas educational system, the Texas Board of Education has an enormous influence on the content of textbooks used throughout the United States. Conservatives and Christian evangelicals have taken over the Texas Board of Education, and they are in the process of rewriting the American history our children will learn.
Among the propositions the board is attempting to impose is that the U.S. was founded as "a Christian nation." What follows from this, of course, is that our Constitution and laws must be understood through the prism of this perspective. Although evangelicals have been pushing this line for two centuries, it is factually false. But the members of the Texas board, who are not historians, nonetheless persist in this effort to propagandize our children.
This is dangerous. It must be contested.
It is true, of course, that Christianity played a central role in the promulgation of early colonial legal codes. The Bible was the rock and foundation of early colonial law, and the Puritans, in particular, injected a fierce religious fervor into their laws. In 1636, for example, only six years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they adopted the "judicials of Moses," which provided that any person "shall be put to death" who "shall have or worship any other God, but the Lord God." Similarly, the 1656 "Lawes of Government" of New Haven colony expressly declared that "the Supreme power of making Lawes belongs to God only" and that "Civill courts are the Ministers of God."
By the late 17th century, however, the strict religious foundations of colonial law had crumbled. With the influx of large numbers of immigrants from widely diverse religious, ethnic and social backgrounds, the old Puritan beliefs faded away, and as the new Enlightenment ideals of personal liberty, the "pursuit of happiness," and the power of reason spread through the New World, traditional sources of authority were increasingly called into question.
With fresh energy and new ideas, 18th century Americans sought to achieve a profound transformation in their society, their government, their politics and their religion. The great American experiment was born in the full illumination of the Enlightenment. In an Enlightened Age, an age dedicated to reason rather than revelation, even the authority of Christianity was open to challenge.
The Framers of the American system of government were often quite critical of what they saw as Christianity's excesses and superstitions. They fervently believed people should be free to seek truth through the use of reason and they concluded that a secular state, establishing no religion, but tolerating all, best served that end.
Unlike the later French Revolution, however, the American Revolution was not a revolution against Christianity. But as men of the Enlightenment, most of the Framers did not put much stock in traditional Christianity. As broad-minded intellectuals and skeptics, they viewed much of religious doctrine as divisive and irrational, and they challenged, publicly and privately, the dogmas of conventional Christianity.
Benjamin Franklin, for example, dismissed much of Christian doctrine as "unintelligible." Franklin believed in a Creator, but not in the Christian God. He dismissed Christian revelation and described himself as "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine."
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that no member of the founding generation "embodied America's ideals more than Thomas Jefferson." A thoroughgoing skeptic, Jefferson subjected every religious tradition, including his own, to rigorous scrutiny. He had little patience for talk of miracles, revelation or resurrection. Like Franklin, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral philosopher, but he believed Jesus' teachings had been "distorted out of all recognition." He condemned the details of Christian dogma as "dross," "abracadabra," "insanity," "a hocus-pocus phantasm," and a "deliria of crazy imaginations." Jefferson expressed his hope to John Adams that "the human mind will someday get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2,000 years ago."
Adams rejected the rigid dogmas he had inherited from his Puritan forebears. The Creator, he declared, "has given us Reason, to find out the Truth, and the real Design and true End of our Existence." Adams rejected all religious doctrines "that could not be verified independently by human reason." He wrote Jefferson that his religion could be "contained in four short Words, ‘Be just and good.'"
I could go on, but you get the point. The leaders of the revolutionary generation were not atheists. Almost all of them believed in a Creator who had set in motion the laws of nature and given man the power of reason. But they most certainly did not intend to establish the United States as a Christian nation. To the contrary, they were careful both in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to avoid any such inference.
The notion that the United States is a Christian nation came later, in the 19th century, during the Second Great Awakening. It was during that evangelical upheaval that the myth that the United States is a Christian nation first came to the fore, to the utter dismay of men like Adams and Jefferson, who sharply contested it.
This is the truth of our history, and this is the history our children should learn. The truth may be upsetting to those who wish for a different history, but we cannot change what was through wishful thinking. In history textbooks, at least, the truth should count for something. The fables and crazy imaginings of the Texas Board of Education do a profound injustice to our Framers, to our history, and to our nation.
Geoffrey R. Stone is a law professor at the University of Chicago.
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
April 4, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-0404-textbook-20100404,0,4181734,full.story
During the era of McCarthyism, red-baiters fed upon the image of "godless" communists infiltrating our educational system to brainwash the youth of America. As it turned out, that image was largely imaginary.
Ironically, though, we now really do have a coterie of Christian evangelicals who are attempting to infiltrate our educational system to brainwash our youth.
They are in Texas.
For reasons peculiar to the textbook industry and the Texas educational system, the Texas Board of Education has an enormous influence on the content of textbooks used throughout the United States. Conservatives and Christian evangelicals have taken over the Texas Board of Education, and they are in the process of rewriting the American history our children will learn.
Among the propositions the board is attempting to impose is that the U.S. was founded as "a Christian nation." What follows from this, of course, is that our Constitution and laws must be understood through the prism of this perspective. Although evangelicals have been pushing this line for two centuries, it is factually false. But the members of the Texas board, who are not historians, nonetheless persist in this effort to propagandize our children.
This is dangerous. It must be contested.
It is true, of course, that Christianity played a central role in the promulgation of early colonial legal codes. The Bible was the rock and foundation of early colonial law, and the Puritans, in particular, injected a fierce religious fervor into their laws. In 1636, for example, only six years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they adopted the "judicials of Moses," which provided that any person "shall be put to death" who "shall have or worship any other God, but the Lord God." Similarly, the 1656 "Lawes of Government" of New Haven colony expressly declared that "the Supreme power of making Lawes belongs to God only" and that "Civill courts are the Ministers of God."
By the late 17th century, however, the strict religious foundations of colonial law had crumbled. With the influx of large numbers of immigrants from widely diverse religious, ethnic and social backgrounds, the old Puritan beliefs faded away, and as the new Enlightenment ideals of personal liberty, the "pursuit of happiness," and the power of reason spread through the New World, traditional sources of authority were increasingly called into question.
With fresh energy and new ideas, 18th century Americans sought to achieve a profound transformation in their society, their government, their politics and their religion. The great American experiment was born in the full illumination of the Enlightenment. In an Enlightened Age, an age dedicated to reason rather than revelation, even the authority of Christianity was open to challenge.
The Framers of the American system of government were often quite critical of what they saw as Christianity's excesses and superstitions. They fervently believed people should be free to seek truth through the use of reason and they concluded that a secular state, establishing no religion, but tolerating all, best served that end.
Unlike the later French Revolution, however, the American Revolution was not a revolution against Christianity. But as men of the Enlightenment, most of the Framers did not put much stock in traditional Christianity. As broad-minded intellectuals and skeptics, they viewed much of religious doctrine as divisive and irrational, and they challenged, publicly and privately, the dogmas of conventional Christianity.
Benjamin Franklin, for example, dismissed much of Christian doctrine as "unintelligible." Franklin believed in a Creator, but not in the Christian God. He dismissed Christian revelation and described himself as "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine."
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that no member of the founding generation "embodied America's ideals more than Thomas Jefferson." A thoroughgoing skeptic, Jefferson subjected every religious tradition, including his own, to rigorous scrutiny. He had little patience for talk of miracles, revelation or resurrection. Like Franklin, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral philosopher, but he believed Jesus' teachings had been "distorted out of all recognition." He condemned the details of Christian dogma as "dross," "abracadabra," "insanity," "a hocus-pocus phantasm," and a "deliria of crazy imaginations." Jefferson expressed his hope to John Adams that "the human mind will someday get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2,000 years ago."
Adams rejected the rigid dogmas he had inherited from his Puritan forebears. The Creator, he declared, "has given us Reason, to find out the Truth, and the real Design and true End of our Existence." Adams rejected all religious doctrines "that could not be verified independently by human reason." He wrote Jefferson that his religion could be "contained in four short Words, ‘Be just and good.'"
I could go on, but you get the point. The leaders of the revolutionary generation were not atheists. Almost all of them believed in a Creator who had set in motion the laws of nature and given man the power of reason. But they most certainly did not intend to establish the United States as a Christian nation. To the contrary, they were careful both in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to avoid any such inference.
The notion that the United States is a Christian nation came later, in the 19th century, during the Second Great Awakening. It was during that evangelical upheaval that the myth that the United States is a Christian nation first came to the fore, to the utter dismay of men like Adams and Jefferson, who sharply contested it.
This is the truth of our history, and this is the history our children should learn. The truth may be upsetting to those who wish for a different history, but we cannot change what was through wishful thinking. In history textbooks, at least, the truth should count for something. The fables and crazy imaginings of the Texas Board of Education do a profound injustice to our Framers, to our history, and to our nation.
Geoffrey R. Stone is a law professor at the University of Chicago.
Chicago Tribune Editorial: iPad envy…and hope
Chicago Tribune Editorial: iPad envy…and hope
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
5:46 p.m. CDT, April 2, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-ipad-20100402,0,3956472,full.story
Sometime soon, you'll be on the train or in a trendy restaurant and you will behold the ethereal glow of Apple's new iPad.
Someone will be caressing its cool glass skin. Flaunting ownership of the most prized techno-bauble since, well, the wondrous iPhone a few years back.
You, like us, may be envious. Tempted to reach for the holy grail. You'll wonder if the machine can live up to the hype.
The technorati, however, aren't grappling with questions that plague ordinary consumers. They're not beset by doubts about whether they really need this sleek new tablet computer.
They're not waiting until the next iteration, with 3G capability. They don't care if their iPhone and iPod Touch and MacBook already do almost as much as, if not more, than this 1.5-pound, 9.7-inch-color-screened aluminum-and-glass wonder. They don't fret about the starting price of $499. Or the absence of a built-in camera or a USB port. Or anything else.
They want it.
They wanted it as soon as Apple chief Steve Jobs introduced it in January. Some probably tried to pull strings and get their hands on it long before the official rollout on Saturday.
Hundreds of thousands of these people have preordered the machine. They're known in marketing parlance as "first adopters."
Hail, intrepid consumers! Your desire for the iPad, stoked by Apple's pitch-perfect marketing, is just what this economy needs. Consumer confidence was recently pegged by the Conference Board at an improving but still abysmal 52.5—that's about 40 points below where it should be in a humming economy.
iPad fever could help turn things around. Nothing like a shiny new machine to jolt Americans back to their natural state of perpetual shopping mania.
Another boost: The first critics' reviews are rolling in, and they are exuberant. Only time—and sales figures—will tell if they are irrationally so. Our guess: You'll have one of these things sooner than you think.
Some critics say the iPad may kill the laptop. That it could revolutionize communications. That it could reveal what happened before the Big Bang.
OK, we made up that last part. But we hope the machine lives up to expectations as the Next Big Thing. Specifically, we hope for a bump in one corner of the media world: the newspaper corner.
We'll be watching to see if newspapers can seize the opportunity—and most important, a chunk of the income stream—from all those people who will read papers that are formatted for Apple's new product. If the iPad begets the iPaper, we'll be very happy.
Jobs has pulled off more than a few amazing feats in his career. Why not one more?
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
5:46 p.m. CDT, April 2, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-ipad-20100402,0,3956472,full.story
Sometime soon, you'll be on the train or in a trendy restaurant and you will behold the ethereal glow of Apple's new iPad.
Someone will be caressing its cool glass skin. Flaunting ownership of the most prized techno-bauble since, well, the wondrous iPhone a few years back.
You, like us, may be envious. Tempted to reach for the holy grail. You'll wonder if the machine can live up to the hype.
The technorati, however, aren't grappling with questions that plague ordinary consumers. They're not beset by doubts about whether they really need this sleek new tablet computer.
They're not waiting until the next iteration, with 3G capability. They don't care if their iPhone and iPod Touch and MacBook already do almost as much as, if not more, than this 1.5-pound, 9.7-inch-color-screened aluminum-and-glass wonder. They don't fret about the starting price of $499. Or the absence of a built-in camera or a USB port. Or anything else.
They want it.
They wanted it as soon as Apple chief Steve Jobs introduced it in January. Some probably tried to pull strings and get their hands on it long before the official rollout on Saturday.
Hundreds of thousands of these people have preordered the machine. They're known in marketing parlance as "first adopters."
Hail, intrepid consumers! Your desire for the iPad, stoked by Apple's pitch-perfect marketing, is just what this economy needs. Consumer confidence was recently pegged by the Conference Board at an improving but still abysmal 52.5—that's about 40 points below where it should be in a humming economy.
iPad fever could help turn things around. Nothing like a shiny new machine to jolt Americans back to their natural state of perpetual shopping mania.
Another boost: The first critics' reviews are rolling in, and they are exuberant. Only time—and sales figures—will tell if they are irrationally so. Our guess: You'll have one of these things sooner than you think.
Some critics say the iPad may kill the laptop. That it could revolutionize communications. That it could reveal what happened before the Big Bang.
OK, we made up that last part. But we hope the machine lives up to expectations as the Next Big Thing. Specifically, we hope for a bump in one corner of the media world: the newspaper corner.
We'll be watching to see if newspapers can seize the opportunity—and most important, a chunk of the income stream—from all those people who will read papers that are formatted for Apple's new product. If the iPad begets the iPaper, we'll be very happy.
Jobs has pulled off more than a few amazing feats in his career. Why not one more?
Elderly drivers’ risk not clear-cut - The debate about when to take the keys away from the elderly flared up again when 86-year-old driver struck thre
Elderly drivers’ risk not clear-cut - The debate about when to take the keys away from the elderly flared up again when 86-year-old driver struck three teenage Chicago cyclists on March 24
By Erika Slife and Bonnie Miller Rubin
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
April 3, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-elderly-drivers-law-20100403,0,3708078,full.story
Alice Topping was in her convertible, soaking in one of fall's last nice days, when she came to a four-way stop in her Evanston neighborhood just as another car approached.
Assuming the other driver would stop at the sign, she began to drive through the intersection when she felt a hard crash.
"Look what you've done to my car!" the elderly driver cried as he got out of his vehicle. But as the drivers inspected the damage — her right rear side, his front — it was evident who was responsible, Topping said.
"It finally clicked in with him that he had hit my car," she said.
The memory of the 2009 crash came flooding back to Topping on March 24 after she heard that 17-year-old Faith Dremmer, a friend, had been killed when an 86-year-old driver veered across the center line, plowing into her as she biked in southern Illinois with two University of Chicago Laboratory School friends.
It made Topping and countless others wonder: Is enough being done to protect motorists from seniors who shouldn't be driving? When is it time to take the keys away?
"NO ONE over the age of 70 should be permitted to operate a motor vehicle. Period," one outraged reader opined online.
The reality is there are more than 20 million drivers age 70 and older on the roads today, compared with 18 million in 1997, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In Illinois, more than 796,000 residents over 70 have licenses, including one 106-year-old man, according to the secretary of state's office.
The oldest baby boomers will turn 65 next year, the start of an explosion of elderly drivers. By 2030, motorists 65 and older are projected to reach 57 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Despite the growing numbers, fewer seniors were involved in fatal collisions during 1997-2006 than in years past, according to a 2008 insurance institute study. More seniors are self-regulating, avoiding rush hour or night driving. And the health of seniors — which some experts say is more critical to driving skill than age — is improving dramatically.
"The conventional wisdom is that we should restrict elderly drivers or take them off the road, but if you really want to have a big effect on highway safety, you'd take the youngest drivers off the road," said Russ Rader, a spokesman for the insurance institute. "The picture for elderly drivers has been improving over the past decade."
Transportation officials say the difficulty is coming up with a test that can accurately screen out at-risk drivers. But with the rapid growth expected in this population, there is an urgency to improve license renewal policies. A recent study in Iowa suggested that restrictions — such as no driving when headlights are required — for applicable seniors may be an effective approach.
Still, it's a fact that drivers 80 and older have higher accident rates — and are more likely to die in a crash — than younger motorists (except for those 15 to 24), according to the Insurance Institute. And the perception exists that elderly drivers are more dangerous because of high-profile crashes, such as the accident involving Dremmer and a 2007 case in which a 94-year-old woman hit the accelerator and crashed into a Wilmette cafe.
Three teenagers were injured Friday morning in Cicero when an 86-year-old woman trying to park in front of a Cicero restaurant accidentally pressed on the accelerator and broke through concrete blocks, officials said. Citations were pending against the driver.
"How do we identify who is safe to drive and who isn't?" said Elinor Ginzler, an AARP senior vice president. "Illinois has one of the most stringent set of guidelines [for senior drivers] and even … that is not necessarily going to work to recognize an at-risk driver."
Indeed, Illinois has had one of the most rigid renewal cycles in the country since 1990, requiring 81- to 86-year-olds to renew their licenses every two years instead of the standard four — complete with vision and road tests. Those 87 and older have to renew annually. In Wisconsin, by contrast, all drivers, no matter the age, renew licenses every 8 years.
But officials agree that the most hard-nosed government regulations are no substitute for proactive drivers and their families.
After Bert Heiferman of Homewood got into a fender-bender in January, one of his sons suggested it was time for Dad to park his 2000 Mustang for good.
"I was angry," said the 80-year-old. "I thought he was being too overprotective ... and all I could think about was, 'How am I going to get where I need to go?' "
The elder Heiferman, who is still driving, understands this is an emotionally loaded topic for lawmakers and family members. As a pedestrian, he concedes that the thought of some of his peers behind the wheel makes him "fearful." Still, he opposes tightening restrictions.
"That's OK for other people, but not for me," he says, with tongue only partly in cheek. "I should be able to drive as long as I damn want."
Hedy Davis, director of resident services at Lincolnwood Place, a senior community, sees many incompetent motorists, and has alerted families when necessary. But few are willing to make the tough call, she said. "It's a thorny, complicated issue that can't be solved overnight."
Sometimes, a resolution presents itself. Marla Busch recalled how her late father's bad driving ended when the octogenarian jumped the curb, due to either a seizure or a loss of consciousness. He was taken to the emergency room, where the accident triggered a call to state authorities, who ultimately revoked the man's license.
"It was a real blessing … not just because no one got hurt, but because it took the responsibility out of our hands," said Busch, who often made the 100-mile round trip from her Flossmoor home to Arlington Heights to chauffeur her dad.
In a nod to the psychological fallout of this decision, many hospitals that offer driving evaluations, such as Alexian Rehabilitation Hospital in Elk Grove Village, include social workers and therapists on the team.
It's always easier to let someone else play the bad cop. Mark Rubert is a Lincolnwood banker, not a social worker, but the 61-year-old has carved out a unique specialty of confronting impaired drivers at the request of their children. He starts by showing elders how taxis can be cheaper than car ownership — and winds up with his most persuasive pitch.
"I ask if they can envision a day in the future when they are no longer able to drive. Once they agree, that leaves two choices: either too early or too late. Since none of us know exactly when that day will come, I say, ‘Let's do it today.' "
eslife@tribune.com
brubin@tribune.com
AARP's top 10 signs that it's time for older drivers to hand over the keys:
1. Frequent "close calls" (i.e. near-accidents).
2. Dents, scrapes on the car or on fences, mailboxes, garage doors, curbs etc.
3. Trouble judging gaps in traffic at intersections and on highway entrance/exit ramps.
4. Other drivers honking at you.
5. Getting lost.
6. Difficulty seeing the sides of the road when looking straight ahead.
7. Slower response time; trouble moving foot from gas to brake pedal or confusing the two.
8. Getting distracted easily or having trouble concentrating.
9. Difficulty turning your head to check over shoulder while backing up or changing lanes.
10. Traffic tickets or "warnings" by traffic or law enforcement officers in recent years.
By Erika Slife and Bonnie Miller Rubin
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
April 3, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-elderly-drivers-law-20100403,0,3708078,full.story
Alice Topping was in her convertible, soaking in one of fall's last nice days, when she came to a four-way stop in her Evanston neighborhood just as another car approached.
Assuming the other driver would stop at the sign, she began to drive through the intersection when she felt a hard crash.
"Look what you've done to my car!" the elderly driver cried as he got out of his vehicle. But as the drivers inspected the damage — her right rear side, his front — it was evident who was responsible, Topping said.
"It finally clicked in with him that he had hit my car," she said.
The memory of the 2009 crash came flooding back to Topping on March 24 after she heard that 17-year-old Faith Dremmer, a friend, had been killed when an 86-year-old driver veered across the center line, plowing into her as she biked in southern Illinois with two University of Chicago Laboratory School friends.
It made Topping and countless others wonder: Is enough being done to protect motorists from seniors who shouldn't be driving? When is it time to take the keys away?
"NO ONE over the age of 70 should be permitted to operate a motor vehicle. Period," one outraged reader opined online.
The reality is there are more than 20 million drivers age 70 and older on the roads today, compared with 18 million in 1997, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In Illinois, more than 796,000 residents over 70 have licenses, including one 106-year-old man, according to the secretary of state's office.
The oldest baby boomers will turn 65 next year, the start of an explosion of elderly drivers. By 2030, motorists 65 and older are projected to reach 57 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Despite the growing numbers, fewer seniors were involved in fatal collisions during 1997-2006 than in years past, according to a 2008 insurance institute study. More seniors are self-regulating, avoiding rush hour or night driving. And the health of seniors — which some experts say is more critical to driving skill than age — is improving dramatically.
"The conventional wisdom is that we should restrict elderly drivers or take them off the road, but if you really want to have a big effect on highway safety, you'd take the youngest drivers off the road," said Russ Rader, a spokesman for the insurance institute. "The picture for elderly drivers has been improving over the past decade."
Transportation officials say the difficulty is coming up with a test that can accurately screen out at-risk drivers. But with the rapid growth expected in this population, there is an urgency to improve license renewal policies. A recent study in Iowa suggested that restrictions — such as no driving when headlights are required — for applicable seniors may be an effective approach.
Still, it's a fact that drivers 80 and older have higher accident rates — and are more likely to die in a crash — than younger motorists (except for those 15 to 24), according to the Insurance Institute. And the perception exists that elderly drivers are more dangerous because of high-profile crashes, such as the accident involving Dremmer and a 2007 case in which a 94-year-old woman hit the accelerator and crashed into a Wilmette cafe.
Three teenagers were injured Friday morning in Cicero when an 86-year-old woman trying to park in front of a Cicero restaurant accidentally pressed on the accelerator and broke through concrete blocks, officials said. Citations were pending against the driver.
"How do we identify who is safe to drive and who isn't?" said Elinor Ginzler, an AARP senior vice president. "Illinois has one of the most stringent set of guidelines [for senior drivers] and even … that is not necessarily going to work to recognize an at-risk driver."
Indeed, Illinois has had one of the most rigid renewal cycles in the country since 1990, requiring 81- to 86-year-olds to renew their licenses every two years instead of the standard four — complete with vision and road tests. Those 87 and older have to renew annually. In Wisconsin, by contrast, all drivers, no matter the age, renew licenses every 8 years.
But officials agree that the most hard-nosed government regulations are no substitute for proactive drivers and their families.
After Bert Heiferman of Homewood got into a fender-bender in January, one of his sons suggested it was time for Dad to park his 2000 Mustang for good.
"I was angry," said the 80-year-old. "I thought he was being too overprotective ... and all I could think about was, 'How am I going to get where I need to go?' "
The elder Heiferman, who is still driving, understands this is an emotionally loaded topic for lawmakers and family members. As a pedestrian, he concedes that the thought of some of his peers behind the wheel makes him "fearful." Still, he opposes tightening restrictions.
"That's OK for other people, but not for me," he says, with tongue only partly in cheek. "I should be able to drive as long as I damn want."
Hedy Davis, director of resident services at Lincolnwood Place, a senior community, sees many incompetent motorists, and has alerted families when necessary. But few are willing to make the tough call, she said. "It's a thorny, complicated issue that can't be solved overnight."
Sometimes, a resolution presents itself. Marla Busch recalled how her late father's bad driving ended when the octogenarian jumped the curb, due to either a seizure or a loss of consciousness. He was taken to the emergency room, where the accident triggered a call to state authorities, who ultimately revoked the man's license.
"It was a real blessing … not just because no one got hurt, but because it took the responsibility out of our hands," said Busch, who often made the 100-mile round trip from her Flossmoor home to Arlington Heights to chauffeur her dad.
In a nod to the psychological fallout of this decision, many hospitals that offer driving evaluations, such as Alexian Rehabilitation Hospital in Elk Grove Village, include social workers and therapists on the team.
It's always easier to let someone else play the bad cop. Mark Rubert is a Lincolnwood banker, not a social worker, but the 61-year-old has carved out a unique specialty of confronting impaired drivers at the request of their children. He starts by showing elders how taxis can be cheaper than car ownership — and winds up with his most persuasive pitch.
"I ask if they can envision a day in the future when they are no longer able to drive. Once they agree, that leaves two choices: either too early or too late. Since none of us know exactly when that day will come, I say, ‘Let's do it today.' "
eslife@tribune.com
brubin@tribune.com
AARP's top 10 signs that it's time for older drivers to hand over the keys:
1. Frequent "close calls" (i.e. near-accidents).
2. Dents, scrapes on the car or on fences, mailboxes, garage doors, curbs etc.
3. Trouble judging gaps in traffic at intersections and on highway entrance/exit ramps.
4. Other drivers honking at you.
5. Getting lost.
6. Difficulty seeing the sides of the road when looking straight ahead.
7. Slower response time; trouble moving foot from gas to brake pedal or confusing the two.
8. Getting distracted easily or having trouble concentrating.
9. Difficulty turning your head to check over shoulder while backing up or changing lanes.
10. Traffic tickets or "warnings" by traffic or law enforcement officers in recent years.
GOP chairman Michael Steele is out front, attracting detractors
GOP chairman Michael Steele is out front, attracting detractors
By Philip Rucker and Amy Gardner
Copyright by The Washington Post
Sunday, April 4, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/03/AR2010040303143.html?hpid=topnews
The camera pans across a bucolic river and a sunny cornfield, an American flag flapping in the breeze, as narrator Michael S. Steele waxes about the freedom to dream and achieve. Then, with the Statue of Liberty sweeping into the shot, comes a dire warning that freedom is fragile: Democrats, he says, are "experimenting with America."
The camera zooms in on a bespectacled Steele, who asks viewers for donations. "Our freedom," he says with a smile, "it's worth fighting for."
The television advertisement, which aired in selected markets last month, is vintage Steele -- affable, charismatic and seizing the spotlight. But the ad's star is not running for anything. He's the chairman of the Republican National Committee, with a mandate to promote his party rather than himself.
Steele has put a public face on what had been largely a behind-the-scenes job, hoping to foster what he has called a "hip-hop" Republican renaissance. That high profile has been accompanied by a record of lavish spending and a string of gaffes, leading some party activists to complain that Steele revels in the perks of the office while neglecting some of the onerous work necessary to reclaim majorities in the House and Senate. This narrative grew more damaging last week with the disclosure that RNC staffers approved a $1,900 bill at a Hollywood nightclub that features topless dancers mimicking lesbian sex acts while wearing bondage gear.
Still there have been no calls for Steele's ouster, and some top Republicans have calculated that there is no upside in forcing out the first black chairman of a party largely dominated by white Southerners -- especially not while the GOP is winning under his watch. Steele claimed credit for recent Republican victories in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, telling reporters in January: "I won two governorships and a host of special elections."
Steele, through a spokesman, declined several requests for interviews.
Some Republicans question Steele's contribution to the party's recent successes. Nevertheless, "to the victor go the spoils," said Ron Kaufman, a former RNC chairman who worked against Steele in the leadership race. "Is the party better off today than the day Michael Steele got elected? It's very hard to say no, on almost every level. . . . The bottom line is the coach gets the credit. They're paid to win, and we're winning."
Yet some prominent party leaders, including three former RNC chairmen, are sidestepping his operation with independent efforts to help Republicans win in the critical November midterm elections. And they are raising millions of dollars from the party's biggest donors, some of whom have stopped giving to the RNC amid the furor over Steele's leadership.
Mark DeMoss, who joined the ranks of big RNC donors after giving $15,000 in 2008, said he would not contribute to the RNC this year because he was offended by an internal fundraising strategy that surfaced last month featuring a caricature of President Obama as the Joker and linking Democratic leaders with socialism.
"I am ashamed," DeMoss said of the PowerPoint presentation. "It was an example of incivility . . . It's representative of a growing mind-set within Republican circles, and I don't want to associate with that."
Then came the nightclub story. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian organization, e-mailed several hundred thousand supporters last week urging them not to give money to the RNC. "What I see is a pattern that suggests that they're tone deaf to the values and concerns of so many of the people they're looking to for financial support," Perkins said. "There are some cultural issues at the RNC."
Stepped out of a crowd
To understand how this one-term lieutenant governor from Maryland became his party's national chairman, go back to the day he was selected, Jan. 30, 2009. It was one week after Obama's historic inauguration, and many in the Republican Party were demoralized and seeking new direction.
In a crowded field of candidates for the chairmanship, Steele stood out -- a 6-foot-4, dapper, television-friendly former politician who spoke eloquently of expanding the party's base to include more blacks and Latinos. He offered a break with history as the first African American chairman of what he referred to over and over again as the "party of Lincoln."
"The party has really wallowed in the sewers of racial politics in the country," said NAACP President Ben Jealous, a longtime Steele friend. "Mike Steele is their chance to get back on higher ground."
Steele was distrustful of the staff he inherited and the Beltway strategists who cycled through the committee. "When they drink that Potomac River water awhile, it changes them, and Michael has tried never to drink that water," said John Kane, a close friend who ran the Maryland Republican Party when Steele was lieutenant governor.
So less than a week after his election, Steele asked each staffer to submit a resignation letter. They were told the chairman would decide who could stay, former aides recalled. He let dozens go.
In his early months, Steele, who had been a Fox News Channel commentator, gave several interviews that led to damaging blunders. On CNN, Steele dismissed Rush Limbaugh, a popular voice for the right, as an "entertainer" and said Limbaugh's radio talk show can be "incendiary" and "ugly." He told GQ magazine that abortion was "an individual choice," going against his party's antiabortion platform.
Meanwhile, he was making cosmetic changes to the party operation. Steele disliked the dark-wood furnishings in his office, telling GQ it was "way too male for me." So he had the RNC spend $18,500 on a new wooden desk, armchairs, a couch and art for the walls, according to aides.
When Steele hit the road to meet local volunteers and operatives, he often brought a photographer to document it all. At party headquarters in Washington, the hallways were decorated with jumbo-size pictures of Steele shaking hands.
Steele declined several requests for interviews for this report because he believes he has received unfair scrutiny from The Washington Post dating from his political career in Maryland, his spokesman Doug Heye said. "Profile after profile after profile by The Washington Post that almost borders on stalking," Heye said. "At a certain point you just stop taking it seriously."
This report is based on Steele's public comments and interviews with more than three dozen RNC members, donors, party strategists and state officials, as well as Steele's friends, political opponents and current and former aides. They portrayed a complex man who, like most people, is a combination of traits, not a 100 percent industrious political strategist or a feckless self-promoter.
Many of those interviewed spoke on the record, but in some cases they asked not to be identified to speak frankly or relate private meetings. One such meeting involved a visit Steele made to Capitol Hill a few days after his election that some said set the wrong tone. Calling on the party's congressional leaders, Steele showed up with an entourage that rivaled the president's: two sport-utility vehicles with a half-dozen aides and a driver, according to a congressional aide who was present.
By last fall, his relationship with congressional leaders had soured so much that they lashed out at Steele in a private meeting for outlining a policy agenda on health care. According to Republican aides present, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) forcefully told him: "Quit trying to set policy. Your job is to build the party."
Donations go fast
The typical party chairman, particularly when his party is out of power, focuses on building an effective infrastructure and raising money to help candidates. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Steele does not spend hours poring over the latest polls, recruiting Republicans to run for office or calling major donors for money, his associates said.
An exception is Virginia. Steele won praise for his work on behalf of Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who was elected in November in a landslide. At Steele's direction, the RNC invested more than $9 million in the state, helping fund field operations and get-out-the-vote efforts that helped GOP candidates sweep the statewide races.
"Michael Steele understood you don't just wake up on Labor Day and say, 'Hey, we're going to run a grass-roots campaign,' " said Phil Cox, McDonnell's campaign manager. "They brought a sense of urgency to the ground game, and it showed."
In another metric of success, the RNC is raising money -- lots of it. The party has collected $96 million since Steele was elected, Federal Election Commission records show. But Steele has received a torrent of criticism from party insiders because of the "burn rate." The RNC had more than $22 million on hand when Steele arrived. Since then, the latest FEC filing shows the party spent more than it raised. The RNC has just $9.5 million in the bank as it begins a year with 37 gubernatorial races and dozens of competitive Senate and House contests.
In 2001, by comparison, when George W. Bush was in the White House, the RNC raised $82 million and began the 2002 midterm cycle with $29 million in the bank. And in 2005, the RNC raised nearly $102 million and began the 2006 cycle with $34 million on hand.
A discomfiting number of major donors who gave to the RNC during the Bush years are instead giving to congressional committees and other campaign groups. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former RNC chairman, is raising tens of millions of dollars for the Republican Governors Association, which announced last week that it had $31 million on hand. And two other former party chairmen, Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie, are behind American Crossroads, a new group that aims to raise more than $50 million to help congressional candidates this fall.
Lawrence Bathgate, a past RNC finance chairman, said Steele has asked him for donations. Bathgate said he instead donated to the governors group and individual campaigns. "If my money will help some Republican get elected to the Senate or the House and if we can make some gains, that's better for my country than giving it to the RNC to see what they're going to do with it," Bathgate said.
Heye said the RNC supports groups such as American Crossroads. "We need as many people and as many organizations fighting back as possible," he said.
Under Steele, the RNC has a record of lavish spending with its donors' money. The 2009 Christmas party at the Newseum was catered by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck's new restaurant, The Source. The winter meeting was held at a beach resort in Honolulu. The RNC budget grew in almost every expense category -- private jets, limousines, hotels, flower arrangements, catering services.
Heye said the Democratic National Committee, led by former Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine, has spent similar sums of money on private car services and fancy hotels, but has not faced the same criticism. "The media has been absolutely derelict in their duty," Heye said.
Even Steele's detractors defended some of the RNC's expenditures. With the party out of power, they say, donors can not be entertained at the White House, so the RNC must shell out for classy events to raise money. But they said there is a problem with appearances, particularly with the private charter flights.
"The reality is that we're being portrayed right now as the party of limousines, $600 hotel rooms, lavish meals," said Katon Dawson, a top operative from South Carolina who lost to Steele in the chairman's race. "I understand there are things you need to do that are necessary for top donors, but we've fought real hard not to be portrayed as that."
The infighting over the RNC's finances could be dismissed as inside-the-Beltway fodder of little interest to voters -- except for two scandals, just four weeks apart, that broke through the noise.
In early March, a leaked 72-page PowerPoint presentation revealed the blunt appeal to fear the party uses to raise money. Steele condemned the presentation after it surfaced. Even so, Heye said "no one was fired."
Then there was Voyeur. Steele was not at the Hollywood nightclub. He did not pick up the $1,946.25 tab for an after-party for young donors. Nor did he authorize his staff to reimburse the GOP consultant who did. But Steele, who has made himself the face of the RNC, still found himself engulfed in the scandal and responded with new procedures.
"At the chairman's direction, we've put through firmer controls in place to ensure that this doesn't happen again. And that goes to what kind of expenses are allowed and the review procedures when those take place," Heye said. "Every expense will be scrutinized."
The messenger
Steele's supporters say he believes he can best build the party by being an effective messenger. He sees his party as a consumer brand that needs to be marketed through as many appearances and blog entries and photo spreads as possible, associates said. "He's there to carry our message," said Dick Wadhams, the Colorado GOP chairman.
Seizing the spotlight carries risks, though. As chairman, Steele is paid a salary of $223,500. But he has drawn criticism for also delivering paid speeches at universities and for trade groups, charging as much as $20,000. Although Steele is allowed by RNC rules to earn other income, three of his predecessors -- Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., Jim Nicholson and Rich Bond -- have publicly suggested Steele is leveraging his position for personal gain.
"Mike is a working man from a working family," Jealous said. "If he had the wealth of a politi-crat, if he were a billionaire, he would happily work for a dollar a year. But he's not, and people should not begrudge him taking steps to support his family."
He is selling a new book -- the source of another kerfuffle. "Right Now" is a 12-step blueprint for Republicans to regain power. But during a promotional interview in January (before the recent health-care debate), Steele said Republicans won't win back the House this fall, a comment that caused agitation on Capitol Hill.
"Get with the program," he thundered back on KTRS, a St. Louis radio station. "I'm the chairman. Deal with it."
In the weeks since, Steele's relationships with Republicans in Congress have improved, Heye said. "It's been night and day."
Steele speaks of Washington with contempt and has few friends among the insider set. But he is a popular draw for party activists outside the Beltway. When he visited Denver last year to speak at a fundraiser, he drew an overflow crowd to the downtown Marriott. "We had to turn people away from the dinner because so many people wanted to come," Wadhams said.
Steele often says he is most comfortable with the conservative grass roots. He became the first national GOP leader to sit down with organizers of the "tea party" movement in February and has been seeking ways to mobilize their energy to help Republican candidates in November.
Steele is not on the ballot, but his fate could be determined at the polls. His term ends in January, and he has not said whether he will seek a second term.
"Look, my style is not something you get used to very easily. I know that," Steele told reporters in Hawaii earlier this year. "But at the end of the day, the members of this party, and this is what they reinforced to me, charged me to do two things: raise money and win elections. On those two fronts, I think we're doing okay."
As Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist, said, "We only keep score in politics every two years. . . . If we win a bunch of seats, he's going to be fine. If we don't win a bunch of seats, he's not going to be fine."
By Philip Rucker and Amy Gardner
Copyright by The Washington Post
Sunday, April 4, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/03/AR2010040303143.html?hpid=topnews
The camera pans across a bucolic river and a sunny cornfield, an American flag flapping in the breeze, as narrator Michael S. Steele waxes about the freedom to dream and achieve. Then, with the Statue of Liberty sweeping into the shot, comes a dire warning that freedom is fragile: Democrats, he says, are "experimenting with America."
The camera zooms in on a bespectacled Steele, who asks viewers for donations. "Our freedom," he says with a smile, "it's worth fighting for."
The television advertisement, which aired in selected markets last month, is vintage Steele -- affable, charismatic and seizing the spotlight. But the ad's star is not running for anything. He's the chairman of the Republican National Committee, with a mandate to promote his party rather than himself.
Steele has put a public face on what had been largely a behind-the-scenes job, hoping to foster what he has called a "hip-hop" Republican renaissance. That high profile has been accompanied by a record of lavish spending and a string of gaffes, leading some party activists to complain that Steele revels in the perks of the office while neglecting some of the onerous work necessary to reclaim majorities in the House and Senate. This narrative grew more damaging last week with the disclosure that RNC staffers approved a $1,900 bill at a Hollywood nightclub that features topless dancers mimicking lesbian sex acts while wearing bondage gear.
Still there have been no calls for Steele's ouster, and some top Republicans have calculated that there is no upside in forcing out the first black chairman of a party largely dominated by white Southerners -- especially not while the GOP is winning under his watch. Steele claimed credit for recent Republican victories in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, telling reporters in January: "I won two governorships and a host of special elections."
Steele, through a spokesman, declined several requests for interviews.
Some Republicans question Steele's contribution to the party's recent successes. Nevertheless, "to the victor go the spoils," said Ron Kaufman, a former RNC chairman who worked against Steele in the leadership race. "Is the party better off today than the day Michael Steele got elected? It's very hard to say no, on almost every level. . . . The bottom line is the coach gets the credit. They're paid to win, and we're winning."
Yet some prominent party leaders, including three former RNC chairmen, are sidestepping his operation with independent efforts to help Republicans win in the critical November midterm elections. And they are raising millions of dollars from the party's biggest donors, some of whom have stopped giving to the RNC amid the furor over Steele's leadership.
Mark DeMoss, who joined the ranks of big RNC donors after giving $15,000 in 2008, said he would not contribute to the RNC this year because he was offended by an internal fundraising strategy that surfaced last month featuring a caricature of President Obama as the Joker and linking Democratic leaders with socialism.
"I am ashamed," DeMoss said of the PowerPoint presentation. "It was an example of incivility . . . It's representative of a growing mind-set within Republican circles, and I don't want to associate with that."
Then came the nightclub story. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian organization, e-mailed several hundred thousand supporters last week urging them not to give money to the RNC. "What I see is a pattern that suggests that they're tone deaf to the values and concerns of so many of the people they're looking to for financial support," Perkins said. "There are some cultural issues at the RNC."
Stepped out of a crowd
To understand how this one-term lieutenant governor from Maryland became his party's national chairman, go back to the day he was selected, Jan. 30, 2009. It was one week after Obama's historic inauguration, and many in the Republican Party were demoralized and seeking new direction.
In a crowded field of candidates for the chairmanship, Steele stood out -- a 6-foot-4, dapper, television-friendly former politician who spoke eloquently of expanding the party's base to include more blacks and Latinos. He offered a break with history as the first African American chairman of what he referred to over and over again as the "party of Lincoln."
"The party has really wallowed in the sewers of racial politics in the country," said NAACP President Ben Jealous, a longtime Steele friend. "Mike Steele is their chance to get back on higher ground."
Steele was distrustful of the staff he inherited and the Beltway strategists who cycled through the committee. "When they drink that Potomac River water awhile, it changes them, and Michael has tried never to drink that water," said John Kane, a close friend who ran the Maryland Republican Party when Steele was lieutenant governor.
So less than a week after his election, Steele asked each staffer to submit a resignation letter. They were told the chairman would decide who could stay, former aides recalled. He let dozens go.
In his early months, Steele, who had been a Fox News Channel commentator, gave several interviews that led to damaging blunders. On CNN, Steele dismissed Rush Limbaugh, a popular voice for the right, as an "entertainer" and said Limbaugh's radio talk show can be "incendiary" and "ugly." He told GQ magazine that abortion was "an individual choice," going against his party's antiabortion platform.
Meanwhile, he was making cosmetic changes to the party operation. Steele disliked the dark-wood furnishings in his office, telling GQ it was "way too male for me." So he had the RNC spend $18,500 on a new wooden desk, armchairs, a couch and art for the walls, according to aides.
When Steele hit the road to meet local volunteers and operatives, he often brought a photographer to document it all. At party headquarters in Washington, the hallways were decorated with jumbo-size pictures of Steele shaking hands.
Steele declined several requests for interviews for this report because he believes he has received unfair scrutiny from The Washington Post dating from his political career in Maryland, his spokesman Doug Heye said. "Profile after profile after profile by The Washington Post that almost borders on stalking," Heye said. "At a certain point you just stop taking it seriously."
This report is based on Steele's public comments and interviews with more than three dozen RNC members, donors, party strategists and state officials, as well as Steele's friends, political opponents and current and former aides. They portrayed a complex man who, like most people, is a combination of traits, not a 100 percent industrious political strategist or a feckless self-promoter.
Many of those interviewed spoke on the record, but in some cases they asked not to be identified to speak frankly or relate private meetings. One such meeting involved a visit Steele made to Capitol Hill a few days after his election that some said set the wrong tone. Calling on the party's congressional leaders, Steele showed up with an entourage that rivaled the president's: two sport-utility vehicles with a half-dozen aides and a driver, according to a congressional aide who was present.
By last fall, his relationship with congressional leaders had soured so much that they lashed out at Steele in a private meeting for outlining a policy agenda on health care. According to Republican aides present, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) forcefully told him: "Quit trying to set policy. Your job is to build the party."
Donations go fast
The typical party chairman, particularly when his party is out of power, focuses on building an effective infrastructure and raising money to help candidates. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Steele does not spend hours poring over the latest polls, recruiting Republicans to run for office or calling major donors for money, his associates said.
An exception is Virginia. Steele won praise for his work on behalf of Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who was elected in November in a landslide. At Steele's direction, the RNC invested more than $9 million in the state, helping fund field operations and get-out-the-vote efforts that helped GOP candidates sweep the statewide races.
"Michael Steele understood you don't just wake up on Labor Day and say, 'Hey, we're going to run a grass-roots campaign,' " said Phil Cox, McDonnell's campaign manager. "They brought a sense of urgency to the ground game, and it showed."
In another metric of success, the RNC is raising money -- lots of it. The party has collected $96 million since Steele was elected, Federal Election Commission records show. But Steele has received a torrent of criticism from party insiders because of the "burn rate." The RNC had more than $22 million on hand when Steele arrived. Since then, the latest FEC filing shows the party spent more than it raised. The RNC has just $9.5 million in the bank as it begins a year with 37 gubernatorial races and dozens of competitive Senate and House contests.
In 2001, by comparison, when George W. Bush was in the White House, the RNC raised $82 million and began the 2002 midterm cycle with $29 million in the bank. And in 2005, the RNC raised nearly $102 million and began the 2006 cycle with $34 million on hand.
A discomfiting number of major donors who gave to the RNC during the Bush years are instead giving to congressional committees and other campaign groups. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former RNC chairman, is raising tens of millions of dollars for the Republican Governors Association, which announced last week that it had $31 million on hand. And two other former party chairmen, Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie, are behind American Crossroads, a new group that aims to raise more than $50 million to help congressional candidates this fall.
Lawrence Bathgate, a past RNC finance chairman, said Steele has asked him for donations. Bathgate said he instead donated to the governors group and individual campaigns. "If my money will help some Republican get elected to the Senate or the House and if we can make some gains, that's better for my country than giving it to the RNC to see what they're going to do with it," Bathgate said.
Heye said the RNC supports groups such as American Crossroads. "We need as many people and as many organizations fighting back as possible," he said.
Under Steele, the RNC has a record of lavish spending with its donors' money. The 2009 Christmas party at the Newseum was catered by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck's new restaurant, The Source. The winter meeting was held at a beach resort in Honolulu. The RNC budget grew in almost every expense category -- private jets, limousines, hotels, flower arrangements, catering services.
Heye said the Democratic National Committee, led by former Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine, has spent similar sums of money on private car services and fancy hotels, but has not faced the same criticism. "The media has been absolutely derelict in their duty," Heye said.
Even Steele's detractors defended some of the RNC's expenditures. With the party out of power, they say, donors can not be entertained at the White House, so the RNC must shell out for classy events to raise money. But they said there is a problem with appearances, particularly with the private charter flights.
"The reality is that we're being portrayed right now as the party of limousines, $600 hotel rooms, lavish meals," said Katon Dawson, a top operative from South Carolina who lost to Steele in the chairman's race. "I understand there are things you need to do that are necessary for top donors, but we've fought real hard not to be portrayed as that."
The infighting over the RNC's finances could be dismissed as inside-the-Beltway fodder of little interest to voters -- except for two scandals, just four weeks apart, that broke through the noise.
In early March, a leaked 72-page PowerPoint presentation revealed the blunt appeal to fear the party uses to raise money. Steele condemned the presentation after it surfaced. Even so, Heye said "no one was fired."
Then there was Voyeur. Steele was not at the Hollywood nightclub. He did not pick up the $1,946.25 tab for an after-party for young donors. Nor did he authorize his staff to reimburse the GOP consultant who did. But Steele, who has made himself the face of the RNC, still found himself engulfed in the scandal and responded with new procedures.
"At the chairman's direction, we've put through firmer controls in place to ensure that this doesn't happen again. And that goes to what kind of expenses are allowed and the review procedures when those take place," Heye said. "Every expense will be scrutinized."
The messenger
Steele's supporters say he believes he can best build the party by being an effective messenger. He sees his party as a consumer brand that needs to be marketed through as many appearances and blog entries and photo spreads as possible, associates said. "He's there to carry our message," said Dick Wadhams, the Colorado GOP chairman.
Seizing the spotlight carries risks, though. As chairman, Steele is paid a salary of $223,500. But he has drawn criticism for also delivering paid speeches at universities and for trade groups, charging as much as $20,000. Although Steele is allowed by RNC rules to earn other income, three of his predecessors -- Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., Jim Nicholson and Rich Bond -- have publicly suggested Steele is leveraging his position for personal gain.
"Mike is a working man from a working family," Jealous said. "If he had the wealth of a politi-crat, if he were a billionaire, he would happily work for a dollar a year. But he's not, and people should not begrudge him taking steps to support his family."
He is selling a new book -- the source of another kerfuffle. "Right Now" is a 12-step blueprint for Republicans to regain power. But during a promotional interview in January (before the recent health-care debate), Steele said Republicans won't win back the House this fall, a comment that caused agitation on Capitol Hill.
"Get with the program," he thundered back on KTRS, a St. Louis radio station. "I'm the chairman. Deal with it."
In the weeks since, Steele's relationships with Republicans in Congress have improved, Heye said. "It's been night and day."
Steele speaks of Washington with contempt and has few friends among the insider set. But he is a popular draw for party activists outside the Beltway. When he visited Denver last year to speak at a fundraiser, he drew an overflow crowd to the downtown Marriott. "We had to turn people away from the dinner because so many people wanted to come," Wadhams said.
Steele often says he is most comfortable with the conservative grass roots. He became the first national GOP leader to sit down with organizers of the "tea party" movement in February and has been seeking ways to mobilize their energy to help Republican candidates in November.
Steele is not on the ballot, but his fate could be determined at the polls. His term ends in January, and he has not said whether he will seek a second term.
"Look, my style is not something you get used to very easily. I know that," Steele told reporters in Hawaii earlier this year. "But at the end of the day, the members of this party, and this is what they reinforced to me, charged me to do two things: raise money and win elections. On those two fronts, I think we're doing okay."
As Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican strategist, said, "We only keep score in politics every two years. . . . If we win a bunch of seats, he's going to be fine. If we don't win a bunch of seats, he's not going to be fine."
City Endorses New Policy for Treatment of H.I.V.
City Endorses New Policy for Treatment of H.I.V.
By SABIN RUSSELL
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/us/04sftreatment.html?hpw
In a major shift of H.I.V. treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting — sometimes years — for signs that their immune systems have started to fail.
The new, controversial city guidelines, to be announced next week by the Department of Public Health, may be the most forceful anywhere in their endorsement of early treatment against H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
Ever since combinations of antiviral drugs were found to slow progression of the disease in the mid-1990s, doctors and patients have wrestled with the question of when to begin a lifetime regimen of costly and sometimes toxic medicines. The answer remains in dispute, but public health leaders here are now making a case for a change.
Behind the policy switch is mounting evidence that patients who start early are more likely to live longer, and less likely to suffer a variety of ailments — including heart disease, kidney failure and cancer — that plague long-term survivors. Studies suggest that in the early years of infection, when a patient may show few signs of immune system failure, the virus is in fact causing permanent damage that becomes evident later.
For instance, in older patients who finally start taking the drugs, the effects of chronic inflammation take their toll.
“The impact on health risk is comparable to that of diabetes,” said Dr. Steven G. Deeks, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “Their immune system may look like that of someone 30 years older.”
Dr. Diane V. Havlir, chief of the H.I.V./AIDS division at San Francisco General Hospital, said the new policy was already in effect for her patients. Although a decision whether or not to take the medicine rests with the patient, all those testing positive for H.I.V. will be offered combination therapy, with advice to pursue it.
“The history of H.I.V. disease has always been about change,” she said. “We pride ourselves on working quickly with new data.”
At the public hospital’s H.I.V. clinic, a 30-year-old man is mulling advice from Dr. C. Bradley Hare to start on antiviral drugs. He was infected four years ago, but his T-cell count, a measure of infection-fighting white blood cells, is 735, comparable to that of an uninfected, healthy adult. He is buff and athletic and feels good.
The man has decided to keep waiting. “Once you start the drugs, you can’t stop,” he said. “You know how they say, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?’ ”
Dr. Hare has been following research on early treatment, and for the last several years he has asked his patients to think about it. Now, he is recommending it outright. He said most of his patients did not have serious problems with drug side effects.
“A lot of times they have a sense of relief when they start the meds,” he said.
The turning point in San Francisco’s thinking may have been a study in The New England Journal of Medicine on April 1, 2009, that compared death rates among thousands of North American H.I.V. patients. Dr. Mari Kitahata, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, and her team of researchers found that patients who put off therapy until their immune system showed signs of damage had a nearly twofold greater risk of dying — from any cause — than those who started treatment when their T-cell counts were above 500.
There is another motivation prompting the change. Reducing the level of virus in the population of infected people may reduce the spread of the disease.
“I do anticipate it will drive down the rates of new infections,” Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, San Francisco director of public health, said. “It’s a nice, secondary benefit of this new policy.”
Dr. Katz said that despite cuts in health budgets, a policy to add to the number of H.I.V. patients taking expensive drugs made economic sense. “H.I.V. medications have been continually proven to be cost effective,” he said, “and in this case, it is also the right thing to do.”
The program is being carried out without a clear picture of its cost to city and state health agencies. Antiviral drugs can cost $12,000 a year, consuming $350 million of the budget of California AIDS Drug Assistance Plan.
Dr. Michelle Roland, chief of the state’s Office of AIDS, said she and her counterparts across the country were working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to estimate the added cost of early treatment.
In San Francisco, up to 2,000 people know they are H.I.V. positive, have healthy T-cell counts and are not yet on treatment, according to the city. Cost estimates are complicated by unknowns, like the number of patients choosing to participate, how close they were to needing treatment under the previous system and whether they had private insurance.
When the first combinations of AIDS drugs came out in 1996, the thinking was “hit early, and hit hard.” But as patients battled nasty side effects, like diarrhea and disfiguring shifts in body fat, therapy was deferred until T-cell counts fell as low as 200.
Today, with safer drugs, quick viral suppression is back in fashion.
“The field is moving, inexorably, to earlier and earlier therapy,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He called San Francisco’s decision “an important step in that direction.”
But the proposal is highly controversial, even in San Francisco.
“It’s just too risky,” said Dr. Jay Levy, the U.C.S.F. virologist who was among the first to identify the cause of AIDS. The new drugs may be less toxic, Dr. Levy said, but no one knows the effects of taking them for decades.
San Francisco’s decision follows a split vote in December by a 38-member federal panel on treatment guidelines. Only half of the H.I.V. experts gathered by the Department of Health and Human Services favored starting drugs in patients with healthy levels of more than 500 T-cells.
One panel member, James D. Neaton of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, contends that a rigorous, randomized clinical trial is needed to show whether early intervention works. The risks of early treatment — giving powerful drugs to people at low risk of disease — - could outweigh the “modest predicted benefit,” Dr. Neaton wrote in an e-mail message. “That is why we do randomized trials.”
In 2009, the University of Minnesota began a study to find that proof. Results are expected in 2015.
Dr. Lisa C. Capaldini, who runs an AIDS practice in the Castro district, also has strong reservations. “H.I.V. behaves differently in different people,” she said.
Although Dr. Capaldini recognizes that today’s drugs are a vast improvement over earlier therapies, the program, she said “is not ready for prime time.”
But the changes make sense to Dr. Stephen Follansbee, director of H.I.V. Services for Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, who oversees a program that covers 2,100 people with the virus.
“The idea of living in happy symbiosis with this virus is delusional,” Dr. Follansbee said. “If you have a fire in one part of the house, but not in the living room, you don’t wait for it to reach the living room before you call the fire department.”
This article is part of our expanded Bay Area coverage.
The Bay Area Blog features coverage of public affairs, commerce, culture and lifestyles in the region. We invite your comments at bayarea@nytimes.com.
By SABIN RUSSELL
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/us/04sftreatment.html?hpw
In a major shift of H.I.V. treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting — sometimes years — for signs that their immune systems have started to fail.
The new, controversial city guidelines, to be announced next week by the Department of Public Health, may be the most forceful anywhere in their endorsement of early treatment against H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
Ever since combinations of antiviral drugs were found to slow progression of the disease in the mid-1990s, doctors and patients have wrestled with the question of when to begin a lifetime regimen of costly and sometimes toxic medicines. The answer remains in dispute, but public health leaders here are now making a case for a change.
Behind the policy switch is mounting evidence that patients who start early are more likely to live longer, and less likely to suffer a variety of ailments — including heart disease, kidney failure and cancer — that plague long-term survivors. Studies suggest that in the early years of infection, when a patient may show few signs of immune system failure, the virus is in fact causing permanent damage that becomes evident later.
For instance, in older patients who finally start taking the drugs, the effects of chronic inflammation take their toll.
“The impact on health risk is comparable to that of diabetes,” said Dr. Steven G. Deeks, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “Their immune system may look like that of someone 30 years older.”
Dr. Diane V. Havlir, chief of the H.I.V./AIDS division at San Francisco General Hospital, said the new policy was already in effect for her patients. Although a decision whether or not to take the medicine rests with the patient, all those testing positive for H.I.V. will be offered combination therapy, with advice to pursue it.
“The history of H.I.V. disease has always been about change,” she said. “We pride ourselves on working quickly with new data.”
At the public hospital’s H.I.V. clinic, a 30-year-old man is mulling advice from Dr. C. Bradley Hare to start on antiviral drugs. He was infected four years ago, but his T-cell count, a measure of infection-fighting white blood cells, is 735, comparable to that of an uninfected, healthy adult. He is buff and athletic and feels good.
The man has decided to keep waiting. “Once you start the drugs, you can’t stop,” he said. “You know how they say, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?’ ”
Dr. Hare has been following research on early treatment, and for the last several years he has asked his patients to think about it. Now, he is recommending it outright. He said most of his patients did not have serious problems with drug side effects.
“A lot of times they have a sense of relief when they start the meds,” he said.
The turning point in San Francisco’s thinking may have been a study in The New England Journal of Medicine on April 1, 2009, that compared death rates among thousands of North American H.I.V. patients. Dr. Mari Kitahata, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, and her team of researchers found that patients who put off therapy until their immune system showed signs of damage had a nearly twofold greater risk of dying — from any cause — than those who started treatment when their T-cell counts were above 500.
There is another motivation prompting the change. Reducing the level of virus in the population of infected people may reduce the spread of the disease.
“I do anticipate it will drive down the rates of new infections,” Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, San Francisco director of public health, said. “It’s a nice, secondary benefit of this new policy.”
Dr. Katz said that despite cuts in health budgets, a policy to add to the number of H.I.V. patients taking expensive drugs made economic sense. “H.I.V. medications have been continually proven to be cost effective,” he said, “and in this case, it is also the right thing to do.”
The program is being carried out without a clear picture of its cost to city and state health agencies. Antiviral drugs can cost $12,000 a year, consuming $350 million of the budget of California AIDS Drug Assistance Plan.
Dr. Michelle Roland, chief of the state’s Office of AIDS, said she and her counterparts across the country were working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to estimate the added cost of early treatment.
In San Francisco, up to 2,000 people know they are H.I.V. positive, have healthy T-cell counts and are not yet on treatment, according to the city. Cost estimates are complicated by unknowns, like the number of patients choosing to participate, how close they were to needing treatment under the previous system and whether they had private insurance.
When the first combinations of AIDS drugs came out in 1996, the thinking was “hit early, and hit hard.” But as patients battled nasty side effects, like diarrhea and disfiguring shifts in body fat, therapy was deferred until T-cell counts fell as low as 200.
Today, with safer drugs, quick viral suppression is back in fashion.
“The field is moving, inexorably, to earlier and earlier therapy,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He called San Francisco’s decision “an important step in that direction.”
But the proposal is highly controversial, even in San Francisco.
“It’s just too risky,” said Dr. Jay Levy, the U.C.S.F. virologist who was among the first to identify the cause of AIDS. The new drugs may be less toxic, Dr. Levy said, but no one knows the effects of taking them for decades.
San Francisco’s decision follows a split vote in December by a 38-member federal panel on treatment guidelines. Only half of the H.I.V. experts gathered by the Department of Health and Human Services favored starting drugs in patients with healthy levels of more than 500 T-cells.
One panel member, James D. Neaton of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, contends that a rigorous, randomized clinical trial is needed to show whether early intervention works. The risks of early treatment — giving powerful drugs to people at low risk of disease — - could outweigh the “modest predicted benefit,” Dr. Neaton wrote in an e-mail message. “That is why we do randomized trials.”
In 2009, the University of Minnesota began a study to find that proof. Results are expected in 2015.
Dr. Lisa C. Capaldini, who runs an AIDS practice in the Castro district, also has strong reservations. “H.I.V. behaves differently in different people,” she said.
Although Dr. Capaldini recognizes that today’s drugs are a vast improvement over earlier therapies, the program, she said “is not ready for prime time.”
But the changes make sense to Dr. Stephen Follansbee, director of H.I.V. Services for Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, who oversees a program that covers 2,100 people with the virus.
“The idea of living in happy symbiosis with this virus is delusional,” Dr. Follansbee said. “If you have a fire in one part of the house, but not in the living room, you don’t wait for it to reach the living room before you call the fire department.”
This article is part of our expanded Bay Area coverage.
The Bay Area Blog features coverage of public affairs, commerce, culture and lifestyles in the region. We invite your comments at bayarea@nytimes.com.
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