Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Mercy Quilt #3

Kathy B's Brown and Cream Churn Dashes are a flimsy! I discovered I had some creamy fabric with a pale geometric motif (click to enlarge picture) that would be not only fine but actually just right for the setting triangles. As you can see, I really could not endure that sore thumb block that had been in the lower left corner, so I left it out and made a nice replacement. Setting a top on point with lattice and cornerstones is always a logistical challenge for me and I was delighted that I got this one together without having to rip out at all!

Kathy had sent fabric for backing, so I'll piece that tomorrow, I imagine. On Saturday I'll pick up the batts for these three mercy quilts as well as some floss for tying and whatever else I need in the way of backs. I don't anticipate putting these quilts together until summertime, but that's just around the corner and I need to be ready! I have a fantasy of a major binding fest during the Summer Olympics!

Tonight I began work on something new. Our guild is having a challenge -- each participant brought a plain brown paper bag full of scraps from one project and, sight unseen, we each brought home someone else's bag. Our task is to make a wall hanging, somewhere between 12 and 36 inches, using these scraps and we're permitted to add up to one light and one dark. There will be some sort of a contest with prizes, I believe, in October. The scraps I brought home were pretty far from my taste; they were brown and gold florals for the most part with a lot of metallic gold in the print. I've been considering the options for weeks, now, and finally have come up with an idea. I began the center basket (what else!?) tonight and will try to continue until it is finished. It isn't at all easy for me to sew on fabric that I don't care for.

Vested interests: AZ Regents are prison profiteers

Excellent editorial - the abuses at Arizona's CCA prisons and detention centers alone are appalling. Regent Anne Mariucci should also resign from the CCA board. If both she and DiConcini fail to do so, I think it's time for direct action....

who wants more prisons?
AZ Regents do...


-----------from the Arizona Daily Wildcat-----------

Regent DeConcini should resign from CCA board

By ELISA L. MEZA, 
GABRIEL M. SCHIVONE, 
RAUL ALCARAZ OCHOA  
Published March 27, 2012

From statewide political rhetoric and policy proposals to the national Republican debates, there is no doubt that a raging anti-migrant sentiment is spreading across the nation, including the Arizona Board of Regents.

As students at the UA, we are bombarded by this rhetoric. So who profits from targeting and criminalizing the migrant community?

Regent Dennis DeConcini, a former senator, is also on the Board of Directors for the Corrections Corporation of America. 

The CCA is the nation’s largest for-profit prison corporation, holding approximately 75,000 state and federal inmates in more than 66 facilities around the country. This includes six prisons here in Arizona that import prisoners from the states of California and Hawaii, but most importantly the prisons import non-citizen detainees in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As a publicly owned corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the CCA’s sole purpose is to make profits for its stockholders through increased incarceration. Indeed, DeConcini is a shareholder who shares in the earnings generated by the CCA

Furthermore, public records and recent reports show the CCA invests heavily in lobbying at the federal and state levels and makes substantial contributions to candidates for political office through lobby consulting firms and its political action committee. More people behind bars means more contracts for the CCA, and Senate Bill 1070 proved to be a good way to get more contracts.

The CCA, through its lobbyists and Political Action Committees, made donations to Gov. Jan Brewer and legislators sponsoring SB 1070. Moreover, both Sen. Russell Pearce and the CCA were members of the public safety committee of the American Legislative Exchange Council, where SB 1070 was approved as “model legislation.” 

DeConcini publicly declared his opposition to SB 1070. However, through his service on the board of the CCA, he directly profits from the incarceration of undocumented families. If DeConcini truly opposes the separation of families, he should resign from his position on the CCA board.

The CCA is an unrepentant profiteer, operating at the expense of prisoners, their families, local communities and the public. Specifically, the CCA immorally profits from depriving hard-working families of their liberty and violating their human rights. The CCA manipulates public policy through lobbying efforts and campaign donations to political candidates via PACs. 

Trusting incarceration to a private entity unnecessarily compounds prisoners’ suffering. Private prison operators’ push for efficiency, and seeking profit inevitably leads to severe violations of prisoners’ most fundamental rights. 

The solution is not in trying to reform an inherently broken system, but rather in working toward achieving a society that no longer sees criminalization and incarceration as the de-facto response to every social problem.

DeConcini has worked for many years in public office and continues to hold leadership positions affecting student life in Arizona as a member of the Board of Regents. His support of an industry that profits from depriving human beings of their liberty stands in sharp contrast to his public statements in which he’s portrayed himself as a champion of the underserved. As a CCA shareholder, he personally benefits from policies driven by racism and corporate greed.

Anne L. Mariucci, another member of the Board of Regents, is also a member of the CCA’s Board of Directors.

Today, UA groups including No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine are running a similar divestment campaign to support migrant and Palestinian rights. These groups have joined a community-based coalition demanding that university leaders oppose profiting from the prison industry.

A new community coalition of local organizations called Fuerza Comunitaria Contra la Industria Carcelaria — including Corazón de Tucson, The Restoration Project, Coalición de Derechos Humanos, American Friends Service Committee, Tucson Childcare Collective, the Southside Worker Center, UA Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine and No More Deaths UA Chapter — call for former DeConcini to resign from Board of Directors of the Corrections Corporation of America.

We actively organize toward a society based on the principles of equality, justice, respect and freedom for all. As students at the UA, we need to hold our own representatives accountable.

As we rally against Pell Grants being taken away, tuition hikes and rising textbook prices, we also need to stand in solidarity with the broader community that we are a part of.

— Elisa L. Meza and Gabriel M. Schivone are former Daily Wildcat employees.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Thiopental controversy: Shame on the FDA; Tough luck to the dead.

Good for the AZ Republic for staying on top of this..

----------------------

Judge: FDA allowed state to illegally gain execution drug



The U.S. Food and Drug Administration violated the law by allowing Arizona and other states to bypass regulations and import unapproved drugs to carry out executions, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Tuesday.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed on behalf of three Arizona death-row inmates -- two of whom have already been executed -- and inmates in Tennessee and California.

• E-mails detail FDA's efforts to avoid responsibility regarding execution drug
• Arizona Supreme Court puts off date for execution
• State Supreme Court weighs killer's execution as FDA exits dispute over drug
 
Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the FDA to notify state corrections departments, including Arizona's, that they must surrender the drug, sodium thiopental, to the FDA. He also barred any future shipments from entering the country.

Leon called the FDA's decision to allow such shipments "contrary to law, arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion."

However, his ruling established no penalties for the FDA's conduct and will not affect Arizona's execution schedule or procedures.

His ruling comes 18 months after The Arizona Republic disclosed that the Arizona Department of Corrections had obtained the drug from a supplier in Great Britain.

That discovery set off an international furor in which Britain and Italy shut down exports of thiopental.

The Corrections Department fought to conceal how it obtained the drug, but the FDA ultimately was identified as the agency that allowed -- even assisted -- the illegal importation.

Eventually, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration confiscated the drug from several states and informed Arizona that it could not be used in subsequent executions.

The state has since altered its execution protocol to include a different drug.

In his ruling, Leon wrote, "In the final analysis, the FDA appears to be simply wrapping itself in the flag of law-enforcement discretion to justify its authority and masquerade an otherwise seemingly callous indifference to the health consequences of those imminently facing the executioner's needle. How utterly disappointing!"

Neither the FDA nor the Arizona Attorney General's Office responded to requests for comment Tuesday.

Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Phoenix, one of the principal attorneys on the case, said he was not surprised by the ruling.

"The law is quite clear that unapproved drugs cannot be imported. The FDA went above the law in allowing these drugs into the country," Baich said. "We brought the illegal-importation issue to the attention of the Arizona Department of Corrections and the FDA almost two years ago, but we were ignored."

Corrections officials said Tuesday that they are no longer in possession of the thiopental, which is still listed as an option in its execution protocol.

Thiopental is a short-acting barbiturate that was used as part of a three-drug, lethal-injection cocktail. It served as anesthesia before a paralyzing drug and a heart-stopping drug were administered. But the sole U.S. supplier of thiopental stopped producing it in 2009 because it had largely been replaced in hospitals by more modern drugs.

The thiopental shortage became apparent in May 2010, when Ohio had to scramble to obtain enough to carry out an execution. That September, the Arizona Department of Corrections, following the lead of other states, obtained the drug from a supplier in London that was not authorized to export it to the U.S.

The Republic first reported the questionable import in October 2010, the day before it was used to execute Jeffrey Landrigan. That information caused the British and Italian governments to stop exports of thiopental to the U.S. for use in executions. It is illegal for anyone in the European Economic Community to assist in capital punishment in other countries.

The FDA initially told The Republic that there was no legal mechanism to import the drug. The state Corrections Department repeatedly denied that it had gone outside legal channels to obtain it. Then, in December 2010, an FDA spokeswoman told The Republic that it would exercise "enforcement discretion" on the matter.

But e-mails obtained by The Republic under the federal Freedom of Information Act showed that FDA officials had allowed the shipments. Many of the e-mails had been redacted, but the encryption had failed, revealing that the FDA, with the approval of unnamed people at the White House, shifted responsibility for allowing the drug's import to U.S. customs officials.

That was done to avoid legal liability and to shield the FDA from any appearance of involvement with the death penalty. The FDA asked The Republic to return the unredacted e-mails. The newspaper declined.
One high-placed FDA official wrote in November 2010 that even if the agency issued a statement that it had not reviewed the drugs for "safety, efficacy or quality ... it will insert FDA into the death-penalty cases because attorneys will try to use the statement as a means to open proceedings on the safety of the imported drugs."

In a separate court proceeding in U.S. District Court in Phoenix last December, a former state Corrections official testified that a local FDA employee counseled him on how to lessen scrutiny of the foreign shipments and ease them past U.S. customs officials. In a videotaped deposition, the FDA official denied giving such advice. But his assistance in obtaining the drugs was interpreted as FDA "approval."

In April 2011, the drug was seized from some states by the DEA, and in June 2011, Arizona was told it could not use its supply. That came one day before the execution of Donald Beaty, the lead defendant in the lawsuit against the FDA.

Beaty was executed using a different drug, pentobarbital, which most states have adopted. Arizona's two most recent executions were carried out using only pentobarbital because the state Corrections Department had inadvertently let one of the other drugs in its three-drug protocol pass its expiration date.

In his ruling Tuesday, Judge Leon noted that the imported thiopental was a "misbranded and unapproved new drug," which by law cannot be distributed in the U.S. without FDA approval.

"No one is above the law -- not the Arizona Department of Corrections, not the FDA," Baich said. "The federal court, relying on the judgment of Congress, has sent a clear message that it is illegal to import drugs that have not been approved by the FDA. The states that have imported non-FDA approved drugs are now on notice that those drugs are illegal."

The Associated Press contributed to this article

AFSC and NAACP protesting for-profit prisons

Prison Legal News
March 27, 2012


Phoenix: The American Friends Service Committee and the NAACP of Maricopa County today took the second step in their protest of the Request for Proposals (RFP) issued by the Department of Corrections for 2,000 private, for-profit prison beds.

The protest, filed earlier this month, argues that the state of Arizona does not need and cannot afford more prison beds, and that the existing prison contracts are in violation of state statute as well as contract provisions which require private prisons to cost less and provide the same or better quality of service as state prisons. The groups cite Arizona Department of Corrections cost studies that show that some private prisons are more expensive than equivalent state units. They also point to a host of security inspections, Auditor General Investigations, and other published data that reveal that private prisons have inferior safety standards, faulty alarms, chronic understaffing, and do not measure recidivism.

The initial protest was dismissed on Monday March 19th by the Chief Procurement Officer of the Department of Corrections. In his dismissal letter, he argued that the groups do not have standing to protest under the state procurement code. In addressing the numerous and well documented objections raised by AFSC and the NAACP, he responds by stating only that they are “wrong,” without offering any evidence or documentation to refute them. The dismissal is attached.

The groups are now taking the next step—an Appeal to the Director of the Department of Administration. They contend that AFSC was specifically directed to file a protest under the Procurement Code by the Attorney General in his Motion to Dismiss their lawsuit against the last private prison RFP, and question why he would have done this if the group did not have standing. They also point out that the Arizona Department of Corrections is itself implicated in the violations of state law, and has failed in its responsibility to properly screen bids, monitor contracts, or hold private prison corporations accountable for their mistakes.

Caroline Isaacs, the Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Arizona office, says that allowing the Department of Corrections to determine the outcome of the protest is “akin to letting the fox tell the farmer whether the henhouse is properly managed.”

The groups are asking the Director of the Department of Administration to immediately halt the prison RFP process while he reviews the appeal. They then have requested that the state formally and permanently cancel the RFP and award no contracts for new private prisons.

Suicide attempt results in prison for vehicular homicide.

A few months ago I heard a story in a community forum about the criminalization of people who are mentally ill that troubled me deeply. It was reported that the City of Phoenix was prosecuting a man for disorderly conduct due to his attempt to jump off a bridge when suicidal one day. A month or so before that I was told about a man in another county who had tried to kill himself by jumping into traffic, and was being prosecuted for the damage he did to the car that hit him. Last year the AZ Department of Corrections prosecuted a prisoner for arson who had set himself on fire and was burned over 80% of his body. And state prisoner Tony Lester was prosecuted and imprisoned in the first place for injuries friends incurred while trying to prevent him from cutting his throat in a psychotic state. 

All this impressed me as being unnecessarily punitive of individuals who were themselves already victims of suicidal despair and clinical depression, and I have a soapbox set up just for this issue. So when I read about this guy going to prison for killing someone during a suicide attempt, I expected more of the same kind of story. It wasn't. This guy is a real self-absorbed bastard who seems like he'd do or say anything to save his own life.

Now, granted, the prosecution only tells the state's version of a story - that version is the one posted below. If their premise is true, however, then Buot intentionally drove his SUV into an unsuspecting woman's path to hurt his wife by killing himself. That's pretty criminal in my book and deserves prosecution. What this man did was something like firing a sub-machine gun into a crowd while hoping to be taken out by a cop. It was reckless, cowardly, and could predictably end in someone else's grave injury or death. 

In the course of his "suicide attempt" (why would he really think he'd die by plowing his huge SUV into another car is beyond me), Buot killed a young mother of three, and lived to lie about it. Good for Bill Montgomery for holding him responsible. I'm not sure I'd send him to prison for the next 22 years, myself - there must be some better way to teach people not to be so careless when so consumed with self-destructive rage that they're driven to risk lives other than their own in the course of acting on suicidal impulse. Lacking that alternative sentencing option right now, though, I'm glad the guy will be off the streets for awhile.

I don't know if Buot has a serious mental illness that impaired his judgement, or if he's just a selfish, manipulative bully. In any case, my heart goes out to the family of this man's victim, Christine Ann Anderson. Condolences to all her loved ones. I still reject the criminalization of mental illness - but I'll remember what happened to Christine the next time I protest the prosecution of someone who endangers others in the course of trying to harm themselves.


Rikers, Solitary, and Schriro...

City Limits

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT ON THE RISE AT RIKERS

There's been a 44 percent jump in the number of punitive segregation cells in city jails the past two years. Jail officials say it's to prevent violence, but advocates argue the punishment is counterproductive.

Jeanmarie Evelly
March 27, 2012
 
Elmhurst - Over the last two years, the Department of Correction has nearly doubled the number of "punitive segregation" cells—the Department's term for solitary confinement—at the jail facilities at Rikers Island. The 44 percent jump, DOC Commissioner Dora Schriro testified at a City Council budget hearing this month, constitutes "the most significant increase in the department's history," one that prisoners rights groups say gives New York City one of the highest solitary confinement rates in the nation.
 
At press time, 914 inmates were being held in segregation at Rikers, meaning they are typically confined to their cells for 23 hours a day. Jail officials say this is a necessary tool to curtail an uptick in violence, maintain safety and order and deal with inmates who commit serious rule violations.

But prisoner advocacy groups say the increase is alarming at a time when the inmate population in the city's jails is at a low, and in light of a growing body of research that says solitary confinement does little to curb bad behavior, and could actually make some inmates act more violently.

Correctional systems across the country have been reducing their use of segregated units, and this fall, a United Nations expert called an all countries to ban the practice except under the most extreme circumstances, likening the mental health effects of prolonged solitary confinement to torture.

"We're at a terrible point where management is really overly punitive, and not able to grasp that it's wrong, that it's not working," says Sarah Kerr, of the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners Rights Project. "The idea that other places are realizing the error and trying to reform, and New York is doing the opposite, is really a problem."

"It's interesting that DOC is doing this when the jail population is falling," says Jennifer Parish, director of criminal justice advocacy at the Urban Justice Center. Indeed, from 2001 to 2010, admissions to city jails fell by 20 percent and their average daily population dropped by 10 percent. "I find it incredible that there's actually a need for this, and that there aren't management strategies they could use to address the problem."

Split lips, broken bones

Violence has long been the most-cited rationale for solitary confinement, and the DOC is under considerable pressure to make sure its facilities are safe.

"Our core objective is to protect both the inmate population and the workforce from harm," Commissioner Schriro says.

For the last several years, union officials who represent jail workers have complained of an uptick in violence against their members. In 2010, there were 84 incidents of inmate assaults on staff resulting in serious injury, according to DOC statistics, up from 63 in 2009 and 53 in 2008.

"Correction officers bear the brunt of it by being assaulted on a daily basis," says Norman Seabrook, president of the Correctional Officers Benevolent Association (COBA). "Every day, every other day, three or four times a day, I'm getting a text message or an e-mail from the Department of Correction notifying me of how many of my correction officers have been assaulted—split lips, sutures, broken bones. This goes on and on and on and this has to stop."

Seabrook blames the increase, in part, on insufficient staff numbers, saying the DOC is not hiring enough correction officers to replace those who retire, get promoted or leave for other reasons.

At the budget hearing last month, Commissioner Schriro said that while the department is hiring several hundred new posts, there is still a shortfall in the department's budget for authorized uniformed staff.

But union officials have also pointed to a shortage of punitive segregation units—known as "Bing" beds—for putting officers at risk. Last fall, the DOC was blasted after media outlets reported on a backlog of inmates who had been sentenced to solitary confinement but who were being held with the rest of the general population because there weren't enough segregated beds. In one incident in November, the Daily News reported that two men involved in a violent slashing in a recreation room were supposed to have been in solitary for previous infractions.

This backlog is the main reason prison officials give for the recent expansion of segregated housing units. In 2009, DOC spokeswoman Sharman Stein said, there were over 1,200 inmates waiting to be placed in solitary. Since then, the department has added 325 units, bringing the total capacity to 1,035 solitary beds, or seven percent of the average daily jail population (a number the DOC says is comparable to other correctional systems, but which advocacy groups argue is much higher than the average—the Legal Aid Society says that the nationwide solitary rate is between two and four percent.)

Today, Stein says, only a "handful" of inmates owe Bing time.

"Resolving this backlog was important to address – all too often, inmates who had remained in general population pending imposition of the punishment for assaulting another inmate or staff, harmed another person," Stein wrote in an e-mail.

Running the New York City jail system, the second largest in the country, is not a simple task. The population at Rikers is an ever-changing one. There are over 87,000 admissions and more than 88,000 releases a year, according to the DOC. Unlike the state prisons, a majority of the population at Rikers is made up of detainees awaiting trial. Some are felons awaiting transfer to a prison facility upstate. Others are those serving short-term misdemeanor sentences, generally less than a year.

Schriro says that while the number of inmates being held in the city's jails is at a low, Rikers has seen an increase in the types of inmates who are prone to bad behavior and who are responsible for the majority of jail incidents: "high-custody" inmates, deemed by jail officials as more inclined to institutional violence, including inmates with gang affiliations, adolescents and the mentally ill.

"The inmate census is lower now than before, but the inmates who are in jail are far more difficult to manage and far more damaged than the inmate population previously," Schriro says.

"The very good news is the vast majority of inmates in our custody are violation-free. They're here to work through their case and then be gone," the Commissioner says. "But there are several populations in particular that have the greatest likelihood of breaking the rules, breaking the law, assaulting a member of the workforce or causing serious injury. There's this group that's pretty dedicated to those endeavors."

Overused and overly punitive?

Prison advocacy groups, however, dispute the DOC's assertions that they need more punitive segregation units. The backlog in inmates waiting for solitary beds, they say, is not due to lack of space but on the DOC's reliance on segregation as a punishment and as a management tool.

"My feeling is, it's being overused," says Barbara Hamilton, a former law librarian at the DOC who now works as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, handling appeals for Rikers detainees challenging their punitive segregation time. "Sometimes it's used as retaliation, sometimes it's used to control mental health inmates."

Mentally ill inmates, experts say, are more prone to violent outbursts and other disruptive behavior in jails and prisons. At Rikers, just over a third of the population has a mental health diagnosis. Mentally ill inmates who violate rules and get sentenced to segregation time are placed in what's called a Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates, or MHAUII—200 solitary confinement beds where, according to Stein, there is increased access to clinicians staffed by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Research has shown that psychiatric symptoms are aggravated by the type of isolation used in punitive segregation, and advocates say even the MHAUII units are not sufficient and lack the resources for dealing with inmates with serious mental health problems.

"It's nothing like what would qualify as a mental health treatment unit," says Parish. "They have some mental health staff who checks on people every so often."

(At the same time, the DOC has been criticized in the past for not segregating mentally ill inmates. In 2001, for example, a detainee was beaten to death by his cellmate, a 19-year-old inmate whose own lawyers said should have been placed in solitary for his psychotic tendencies).

Schriro says Rikers staff carefully evaluates the needs of every inmate to determine where they should be housed. The department has spent the last two years fine-tuning their inmate classification system, "scoring" inmates based on factors like mental and medical health needs, as well as their propensity towards violent behavior. Someone deemed high-security, for example—like a known gang member—might be put in a housing unit where food is brought to their cell, instead of one where they need to be escorted to the chow hall, reducing the chance of a fight that might happen en route.

Inmates are re-assessed every 60 days, Schriro said, and good behavior can lower an inmate's score, which can get them moved into a less restrictive housing unit that offers some kind of reward incentive, like a common room that has two television sets instead of one.

Schriro adds that the DOC's hands are tied in many ways by city rules, set by the Board of Corrections' minimum standards, that allow all inmates in the general population—essentially, anyone other than those sentenced to punitive segregation—the option of leaving their cells or "locking out" for up to 14 hours a day. If the DOC were given more discretion in determining lock out periods for individual inmates, she says, they wouldn't depend as much on punitive segregation.

Further still, she insists, the city's solitary units are less restrictive than those in the state prisons or in so-called "super max" facilities, where inmates are often placed indefinitely and for years on end. At Rikers, where the average length of stay is 50 days, punitive segregation is more a "temporary assignment," she says, one that's largely reserved for inmates who've committed a grade 1 offense, typically a violent infraction.

Inmates who commit lesser violations, grade 2 or 3—say, drug possession or disobeying orders—will often receive less harsh reprimands, Schriro says. "But for that group where incentives do not entice, where lesser sanctions are not sufficient to otherwise modify their conduct, punitive beds become an important strategy," she adds. "Not by any means the only strategy, but it's something that's necessary, just as jail itself is."

Inmates rights groups, however, assert that it's common for individuals to get Bing time for minor offenses, like disobeying orders, and that much of the discretion is left in the hands of correction officers. The Legal Aid Society, which represents many Rikers inmates and detainees, says clients report a "culture of brutality."
Many accused of committing violence are often reacting to assaults committed first by officers, advocates say, pointing to DOC statistics indicating an increase in uses of force by jail staff as proof.

"I don't think it's running as smoothly as the Commissioner thinks," Hamilton says.

Victor Herrera, 45, was locked up in Rikers in 2010 for a drugs possession charge. He describes himself as a "boisterous" inmate and says he was disliked by the staff for complaining about his meals—he's a vegetarian—and for disobeying orders. He estimates he spent four or five months in the Bing, a period during which, he says, he was at the mercy of correction officers.

"Every need has to be met by the COs," he says. "They don't care about the inmates, they have this view that inmates are the lowest on the totem pole, that they're trash."

He says some officers would intentionally not deliver his meals as retaliation for bad behavior, and that he was routinely ignored if he tried to request something. He would take to covering up the small window looking into his cell—a security violation, because officers then couldn't check in on him—just to get someone's attention.
"They'd walk right by my cell and I could bang and yell and scream and nobody does anything," he says.

"You can talk until your mouth is dry and they will ignore you."

‘No better way to create a violent individual'

Inmates held at the Bing are typically on lockdown for 23 hours a day, experts say. They are allowed out for an hour of recreation, required by the Board of Corrections' standards, and for occasional meetings with lawyers or to meet with religious advisers, but their access to showers can be reduced at the discretion of staff. Reading materials and meals are brought to inmates in their cells by guards.

The isolation imposed by segregated confinement, many experts say, can cause severe psychological distress, even in otherwise healthy people. According to Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who studies the effects of solitary confinement, isolating inmates can result in agitation, paranoia, panic attacks, hallucinations and problems with impulse control—symptoms that can make someone already prone to violence even more so.

"There's no better way to create a violent individual than to put them in solitary," Grassian says. "Are there moments when a person should be housed by themselves until they calm down? Sure. We do it in psychiatric hospitals. But we do it in situations where there's an effort in re-engaging the patient. That's usually in a matter of minutes, hours, but not weeks, months or many years."

That's the argument that critics of solitary confinement make—that as a tactic to control violence, it just doesn't work. Jails should attempt to focus on fixing their management techniques, advocates say, and focus on rehabilitative efforts over lockdown.

"It may sound good politically to say you're tough on crime, but what you're really doing is being tough on the community, because we're going to see those people on the outside," Grassian says.

"I Thought it would be Charles"

Better minds than mine have analyzed the Trayvon Martin tragedy and better writers than I have expounded on it. It would seem there would be little to add.

But I write nonetheless because I know Trayvon's case is not unique. There have been many Trayvons.

During my seminary years, I spent ten weeks one summer doing Clinical Pastoral Education at an inner city hospital setting. I had regular floors and departments that were my "parishes," and every sixth night and sixth weekend day, the entire hospital was mine to cover. Throughout that time, I never had a single night where I was not awakened from my on-call room to come to the Trauma Unit because of a shooting. Larcenia, a young black girl who had been sitting on her front steps in search of some cooler air than in her row house, was the exception; she was the victim of a senseless drive-by shooting and she never walked again, never had feeling of any kind from her mid-section down. Larcenia was 14.

But, as I said, she was the exception. Because more often than not, it was a young black male who had been shot. Sometimes it was an act of vengeance; sometimes there was gunfire from multiple players. And sometimes it was random, thoughtless shooting. Perhaps for sport.

One night the victim was a young black man named John. He was seventeen years old. He lived, thank God, but not without compromises in his quality of life. My job was to talk with him, to get his identification information, and to ask him who I should call at home. John was a sweet guy. He had no idea who had shot him or why. He believed it had been a white guy in a car. And he asked me to phone his grandmother. When I reached the lady, I told her as gently as I could that I was the hospital chaplain, that John had been admitted, and he was alive and talking to me, and wondered if there was someone who could bring her to the emergency room. I'll never forget what she said to me: "Did you say it was John that was shot? I always thought it would be Charles who would get shot."

It was unfathomable to me that this woman, and probably many, many other African-American mothers and grandmothers actually lived with the expectation that their sons and grandsons would be shot. I couldn't wrap my mind around it -- and I've later learned that this is due to white privilege.

That summer was nineteen years ago. How little progress, if any at all, we have made.


Justice for the Coons, and Flipper's cool garage.

Do you people remember the post I did a few days ago about two wrongs not making a right? I talked about the case in Kansas City that wingnuts swore no one was talking about. The one where the black kids allegedly set a white teen on fire and allegedly said "you get what you deserve white boy".

Well, as it turns out, there has been no arrest in the case, either. And the mother of this poor white child believes that she is being "brushed off".
   
"The mother of a 13-year-old boy who says he was set on fire by two teens said Monday that her son is having a difficult time after he suffered first-degree burns.
"It's hard for him," the boy's mother told KCTV5 Monday. "It's hard for us as a family having to deal with this."
Other media outlets have identified the boy's mother. KCTV5 is not doing so because the boy is a minor and no one has been charged.
Part of the police investigation has included attempting to verify the veracity of the boy's claims.
This prompted the boy's mother earlier this month to complain that police were treating her son as a suspect.
"It's very frustrating because I feel like we're being brushed off and there's nothing that is happening for us," the mother said Monday.
But in a news conference held last month, detectives said what the boy experienced was a particularly heinous crime.
The case drew national attention last month because the boy is white and he said the two teen boys who set him on fire were African-Americans.
Kansas City Police Sgt. Stacey Graves said Monday that the investigation is ongoing.
"This is not an incident we take lightly," Graves said. "Detectives have reached out to the community and members of the school district in the course of this investigation to learn as much as they can about what occurred and may have led up to the assault and they are still doing that today."
The boy says he was walking home from East High School when two teens he didn't know began to follow him.
According to the police report, the boy said he made it the front porch of his home on Quincy Avenue when one suspect physically barred him from entering. The second suspect grabbed a red gallon gasoline can and said, "This is what you get."
The second teen then used a light to ignite the gasoline, which "produced a large fireball burning the face and hair" of the victim, according to a Kansas City Police Department report.
Other media outlets have reported that one of the suspects said, "You get what you deserve, white boy."
That was not in the police report, and the boy's mother had spoken publicly with KCTV5 before Monday. As a result, KCTV5 did not previously report that statement.
The mother (Melissa Coon) explained Monday that her son confided in her what the suspect said while he was in the hospital. She said he didn't tell police those specific words because he was too upset at the time, which is why it wasn't reflected in the police report.
The boy's allegations have drawn particular attention across the country in the wake of the shooting death of a Florida teen.
The Kansas City case pales in comparison to the death of Trayvon Martin, the local boy's mother said. But she said it is a good reminder to look out for children. [Source]
Yes, Mam we do have to look out for our children. But I sure hope you are not  another Ashley Todd. I don't want to jump to conclusions like some folks have done with Trayvon Martin, but.....
We know for sure something happened with Trayvon, he is dead. We know something happened with this poor child as well, but....
When I first heard this story I was aghast and appalled at what happened to this young man. I still am. But some of you can be so jaded:
"This was broad daylight..correct?
They knew the lighter was a bic. They noticed the types of shoes the boys wore.  One had sunglasses and they could see the silver trim on the sides? The boy wasn't far from his home. Is the area rural that it would produce no witnesses? Did they find the lighter fluid? Surely someone saw these boys...they didn't just disappear into oblivion. I'm questioning whether it was a case of a little boy playing with lighter fluid and his semi racially aroused parents making effort to swing this into something racial because they watch Fox news...and know of the Martin Case...... Remember the girl with the backward "B" carved into her face? They knew the perps to be 16 years old, even the one concealed in his eye glasses and Ohhh! A hoodie no less... How quick did they get away? The teen was attacked right outside on his front porch. Bold teenagers! What did they use as a get away? Their bat mobile? Are the youths in school? High schools can't make out anyone fitting this particular description?????"  (h/t to the folks who send me e-mails on a regular. I won't put your name out there but you know who you are.)
Oh my! What are you saying? That this poor woman made this all up? No, I don't think that she did. I am sure that they will catch these culprits really soon. This little boy deserves justice.
Finally, shout out to Flipper and his new toy. The auto elevator is a nice touch there Flipper. It beats having to spread out the garage. You can just stack those bad boys one on top of the other.

"SAN DIEGO — If the news last summer that Mitt Romney had a $12 million expansion planned for his oceanfront property here helped portray him as a member of the top 1 percent, the new disclosure that the renovation includes elevators for his four-car garage is not likely to burnish his image as a man of the people.

Plans for the expansion, first reported by Politico and later obtained by The New York Times from a rival campaign, include a split-level, four-car garage with a “car lift,” an outdoor shower, and a 3,600-square-foot basement.

A visit to the Romneys’ beachside property on Monday — one of three properties Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, own — revealed a modest home for the wealthy enclave (at least from a street view) at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. But an official city “Notice of Application” from April 2010 highlighted the changes to come: plans to “demolish the existing residence and construct a new, approximately 8,105-square-foot, single-family residence on a 0.41 acre site.”
Mr. Romney’s pre-expansion home, which sits perched atop a concrete seawall and is further separated from the beach by a locked gate...

...The Romney campaign said that a “car elevator” was simply a mechanism for storing cars in tight spaces, but that hasn’t stopped Mr. Romney’s rivals from jumping on the details of the planned expansion. In an e-mail on Tuesday, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for President Obama’s re-election campaign, wrote, “But while Governor Romney has been quite specific about putting the finishing touches on his car elevator in La Jolla, he has hid many of his domestic and foreign policy plans under lock and key.”

And the Obama campaign also took a jab at Mr. Romney’s hiring of Matthew A. Peterson, a lawyer in San Diego, to ease the way for construction permits. Since 2008, Mr. Romney has paid Mr. Peterson $21,500 to lobby city officials for the renovation.

Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, sent out an e-mail that simply said: “Well, doesn’t everyone need an elevator for their cars? Even if you have to hire a lobbyist to secure it?” [Source]

Flipper, I was cool with the garage upgrade until I saw the part about the $21,500 you paid to have someone lobby for you to be able to build it. Now it doesn't look so cool anymore.

Besides, that money would have been better spent taking some Russian studies classes.

"MOSCOW – Russian President Dmitri Medvedev today accused Mitt Romney of being stuck in the Cold War, after the Republican presidential candidate said Russia was the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe.”
Medvedev dismissed Romney’s Monday remarks at a news conference in Seoul, saying they “smell of Hollywood.”

Medvedev told reporters today that the U.S. presidential candidates should explain their rationale for such statements, according to the Russian Interfax news agency. He advised Romney and the other candidates to look at their watches, saying “now is not the mid-70s.” [Source] 

Yes, but at least he has elevators for his cars. Can you say that Mr. Medvedev?

   
     

  

Transcript and Audio- Supreme Court Hears Obamcare: Day Two Arguments

By Susan Duclos

Today's topic in the Supreme Court over Obamacare was the individual mandate and whether or not Congress exceeded it's bounds and if it is constitutional.

The Audio is HERE and the 131 page transcript, via The Hill is embedded below and underneath that is some linkage to analysis from people more versed in law than myself and some of the headlines from the MSM.

327 Scotus Transcript

According to CNN's legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin, "This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it's going to be struck down.All of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong."

"The only conservative justice who looked like he might uphold the law was Chief Justice Roberts who asked hard questions of both sides, all four liberal justices tried as hard as they could to make the arguments in favor of the law, but they were -- they did not meet with their success with their colleagues."

Video below:



ScotusBlog gives an argument recap of Day Two.

Business Insider headlines with "People Are Saying That Obama's Healthcare Law Got Massacred At The Supreme Court Today."

Wall Street Journal headlines with "Conservative Justices Challenge Government Over Health Law."

New York Times headlines with "Hard Questions From Justices Over Insurance Mandate."

The Politico headlines with "Mandate could be in big trouble after Supreme Court arguments."

LA Times headlines with "Skeptical Kennedy signals trouble for Obama's healthcare law."


.

St Louis: Women's resistance and the wrongful death of Anna Brown.

This devastating story from St. Louis sounds eerily like it could have been Maricopa County. The damage we do to the lives of those we criminalize in crisis begins long before they arrive in court - if they ever make it there. Had people not just assumed that this young mother was drug-seeking and treated her like a criminal, they could have saved her life...


Women's rights groups out there really should be all over this one...




 ----------------from St. Louis Today------------

Woman unhappy with care at St. Mary's hospital arrested for trespassing, dies in jail.

March 25, 2012

Christine Byers


RICHMOND HEIGHTS • Anna Brown wasn't leaving the emergency room quietly.

She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary's Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn't stand.

She had already been to two other hospitals that week in September, complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle.

This time, she refused to leave.

A police officer arrested Brown for trespassing. He wheeled her out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.

Brown was 29. A mother who had lost custody of two children. Homeless. On Medicaid. And, an autopsy later revealed, dying from blood clots that started in her legs, then lodged in her lungs.

She told officers she couldn't get out of the police car, so they dragged her by her arms into the station. They left her lying on the concrete floor of a jail cell, moaning and struggling to breathe. Just 15 minutes later, a jail worker found her cold to the touch.

Officers suspected Brown was using drugs. Autopsy results showed she had no drugs in her system.

Six months later, family members still wonder how Brown's sprained ankle led to her death in police custody, and whether anyone — including themselves — is to blame.

There seems to be no simple answer.

St. Mary's officials say they did all they were supposed to do for Brown. Richmond Heights police said they trusted a doctor who said she was fit for jail.

Brown's mother, Dorothy Davis, isn't sure what to think.

"If the police killed my daughter, I want to know," she said. "If the hospital is at fault, I want to know. I want to be able to tell her children why their mother isn't here."

Davis also faults the St. Louis County Family Court, which she said forced her into a heartbreaking dilemma after the state took away Brown's children on a claim of neglect. Davis could take in her grandchildren or her daughter, a judge said, but not both.

"I'm mad at myself because if I hadn't listened to the courts, she would still be here," Davis said. "If she had been here at this house, she would be here today."

STREETS BECAME HOME

Anna Brown was one of 10 children. She graduated from Kirkwood High School. At 18, she had her first child, a boy. She had a daughter nine years later. Brown was raising them alone when a tornado destroyed her north St. Louis home on New Year's Eve 2010. She moved to Berkeley.

Shortly after, she lost her job at a sandwich shop. Bills lapsed. The electricity was turned off. So was the gas. And the water.

Family members say Brown and her children appeared fine during visits at Davis' home in Normandy.

They weren't.

In April, a state Children's Division representative found Brown's toilet filled with feces. Burn marks scarred the floors and sinks where Brown had used small fires to stay warm. One refrigerator could not be opened. Insects and rotting food filled another, according to state reports given to the Post-Dispatch by Brown's family.

Brown was not lucid and seemed confused as Berkeley police arrested her for parental neglect. The courts awarded legal custody of the kids to the Children's Division. Davis could have physical custody, as long as Brown didn't live with her.

Brown's home was condemned. She ended up on the streets. She lived in four homeless shelters from May to September 2011.

At first, she visited her children at her mother's home. That ended in June, when Brown started telling the children they didn't have to listen to their grandparents and called the police to report they were being abused. Police found no evidence of abuse.

After that, Brown had supervised visits with her children at the Children's Division. She also called her mother daily to check on them.

SLIPPING AWAY

Brown struggled with officials' requirements for reuniting with her children. She passed two drug tests but balked at others. "She felt that she had passed them, so there was no point in doing them again," Davis said.
A court-ordered psychological evaluation to determine whether Brown had cognitive, developmental, behavioral or mental illnesses came back inconclusive. So the courts ordered a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether Brown needed medication or a doctor's treatment.

But Brown resisted, not understanding the difference between the two evaluations, according to her caseworker's notes.

Still, she may have known something was wrong. She joined the St. Louis Empowerment Center, a drop-in center for the mentally ill.

"It was like a light bulb went on when she heard others tell their stories," said Kevin Dean, a peer specialist at the center. "She was just starting to make progress."

Brown's witty comments often broke the ice during group meetings, said Warren Brown, another peer specialist and no relation to Anna.

Anna Brown one day said she hurt her ankle while walking near a ditch, Dean and Warren Brown recalled.
The last time they remember seeing her was in August 2011; she said she couldn't walk up the stairs.

Brown told her caseworker on Sept. 14 that she had been admitted to St. Louis University Hospital for a sprained ankle.

Bills her mother received show Brown stayed at that hospital from Sept. 13-15 and underwent an EKG, some radiology services, lab work and cardiovascular services.

"She wasn't very eager to go home, but we do all we can to take care of the whole patient, and we want to make sure that we do not push someone out the door as soon as she came here," said SLU spokeswoman Laura Keller. She said there was no indication of a blood clot in Brown's leg.

Krystle Brown said she saw her sister for the last time after she was discharged from SLU. She dropped Anna off on Market Street downtown, where Anna said she wanted to be.

Davis didn't want her daughter out in the rain and ordered Krystle to bring her home — regardless of the court order. It was too late. Krystle couldn't find her sister.

Four days later, Brown had her last supervised visit with her children. She was on crutches.

FINAL MOMENTS

State inspectors working for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — a federal agency that regulates hospitals — interviewed St. Mary's staff and reviewed medical records after the Post-Dispatch asked about Brown's case in January.

They found that on Sept. 20, Brown returned to SLU Hospital for knee and ankle pain. X-rays of her knees were negative and she was given a prescription for a painkiller.

She refused to leave. Hospital security called St. Louis police, who responded about 5 a.m. Brown told them she wanted to go to a better hospital but refused to go in an ambulance, police said.

She then wheeled herself next door to Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center, where doctors found tenderness in her legs. They told her she was at a pediatric hospital. She said she wasn't leaving unless someone took her to an adult hospital, according to the inspectors.

An ambulance then took her to St. Mary's, inspectors found. She arrived at 11:45 a.m. Her left ankle was swollen. She was there for about seven hours, during which ultrasounds on both of her legs were negative for blood clots. A nurse said she saw her stand up. A social worker gave her a list of shelters and a phone number for transportation.

She returned eight hours later by ambulance complaining of abdominal pain only, inspectors said. She refused to sign discharge papers but was discharged at 7 a.m.

Richmond Heights Officer Jason Tharp was at St. Mary's on another call about 10 a.m. when a security officer, Steve Schaffer, told him a woman was claiming she "did not receive adequate medical attention and did not have to leave."

She was sitting in a wheelchair and told officers she was waiting for a ride. Tharp told her to wait outside or face arrest for trespassing.

"You can't arrest me. I know my rights, I can't even stand up!" she yelled, according to police.

Officer Scott Stebelman said he waited for about three hours for a doctor to examine Brown before taking her to jail. At 12:30 p.m., a doctor issued a "Fit for Confinement" report, according to the state inspectors.

The inspectors' report, however, contains some differences from reports written by Richmond Heights police and the county medical examiner's office:

• Police and medical examiner reports, based on interviews from that day, quote St. Mary's staff as saying Brown did complain of leg pain on her return visit, not just abdominal pain.

• A St. Mary's nurse told the medical examiner that Brown was still complaining of leg and abdominal pain at 12:40 p.m.: "She was advised that she had already been treated and needed to leave the hospital."

• Police said the doctor's "fit for confinement" decision was made at 1:20 p.m., not 12:30 p.m. Police also said Brown yelled "My legs don't work!" as they wheeled her out after the exam.

DYING IN JAIL

Once in custody, Brown initially cursed at Tharp inside his patrol car during the ride to jail and asked for a wheelchair after officers ordered her out of the car, according to surveillance tapes.

"I can't put any pressure on my legs," she told them.

Two officers then pulled her into the station by her arms. Police listed "suspected drug use" as Brown's physical state and "unknown leg pain" under medical notes.

While at the police station, Brown's condition worsened. Officers carried her by her arms and legs into a cell and left her on her back on the floor. She moaned and moved her head back and forth. She's last seen moving on the tapes at 2 p.m.

A dispatcher with East Central Dispatch zoomed a surveillance camera in and out on Brown because "it was difficult to determine if the prisoner was still breathing later due to the pixilation grain on his monitor," police reported.

Fifteen minutes later, a jail worker readying meals found Brown unresponsive. Several responders shocked her with a defibrillator and started CPR. Paramedics rushed Brown back to St. Mary's.

Within hours of being declaring fit for confinement, Brown was pronounced dead.

Back in the jail cell, Richmond Heights Fire Chief Kerry Hogan was putting away the jail's defibrillator when, according to a recording of the conversation, a Richmond Heights officer told him: "We got a 'fit (for confinement') on her a half hour ago. I mean, literally, a half hour ago we brought her in here."

"Where at?" Hogan asked.

"St. Mary's."

"What was, uh. Any problems at all?"

"No, they thought she was a drug seeker."

"Well, that could very well be ... And that's a shame."

Acting Police Chief Maj. Roy Wright refused to identify the officer on the tape. He also wouldn't let the Post-Dispatch interview Stebelman, who sat with Brown for three hours waiting for a doctor's exam. Wright said his officers had no way of knowing Brown's dire condition.

"A lot of times people don't want to stay in jail and will claim to be sick," he said. "We depend on medical officials to tell us they're OK."

Likewise, the dispatcher monitoring Brown as she died had no way of knowing she wasn't just sleeping, said Mark Dougherty, general manager of East Central Dispatch.

"It's not unusual to have someone lay there lethargic," he said. "If he felt it was more severe, he would have called."

SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

All nine of Brown's siblings went to St. Mary's after learning she was gravely ill. Confusion and frustration took over as they waited 45 minutes for a doctor to tell them their sister was dead.

"They told us she came in from the jail unresponsive and, 'We don't know what happened,'" Krystle Brown recalled.

Davis said she did not receive a bill from St. Mary's, as she had from SLU Hospital. She said she has been told she cannot see the medical records without proving a legal right to them.

She vowed to not give up.

"When you lose a child, it's like a part of you you will never, ever get back," Davis said. "It's like a part of your soul, a part of you is totally gone. And when you don't know why, you keep wondering, you keep guessing."

Brown's cause of death puzzles Davis because immobility is a risk factor for deep vein thrombosis, the medical term for clots in the legs. "My daughter was homeless. She had to move around constantly."

But trauma, such as a sprained ankle, also is a risk factor. So is obesity, said Dr. Samuel Goldhaber, a Harvard Medical School professor and director of Brigham and Women's Hospital's Venous Thromboembolism Research Group. At autopsy, Brown was 5 feet tall and weighed 189 pounds.

"The body responds to trauma by revving up the coagulation system to prevent the individual from bleeding to death from the trauma," Goldhaber said. "But half the time, DVT is silent and there are no symptoms whatsoever."

In most cases, diagnosed patients take blood thinners and walk out of the hospital, said Dr. Elliott Haut, an emergency medicine expert for Johns Hopkins Medicine.

"Relatively small periods of immobility can potentially cause DVT," Haut said. "Not every test is 100 percent, but if you do the test and see the veins you are supposed to, you shouldn't miss it."

St. Mary's staff leaned heavily on the state's investigation in defending its actions.

"Our records show that, in this case, everything that should have been done medically was done properly. We found nothing that would have changed this tragic outcome," according to a statement.

Hospital spokesman Neil Keisel said, without providing specifics, that the medical examiner's report had inaccuracies and, "If that information was true, we would've been cited by the" state inspectors.

PASSING JUDGMENT

Brown's family hired an attorney, but a lawsuit hasn't been filed.

Should the matter make it to court, it will rest on whether St. Mary's violated state medical malpractice laws, said Sean Fosmire, a Michigan attorney with more than 30 years of experience representing hospitals and physicians.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "must have seen there was enough … medical testing to satisfy the federal law," Fosmire said. Federal law does not require accurate treatment, he noted.

If St. Mary's doctors "went through an exam, did testing and determined that the diagnosis was something else like a leg cramp, they may have been wrong, but that doesn't mean they're in violation of the federal law," he said.

The family's success in court also would depend upon how much a jury finds her life was worth — in dollars, said Tom Keefe, a Belleville-based personal injury attorney.

"If you kill a homeless man with no job, he's not worth very much. But if you wipe out (Cardinals star) Matt Holliday, who is making $20 million a year, it's worth a lot of money," Keefe said. "Even though they are both human beings and both victims, the truth is, death cases are evaluated by the losses you can prove the survivors have suffered."

Davis said she still has trouble sleeping and eating, and constantly questions whether she should have taken in her daughter. She said she wants permanent custody of her grandchildren, now 11 and 2.

Brown's son is in counseling to deal with his mother's death but is earning A's and B's. The girl kisses a picture of her mother whenever her grandmother wears a T-shirt bearing her image.

The family wore the shirts to Brown's burial on Oct. 8. Krystle Brown still wears hers to bed.

"She was not a drug dealer or a hooker or doing other things that she could've ended up dead for," the sister said. "People assume things because of they way they talk or the way they live or the things they do.

"My sister is not here today because people passed judgement."

Blythe Bernhard and Jeremy Kohler of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

Taste and See

I have been following his blog for months, now, but never left a comment. That is how awed I am by his writing. The fear of being banal keeps me from even trying to formulate a comment. But I follow. Faithfully. I read every post he writes. I ponder it. And again find myself at a loss for words.

Now he's got a book published. A book I intend to purchase this week. Already I know it is going to be one of those flourless-chocolate-cake-rich books where a couple of bites at a time is all I'll be able to handle. I'll need time to digest before returning for more. Can this guy write? Yup. He sure can. Whether he's talking about the church he attends, his work as a refrigeration mechanic or -- more frequently -- about his relationship with his young-adult son Sam, his marriage, or the autistic son that is never far from his thoughts, he can write. Every now and again, I get that odd sensation that this man is looking into my own very soul and telling what he finds there.

At the little grocery store where I shop, the one where a kid I taught in my fourth grade Sunday school class works at the deli counter, the background music is an oldies station. The other day I heard the insipid song, "Sometimes When We Touch." I cringed and nearly gagged. Talk about banal. And yet here's what comes to mind when I think about Joe Blair and his writing: "The honesty's too much." Too much for a whole serving at once,  but just right for a bite or two in a blog post or a book chapter at the start of the day.

Don't take my word for it. Go read his blog for yourself. Or better yet, buy his book. We've got to keep him writing. Because he feeds a hunger we never knew we had. In small, small portions.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Let the push-back begin.

"Damn field! Why do you allow all those racist trolls to comment on your site?"

 I get that a lot. And my answer is always the same: Get used to it. Those trolls could be your neighbor, your co-worker, or even the person you set next to in church.

The thing about the Internet is that allows folks who couldn't always do it to hide behind an anonymous label and call you all kinds of vile things. He or she can do it from the safety of their trailer park or the Wal- Mart bathroom, and they can send it out to thousands of people reading every day with one push of a button to a black run website. Isn't technology beautiful?

The thing is, far too many of you so called progressive thinking people have been fooled into thinking that A-merry-ca is this forward thinking place full of enlightened people. You watch too many commercials with hip interracial friends getting along while sipping beer and playing with puppies. That is not A-merry-ca. That is what Madison Avenue wants A-merry-ca to be.

The real A-merry-ca is a place filled with the kind of folks you see commenting on this web site on a daily basis. The real A-merry-ca is full of envy,hate, and "color aroused" angst brought on by ignorance and prejudice. It's why you are seeing the blow- back from right wingers and some folks in the majority population with the Trayvon Martin case. Now you will hear what a bad kid he was. You will hear that he might have been kicking his killer's ass before he was slaughtered in that housing development like roadkill on a Florida highway. You will hear that Mr. Zimmerman actually had a black friend, and that he mentored black boys. And you will hear that if George Zimmerman didn't kill Trayvon Martin, the seventeen year old was going to beat him to a bloody pulp with those "street hardened" fists of his.

You will hear it, but don't believe a word of it. And even if you do, it should not affect how you feel about this case one little bit. The truth of the matter is that an unarmed seventeen year old was lawfully walking down the street to go and watch a basketball game at the home of a friend. He was spotted, profiled,  hunted down, and eventually killed.   

Trayvon Martin is dead, and George Zimmerman is free. Therein lies the problem. Justice has not been served. George Zimmerman has not even been arrested for a lessor crime than murder. Most A-merry-cans see the injustice in this. Most.

Sadly, in the dark hearts of many A-merry-cans, this is exactly how it should be. Because the person who died is a "young black thug". The hoodie wearing suspect fit a profile and fit our perceptions of what people who end up dead when there is a violent confrontation should look like. This fits the narrative. All the protesting and calls for justice does not.

So what's a good knuckle dragging racist to do? Well,for one, they can comment  and troll on black websites. Or, if they are fortunate enough, they can tell the world how it should be or manipulate the facts from their own websites. Or, thanks to their very own 24 hour cable news channel; they can go on television and tell millions of like minded people to ignore the calls for justice because justice was already served.

"Field, by allowing these trolls to leave these nasty comments and say all those vile things, you make it hard for me to go to your website."

I will miss you. But remember, you not reading the Field Negro blog and me blocking their comments won't change how they feel in their hearts or how A-merry-cans, in general, feel about you and me.

I just want you to understand what is happening here in the land of only some are free. It's been here all along. But we have a black president now, and black people, people of color, poor people, and progressive whites, are now demanding  that A-merry-ca lives up to her claim of exceptiona ism. The rest of the people in A-merry-ca want to know why. "Haven't we been exceptional all along?"

No, we haven't. And our actions and words lately prove more than ever why we have not.

"It's clear the president has been not a uniting figure on an issue that, I think many Americans thought he would be. And it’s very tragic and to take a horrible situation like that and inject this issue, which, you know, may be a factor, may not be a factor, but even if it is a factor, it’s one… If it is a factor, it’s obviously one sick man and to use that instead of just saying, as a healing president would do, try to bring people together, but instead try to divide people is really a sad, tragic legacy of this president.”

Wrong again Mr. Santorum. The "tragic legacy" of this presidency will be the behavior of those who thrive on division and are driven by hatred.

 “What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful,” Gingrich told conservative talker Sean Hannity. “It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.”

We should "be horrified". But we are not. Not at the killing of that young man.  Instead we make excuses for justice denied to a dead young man and his family.

“It is a tragedy this young man was shot. It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban, or if he had been white, or if he had been Asian-American, or if he’d been a Native American,” he continued. ”At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

What I find "appalling" Mr. Gingrich is the fact that you would politicize the death of a human being to score cheap political points with like minded people.

You all deserve each other.






          

Study: Obamacare Medical Device Tax Will Cost 39,000 Jobs And $2 Billion Personal Income

By Susan Duclos

A new study has been released prepared for the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed)by Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, the study finds that a tax associated with Obamacare, scheduled to begin in 2013, on medical device manufacturers, will cause a loss of jobs for tens of thousands of workers, cost $2 billion in personal income for U.S. workers and more than $8 billion in national economic output.

As one of the 21 different tax increases associated with the Affordable Care act aka Obamcare which is is being challenged on constitutionality issues in the Supreme Court, (arguments started today), there is a tax on Medical Device Manufacturers (Tax hike of $20 bil/takes effect Jan. 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax. Exempts items retailing for <$100. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,980-1,986

The study shows the advanced medical technology industry is responsible for generating:

• Almost 1.9 million U.S. jobs; nearly 519,000 are industry jobs;
• More than $113 billion in personal income for U.S. workers; and
• Nearly $382 billion in national economic

In 2010, the industry generated export revenues in excess of $40 billion and a positive balance of trade of more than $3 billion.

The study estimates that an economic event resulting in a $3 billion decline in the industry’s direct output (such as the impending medical device tax) would cause the loss of:

• Nearly 39,000 U.S. jobs;
• More than $2 billion in personal income for U.S. workers; and
• More than $8 billion in national economic output.


A copy of the study can be found HERE.

According to the Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA), the initial estimates of $20 billion have already ballooned to $30.5 billion. While the tax is not to be implemented until 2013, conveniently set after the November 2012 presidential election as are many of the 21 tax increases written into the Obamacare law, the effects are already being felt across the country.

Statement from the MDMA below:

While the 2.3% medical device tax isn’t scheduled for implementation until 2013, its impact is already being felt across the country on the two year anniversary of it being signed into law as a part of the Affordable Care Act. MDMA, the leading voice in opposing the device tax, reiterated its commitment to a full repeal, and noted the growing coalition working to do so.

“MDMA said from the beginning that the device tax would hamper job creation and patient care, and unfortunately we are already seeing this play out as companies plan for what is really a tax on innovation,” said Mark Leahey, President and CEO of MDMA. “As the voice of small and innovative medical technology entrepreneurs, we know of many companies who will be paying more in taxes than they earn in profits starting in 2013.”

Organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the National Venture Capital Association and others have joined MDMA’s efforts to push for repeal. Leahey noted that the bipartisan support to repeal the medical device tax in Congress is recognition of how important it is for the United States to retain our leadership position in this dynamic industry.

“MDMA and our members remain committed to repealing this onerous provision of health care reform,” Leahey added. “This issue presents a clear opportunity for elected officials to support innovation and empower America’s entrepreneurs to improve patient care and create great jobs.”


In February 2012, a letter was signed by 70 Congressmen pushing for a House vote to repeal the medical device tax. The bill was sponsored by Congressman Erik Paulsen (MN) currently has strong bipartisan support, with 228 cosponsors.

There is momentum in the Republican controlled House for the repeal of this tax but the Democratically controlled Senate is dragging it's heels and has been referred to the Senate's Finance Committee.

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