Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Police Violence Targets Occupy Oakland Demonstration

http://www.nlgsf.org/news/view.php?id=174

Police Violence Targets Occupy Oakland Demonstration
January 30, 2012

NLGSF Demands Action From The Monitor On Police Misconduct

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) condemns Oakland Police (OPD) and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) violence, mass arrests and abuses against Occupy demonstrators at Saturday’s demonstration. Police violently attacked activists with chemical weapons, so called Less-Lethal munitions, and physical assaults. Hundreds were arrested unlawfully, without opportunity to disperse, and then detained for many hours on the street and then in buses, in stress positions, and without bathrooms, food or water. Once in jail, protesters faced inhumanely crowded conditions, abusive treatment and were denied access to legal counsel. Many remain unaccounted for, though certainly arrested and awaiting booking two days after being detained.

Jobs, Jobs and Cars

Jobs, Jobs and Cars

 

Paul Krugman

 

NY Times Op-Ed: January 27, 2012

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/opinion/krugman-jobs-jobs-and-cars.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

 

Mitch Daniels, the former Bush budget director who is

now Indiana's governor, made the Republicans' reply to

President Obama's State of the Union address. His

performance was, well, boring. But he did say something

thought-provoking -- and I mean that in the worst way.

 

For Mr. Daniels tried to wrap his party in the mantle

of the late Steve Jobs, whom he portrayed as a great

job creator -- which is one thing that Jobs definitely

wasn't. And if we ask why Apple has created so few

American jobs, we get an insight into what is wrong

with the ideology dominating much of our politics.

 

Mr. Daniels first berated the president for his

"constant disparagement of people in business," which

happens to be a complete fabrication. Mr. Obama has

never done anything of the sort. He went on: "The late

Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created

more of them than all those stimulus dollars the

president borrowed and blew."

 

Clearly, Mr. Daniels doesn't have much of a future in

the humor business. But, more to the point, anyone who

reads The New York Times knows that his assertion about

job creation was completely false: Apple employs very

few people in this country.

 

A big report in The Times last Sunday laid out the

facts. Although Apple is now America's biggest U.S.

corporation as measured by market value, it employs

only 43,000 people in the United States, a tenth as

many as General Motors employed when it was the largest

American firm.

 

Apple does, however, indirectly employ around 700,000

people in its various suppliers. Unfortunately, almost

none of those people are in America.

 

Why does Apple manufacture abroad, and especially in

China? As the article explained, it's not just about

low wages. China also derives big advantages from the

fact that so much of the supply chain is already there.

A former Apple executive explained: "You need a

thousand rubber gaskets? That's the factory next door.

You need a million screws? That factory is a block

away."

 

This is familiar territory to students of economic

geography: the advantages of industrial clusters -- in

which producers, specialized suppliers, and workers

huddle together to their mutual benefit -- have been a

running theme since the 19th century.

 

And Chinese manufacturing isn't the only conspicuous

example of these advantages in the modern world.

Germany remains a highly successful exporter even with

workers who cost, on average, $44 an hour -- much more

than the average cost of American workers. And this

success has a lot to do with the support its small and

medium-sized companies -- the famed Mittelstand --

provide to each other via shared suppliers and the

maintenance of a skilled work force.

 

The point is that successful companies -- or, at any

rate, companies that make a large contribution to a

nation's economy -- don't exist in isolation.

Prosperity depends on the synergy between companies, on

the cluster, not the individual entrepreneur.

 

But the current Republican worldview has no room for

such considerations. From the G.O.P.'s perspective,

it's all about the heroic entrepreneur, the John Galt,

I mean Steve Jobs-type "job creator" who showers

benefits on the rest of us and who must, of course, be

rewarded with tax rates lower than those paid by many

middle-class workers.

 

And this vision helps explain why Republicans were so

furiously opposed to the single most successful policy

initiative of recent years: the auto industry bailout.

 

The case for this bailout -- which Mr. Daniels has

denounced as "crony capitalism" -- rested crucially on

the notion that the survival of any one firm in the

industry depended on the survival of the broader

industry "ecology" created by the cluster of producers

and suppliers in America's industrial heartland. If

G.M. and Chrysler had been allowed to go under, they

would probably have taken much of the supply chain with

them -- and Ford would have gone the same way.

 

Fortunately, the Obama administration didn't let that

happen, and the unemployment rate in Michigan, which

hit 14.1 percent as the bailout was going into effect,

is now down to a still-terrible-but-much-better 9.3

percent. And the details aside, much of Mr. Obama's

State of the Union address can be read as an attempt to

apply the lessons of that success more broadly.

 

So we should be grateful to Mr. Daniels for his remarks

Tuesday. He got his facts wrong, but he did,

unintentionally, manage to highlight an important

philosophical difference between the parties. One side

believes that economies succeed solely thanks to heroic

entrepreneurs; the other has nothing against

entrepreneurs, but believes that entrepreneurs need a

supportive environment, and that sometimes government

has to help create or sustain that supportive

environment.

 

And the view that it takes more than business heroes is

the one that fits the facts.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

Jobs, Jobs and Cars

Jobs, Jobs and Cars

 

Paul Krugman

 

NY Times Op-Ed: January 27, 2012

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/opinion/krugman-jobs-jobs-and-cars.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

 

Mitch Daniels, the former Bush budget director who is

now Indiana's governor, made the Republicans' reply to

President Obama's State of the Union address. His

performance was, well, boring. But he did say something

thought-provoking -- and I mean that in the worst way.

 

For Mr. Daniels tried to wrap his party in the mantle

of the late Steve Jobs, whom he portrayed as a great

job creator -- which is one thing that Jobs definitely

wasn't. And if we ask why Apple has created so few

American jobs, we get an insight into what is wrong

with the ideology dominating much of our politics.

 

Mr. Daniels first berated the president for his

"constant disparagement of people in business," which

happens to be a complete fabrication. Mr. Obama has

never done anything of the sort. He went on: "The late

Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created

more of them than all those stimulus dollars the

president borrowed and blew."

 

Clearly, Mr. Daniels doesn't have much of a future in

the humor business. But, more to the point, anyone who

reads The New York Times knows that his assertion about

job creation was completely false: Apple employs very

few people in this country.

 

A big report in The Times last Sunday laid out the

facts. Although Apple is now America's biggest U.S.

corporation as measured by market value, it employs

only 43,000 people in the United States, a tenth as

many as General Motors employed when it was the largest

American firm.

 

Apple does, however, indirectly employ around 700,000

people in its various suppliers. Unfortunately, almost

none of those people are in America.

 

Why does Apple manufacture abroad, and especially in

China? As the article explained, it's not just about

low wages. China also derives big advantages from the

fact that so much of the supply chain is already there.

A former Apple executive explained: "You need a

thousand rubber gaskets? That's the factory next door.

You need a million screws? That factory is a block

away."

 

This is familiar territory to students of economic

geography: the advantages of industrial clusters -- in

which producers, specialized suppliers, and workers

huddle together to their mutual benefit -- have been a

running theme since the 19th century.

 

And Chinese manufacturing isn't the only conspicuous

example of these advantages in the modern world.

Germany remains a highly successful exporter even with

workers who cost, on average, $44 an hour -- much more

than the average cost of American workers. And this

success has a lot to do with the support its small and

medium-sized companies -- the famed Mittelstand --

provide to each other via shared suppliers and the

maintenance of a skilled work force.

 

The point is that successful companies -- or, at any

rate, companies that make a large contribution to a

nation's economy -- don't exist in isolation.

Prosperity depends on the synergy between companies, on

the cluster, not the individual entrepreneur.

 

But the current Republican worldview has no room for

such considerations. From the G.O.P.'s perspective,

it's all about the heroic entrepreneur, the John Galt,

I mean Steve Jobs-type "job creator" who showers

benefits on the rest of us and who must, of course, be

rewarded with tax rates lower than those paid by many

middle-class workers.

 

And this vision helps explain why Republicans were so

furiously opposed to the single most successful policy

initiative of recent years: the auto industry bailout.

 

The case for this bailout -- which Mr. Daniels has

denounced as "crony capitalism" -- rested crucially on

the notion that the survival of any one firm in the

industry depended on the survival of the broader

industry "ecology" created by the cluster of producers

and suppliers in America's industrial heartland. If

G.M. and Chrysler had been allowed to go under, they

would probably have taken much of the supply chain with

them -- and Ford would have gone the same way.

 

Fortunately, the Obama administration didn't let that

happen, and the unemployment rate in Michigan, which

hit 14.1 percent as the bailout was going into effect,

is now down to a still-terrible-but-much-better 9.3

percent. And the details aside, much of Mr. Obama's

State of the Union address can be read as an attempt to

apply the lessons of that success more broadly.

 

So we should be grateful to Mr. Daniels for his remarks

Tuesday. He got his facts wrong, but he did,

unintentionally, manage to highlight an important

philosophical difference between the parties. One side

believes that economies succeed solely thanks to heroic

entrepreneurs; the other has nothing against

entrepreneurs, but believes that entrepreneurs need a

supportive environment, and that sometimes government

has to help create or sustain that supportive

environment.

 

And the view that it takes more than business heroes is

the one that fits the facts.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

DNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

 

January 30, 2012

DNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All

By ALANNA MITCHELL

The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.

The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.

Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.

Their DNA lives on in us even though they are extinct. “In a sense, we are a hybrid species,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist who is the research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an interview.

The Denisovans (pronounced dun-EE-suh-vinz) were first described a year ago in a groundbreaking paper in the journal Nature made possible by genetic sequencing of the girl’s pinky bone and of an oddly shaped molar from a young adult.

Those findings have unleashed a spate of new analyses.

Scientists are trying to envision the ancient couplings and their consequences: when and where they took place, how they happened, how many produced offspring and what effect the archaic genes have on humans today.

Other scientists are trying to learn more about the Denisovans: who they were, where they lived and how they became extinct.

A revolutionary increase in the speed and a decline in the cost of gene-sequencing technology have enabled scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to map the genomes of both the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.

Comparing genomes, scientists concluded that today’s humans outside Africa carry an average of 2.5 percent Neanderthal DNA, and that people from parts of Oceania also carry about 5 percent Denisovan DNA. A study published in November found that Southeast Asians carry about 1 percent Denisovan DNA in addition to their Neanderthal genes. It is unclear whether Denisovans and Neanderthals also interbred.

A third group of extinct humans, Homo floresiensis, nicknamed “the hobbits” because they were so small, also walked the earth until about 17,000 years ago. It is not known whether modern humans bred with them because the hot, humid climate of the Indonesian island of Flores, where their remains were found, impairs the preservation of DNA.

This means that our modern era, since H. floresiensis died out, is the only time in the four-million-year human history that just one type of human has been alive, said David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who was the lead author of the Nature paper on the Denisovans.

For many scientists, the epicenter of the emerging story on human origins is the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, where the girl’s finger bone was discovered. It is the only known place on the planet where three types of humans — Denisovan, Neanderthal and modern — lived, probably not all at once.

John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose lab is examining the archaic genomes, visited the cave in July. It has a high arched roof like a Gothic cathedral and a chimney to the sky, he said, adding that being there was like walking in the footsteps of our ancestors.

The cave has been open to the elements for a quarter of a million years and is rich with layers of sediments that may contain other surprises. Some of its chambers are unexplored, and excavators are still finding human remains that are not yet identified. The average temperature for a year, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, bodes well for the preservation of archaic DNA.

Could this cave have been one of the spots where the ancient mating took place? Dr. Hawks said it was possible.

But Dr. Reich and his team have determined through the patterns of archaic DNA replications that a small number of half-Neanderthal, half-modern human hybrids walked the earth between 46,000 and 67,000 years ago, he said in an interview. The half-Denisovan, half-modern humans that contributed to our DNA were more recent.

And Peter Parham, an immunologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has used an analysis of modern and ancient immune-system genetic components — alleles — to figure out that one of the Denisovan-modern couplings most likely took place in what is now southeastern China. He has also found some evidence that a Neanderthal-modern pair mated in west Asia.

He stressed, however, that his study was just the first step in trying to reconstruct where the mating took place.

Dr. Parham’s analysis, which shows that some archaic immune alleles are widespread among modern humans, concludes that as few as six couplings all those tens of thousands of years ago might have led to the current level of ancient immune alleles.

Another paper, by Mathias Currat and Laurent Excoffier, two Swiss geneticists, suggests that breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was rare. Otherwise, they say, modern humans would have far more Neanderthal DNA.

Were they romantic couplings? More likely they were aggressive acts between competing human groups, Dr. Stringer said. For a model, he pointed to modern hunter-gatherer groups that display aggressive behavior among tribes.

The value of the interbreeding shows up in the immune system, Dr. Parham’s analysis suggests. The Neanderthals and Denisovans had lived in Europe and Asia for many thousands of years before modern humans showed up and had developed ways to fight the diseases there, he said in an interview.

When modern humans mated with them, they got an injection of helpful genetic immune material, so useful that it remains in the genome today. This suggests that modern humans needed the archaic DNA to survive.

The downside of archaic immune material is that it may be responsible for autoimmune diseases like diabetes, arthritis and multiple sclerosis, Dr. Parham said, stressing that these are preliminary results.

Although little is known about the Denisovans — the only remains so far are the pinky bone and the tooth, and there are no artifacts like tools. Dr. Reich and others suggest that they were once scattered widely across Asia, from the cold northern cave to the tropical south. The evidence is that modern populations in Oceania, including aboriginal Australians, carry Denisovan genes.

Dr. Reich and others suggest that the interbreeding that led to this phenomenon probably occurred in the south, rather than in Siberia. If so, the Denisovans were more widely dispersed than Neanderthals, and possibly more successful.

But the questions of how many Denisovans there were and how they became extinct have yet to be answered. Right now, as Dr. Reich put it, they are “a genome in search of an archaeology.”

© 2011 The New York Times Company

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

Montana Supreme Court Flouts Citizens United

Will It Be Reversed? Montana Supreme Court Flouts Citizens United

 

by JOHN DEAN

 

Weekend Edition January 27-29, 2012

 

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/montana-supreme-court-flouts-citizens-united/

 

On December 30, 2011, the Montana Supreme Court ruled

that the state’s one-hundred-year-old ban on corporate

political contributions should remain in full force and

effect, notwithstanding the January 21, 2010 ruling of

the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC.  (As

readers may recall, Citizens United was the

controversial decision holding that corporate campaign

contributions are protected as political speech under

the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.)

 

Supporters of the Citizens United ruling think that the

Montana justices simply don’t know how to read the law.

 On the other hand, those who want to overturn Citizens

United and thus to reverse its corrosive impact, which

allows corporate money to be spent on partisan

politics have applauded the Montana high court’s

action. They believe that Montana’s high court got it right.

 

No one knows for certain, though, which side will ultimately prevail.

 

Montana’s Claimed Exception To Citizens United

 

The Montana Supreme Court (MSC)’s opinion demonstrated

that it was fully cognizant of the Citizens United

ruling.  Yet the MSC majority found that the state

statute at issue, the Montana Corrupt Practices Act,

with its ban on corporate contributions was importantly

different from the ban on corporate campaign money that

had been at issue in Citizens United.

 

Notably, the MSC opinion, Western Tradition

Partnership, Inc v. Attorney General of Montana, was

closely and carefully considered by the state’s high

court, and was fully briefed by a number of amici from

national organizations, both for and against Citizens United.

 

The MSC held that when ruling in Citizens United, the

U.S. Supreme Court had found “compelling interest

for the Federal restrictions on corporate political

speech,” and so had concluded that the federal statue

at issue there was “impermissible contravention of

the First Amendment.”  

 

Stated a bit differently, the MSC opinion concludes

that, under Citizens United, (1) “the highest level of

scrutiny” must be applied to any restrictions on

speech, and (2) to impose such restrictions government

must “demonstrate a compelling interest.”  

 

But the MSC added that when and if there is evidence

that passes this high level of scrutiny and proves that

a compelling interest has been shown, then restrictions

can be imposed on political speech.  The MSC notes,

moreover, that the level of evidence that is needed to

satisfy heightened scrutiny will vary with the ˜novelty

and plausibility of the justification raised.” (Citation omitted.)

 

In short, the MSC believed it has found an exception to

Citizens United, one that allows Montana to bar all

corporate money in politics, when there is evidence of

a compelling state interest to justify such action.

 

Montana’s Compelling State Interest for Barring

Corporate Money in Montana Elections

 

The four U.S. Supreme Court justices who dissented in

Citizens United concluded that, based on the majority’s

opinion, there was no situation in which corporate

money could be excluded by the government in political

campaigns.  The MSC opinion, however, reaches a very

different conclusion.

 

The MSC majority reasons as follows: “The Dissents

assert that Citizens United holds unequivocally that no

sufficient government interest justifies limits on

political speech. We disagree. The [U.S.] Supreme Court

held that laws that burden political speech are subject

to strict scrutiny, which requires the government to

prove that the law furthers a compelling state interest

and is narrowly tailored to that interest.”

 

Accordingly, the MSC majority proceeded to assemble

facts showing that the Montana legislature had a

compelling state interest when ”one hundred years

ago”its members enacted the Montana law that prohibited

corporations from making campaign contributions. What

was that interest?  It was to reverse the situation as

it then stood in Montana:  Corporations had, at that

time, utterly corrupted the state’s government.

 

The MSC majority also reasoned that that same potential ”of corporate funds breeding Corruption” remains just as compelling today as it was when the law banning corporate money was first adopted.

 

Thus, the MSC rhetorically asked if the law must now

be repealed because the problem of corruption has been resolved?

 

The MSC then answered its own question with another

question: “Does a state have to repeal or invalidate

its murder prohibition if the homicide rate declines?”   

The MSC answered as followed:  “We think not. Issues of

corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon

agriculture and extractive resource development,

location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign

costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued

efforts of corporate control to the detriment of

democracy and the republican form of government.

Clearly sponsored candidates and Montana citizens, who

for over 100 years have made their modest election

contributions meaningfully count would be effectively

shut out of the process.”

 

The Montana justices made a particularly strong case

for a compelling state interest regarding prohibiting

corporate funding of the election of judges and

justices in Montana, a subject as to which they have

firsthand experience.

 

Thus, under the ruling of Western Tradition Partnership

Montana’s ban on corporation contribution remains ”for

now at least”in full force and effect.  Unsurprisingly,

however, it appears that the ruling is going to be

appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The lawyer who

represented Citizens United, and who prevailed earlier

before the U.S. Supreme Court, James Bopp, Jr., has now

been hired by Western Traditional Partners, and the

other parties, to seek review of the MSC ruling.

 

Testing Montana’s Ruling

 

The MSC ruling was not unanimous; rather, the MSC was

divided, in a five-to-two vote.  The two dissenting

Montana justices felt that there was no room

under Citizens United for the MSC to carve out an exception.

 

Dissenting Justice James Nelson, who noted that he did

not personally agree with Citizens United, nonetheless

concluded that it was the “law of the land,” and thus,

that the Montana high court was bound to follow it.

 

Justice Nelson asked: “Has the State of Montana

identified a compelling state interest, not already

rejected by the Supreme Court, that would justify the

outright ban on corporate expenditures for political

speech effected by [Montana’s ban on corporate

contributions]?”

 

He answered: “Having considered the matter, I believe

the Montana Attorney General has identified some very

compelling reasons for limiting corporate expenditures

in Montana’s political process.  The problem, however,

is that regardless of how persuasive I may think the

Attorney General’s justifications are, the [U.S.]

Supreme Court has already rebuffed each and every one

of them.  Accordingly, as much as I would like to rule

in favor of the State, I cannot in good faith do so.”

Justice Nelson concluded that he would not be surprised

if the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the MSC ruling summarily.

 

Despite Judge Nelson’s stance, I believe that the

majority ruling in the MSC opinion is not baseless.

U.S. Supreme Court opinions are not written like

statutes; rather, they are discussions of the law and

reasoning.  And the MSC reading of Citizens United is

not unreasonable.

 

Thus, maybe, just maybe, given the havoc Citizens United

has wrought in the 2012 election cycle’s the five

justices who overturned the one-hundred-year-old ban on

corporate money in federal elections will reconsider

their stances, agree with the MSC’s reading of their

ruling, and provide an exception.

 

Other states are tracking the Montana situation

closely. For example, a Maine lawmaker has introduced a

bill to adopt the Montana statue in Maine.  If there is

an exception to Citizens United, other states want to

follow quickly in embracing it.

 

Most likely, it will take a Constitutional amendment to

overturn Citizens United, and thankfully, efforts to

introduce just such an amendment are proceeding. But

the amendment process is very difficult, and while

public polling shows clear and overwhelming public

disapproval of the role of corporate money in politics,

this issue is not of the sort that moves large numbers

of people to take actions, and that is what is needed.

Rather, I expect public apathy to allow corporations

and their money to dominate politics under Citizen

United in 2012, and in the foreseeable future. It is a

mess, but a mess that favors Republicans, and a

powerful minority of Americans.  Thus, the ugly

situation with respect to elections and corporate money

is going to get much worse before it gets better.

 

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the

United States from July 1970 to April 1973.

 

This column originally appeared in Justia’s Verdict.

___________________________________________