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From the Los Angeles Times

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Federal judge says healthcare law is unconstitutional

He cites the requirement to buy insurance. The ruling is the most sweeping blow yet to President Obama's signature domestic achievement.

by Noam N. Levey and David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

February 1, 2011

Reporting from Washington

A federal judge in Florida dealt President Obama's healthcare overhaul a sweeping blow Monday, ruling the law unconstitutional because of its requirement that Americans have health insurance starting in 2014.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson declined to suspend the law but said the government should abide by his ruling, potentially complicating implementation in some states.

DOCUMENTS: Read Judge Vinson's decision

The Washington lawyer who represented the 26 states in the lawsuit said the ruling freed them from complying with its provisions, including requirements not to cut people from their Medicaid programs, as some governors say they want to do.

"For the 26 states that were parties to this suit, the entire statute is dead," said David B. Rivkin Jr. "The decision has immediate force, and it means all the new Medicaid stuff is gone."

Obama administration officials disputed Rivkin's analysis and indicated they would appeal Vinson's decision.

"We don't believe this kind of judicial activism will be upheld and we are confident that the Affordable Care Act will ultimately be declared constitutional," Assistant to the President Stephanie Cutter said in a White House blog post.

With lower federal courts divided, the fate of Obama's signature domestic achievement will probably be decided by the Supreme Court, which could rule as soon as next year.

In separate lawsuits, two other federal courts have ruled that the law's insurance mandate is permissible under the so-called Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

A third federal judge in Virginia ruled in December that the mandate was unconstitutional, but stopped short of invalidating the whole law.

Parts of the law have already taken effect, including drug discounts for seniors, tax credits for small businesses and insurance regulations that prevent insurers from denying coverage to sick children.

In Arizona, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who is pressing the Obama administration for permission to cut people from its Medicaid rolls to save money, said the state would not abandon that effort.

"We are not going to act unilaterally," spokesman Matthew Benson said. Arizona is among the states that joined Florida in its lawsuit.

Vinson's rejection of the mandate as an overextension of government power appears certain to further energize Republican efforts to dismantle the law.

In often colorful language that invoked the Boston Tea Party, Vinson, an appointee of President Reagan, rejected the administration's argument that Congress' broad powers to regulate commerce allowed lawmakers to require Americans to buy health insurance.

"The existing problems in our national healthcare system are recognized," Vinson wrote in his 78-page decision. "There is widespread sentiment for positive improvements that will reduce costs, improve the quality of care, and expand availability in a way that the nation can afford. Regardless of how laudable its attempts may have been to accomplish these goals in passing the act, Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution."

Vinson warned that if Congress could require health insurance, it could also decide for Americans "whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner or even a morning cup of coffee."

"It is difficult to imagine," Vinson said, "that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place."

The insurance mandate in the healthcare law was designed to spread risk more broadly and control insurance premiums, enabling the federal government to offer consumers other protections — such as prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting medical conditions.

Without a mandate, healthy Americans can avoid buying insurance until they get sick. Those who do buy insurance tend to be sicker than the general population. That phenomenon, which has occurred in several states that have guaranteed the right to coverage without any insurance requirement, has helped drive up premiums.

"People who make an economic decision to forgo health insurance do not opt out of the healthcare market," said Cutter of the White House. "As Congress found, every year millions of people without insurance obtain healthcare they cannot pay for, shifting tens of billions of dollars in added cost onto those who have insurance and onto taxpayers."

But the mandate remains the most unpopular feature of the healthcare overhaul and has helped galvanize a nationwide Republican attack on the law.

Nineteen states joined Florida in the suit last year: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.

In January, six more states joined the suit after new GOP governors took office: Ohio, Kansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Maine and Iowa.

Except for Louisiana, which is represented in the suit by its Democratic attorney general, the states are represented by Republican governors or attorneys general.

Several dozen leading consumer groups, medical associations and patient advocates joined the Obama administration in defending the law. They include the American Medical Assn., the American Hospital Assn., the Consumers Union and the March of Dimes Foundation.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-healthcare-ruling-20110201,0,4554276,print.story

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Central Valley canal's murky waters hide dark secrets

Divers searching for a car reportedly used in a boy's kidnapping have a tough task — zero visibility, dangerous pumping pressure, a junkyard of abandoned vehicles and evidence of past crimes.

by Diana Marcum, Los Angeles Times

February 1, 2011

Reporting from Patterson, Calif.

On a pretty day from a vista point a few miles south of here, you can look over green grazing lands, almond orchards, row crops and the blue ribbons of canal water that run through California's Central Valley.

This isn't a pretty day.

The valley's infamous Tule fog has leached the color from the scene, leaving the hills pale and the sky gray. The water in the Delta-Mendota Canal is rust-brown — and day after day yields ugly secrets as divers search for what they hope they won't find: the body of 4-year-old Juliani Cardenas, kidnapped from his grandmother's arms two weeks ago.

A farmworker said he saw a car go into the canal 45 minutes after Juliani was taken.

On this late January afternoon, the sixth day of the search for the kidnapper's silver Toyota, authorities so far have fished up a Lexus, an Infiniti, a red Mustang, four economy-sized sedans, an SUV, two pickup trucks, a motorcycle and parts of a decaying Trans Am. Before the eight-day search ends, they will pull up four more vehicles — 16 in all — that are not the car they are looking for.

In other years, along with hundreds of vehicles, the canal has offered up weapons, remnants of meth labs and the bodies of murder victims, suicides and hapless fishermen. The severed limbs of one victim washed up 12 miles apart.

People in these parts know the canal as a dumping ground, especially for things people want never to be found. But the near-daily dredging up of wreckage has the rest of California wondering: "What's in that water?"

"It caught people off guard. People who aren't familiar with the canal don't realize how big it is, how accessible," said Seth Harris, assistant superintendent of water operations for the Delta-Mendota Canal.

"They think, 'If they found 11 cars in a few miles, how many thousands of cars must be in there?' But at this particular spot, the canal goes right through a town. There are other places where the canal runs for miles with maybe one farmhouse, and dumping isn't as much of a problem," he said.

The canal stretches 117 miles from the Sacramento River Delta to Mendota, a farm town in western Fresno County. The canal authority pulls out 50 to 100 cars a year, mostly at spots where the canal passes through populated areas. Lately, a lot of those cars have had the keys in the ignition. Times are tough, and reporting a car stolen is one way to stop making payments on it.

At Crow's Landing, another town the canal crosses about six miles from Patterson, men at Dick's Bar are talking about "our underwater junkyard."

"There's cars that have been in there for decades," says a retired ranch worker who won't give his name. "Maybe one of those cars is mine."

The cars, the gas and the oil, the bodies and the meth ingredients and everything else people dump in the canal go into water used to irrigate crops. Pollution control relies on sheer dilution — the canal holds 5 billion gallons of water that move at 4,200 cubic feet per second.

Among the few who have seen what's really down there are the divers searching for the silver Toyota Corolla, although "seeing" is a misnomer.

Visibility is near zero in the 100-foot-wide, 18-foot-deep concrete-encrusted canal. Drop a rock in, and it disappears from sight in less than a second.

"People always ask me, 'Doesn't it freak you out to be down there in the dark, knowing there are bodies?' " said Mark Cardoza, a Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department Dive Team leader. "I tell them, 'It's the stuff that's alive that scares me.' "

Cardoza said he was once hit by a fish so big it felt like he'd been punched in the gut by a grown man. Then the fish's tail almost knocked off his diving mask.

Those kind of tales keep fishermen coming to the steep banks even though if they fall in, they're probably not coming back out.

Cardoza didn't see the fish. He couldn't see anything.

"It's black-black down there."

Searching in the dark

Authorities say Jose Esteban Rodriguez grabbed Juliani from his grandmother, Amparo Cardenas, on the afternoon of Jan. 18. A farmworker told police he saw a car that matched the description of the silver Toyota go airborne and plunge into the canal near Zacharias Road bridge.

Rodriguez, 27, is the ex-boyfriend of Juliani's mother, Tabitha Cardenas. She is eight months pregnant with Rodriguez's child. Rodriguez is not Juliani's father, but Tabitha Cardenas says he wouldn't hurt the boy and she doesn't believe they're in the canal.

Diving teams from Stanislaus and Merced counties started searching where car tracks led to the water. It's a dangerous spot for divers. At that point, the canal goes into a siphon and through a 15-foot underground tunnel beneath a creek. A diver sucked into the siphon would be unlikely to survive.

Geoff Crowley was one of the divers who went in at that spot on the first day of the search.

"It narrows up, and the water force is tremendous. It felt like the water was going to pull off my face mask. It was vibrating with the force," he said.

When they didn't find Rodriguez's car, the divers moved farther along, searching 12 miles over six days.

On the sixth day, the team pulled up the hood of a Trans Am, some 10 miles from the original search site. As the afternoon light was fading, they decided to go back by the bridge one more time.

Steve Macedo dropped sonar equipment into the water. He's the co-leader of the team with Cardoza, who is nicknamed "Dozer."

"For bulldozer, not for snoozing," says the beefy man, watching the sonar scan on a computer screen. He sees an object and the shadow behind it.

"What does that look like? That's a car," he says. He calls over diver Randon Kirkbride.

Kirkbride takes one look and says, "Let's send down a diver."

Cardoza is shaking his head.

"We search all this damn week and it's right here?" he says, then adds, "Maybe."

"Cops are pessimists. We don't believe anything until we see it."

This sonar hit is different from the 11 others that led the rescuers to submerged vehicles. It's in an area that was already searched — and thought to be clear. It's on the other side of the canal from the tracks, but then the witness did say the car was airborne.

Calvin Watson, the one they've dubbed "Hollywood" because they say he's ruggedly handsome, is gazing across the canal.

"I hope that car is not here and they are alive somewhere," he says before suiting up as the safety diver. He will go in the water if anything goes wrong for the first diver.

Kirkbride, the primary diver, climbs down a metal ladder a few yards from the siphons. He is wearing a vulcanized rubber suit and a full face mask. He communicates with team members on the canal bank through a radio in his mask.

Deep below the water, Kirkbride's foot hits something. He asks for two more feet of rope. He scrapes mud off his mask and, even through the murky water, sees enough to report back: It's not a car. It's a truck.

Murky findings

On Friday, authorities lowered the water level in the canal by turning off three feeding pumps. With a calmer current, a remotely operated rover sonar with a camera captured an image of the Toyota's license plate. The car was wedged about 60 feet inside one of the three tunnels of the siphon.

A diver was beneath the water trying to hook the car when officials called to say they could keep the pumps turned off for only 20 more minutes without risking flooding.

The tow truck pulled the Toyota up just in time. Its windows were down.

There were no bodies inside.

Cardoza is sticking to his philosophy of nothing-less-than-seeing-is-believing.

"Until there's a body I'm still of the opinion that it's 50-50. The Delta-Mendota is a nasty mess, the perfect place to dump things and I sure wouldn't eat any fish that came out of it," he said.

"But in 12 years searching … I've never seen it keep a body this long. Even this canal can't hide things forever."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-canal-20110201,0,3010911.story?track=rss

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From the New York Times

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Gates Calls for a Final Push to Eradicate Polio

On Monday, in a Manhattan town house that once belonged to polio's most famous victim, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Gates made an appeal for one more big push to wipe out world polio.

Although that battle began in 1985 and Mr. Gates started making regular donations to it only in 2005, he has emerged in the last two years both as one of the biggest donors — he has now given $1.3 billion, more than the amount raised over 25 years by Rotary International — and as the loudest voice for eradication.

As new outbreaks create new setbacks each year, he has given ever more money, not only for research but for the grinding work on the ground: paying millions of vaccinators $2 or $3 stipends to get pink polio drops into the mouths of children in villages, slums, markets and train stations.

He also journeys to remote Indian and Nigerian villages to be photographed giving the drops himself. Though he lacks Angelina Jolie's pneumatic allure, his lingering “world's richest man” cologne is just as aphrodisiacal to TV cameras.

He also uses that celebrity to press political leaders. Rich Gulf nations have been criticized for giving little for a disease that now chiefly affects Muslim children; last week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Mr. Gates and Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan jointly donated $50 million each to vaccinate children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Gates and the British prime minister, David Cameron, announced that Britain would double its $30 million donation. Last month, when the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, went to Washington for the diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke's funeral, Mr. Gates offered him $65 million to initiate a new polio drive. Twelve days later, publicly thanking him, Mr. Zardari did so.

However, even as he presses forward, Mr. Gates faces a hard question from some eradication experts and bioethicists: Is it right to keep trying?

Although caseloads are down more than 99 percent since the campaign began in 1985, getting rid of the last 1 percent has been like trying to squeeze Jell-O to death. As the vaccination fist closes in one country, the virus bursts out in another.

In 1985, Rotary raised $120 million to do the job as its year 2000 “gift to the world.”

The effort has now cost $9 billion, and each year consumes another $1 billion.

By contrast, the 14-year drive to wipe out smallpox, according to Dr. Donald A. Henderson, the former World Health Organization officer who began it, cost only $500 million in today's dollars.

Dr. Henderson has argued so outspokenly that polio cannot be eradicated that he said in an interview last week: “I'm one of certain people that the W.H.O. doesn't invite to its experts' meetings anymore.”

Recently, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, the influential British medical journal, said via Twitter that “Bill Gates's obsession with polio is distorting priorities in other critical BMGF areas. Global health does not depend on polio eradication.” (The initials are for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)

And Arthur L. Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania 's bioethics center, who himself spent nine months in a hospital with polio as a child, said in an interview, “We ought to admit that the best we can achieve is control.”

Those arguments infuriate Mr. Gates. “These cynics should do a real paper that says how many kids they're really talking about,” he said in an interview. “If you don't keep up the pressure on polio, you're accepting 100,000 to 200,000 crippled or dead children a year.”

Right now, there are fewer than 2,000. The skeptics acknowledge that they are arguing for accepting more paralysis and death as the price of shifting that $1 billion to vaccines and other measures that prevent millions of deaths from pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, meningitis and malaria.

“And think of all the money that would be saved,” Mr. Gates went on, turning sarcastic. “It'd be like 5 percent of the dog food market in the United States.”

(Americans spend about $18 billion a year on pet food, according to the American Pet Products Association.)

Both he and the skeptics agree that polio is far harder to beat than smallpox was.

One injection stops smallpox, but in countries with open sewers, children need polio drops up to 10 times.

Only one victim in every 200 shows symptoms, so when there are 500 paralysis cases, as in the recent Congo Republic outbreak, there are 100,000 more silent carriers.

Other causes of paralysis, from food poisoning to Epstein-Barr virus, complicate surveillance.

Also, in roughly one of every two million vaccinations, the live vaccine strain can mutate and paralyze the child getting it. And many poor families whose children are dying of other diseases are fed up with polio drives.

“Fighting polio has always had an emotional factor — the children in braces, the March of Dimes posters,” Dr. Henderson said. “But it doesn't kill as many as measles. It's not in the top 20.”

Also, the effort is hurt by persistent rumors that it is a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. The Afghan Taliban, under orders from their chief, Mullah Muhammad Omar, tolerate vaccination teams, but the Pakistani Taliban have killed some vaccinators.

Victory may have been closest in 2006, when only four countries that had never beaten polio were left: Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Those four have still not conquered it, although India and Nigeria are doing much better. Now four more — Angola, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan — have had yearlong outbreaks, and another 13 have had recent ones: eight in Africa, along with Nepal, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Russia.

And polio migrates. In 2005, it briefly hit both an Amish community in Minnesota and Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country. Both outbreaks were stopped by vaccination.

Proponents of eradication argue that it would be terrible to waste the $9 billion already spent, and a new analysis concluded that eradication, if successful, would save up to $50 billion by 2035.

The United States is still committed.

“If we fail, we'll be consigned to continuing expensive control measures for the indefinite future,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which leads the country's effort.

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chief bioethicist for the National Institutes of Health, who is seen as a powerful influence within the Obama administration, said he had “not seen enough data to have a definitive opinion.”

“But my intuition is that eradication is probably worth it,” he added. “As with smallpox, the last mile is tough, but we've gotten huge benefits from it. But without the data, I defer to people who've really studied the issue, like Bill Gates.”

The W.H.O. recently created a panel of nine scientists meant to be independent of all sides in the debate to monitor progress through 2012 and make recommendations.

Dr. David L. Heymann, a former W.H.O. chief of polio eradication, said he was still “very optimistic” that eradication could be achieved.

But if there is another big setback, he said — if, for example, cases surge again in India's hot season — he might favor moving back the eradication goal again to spend more on fixing health systems until vaccination of infants for all diseases is better.

“When routine coverage is good, it's no problem to get rid of polio,” he said.

Asked about that, Mr. Gates said, “We're already doing that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/health/01polio.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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OPINION

When Microcredit Won't Do

If you asked poverty experts to name the single most significant new concept in the field in the last few decades, chances are they would say microcredit.  Microcredit is the lending of very small amounts of money to very poor people to help them invest in things that have the potential to bring income later on — a loan of $50 to buy a sewing machine to make clothes, for instance, or piglets to raise and sell.  It reaches nearly 100 million clients in more than 100 countries.

One of the reasons that microcredit is so exciting is that its benefits can go beyond the women (and they are almost all women) who borrow money. Not only does their increase in income add to the economy of the whole village, they can start businesses that sell needed goods and services to their neighbors.  After all, much of rural development involves bringing to villages the same things that city dwellers take for granted.  For example, a borrower can use her loan to buy a cell phone and charge her neighbors for calls and messages.  She has a new business and her neighbors have a link to the outside world.

But microcredit isn't a panacea.  It has always been vulnerable to abuse.   The most recent example is a scandal in India, where banks have been luring microborrowers into excessive debt, just as predatory lenders lured millions of Americans into unsustainable mortgages.  Loans can be malignant.  Some people shouldn't take on debt.  Some businesses are too risky.  And the temptation is always present to spend the loan on food for the family or shoes for the children.

In the hills of rural Guatemala, a different kind of microfinance, one that doesn't involve loans, is doing something microcredit can't.  A company called Soluciones Comunitarias (“community solutions”) is selling products that improve the health and prosperity of villagers, and doing it in a sustainable way while providing rural people — the vast majority of them women — with new business opportunities that do not require risk or debt. 

Soluciones Comunitarias uses the same model employed by second-hand clothing and furniture shops in the United States and elsewhere: consignment.  It's an old idea.  What's new is using it to improve the lives of the rural poor.

Take reading glasses.   Imagine you are a rural Guatemalan in your forties.  You make a living as a tailor, weaver, carpenter or mechanic, but to your horror, your close vision is getting more blurry each day.  It seems like the end of your livelihood.   If you were middle-class and lived in a city this wouldn't be a big deal — you'd just get reading glasses.   But not only were these not available in villages, few rural Guatemalans even knew about them.  Their progressive blurriness seemed, to them, incurable.

Microcredit cannot help get reading glasses to Guatemalans in mountain villages.  With microcredit, an entrepreneur would first take out a loan, then buy an assortment of glasses, sell them to her neighbors and repay the loan. But there's no existing market for reading glasses.  A good sales force can create one, by teaching people that their vision problems are curable — and that this is the cure.  And while it's not hard for an ambitious entrepreneur to learn to test eyes and find the right glasses, someone has to teach her.  She has to be confident in her ability to sell people a product they don't realize they need.  She has to acquire the credibility to sell a health product.  It's one thing to take on debt to buy a cell phone or baby chicks to sell — she knows there will be a market for phone calls and chickens.  Reading glasses are too much of an unknown.  “Lots of women are afraid of debt,” said Clara Luz de Montezuma, a Guatemalan who trains women entrepreneurs for Soluciones.   “When you borrow money, you fear you won't be successful, and it will be very difficult to pay it back.”

Greg Van Kirk was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nebaj, Guatemala, a town of about 10,000 people in a mountainous Mayan region, when he thought of consignment as the solution.  He was an unusual Peace Corps volunteer, having already had one career as an investment banker.  He had worked in structured finance for UBS, helping companies do complex deals to buy, sell or lease airplanes and power plants.

Van Kirk's adventures in less-structured finance didn't start with reading glasses, but with cookstoves.   He saw that families in the region cooked on open fires on the dirt floors inside their houses.  Their ceilings were black from smoke.  People coughed all the time and children were always sick. (Respiratory illnesses are a leading cause of death in poor countries, and indoor cooking is a significant cause.)  Open-pit fires, moreover, were inefficient.  The heat dispersed, and only one pot could be heated at a time.  That meant the family had to collect or buy a lot of firewood.  Moreover, fires were unsafe, especially for children, and cooking on the floor was unhealthy, luring ants and the family's chickens into the house.

Van Kirk worked with a local mason named Augustín Corrio to try to find something better.  Corrio took a standard stove design and rejiggered it in various ways.  The best model had cement block legs, a brick chamber surrounding the fire on three sides, a metal sheet over the fire so several pots could be heated at once, and a chimney to take the smoke outside the house.  This stove used 60 to 70 percent less wood than an open fire — so even though it costs about $100 it could pay for itself quickly.  Buyers could pay in installments.  It could be locally produced from basic construction materials.

The problem was how to sell it on a wide scale. No micro-borrower would take out the enormous loan necessary to buy a number of stoves to resell.

Van Kirk thought that consignment was the answer.  With consignment, a supplier gives a product to a retailer, who then sells it. After the sale is completed, the retailer reimburses the seller, keeping a commission.  The risk is taken not by the retailer, but by the supplier.  Van Kirk made a deal with Corrio:  Corrio went around to groups of people in Nebaj and surrounding villages to talk about the stove and show pictures.  When a family ordered one, Corrio built it right in their house with materials Van Kirk had bought for him.  Families paid in installments about equal to the money they saved by buying less wood. As payments came in, he repaid Van Kirk and kept a commission.

The stoves and the consignment model were both successful.  Soon Van Kirk and a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, George Glickley, began to train local women to sell the stoves and protective glasses, eye drops and reading glasses supplied by VisionSpring, a nonprofit organization that sells eye glasses to poor people all over the world.  (My co-author, David Bornstein, is a member of VisionSpring's board.)

VisionSpring had started out using microcredit for part of its sales — its retailers took out loans to buy glasses to sell.  But it didn't work very well.  “We needed a financing arm — but we weren't a microfinance institution,” said Malini Krishna, the company's vice president of development. At Van Kirk's urging, in 2004 the organization switched from microcredit to a consignment model.  “Why put all that risk on somebody up front?” said Krishna.  “Why not help them put the glasses out there and then get repaid when glasses sell?”

One of the first entrepreneurs Glickley and Van Kirk trained was Yolanda García.  She was a primary school graduate and housewife — she knew the men because Glickley had lived in her family's house when he was in the Peace Corps. Consignment was key for her, she said.  “If I had had to take out a loan I wouldn't have done it.  I always felt I wanted to do something, but we didn't have the economic resources beyond what we needed for the day.”

Van Kirk and Glickley trained her in how to test eyes and fit glasses, but more important was boosting her confidence to sell a mystery product.  “No one knew about reading glasses,” she said.  “People thought I was crazy.”  That wasn't the only obstacle.  Her first customer was eager — she wanted to be able to read her Bible again.  “But who will do the examination?” she said, looking around.  Clearly, there was no doctor there.

“I will,” said García.

García nervously took out her charts and instruments.  A few minutes later, the customer was reading small print and grinning from ear to ear.

Still, García said, it was not a very successful campaign. She sold five pair of glasses and netted 65 quetzales — about $8.  But García was thrilled to be earning anything.  She spent the money on school supplies for her kids.

In 2006, Van Kirk and Glickley founded Soluciones.  Its entrepreneurs — the vast majority of them women — now travel from village to village selling glasses, water-purifying buckets, solar flashlights, a solar panel that powers a lamp and cell phone charger, eye drops, sunglasses, energy-efficient light bulbs and vegetable seed packets.  (The stoves are mainly sold around Nebaj.)  A campaign in a village takes two days — one for publicity and one for sales — and usually nets each entrepreneurs some 200 quetzales, although once in a while a lucky salesperson can triple that.  Van Kirk said that a new salesman started just two weeks ago and has already earned $100 — more than he would make in two or three months in a different job.

Soluciones is still very small.   In the last two years, it has sold fewer than 7,000 pairs of glasses.  The solar lamps are the most popular big-ticket item, with 3,000 sold since their debut.  Soluciones today is owned and run by eight Guatemalans who were its original entrepreneurs, including Yolanda García and Clara Luz de Montezuma.  By the end of the year, it will be running a consistent profit.

Soluciones is an incubator, testing new strategies and new products that may some day sell all over the world.  (Van Kirk and Glickley have more information about their non-profit efforts at cesolutions.org.) Improved cookstoves, reading glasses, water purifiers, solar lamps — these are all products that can provide equity, in the form of ability to work and better health, to villagers who before only had access to microcredit debt.  Yet the real news here isn't the cookstove or the lamp.  Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such practical and ingenious products exist.   Yet they do little good if the rural poor can't use them.  A constant drumbeat of the Fixes column is that the more important innovation is the delivery mechanism.

Is microconsignment a system that can deliver these products on a sustainable basis and large scale to people who need them?  If so, how?  Saturday's column will respond to comments, and will explore answers to those questions.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/when-microcredit-wont-do/?pagemode=print

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From Google News

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Tampa mom faced abuse allegations months before her kids' murder

The Tampa woman accused of killing her teenage kids was no stranger to state officials.

Florida officials were investigating abuse allegations against Julie Schenecker just months before the slayings that the overall risk to the children was low.

The Florida Department of Children and Families released a report on its investigation into Julie Schenecker, who had been accused of hitting her daughter on two occasions.

Schenecker is now charged with killing her 16-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son.  Their bodies were found Friday.

The DCF report centered around two fights between Schenecker and her daughter, Calyx.

Schenecker's husband told investigators his wife had never hit their daughter before the two incidents.  The family was in counseling at the time.

The DCF says it took no action on the case.

http://wokv.com/localnews/2011/02/tampa-mom-faced-abuse-allegati.html

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How to Buy a Glock If You Flunk a Background Check

 (Video on site)

The guv'ment's tyrannical background checks stopping you from exercising your Second Amendment right to carry a semiautomatic handgun that can squeeze off 33 rounds in seven seconds or less? Just come on down to the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix, Arizona, where undercover investigators working with Mayor Bloomberg's administration had no problem buying Glocks like the kind used by Jared Loughner in the Tuscon massacre. All you need to do is show some I.D. to exploit what some lawmakers call the "gun show loophole." In fact, one investigator was able to pay cash for a 9 mm semiautomatic even after telling the seller he probably wouldn't pass a background check. Instead of refusing the sale, as required by federal law, the gun peddler pockets the $500 and directs his shady customer toward the tent with the cheap ammunition. Watch:

City Hall says gun shows are linked to 30% of guns in federal gun trafficking investigations. Mayor Bloomberg announced the results of the investigation today, and said in a statement, "We have demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to buy a semiautomatic handgun and a high capacity magazine, no questions asked. This country must take two simple steps to stop more of the 34 murders that occur with guns every day: make every gun sale subject to a background check, and make sure the background check system has all the required records in it. Congress should act now, but gun show operators shouldn't wait."

After a similar gun show investigation in 2009, four of the seven gun shows targeted by Bloomberg each signed agreements with the City of New York agreeing to end no-background check gun sales. Of course, Tuscon shooter Jared Loughner bought his Glock from a Sportsman's Warehouse after passing the FBI's background check "immediately and without incident."

http://gothamist.com/2011/01/31/video_how_to_buy_a_glock_in_az_if_y.php

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Program targeting dangerous illegal immigrants falls short

WASHINGTON — An immigration enforcement program that trains local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws has not been used to target illegal immigrants who commit the most serious crimes, according to a report released Monday.

Some viewed those figures as proof that the program is being abused by local authorities who are simply trying to rid their communities of growing numbers of legal and illegal immigrants.

"Nobody disputes the need to get rid of dangerous people, of drug dealers," said David Leopold, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "But when the effect is to split up families and to chase people out of the country who might otherwise help the country, you've got to scratch your head and wonder 'What is the point of this program?' "

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates lower levels of immigration, said it's unfair to criticize the program without understanding how its being used in each area.

She said the program is used to target smuggling routes along Colorado highways, and many people involved initially face minor charges. The same goes for gang activity in Southern California, where 287(g) officers can identify and deport illegal immigrants charged with minor crimes, but are tied with violent gangs.

"The idea for 287(g) was to give local law enforcement agencies a tool that they could adapt in their own communities," Vaughan said.

• FULL COVERAGE: Immigration policy in the U.S.

• MAP: A county-by-county look at American diversity

Gillian Brigham, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a statement that they closely monitor each of the 72 law enforcement agencies across the country that participate in the program for abuses.

"ICE does not tolerate violations of civil rights and civil liberties and will not partner with jurisdictions which engage in racial profiling or otherwise violate federal law," Brigham said in a statement.

The report also found that law enforcement agencies in the Southeast had the highest percentage of deportations that started out as traffic arrests. In nine agencies, more than 50% of deportations started as traffic offenses. Eight of those nine agencies were in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports a process for some illegal immigrants to become citizens, said those numbers closely mirror the political dynamics in those states, where many anti-immigration efforts are underway in state legislatures.

Just as the Northeast struggled with European immigrants in the 1800s and the Southwest has grappled with illegal immigration from Latin America or decades, Noorani said, the Southeast is just now battling with immigration as more immigrants — both legal and illegal — move into those states.

"These are four states that are really grappling with a change in their demographics," Noorani said. "The country is changing, and you can either respond to it in a way that's forward-thinking, or in a way that foments fear."

Sixty-two percent of deportations in Gaston County, N.C., started as arrests on traffic offenses, but Sheriff Alan Cloninger said that's simply a representation of the kind of crimes that illegal immigrants commit in his county.

Cloninger said they have officers trained through the 287(g) program working in their jail, and that everybody processed into the jail is questioned about their immigration status. "If I was arrested ... I would be asked these questions," Cloninger said.

He said the numbers are simply a result of North Carolina laws that require officers to arrest anyone caught driving drunk or driving without a driver's license.

"My thing is to try to be fair to everybody," Cloninger said. "That's important to me as sheriff: that we try to be fair to everybody. But when somebody violates the law, they violate the law."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-02-01-Enforce01_ST_N.htm

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Remarks on Border Security at the University of Texas at El Paso

January 31, 2011

EL PASO, Texas—Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today delivered remarks at the University of Texas at El Paso highlighting the Department's unprecedented efforts over the past two years to secure the Southwest border by deploying historic levels of manpower, resources and technology and increasing collaboration with federal, state, local and tribal, and Mexican partners while facilitating legal trade and travel.

“The Obama administration has engaged in an unprecedented effort to bring focus and intensity to Southwest border security, coupled with a reinvigorated, smart and effective approach to enforcing immigration laws in the interior of our country,” said Secretary Napolitano. “Almost two years into the Southwest Border Initiative and the verdict is in: our approach is working—illegal immigration is decreasing, deportations are increasing and crime rates have gone down.”

During her remarks, Secretary Napolitano highlighted the Obama administration's efforts to strengthen Southwest border security by increasing the number of Border Patrol agents from approximately 10,000 in 2004 to more than 20,700 in 2010; doubling the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces; increasing the number of intelligence analysts working along the U.S.-Mexico border; quintupling deployments of Border Liaison Officers; and beginning screening of southbound rail and vehicle traffic for the illegal weapons and cash that are helping to fuel the cartel violence in Mexico.

Secretary Napolitano also underscored the results of these investments, noting that Border Patrol apprehensions—a key indicator of illegal immigration—have decreased 36 percent in the last two years and are less than half of what they were at their peak; violent crime in border communities has remained flat or fallen in the past decade; and statistics have shown that some of the safest communities in America are along the border.

Additionally, Secretary Napolitano reiterated the Department's continued commitment to partnering with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement to enforce America's immigration laws and prioritize the removal of criminal aliens that pose a threat to public safety. In FY 2010, ICE removed over 195,000 illegal aliens convicted of crimes, the most ever removed from our country in a single year. The continued growth of DHS programs such as Secure Communities—which has helped DHS identify and remove tens of thousands of criminal aliens in state prisons and local jails by running their fingerprints against federal immigration databases when they get booked into the system—reflects the success of these partnerships. DHS has expanded Secure Communities from 14 jurisdictions in 2008 to more than 1,000 this week—including all jurisdictions along the Southwest border.

DHS has also stepped up labor enforcement, arresting a record number of employers last year who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and strengthening the efficiency and accuracy of E-Verify, which continues to grow by more than 1,000 businesses a week on average, to assist employers in abiding by the law.

In the coming months, DHS will continue to deploy additional resources to the Southwest border, including two new forward operating bases to improve coordination of border activities, improved tactical communications systems and 1,000 new Border Patrol Agents, funded through the Emergency Supplemental for Border Security passed and signed into law in August 2010.

Secretary Napolitano's remarks as prepared for delivery are available here. For more information about the Department's unprecedented efforts to secure the Southwest border, visit www.dhs.gov.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1296496548700.shtm

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Secretary Napolitano Announces "If You See Something, Say Something" Campaign at Super Bowl XLV

January 31, 2011

Washington, D.C. — Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today joined National Football League (NFL) Vice President of Security Milt Ahlerich and Arlington, Texas Chief of Police Theron Bowman to announce a new partnership to bring the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) "If You See Something, Say Something" public awareness campaign to Super Bowl XLV - to help ensure the security of fans, players, and employees by identifying and reporting suspicious activity.

"Security is a shared responsibility and each citizen has a role to play in identifying and reporting suspicious activities and threats," said Secretary Napolitano. "Our partnership with the NFL and local law enforcement to bring the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign to Super Bowl XLV is a critical part of our efforts to ensure the safety of every player, employee and fan in the area for the game."

The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign—originally implemented by New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and now licensed to DHS for a nationwide campaign—is a simple and effective program to engage the public and key frontline employees to identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities.

The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign at Super Bowl XLV will include both print and video advertisements, as well as a training video for NFL employees to ensure that both employees and fans have the tools they need to identify and report suspicious activities and threats. DHS is also working with federal, state, local and private sector partners to support security efforts at the Super Bowl through additional personnel, technology and resources.

Over the past six months, DHS has worked with its federal, state, local and private sector partners, as well as the Department of Justice, to expand the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign and the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative—an administration effort to train state and local law enforcement to recognize behaviors and indicators related to terrorism, crime and other threats; standardize how those observations are documented and analyzed; and expand and enhance the sharing of those reports with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DHS—to communities throughout the country. The "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign has recently been launched in Minnesota and New Jersey, as well as to more than 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, Walmart, Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country.

In the coming months, DHS will continue to expand the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign nationally with public education materials and outreach tools designed to help America's businesses, communities and citizens remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1296509083464.shtm

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From the Department of Justice

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Third Man Pleads Guilty to Federal Hate Crime Charge Related to Desecration of Synagogue and Churches in Modesto, California

WASHINGTON – Andrew Kerber, 22, of Chico, Calif., pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. O'Neill in Fresno, Calif., to violating the civil rights of congregants of Congregation Beth Shalom, a synagogue in Modesto, Calif.

According to court documents, on or about Feb. 2, 2006, Kerber and two other men, Abel Mark Gonzalez, 23, of Morgan Hill, Calif., and Brian Lewis, 23, of Modesto, Calif., defaced and damaged the synagogue. Kerber admitted that the men spray-painted anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi graffiti on the synagogue's exterior walls. Kerber further admitted that the men spray-painted anti-Christian graffiti on the exterior walls of, and caused other damage to, Our Lady of Fatima Church and School and the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, both located in Modesto. Lewis and Gonzalez pleaded guilty for their role in the offense on Jan. 14, 2011.

Kerber faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a fine of $100,000. A sentencing hearing has been set for Friday, April 8, 2011.

"The Constitution protects the right of all individuals to worship in peace, and strong enforcement of our nation's civil rights laws safeguards that right," said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The department will continue to aggressively prosecute those who seek to violate the rights of their fellow Americans to worship freely."

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California Benjamin B. Wagner said, "This country was founded by people who sought to practice their religion without being harassed, threatened, or intimidated. It is our obligation to ensure that all Americans can be secure in the exercise of their First Amendment rights."

This case was investigated by the Modesto Resident Agency of the FBI's Sacramento Field Office with assistance from the Modesto Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Gappa of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California and Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney Karen Ruckert Lopez.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/January/11-crt-135.html

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From ICE

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Canadian John Wrenshall sentenced on child porn charges

Worldwide endeavor brought man to justice

NEWARK, N.J. - John Wrenshall, 64, was sentenced to 300 months in prison for inviting men to travel from around the world to his home in Thailand in order to sexually abuse young boys. The investigation was conducted by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Peter T. Edge, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in Newark stated: "Criminals who prey on children are committing unspeakable acts, causing irreparable harm and robbing the innocent of their innocence. HSI will track down these criminals, wherever they think they can hide, arrest them and bring them to justice."

Wrenshall, a Canadian citizen, admitted that from at least as early as January 2000, he arranged trips to his home during which U.S. citizens and others paid him to engage in anal sex, oral sex, and other sexual acts with Thai boys, some as young as four years old. Wrenshall's customers were allowed to videotape and photograph their abuse. Wrenshall also personally victimized the boys in order to "train" them for his paying customers.

Wrenshall was indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey in August 2008 after authorities learned that Wayne Nelson Corliss had traveled to Wrenshall's home to engage in illegal sexual acts with minor boys. Wrenshall was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport in December 2008 by London's Metropolitan Police, with HSI agents, and was extradited to the United States in July 2009 to face the New Jersey indictment.

Corliss, formerly of Union City, New Jersey, was the first of Wrenshall's clients identified by law enforcement officers. In May 2008, Interpol released a sanitized photograph of a man sexually abusing young Thai boys to media outlets in the United States and abroad, and made a global appeal for information that could identify the offender depicted in the photo. Within 48 hours, and acting on information obtained from individuals who recognized the offender as Corliss, ICE, coordinating with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey and the Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), located and arrested Corliss in Union City, N.J.

When HSI agents seized Corliss' three computers they found over 1,000 images, many of which contained photos of Corliss engaged in sexual activity with minors.

The release of Corliss' photo represented only the second time that Interpol has made such a public appeal to identify a suspected child predator. Interpol and ICE are partners in the Virtual Global Task Force, an international alliance of law enforcement agencies committed to joint, international enforcement efforts designed to keep children safe from sexual predators around the world.

Three of Wrenshall's U.S. clients - Corliss, Burgess Lee Burgess, and Mitchell Kent Jackson - have already pleaded guilty and have been sentenced on sex tourism and related charges. Corliss received 20 years in prison; and both Burgess and Jackson each were sentenced to 78 months in prison.

In addition to the prison term, Wrenshall was sentenced to three years of supervised release, referring to Wrenshall as a, "repeat, dangerous sexual offender."

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE . This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators. Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1101/110131newark.htm

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California man sentenced to 17 years in prison for engaging in a child exploitation enterprise

Homeland Security Investigations, Pittsburgh, identified global Internet ring

PITTSBURGH - Stephen Sims of Palm Springs, Calif., was sentenced today by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Gustave Diamond in the Western District of Pennsylvania to 17 years in prison for engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Pittsburgh and the High Technology Investigative Unit of the Department of Justice Criminal Division, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).

The sentence was announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania David J. Hickton and John Kelleghan, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in Phildelphia.

Sims, 57, pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise before U.S. District Court Judge Arthur A. Schwab on July 13, 2010. According to court documents and proceedings, Sims and others distributed images and videos of children being sexually abused to other members of an international group that had restricted membership and was formed on a social networking website. Members of the group distributed to one another thousands of sexually explicit images and videos of children, many of which graphically depicted prepubescent, male children, including some infants, being sexually abused and sometimes sodomized or subjected to bondage.

"Sims and others distributed thousands of images and videos of children, including infants, being sexually abused around the world in an exclusive online forum that the users thought was hidden from justice. They were wrong," said Special Agent in Charge Kelleghan. "An HSI operation identified them, arrested them and brought them to justice. HSI will continue to protect children and the pursuit of those who would use them for sexual gratification."

HSI's involvement in this investigation is part of the agency's initiative known as Operation Predator, an ongoing enforcement effort targeting those who prey upon and sexually exploit our nation's children - including Internet pornographers, international sex tourists, and foreign national sexual predators.

ICE encourages the reporting of suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE . This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators. Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, an ICE partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

For more information in HSI's predator investigations, go to www.ICE.gov.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig W. Haller and CEOS Trial Attorney Andrew McCormack prosecuted the case.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1101/110131pittsburgh.htm

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