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Leading Abortion Foe Reaches Pact On Health Vote

A leading Democratic abortion foe in the House says he has reached agreement with the White House and party leaders to make sure health care legislation does not permit the use of federal funds for elective abortions. Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan said Sunday the agreement means he can now support a health care bill headed for a vote on the House floor later Sunday.

Obama, Dems On Track For Health Care Vote

Triumph in their grasp, President Barack Obama and House Democrats demonstrated command of the votes needed to pass landmark health care legislation Sunday night, writing a climactic chapter in a century-long quest for near universal coverage.

Women's groups, without the votes

Women's groups didn't do as badly today as they might have, as the Stupak executive order appears to be more a restatement of the Nelson language th

Abortion compromise doesn't satisfy critics

A last-minute compromise that swung a half-dozen anti-abortion Democrats behind President Barack Obama's health care bill - virtually ensuring its passage - failed to placate outside activists on either side of the issue, and drew derision from Republicans.

Live from the Health-Care Vote

House Democrats passed the first key procedural measure with 224 votes, suggesting the historic health-care reform bill will pass tonight. Watch live video of the fiery debate from the House of Representatives. For more of The Daily...

Credit to OfA

Organizing for America, the Obama campaign organization, was much maligned (including by me) when Obama couldn't seem to get anything done on the Hi

Historic Vote on Health

The biggest transformation of the health system in decades was on the verge of passage after a last-minute deal won over antiabortion Democrats. The House voted 224-206 to allow debate to begin, a key test for whether the bill will pass.

Profiles in candor

Lynn Sweet has a remarkable interview with "no" voter Dan Lipinski, who -- she reported -- is widely seen as having been given his seat by

David Isenberg: To Do the Impossible Job

Recent news about private military contractors (PMC) confirms the obvious; the federal government needs to improve both the quantity and quality of resources it devotes to doing PMC oversight.

While PMC do, at times, screw up through their own actions and choices, I think it fair to say that most of them strive to do the right thing. But they can only be as good insofar as they have a knowledgeable client that clearly spells out what is expected and how the work should be done.

Now consider the just published, must read article that ProPublica co-published with Newsweek. It examines U.S. efforts to train the Afghan National Police. An honest, effective Afghan police force is crucial if Afghanistan is ever going to be able to function on its own.

For many years DynCorp held the contract and encountered all sorts of problems. Some were DynCorp's own fault but many were not. When the client, as in the U.S. government, sets ridiculous requirements failure become inevitable:

The people who oversaw much of the training that did take place were contractors--many of them former American cops or sheriffs. They themselves had little proper direction, and the government officials overseeing their activities did not bother to examine most expenses under $3,000, leaving room for abuse. Amazingly, no single agency or individual ever had control of the training program for long, so lines of accountability were blurred.

...

It's practically impossible to produce competent police officers in a program of only eight weeks, says a former senior DynCorp executive, requesting anonymity because he continues to work in the industry. But that was the time frame State and Defense set for the course. "They were not going to be trained police officers. We knew that. They knew that," the former executive says. "It was a numbers game." In fact, the course has now been cut from eight weeks to six in order to squeeze in more trainees. ("We believe the training is appropriate under the circumstances," says Assistant Secretary of State David Johnson. DynCorp spokesman Douglas Ebner says the basic-training course is part of a more extensive 40-week program, and is supported by further "field monitoring, mentoring, and advising." Training hours have been extended to make up for the lost weeks, he says. DynCorp does "not make the policies, recruit the police candidates, or design the program," he adds, saying the company has "fully met" its objective of providing highly qualified police trainers.)

DynCorp's defense smacks of the Nuremberg defense, i.e., it was just following orders "to produce highly qualified police trainers" when, in fact, the goal is to produce qualified and competent Afghan police. But, in truth, DynCorp is correct. It should not be held at fault for trying to do the impossible, as in impossible to produce competent police officers in a program of only eight weeks. While Don Quixote could dream the impossible dream, contractors should not be paid to do an impossible job.

Of course, DynCorp could have said, this is impossible, it won't work, and we're not going to do it. That would be an ethical business practice. As any contractor knows, sometimes you just have to tell the client that it can't have what it wants. Yet, the recent decision by the GAO to reopen the competition for the police training contract, for which Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) had heretofore been considered a leading contender, means that DynCorp is still willing to take the money to do a job that is, unless the State Department radically changes its contract requirements, virtually impossible to successfully achieve.

The article makes clear that when it comes to oversight on this contract State is AWOL:

Those failures should have been no surprise. The audit also found that State routinely short-staffed its contract-monitoring office in Afghanistan. At one point, only three contract officers were on the ground overseeing DynCorp's $1.7 billion training contract. A former DynCorp official who worked in Afghanistan, asking not to be named because he remains in the government contracting business, says he asked the State Department repeatedly for concrete goals for the police contract but never got firm answers. "I'd ask them: 'Please explain to me what a successful training program was. What are the standards you want us to apply?' There was no vision for the future."

The ProPublica article is just another depressing example of how badly government falls down on the job. This is worse than not just providing enough auditors or contracting officers, although that is still a significant problem. As William Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for GAO, testified to the U.S. House Appropriations defense subcommittee on March 17 shortcomings include a lack of sufficient and sufficiently trained military personnel and civilian employees to oversee contractors day-to-day during wartime operations. For example, in Afghanistan, there was concern the military didn't have people with enough knowledge of trades such as plumbing and electrical wiring to oversee contractors doing those jobs.

This is about being able to write a realistic job goal. If the U.S. government can't do that then why expect a contractor to pull its fat out of the fire?

If you think this is an exaggeration consider that when President Obama announced his plan to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan everyone recognized this meant tens of thousands more contractors would be accompanying them. Yet according to Solis:

On December 1, 2009, the President announced that an additional 30,000 U.S. troops would be sent to Afghanistan to assist in the ongoing operations there, and the Congressional Research Service estimates that between 26,000 and 56,000 additional contractors may be needed to support the additional troops. However, during our December 2009 trip to Afghanistan, we found that only limited planning was being done with regard to contracts or contractors. Specifically, we found that with the exception of planning for the increased use of LOGCAP, USFOR-A had not begun to consider the full range of contractor services that might be needed to support the planned increase of U.S. forces. More important, officials from USFOR-A's logistics staff appeared to be unaware of their responsibility as defined by DOD guidance to identify contractor requirements or develop the contract management and support plans required by guidance.

Let's hope that at this Wednesday's hearing, to examine Defense Department and State Department contracts for police training in Afghanistan, including the State Department's Civilian Police (CIVPOL) Program contract, members of the Senate Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight will minutely scrutinize all the contract requirements and goals.

Health Care Protesters Create An Ugly Scene On Capitol Hill

You may have heard or read about the ugly scenes on Capitol Hill yesterday, when a few conservative activists shouted racial and homophobic epithets at Democratic lawmakers. Today the conservative activists are back. And so is the ugliness--only this time, a few Republicans were actually encouraging them.

Oil, Gas Producers In Colorado Showing Signs Of Life

After a punishing year when natural-gas prices slid to their lowest level since 2002, there are signs of life in Colorado's oil and gas fields.

The state's largest publicly traded producers have, in the past few weeks, issued capital forecasts for 2010 showing rigs and money flowing into Colorado.

Randall Amster: Silent Spring Has Sprung

Seasons change, yet some things remain the same. Nearly half a century ago, Rachel Carson debuted the first serial installment of what would eventually become one of the landmark works of the 20th century, Silent Spring. In that book, Carson famously argued that the pesticide DDT was responsible for negative impacts on the environment, animals, and humans alike, despite disinformation spread by industry and government officials about its purported safety and utility in agribusiness. Silent Spring is often credited with starting the modern environmental movement, yet today we are facing equivalent challenges and similar campaigns to conceal the potential dangers of toxic chemicals in our midst.

In particular, the pervasive use of the herbicide atrazine raises a host of ecological and political questions that are strikingly reminiscent of those confronted by Carson. Perhaps coincidentally, the widespread use of atrazine in American agriculture dates to almost precisely the time that Silent Spring was beginning to take shape as a withering indictment of the chemical industry's blatant disregard for emerging health warnings and its concomitant influence over politicians and regulators. While DDT was eventually banned for use as a pesticide in 1972, atrazine has enjoyed decades of unfettered use as (according to its maker, Syngenta) "one of the most effective, affordable and trusted products in agriculture." This promotional website includes personal testimonials from farmers as well as press releases intended to debunk "baseless activist claims" about atrazine's safety.

Interestingly, a similar pattern was evident in the early days of Carson's work to expose the dangers of DDT, in which her perspective was considered so "heretical and controversial" that she couldn't readily find a willing publisher to bring the story to light. When Silent Spring was finally published in 1962, there was an immediate backlash from the chemical industry and its proponents in the Department of Agriculture, equal parts of which were aimed at debunking Carson's science and attacking her personally in an attempt to discredit her views. In a thinly-veiled invocation of the Enlightenment gendered view of nature, one prominent industry spokesman remarked as part of a concerted public relations effort: "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth."

Despite such dire predictions and ad hominem recriminations, Carson never wavered in her views. One of the most powerful aspects of her analysis was the recognition that environmental issues are necessarily socio-political ones as well. Most of us (myself included) are not able to follow the purely scientific components of any debate about the safety and efficacy of a given industrial chemical. Indeed, it is likely that competing research claims will be made, with industry oftentimes directly employing "think tanks" to generate or recast findings to undermine the force of contrary claims about its products. To sort these contests out and protect the population's interests, we generally must rely on regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which actually traces part of its roots back to Carson and even has been referred to as "the extended shadow of Silent Spring."

Unfortunately, the EPA frequently aligns itself with commercial interests in the face of studies suggesting problematic effects of highly profitable and widespread agricultural chemicals such as atrazine. In 2003, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reported that the EPA had decided not to regulate or otherwise limit the use of atrazine despite growing concerns about its potential effects on humans and the environment, including its impact on water systems from agricultural runoff. The NRDC, in a manner that will figure into the current debate, described these concerns as follows:

"Several recent studies show that atrazine causes sexual abnormalities in frogs, and another revealed elevated levels of prostate cancer in workers at an atrazine manufacturing plant. Some of the findings resulted from research funded by the manufacturer itself.... One of the first of several studies to turn up evidence of sexual deformities in frogs exposed to atrazine was conducted by Dr. Tyrone Hayes [who] conducted initial research with funding from Syngenta, and the deformities he found in the frogs included hermaphroditism. Syngenta responded by repeatedly sending him back to re-run his research, and apparently did not submit the findings about hermaphroditism to the EPA. Frustrated by the delays, Dr. Hayes eventually gave up his Syngenta funding, ran the experiments again independently, and found the same results. Since then, Syngenta-funded researcher Tim Gross has reported similarly damaging effects to a different species of frogs exposed to atrazine...."

This 2003 report further cited a study from the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that suggested a link between atrazine and prostate cancer in humans. In light of such potential issues arising from groundwater contamination, in 2005 the European Union banned the use of atrazine as a precautionary measure. Nonetheless, in 2006 the EPA re-registered its use in the United States. In recent weeks, however, a number of new studies have emerged that cast further doubt upon atrazine's safety, including (as reported by Reuters) studies indicating increased rates of birth defects: "Atrazine ... upped the risk of nine birth defects in babies born to mothers whose last menstrual period was from April to July -- that is, when surface water levels of the pesticide were highest. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has also reported that high levels of the chemical have been shown to cause birth defects in animals."

Predictably, Syngenta issued a press release arguing that there was "no direct or credible link" between atrazine and the observed incidences of birth defects. The company's atrazine website continues to laud its agricultural benefits and the purportedly "overwhelming evidence" of its safety. In 2009, the New York Times reported that the EPA generally has sided with Syngenta in rejecting calls for regulation in light of emerging critical studies, but that it "is likely to be re-examined" by the new EPA administrator due to its widespread usage (not only agriculturally but on lawns, parks, and golf courses) as well as concerns voiced by officials in other agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services. Still, the EPA is perceived as a relatively weak and highly politicized agency, casting doubt as to whether the so-called "extended shadow of Silent Spring" will in fact strive to uphold its legacy.

The mounting pressure may be difficult for the EPA to ignore, however, as indicated by news reports that "forty-three water systems in six states - Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi and Ohio - recently sued atrazine's manufacturers to force them to pay for removing the chemical from drinking water." Indeed, in 2009 the NRDC issued a comprehensive report on the presence of atrazine in watersheds, concluding that "approximately 75 percent of stream water and about 40 percent of all groundwater samples from agricultural areas tested in an extensive U.S. Geological Survey study contained atrazine." This in-depth report explores atrazine's endocrine-disrupting qualities, its pervasive appearance in high levels in drinking water systems, and the EPA's permissive standards and general neglect of the problem. The recommendations offered by the NRDC include "phasing out the use of atrazine, more effective atrazine monitoring, the adoption of farming techniques that can help minimize the use of atrazine and prevent it from running into waterways, and the use of home filtration systems by consumers." A follow-up Huffington Post article by one of the report's authors further notes that atrazine "can be detected in most streams and rivers of the U.S.," and that eventually much of it makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico, "where it continues its plant-killing spree of algae and other beneficial water plants that provide food and oxygen for aquatic life."

Equally compelling are recent studies - including those directed by former Syngenta researcher Dr. Tyrone Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley - indicating that frogs absorbing atrazine through their skin can be feminized even to the point where males are "functionally female" enough to lay eggs. According to Hayes, as reported in the Washington Post, even at trace levels that are within drinking water standards, male fertility rates among subject frogs are significantly diminished. Hayes has been conducting these studies and finding similar results for many years, and recently told me that further research has found that "atrazine induces infertility, prostate cancer, and breast cancer in rats and is associated with these diseases in humans in several published studies." In words that echo the spirit of Silent Spring, Hayes told the Post that atrazine is a chemical "that causes hormone havoc. You need to look at things that are affecting wildlife, and realize that, biologically, we're not that different."

The company of course rejects such notions, and referred the Post reporter to a professor who questioned Hayes's findings even as it was noted that this professor "had received funding from Syngenta for previous research, but that it had not biased his work." Respected publications such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Experimental Biology, however, have carried Hayes's reports and thus given imprimatur to his operative conclusion that "atrazine is a likely contributor to worldwide amphibian declines." In a recent email interview with me, Dr. Hayes further noted that these results have been confirmed by "independent labs," and that "the induction of aromatase and estrogen production has been demonstrated ... in fish, frogs, alligators, birds, turtles, rats and human cells." As a recent article in Science Daily explains:

"Some 80 million pounds of the herbicide atrazine are applied annually in the United States on corn and sorghum to control weeds and increase crop yield, but such widespread use also makes atrazine the most common pesticide contaminant of ground and surface water, according to various studies. More and more research, however, is showing that atrazine interferes with endocrine hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone - in fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles, laboratory rodents and even human cell lines at levels of parts per billion. Recent studies also found a possible link between human birth defects and low birth weight and atrazine exposure in the womb. As a result of these studies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing its regulations on use of the pesticide. Several states are considering banning atrazine, and six class action lawsuits have been filed seeking to eliminate its use. The European Union already bars the use of atrazine."

In response, Syngenta issued a press release, remarkably claiming that a "growing body of research shows that atrazine has no effects on amphibians" and that "scientists around the world have shown that atrazine is safe to use - providing farmers an important tool to bring us safe, abundant and nutritious food." In an attempt to discredit Hayes in particular, the release contends that his work "has many shortcomings that undercut its usefulness, including its inconsistency with prior findings by the author." Hayes flatly rejects this, telling me that he has no doubt about the consistency of his findings: "Our previous studies showed that metamorphs (juveniles) were demasculinized and partially feminized (hermaphrodites). Our new data shows that when these animals reach sexual maturity they continue to be demasculinized and some which probably start out as hermaphrodites are completely feminized. I have no idea what their proposed contradiction is." While no further details are offered by Syngenta about Hayes's results, which have been published in noteworthy journals for many years, the company concludes its press release with a self-promotional blurb that is full of its own contradictions:

"Syngenta is a responsible company. We take the stewardship of all our products seriously - and atrazine is no exception. Our 4,500 employees across the United States share a common purpose - bringing plant potential to life. We all have families, so we are all interested in seeing that atrazine is properly regulated in the water we drink. We are convinced that it is. We all enjoy the safe and abundant supply of food that our products bring to our tables. Syngenta is one of the world's leading companies with more than 25,000 employees in over 90 countries dedicated to our purpose: Bringing plant potential to life. Through world-class science, global reach and commitment to our customers we help to increase crop productivity, protect the environment and improve health and quality of life."

Indeed, contesting research methodologies and asserting that there are "problems" with any studies contradicting its marketing line have been standard practices for Syngenta, as the New York Times noted in 2009: "In written statements, the E.P.A. and Syngenta argued there were problems with all of the studies suggesting health risks from low doses of atrazine. Agency officials pointed out that epidemiological findings cannot fully differentiate between multiple influences, and that they only highlight associations, and do not demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship...." The Times, however, asked six leading researchers to review the epidemiological studies, and they concluded that the results were troubling. "These suggest real reasons for concern," said Melissa Perry, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The results need to be replicated, but they suggest there are real questions for policy makers about what constitutes safe levels of atrazine." The article continued:

"Recent studies suggest that when adults and fetuses are exposed to even small doses of atrazine, like those allowed under law, they may suffer serious health effects. In particular, some scientists worry that atrazine may be safe during many periods of life but dangerous during brief windows of development, like when a fetus is growing and pregnant women are told to drink lots of water.... In recent years, five epidemiological studies published in peer-reviewed journals have found evidence suggesting that small amounts of atrazine in drinking water, including levels considered safe by federal standards, may be associated with birth defects - including skull and facial malformations and misshapen limbs - as well as low birth weights in newborns and premature births.... Some of those studies suggest that as atrazine concentrations rise, the incidence of birth defects grows."

Like most of us, I'm not a biological scientist and thus must rely on others to bring their expertise to bear on important issues such as this. I do know that corporate obfuscation and regulatory cronyism have been recurrent features of the post-Silent Spring landscape. If there is even a chance that one of the most widely-used agricultural chemicals is contributing to increased rates of cancer and birth defects, plus decreased fertility rates in numerous species, it warrants serious scrutiny. As Hayes related to me: "I believe that the preponderance of the evidence shows atrazine to be a risk to wildlife and humans. I would not want to be exposed to it, nor do I think it should be released into the environment." If a former corporate-funded and well-respected researcher continually warns of its usage, the U.S. should consider following the E.U.'s example and ban atrazine's use even if only as a precautionary measure. If our food and water supplies indeed are increasingly becoming toxic, we need to step back and consider the implications for the potential survival of the species itself. "We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effects," Carson wrote in Silent Spring. "These exposures now begin at or before birth and - unless we change our methods - will continue through the lifetime of those now living." We can, and must, change our methods before it's too late.

While her landmark book was inspired in its title (from a line in a John Keats poem) by the notion of waking up to a spring season in which no bird songs could be heard, Carson was likewise motivated by the toll that industrial chemicals could take on human life as well. This spring, in recognition of Carson's legacy, let us vow not to remain silent in the face of increasing threats to our health and wellbeing. We owe at least this much to ourselves and to the world we'll leave behind for our children. Let's hope that the future is filled with clamorous and boisterous springs from here on out.

Student Loan Overhaul Tied To Health Care Bill

WASHINGTON — With health care dominating House action, President Barack Obama was looking for another domestic policy victory Sunday – passage of a vast rewrite of college aid for needy students.

The legislation, piggybacked to the expedited health care bill, would end a four-decades old program and its reliance on private lenders. It would authorize the government to originate all assistance loans and would use the savings to increase Pell Grants to students.

In the biggest piece of education legislation since No Child Left Behind nine years ago, the bill would direct more than $40 billion over 10 years into higher education, with $36 billion going toward the popular but financially strapped Pell Grant program. Historically black colleges and community colleges also would receive a share of the money.

If approved in the House, the Senate would take up the bill next week under the same expedited rules used for health care legislation. That means the Senate could pass the education measure by a simple majority, virtually guaranteeing its success despite qualms from some Democrats and opposition from Republicans.

House lawmakers passed the bill last year, but it failed to get action in the Senate, where it did not have 60 votes to overcome a near-certain filibuster. By riding shotgun on the fast-track health care bill, the legislation now can avoid that obstacle.

Private lenders have conducted an all-out lobbying effort against the bill, arguing it would cost thousands of jobs and unnecessarily put the program in the hands of the government. Under the college aid program, financial institutions provide college loans at low interest rates, the government guarantees the loans in the event of default and subsidizes private lenders when necessary to keep rates low.

By directing the government to originate loans, the legislation would see savings totaling $61 billion between now and 2019, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

That money would be used to finance a continuation of the Pell Grants and other higher-education assistance in the bill. But about $19 billion would be used for deficit reduction and to offset expenses in the health care legislation.

The legislation is not as generous as the bill the House passed last year. The government anticipates smaller savings than initially foreseen and the Pell Grant now faces a $19 billion shortfall. The bill provides $13.5 billion to fill that budget hole.

Congressional Democrats had to trim their original student loan plans, reduce spending for community colleges and eliminate about $8 billion in early childhood education money from their initial bill.

The bill proposes no increases in Pell Grants over the next two years and a modest increase over the five years that follow. The maximum Pell Grant, which a House-passed bill last year would have raised to $6,900 over 10 years, will now only increase to $5,900. The current maximum grant for the coming school year is $5,500.

Following Republican criticism, Democrats dropped a provision in the new bill that would have allowed the state-owned Bank of North Dakota to continue making federally financed student loans to students.

"That's out, end of the story," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D

Jamil Zaki: Let's get amoebic: The charitable slime mold as a model for facing climate change

A dirty, but heroic protozoan might be able to revamp our hopes in climate reform. But first, let's talk about viruses and a very Y2K view of our own species.

I recently decided to re-watch The Matrix to see if it would blow my mind as much as it did in 1999. It didn't even come close (neither, I suppose, would Napster, Ask Jeeves, or the Thong Song). But I was struck (again) by a moment in which the sentient, ever-monotonous program "Agent Smith" compares humans to viruses. Unlike mammals, which maintain a balance with their environment, Smith reports that we (and viruses) "multiply and multiply, until every resource is consumed."

We're nothing like viruses; our thoughts, emotions, and even cell nuclei exempt us from this comparison. Nonetheless, one feature of viral life--relentless consumption--might be a fair comparison to our treatment of climate change. Last December in Copenhagen, world leaders' resolution to prevent global warming was pulled apart like so much taffy by many countries' reluctance to reduce their carbon emissions. Cap and trade, the central feature of the US's attempt to cut emissions, has died on the vine because it is considered too expensive. And last month, Yvo de Boer, the UN climate chief who has embodied reform efforts for several years, announced his resignation, saying that bickering and mistrust will stall any international climate agreement until at least 2011. Given the consensus that enormous change will be required to prevent environmental catastrophe, we might as well be wrestling on a sinking ship instead of plugging its leaks.

According to economists, this shortsightedness is nothing new. Resources shared by many (anything from a pie to a polar ice cap) naturally create tension between cooperation and self-interest: a group is best served when each person consumes equal and sustainable amounts, but individuals tend to take more than their share, thinking that their excesses will go unnoticed. This miscalculation--repeated by each person in the group--eventually leaves everyone with nothing. Garrett Hardin, who first described this phenomenon as The Tragedy of the Commons 40 years ago, didn't cut us much slack, concluding that "Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest." Agent Smith would probably agree!

But both of them would be wrong. Humans may act selfishly towards public resources, but the success of our species depends on working together to survive in situations no individual could weather alone. We also demonstrate enormous selflessness when others are in need, as demonstrated during outpouring of altruism following January's earthquake in Haiti. This cooperative side of humanity makes the virus metaphor seem unrealistic. To replace it, I'd like to propose a better analogy for our behavior in the single-celled world: Slime Mold. Although not the most glamorous evolutionary relative, the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum has some pretty amazing properties, including primitive forms of cooperation and altruism.

Under normal conditions, slime mold cells live pretty self-centered lives, pulling themselves through soil and engulfing bacteria like e coli. But when resources become scarce, unlike viruses, Dicty don't consume themselves into oblivion; they get together. Starvation causes each single-cell organism to release a chemical that attracts others, and soon enough tens of thousands of amoeba from different, unrelated strains merge into a "slug," that crawls towards signs of better prospects (like heat and light). Once it has found a promising spot, this slug undergoes a second metamorphosis, this time into a kind of amoebic dandelion. About 20 percent of the individual amoebas making up the slug become a "stalk" that supports an orb full of spores. Like a dandelion's airborne "parachutes", spores in this orb float towards richer environments. The amoebas in the stalk die, never to pass on their genes.

Of course, amoebas like the slime mold are not altruistic in the classic sense. They don't share each other's suffering, or consciously sacrifice themselves in a blaze of selflessness. They're simply running genetic programs. Nonetheless, Dicty's behavior is downright poetic. Imagine an analogous situation: 1,000 people trapped on the barren side of a crevasse, with no way to get across. If we were as (genetically) brave or charitable as Dicty, 200 of those people would form a human bridge so that the others could cross over, even if it meant possible death to the bridge-makers. There are, in fact, examples of such sacrifice, such as when soldiers jump on top of live grenades to rescue their platoons, or when people climb down onto subway tracks to save trapped strangers from oncoming trains.

Dicty's charity is also genetically smart. In a recent article, biologists demonstrated that some Dicty strains "cheat" by floating to freedom as spores while letting other strains make up most of the doomed stalk. However, Dicty evolve, over generations, to defend against cheating, by acting charitably much less when paired with a cheater strain. Humans demonstrate this selectivity also, contributing fairly to public resources most often when they can trust others to do the same, a phenomenon known as "conditional cooperation."

Dicty present a much more optimistic analogy for human behavior than viruses. Nations could emulate amoebae, and realize that saving any of us means making serious sacrifice (in our case, not of lives, but of profit). But will we? If our behavior at Copenhagen is any sign, maybe we don't have the instinct to sacrifice personal gain in the service of a common resource.

This may, however, be a matter of how present a threat we're facing. Remember, Dicty only cooperate when their resources are almost entirely depleted, a state of extremely danger. People, like Dicty, may be most amenable to selfless cooperation under truly desperate circumstances. Although images of a shrinking Lake Victoria and melting sea ice are threatening, they may be too abstract to hit many people's panic buttons. In this regard, apocalyptic summer blockbusters may be more insightful than we think. On Hollywood's view, alien invasions, meteors, and ice ages inspire slime mold-like collectivism, with people the world over fighting together to preserve the fruits of human culture. In 2012, humans' endgame strategy--stuffing paintings, giraffes, and attractive physicists into survival pods while sacrificing everyone else--might as well have been stolen straight from the Dicty playbook. If any of these renditions are right, things may have to get a lot worse before we get amoebic.

Pratap Chatterjee: Policing Afghanistan: How Afghan Police Training Became a Train Wreck

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

The Pentagon faces a tough choice: Should it award a new contract to Xe (formerly Blackwater), a company made infamous when its employees killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007, or to DynCorp, a company made infamous in Bosnia in 1999 when some of its employees were caught trafficking young girls for sex?

This billion-dollar contract will be the linchpin of a training program for the Afghan National Police, who are theoretically to be drilled in counterinsurgency tactics that will help defeat the Taliban and bring security to impoverished, war-torn Afghanistan. The program is also considered a crucial component of the Obama administration’s plan for turning the war around. Ironically, Xe was poised to win the contract until a successful appeal by DynCorp last week threw the field wide open.

Some people in the U.S. government (and many outside it) believe that this task should not be assigned to private contractors in the first place. Meanwhile, many police experts are certain that it hardly matters which company gets the contract. Like so many before it, the latest training program is doomed from the outset, they believe, because its focus will be on defeating the Taliban rather than fostering community-oriented policing.

The Obama administration is in a fix: it believes that, if it can’t put at least 100,000 trained police officers on Afghan streets and into the scattered hamlets that make up the bulk of the country, it won’t be able to begin a drawdown of U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan by the middle of next year.

"The Obama administration's strategy for the Afghan police is to increase numbers, enlarge the ‘train and equip’ program, and engage the police in the fight against the Taliban," says Robert Perito, an expert on police training at the United States Institute of Peace and the author of a new book, The Police in War. "This approach has not worked in the past, and doing more of the same will not achieve success."

When it comes to police training, the use of private contractors is not unusual -- and neither is failure. North Carolina-based Xe has, in fact, been training the Afghan border police for more than two years, and Virginia-based DynCorp has been doing the same for the Afghan uniformed police for more than seven years now. Nonetheless, the mismanagement of the $7 billion spent on police training over the last eight years, partly attributed to lax U.S. State Department oversight, has left the country of 33 million people with a strikingly ineffective and remarkably corrupt police force. Its terrible habits and reputation have led the inhabitants of many Afghan communities to turn to the Taliban for security.

Of the training programs run by the NATO Training Mission out of Camp Eggers in Kabul, the Afghan capital, only DynCorp’s component is even fully staffed. The company supplies 782 former American police officers to dozens of training centers and military bases scattered around the country to work with the U.S. military and with European Union police mentors. Altogether there are supposed to be 4,000 of these trainers, but NATO estimates that it has only half of the staffers it needs.

In a desperate attempt to offset this shortage of trainers, Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar has proposed the dispatching of 3,000 police officers annually to Jordan and Turkey for nine months of instruction abroad.

Too-Fast-Track Training

In May 2009, I visited several training sites for the Afghan security forces in and around Kabul. Major Joey Schneider of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan escorted me around a recruitment center at the Kabul Central Police Command. There, dozens of raw recruits from Afghan villages were being tested for ever-present drugs before induction into a fast-track program to double the 5,000 police officers in Kabul before the August elections.

"After three weeks in the Kabul Security Acceleration Program, these men will get a badge, uniform, and gun and be sent out to patrol," Schneider explained. Asked if that was really sufficient, he assured me that the new police officers would be given an additional five weeks of intensive post-election training by DynCorp contractors and international military mentors.

Three months later, a report for the European Commission written by Scott Chilton and Tim Bremmers, two police experts, in collaboration with Eckart Schiewek, a senior United Nations official, concluded that this approach was a disaster-in-the-making. It was, they claimed, causing an "absolute irresponsible downgrading" of the police force. "Our view is that the spiraling increase in police deaths and wounding will further increase with quick-fix recruiting, poor training, and equipping."

Absurd as it may sound, this program is considered better conceived than many of the older training programs the Afghan government launched with U.S. funding. For example, a 2006 attempt to induct 11,000 villagers into a new organization dubbed the Afghan National Auxiliary Police -- with only 10 days of training from DynCorp and international military mentors -- was a complete and abysmal failure. One-third of the trainees in certain southern provinces, given a gun and a uniform, were never seen again. Two years later, in September 2008, the project was terminated.

A 2008 report by the well-respected International Crisis Group pointed out that such rapid-induction programs had the perverse effect of actually lowering the average literacy rate and effectiveness of the Afghan police force -- and that’s without even considering the security problems created by those drop-outs with guns.

Eight Years of Failures

Until recently, Afghanistan has never really had a national police force, though before the Soviet invasion of 1979 there was a conscription system that produced rank-and-file cops working under a trained officer corps. In 2002, in the wake of the Taliban's defeat, the Germans set up a police academy in Kabul that offered a five-year training program aimed at bringing back the officer corps. In 2003, the U.S. awarded a small contract to DynCorp to run a train-the-trainers program in Kabul, based on prior work it had done in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.

Yet no one spent much time worrying about beat-cop training, least of all the Bush administration, which was already immersed in planning the invasion of Iraq and preferred to operate in Afghanistan with what it liked to call a "light footprint."

By 2005, security in Kabul was deteriorating sharply. At the same time, the spectacular failure of the U.S. effort to create a brand new police force in Iraq had helped spark a bloody, devastating civil war in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. Somewhere in this period, Bush administration officials started to wake up to the possibility that Afghanistan might be heading in the same direction. A series of new contracts were then issued to DynCorp by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs -- $1.6 billion in training work scheduled to be completed by the end of 2009. (The contracts have since been extended to June 2010.)

State Department planners seem to have taken an inordinately long time to wake up to the basic problems that Afghanistan faced in creating a viable police force. With salaries pegged at $16 a month for a beat cop in 2002, the police were particularly vulnerable to corruption in the form of extorted bribes, and to the Taliban who offered much higher wages to their fighters. Making the situation worse, the force was remarkably top-heavy. More than 20,000 officers and non-commissioned officers oversaw only 36,000 patrolmen. It was regularly alleged that they made their beat cops shake down citizens for bribes. In fact, a 2007 study by the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan that reviewed the records of 2,464 police officers found claims of drug trafficking, corruption, or assaults against more than one-third of them.

"There are some parts of Afghanistan where the last thing people want to see is the police showing up," Brigadier General Gary O'Brien, former deputy commander of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, told the Canadian Press news agency in March 2007. "They are part of the problem. They do not provide security for the people -- they are the robbers of the people."

Salaries are not the only budget shortfall. Afghanistan simply has no money to pay for equipment like guns and police vehicles, or even to build police stations. Instead, for the last eight years the Afghan police have received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of donated weapons and other equipment, much of which turned out to be broken or incompatible with the equipment the force already had. Typical was a batch of thousands of Czech VZ58 rifles that look like the AK-47s Afghan policemen traditionally carry but require completely different maintenance procedures.

In another glaring example of what a lack of resources has led to, Hazeb Emerging Business, an Afghan company hired to maintain the force’s weapons, used hammers and nails to “repair” grenade launchers, because they had no idea how to fix donated weapons. In perhaps the most widely reported mishap, AEY Inc., based in Florida, and described by the New York Times as “a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur,” dispatched to the Afghan security forces 100 million Chinese cartridges, some 40 years old and in “decomposing packaging,” under a $10 million Pentagon contract.

In a country where the official literacy rate is pegged at an optimistic 30% -- some estimates put the rate among police recruits at closer to 5%, or even less -- most of any Western-style training curriculum proves strikingly irrelevant. To make things worse, one in five volunteers for police training is a drug-abuser, a statistic that rises to 60% in southern provinces like Helmand, which produces a significant part of the opium crop for the world’s leading narco-state.

Not surprisingly, then, capability assessments of the Afghan police have been less than encouraging. At a June 2008 discussion at the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Congressman John Tierney summed up findings on the 433 Afghan National Police units of that moment this way: "Zero are fully capable, three percent are capable with coalition support, four percent are only partially capable, 77 percent are not capable at all, and 68 percent are not formed or not reporting."

A new plan was drawn up under which dramatic changes were made, including the raising of police salaries to $180 a month in 2010 (and in high-risk areas up to $240). In addition, increasing numbers of police salaries are now paid directly and electronically to bank accounts or cell phones, which means it’s harder for officers to dip into the meager pay of their underlings.

The officer corps has also been slashed dramatically, thanks to a new requirement that all high-level staff complete a difficult exam. By 2010, the 340 generals had been reduced to 117, the 2,450 colonels to 301, and the 1,824 lieutenant colonels to 467. (Afghan police ranks have military titles.)

Perhaps most significantly, a new, intensive training program called Focused District Development (FDD) was launched in late 2007 under which every police officer in specific districts would be removed en masse for eight weeks of training in another part of the country. In the meantime, the country's elite police unit, the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP), was to temporarily take over local policing duties. When the original force returned, a mentorship team of 14 internationals accompanied them to provide advice and -- at least theoretically -- to root out corruption.

By early 2009, FDD was claiming success. Almost one in five police districts which completed the program was now considered “independently capable.” (Before 2008, that number was zero.) Unfortunately, only one-quarter of the police districts in Afghanistan have completed the FDD program to date and only 5% of the country's police units are considered capable of operating on their own. Even this may be an illusion as an estimated 25% of police recruits quit every year -- and that's not just among the bad performers. The drop-out rate for the 2,500 strong elite ANCOP is an astronomical 65%, making any training efforts a Sisyphean undertaking.

One year after Obama promised to revamp the Afghan police aid effort by sending in more trainers and civilian experts, no one is hailing the results as an outstanding success; few even consider them a half-decent start. "Operationally, the effort is broken. Assets are misdirected, poorly managed and misused,” wrote Robert A. Wehrle, a U.S. advisor to the Afghan Ministry of the Interior, in February 2010 after returning from a 15-month stint in Kabul. “Graft and corruption in the Afghan forces are endemic, and coalition forces unwittingly enable that corruption."

Assigning Blame

Who, then, is responsible for this dismal state of affairs? Many have pointed fingers at the State Department. A joint report from the inspectors general of the Pentagon and the State Department claims that the DynCorp contract was particularly badly managed. "The current [contract does] not provide any specific information regarding what type of training is required or any measurement of acceptability… Additionally, the current contract does not include any measurement of contractor performance."

Indeed, DynCorp’s police trainers, who tend to hail from small American towns, are often remarkably ignorant about life in a war zone. A DynCorp trainer from Texas, who asked not to be named, typically told this reporter about his first encounter with mortars in eastern Afghanistan: "I was mesmerized by what looked like a fireworks display." Angry U.S. soldiers yelled at him to hit the ground.

Naturally, DynCorp disputes this. "[N]either our military nor European National police were formed or trained to teach basic law enforcement skills," Don Ryder, the DynCorp program manager, told the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a congressionally mandated body established to offer an independent assessment of contracting practices in Iraq and Afghanistan. "At DynCorp International we do not build satellites. We do not design aircraft. We do training and mentoring. That is our core competency -- and this competency is represented in the DNA of our 30,000 employees worldwide."

Most experts disagree. "DynCorp and [the] State [Department] had too few people, too few resources, and too little experience building a police force in the midst of an insurgency," Seth Jones, a political scientist with the RAND Corporation who spent most of 2009 traveling with Army Special Forces teams in Afghanistan, told the commission. "While it may be necessary to utilize [private] contractors to help execute some security programs -- including helping U.S. military or other government officials conduct some police training -- contractors should not be the lead entity, as they were from 2003 to 2005."

Not the least of the problem with Dyncorp (or Xe, if it gets the new training contract) is the cost of hiring such contractors to train police. Each expatriate police officer makes a six-figure U.S. salary, at least 50 times more than an Afghan police officer and three times as much as military mentors.

Alternative Police Programs

Mentoring programs “are based on the assumption that international mentors are the more knowledgeable actors, whose job it is to impart their wisdom and expertise to their Afghan junior partners," observed Andrew Wilder, the former director of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit in Kabul, in his 2007 report on the Afghan police, “Cops or Robbers?” "In reality, however, this is often not the case. The internationals may know much more about the technical aspects of policing in the West, but the Afghans know much more about the culture and politics of policing in Afghanistan."

Wilder proposes a radical solution: to dramatically scale back the plans for an Afghan police force. He notes that the historical role of police in Afghanistan, especially in rural areas, was limited to protecting government buildings. "Most civil disputes and criminal matters, however, were not referred to the police or courts -- which were perceived to be corrupt, costly, and slow to take decisions -- but were resolved using customary law and institutions." Wilder believes any counterinsurgency efforts to fight terrorist attacks should be limited to the Afghan army and possibly a "separate paramilitary force, or gendarmerie."

"A prevalent view, even among some international police, is that Afghanistan is unready for civilian policing and holds that the police must remain a military force while insecurity lasts," writes Tonita Murray, a former director general of the Canadian Police College, who worked as an advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Interior in 2005. "If such a view were to prevail, only military solutions for security sector reform would be considered, and Afghanistan would be caught in a vicious circle of using force against force without employing other approaches to secure stability and peace."

According to Robert Perito, who worked with the U.S. Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program training police in international peace operations from 1995 to 2001, the U.S. government should rethink its entire approach. It should, he says, pull back from using contractors to run its police-training program, turning instead to a strong U.S. federal workforce that is qualified to undertake police training abroad.

A New Direction?

Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, head of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, admitted that police training has been a train wreck since the toppling of the Taliban almost nine years ago. "We weren't doing it right. The most important thing is to recruit and then train police [before deployment]. It is still beyond my comprehension that we weren't doing that."

The realization that giving illiterate, drug-prone young men a uniform, badge, and gun (as well as very little money and no training) was a recipe for corruption and disaster is certainly a first step. But how to withdraw the 95% of the Afghan police force that is still incapable of basic policing for months of desperately needed training in a country with no prior history of such things? That turns out to be a conundrum, even for President Obama.

On March 12th, the president devoted much of the monthly video conference call between his Washington national security team and his senior commanders in Afghanistan to questions about how the problem should be tackled. “The President has gone through and looked at monthly recruitment and retention goals because… we’re not going to be there forever,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that day. “Not only are we going to need improved governance, but we’re going to need a police force that can keep the peace.”

If the Pentagon does not dramatically alter the current training scheme, it doesn’t look good for either governance or peace in Afghanistan. Yet the likelihood remains low indeed that Pentagon officials will take the advice of a chorus of police experts offering critical commentary on the mess that is the police training program there. Instead, it’s likely to be more of the same, which means more private contracting of police training and further disaster. Bizarrely enough, the Pentagon has given the Space and Missile Defense Command Contracting Office in Huntsville, Alabama, the task of deciding between DynCorp and Xe for that new billion-dollar training contract. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as the French say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pratap Chatterjee is a freelance journalist and senior editor at CorpWatch. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia and is the author of two books about the war on terror, Iraq, Inc. and Halliburton's Army (Nation Books, 2009), which has just been published in paperback. He can be contacted at pchatterjee@igc.org. To listen to a Timothy MacBain TomCast audio interview in which Chatterjee discusses the lives of contractor/trainers in Afghanistan, click here or, if you prefer to download it to your iPod, here.

Kim O'Donnel: While HCR Vote Is Underway, Connecting Health and Care to the Stove

As the country waits in nail-biting anticipation of the House vote on health care reform, there is something we can actually do: Cook.

Remember that thing called Sunday dinner? Let's give it a try.

Let's see what happens when we bypass the drive-thru window or the supermarket aisle of food additives and make a detour for the kitchen.

Let's see what happens when we take the initiative to boil water for rice, and wash lettuce for salad.

Let's see what happens when the others hear the sizzle of garlic in oil and inhale the smell of roast chicken in the oven.

Let's see what happens when everyone in the house has a job, from chopping to washing dishes.

Let's see what happens at table when we chew our food and we chew on each other's conversation.

Let's see just how much we enjoy the fruits of our collective labor, and what happens when we commit to Sunday dinner, week after week.

Let's see about that new appetite for food you can peel rather than "food" that comes wrapped in cellophane.

Let's see how eating at home instead out of a bag or box affects our waistlines.

Could it be this simple? Let us see indeed.

As Michael Pollan reminds us in "Food Rules," four of the top 10 causes of death in the United States -- heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke -- are linked to our sugar-saturated, fat-laden and processed diet.

On this day, when the House decides the future of our ailing health care system, we can decide the future of our health by taking it to the stove, where there is no system but lots and lots of care.

This article originally appeared on True/Slant.

Rev. Romal J. Tune: Does the Black Church Support Immigration Reform? A conversation with Bishop Vashti McKenzie, African Methodist Episcopal Church

For several months I've been in conversations with organizations working to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. All of these organizations are engaging the religious community to support their efforts. In fact many religious issue advocacy organizations have taken the lead to champion the cause of immigration reform. At the invitation of friend, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by the Center for American Progress that brought together leaders in the religious community to talk about what congregations are doing to support immigration reform. Throughout these conversations, I noticed there was always something missing. While not totally absent but certainly not well represented during these conversations -- there seemed to be a lack of voices from the Black religious community.

Although there are Black Churches across the country engaged in the work of immigration reform, based on my conversations with organizations trying to increase support it appears they are limited in number. As a result I started asking some of the Black clergy and members of Black Churches a few questions. What does the Black religious community think about immigration reform, is it important, do they care, and do they think comprehensive reform will harm Black communities?

The responses I received were interesting. Most of the people I talked to expressed racial stereotypes, fears about jobs, and said it was wrong for people to enter the country illegally. As people of faith, my assumption was that they would be far more compassionate and welcoming but what I learned is that their opinions were not based of their faith or on facts but on their fears and misinformation about immigration reform.

One would think with the similarities between the Black and Brown communities as it relates to challenges in public education, health care, violent crime, poverty, and incarceration rates, that these communities would be more understanding of each other and work together to solve these common problems. But it seems as though fear and negative stereotypes that are not founded on faith or facts have been keeping many of us separated.

But there are signs of hope. Some Black leaders are publicly talking about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. As I said earlier, there are Black pastors participating in rallies and working with religious issue advocacy groups to fight for immigrant rights. My Pastor, Dr. Derrick Harkins, has been on CNN several times addressing this issue and works closely with several organizations working on immigration reform. An even better sign of hope on the local level came from my conversation with Bishop Vasthi McKenzie as she shed some light on the subject related to how many churches view the issue of immigration. Here's what the Bishop had to say.

"Let me dwell on immigration.....Think of these things: it seems that Homeland Security is offering a "three legged stool" proposal to immigration reform. It seems however the conversation rests more on two legs - enforcement and hard but fair stance on those already here. The conversation on the street often boils down to: What does immigration reform mean to job availability or how will it affect my job or salary if someone is willing to work for less? What does immigration reform mean to the availability of services in my community? Will there be higher taxes because services such as health care, assistance to children and families, senior services and safety net services are provided for non- citizens? Will it diminish services for me and my family if and when I need them? However, what we rarely hear about or see are the numerous Black churches that are sharing space with their new neighbors who are Hispanic/Latino. Some are having non - English services for their new neighbors. Others have inclusive services and other have two separate services. All of which are signs that Black churches are not only adjusting to their new neighbors but they are embracing them because they share the same faith and hope for the future, and are looking for the same solutions to the challenges they face."

So it seems that when Black and Brown come together in communities of faith, not only to worship together but getting to know each other, the barriers begin to fall; the fears, racism and misinformation are replaced by facts and they find common ground. Immigration reform is about more than boarder protection, government programs, or protecting our personal stuff out of fear. It's about people. For those of us who call ourselves Christian, we do violence to the Gospel whenever we choose to reject people that don't look like us or act like us. In fact multicultural worshiping communities give us a sign of what heaven must look like. Someone once told me that our differences are unique expressions and reflection of an infinite God who knows no limitations. When faith in a God that loves all of us, because we are different, transforms our hearts we can take the next step and let our politics reform our immigration policy.

There is still a lot of work to do in order to overcome stereotypes around immigration which divide us. But Bishop McKenzie points us in the right direction. We need to lift up and share those examples of communities where diversity is embraced rather than simply talking about immigration reform as if it doesn't have a pulse.

As Bishop McKenzie points out, successful relationships happen when the work of healing takes place between the stake holders not someone claiming to represent their best interests. Perhaps we would see more support for immigration reform if we highlighted examples of what life looks like when people come together regardless of race and focus on what they have in common.

Richard Grenell: Media Matters Jumps to Defend Unsolicited White House Emails to Federal Employees

Media Matters, the defender of liberal media, jumped into last week's developing controversy and debate over White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle's unsolicited White House emails to federal employees. Media Matters scolds and makes fun of CBS News and Fox News for highlighting the issue, calling the claims "pure speculation". Ironically, Media Matters doesn't deny that the unsolicited emails have been sent but rather they defend the emails by saying, "it appears they are sent out to everyone on the whitehouse.gov mailing list." Well, duh. That's the problem. Why are federal employees on the whitehouse.gov email list? And why are federal employees being hounded to do the White House's political bidding for a trillion dollar entitlement program?

Building support for President Barack Obama's health reform package by sending consecutive emails to federal employees' official government email inboxes and instructing them to forward the emails to their "friends, family and online networks" is not only unethical but possibly illegal.

Media Matters also complains that the story has no anonymous quotes from frustrated federal employees in order to prove the story. Which is a fair point. I'll give them that. So here are two anonymous quotes from State Department employees that didn't sign up for the White House emails but are still receiving political musings from Nancy-Ann DeParle and the White House:

Anonymous Quote #1:

" I didn't sign up for this. Why do I have to bother with political fights from work. This is inappropriate and distracting to REAL issues."

Anonymous Quote #2:

"I have been receiving these emails at my state.gov address, unsolicited e-mails such as the one below on a near weekly basis. Kinda threatening dontcha think? Budget problems if it doesn't pass?"

Department of State employees receive hundreds of official government emails everyday on pressing issues like the Israeli-Palestinian issue or the Iranian nuclear weapons issue. Should they have to worry about partisan political emails threatening budget complications if Obama's bill isn't passed?

DeParle's language in one email flatly states that there will be budget problems for federal agencies if the Obama bill isn't passed. DeParle uses scare tactics that are clearly meant as threats:

"No ifs, ands or buts about it -- if we do nothing to reform our broken health care system, costs will continue to skyrocket and break the budgets of American families, small businesses and the Federal Government," read the March 12th email from DeParle.

Since Media Matters is trying to dismiss the issue as "pure speculation", here are 2 examples of the emails. Decide for yourself:

Email #1:
From: Nancy-Ann DeParle, The White House [mailto:info@messages.whitehouse.gov]
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:10 PM
To: (Name Withheld)
Subject: 625

Good morning,

625 -- that's the number of people who lost their health insurance every hour in 2009.1

A statistic like that tells a frightening story -- losing insurance can happen to anyone. How many more Americans have to lose their health insurance and how many more businesses have to drop coverage before we fix our broken health care system?

We've been debating what to do about our broken health care system for decades -- not just this past year. Every idea has been put on the table. Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health reform has been said. It's time to decide how to reform our health care system to give American families and businesses the security and stability they deserve.

As the President has said, "In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they'll go without insurance -- not for one year, not for one month, not for one day."

The millions of Americans who lost their insurance last year can't wait any longer. The time is now for health insurance reform.

625 is the latest digit in 'Health Reform by the Numbers,' an online campaign to spread the word about the need for health insurance reform. You can help raise awareness by sharing this email with your friends, family and online networks.

Let's get it done.

Nancy-Ann DeParle

Director, White House Office of Health Reform

1The Wonk Room, ThinkProgress.org, UPDATE: 15,000 People Lost Health Insurance Per Day In 2009

This email was sent to (name withheld)@state.gov

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Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House â¢ 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW â¢ Washington, DC 20500 â¢ 202-456-1111
*****
Email #2:
To: (Name Withheld)
Subject: "There but for the grace of God go any one of us"
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:05:48 -0400
From: info@messages.whitehouse.gov

Good afternoon,

If you're an American under the age of 65, there's roughly a 50/50 chance that you will find yourself without coverage at some point in the next decade.1

Simply put, losing insurance can happen to anyone.

At yesterday's health reform event, President Obama told the story of Natoma, a self-employed woman in Ohio who found herself in the position of losing her health insurance after yet another rate hike from her insurance company:

"She realized that if she paid those health insurance premiums that had been jacked up by 40 percent ... she couldn't make ends meet. So January was her last month of being insured. Like so many responsible Americans -- folks who work hard every day, who try to do the right thing -- she was forced to hang her fortunes on chance... And on Saturday, Natoma was diagnosed with leukemia...

"Part of what makes this issue difficult is most of us do have health insurance, we still do.... But what we have to understand is that what's happened to Natoma, there but for the grace of God go any one of us."

For Natoma and the millions of other Americans forced to face the burden of medical bills they can't pay while at their most vulnerable -- the time is now for health insurance reform. Watch the video of Natoma's story and learn what more you can do to help spread the word about the need for reform.

50/50 is the latest number in 'Health Reform by the Numbers,' our online campaign to raise awareness about why we just can't wait any longer for health insurance reform. Help spread the word by sharing this message with your family, friends and online networks.

Let's get it done.

Nancy-Ann DeParle

Director, White House Office of Health Reform

1 Department of the Treasury, The Risk of Losing Health Insurance Over a Decade

This email was sent to (name withheld)@state.gov

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Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House â¢ 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW â¢ Washington, DC 20500 â¢ 202-456-1111

Cross-posted from Without the Filter.

Robert Reich: The Final Health Care Vote and What it Really Means

It's not nearly as momentous as the passage of Medicare in 1965 and won't fundamentally alter how Americans think about social safety nets. But the likely passage of Obama's health care reform bill is the biggest thing Congress has done in decades, and has enormous political significance for the future.

Medicare directly changed the life of every senior in America, giving them health security and dramatically reducing their rates of poverty. By contrast, most Americans won't be affected by Obama's health care legislation. Most of us will continue to receive health insurance through our employers. (Only a comparatively small minority will be required to buy insurance who don't want it, or be subsidized in order to afford it. Only a relatively few companies will be required to provide it who don't now.)

Medicare built on Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal notion of government as insurer, with citizens making payments to government, and government paying out benefits. That was the central idea of Social Security, and Medicare piggybacked on Social Security.

Obama's legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon, of a market for health care based on private insurers and employers. Eisenhower locked in the tax break for employee health benefits; Nixon pushed prepaid, competing health plans, and urged a requirement that employers cover their employees. Obama applies Nixon's idea and takes it a step further by requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, and giving subsidies to those who need it.

So don't believe anyone who says Obama's health care legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama's health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option.

The significance of Obama's health legislation is more political than substantive. For the first time since Ronald Reagan told America government is the problem, Obama's health bill reasserts that government can provide a major solution. In political terms, that's a very big deal.

Most Americans continue to be suspicious of government. That distrust is deeply etched in our culture and traditions. Our system of government was devised by people who distrusted government and intentionally created checks and balances, three separate branches, and almost insuperable odds against getting big things done. The period extending from 1933 to 1965 -- the New Deal and the Great Society -- was an historical aberration from that long tradition, animated by the unique crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and the social cohesion that flowed from them for another generation. Ronald Reagan merely picked up where Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover left off.

But Reagan's view of government as the problem is increasingly at odds with a nation whose system of health care relies on large for-profit entities designed to make money rather than improve health; whose economy is dependent on global capital and on global corporations and financial institutions with no particular loyalty to America; and much of whose fuel comes from unstable and dangerous areas of the world. Under these conditions, government is the only entity that can look out for our interests.

We will not return to the New Deal or the Great Society, but nor will we continue to wallow in the increasingly obsolete Reagan view that we don't need a strong and competent government. Today's vote confirms our hope that we can have both strength and competence in Washington. It is an audacious hope, but we have no choice.

Tiger Woods Interview VIDEO: ESPN, Golf Channel Talk With Golfer

Tiger Woods gave two interviews that aired Sunday evening, the first time he has answered questions since his post-Thanksgiving car accident. According to ESPN, Woods' representatives did not restrict the network's questions, but the interview was limited to just five minutes. Another interview aired simultaneously on the Golf Channel.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO & FULL TRANSCRIPT)

Woods told ESPN that the past four months have been difficult. "I have had a lot of low points. Just when I didn't think it could get any lower, it got lower," he said. He added that he is "little nervous" about the reception he will get at the Masters, where he is scheduled to return to golf in April.

When asked how many affairs he had, Woods did not answer directly. "Well, just one is enough. And obviously that wasn't the case, and I've made my mistakes. And as I've said, I've hurt so many people, and so many people I have to make an amends to."

Woods told ESPN that telling his wife and mother about his transgressions has "been brutal. They've both been very tough. Because I hurt them the most. Those are the two people in my life who I'm closest to and to say the things that I've done, truthfully to them, is ... honestly ... was ... very painful."

Asked to describe his wife's reaction, Woods said she "was hurt, she was hurt. Very hurt. Shocked."

ESPN's Tom Rinaldi also asked Woods why he married Elin Nordegren (PHOTOS). "Why? 'Cause I loved her. I loved Elin with everything I have. And that's something that makes me feel even worse. That I did this to someone I loved that much," Woods said.

In his interview with the Golf Channel, Woods denied that many people close to him knew of his affairs as they were happening: "I'm sure if more people would have known -- in my inner circle -- they would have stopped it. But I kept it all to myself."

Woods said that his father, if he were still alive, would "be very disappointed in me. We'd have numerous long talks. And that's one of the things I miss. I miss his guidance." When asked to guess what his father would say to him, Woods replied, "I can't say it on air."

Developing...

WATCH:

Full transcript:

Rinaldi: What's the difference between the man who left Augusta national a year ago and the one who is about to return?
Woods: A lot has transpired in my life. A lot of ugly things have happened. Things that.....I've done some pretty bad things in my life. And uh, all came to a head. But now, after treatment, going for inpatient treatment for 45 days and more outpatient treatment, I'm getting back to my old roots.

Rinaldi: For a lot of people, the spark of those bad things is Nov. 27. Early that day, what happened?

Woods: Well, it's all in the police report. Beyond that, everything's between Elin and myself and that's private.

Rinaldi: Why did you lose control of the car?

Woods: As I said ... that's between Elin and myself.

Rinaldi: If it's a private matter, why issue a public apology?

Woods: Well, I owe a lot of people an apology. I hurt a lot of people. Not just my wife. My friends, my colleagues, the public, kids who looked up to me. There were a lot of people that thought I was a different person and my actions were not according to that. That's why I had to apologize. I was so sorry for what I had done.

Rinaldi: You've said you've made transgressions. How would you, in your own words, describe the depth of your infidelity?

Woods: Well, just one is, is enough. And obviously that wasn't the case, and I've made my mistakes. And as I've said, I've hurt so many people, and so many people I have to make an amends to, and that's living a life of amends.

Rinaldi: You said you were in treatment. The simple question is, for what?

Woods: That's a private matter as well. But I can tell you what, it was tough, it was really tough to look at yourself in a light that you never want to look at yourself, that's pretty brutal.

Rinaldi: What'd you see?

Woods: I saw a person that I never thought I would ever become.

Rinaldi: Who was that?

Woods: Well, I had gotten away from my core values as I said earlier. I'd gotten away from my Buddhism. And I quit meditating. I quit doing all the things that my mom and dad had taught me. And as I said earlier in my statement, I felt entitled, and that is not how I was raised.

Rinaldi: Why not seek treatment before all of this came out?

Woods: Well, I didn't know I was that bad. I didn't know that I was that bad.

Rinaldi: How did you learn that? How did you learn it?

Woods: Stripping away denial, rationalization. You strip all that away and you find the truth.

Rinaldi: How do you reconcile your behavior with your view of marriage?

Woods: That's living a life of amends and that's just working at it each and every day.

Rinaldi: Given all that's happened, what's your measure of success at Augusta?

Woods: Well, playing is one thing. I'm excited to get back and play. I'm excited to get to see the guys again. I really miss a lot of my friends out there. I miss competing. But still, I still have a lot more treatment to do, and just because I'm playing, doesn't mean I'm gonna stop going to treatment.

Rinaldi: What reception are you expecting from fans?

Woods: I don't know. I don't know. I'm a little nervous about that to be honest with you.

Rinaldi: How much do you care?

Woods: It would be nice to hear a couple claps here and there. But also hope they clap for birdies, too.

Rinaldi: Eleven months ago, here at Isleworth, I asked you, 'How well does the world know you?' What's your answer to that now?

Woods: A lot better now. I was living a life of a lie. I really was. And I was doing a lot of things, like I said, that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly. But then again, when you face it and you start conquering it and you start living up to it. The strength that I feel now, I've never felt that type of strength.

Rinaldi: In the last four months, Tiger, what's been the low point?

Woods: I've had a lot of low points. Just when I didn't think it could get any lower, it got lower.

Rinaldi: An example?

Woods: When I was in treatment, out of treatment, before I went in, there were so many different low points. People I had to talk and face like my wife, like my mom.

Rinaldi: What was that moment like, either one?

Woods: They both have been brutal. They've both been very tough. Because I hurt them the most. Those are the two people in my life who I'm closest to and to say the things that I've done, truthfully to them, is ... honestly ... was ... very painful.

Rinaldi: What was your wife's reaction when you sat down and had that first conversation?
Woods: She was hurt, she was hurt. Very hurt. Shocked. Angry. And, you know, she had every right to be and I'm as disappointed as everyone else in my own behavior because I can't believe I actually did that to the people I loved.

Rinaldi: I ask this question respectfully, but of course at a distance from your family life. When you look at it now, why did you get married?

Woods: Why? Because I loved her. I loved Elin with everything I have. And that's something that makes me feel even worse, that I did this to someone I loved that much.

Rinaldi: How do you reconcile what you've done with that love?

Woods: We work at it.

Healthcare Vote Results LIVE: Breaking Updates, Video

Today is THE DAY for health care reform, and this page will bring you all the breaking news, tweets, photos, and video, all in one place.

Flip through the latest major news in the slideshow below, or scroll down to the Twitter module below for streaming updates from HuffPost's reporting team as well as members of Congress, top journalists, analysts, and pundits. (Get our Twitter feed directly by following @HuffPolitics.)

Below is our health care-focused Twitter List module. In the left column are key health care policy experts, advocates, and Congressional reporters (including our own HuffPost team of reporters: @RyanGrim, @NicoPitney, @SamSteinHP, @ArthurDelaneyHP, @MichaelPFalcone). Next to that are lists of influential Democratic and Republican pundits and members of Congress.

Dan Dorfman: Market Debacle, Market Bonanza Or Market Madness?

Wild stock market forecasts -- most of which are for the birds -- remind me of the Wild West. Here are two that recently crossed my a shootout representing sharply conflicting outlooks.

One calls for another giant decline, possibly starting this week. The other is a forecast of a buying panic in stocks, which, it's said, could already be in its early stages.

Does either have any merit? Your guess is as good as mine, but you can't simply write them off as sheer nonsense because such wild forecasts -- as outrageous as they seem -- do occasionally come to pass.

The prospects of another market debacle come from an Australian reader, Cornel Campeanu, a chartist who runs a market website, techpro.com.au, out of Brisbane. Last January, he e-mailed me to say his charts suggested a stock market crash was imminent and that the Dow could drop 1,000 points in a single day. He followed with a series of similar warnings in February and March, which, of course, will not win him any forecasting plaudits. Still, he's sticking to his guns that his time is at hand. Of Thursday, he e-mailed me again, this time to say he sees a "possible severe market reversal" and that the Dow's 1,000-point fall could occur this coming week.

Noting in a brief earlier chat that the stock markets in the U.S. and Australia often run along a similar course, he now finds that the money flow in Australia, coupled with its mining and bank stocks, is drifting toward the negative. In the case of Australian-based BHP Billiton Ltd., one of the world's largest mining companies and a well tracked stock in the U.S. he notes the money flow is diving.

In his latest note to me, Campeanu took note of what he refers to as "a classic reversal signal" and writes that "a reckoning appears to be in the wind."

The overwhelming evidence, however, suggests Campeanu is waging a losing battle against a fast developing tidal wave of optimism and a U.S. stock market on a tear. The figures tell the story, The S&P 500 recently scooted to a 17-month high and the Dow and Nasdaq turned in impressive winning streaks by recently rising in 14 out of 16 trading sessions. That's what bull markets are all about.

What's more, the public, whose 2009 approach to the market was "just get me out," is suddenly beginning to warm up to stocks again, hoping to cash in on even bigger gains ahead from those racked up from last March's low. For example, this month through March 17, investors, ignoring a bevy of risks and uncertainties, went on a mini buying spree, snapping up about $4 billion worth of U.S. stock mutual funds, according to West Coast liquidity tracker TrimTabs Research. Before the month is over, it's estimated these mutual fund outflows will top $5 billion.

In addition, a number of outspoken bears have recently thrown in the towel, while some have lessened their bearish stance. For example, Richard Russell, the venerable editor of the Dow Theory Letters, though expressing some trepidations, notes that the market has gotten three important buy signals: In brief, the Dow (now a hair under 10,742) has closed above its critical 10,725 level; the Dow transports have posted a new high, and a surging number of new highs are cropping up on the New York Stock Exchange.

Still, given the lack of light at the end of the tunnel for many Americans -- notably those nearly 16 million unemployed who can no longer find work, the ballooning number of homeowners who can no longer meet their mortgage payments and the bevy of financially-strapped small businessmen who are treated by bankers as though they're lepers when they try to borrow money -- there's clearly a major disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.

In the face of this disconnect, we get our second market scenario, the one that could bring smiles. That's the possibility of a buying panic in stocks, which is what I hear from San Francisco money manager Gary Wollin, who characterizes his panic as a strong up market on extremely heavy volume. In fact, he thinks we could be in early stages of the panic.

Wollin, though a relative unknown as money managers go, is not a fella to be taken lightly. I've frequently quoted him because of his uncanny record in calling market ups and downs in recent years. Probably most impressive was his switch from a bear to a bull in March of 2009 with the Dow at around 6,500. Wollin, who runs about $100 million of assets under the banner Gary Wollin & Co., has essentially remained bullish ever since.

How does he come up with a buying panic? Here is his reasoning:

--The economic news is becoming more positive day by day and that trend should continue.

--Unemployment is becoming less worse and pretty soon we'll see more positive numbers in this area.

--Expense cutbacks the past 12 to 18 months and shoddy year-over-year comparisons should provide companies with good earnings numbers and prompt analysts to raise their profit estimates over the next quarter or two.

--Investors who have been waiting for clear signs that the economy is on the upswing -- and have now gotten them -- will become increasingly less reluctant to invest in the stock market. Likewise, their renewed confidence should help them overcome their fear.

Wollin, who is up 3.2% this year, just a shade below the Dow, figures that most investors who missed the explosive up move over the past year and are late to the race, will likely seek to mount the fastest horses. In this context, he sees lively demand for such 2010 winners as Boeing, Ford, BB&T Corp. and Sony, which were recently up this year anywhere from roughly 27.5% to 44%. As new investments, Wollin favors Bemis, CSX Corp., Automatic Data Processing and Sealed Air Corp., each of which he views as a market out-performer over the next 12 months.

So there you have it -- two stock scenarios, one chilling, one thrilling. Only time will tell whether either is reasonable or more probably, unlikely.

What do you think? E-mail me at Dandordan@aol.com

Frank Schaeffer: Obama's Health Care Victory Puts His Critics to Shame

Re: Health Care Reform;

President Obama: 1

Critics: 0

Oct 8 of 2008 I predicted -- right here on Huffington Post -- that Obama would have a great presidency. Not only do I stand by my remarks made then but reiterate them now in the light of today's historic health care bill's passage. I also hereby call out the Democratic Party doubters (from the left) of our president who have been so ready to dismiss him. Who is looking smart today?

Presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with character, temperament and intelligence. Like firemen, cops, doctors or soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine.

Obama is one of the most intelligent presidents to ever step forward in American history. The likes of his intellectual capabilities have not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put pen to paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart, America: we have the leader for our times. He's just outworked and outsmarted the far right and the far left. The Tea party troglodytes are reduced to yelling racial epithets from the sidelines. The Lefty critics have egg on their faces.

I say this as a white, former Republican active on the Religious Right before I got disgusted with right wing hate and changed my mind in the mid-80s. (Something I write about in my memoir Crazy For God.) I say this as just another American watching his health care costs go stratospheric.

I say this as someone happy to have been called a fool for going out on a limb and declaring early in the primaries that, 1) Obama would win the nomination and then the election, and 2) that he was going to be amongst the greatest of American presidents.

You doubters beware. In November the Democrats will do much better than expected right now. You were wrong on health care. You are wrong about problems in November too. And while we're at it: Obama is not in the "pocket of Wall Street." He is not "betraying working America." What you saw today you'll see next in financial reform of banking laws. And you'll also see the economy turn around.

Obama puts service ahead of ideology. He also knows that to win politically you need to be tough. He can be. He just has been. Ask the Republicans today!

This is a man who does what works, rather than scoring ideological points. In other words, he is the quintessential non-ideological pragmatic American. He will (thank God!) disappoint ideologues and purists of the left and the right. He's already made them angry. And because he did that he just won a huge victory.

Obama has a reservoir of personal, physical courage that is unmatched in presidential history. Why unmatched? Take a look at the signs the Tea Party people carry. Take a look at the weapons they carry. As the first black president, Obama is in great physical danger from the seemingly unlimited reserve of unhinged racial hatred, and just plain unhinged ignorant hatred, that swirls in the bowels of our country. By stepping forward to lead, Obama has literally put his life on the line for all of us in a way no white president ever has had to do. His health care reform victory just made his life more dangerous. What personal risk have his critics taken? What courage was required to snipe from the sidelines?

Obama is the sober voice of reason at a time of unreason. He is the fellow keeping his head while all around him are panicking. Both the Left and Right not only blinked but ducked. Obama stood tall.

Obama brings a healing and uplifting spiritual quality to our politics at the very time when our worst enemy is fear. For eight years we were ruled by a stunted fear-filled mediocrity -- Bush -- who expanded his power on the basis of creating fear in others. Fearless Obama is the cure. He speaks a litany of hope rather than a litany of terror. Bush legalized torture. Obama just legalized health care for all. Which line would you rather stand in?

America is fighting its "Armageddon" in one fearful heart at a time. From the nutty Right we were told that Obama wanted to kill old people. From the nutty Left we were told Obama had "sold out to big pharma." What nonsense! A brilliant leader with the mild manner of an old-time matter-of-fact country doctor soothing a frightened child is just what we need.

The fact that our "doctor" is a black man leading a hitherto white-ruled nation out of the mess of its own making is all the sweeter and raises the Obama story to that of moral allegory. Literally we have a president that is now a healer of millions hitherto uninsured.

Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who have had to work for everything they've gotten and had to do twice as well as the person standing next to them because of the color of their skin. His experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social background and prejudice could have been embittering or one that fostered a spiritual rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama radiates the calm inner peace of the spirit of forgiveness. Doubters from the left and right just look cranky by comparison.

A hundred years from now Obama's portrait will be placed next to that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Long before that we'll be telling our children and grandchildren that we stepped out in faith and voted for a young black man who stood up and led our country back from the brink of an abyss.

We'll tell them about the power of love, faith and hope. We'll tell them about the power of creativity combined with humility and intellectual brilliance.

We'll tell them that President Obama gave us the gift of regaining our faith in our country. We'll tell them that we all stood up and pitched in and won the day. We'll tell them that President Obama restored our standing in the world.

We'll tell them that by the time he left office health care was reformed! We'll tell them that our schools were on the mend, our economy booming, that we'd become a nation filled with green energy alternatives and were leading the world away from dependence on carbon-based destruction.

Remember our slogan as we fought for our candidate: "YES WE CAN"?

We just did!

Thank you Mr. President!

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)

Van Hollen confident on motion to recommit

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), on Sunday night expressed confidence that Democrats will prevail on the Republican motion to recommit.

"I am confident we will prevail," Van Hollen told reporters.

Van Hollen, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that if Republicans want to make repeal of the Democrats' healthcare bill a midterm election issue they should "bring it on." Van Hollen said that the Republicans face "a huge credibility gap" for defending the "status quo."

He also said that most provisions in the healthcare bill would take effect after the reconciliation bill is adopted.

Pelosi Overpowers Stupak, Path is Cleared

Carolyn Lochhead, SF Chronicle