Acorn’s Woes Strain Its Ties to Democrats

Last December, in one of his last acts as New York City’s top urban development official — and just days before President Obama nominated him as the federal housing secretary — Shaun Donovan attended a groundbreaking ceremony in the South Bronx.

A complex of 125 apartments had fallen into such disrepair that Bush administration housing officials had foreclosed on the building and transferred it to a group they and Mr. Donovan had come to trust: the New York Acorn Housing Company.

“These renovations will transform this once-troubled property into a remarkable asset,” Mr. Donovan declared in a city news release trumpeting the apartments’ “rescue” by Acorn and its development partners.

Now in Mr. Obama’s cabinet, Mr. Donovan is unwilling to speak publicly about that project or any other work with Acorn, a group with which he at times worked particularly closely during his five years as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s housing development commissioner but whose missteps have allowed conservatives to cast it as a symbol of liberalism run amok.

Congress is pushing legislation ordering Mr. Donovan to cut off all Acorn-related grants, something he has declined to address. And he is staying clear of the organization’s leaders.

“I can’t get near him,” said Bertha Lewis, the Acorn chief executive, who frequently interacted with Mr. Donovan as Acorn’s New York leader until 2008.

The arc of Mr. Donovan’s relationship with Acorn traces the broader trajectory of its affiliation with the Democratic Party, exhibiting how deeply the group has been enmeshed in urban politics in New York and other large cities and how members of the Obama administration have been put on the defensive over past relationships with the group.

The relationship between Democrats and Acorn has always been as productive as it has been uneasy. In Acorn’s 40-year history, its voter registration drives and policy proposals on behalf of mostly poor and minority constituents have often redounded to the benefit of Democratic politicians and policy makers.

But its hot rhetoric, frequently heavy-handed approach and occasional legal stumbles have just as often proved an alienating liability easily exploited by Republicans.

That is especially the case now, with the presentation of videotapes in which conservative advocates posing as a pimp and a prostitute elicited advice on tax evasion at Acorn-affiliated offices — including one in New York — bringing a new round of recriminations and investigations. Many of Acorn’s onetime Democratic allies, including Mr. Obama, appear to have fled its side.

In publicizing Acorn’s foibles, conservative radio and cable television hosts frequently mention Mr. Obama’s previous interactions with its affiliates in Illinois, including a 1995 ballot-access lawsuit where he represented the group alongside the Justice Department. Mr. Obama’s campaign also hired an Acorn-affiliated get-out-the-vote subsidiary last year.

Yet the Obama administration’s closest contacts with Acorn come by way of New York.

Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with Acorn in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party’s board with Ms. Lewis when he was the top strategist for its ally, 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her campaigns for the Senate, and the White House urban policy czar, Adolfo Carrión Jr., formerly the Bronx borough president, ran on the party’s ballot lines.

Perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with Acorn than Mr. Donovan, Mr. Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development.

“We grew to respect him, and he grew to respect us,” Ms. Lewis said in an interview.

Mr. Donovan’s work with Acorn’s New York housing arm, glimpsed through two dozen interviews and a review of city documents, was by most accounts mutually beneficial, and showed a side of the group at variance with depictions of it by opponents as a “criminal enterprise.”

Even Bush administration HUD officials came to view some Acorn divisions as credible, awarding more than $40 million to national affiliates.

But throughout, there were hints of the side of Acorn that has made it politically toxic, “a less tightly run ship” — in the words of one city official — that engendered the same sort of suspicion and resentment dogging it now.

By the time Mr. Donovan joined the Bloomberg administration in 2004, Acorn’s housing wing was a well-established partner with the city in rehabilitating its affordable housing stock.

Under its leader, Ismene Speliotis, New York Acorn Housing Company Inc. developed an expertise that even officials in the Republican administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani — no fan of the group — grew to respect during the 1990s.

“These affordable-housing deals get really complicated, and you need a partner with a certain level of financial sophistication,” said Jerilyn Perine, a commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Bloomberg. “Ismene’s one of the best people for that.”

Mr. Donovan included Ms. Speliotis in a group of affordable housing specialists with whom he consulted frequently, current and former city officials said.

They worked closely to keep Starrett City in Brooklyn the nation’s largest federally supported middle-class housing complex when it went up for sale last year.

And she and Ms. Lewis appeared to help Mr. Donovan deliver a coup for Mr. Bloomberg in 2005 when Acorn endorsed a huge Brooklyn development he was supporting in the face of local opposition.

Acorn backed the plan in return for an unusual promise from the developer, Forest City Ratner, to make half of the 4,500 rental apartments that it was proposing — along with a new Nets basketball arena — available to poor and middle-class families at below-market rates.

The city’s agreement to help finance the plan, hammered out among Mr. Donovan, Ms. Speliotis and others, was hailed as a breakthrough for subsidizing a substantial amount of housing for an unusually broad range of middle-class tenants.

Ms. Lewis — a supporter of Mr. Bloomberg’s challenger that election year, Fernando Ferrer — celebrated by exuberantly kissing the mayor at a public ceremony.

The project’s opponents accused Acorn of selling out. (More recently, Forest City Ratner — a development partner with The New York Times on its new Manhattan headquarters — complied with Acorn’s plea for $1.5 million in grants and loans to help it restructure after an internal embezzlement scandal involving Dale Rathke, the brother of its founder, Wade Rathke.)

Friends said it was not the only time when Mr. Donovan felt as if Acorn had forced itself into an outsize role in development negotiations because of political power derived in part through its Working Families Party; the party was affiliated with many officials the developer was wooing.

“One difference with Acorn was their strong political connections to the influential Working Families Party,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor of public policy at New York University who is friendly with Mr. Donovan and served on the presidential transition team that selected him. “That sometimes helped in creating affordable housing, and sometimes made negotiations more difficult.”

Soon after Mr. Donovan left for Washington, a city-supported nonprofit he helped the mayor and the City Council start to stave off home foreclosures suspended a grant to Acorn’s mortgage counseling center based in Brooklyn because of incomplete record keeping.

It would become the least of the Brooklyn office’s troubles after the conservative filmmakers posing as a pimp and a prostitute — James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles — elicited advice from two of its counselors on how to secure a mortgage for a brothel.

Acorn fired the counselors and is reviewing its supervisory structure; the counselors reported to Acorn Housing’s national branch in Chicago, but fell under the supervision of Ms. Speliotis, in spite of her primary focus on development issues.

With the Brooklyn district attorney’s office investigating, one longtime Acorn ally, the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, has suspended all of its Council money.

Some friends, like Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn, called on Mr. Donovan to speak out. “It’s time for people to say, ‘Wait a minute, Acorn has played a crucial role here,’ ” he said.

Ms. Lewis said she had no such expectations.

By JIM RUTENBERG

NY Times

Doctors Will be 'Drafted' Under Public Option

A respected medical specialist has carefully reviewed the healthcare reform bill in the U.S. House, and he declares that it would amount to a virtual "draft" of doctors into the government's "public option" health insurance program.

Dr. Russell Blaylock, a renowned neurosurgeon, book author and editor of the Blaylock Wellness Report published by Newsmax, also warns that "death panels" could lead to the rationing of medical care to the elderly and a "violation of the Hippocratic Oath."

In an exclusive Newsmax interview, Dr. Blaylock points to other ominous provisions in the bill, HR 3200, which he says would:

• Severely discourage the readmission of patients to a hospital after they have been treated, and punish doctors and hospitals if they do readmit them.
  
  
• Require medical practitioners to document their dealings to the extent that they won't have enough time to adequately treat their patients.
  
  
• Jeopardize the confidentiality of patients' medical records, including psychiatric reports.
  

Read Full Story

NewsMax.com

Republicans fail to stop Gitmo transfers into US

WASHINGTON (AP) - Handing President Barack Obama a partial victory in his effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, House Democrats on Thursday repelled a Republican effort to block transfer of any of the detainees to the U.S. Instead, by a 224-193 vote, the House stood by a Democratic plan to allow suspected enemy combatants held at the controversial facility in Cuba to be shipped to U.S. soil—but only to be prosecuted for their suspected crimes.



The Guantanamo restrictions were attached by House-Senate negotiators on a $42.8 billion homeland security appropriations bill. The measure subsequently passed by a 307-114 vote.

President Barack Obama has ordered the facility closed in January but has yet to offer a plan to meet his deadline.

Democratic leaders had to push hard to win the vote because many Democrats two weeks ago had cast a nonbinding but politically safe vote against any Guantanamo detainee transfers. But several Democrats from swing districts said they saw little political risk on Thursday's vote.

"It's a non-issue. Inside the (Washington) Beltway stuff," said first-term Rep. Dan Maffei, D-N.Y. "People care about jobs, the economy, health care."

"I haven't had one person ask me about Guantanamo," said Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind. He added that he does "not in the least" fear it as an issue in next year's elections.

Permitting Guantanamo prisoners to be transferred to U.S. soil to stand trial had been a bipartisan compromise earlier. It mostly tracks current restrictions put in place in June and is similar to a version backed by Republicans earlier in the year. In fact, Republicans such as top Appropriations panel Rep. Jerry Lewis of California helped fashion the compromise.

But in the absence of a plan from the administration for closing the facility, Lewis has toughened his talk, calling the administration's plan misguided and potentially dangerous.

"Terrorists should not be treated like common criminals in federal court," Lewis said. "These detainees are enemies of the state, and should be treated as such by being held and brought to justice right where they are—in Guantanamo Bay."

Read Full Story From AP
Breitbart.com
Photo from AP, former Gitmo detainees chilling with some ice cream.

Bush Preemptive Strike Doctrine Under Review, May Be Discarded

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon is reviewing the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive military strikes with an eye to modifying or possibly ending it.

The international environment is “more complex” than when President George W. Bush announced the policy in 2002, Kathleen Hicks, the Defense Department’s deputy undersecretary for strategy, said in an interview. “We’d really like to update our use-of-force doctrine to start to take account for that.”

The Sept. 11 terrorist strikes prompted Bush to alter U.S. policy by stressing the option of preemptive military action against groups or countries that threaten the U.S. Critics said that breached international norms and set a dangerous precedent for other nations to adopt a similar policy.

The doctrine is being reassessed as part of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review of strategy, force structure and weapons programs. Hicks is overseeing the review.

“We are looking very explicitly at use of force and use of forces,” she said. “We are looking at how to articulate the use of the U.S. military instrument -- how we use military force to achieve national objectives.”

President Barack Obama was elected last year on a platform that included promises to undo many Bush policies. He pledged to extract U.S. forces from Iraq, close the terror detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and give greater U.S. support to the UN.

Norway’s Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the Peace Prize last week, cited a “new climate” in world politics and the restoration of “multilateral diplomacy.” The prize also was widely seen as a repudiation of Bush’s policies.

Report to Congress

Congress requires the administration to report its national security strategy annually, and it requires the Pentagon to reassess its policies and war-fighting doctrine every four years.

The Obama administration will state its security doctrine for the first time as part of the Pentagon’s review, which will be given to Congress in February along with the fiscal 2011 budget.

Bush outlined his doctrine of preemptive strike in a speech at West Point in June 2002. He elevated it to a formal strategy that September. For the first time in a doctrine, the U.S. expressed the right to attack a threat that was gathering, not just imminent.

The doctrine was issued as the U.S. was working to build global support for military action against Iraq to enforce United Nations resolutions requiring Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to allow unfettered inspections for suspected chemical, biological and nuclear arms and to destroy any such weapons of mass destruction.

‘Will Not Hesitate’

The doctrine says the U.S. “will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively.

“In an age where enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather,” the doctrine says.

Some defense policy analysts say the doctrine should be amended or minimized.

“That doctrine was always at odds with international law and norms,” said James Lindsay, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The doctrine is now “dead” after the invasion of Iraq, when the U.S. in March 2003 launched a “preventive war” to eradicate “the threat of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist,” he said.

‘New Strategy’

James Mann, an author in residence at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said the doctrine “was presented as not just the ‘right’” to strike “before you are about to be attacked, but as an entirely new strategy for dealing with the world.”

“I don’t think the Obama people believe preemption should be defined in this incredibly broad sense -- and I think they feel -- with some reason -- the broad definition really lost American support in the rest of the world,” said Mann, author of “Rise of the Vulcans,” a 2004 history of Bush’s war cabinet.

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the non-partisan Brookings Institution in Washington, said “the clear challenge for this administration is to find a balance between retaining the right, in extremis, to preempt, while avoiding association with the Bush administration.”

“The only solution is to try to downplay this option and say it will be reserved for the most extreme cases and even then pursued only with as much international backing and legitimacy as possible,” O’Hanlon said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio at acapaccio@bloomberg.net.

Bloomberg

Missile Defense Shield: Deal or no Deal?

The trading off of a missile defense system for what appears to be our own safety would seem to be a classic move for a Nobel peace prizewinner. The question remains however, did he indeed “trade something” with Russia for removing the shield?

There have been many different ideas and theories floating about the Obama administration and the “deal” that would do one of two things, either ensure that Russia looks the other way when Israel inevitably attacks Iran, or Russia will support harsh sanctions against Iran when it is raised at the U.N. Either deal (especially the first one) would seem to be worth the removal of a missile defense shield.

As we know a missile from Iran would take 33 minutes to get the U.S. so ideally our own protection with a mulit-facetted approach to missile destruction, Obama’s new plan, seems secure.

This theory leaves our allies out to dry, but we know that peace in some appeasers minds means surrender, unless of course we got something in return. Israel is not likely to sit by and watch the fireworks show in 4-5 months when the first missiles that will carry nukes becomes operational. They are not in favor of a blockade or U.N. sanctions when Iran is so close and preaches Israel’s destruction on almost a daily basis. Israel will go in and take them out likely before they become operational.

Recently the Obama administration is rethinking and possibly shifting it’s policy on the missile shield, this coming after Vladimir Putin warns about intimidating Iran.

This either signifies a doctrinal shift in thought on missile defense, or Russia did not hold up their end of the bargain, and wants to see how much they can get from our new Nobel peace prizewinner since Moscow has come out and said they are not happy with the new system either.

Russia having influence on our defense system is somewhat troubling, and I can’t help but think that Obama tried to make a back channel deal with Russia, and was laughed at for his inexperience. Appeasement makes the aggressor more aggressive.

~Ohio Citizen

Sluggish Results Seen in U.S. Math Scores

Scores on the most important nationwide math test increased only marginally for eighth graders and not at all for fourth graders, continuing a six-year trend of sluggish results that suggest the nation will not come close to bringing all children to proficiency by 2014, a central goal of the Bush-era federal education law, No Child Left Behind.

Thirty-nine percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level on the test, administered this spring.

“The trend is flat; it’s a plateau. Scores are not going anywhere, at least nowhere important,” said Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research organization in Washington. “That means that eight years after enactment of No Child Left Behind, the problems it set out to solve are not being solved, and now we’re five years from the deadline and we’re still far, far from the goal.”

The test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, was given to 329,000 fourth- and eighth-grade students. Results in reading are to be released next year, officials said.

“This is the first time in 19 years that fourth-grade math scores are flat,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We’ve got to get better faster.”

The latest scores were especially disappointing because score gaps between white and minority students did not diminish at all since the last time the math test was administered, in 2007. On average, the nation’s fourth graders scored 240 on a 500-point scale, just as they did in 2007. White fourth graders, on average, scored 248, Hispanics scored 227 and blacks scored 222.

Eighth graders, on average, scored 283 on the same scale, up from 281 in 2007. White eighth graders, on average, scored 293, while Hispanics scored 266 and black eighth graders scored 261.

The gap of 32 points separating average black and white eighth graders represents about three years’ worth of math learning.

The No Child Left Behind law, which President George W. Bush signed in 2001, raised the importance of the National Assessment, requiring the Department of Education to increase the frequency of its administration in math and reading to once every two years, to help Americans monitor progress toward the goals of universal proficiency and the elimination of the achievement gap.

The federal law’s enactment followed a decade dominated by a standards and accountability movement that brought deep changes to public schools across the nation. Educators and policy makers, in nearly every state, often led by governors, including Mr. Bush when he was the Texas governor, laid out standards as to what students were expected to know in each grade and subject, and required schools to use those standards to guide instruction.

Nearly every state established standardized testing regimes during the 1990s, intended to measure whether students were meeting the standards, with the intent of holding schools accountable for student achievement.

The No Child Left Behind law, proposed by President Bush and passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress in his first year in office, sought to build on the standards and accountability movement with many new federal rules, including a requirement that states administer reading and math tests to every student every year in all elementary and middle schools, and once in students’ high school careers.

It also required that schools publish test scores not just as averages, but broken down by students’ race, sex and other groups, a rule that most educators agree has focused nationwide attention on narrowing achievement gaps.

The law also for the first time made it a national goal to bring every student to proficiency in those subjects by 2014.

With the latest test results, it is possible to trace student achievement growth over the years before the law’s passage, when states were dominant in education policy, and over the years since, when the federal law has become a powerful force in classrooms.

They show that scores grew faster during the seven years before the federal law’s enactment. During those years, average fourth-grade math scores grew by 11 points, to 235 in 2003 from 224 in 1996, and eighth-grade scores grew by eight points, to 278 in 2003 from 270 in 1996. In the six years since the law took effect, fourth-grade scores have risen by five points, to 240 from 235. Eighth-grade scores have risen by an equal amount, to 283 from 278.

“If we look at the gains between 1996 and 2003, which is the era preceding the No Child law, when states were enacting accountability and standards, the gains were larger than during the No Child era that began in 2003 and has run to 2009,” said Mark Schneider, who from 2005 to 2008 was commissioner of the arm of the Department of Education that oversees the National Assessment. “Either the standards movement has played out, or the No Child law failed to build on its momentum. Whatever momentum we had, however, is gone.”

William Schmidt, an education professor at Michigan State University, also called the results disappointing.

“We’re just inching upwards, and we’ve only got about a third of our students proficient,” Professor Schmidt said.

The large variation in average scores by state, he said, should be a focus of national analysis. In Massachusetts, for instance, where educators have sharply raised math scores in recent years by carefully reworking standards and instruction, 57 percent of fourth graders scored at or above proficient on the latest test. That compares with Mississippi, where only 16 percent of students scored at proficient.

“How can we as a nation allow such disparity?” Professor Schmidt asked.

by Sam Dillon

NyTimes

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson 

Climate correspondent, BBC News

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.


But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles
What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

“ In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down ”

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?
Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

BBC

Obama's Gitmo blame game

Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order.

But sources familiar with the process believe Craig is being set-up as the fall guy and say the blame for missing the deadline extends well beyond him.

Instead, it was a widespread breakdown on the political, legislative, policy and planning fronts that contributed to what is shaping up as one of Obama’s most high-profile setbacks, these people say.

The White House misread the congressional mood – as it found out abruptly in May, when theSenate voted 90-6 against funds for closing the base after Republicans stoked fears about bringing prisoners to the U.S. The House also went on record last week opposing bringing Gitmo detainees here.

The White House misread the public mood – as roughly half of Americans surveyed say they disagree with Obama’s approach. A strong element of NIMBY-ism permeates those results, as Americans say they don’t want the prisoners in their backyards.

But most of all Obama’s aides mistook that political consensus from the campaign trail for a deep commitment in Washington to do whatever it takes to close the prison.

“The administration came in reading there to be wide support for closing Guantanamo at home and abroad, and I think it misread that attitude,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who held Defense and State Department positions on detainee policy. “In general, they were right….but there was very little willingness to accept the costs and risks of getting it done.”

The White House declined to make Craig available for an interview, or discuss the Gitmo deliberations in detail, but several allies and even some critics scoffed at suggestions that Craig bears the main responsibility for the missteps.

“This clearly was a decision that had the full support of the entire national security team,” said Ken Gude, who tracks Guantanamo issues for the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. “It’s typical Washington that someone has their head on the chopping block, but it’s ridiculous that it’s Craig.”

“The implication that this was the brainchild of the White House counsel is not really credible,” said Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First.

When Obama signed a series of executive orders on Guantanamo during his second full day in office, what grabbed attention was not his promise to close the prison but his pledge to do it within one year.

During the presidential campaign, Obama talked almost daily about closing Guantanamo, but he rarely offered a timeline. His Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), spoke in a far greater specificity, proposing to move the Gitmo prisoners to Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas.

However, back in July 2007, Obama co-sponsored an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that called for Guantanamo to close within a year. Obama’s primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was also a co-sponsor.

Some Bush administration officials contend that the one-year timeline was driven by a naïveté on the part of Obama’s aides.

“To a certain extent, they had drunk a lot of the far-left Kool-aid: that everybody, or most people, at Guantanamo were innocent and shouldn’t be there, and the Bush administration was not working very hard to resolve these issues, and that the issues were fairly easy to resolve once adults who were really committed to doing something about it in charge,” said one Bush official who met with Obama’s aides during the transition on Gitmo. “It became clear to me they had not really done their homework on the details.”

But even back on Jan. 22, 2009, the same day Obama signed the orders, Craig acknowledged some of the difficulties involved – including that some of the detainees can never be tried, a problem Craig called “difficult” and “most controversial.”

Now Obama’s decision to set a one-year deadline is being widely second-guessed. Craig supported the idea – and Craig’s allies say that a deadline was needed to persuade foreign governments that Obama was serious. They note that President George W. Bush talked on at least eight occasions about his desire to close Guantanamo – and left office with 250 prisoners there.

“Simply reasserting the intention to close Guantanamo would not have been sufficient in the international community,” Gude said. “They had to have a firm date and they had to have a timeline.”

Gude had advocated an 18-month timeline to “build in a cushion” but he said the only real mistakes the White House made involved failing to anticipate the resistance in Congress – particularly surrounding the Senate’s sharp rejection of Obama’s $80 million request to close Gitmo.

“They made that request without much supporting information and opened the door for Republicans in Congress to make it a Congressional issue and they did it very successfully,” Gude said. “The White House didn’t have a plan to support Democrats who were willing to back up their proposal and it all fell apart.”

Craig’s backers contend that, if that was the White House’s key misjudgment, other top officials share responsibility for the breakdown.

“It seems very unlikely to me that Greg Craig, by himself, engineered a DOD appropriations request,” one lawyer close to Craig said.

In retrospect, there were early signs of possible trouble ahead. Within hours of Obama signing the orders, McCain warned of a backlash and said the time frame the president set out would be “very difficult” to achieve.

A McCain adviser said the Obama team should have known. “I don’t think they realized how much heat McCain took from conservatives” during the GOP primary, said the aide, who asked not to be named. “Had they been aware of that I don’t think they would have handled it this way…..It shouldn’t have surprised anybody.”

Today, the National Security Council and Obama senior adviser Pete Rouse are effectively in charge of closing Gitmo, though Press Secretary Robert Gibbs denied Craig had been stripped of his responsibilities on the prison. “There are number of people that are working on it, Greg being one of them,” Gibbs said.

A review of Guantanamo prisoners is also nearly complete, with about 80 detainees up for release and State Department envoy Dan Fried lining up places to receive them.

“Our friends and allies have accepted or agreed to accept more than 30 of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be sent home due to humane treatment concerns, and are seriously considering taking others,” said a White House official who asked not to be named.

But it’s been slow. Obama’s administration has transferred 17 Guantanamo prisoners to other countries so far – compared to 19 by the Bush administration in the first nine months of 2008.

Obama aides have blamed the delays on disarray in government files about the detainees, but several former officials said that is not directly linked to the thorniest questions such as where to locate detainees in the U.S. “Those issues that have been kicked down the road are by far the hardest,” Waxman said.
By: Josh Gerstein 
October 6, 2009 05:15 AM EST


Politico.com

Palestinians Drop Effort to Pressurize Israel at UN, For Now

In an unexpected move late Thursday, the Palestinian Authority withdrew its backing for a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council that sought to endorse in full a report accusing Israel of war crimes.

Hours earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had warned that adoption of the report would kill the Mideast “peace process.” It would also jeopardize the war against terrorism and severely damage the U.N.’s reputation, he said.

The P.A. decision followed strong lobbying by the United States, which is trying to restart stalled Israeli-P.A. negotiations. It will likely mean that the HRC, on its last day of a month-long session in Geneva Friday, will vote on a compromise resolution that defers the matter, at least until the council next meets in March 2010.

The closing days of the current session have been dominated by the so-called Goldstone report, a 575-page document compiled by a HRC-mandated fact finding mission examining Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip last winter.

Among its recommendations, the report says the U.N. Security Council should refer allegations of war crimes by Israel and Hamas to International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors if the Israelis and Palestinians do not launch independent investigations into the charges within six months.

The mission head, South African judge Richard Goldstone, presented his report to the council on Tuesday. Israel, which refused to cooperate with the mission, repudiated the document, saying it had ignored Israel’s “right to self-defense” in the face of thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza over a number of years.

The U.S. led calls to have the matter handled by the HRC alone, rather than be referred to parties outside the body, including the Security Council and ICC.

It called the report “deeply flawed,” noted that Israel already has criminal inquiries underway, and said it should be encouraged to probe and address the allegations through credible domestic processes, while the Palestinians should also investigate allegations of Hamas abuses.

But the P.A., with the backing of Islamic, Arab, African and “non-aligned” member states, wanted the council to adopt a resolution endorsing the report “in full” – an outcome that would effectively have started the clock on the six month period set by Goldstone.

Late Thursday, however, Israeli media reported that the P.A. envoy to the HRC had told his Israeli counterpart that he would on Friday withdraw P.A. support for the draft resolution.


By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
CNSNEWS
Read Full Story Here....

John Thune leads Senate Republican Policy Committee to fight arms treaty.

As the Obama administration negotiates with Russia over a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, Senate Republicans are already planning their strategy to demand maximum concessions in exchange for their potential support.

The Senate Republican Policy Committee, led by South Dakota's John Thune, shown at left, is circulating a memo (pdf) outlining the GOP strategy to deal with the "follow on" to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires December 5. According to the memo, obtained by The Cable, the Republicans have a long list of demands, some of which are unlikely to be met when the administration rolls out the new agreement.

"A treaty meeting the goals articulated in this paper is more likely to gain the two-thirds majority necessary for Senate consent," the memo explains.

The differences between administration plans and GOP demands are likely to complicate the push for ratification in the Senate, which is expected early next year.

The core strategy for the Senate Republicans will be to try to frame the nuclear reductions as a unilateral concession that President Obama is making to the Russians.

"The United States should not pay for what is free," the memo states. "Russia's nuclear numbers will decline dramatically in the coming years with or without an arms control treaty. The United States should not make important concessions in return for something that will happen in any event."

Republicans will also call on Obama to justify the arms reductions in the context of American security interests, not simply U.S.-Russia relations.

"Russia needs this agreement far more than the U.S. does. It is desperately trying to lock the U.S. into lower nuclear levels, not the other way around."

GOP senators such as minority whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ, have been accusing Obama of rushing to get an agreement, a theme the strategy memo says will continue as Republicans argue that an extension of the old terms is preferable to a bad treaty.

Specifically, the memo sets three basic conditions for Republican support.

First, the new treaty should not constrain U.S. missile defenses, the GOP senators argue, nor should it impinge upon the military's plans to develop what's called "global strike" capabilities -- the ability to attack any target in the world at any time.

In a previous interview with The Cable, a senior administration official said there would be no specific treaty language on missile defense, but that some verification of conventional systems such as those used in global strike might be covered in the final version.

Secondly, Republicans are demanding the administration submit a modernization plan for the nation's nuclear stockpile at the same time as the treaty. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher has said that such a plan will be submitted in next year's budget but will not include the Bush administration's proposal for building a new type of nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead.

The third condition, the one the administration won't be able to deliver to Republicans, is their call for Russian tactical nuclear weapons to be covered in the new treaty. The senior official had said that would not be part of these negotiations, but could be covered in the next treaty, what insiders are calling "the follow on to the follow on."

The administration's negotiating team, led by Rose Gottemoeller, the assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation, has been traveling back and forth to Geneva to negotiate terms with the Russians.

And Tauscher is testifying today to the House Armed Services Committee on the administration's recent decision to alter missile-defense plans in Europe, a decision she maintains was also not a concession to Russia.

"Nothing that we did had anything to do with Russian saber-rattling or their consternation about the ground-based interceptors or the Czech radar. The decision was not part of any trade-off or quid pro quo," Tauscher said, adding, "If, as a consequence of President Obama's decision, relations with Russia improve, then we should embrace that benefit."

Source: The Cable

Immigration Crackdown With Firings, Not Raids

LOS ANGELES — A clothing maker with a vast garment factory in downtown Los Angeles is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees in the coming days — more than a quarter of its work force — after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents the workers presented when they were hired.

The firings at the company, American Apparel, have become a showcase for the Obama administration’s effort to reduce illegal immigration by forcing employers to dismiss unauthorized workers rather than by using workplace raids. The firings, however, have divided opinion in California over the effects of the new approach, especially at a time of high joblessness in the state and with a major, well-regarded employer as a target.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, called the dismissals “devastating,” and his office has insisted that the federal government should focus on employers that exploit their workers. American Apparel has been lauded by city officials and business leaders for paying well above the garment industry standard, offering health benefits and not long ago giving $18 million in stock to its workers.

But opponents of illegal immigration, including Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a Republican from San Diego who is chairman of a House caucus that opposes efforts to extend legal status to illegal immigrants, back the enforcement effort. They say American Apparel is typical of many companies that, in Mr. Bilbray’s words, have “become addicted to illegal labor.”

“Of course it’s a good idea,” Mr. Bilbray said of the crackdown. “They seem to think that somehow the law doesn’t matter, that crossing the line from legal to illegal is not a big deal.”

In July, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, opened audits of employment records similar to the one at American Apparel at 654 companies around the country. John T. Morton, who, as assistant secretary of homeland security, runs ICE, said the audits covered all types of employers with immigrant workers, including many like American Apparel that were not shadowy sweatshops or serial violators of labor codes.

The investigation at American Apparel was started 17 months ago, under President George W. Bush. Obama administration officials point out that they have not followed the Bush pattern of concluding such investigations with a mass roundup of workers. Those raids drew criticism for damaging businesses and dividing immigrant families.

Immigration officials said they would now focus on employers, primarily wielding the threat of civil complaints and fines, instead of raids and worker deportation.

“Now all manner of companies face the very real possibility that the government, using our basic civil powers, is going to come knocking on the door,” Mr. Morton said.

The goal, he said, is to create “a truly national deterrent” to hiring unauthorized labor that would “change the practices of American employers as a class.”

The employees being fired from American Apparel could not resolve discrepancies that investigators discovered in documents they had presented at hiring and in federal Social Security or immigration records — probably because the documents were fake. Peter Schey, a lawyer for American Apparel, said that ICE had cited deficiencies in the company’s record keeping, but that the authorities had not accused it of knowingly hiring illegal workers. A fine threatened by the agency was withdrawn, Mr. Schey said.

After months of discussions with ICE officials, the company moved on its own to terminate the workers because, Mr. Schey said, federal guidelines for such cases were “in a shambles.” The Bush administration proposed rules for employers to follow when workers’ documents did not match, but a federal court halted the effort and the Obama administration decided to abandon it.

With its bright-pink, seven-story sewing plant in the center of Los Angeles, American Apparel is one of the biggest manufacturing employers in the city, and makes a selling point of the “Made in U.S.A.” labels in its racy T-shirts and miniskirts. Dov Charney, the company’s chief executive, has campaigned, in T-shirt logos and eye-catching advertisements, to “legalize L.A.,” by granting legal status to illegal immigrants, a policy President Obama supports.

Since the audit began, Mr. Charney has treaded carefully, eager to show that his publicly traded company is obeying the law, and to reassure investors that the loss of so many workers will not damage the business, since production has slowed already with the recession.

But Mr. Charney is also questioning why federal authorities made a target of his company. Over the summer he joined his workers in a street protest against the firings. Because the immigration investigation is still under way, Mr. Charney declined to be interviewed for this article but did respond in an e-mail message.

The firings “will not help the economy, will not make us safer,” he said.

“No matter how we choose to define or label them,” he said, illegal immigrants “are hard-working, taxpaying workers.”

On a recent visit to American Apparel’s factory floors here, amid the whirring of sewing machines and the whooshing of cooling fans, a murmur of many languages rose: mostly Spanish, but also Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Portuguese. Masseurs were offering 20-minute massages for sewers in need of a break.

But there was also a mood of mourning, as work was interrupted with farewell parties. The majority of workers losing their jobs are women, most of whom are working to support families. Many departing workers have been with the company for a decade or more.

Executives said many workers had learned skills specific to a proprietary production system that allows American Apparel to make 250,000 garments a week in Los Angeles, while keeping prices competitive with imports from places like China.

Some workers who are leaving said the company had been a close-knit community for them. Jesús, 30, originally from Puebla, Mexico, said he was hired 10 years ago as a sewing machine operator, then worked and studied his way up to an office job as coordinating manager.

“I learned how to think here,” said Jesús, who would not reveal his last name because of his illegal status.

The company provides health and life insurance, he said, and he earns about $900 a week, with taxes deducted from his paycheck.

Like many others, Jesús said his next move was to hunt for work in Los Angeles. He will not return to Mexico, he said, because he is gay and fears discrimination.

“There they treat you and judge you without even knowing you,” Jesús said.

He said several job offers from mainstream garment makers in this country had been withdrawn once he was asked for documents.

“Being realistic,” he said, “I guess I’m going to have to go to one of those sweatshop companies where I’m going to get paid under the table.”

ICE has made no arrests so far at the factory. But Mr. Morton of ICE said the agency would not rule out pursuing workers proven to be illegal immigrants.

Mr. Schey said company human resources managers had added new scrutiny to hiring procedures. But workers facing dismissal pointed to the line of job applicants outside the factory one recent day, who, like many of them, were almost all Spanish-speaking immigrants.

“I think the Americans think that garment sewing is demeaning work,” said Francisco, 38, a Guatemalan with nine years at the plant who is being forced to leave.

A top supervisor, he is training new employees to replace him.

By JULIA PRESTON

Source: NY Times

White House to exempt Canada on "Buy American": report

TORONTO (Reuters) - The White House is expected to exempt Canada from a provision in the U.S. stimulus package that gives priority to American-made products used in public works projects, CBC News reported on Tuesday.

In return Ottawa will offer U.S. companies guaranteed access to procurement contracts awarded by provincial and municipal governments, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported on its website, citing Canadian government sources.

The so-called "Buy American" provision, which favors U.S.-made steel, iron and other manufactured goods in taxpayer-funded building projects, has proved a sore spot in relations between the two countries for months.

Canadian companies have complained the provision is protectionist and shuts them out from large U.S. contracts.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed the issue with U.S. President Barack Obama during a visit to Washington last week. Obama used the occasion to declare there was no prospect of a trade war between Canada and its largest trading partner, the United States.

(Reporting by Frank McGurty, editing by Chris Wilson)
Source: Reuters