Pet-ty Politics

Cafe Press

Kate S. Peabody of the Pensacola News Journal collared a nearly month-old article about political dog fashions from the Colorado Gazette, among other news sources, slapped some local lipstick on it, and today it appears, recycled, on the front page of PNJ's Life section.

So what if the whole thing started as a cheap marketing ploy by Petlane? It's still amusing.

They Get Letters

Pensacola pooh-bah Fred G. Levin has a letter-to-the-editor in today's PNJ. You'll have to scroll down to find "I See The Light."

Former law partner (for marketing purposes, anyway) Joe Scarborough won't be happy, in the unlikely event he cares at all. Unless, of course, this is just a local lawyers' version of The Battle of the Sexes intended to drum up more business.

Here's the version of Fred's letter that would have been printed if his personal valet-and-editor hadn't been on strike for higher wages:

Joe Scarborough... Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy Jr. have all been my law partners, and I thought we pretty much agreed politically. I was, therefore, shocked when I read Joe Scarborough's column saying that he is now very conservative. * * * I remember Joe as a young congressman who had a bust of Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s dad on his desk.

Both Joe and Mike grew up [in] very meager circumstances[.] I [was raised] with a silver spoon in my mouth. Now, all three of us are doing quite well financially.

I thought... [we] were in agreement that rich people should pay big taxes in order to cover our government's outrageous expenses (including wars). There's no question that Mike [and Bobby] still believe that the rich should pay their fair share and not put obligations on our grandchildren.

Now that Joe has joined the world of the financially secure, he believes in the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

[Sarcasm alert:] After a great deal of reflection, I have now come around to Joe's way of thinking. I don't want to pay my fair share of taxes and I am, therefore, only going to read the columnist on the right side of the editorial page on Wednesday mornings.

Thank you, Joe Scarborough, for enlightening me.

— Fredric G. Levin

Okay. Not the most erudite, graceful, or convincing argument. But what the heck, Fred's heart is in the right place. And, after all, it's just a letter to the editor.

Since the PNJ apparently won't give him his own column, Fred should get a blog.

Document the Atrocities

Dept. of Children and Family Services: Atrocity No. 54, 348:

John Joseph Edwards Jr. is also suing the Department of Children and Families' private arm, claiming the agency's caseworker failed to recognize the signs of neglect.

On Thursday, Edwards' attorney, Gary Gossett, likened the conditions suffered by his client to a Nazi death camp. The lawsuit says Edwards underwent "physical and mental torture," to include starvation, beatings, head shaving and "unlawful confinement."
* * *
As the Allains' case wound its way through the judicial system, the spotlight also turned to DCF. Investigations were opened to determine how the abuse could have continued for so long if case workers were supposedly making monthly visits.

As we have said, "the worst agency in the state of Florida, if not the universe."

Flying Blind

Then came 'Heck of a Job' George W. Bush.
Ideology trumped reality and competence, once again.

Fred Hiatt's Pravda on the Potomac editorially wrings its hands today over this week's FAA-enforced grounding of all MD-80 airplanes, operated by American Airlines, "resulting in more than 3,000 flight cancellations and more than 250,000 stranded passengers by Friday." Then, there's this:

[L]ast month... an FAA inspector let Southwest Airlines fly its Boeing 737 jets despite reports of a crack in a fuselage. At hearings before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on April 3, the Transportation Department's inspector general, Calvin L. Scovel III, bemoaned the "overly collaborative relationship" between the FAA and Southwest. According to an FAA safety inspector, this was the result of the agency treating the airlines like "customers." Meanwhile, the real customers -- the ones crammed onto crowded and late planes who are nickel-and-dimed for everything from checking an extra bag to securing an onboard meal -- are treated with disdain.

This inspires WaPo to reach the brilliant, hard-hitting conclusion that passengers "shouldn't... have to worry that the plane they're sitting on might be a disaster waiting to happen." Really? Every time we board an airplane we assumed it was our job to worry.

The trouble with the Post's editorial is that there's no hint of how, when, or why our civil air transportation industry was allowed to fall into such a disgraceful state of disrepair. For that, you have to turn to today's New York Times.

In "Behind Air Chaos, an F.A.A. Pendulum Swing" by reporters Matthew Wald and Michelle Maynard, we learn that under the Clinton administration FAA inspection reforms led to enhanced safety. "Over the next decade, the accident rate fell 65 percent, and [the] new approach is widely seen as having played a role in the drop."

Then came 'Heck of a Job' George W. Bush. Ideology trumped reality and competence, once again.

[T]he F.A.A., under the Bush administration, took on a role after the Sept. 11 attacks to help the industry recover — “through technology, through greater efficiencies, through sensible and non-burdensome regulatory schemes,” Marion C. Blakey, the F.A.A. administrator in 2002, said at the time. She declined to be interviewed for this article.

This more collaborative approach was reflected in a “customer service initiative” announced by the F.A.A. in April 2003.

The customers in this case were not passengers; they were the airlines the F.A.A. regulates. The core principles of the new initiative, which inspectors could print up on pocket-size cards, included creating for the airlines “an environment without fear of retribution if you challenge our decisions” and “clear guidance on how you can elevate your concerns to the next higher level of authority.”

The F.A.A.’s watchdog role, to many Democrats in Congress who now oversee airline regulators, grew toothless.

One notorious example is the fresh example of Southwest Airlines:

In January 2007, the airline discovered cracks on some of its Boeing 737s. Less than two months later, an unidentified whistle-blower in the F.A.A.’s Chicago office noticed a crack in a Southwest jet that had been flown the day before.

Earlier this year, Southwest told the F.A.A. that it had flown 46 planes without the required inspections of fuselage panels, operating the defective planes for up to nine months on more than 61,000 flights.

It took the persistence of brave whistle-blowing inspectors deep down in the agency to expose safety concerns which the Bush's FAA administration has been actively suppressing. The whistle-blowers, we're told, "have become 'rock stars' within aviation safety circles."

Predictably, the Bush administration hit back hard at the whistle-blowers instead of the FAA administrators who consciously endangered public safety. But when an independent inspector-general's report about the controversy began circulating on Capitol Hill, the FAA was forced to act by re-inspecting all civil airplane fleets.

By one informed estimate, some 568 unsafe aircraft have been grounded so far. And, we're told, "more groundings of other planes throughout the industry are likely to occur in coming weeks."

We're thinking we should cancel our airline reservations for a business meeting next week. In fact, we just might cancel everything, go to bed, and pull the covers pulled over our head until Bush leaves office.

Future Forgetfulness

We can't remember why we wanted to read this Sunday New York Times article.

Saturday Mutt Blogging

Even many locals in Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa counties are not aware of this worthy organization, run by dedicated volunteers: the Junior Humane Society, providing ethical "foster care" and adoptable pets throughout Northwest Florida directly, by appointment, or twice a month at Petsmart, 6251 N Davis Hwy, Pensacola.

How can you help? Click this link and scroll down the page for dozens of ideas, including --

• Qualify as a "foster home" for abandoned pets
• Help provide food, bedding, toys, etc. for the animals
• Donate what you can afford, through PayPal or by check
• Take a dog to the vet
• Visit a 'foster' dog to help socialize it
• Volunteer to 'dog sit' for a foster family, to give them a break
  
• Donate your services or time - raking, fence repair, kennel cleaning, printing services, screen printing, advertising, etc.
• Help wash & groom foster dogs
• Donate old towels and blankets or your old pet items
  

Above all, spread the word and save a pet from misery, confinement, or early death.

Bush's Catch-22

"Bush announced today that he would shorten Army tour lengths." That so? No, it's not:

Make no mistake about it: With an effective date of August 1st, this means that not one troop will benefit from this deployment reduction until August 2009--seven months into the next Presidential administration. This means that even if you're not scheduled to deploy for another three months from now, you'll still be conducting a 15-month-long tour in Iraq. And of course, it certainly doesn't affect anyone there now.

If Bush's PR stunt sounds familiar, that's because it is. Once again, life in the Bush administration imitates art. Without a doubt, Bush borrowed the idea from Colonel Cathcart , who lives within the pages of Catch-22.

If you haven't read the book, you should. Here's a short summary. Here's a longer one.

And here's an excerpt from chapter nine that nearly perfectly describes Bush's latest Iraq troop deployment plan, written some 58 years ago:

Major Major lowered his gaze sheepishly and fiddled with his fingers. "What do you want me to tell you?"
"That I've flown enough missions and can go home."
"How many have you flown?"
"Fifty-one."
"You've only got four more to fly."
"He'll raised them. Every time I get close he raises them."
"Perhaps he won't this time."
"He never sends anyone home, anyway. He just keeps them around waiting for rotation orders until he doesn't have enough men left for the crews, and then raises the number of missions and throws them all back on combat status. He's been doing that ever since he got here."

Why does the Pentagon, or for that matter Congress and the American people, put up with this? Again, Joseph Heller had the answer:

What could you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly. One thing he could not say was that there was nothing he could do. To say there was nothing he could do would suggest he would do something if he could and imply the existence of an error or injustice in Colonel Korn's policy. Colonel Korn had been most explicit about that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But there is nothing I can do."

Will the Light Shine on Florida's Department of Children and Families?

Today's PNJ reports legislation is pending in Tallahassee that, for the first time, would open the records of the Florida Department of Children and Families to "children and others who have been through DCF's child care system... ."

Because their records so often deal with children and cases of sexual abuse, DCF has many records that are closed — including barring access for people to see their own records.

"That was a driving force behind the bill," [state senator Paula] Dockery said. "When I found out people could not even get their own records from DCF, I couldn't believe it."
* * *
Under existing law, the only way to get those records is to petition the courts.

This could turn out to be an expensive idea. After all, DCF is rightly regarded as the worst agency in the state of Florida, if not the universe. "There is no place in the country where it is worse to be a foster child than Florida," one national expert told Time Magazine six years ago.

Riddled with incompetent caseworkers and rife with ignorant and biased supervisors, the agency wasn't even "shocked" when a recent inspector general's report found the agency's hiring practices to be a muddled mess from top to bottom. DCF ignores judicial orders seeking to compel its employees to do their jobs properly.

It hires sexual perverts who abuse children to be top spokesmen. Six-figure jobs at the local county level are manufactured out of thin air for tired politicians with no particular skills to recommend them.

Unable even to keep track of children that are supposed to be in "the system" -- much less protect them -- the Florida Department of Children and Families presently must be hiding in their private archives evidence of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of tragic blunders, negligent mistakes, intentional villany, and other atrocities.

Once the public gets its hands on the proof, the victims of this abominable agency might actually sue for gross negligence, as did 9 year old Marissa Amora. That could bankrupt the state, don'cha know, if there is any justice in Florida.

But there is a ray of hope for worried taxpayers. Florida's Department of Children and Families is so utterly beyond redemption that, as shown by the case of an unnamed four-year old girl embroiled in an "important international custody battle," the agency is quite capable of "losing" more records than it can find. Moreover, sporadic investigations have revealed that "some caseworkers... falsified records... and knowingly placed children in abusive foster homes."

The "Sunshine Act" can't train the light on DCF's malfeasance if all the evidence gets 'lost.'

You're in a Bully's Hands with Allstate

"[C]laims organization... revolve[s] around two axes -- standardizing claims awards across the board; and stopping policyholders from hiring lawyers."

-- Allstate Insurance Co., PowerPoint training slide

The highly respected reporter Paige St. John, in Sunday's Sarasota Herald Tribune, boils down some 12,000 pages of previously-secret documents from the vaults of Allstate Insurance Co. to discover "how the nation's second-largest insurer systematically cut payments" to those covered by insurance "as a way to boost profits."

First, the company eliminated much of the discretion of on-site adjusters.

Second, using its own adaptations of computer software known as "Colossus" the company lowered authorized "average payouts for bodily injuries" by "more than 20 percent." This, we are told, was "a big step" toward reaching a consultant company's stated "goal of establishing a new fair market value" for injuries.

Third, Allstate pressured claimants "to accept quick settlements without the help of lawyers." If a policyholder was so bold as to hire a lawyer or hold out for more, Allstate would coach its own lawyers "to refuse to negotiate and to drag out litigation."

Allstate, here, is talking about hurting its own customers who have been paying premiums to the company for auto and property insurance, including hurricane wind insurance. As one lawyer with extensive knowledge of Allstate's abusive policies explains:

"When you look at it from the policyholders' point of view, here you are, your home is flattened. They come to you and offer [a low settlement] to you within the first 180 days.... [when they know] that financial pressure in that first 180 days would be at its greatest." * * *

"They won't walk away happy. They'll just walk away. A lot of them won't understand how badly they've been abused."

Internal company documents also make it clear that Florida was an early and profitable testing ground for Allstate's new strategy:

"Florida East and Florida West are getting phenomenal, never-seen-before results in terms of loss/cost management," a 1997 Allstate newsletter declared. Allstate today pays less than most other auto insurers in Florida for accident injuries, averaging $16,884 per claim in early 2007 compared with an $18,105 average for the industry.

There's no real surprise here for anyone who has ever had a close look into the small, dark heart of Allstate Insurance Company. What is surprising is how blatant the company and its industry consultant, McKinsey & Co., can be when they think no one is looking:

In PowerPoint presentations and discussion papers drawn up for Allstate executives, McKinsey used "boxing gloves" to characterize how Allstate should treat policyholders who balk at settlements. For customers who hired lawyers, McKinsey urged, "align alligators," adding these instructions: "sit and wait."
* * *
PowerPoint slides show the McKinsey consultants also advised Allstate to convince policyholders they did not need lawyers, and then to target those who disregarded that advice for denials, delays and litigation.

In effect, says former Allstate lawyer Robert Healy, who's now in private practice in Tampa, Allstate has become "a bully in the market." That would be the market for justice.

To be sure, "Allstate has been sanctioned by regulators in at least two states." And some policyholders have won "bad faith" claims "forcing it into confidential settlements and large jury verdicts."

However, explains St. John, courts too often have generously ordered verdicts to be cut to a fraction of what juries awarded. By that means, Allstate has managed to keep the lion's share of its gains from bullying customers.

Allstate's incentives to keep the system have proven larger.

Since changing the way it regards claims, the company has reported the largest profits of its 77-year history. It had a record profit of $4.9 billion in 2006. In 2007, it reported a $4.6 billion profit.

The insurance company's trove of secret documents became publicly available only after a Florida appeals court ruled that "state regulators have the right to ban Allstate from writing new policies" if it doesn't turn over evidence of internal policy-making demanded by "state investigators."

What do you want to bet that even now a few hundred million dollars of those skyrocketing profits are being used to buy lobbyists and legislators in Tallahassee, to be sure that Allstate never again is compelled to wash its dirty linen in public? Keep your eye on the current legislative session.

Dept. of Amplification

"All State Insurance Co.'s Behavior "Potentially Criminal'"

Whitehead: 'Trapped' Again

Mike ("Bambi Killer") Whitehead has been busted again. In his long war against the truth, this time Whitehead seems to have broken Emily Post's law: when you decline a formal invitation to be the featured speaker at an event that's important to the host, be sure to give an excuse that can't be exposed as a blatant lie.

Jamie Page has the story for the Pensacola News Journal. She makes the most of it with appropriately cheap golfing puns:

Some Myrtle Grove volunteer firefighters are teed off.

The object of their wrath: Escambia County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead, who was teeing off at the Marcus Pointe Golf Club last Saturday morning instead of attending the Myrtle Grove Fire Department's 55th anniversary celebration.

And consider it a double bogey since Whitehead had told the firefighters he couldn't be there to be the main speaker because he'd be out of town.

This isn't the first time Whitehead has been caught in a lie. It seems to be a habit with him.

It was Wilson Robertson, who's running against Whitehead's bid for reelection, who blew the siren this time.

Robertson, a fellow member of Marcus Pointe Golf Club... let the firefighters know about Whitehead's stroke of subterfuge after seeing him golfing during a regular Saturday morning members' tournament.

Now, it's obvious that Robertson had a motive for penalizing Whitehead. But was it politics? Or concern for the integrity of the game?

Robertson normally would have played in the Saturday morning tournament, but he canceled to attend the Myrtle Grove event.

Maybe both.

Clarence Gulsby of Molino, who serves on the county's citizen fire advisory committee, said Whitehead should have been at the Fire Department, considering it's in his district.

"Nobody should tell you one thing and then do something else," Gulsby said. "That's not good ethics, let alone, politics."

It also makes you wonder about the scorecards Whitehead turns in, doesn't it?

Glass Two Percent Full

Good News for neocons: Two of every 109 historians rate George W. Bush's presidency as a success.

Ron Thompson (1931-2008)

Ronald Vincent Thompson, 76, passed away on March 31, 2008.

Ron was a native of Pensacola, grew up around Bayou Texar, Bayview Park, and Pensacola Beach, fishing and water-skiing. He was one of the original lifeguards on Pensacola Beach.

Ronald was a 1949 graduate of Catholic High School and attended college in Mississippi and Pensacola on a football scholarship. He also played for the Pensacola Alumni Football Team for 4 years. Ronald was an Insurance Adjuster for 32 years and retired in 1996 as owner of Thompson and Associates.

Ronald was an original member and founding member of Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church on Pensacola Beach as well as serving as parish council president, Eucharistic minister and usher.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Colley and Marie (Rivais) Thompson; and son, Stephen Wayne Thompson.

Ron is survived by his wife of 54 years, Betty Russell Thompson; son, Douglas (Penny); grandchildren, Ashley Yvonne-Marie Thompson, Collin Wyatt Thompson, Justin York Gittings; 2 great-grandchildren; brother, Jerauld R. (Jackie) Thompson; sisters, Marie Gossman, Elizabeth Hale; fifteen nieces and nephews; five brothers-in-law and their wives.

Visitation will be held 9-10:00am Friday, April 4, 2008 at Our Lady of The Assumption Catholic Church (Pensacola Beach) with Funeral Mass to begin at 10:00 a.m. with Msgr. Luke Hunt celebrant. Burial will follow at Bayview Memorial Park.

Active Pallbearers will be Justin Gittings, Collin Thompson, Jerauld Thompson, Ellis Mason, John Russell, and Nikko Sarabia. Honorary Pall bearers will be Charles Schultz, Edwin Frank, Glover Bridges, Paul Bookout, Paul Cutchen, Frank Plewa, and James Turnupseed.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Our Lady of the Assumption Building Fund, P.O. Box 1057, Gulf Breeze, FL 32562.

HARPER-MORRIS MEMORIAL CHAPEL is in charge of arrangements.

--------
Also published in the
Pensacola News Journal April 3, 2008

Saturday Backstory on the Torture Memo

UPDATED BELOW
The Justice Department has at last declassified and turned over to the ACLU the infamous John Yoo torture memos. WaPo has more on the news.

Georgetown Law School professor Marty Lederman has the memos (Part 1 here; Part 2 here) and the fascinating back story:

On Friday, March 13, 2003, Jay Bybee resigned from his Office as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, to become a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The very next day -- a Saturday, mind you -- John Yoo, merely a Deputy AAG in the Office, issued his notorious memo to the Pentagon, on behalf of OLC, which effectively gave the Pentagon the green light to disregard statutory limits on torture, cruelty and maltreatment in the treatment of detainees. This is the version of the 2002 Torture memo, which was addressed only to the CIA and the torture statute, as applied to the numerous statutes restricting the conduct of the armed forces. None of those statues, you see, limits the conduct of war if the President says so. It is, in effect, the blueprint that led to Abu Ghraib and the other abuses within the armed forces in 2003 and early 2004.

CBS's "60 Minutes" already has documented the kind of atrocities the Yoo memo led to. Glenn Greenwald adds a small snippet from Yoo claiming it's legal for the president to order the crushing of a child's testicles. Then he asks --

If writing memoranda authorizing torture -- actions which then directly lead to the systematic commission of torture -- doesn't make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?

UPDATED
04-02 pm

Scott Horton has more.

UPDATED
04-03 am

Marty Liederman has a correction and an apology.

First Pitch of the Hurricane Season

The 2008 season of hurricane predictions opens this week. The first big game is now under way in Miami at the National Hurricane Conference. Phil Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray take the mound on Friday.

The first pitch wasn't tossed there, however. Instead, it was hurled into the news maw by The Weather Center, a privately-operated non-profit operation in Houston. They announced at the start of the week that they are predicting "at least 11 named storms with 6 of these tropical storms intensifying into hurricanes."

According to something they call the "Orbital Cyclone Strike Index," which they say assesses storm risks to specifically designated geographical areas, "West Florida" has a 70 percent chance of being hit this year. The Southeast states from North Carolina to Georgia have "a 90% chance of experiencing a landfall of a tropical storm or hurricane this year."

Interestingly, The Weather Center's "strike index" relies on sunspot cycles. And, no, we aren't joking. According to the Center --

The OCSI model is based on the premise that there are orbital influences that are reflected in the global circulation pattern on the sun as well as the global circulation pattern of the earth. These orbital influences are reflected in the 11.1 year sun spot cycle. During the 24-year period from 1984 to 2007, there have only been three years (1987, 1992, and 1999) when a storm or hurricane did not make landfall in the section of the United States coastline that had the highest risk. In all three of these years, cyclones made landfall in the section of the coast with the second highest risk. This gives the OCSI an 87.5% accuracy rate.

You can read the whole of the Houston-based WeatherCenter's 2008 hurricane forecast here [pdf file].

Time to get those office hurricane pools going! Which "expert" hurricane forecast will prove to be the dumbest one this year?

Wall Street Government

Conservative political principles at their core, we were always taught, promote smaller government, a less intrusive federal authority, multiple checks and balances against abuse of power, respect for states' rights, and the sanctity of contract.

The Bush administration's proposal, announced yesterday, to reform the financial regulatory system actually "drastically" expands the powers of the Federal Reserve; would eliminate the multiple checks and balances provided by smaller agencies; virtually erases more than a century of state regulation of the insurance industry; supplants it with a federal charter system for insurance companies and brokers; and gives federal authorities the power to override and rewrite individual contracts of all kinds.

Oh, and one more thing: when it comes to investing in nationally marketed stock and bonds, it takes away the one major safeguard individual investors have relied upon since the New Deal: "The plan proposes... to reduce the enforcement authority of the S.E.C. in a variety of ways and hand that authority instead to industry groups."

In other words, stock touts and hot room bond jockeys that prey on the ordinary consumer get to police themselves. Now, that is a recognizable conservative principle. It's the same one that helped bring on the Great Depression and that has a lot to do with today's financial crisis.

The Bush administration's plan to "reform" the financial system, as Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulsen candidly admits, has nothing to do with the current financial crisis.

“Some may view these recommendations as a response to the circumstances of the day,” Mr. Paulson said. “That is not how they are intended.”

Indeed, they aren't. If anything, the administration's proposals, which are more than a year in the making, reflect an ideological commitment to not much more than governance "of America, by Wall Street, for Wall Street."

That's exactly the opposite of what is needed. As Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) puts it, "[T]he Fed helped create this crisis by ignoring the red flags as far back as five years ago. It does not make sense to give a bigger shovel to the very people who helped dig us into this hole.”