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From the Los Angeles Times

Clinton says Mexico drug wars starting to look like insurgency

Her comments reflect a striking shift in public comment by the Obama administration about the violence and come as U.S. officials weigh a large increase in aid to Mexico to help fight the cartels.

By Paul Richter and Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

September 9, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Mexico's violent drug cartels increasingly resemble an insurgency with the power to challenge the government's control of wide swaths of its own soil, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.

Clinton's comments reflected a striking shift in the public comments of the Obama administration about the bloodshed that has cost 28,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006. They come as U.S. officials weigh a large increase in aid to the southern neighbor to help fight the cartels.

Clinton compared the conflict in Mexico to Colombia's recent struggle against a drug-financed leftist insurgency that, at its peak, controlled up to 40% of that country. She said the United States, Mexico and Central American countries need to cooperate on an "equivalent" of Plan Colombia — the multibillion-dollar military and aid program that helped turn back Colombia's insurgents.

"We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency," Clinton said in response to a question after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

As recently as last week, a senior State Department official staunchly denied that the drug war could be accurately described as an insurgency.

And although the administration has regularly praised the cooperation of Mexican authorities, some U.S. officials are beginning to show uneasiness about the partnership.

Top American officials have noted that the Mexican government does not always act on intelligence shared by the U.S., and some suspect corruption is sometimes the cause of the inaction.

"There is some frustration," Alonzo R. Pena, deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview. U.S. officials may pinpoint a particular house where a cartel figure is believed to be, and no operation ensues to capture him, he said.

Pena said that the Mexicans, who have lost an "astronomical" number of police officers and soldiers, may be simply cautious when they decide not to use U.S. information to attack the gangs. But at other times "it is completely corruption," he said.

He said that he believed Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his close aides were trustworthy and committed to taking on the cartels. But U.S. officials are wary about cooperating with other elements of the Mexican government, fearing they can't be trusted, Pena said.

The Calderon government quickly disputed Clinton's assessment. Unlike Colombia, Mexico is acting "in time" to save its political system from being penetrated by the cartels, and to reform important institutions such as the police, the government's spokesman on security matters, Alejandro Poire, said at a news conference.

"There is a very important difference between what Colombia faced and what Mexico is facing now," Poire said. "Perhaps the most important similarity … is the extent to which organized crime and narcotics-trafficking organizations in both countries are fed by the enormous and gigantic U.S. demand for drugs."

Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said in a radio interview that leftist rebels in Colombia had a political agenda, and established ties with organized crime to obtain resources. In Mexico, the cartels have no political agenda, she said.

Still, senior U.S. officials have grown increasingly alarmed in recent months at the expanding power and influence of the cartels, which now dominate swaths of the country. They battle one another and seek to cow Mexican citizens with violence that includes assassinations, beheadings and car bombings.

Authorities said Wednesday that Mexican marines had arrested seven gunmen suspected in the August massacre of 72 migrants from Central and South America, whose bodies were found on a small ranch near the town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state. An additional suspect was captured earlier, and six have been killed in shootouts with authorities.

The seven are suspected of belonging to the Zetas cartel. They are thought to have kidnapped the migrants to force them to work as mules or fulfill other menial roles, and then allegedly shot them when they refused.

The two lead investigators in the case, who went missing a day after the bodies were discovered, have been found dead, officials said.

Also Wednesday, the mayor of a town in the relatively tranquil state of San Luis Potosi was gunned down in his office, the third Mexican mayor to be executed gangland-style in three and a half weeks. Alexander Lopez, 35, was shot to death midday by a man who burst into City Hall in the town of Naranjo, where Lopez had served as mayor for 11 months, local officials said. He was sitting at his desk when shot to death.

Although San Luis Potosi has not been engulfed in the same bloodshed as other states, Naranjo is located on the northeastern edge of the state bordering violent Tamaulipas. Intelligence sources say the Zeta cartel has been steadily moving into that part of the region.

There has been a growing outcry from officials in U.S. border states such as California, Arizona and Texas as the carnage has edged ever closer.

Some U.S. officials are questioning whether their Mexican counterparts are willing to stand up to the cartels as strongly as Colombian authorities. Clinton praised Calderon for his "courage and his commitment" but also called on Mexico to increase its "political will" to fight the cartels.

She said defeating the gangs will require stronger civil, police and military institutions, "married to political will, to be able to prevent this from spreading and beat it back."

In Colombia, billions of dollars in U.S. aid and the policies of hard-line President Alvaro Uribe beat back the FARC rebels. Expanded police ranks have sharply reduced violent crime in the cities. Foreign investment has tripled, fueling a growing economy.

But Plan Colombia has drawn criticism for its heavy use of military force, the presence of hundreds of U.S military advisors and for human rights abuses. The program brought not only the military advisors, but also U.S. special forces personnel and a large numbers of defense contractors.

Clinton acknowledged that Plan Colombia was "controversial … there were problems and there were mistakes. But it worked."

George Grayson, a specialist on Mexico at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said Clinton's remarks were a sign of U.S. officials' growing alarm at the effects of the drug war.

He said that while President Obama didn't even mention Mexico in his State of the Union message in January, more and more law enforcement and military officials see the situation as a top priority national security threat.

"It's not like Afghanistan or Iran, but it's suddenly on the national security radar," he said.

Even so, he said he was skeptical that Mexico, with its nationalist sensitivities, would consent to a far more active U.S. role, even should Congress be willing to appropriate the funds.

Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Mexico Institute said he senses from conversations with administration officials that "the administration still seems handcuffed by the lack of reliable partners at the operational level."

Olson said that although he was reluctant to be alarmist, "I don't think anybody thinks this has gotten to the bottom."

Administration officials have said in recent days that despite the financial burdens of two other wars, they are considering a sizable increase in spending on the anti-drug war, as well as other improvements to the U.S. counter-narcotics security program.

A White House official who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the subject said last week that the joint effort with the Mexican government "remains a top administration priority.... We are constantly evaluating our efforts to make sure we are doing all we can on this issue."

U.S. officials have been deliberating for some time how to follow up the Merida Initiative, a three-year, $1.6-billion program started in 2008 by President George W. Bush to provide equipment and training to the Mexican, Central American and Caribbean governments.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-mexico-insurgency-20100909,0,224449,print.story

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U.S. healthcare costs projected to continue to climb

By covering more Americans under the healthcare overhaul, costs will increase over the next decade, but not substantially more than if the law had not been enacted, an independent government analysis finds.

By Noam N. Levey, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 9, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Pushed by a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who will get insurance under the new healthcare law, total U.S. medical spending will continue to gallop upward, consuming nearly 20% of the economy by 2019, according to a new government estimate.

But because new savings in the law offset most of the cost of extending insurance to more people, the nation's total healthcare bill is not expected to be substantially larger than it would have been without the overhaul.

"It appears that the Affordable Care Act will have a moderate effect on health spending growth," said Andrea M. Sisko, the lead author of the closely watched study by independent economists at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The estimates, which parallel earlier analyses of the law, underline a major promise of the landmark legislation that President Obama signed in March.

By 2019, nearly 93% of the population is projected to have medical coverage, compared with about 84% now. Without the law, the percentage of people with coverage was expected to dip to 83% over the next decade, according to the report.

Extending coverage to an estimated 32.5 million uninsured Americans is expected to reduce the tendency of doctors, hospitals and others to shift the cost of treating the uninsured onto those who have insurance.

But the expansion of coverage will not come without a cost.

"When you cover the uninsured and they get the care they need, you have to spend more money," said Karen Davis, president of the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, a leading authority on healthcare policy.

The report estimated that healthcare spending will nearly double for the previously uninsured as many of the newly insured get care they now do without.

The coverage expansion is largely paid for with a series of new fees and taxes and cuts in what Medicare pays private health insurers, hospitals and other providers.

Before passage of the law, the United States was projected to spend $4.5 trillion on healthcare in 2019, up from about $2.6 trillion this year.

The overhaul is expected to push up the nation's 2019 healthcare bill to $4.6 trillion.

That translates to an average annual growth rate of 6.3% over the next decade, far outpacing the economy-wide inflation rate.

The continuing upward surge in total healthcare spending poses a challenge for Obama and others who championed the healthcare overhaul as a way to "bend the cost curve."

Republican critics of the new law, many of whom are promising to repeal it, have seized on earlier estimates of rising healthcare spending to cast the overhaul as a failure.

On an individual level, millions of Americans are still seeing their healthcare bills rise as insurance companies demand higher rates and employers pass along a growing share of their healthcare costs to workers.

The overhaul includes numerous provisions designed to relieve this cost pressure on consumers, including those to improve the quality of medical care and make the healthcare system more efficient.

"The new law … supports a major set of research and development for new models of healthcare delivery and healthcare payment," said Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whose office prepared the report.

But because many of these changes are relatively untested, Foster acknowledged that his team could not estimate their impact.

Other analysts, including Davis at the Commonwealth Fund, have estimated that the changes, including incentives to get doctors and other medical providers to work together more effectively, could ultimately save hundreds of billions of dollars.

http://www.latimes.com/health/healthcare/la-na-health-costs-20100909,0,284178,print.story

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Collene Thompson Campbell and her late father, Police Capt. Marion L. Thompson, will be honored by Alhambra officials Thursday for their roles -- 74 years apart -- in closing the cold case of an officer shot to death in 1933.

Woman gets police to put cold case on ice When Collene Campbell found out that a 1933 Alhambra slaying was still on the books, she proved that her cop father had resolved it long ago. She also helped solve the murders of her son and brother. By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times September 9, 2010 Somebody should pin a detective's badge on Collene Thompson Campbell. For the third time, the 78-year-old San Juan Capistrano woman has helped solve a murder mystery — this one a 1933 shooting of an officer considered a cold case by Alhambra police. Like the other two homicides she played a role in resolving, this was one Campbell took personally. Officer James H. Nerison was killed on Jan. 3, 1933, by shotgun-wielding robbers who were attempting to blow open a safe at the Alhambra Theater. A second officer, Glenn Wasson, was wounded. Campbell's late father, Alhambra Police Capt. Marion L. Thompson, closed the case three years later. But Nerison's death was still viewed as an open case when Campbell bumped into an Alhambra police sergeant in Sacramento two years ago. Campbell, a former mayor of San Juan Capistrano, is an appointed public member of the state's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. She was attending one of the panel's triannual meetings when she encountered Sgt. Joe Flannigan.

"I asked him how things were going in my old hometown," Campbell recalls. "He said things were great, that they only had one unsolved murder of a police officer, one back in 1933."

Campbell's jaw dropped. "I said, 'You mean the shooting at the Alhambra Theater? I know about that incident. That's a solved case.' I came home thinking that he hadn't believed me."

Campbell knew that her father had taken part in a 1936 shootout when police confronted a trio of bank robbers in El Monte. He had killed one of the stick-up men — Clarence Smith, 43, of Glendale. A few days later, witnesses to the earlier shooting identified Smith as the gunman who had killed Nerison.

Back home, Campbell dug out newspaper clippings from the 1930s that her mother had saved. A Feb 9, 1936, Pasadena Star-News article headlined "Bandit's Death Avenges Slain Peace Officer" was among the yellowed papers.

The article explained how Thompson, then a sergeant on the Alhambra force, had been attending a meeting of law enforcement pistol team members in El Monte at the time of the bank robbery. When the alarm was sounded, the eight pistol competitors raced half a block to the Southern County Bank where they confronted Smith and two other robbers.

In the exchange of gunfire, Smith and another robber were fatally shot and the third was captured. A shotgun blast fired by Smith wounded El Monte Officer Joseph Fritsch.

The 1936 story gives a hint of why Nerison's murder remained open even after Smith's identification. It quoted the lead detective on the case saying the identification was "99% perfect," but noting that the investigation "would not stop until the shotgun used" to kill Nerison was found so authorities could compare it to shotgun shells found at the theater.

When Campbell shared her information with Alhambra police, they decided that the 1933 investigation was over. They plan to recognize Campbell and her father at a 9 a.m. ceremony Thursday at police headquarters.

"We had the case solved since 1936," said Sgt. Brian Black. "It just had never been cleared, for whatever reason. There's a distinction between 'solved' and 'cleared.' 'Cleared' means 'closed,' no further investigation."

Campbell knows the importance of a thorough investigation. She assisted authorities in solving the murders of her brother and her son.

Her brother, race car legend Mickey Thompson, was gunned down along with his wife outside their Bradbury home in 1988. Campbell eventually posted a $1-million reward and helped investigators track down evidence used to convict her brother's former business associate of arranging the murders. Michael Goodwin, who was locked in a bitter feud with Mickey Thompson, was sentenced in 2007 to two life terms in prison.

In 1982, Campbell's 27-year-old son, Scott, disappeared.

When authorities' investigation into his disappearance lagged, Campbell and her husband, Gary, found a friend who remembered Scott mentioning that he was going flying. They searched airport parking lots until they found his car, then found a flight log that led them to the rented plane he had been in.

The couple searched the plane and found blood on a rear seat and on a window curtain. They hired undercover investigators to secretly record a confession from the pilot and a passenger. Scott Campbell had been thrown out of a small airplane 2,000 feet up, a mile from Catalina Island.

Donald P. DiMascio was sentenced to life in prison without parole and Lawrence Raymond Cowell was sentenced to 25 years to life following several trials that ended in 1990.

Scott Campbell's body was never recovered. Authorities say the murder was tied to a drug deal, but Campbell believes her son was killed because of a dispute over his expensive sports car.

The deaths of her son and brother prompted her career as a citizen criminal justice advocate, she said. Along with the Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, she has served on six other national and state boards and panels.

"I feel strongly about guilty people being brought to justice," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cold-case-20100909,0,6877905,print.story

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9th Circuit throws out CIA torture lawsuit for national security reasons

The decision by a divided appeals court says the risk of state secrets being exposed outweighs the alleged victims' right to seek damages from a Boeing subsidiary they say aided in the renditions.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

September 9, 2010

Five foreign men who say they were kidnapped and tortured by the CIA cannot sue the Boeing Co. subsidiary that helped spirit them away for interrogations because of the risk of secret intelligence matters being exposed at trial, a sharply divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision in the closely watched case was a significant victory for the Obama administration because it recognized a president's power to protect wartime actions from judicial scrutiny by invoking the state secrets doctrine.

The civil rights lawyer who represented the alleged victims of the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program said the ruling, if allowed to stand, means the United States has "closed its courtroom doors to torture victims."

The majority in the 6-5 ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals "reluctantly" concluded that national security interests in the case were paramount to "even the most compelling necessity" to protect fundamental principles of liberty and justice.

The lawsuit brought by former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed and four others sought to hold San Jose's Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. responsible for the alleged violations committed against them because of the company's logistical support to the CIA. Jeppesen reportedly supplied the flight services and other assistance to CIA agents who whisked the men from Sweden, Pakistan, Jordan and Gambia to secret interrogation sites elsewhere overseas.

In exacting detail, the majority reiterated the men's accounts of having been snatched off the streets in their resident countries or on business trips abroad, then blindfolded, shackled, stripped and transported to CIA "black sites." They said they were beaten, starved, subjected to electrical shocks to the genitals and held in darkness and isolation for months at a time.

"This case requires us to address the difficult balance the state secrets doctrine strikes between fundamental principles of our liberty, including justice, transparency, accountability and national security," began the majority opinion written by Judge Raymond C. Fisher, appointed to the San Francisco-based appeals court by President Clinton. "Although as judges we strive to honor all of these principles, there are times when exceptional circumstances create an irreconcilable conflict between them."

The majority said the case couldn't go forward even on the basis of unclassified evidence already disclosed to the public because those facts were part of a "mosaic" and the court cannot order the government to "disentangle" innocuous information from what is secret.

"Litigating the case to a judgment on the merits would present an unacceptable risk of disclosing state secrets," the majority said.

A federal district court judge in San Francisco in 2008 granted the U.S. government's motion to dismiss the lawsuit after President George W. Bush asserted his state secrets privilege, arguing that litigation of the case would reveal confidential national security practices and interrogation tactics.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit last year reversed the district court, saying the men should be allowed to prove their case on the unclassified evidence they claimed would be sufficient for a trial court to reach a judgment on their behalf.

The five judges who dissented in the ruling deemed arbitrary imprisonment and torture "a gross and notorious act of despotism." They called the majority decision to dismiss the lawsuit "premature."

"This court should not determine that there is no feasible way to litigate Jeppesen's liability without disclosing state secrets; such a determination is the district court's to make," read the dissent written by Senior Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, another Clinton appointee.

A Justice Department spokesman welcomed the appeals court action dismissing the men's suit.

"The Attorney General adopted a new policy last year to ensure the state secrets privilege is only used in cases where it is essential to protect national security, and we are pleased that the court recognized that the policy was used appropriately in this case," said Matthew Miller, director of public affairs.

An attorney for the plaintiffs disagreed.

"To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration torture programs has had a day in court," said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing Mohamed and the other four men.

Obama as a candidate vowed to rein in use of the state secrets privilege but has backed the Bush administration policy in several high-profile cases, including the rendition challenge. He also promised to abolish torture in handling terrorism cases.

In the 55-page opinion, replete with ambivalence, the six judges voting for dismissal pointed out that the plaintiffs could still pursue compensation or redress from the U.S. government or Congress. They alluded to the Japanese Americans interned during World War II who were later paid reparations for the violation of their civil rights.

"We do not reach our decision lightly or without close and skeptical scrutiny of the record and the government's case for secrecy and dismissal," said the majority.

Fisher noted in his opinion that the appeals court had had the opportunity to question the government attorneys behind closed doors after the hearing in December, and that the majority concluded after reviewing both public and classified declarations "that the government is not invoking the privilege to avoid embarrassment or to escape scrutiny of its recent controversial transfer and interrogation policies."

Bobby Chesney, a national security law professor at the University of Texas, said the majority ruling was riddled with "overtones that suggest awareness of the human costs" of those subjected to government actions that have stirred serious concerns about human rights violations.

In another indication of conflicting sentiments in the decision, the court ordered the U.S. government to pay all parties' costs.

"Maybe that's their way of doing rough justice," Allen Weiner, a Stanford University national security law professor, said of the unusual award of attorney fees to a losing party. "They may be saying the government gets its way, but we don't have to pile on and make the [plaintiffs] pay for losing."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rendition-20100909,0,6153627,print.story

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Don't fan the flames

The Florida church planning to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11 ought to exercise restraint, as should those in opposition to the Islamic center in New York.

OPINION

September 9, 2010

The small church in Florida that is planning to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11 says it is taking into consideration advice from all around the world not to do so. In recent days, Gen. David H. Petraeus has advised leaders of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., not to go forward with the plan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted it as "outrageous" and "disgraceful." As of Wednesday, the church still planned to desecrate the holy book of Islam, but Pastor Terry Jones said he was continuing to pray over the decision.

While the church has a 1st Amendment right to engage in book burning (provided it takes precautions to prevent the fire from spreading), the observance of what the church calls "International Burn a Koran Day" would have negative repercussions all out of proportion to the group's minuscule numbers. If Jones and his followers are immune to pleas for religious tolerance, they at least ought to be moved by Petraeus' comments this week that soldiers and civilians could be put in jeopardy by the church's actions and his request that it exercise restraint. That wouldn't prevent it from continuing to spew hateful comments like "Islam is of the devil," but it would deny this countries' enemies an opportunity to claim that the United States is engaged in an unholy war on Islam.

The distinction between possessing a right and exercising it imprudently has figured into the debate over the construction of an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York. Some critics of the misnamed "ground zero mosque" would argue that if the Dove World Outreach Center ought to exercise restraint, so should the organizers of the Islamic center.

The situations, however, are completely different. The Florida church is preaching hatred of an entire religion; the Islamic center says it hopes to encourage interfaith tolerance. And no one is suggesting that construction of the center would lead to violence against U.S. troops. If anything, it's the opposition to the center near the World Trade Center site that supports the terrorists' narrative that America is waging war on Islam.

So would the burning of Korans. We hope that, after praying about it, Jones and his followers see the wisdom in Petraeus' words.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-koran-20100909,0,4462394,print.story

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Reining in executive pay

The landmark financial reform legislation passed in July includes reforms advocated for years by those who believe that empowering shareholders will clean up the executive pay mess.

OPINION

By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati

September 9, 2010

Joel Gemunder, the chief executive officer of Omnicare, retired on July 31, almost exactly one year after his company announced a wide array of wage cuts and layoffs. The former head of the nation's top provider of pharmaceuticals for seniors won't have to worry much about his own personal economic security. He's walking off into his golden years with a getaway package worth at least $130 million.

Gemunder's sweet deal only hints at the excess still pulsing through America's executive suites. Since 2008, the year the nation collapsed into the Great Recession, 50 major U.S. corporations have each axed more than 3,000 jobs. Yet their CEOs, as our just-released report for the Institute for Policy Studies documents, last year took home 42% more pay on average than the S&P 500 CEO average.

At America's top 50 companies, CEO pay — after adjusting for inflation — is running at quadruple the 1980s average and eight times the average in the mid-20th century. Is executive pay going to forever trend upward? Or can somebody, anybody, do something?

Actually, Congress has just done something. The landmark financial reform legislation passed in July includes reforms advocated for years by those who believe that empowering shareholders will clean up the executive pay mess. The most notable proposal — shareholder "say on pay" — now stands as the law of the land, not just for financial companies but for all publicly traded U.S. corporations.

All shareholders now will have the right to express their disapproval of executive pay packages. And if directors ignore that disapproval, shareholders will soon have the tools, through new SEC regulations, to get their own director candidates on corporate board ballots.

Point by point, Congress has codified almost the entire shareholder-driven agenda for pay reform. Corporate board compensation committee independence? Check. All members of the committees that set CEO pay must now be independent. Corporate pay consultant conflict of interest? Check. The new law clamps down on consultants who play footsie with CEOs under the table. Pay for performance standards? Check. The law requires corporations to disclose how their executive pay relates to actual financial performance.

These are all positive steps. But will they end the outrageous incentives for reckless executive misbehavior that excessive rewards create? Unfortunately, no.

All these reforms rest on the shaky assumption that shareholders, once suitably empowered, will rise up and end executive pay excess. We don't make this assumption for other corporate problems. We don't, for instance, expect shareholders to prevent corporations from poisoning our water or employing child labor. We endeavor, instead, to enact laws and regulations to prevent such practices. So why should we rely on shareholders to fix executive pay?

We're all stakeholders, after all, in executive pay decisions, either as consumers or workers or residents of communities where corporations operate. In recent years, executives chasing after paycheck jackpots have engaged in actions that have put us all at risk, such as toxic securities and job-killing mergers. Why should we leave the responsibility for executive pay decisions to shareholders and shareholders alone?

Instead, we can start with a different assumption: that our tax dollars must in no way subsidize executive excess. Currently, corporations can deduct from their income taxes all those millions they lavish on their execs. One bill before Congress would deny tax deductions on any executive pay that runs over $500,000 or 25 times the pay of a company's lowest-paid workers.

Another promising proposal would give a leg up in federal contract bidding to companies that pay their executives less than 100 times what their workers make.

We already deny government contracts to companies that discriminate, by race or gender, in their employment practices because we don't want our tax dollars subsidizing such inequality.

We need to apply this same reasoning to extreme economic inequality.

Lawmakers in the current Congress, to their credit, have quietly taken some baby steps down this alternate executive pay reform road. The healthcare reform legislation enacted this year lowers the tax deduction that health insurers can take on executive pay to $500,000.

Even better, the new financial reform law includes a provision that requires all U.S. corporations to annually report the ratio between their CEO compensation and the median pay that goes to their workers.

Corporate lobbyists are now working furiously, behind the scenes, to defang this mandate. They have good reason to feel panicked. The first step to limiting the vast pay gap that divides CEOs and workers is disclosing that gap. We've now taken that step. Let's keep going.

Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati are among the coauthors of the new Institute for Policy Studies report, "Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-anderson-ceopay-20100908,0,2438766,print.story

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From the New York Times

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New Schools in South Africa Serve the Underserved

CAPE TOWN — Gcobani Mndini, a shy, lanky 17-year-old, said he was already a gangster by the time he started ninth grade. His small gang, which called itself the Tomatoes, was robbing people, fighting over girls and getting high on Jack Daniel's and marijuana.

“I joined the gang because I wanted to belong,” he said.

He has since found that he fits in the last place he might have expected — at a private high school that is reinventing education for teenagers from South Africa 's black townships.

Gcobani quit gang life and has emerged as a talented science student seeking admission to the country's finest universities. A teacher recently looked in on a class of students studying late on a weeknight and asked, “Everything good?” Gcobani gave a thumbs up.

As many of South Africa's public schools have failed a post-apartheid generation of children from poor townships and rural areas, a budding movement of educators, philanthropists and desperate parents is increasingly searching for alternatives.

For a decade, banks and foundations here have sponsored promising township students to attend elite, mostly white schools. But now new private schools are springing up to serve poor and working-class black children, giving the still dominant public system some newfound competition and perhaps even devising models that will end up influencing it.

The 500 students at three schools known as Leap represent one approach. All of the students, including Gcobani, come from black townships. They are immersed in an educational environment that is reminiscent of some of the most successful American charter schools .

In another undertaking, civic leaders are trying to revive the rural mission schools that educated many of South Africa's liberation heroes but were largely destroyed by apartheid-era laws that required the institutions to submit to a racist system's dictates or surrender control to the state. Nelson Mandela 's alma mater, Healdtown, and the Inanda Seminary, South Africa's first high school for African girls, founded by American missionaries in 1869, are among those to be restored.

And in a small platinum-rich dominion near Johannesburg, the king of the Bafokeng people , Leruo Tshekedi Molotlegi, has built a $72 million private school for 800 children, most of whom will be local boys and girls on scholarship.

But a growing number of families, even without philanthropic support and tired of what they see as unmotivated public school teachers, are scraping together money on their own to send their children to bare-bones private schools tucked away in abandoned factories, shopping centers, shacks and high-rises, a new study of rural and urban communities in three provinces found.

In fact, researchers discovered far more of these low-fee private schools than official statistics suggest and surprisingly noted that public school teachers dissatisfied with their own workplaces were among the parents of students in these schools. While national studies are needed to gauge the full scope of the phenomenon, the researchers said, the evidence suggests that such schools are increasingly popular.

“Some ask, ‘Why aren't parents screaming about the appalling state of public education?' ” said Ann Bernstein, executive director of the Johannesburg-based Center for Development and Enterprise, which conducted the study. “They're moving with their feet.”

At the Leap schools, students have extended classes during the week, from 8:15 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., and they attend on Saturday mornings. They spend extra time on math, science and English. Seniors preparing for the matriculation examinations that will shape their futures stay until 8 p.m. three nights a week.

But the schools instill more than a fierce work ethic. Each day, students have a life orientation class, or L.O. as they call it, where they talk about the personal problems that can derail an education — a stepfather who expects a girl to clean house rather than do her homework, a student trying to study in the shack where her family lives and runs a saloon, and another student who goes to school hungry because her mother's salary as a maid runs out before the end of the month.

After a year of denying that he was in a gang, Gcobani said it was only in L.O. that he began facing the consequences of his choices, even though his township friends were dying in knife fights. “Sometimes, the whole class would confront him,” said his classmate, Lucinda Plaatjie.

The one-two punch of academic rigor and emotional honesty has paid off. Leap students have far outperformed the national average on matriculation exams. Nine out of 10 have passed the exams over the past five years, and most have gone on to higher education.

Nationally, performance on the exams has declined every year for six years, with only 6 out of 10 passing last year. Public schools, many of them hampered by poorly trained, unaccountable teachers, are failing too many poor black children, experts say.

The Leap schools are the brainchild of John Gilmour, a coach and educator who left a comfortable position as headmaster of a mostly white preparatory high school to start them. Mr. Gilmour said he had once believed that sports would be the answer. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he coached a cricket team from the township of Langa that produced stars who played for national teams.

“Then I started going to funerals,” Mr. Gilmour said. Players were felled by AIDS, alcohol, crime and violence.

In the 1990s, as principal of a white public high school in the suburb of Pinelands, he started an intensive tutoring program for children from the neighboring Langa township. But after more than a decade, the students' scores in math and science had barely budged. In 2003, the year before he started the first Leap school in Pinelands to serve Langa, only 6 of 650 students in the township who took the matriculation exams scored well enough for university admission.

By then, Mr. Gilmour had concluded that children from Cape Town's vast townships needed far more than a sports team or a few extra hours of tutoring. Leap was the result. The schools — two in Cape Town and one in Johannesburg — are utilitarian structures with worn floors, dedicated staff members who work long hours for modest pay, and soaring student choirs. Most of the annual cost of $4,000 per student is raised privately. The government contributes about $800 of it.

The schools are still works in progress, conducted in a spirit of experimentation. For the past three summers, Leap has collaborated with a San Francisco-based nonprofit group, Teach With Africa , which this year sent 22 American teachers with their own creative methods to volunteer.

One recent morning, a Leap bus rumbled through the still dark streets of the Crossroads, Gugulethu and Nyanga townships. Groggy students in charcoal gray skirts and slacks and white shirts trooped on board.

Gcobani's first class of the day was his favorite. This is his third year taking science from Ross Hill, 31, the son an Anglican pastor and a high school biology teacher who knows the privileges he had growing up white in South Africa and feels a responsibility to help tilt the scales back.

When Gcobani first stepped into class as a 10th grader, Mr. Hill said he knew of the boy's reputation and braced for a fight, but there was none. “He loves science,” Mr. Hill said.

On this particular morning, the class began with a dull, theoretical review of the photoelectric effect. The students seemed virtually comatose. Then the interplay between Mr. Hill and Jamie Brandt, a physics teacher from Marin County, Calif., woke everyone up.

Mr. Brandt, 36, a Teach With Africa volunteer, pantomimed the photoelectric effect in action, pretending to walk through a laser beam and getting the students to describe what happened when his body broke the current.

Mr. Hill then instructed the class to act out the photoelectric effect. The photon students bounced into a piece of zinc (a swaying clump of teenagers), causing the electrons (more students) to pop out.

“Come on, photons!” Mr. Hill exclaimed. “Just a gentle bump! A loving bump!”

A photon girl nudged the zinc students. The class howled with laughter, and Mr. Hill said, “Oh, sweet.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/world/africa/09safrica.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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The 5 Percent Doctrine

A minister in Gainesville, Fla., has created an international uproar by vowing to burn the Koran on Sept. 11. This is under the theory that the best way to honor Americans who died at the hands of religious extremists is to do something that is both religious and extreme.

I am not going to mention his name, since he's already been rewarded with way too many TV interviews for a person whose seminal career achievement has been building a thriving congregation of about 50 people.

The Koran-burning has been equated, in some circles, with the fabled ground zero mosque. This is under the theory that both are constitutionally protected bad ideas. In fact, they're very different. Muslims building a community center in their neighborhood on one hand. Deliberate attempt to insult a religion that is dear to about 1.5 billion souls around the globe on the other.

This week, New York City was visited by another minister, with the depressing title of “Internet evangelist” who announced plans to build a “9/11 Christian center at ground zero” in response to “the lies of Islam.” This guy, who is from Tampa, drew an estimated crowd of 60 people. Does that make him more popular than the minister from Gainesville? Plus, is there something in the water in Florida?

When this sort of thing happens, it is important to remember that about 5 percent of our population is and always will be totally crazy. I don't mean mentally ill. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 26 percent of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year. So, basically, that's just normal life. I mean crazy in the sense of “Thinks it is a good plan to joke with the flight attendant about seeing a bomb in the restroom.”

There is nothing you can do about the crazy 5 percent except ask the police to keep an eye on them during large public events, where they sometimes appear carrying machine guns just to make a political point about the Second Amendment. And, in situations like a Koran-burning, make it clear that the rest of us disagree.

So far, the people lining up to denounce the burning of the Koran include the pope, Gen. David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the Republican side, Haley Barbour, theMississippi governor and would-be presidential contender, stepped up to the plate. “I don't think there is any excuse for it,” said Barbour at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

Unfortunately, Barbour followed up his bow to tolerance by suggesting that the public's confusion over Barack Obama's religion is because of the fact that “this is a president that we know less about than any other president in history.” The governor claimed that Americans had been particularly deprived of information on Obama's youth, while they knew a great deal about the formative years of the other chief executives all the way back to the way the youthful George Washington “chopped down a cherry tree.”

Let us reconsider the above paragraph in light of the fact that while Obama wrote an entire book about his childhood, Washington never chopped down the cherry tree.

But I digress. While a pope, a general and a cabinet member are speaking out, the candidates running in this year's elections seem to be superquiet about the Koran-burning. However, quite a few have been racing to bash the Muslim community center for Lower Manhattan. In Florida, the gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott has an ad railing against a mosque “just yards away” from ground zero, which is semiaccurate only if you believe “city blocks” and “yards” are the same thing. And in New York, the Republican candidates for governor appear to be running for the Mosque Removal slot on the ballot.

“Just before the primary, we had candidates who thought they might gain more votes by bashing Islam,” said Saleh Sbenaty, a leader of the Muslim families in Murfreesboro, Tenn., whose community center construction site has been vandalized twice in recent weeks. “We had a rough, rough time during the primary.”

My memories of Sept. 11, 2001, are still intense, and they are mainly about the outpouring of concern from the rest of the country. The piles of donated clothes and food piled up, unused but not necessarily unwanted since each bit was a token of someone's good will toward the city. Helping us achieve that state of public grace is the highest possible duty of every elected official.

But, lately, they've abdicated or worse. And the fight for public sanity has fallen to average citizens, like Professor Sbenaty, who is still trying to explain to the rest of the world what happened in his community. “Let me say first,” he told an interviewer on NPR, “there are crazy people in every society.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09collins.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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The Healers of 9/11

This weekend, a Jewish woman who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks is planning to speak at a mosque in Boston. She will be trying to recruit members of the mosque to join her battle against poverty and illiteracy in Afghanistan.

The woman, Susan Retik, has pursued perhaps the most unexpected and inspiring American response to the 9/11 attacks. This anniversary of Sept. 11 feels a little ugly to me, with some planning to remember the day with hatred and a Koran-burning — and that makes her work all the more exhilarating.

In the shattering aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Ms. Retik bonded with another woman, Patti Quigley, whose husband had also died in the attack. They lived near each other, and both were pregnant with babies who would never see their fathers.

Devastated themselves, they realized that there were more than half a million widows in Afghanistan — and then, with war, there would be even more. Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley also saw that Afghan widows could be a stabilizing force in that country.

So at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.

The organization they started, Beyond the 11th, has now assisted more than 1,000 Afghan widows in starting tiny businesses. It's an effort both to help some of the world's neediest people and to fight back at the distrust, hatred and unemployment that sustain the Taliban.

“More jobs mean less violence,” Ms. Retik noted. “It would be naïve to think that we can change the country, but change has to start somewhere. If we can provide a skill for a woman so that she can provide for her family going forward, then that's one person or five people who will have a roof over their head, food in their bellies and a chance for education.”

In times of fear and darkness, we tend to suppress the better angels of our nature. Instead, these women unleashed theirs.

Paul Barker, who for many years ran CARE's operations in Afghanistan, believes America would have accomplished more there if our government had shared the two women's passion for education and development. “I can only wonder at what a different world it could be today if in those fateful months after 9/11 our nation's leadership had been guided more by a people-to-people vision of building both metaphorical and physical bridges,” Mr. Barker said.

A terrific documentary, “ Beyond Belief,” follows Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley as they raise funds for Afghan widows and finally travel to Afghanistan to visit the women they had been helping. Ms. Quigley has since stepped down from Beyond the 11th because she felt in danger of becoming a perpetual 9/11 poster widow, but she still is working on a series of Afghan initiatives. Ms. Retik, who has since remarried, remains focused on the charity.

Beyond the 11th began by buying small chicken flocks for widows so that they could sell eggs. Another major project was to build a women's center in the city of Bamian, where the women weave carpets for export. The center, overseen by an aid group called Arzu , also offers literacy classes and operates a bakery as a business.

Another initiative has been to train Afghan women, through a group called Business Council for Peace, to run a soccer ball manufacturing company. The bosses have been coached in quality control, inventory management and other skills, and they have recruited unemployed widows to stitch the balls — which are beginning to be exported under the brand Dosti.

Ms. Retik's next step will be to sponsor a microfinance program through CARE. There are also plans to train attendants to help reduce deaths in childbirth.

Will all of this turn Afghanistan into a peaceful country? Of course not. Education and employment are not panaceas. But the record suggests that schools and economic initiatives do tend over time to chip away at fundamentalism — and they're also cheap.

All the work that Beyond the 11th has done in Afghanistan over nine years has cost less than keeping a single American soldier in Afghanistan for eight months.

I admire Ms. Retik's work partly because she offers an antidote to the pusillanimous anti-Islamic hysteria that clouds this anniversary of 9/11. Ms. Retik offers an alternative vision by reaching out to a mosque and working with Muslims so that in the future there will be fewer widows either here or there.

Her work is an invigorating struggle to unite all faiths against those common enemies of humanity, ignorance and poverty — reflecting the moral and mental toughness that truly can chip away at terrorism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Torture Is a Crime, Not a Secret

OPINION

Five men who say the Bush administration sent them to other countries to be tortured had a chance to be the first ones to have torture claims heard in court. But because the Obama administration decided to adopt the Bush administration's claim that hearing the case would divulge state secrets, the men's lawsuit was tossed out on Wednesday by the full United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The decision diminishes any hope that this odious practice will finally receive the legal label it deserves: a violation of international law.

The lawsuit was brought in 2007 against a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, that the plaintiffs said had arranged the rendition flights that took them to Morocco, Egypt and Afghanistan to be tortured. One of the men, Binyam Mohamed, had his bones broken in Morocco, where security agents also cut his skin with a scalpel and poured a stinging liquid into his wounds.

But the merits of the case were never considered because the Bush administration argued that even discussing the matter in court would violate the state secrets privilege. Barack Obama told voters in 2008 that he opposed the government cult of secrecy, but once he became president, his Justice Department also argued that the case should be dismissed on secrecy grounds.

The Ninth Circuit was sharply divided , voting 6 to 5 to dismiss the case and overturn a decision to let it proceed that was made by a panel of three circuit judges last year. The majority said it reached its decision reluctantly and was not trying to send a signal that secrecy could be used regularly to dismiss lawsuits. But even though it is public knowledge that Jeppesen arranged the torture flights, the majority said any effort by the company to defend itself would pose “an unacceptable risk of disclosure of state secrets.”

That notion was demolished by the five-judge minority that dissented from the ruling, pointing out that the plaintiffs were never even given a chance to make their case in court using nonsecret evidence, including a sworn statement by a former Jeppesen employee about the company's role in what he called “the torture flights.” The case should have been sent back to the district court to examine which evidence was truly secret; now it will have to be appealed to a Supreme Court that is unlikely to be sympathetic to the plaintiffs.

The state secrets doctrine is so blinding and powerful that it should be invoked only when the most grave national security matters are at stake — nuclear weapons details, for example, or the identity of covert agents. It should not be used to defend against allegations that if true, as the dissenting judges wrote, would be “gross violations of the norms of international law.”

All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America's reputation are already too well known.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09thurs2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Drugs, knives amid the flowers

DALEY CENTER | Court clientele use planters to stash contraband

Strange and dangerous things hide beneath the flowers outside the Daley Center courthouse.

Knives, key chains, cameras, crack pipes, phone chargers.

"People stand in line waiting to go through the metal detector to get into the building," explained Sgt. Officer Lem Jagielski of Cook the County Sheriff's Canine Unit. "And all the sudden they think, 'Oh my God! I forgot about the knife, or the drugs or the whatever that's in my pocket'. . . . And then they think: 'I'll hide it outside in the flowers and come and get it after court.' "

With 37 concrete flower beds creating a physical barrier around the building, there are plenty of hiding places.

"We conduct sweeps at least twice a day," Lt. Kristin Marunde said Wednesday as sheriff's deputies picked through the foliage.

The results of the 20-minute search: six knives, a crack pipe, a canister of Mace, a small amount of crack cocaine, sewing needles, a screwdriver with a sharpened edge and an empty Grey Goose vodka bottle. Deputies also have found box cutters, switchblades, a Walkman, phone chargers and extension cords. Outside Juvenile Court, Marunde has seen throwing stars stashed in flowers.

"We found a sword once in the bushes. It was hidden inside a walking cane -- and it was not a novelty item," Marunde said. "We even had an individual last week who had drugs in his pocket as he tried to enter the Daley Center. He said, 'These aren't my pants.' You just shake your head and keep going."

In the winter, officers check under branches placed over the dirt and keep an eye out for snow that has been disturbed. Dogs lend a snout, too.

Uniformed guards patrol the perimeter of the courthouse, but arrests for stashing contraband are extremely rare, Marunde said.

For items that aren't allowed in the building but aren't illegal -- such as extension cords, phone chargers and even knives with blades under 4 inches -- storage canisters can be rented for $3 in the lower level of the Daley Center.

The problem: "Most people are cheap," Marunde said.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2689672,CST-NWS-STASH09.article

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Two-thirds of us helped a stranger in the last month

September 9, 2010

Just about every mother tells their child "don't talk to strangers." But 65 percent of Americans say they offered help to someone they didn't know in the last month, a new poll finds.

That's better than many of the 153 nations in the survey but behind Liberia (76 percent), Sierra Leone (75 percent) and Canada (68 percent.)

The findings were part of a first-of-its kind "World Giving Index," released Wednesday by the British-based Charities Aid Foundation, which also measured the percentage of citizens who have given money and donated time to charities.

Australia and New Zealand shared first place, and the United States tied for fifth.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2689948,CST-NWS-charity09.article

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From the White House

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Fighting Foreclosures and Strengthening Neighborhoods

We all understand the impact the foreclosure crisis has had on homeowners. But the crisis has hurt communities, too. Foreclosed and vacant homes have a debilitating effect on neighborhoods and often lead to blight, neighborhood decay and reduced property values.

That's why the Administration is announcing today another $1 billion to help communities struggling with foreclosures.  Already, HUD has provided $6 billion in two rounds of Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding.  These funds help communities buy and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned homes and residential properties – putting Americans back to work, creating more affordable rental housing and helping the neighborhoods that need it most. 

Today, the $4 billion first round of Neighborhood Stabilization funding is in communities, buying up and renovating homes, and creating jobs.  The $2 billion included as part of President Obama's Recovery Act is making a difference as well.  This second round of funding differed from the first in that it was competitively awarded – to encourage innovative local partnerships, reward the best ideas for tackling the housing crisis and grow local economies in impactful ways.

You only need look at a city like Minneapolis to understand the impact Neighborhood Stabilization is having. With $5.6 million of Neighborhood Stabilization funds, Minneapolis was able to leverage an additional $30 million in resources from the Twin Cities Community Land Bank and the partnership of for-profit developers.  Already, they've bought up nearly 250 properties in targeted neighborhoods, which they are rehabilitating to green standards and selling to responsible homeowners through a local down payment program.

Now, in the most heavily foreclosure impacted neighborhoods in North Minneapolis, home prices are gaining and local experts believe private market recovery is underway. It was that success that led the Administration to award the city another $20 million in the second round of NSP.

And more help is on the way to communities across the country.  The additional $1 billion we announced today was included as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform legislation ,

Building on the first two rounds, we expect the Neighborhood Stabilization Program will impact nearly 100,000 properties in the nation's hardest-hit markets.  Because this makes up 20 percent of vacant and abandoned homes over the last 18 months in NSP-targeted areas, addressing these properties will have ripple effects that could have a profound impact on our local, regional and national housing markets alike.

Still, the Obama Administration believes government can't solve this problem alone.  As Minneapolis showed, stabilizing neighborhoods requires private investment and other partners to step up. 

Last week, I announced an important Neighborhood Stabilization innovation that helps make that possible called “First Look.” A historic partnership with the National Community Stabilization Trust and the nation's leading financial institutions, First Look will gives every grantee an exclusive 12-14 day window to evaluate and bid on properties before others can do so.  First Look will cut the time it takes to sell these properties in half, which is particularly important given that vacant and abandoned homes are more than three times as destructive to home prices as homes that have only begun the foreclosure process.  It will also give grantees access to state of the art mapping and management tools, so they know what properties are available and who owns them. 

Communities struggling with foreclosures and budget cuts rarely have the time or funds to establish individual relationships with financial institutions and negotiate the best price one house at a time.  With the potent combination of Neighborhood Stabilization funds and First Look, they'll have the resources and partners they need to buy target foreclosed homes strategically – and act quickly.

Obviously, these remain difficult times for every American.  Neighborhood Stabilization is only one tool in our toolbox. And it won't help every block wracked by foreclosures. 

But with game-changing, market-oriented and cost-effective strategies like these—that bring more stakeholders to the table with a greater sense of shared responsibility—President Obama and I believe we can tackle tough challenges like foreclosures and blight.  We can put Americans back to work.  And we can help our communities recover. 

Shaun Donovan is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/08/fighting-foreclosures-and-strengthening-neighborhoods

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President Obama on the Economy in Cleveland: "The America I Believe In"

This afternoon the President was in Cleveland, Ohio, the city where House Republican Leader Boehner recently put forth his party's priorities for the economy.  In his remarks ,  the President laid out a stark contrast between policies that help the economy work for the middle class, and the policies that allowed special interests to run amok -- and to run our economy into a ditch.  He spoke about the need to strengthen our recovery in both the short and long terms by investing in America's roads, bridges and runways, by helping small businesses grow and hire, and by giving certainty to businesses through a permanent incentive to innovate and create good jobs in America in the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit.

But before all that he talked about the foundation of the values that guide his decisions:

Yes, our families believed in the American values of self-reliance and individual responsibility, and they instilled those values in their children.  But they also believed in a country that rewards responsibility.  A country that rewards hard work.  A country built upon the promise of opportunity and upward mobility.   

They believed in an America that gave my grandfather the chance to go to college because of the GI Bill.  An America that gave my grandparents the chance to buy a home because of the Federal Housing Authority.  An America that gave their children and grandchildren the chance to fulfill our dreams thanks to college loans and college scholarships.

It was an America where you didn't buy things you couldn't afford; where we didn't just think about today – we thought about tomorrow.  An America that took pride in the goods it made, not just in the things it consumed.  An America where a rising tide really did lift all boats, from the company CEO to the guy on the assembly line.

That's the America I believe in.  That's what led me to work in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant on the South Side of Chicago when I was a community organizer.  It's what led me to fight for factory workers at manufacturing plants that were closing across Illinois when I was a Senator.  It's what led me to run for President – because I don't believe we can have a strong and growing economy without a strong and growing middle-class. 

A few weeks ago, the Republican leader of the House came here to Cleveland and offered his party's answer to our economic challenges.  Now, it would be one thing if he had admitted his party's mistakes during the eight years that they were in power, if they had gone off for a while and meditated, and come back and offered a credible new approach to solving our country's problems.

But that's not what happened.  There were no new policies from Mr. Boehner.  There were no new ideas.  There was just the same philosophy that we had already tried during the decade that they were in power -- the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place:  Cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations.

Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care for folks who are sick, or let credit card companies go back to raising rates without any reason.  Instead of setting our sights higher, they're asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth and eroding competitiveness and a shrinking middle class.

Cleveland, that is not the America I know.  That is not the America we believe in.  (Applause.)

A lot has changed since I came here in those final days of the last election, but what hasn't is the choice facing this country.  It's still fear versus hope; the past versus the future.  It's still a choice between sliding backward and moving forward.

The President's speech was sweeping, and it is well worth reading in full, where he speaks to the misguided Republican proposal to grant permanent, budget-busting tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans as we touched on this afternoon, and elaborates on his own proposals as we touched on this morning.  In closing, he took a step back:

I know that folks are worried about the future.  I know there's still a lot of hurt out here.  And when times are tough, I know it can be tempting to give in to cynicism and fear and doubt and division -– and just settle our sights a little bit lower, settle for something a little bit less.  But that's not who we are, Ohio.  Those are not the values that built this country.

We are here today because in the worst of times, the people who came before us brought out the best in America.  Because our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents were willing to work and sacrifice for us.  They were willing to take great risks, and face great hardship, and reach for a future that would give us the chance at a better life.  They knew that this country is greater than the sum of its parts -– that America is not about the ambitions of any one individual, but the aspirations of an entire people, an entire nation.  (Applause.)

That's who we are.  That is our legacy.  And I'm convinced that if we're willing to summon those values today, and if we're willing to choose hope over fear, and choose the future over the past, and come together once more around the great project of national renewal, then we will restore our economy and rebuild our middle class and reclaim the American Dream for the next generation. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/08/president-obama-economy-cleveland-america-i-believe

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The Affordable Care Act Strengthens Health Care for Latinos

by Luis Miranda

September 08, 2010

En español.

Today, an op-ed from President Obama is running in major Spanish-language newspapers across the country. The op-ed discusses the benefits of the Affordable Care Act for Latinos and announces the release of a new Spanish-language version of  HealthCare.gov  –  www.CuidadoDeSalud.gov .

The op-ed is running in ImpreMedia's print publications (including La Opinión in Los Angeles and El Diario La Prensa in New York) and online properties, all of which have a monthly reach of 9.3 million adults and monthly distribution of nearly 11 million.

As the President notes in his op-ed:

These are some of the changes that you will see under this new health care law. And to learn more, you can head to a new website accessible in Spanish:  CuidadoDeSalud.gov . This website will also allow you to see - for the first time ever - all of your insurance options in one place that can be personalized for you and your family. The fact is, finding the right health insurance is one of the most important decisions we make, but all too often it is a frustrating and difficult process. This website will help change that.

For example, let's say you're a parent living in Los Angeles with your son who has asthma. If you go to  CuidadoDeSalud.gov , the first thing you'll do is answer a few basic questions about your circumstances. Based on your choices, the website will give you all your health insurance options in your community in an easy-to-read format. You'll be able to get key information about benefits, premiums, and out-of-pocket costs so you can compare plans and pick the one that is right for you.

CuidadoDeSalud.gov  does not collect or store any personal information. It is not selling anything to anyone. This tool will simply help give you the facts, so you can make the best decisions for you and your family.

• Read the President's op-ed in Spanish.
  
  
• Read the President's op-ed in English.

The Affordable Care Act Did Not Cause Unjust Premium Increases

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that some health insurance companies are blaming the Affordable Care Act for premium increases that were planned long before the law was passed. We knew this would happen, which is why the President called on insurance companies not to use the Affordable Care Act as an excuse to implement unreasonable premium increases. In fact, when one insurance company in the State of Washington was called out for telling its beneficiaries that rate increases were due to the Affordable Care Act, that company agreed to issue a new letter clarifying the reasons for the increase.

The premium increases discussed today – many of which were planned before the Affordable Care Act was even signed into law– demonstrate that reform came at a critical time.  In fact, consumers have faced unreasonable double digit premium increases for more than a decade, including employer-sponsored plans where premiums have more than doubled since 2000. 

The most recent round of premium increase announcements are at odds with a number of health care cost related projections. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that medical inflation is currently projected to be 3.2 percent this year.  Similarly, The Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that family premiums were rising only 3 percent for this year.  Finally, we estimate that any potential premium impact from the new consumer protections and increased quality provisions under the Affordable Care Act will be minimal – no more than 1-2 percent -- which will be further offset by other out of pocket savings implemented in the law. Here's how: 

• Reducing the “hidden tax” on insured Americans: Today, families with insurance pay a $1,000 hidden tax to subsidize care for the uninsured. By making sure insurance covers people who are most at risk, there will be less uncompensated care and the amount of cost shifting among those who have coverage today will be reduced by up to $1 billion in 2013. 
  
  
• Improving Americans' health: By making sure that high-risk individuals have insurance and emphasizing health care that prevents illnesses from becoming serious, long-term health problems, the law will reduce avoidable hospitalizations. 
  
  
• Preventing bankruptcy:  Medical costs contribute to about half of the more than 500,000 personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007.  Bankruptcies can be avoided through ensuring insurance companies can't drop people when they get sick, can't place a lifetime or unrestricted annual limit on coverage, or discriminate against kids with preexisting conditions.  
  
  
• Preventing illness:  Reducing preventable illness through new prevention coverage will result in significant savings. For instance, preventing obesity will lower premiums by .05 to .1 percent. Every dollar spent on immunizations could save $5.30 on direct health care costs and $16.50 on total societal costs of disease.  Reducing preventable illness can also increase worker productivity – today, increased sickness and lack of coverage security reduce economic output by $260 billion per year. 
  
  
• Reducing Out of Pocket Costs:  Preventive health benefits will also help reduce out of pocket costs. For example, guidelines suggest that a 58-year old woman who is at risk for heart disease should receive a mammogram, a colon cancer screening, a Pap test, a diabetes test, a cholesterol test, and an annual flu shot; under a typical insurance plan, these tests could cost more than $300 out of her own pocket.

The Affordable Care Act also includes new resources and authorities to crack down on unjustified rate hikes.   Today, 46 states are using resources under the new reform law to pass or strengthen rate review laws which will have a significant impact on keeping rates low.  In a number of states (California, Massachusetts, Maine) regulators have already reviewed and rejected these proposed increases. We expect this pattern to continue. 

And the new law provides HHS with new authorities to prevent unreasonable increases, including: 

• Requiring insurance companies to publicly justify any unreasonable premium increases in 2011 by posting them on their websites.
  
  
• Requiring insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on health care instead of overhead, salaries or administrative expenses, in 2011. If they fail to do so, they will be required to provide a rebate to consumers.
  
  
• Denying insurance companies, who unreasonably raise premium rates, participation in insurance market Exchanges in 2014.  

When reform is implemented, costs will be reduced across the board, premium increases will need to be justified and consumers will be protected.  

Stephanie Cutter is Assistant to the President for Special Projects

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/08/affordable-care-act-did-not-cause-unjust-premium-increases

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Join the National Dialogue on Preparedness What We Talk About When We Talk About Preparedness Every year during the month of September, the Ready.gov team—along with the entire Department—direct their energies toward building the preparedness of all Americans. What do we mean by preparedness? Simply put: to strengthen our defenses against emergencies of all kinds.

From ICE

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ICE boasts a slate clean of appeals to Freedom of Information Act requests

When given the choice to pay another Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency or save that funding by clearing a backlog of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeals in house, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) FOIA staff chose the latter without hesitation. "There was no point in paying someone from outside of ICE when we were fully capable of doing it here," said ICE FOIA Officer Catrina Pavlik-Keenan. That's not to say, however, that the task of processing 331 FOIA appeals within a six-week deadline was a snap.

ICE FOIA staff, working with the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), some personnel burning the midnight oil on occasion, accomplished the DHS requirement to process half of the backlog of appeals, totaling 166, from mid-July to the end of July and get the remaining number of appeals off the books by August 31. ICE exceeded the first deadline, processing 179 FOIA appeals and completed the remaining 152 by the end of August.

In the seven years since DHS has been in existence, the agency took on the responsibility of processing their components' FOIA appeals. DHS Chief FOIA Officer and Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan proposed the FOIA appeal process change in her July 2010 memorandum, which called for "prompt elimination of all our FOIA backlogs to further the president's open government and to be consistent with the department's open government plan." DHS gave certain components, including ICE, the opportunity to either clear their own FOIA appeal backlogs or to have the U.S. Coast Guard Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) complete the task for an hourly fee.

Pavlik-Keenan said not only would it save ICE funds, but it made sense to have ICE clear their own FOIA appeal backlogs. "We know the subject matter experts within each ICE program office to approach for each FOIA. We're involved in ICE's day-to-day operations. Getting the information from the right people is half the battle and tremendously speeds up the process," said Pavlik-Keenan.

Pavlik-Keenan has been handling FOIAs for 19 years and is experienced in all aspects of the FOIA process including processing, appeals and litigation. "I wouldn't be able to keep doing this if I didn't find it challenging and interesting," said Pavlik-Keenan. She said ICE receives a diverse range of FOIA requests from the public. The ICE FOIA Office is asked for information pertaining to immigration statistics, investigations, detainee records, business contracts and so forth.

"Our job is to allow people access to the information they're allowed to have while at the same time protect important information that's critical to the ICE mission," said Pavlik-Keenan.

The public has 60 days to appeal a FOIA response. ICE holds an excellent track record in satisfying FOIA requests. For instance, ICE received only 10 appeals to the 7,303 FOIA requests processed in fiscal year 2010-which is less than 1 percent of appeals to FOIAs.

Pavlik-Keenan said she was glad that DHS gave ICE the opportunity to clean up the FOIA backlogs when it did. "The number of FOIA appeals-331-was manageable. If it had of reached much higher…into the thousands, it would not have been manageable," she said.

ICE Executive Associate Director of Management and Administration Dan Ragsdale has set up a process for ICE to continue managing its own FOIA appeals process. The process between FOIA and OPLA is now streamlined. "Our goal is to remain current." said Ragsdale. "While we will not release information appropriately withheld, the public has a right to ask questions of their government, and we have an obligation to respond in a timely manner. It's a matter of providing a good return on investment to the taxpayers," said Ragsdale.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1009/100908washingtondc.htm

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3 additional Georgia counties to benefit from ICE strategy to enhance the identification, removal of criminal aliens

ATLANTA - On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began using a new biometric information sharing capability in Cobb, Fulton and Muscogee counties that helps federal immigration officials identify aliens, both lawfully and unlawfully present in the United States, who are booked into local law enforcement's custody for a crime. This capability is part of Secure Communities-ICE's comprehensive strategy to improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States.

Previously, fingerprint-based biometric records were taken of individuals charged with a crime and booked into custody and checked for criminal history information against the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Now, through enhanced information sharing between DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), fingerprint information submitted through the state to the FBI will be automatically checked against both the FBI criminal history records in IAFIS and the biometrics-based immigration records in DHS's Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT).

If fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE. ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual's immigration status and takes appropriate enforcement action. This includes aliens who are in lawful status and those who are present without lawful authority. Once identified through fingerprint matching, ICE will respond with a priority placed on aliens convicted of the most serious offenses first-such as those with convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape and kidnapping.

"The Secure Communities strategy provides ICE with an effective tool to identify criminal aliens in local custody," said Secure Communities Executive Director David Venturella. "Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE's mission. Our goal is to use biometric information sharing to remove criminal aliens, preventing them from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our law enforcement partners."

With the expansion of the biometric information sharing capability to these three counties, ICE is using this capability in six Georgia jurisdictions, including Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. Across the country, ICE is using this capability in 589 jurisdictions in 31 states. By 2013, ICE plans to be able to respond nationwide to fingerprint matches generated through the biometric information sharing capability.

"The Cobb County Sheriff's Office has had a positive and productive partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for many years," said Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren. "As Sheriff, it is my duty and responsibility to utilize any concept, program or tool that will assist my efforts to protect and serve the citizens of Cobb County. The Secure Communities Program is another resource that will enable our agency to accurately identify individuals booked into our facility. This initiative can help improve public safety by keeping dangerous offenders from being released in our community."

"The use of this new biometric technology is part of an ongoing effort to coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement," said Fulton County Sheriff Theodore "Ted" Jackson. "We will continue to cooperate fully with ICE and take the appropriate actions necessary when we have persons in custody at the Fulton County Jail, who are determined to be in the country illegally."

Since ICE began using this enhanced information sharing capability in October 2008, immigration officers have removed from the United States more than 10,800 criminal aliens convicted of Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping. Additionally, ICE has removed more than 27,000 criminal aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes, which account for the majority of crimes committed by aliens. ICE does not regard aliens charged with, but not yet convicted of crimes, as "criminal aliens." Instead, a "criminal alien" is an alien convicted of a crime. In accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE continues to take action on aliens subject to removal as resources permit.

The IDENT system is maintained by DHS's US-VISIT program and IAFIS is maintained by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS).

"US VISIT is proud to support ICE, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US-VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."

"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said Daniel D. Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's CJIS Division. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1009/100908atlanta.htm

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First 3 counties in State of South Carolina to benefit from ICE strategy to enhance the identification, removal of criminal aliens

COLUMBIA, S.C.-On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began using a new biometric information sharing capability in Charleston, Greenville and York counties that helps federal immigration officials identify aliens, both lawfully and unlawfully present in the United States, who are booked into local law enforcement's custody for a crime. This capability is part of Secure Communities-ICE's comprehensive strategy to improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States.

Previously, fingerprint-based biometric records were taken of individuals charged with a crime and booked into custody and checked for criminal history information against the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Now, through enhanced information sharing between DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), fingerprint information submitted through the state to the FBI will be automatically checked against both the FBI criminal history records in IAFIS and the biometrics-based immigration records in DHS's Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT).

If fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE. ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual's immigration status and takes appropriate enforcement action. This includes aliens who are in lawful status and those who are present without lawful authority. Once identified through fingerprint matching, ICE will respond with a priority placed on aliens convicted of the most serious offenses first-such as those with convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape and kidnapping.

"The Secure Communities strategy provides ICE with an effective tool to identify criminal aliens in local custody," said Secure Communities Executive Director David Venturella. "Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE's mission. Our goal is to use biometric information sharing to remove criminal aliens, preventing them from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our law enforcement partners."

With the expansion of the biometric information sharing capability to Charleston, Greenville and York counties, ICE is using this capability in 589 jurisdictions in 31 states. By 2013, ICE plans to be able to respond nationwide to fingerprint matches generated through the biometric information sharing capability.

Since ICE began using this enhanced information sharing capability in October 2008, immigration officers have removed from the United States more than 10,800 criminal aliens convicted of Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping. Additionally, ICE has removed more than 27,000 criminal aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes, which account for the majority of crimes committed by aliens. ICE does not regard aliens charged with, but not yet convicted of crimes, as "criminal aliens." Instead, a "criminal alien" is an alien convicted of a crime. In accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE continues to take action on aliens subject to removal as resources permit.

The IDENT system is maintained by DHS's US-VISIT program and IAFIS is maintained by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS).

"US VISIT is proud to support ICE, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US-VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."

"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said Daniel D. Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's CJIS Division. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1009/100908columbia.htm

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9 additional North Carolina counties to benefit from ICE strategy to enhance the identification, removal of criminal aliens

RALEIGH, N.C.-On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began using a new biometric information sharing capability in nine North Carolina counties that helps federal immigration officials identify aliens, both lawfully and unlawfully present in the United States, who are booked into local law enforcement's custody for a crime. This capability is part of Secure Communities-ICE's comprehensive strategy to improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States.

Today's announcement includes the following nine North Carolina jurisdictions: Alamance, Bladen, Chatham, Edgecombe, Granville, Hoke, Johnston, Moore and Nash counties. With the expansion of the biometric information sharing capability to these counties, ICE is using it in 48 North Carolina jurisdictions. Across the country, ICE is using this capability in 589 jurisdictions in 31 states. By 2013, ICE plans to be able to respond nationwide to fingerprint matches generated through the biometric information sharing capability.

Previously, fingerprint-based biometric records were taken of individuals charged with a crime and booked into custody and checked for criminal history information against the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Now, through enhanced information sharing between DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), fingerprint information submitted through the state to the FBI will be automatically checked against both the FBI criminal history records in IAFIS and the biometrics-based immigration records in DHS's Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT).

If fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE. ICE evaluates each case to determine the individual's immigration status and takes appropriate enforcement action. This includes aliens who are in lawful status and those who are present without lawful authority. Once identified through fingerprint matching, ICE will respond with a priority placed on aliens convicted of the most serious offenses first-such as those with convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape and kidnapping.

"The Secure Communities strategy provides ICE with an effective tool to identify criminal aliens in local custody," said Secure Communities Executive Director David Venturella. "Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE's mission. Our goal is to use biometric information sharing to remove criminal aliens, preventing them from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our law enforcement partners."

Since ICE began using this enhanced information sharing capability in October 2008, immigration officers have removed from the United States more than 10,800 criminal aliens convicted of Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping. Additionally, ICE has removed more than 27,000 criminal aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes, which account for the majority of crimes committed by aliens. ICE does not regard aliens charged with, but not yet convicted of crimes, as "criminal aliens." Instead, a "criminal alien" is an alien convicted of a crime. In accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE continues to take action on aliens subject to removal as resources permit.

The IDENT system is maintained by DHS's US-VISIT program and IAFIS is maintained by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS).

"US VISIT is proud to support ICE, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US-VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."

"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said Daniel D. Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's CJIS Division. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1009/100908raleigh.htm

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From the FBI

ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER

Going After the Major Players

09/08/10Methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, and cash—the amount of drugs and currency crossing the border in and around El Paso, Texas can be difficult to comprehend.“El Paso may be the busiest city in the world in terms of the flow of drugs,” said Special Agent Mike Cordero, a member of the FBI/DEA Strike Force, an investigative team established in 2007 to target “the biggest of the big” drug trafficking organizations.

“If they are major players,” Agent Cordero explained, “we're going after them. Our mission is to disrupt and dismantle these organizations.”

It is estimated that 40-60 percent of all illegal drugs that come into the U.S. enter through the border areas encompassed by our El Paso Field Office. The drugs flow across the border from Juarez, and U.S. currency flows back into Mexico. Every month, tens of millions of dollars in cash pass into Juarez, enabling the cartels to corrupt public officials, purchase weapons, and engage in other criminal activity beyond drug trafficking.

The strike force in El Paso—one of several along the Southwest border—is designed to fight this cycle of crime and violence . The program is funded by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, a longstanding Department of Justice initiative that combines federal, state, and local law enforcement efforts to fight organized crime and drug traffickers. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI have lead roles in operating the strike force.

Working with undercover operatives, sources, and Mexican law enforcement, the team uses an intelligence-driven approach in its investigations . Besides orchestrating large drug buys, agents pay close attention to the money laundering aspects of drug trafficking. Perhaps most importantly, the actionable intelligence gathered by the strike force benefits many other investigations and law enforcement agencies both domestically and internationally.

The El Paso strike force consists of 10 FBI agents and 10 DEA agents, as well as representatives from the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

“We are a badge-less operation,” Agent Cordero said. “When you walk in our office, you can't tell who is FBI and who is DEA. There is a concerted effort to put the cases first and not to worry about who gets the credit,” he added. “A win is a win for everybody.”

Recently, during a nationwide drug trafficking takedown called Project Deliverance, the strike force arrested 133 individuals on drug charges and seized 800 pounds of marijuana, 11 kilos of cocaine, and nearly $140,000 in cash. The operation also contributed intelligence to numerous other investigations around the country. “Because El Paso is a pivotal location for the Mexican drug trade,” said Special Agent Raul Bujanda, another member of the strike force, “the intelligence we gather allows us to spin off a lot of cases to other offices.”

“We're very proud of the work we do,” Agent Cordero said. “There are no egos involved in the strike force—it's all about the cases and bringing down the drug traffickers.”

Next: Understanding the Gang Threat

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/september10/border_090810.html

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