Recent comments

Good news! I was told by McKinley staff today that UIUC Vice Chancellor Michael DeLorenzo is backing plans to retain a sonographer at the health center now that the contracted sonographer has completed her final year, and retired, as she announced she would at the start of 2007.  While this is the case, McKinley director Dr. Robert Palinkas sadly has not yet hired a replacement, causing (at the very least) a lapse in sonogram services. McKinley health coverage runs until the spring semester starts on January 19, but students who were ordered sonogram services following January 1 have not able to receive them.  Please call or send an email to McKinley via the web comment board listed above or to Director palinkas(at*)illinois.edu AND COPY your note to Vice Chancellor Michael DeLorenzo michaeld(at*)sab.uiuc.edu / Vice Chancellor Renee Romano romano3(at*)sab.uiuc.edu THIS WEEK to let them know that these services are important to students, and should reinstated at McKinley right away! * = replace (at) with @ Also, efforts from the community were noted as key to the decision to maintain services. Nice work! Keep it up!

BURYING BURRIS

Sam Smith

Bad
as Rod Blagojevich may be, Harry Reid and other superlative hypocrites
in the Senate are certainly giving him a run for his money. And they're
getting aid from liberal Democrats who are ready to dump basic
principles - such as guilt being determined by a court and not by the
media or a prosecutor - in hopes of saving themselves some
embarrassment.

The hypocrisy includes the fact that the current
Senate is the most corrupt in American history based on the amount of
contributions accepted from those with clear intent to wrongfully
influence legislation. The only real difference between Blagojevich and
the Senate is that the former may have been too dumb to do it all under
cover of law.

Further, journals such as Slate have come up with
remarkably tortured arguments as to why the Senate should be allowed -
essentially on an ad hoc basis and without any formal warning in
advance - to determine who gets to join it. At the very least, however,
the Senate's membership requirements should be as accessible to
applicants as those of the Metropolitan Club.

CNN even reported
that Senate Democrats were seriously dealing with the question of
whether to arrest Burris should he show up seeking his seat:

"The
first Democratic aide said if Burris tries to enter the Senate chamber
on Tuesday, the Senate doorkeeper will stop him. If Burris were to
persist, either trying to force his way onto the Senate floor or
refusing to leave and causing a scene, U.S. Capitol police would stop
him, the aide said. 'They [police] probably won't arrest him,' but they
would call the Senate's sergeant-at-arms, the aide said."

The
Democrats are not being driven by any new found love of integrity and
the law. Rather they have been embarrassed and they're trying
desperately to keep their distance from Blagojevich after rejecting the
alternative of a special election, since that might add one more GOP
senator.

A dignified and democratic solution would include an
acceptance of the fact that Blagojevich is the governor of Illinois and
entitled to act like one until the law says otherwise. It would also
not engage in the semantic waterboarding of a somewhat obscure
constitutional provision in order to satisfy only the most puerile of
political goals. And the Senate should state its qualifications openly
and not engage in ex post facto legislation, which a far more important
section of the Constitution prohibits.

Here is the laundry list Detective Staples recieved for pleading guilty to Driving Under the Influence of alcohol. It should be noted from the start, that Illinois statutes require an automatic six-month suspension of a driver's license if the offender refuses to submit to a brethalyzer test the night of the offense.

Staples was represented by local defense attorney Ed Piraino. The presiding judge of Champaign County, Tom Difanis, appointed Tony Lee, a recently retired Ford County prosecutor of 16 years. Lee was appointed when Champaign County State's Attorney Julia Rietz asked for a special prosecutor  because of a professional relationship with Detective Staples. Piraino and Lee worked out the following plea bargain before traffic court Judge Richard Klaus. Klaus accepted the following:

Staples pled guilty to Driving Under the Influence. Charges of Improper Lane Usage and Driving Without a License were dismissed by the state. Staples punishment was:

• pay a fine of $750 dollars
• pay court costs of $2,258
• pay the above $3008.00 within 300 days.
• pay a anti-crime fee of $10.00
• pay a probation service fee of $10.00 a month for 18 months ($180.00)
• sumbit to 18 months of court supervision with the Champaign County Court Services
• Perform 250 hours of public servic work (Staples will get credit for public service hours performed any time Staples does the following: education treatment, aftercare, sobriety-based self-help group meetings, attends victim impact panels)
• Attend a Victim Impact Panel. (The Victim Impact Panel is a proceeding hosted by the Champaign County Court Services department, where DUI offenders are gathered to hear the stories from former victims of drunk drivers or former drunk drivers who hurt someone in an accident.)
• Obtain a substance/alcohol abuse evaluation with an agency approved by the Champaign County Court Services department and follow any recommendations for treatment or counseling.
• [In exchange for Staples' plea of guilty,] the State agrees not to file any criminal charges against the defendant based solely on the conduct described in the police reports contained in this written order.

Still Lying to the End

by Bruce Mirken

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David Murray, the alleged “chief
scientist” at the White House drug czar’s office, seems determined to
end his tenure in a blaze of dishonesty. In a just-published article in New Scientist that examines the excellent Beckley Foundation Global Cannabis Commission report,
Murray touts recent declines in U.S. teen marijuana use and claims, “In
the absence of prohibition, it would have been difficult to achieve
that.”

That’s nonsense, as we’ve already pointed out. As many U.S. teens currently smoke marijuana as smoke cigarettes, which are legal for adults. Since 1991, teen marijuana use has increased while teen cigarette smoking has dropped by nearly half.  A
good case can be made that a major reason for this has been a concerted
campaign to curtail tobacco sales to persons under 18 — a campaign that
has only been possible because tobacco is legal, allowing producers and
sellers to be regulated — but at the very least, it demonstrates that
prohibition for adults is not necessary to curb misuse of a substance
by children.

A few months ago, a World Health Organization survey published in PLoS Medicine
found that the U.S. and New Zealand to have the world’s highest rates
of marijuana use, despite having some of the world’s strictest laws.
Both the overall rate of use and use by age 15 in the U.S. were far
higher than in the Netherlands, with its famously tolerant marijuana
policies.

We still don’t know who president-elect Barack  Obama
will appoint to replace drug czar John Walters and his gang of hacks
like Murray, but it’s hard to imagine how he could do worse.

An enterprise of the Marijuana Policy Project

Graduate employees have some coverage for prescriptions at McKinley. There is now a $5 minimum co-pay for each month's supply, with some medications being considerably more. When the current contract was negotiated, there was no co-pay.

Many prescriptions that grad employees typically need are NOT carried at the McKinley pharmacy. For those, all the student employees have for coverage is a preciption discount card. I found that it offered little or no discount at local pharmacies.

Thanks to the AFL-CIO and the United Way, there is a FamilyWize pharmacy discount card. The good thing about it is that it does offer substantial discounts on prescriptions, although it still doesn't make many precriptions really affordable on the limited income that grad employees have due to the less than living wage income we subsist on.

I have no idea how much the University pays for their precription card, but it is a waste of money. The FamilyWize card costs nothing, although it technically is charity. However, this sad situation matches well with the substandard health care that the University provides under our current contract. Essentially, the University relies on the fact that the low pay of grad employees qualifies them for charity care in some cases at Carle and Provena. Other than that, a major illness quickly becomes a threat to our ability to teach, work, and continue in our programs.

The state of Illinois thus relies on charity to provide much of the healthcare for graduate employees. Added to the state's tendency to take months to reimburse local health providers, this represents yet another shameful situation created by the state's frequent failure to provide for even the most basic services of those who work and live in Illinois. It is a definite disincentive for the best graduate students to come to Illinois and to stay here after graduation so that the citizens of Illinois can benefit from the investment made in devloping our skills and talents.

ARNE DUNCAN CONT'D

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the past couple years, Arne Duncan has been turning public schools over
to private operators ­ mainly in the form of charter and contract
schools - at a rate of about 20 per year. Duncan
has also resuscitated some of the worst 'school reform' ideas of the
1990s, like firing all the teachers in low-performing schools (called
'turnarounds'). At the same time, he's eliminated many Local School
Councils and made crucial decisions without public input."

To me, the thing that made Duncan's role clear came after three months of organizing at Senn High School, the community school where I teach, against the Chicago Board of Education's proposal to install a Naval Academy.
After an inspiring campaign that involved literally hundreds of people
in the biggest education organizing effort in the area in decades, we
forced Duncan to come up to our neighborhood to listen to our case for
keeping the military out of our school.

More than 300 of us - parents, teachers, and community supporters -
held a big meeting in a local church and, at the end of the meeting, we
asked Duncan to postpone the decision to put the military school at Senn.

Duncan's answer was a classic. He said: 'I come from a Quaker family, and I've always been against war. But I'm going to put the Naval Academy in there, because it will give people in the community more choices.'

http://prorev.com/indexa.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 22, 2008
10:00 AM

CONTACT: The Real News Network
Taruna Godric, 416-916-5202 ext. 414
smcommunications@therealnews.com

Why Did Cheney Confess on National Television?
Michael Ratner: Cheney's admission of guilt is a plea for a presidential pardon

WASHINGTON - December 22 - The Real News spoke to Michael Ratner
about Dick Cheney's statements regarding U.S. counter terrorism
measures and whether the use of torture as well as illegal wiretapping
has been successful. Dick Cheney acknowledged that he endorsed and
supported such torture techniques including water-boarding. Ratner
comments that "Cheney is running through a lot of the policies that
have been condemned both in the United States as illegal and worldwide"

"I
think people should understand that this was a pretty astounding
statement" says Ratner in response to Cheney's admission of illegal
tortue techiniques, he continues adding "here you have the vice
president of the United States saying it's okay to water board people
and I approved it"

According to Ratner these admissions are a
last minute attempt for members of the Bush administration to receive a
pardon before Obama is sworn in, "this interview is leading up and
putting pressure on Bush to give pardons to Bush himself and the rest
of them."

For complete coverage of this story visit our website

###

The Real News Network is
a television news and documentary network focused on providing
independent and uncompromising journalism. Our staff, in collaboration
with courageous journalists around the globe, will investigate, report
and debate stories on the critical issues of our times. We are viewer
supported and do not accept advertising, government or corporate
funding.

The Real News Network Links: Homepage

AP Study Finds $1.6B Went to Bailed-Out Bank Execs

by Frank Bass and Rita Beamish

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top
executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits
last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold
the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government
rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank
performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay
packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal
use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club
memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal
securities documents found.

The total amount given to nearly 600
executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that
have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

Rep.
Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee and a
long-standing critic of executive largesse, said the bonuses tallied by
the AP review amount to a bribe "to get them to do the jobs for which
they are well paid in the first place.

"Most of us sign on to do
jobs and we do them best we can," said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat.
"We're told that some of the most highly paid people in executive
positions are different. They need extra money to be motivated!"

The
AP compiled total compensation based on annual reports that the banks
file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 116 banks have so
far received $188 billion in taxpayer help. Among the findings:

• The average paid to each of the banks' top executives was $2.6 million in salary, bonuses and benefits.
• Lloyd
  Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took
  home nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top
  five executives received a total of $242 million.

  This year,
  Goldman will forgo cash and stock bonuses for its seven top-paid
  executives. They will work for their base salaries of $600,000, the
  company said. Facing increasing concern by its own shareholders on
  executive payments, the company described its pay plan last spring as
  essential to retain and motivate executives "whose efforts and
  judgments are vital to our continued success, by setting their
  compensation at appropriate and competitive levels." Goldman spokesman
  Ed Canaday declined to comment beyond that written report.

  The
  New York-based company on Dec. 16 reported its first quarterly loss
  since it went public in 1999. It received $10 billion in taxpayer money
  on Oct. 28.

• Even where banks cut back on pay, some executives
  were left with seven- or eight-figure compensation that most people can
  only dream about. Richard D. Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One
  Financial Corp., took a $1 million hit in compensation after his
  company had a disappointing year, but still got $17 million in stock
  options. The McLean, Va.-based company received $3.56 billion in
  bailout money on Nov. 14.
• John A. Thain, chief executive
  officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83
  million in earnings last year. Thain, a former chief operating officer
  for Goldman Sachs, took the reins of the company in December 2007,
  avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $7.8 billion. Since
  he began work late in the year, he earned $57,692 in salary, a $15
  million signing bonus and an additional $68 million in stock options.

  Like Goldman, Merrill got $10 billion from taxpayers on Oct. 28.

The
AP review comes amid sharp questions about the banks' commitment to the
goals of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a law designed to
buy bad mortgages and other troubled assets. Last month, the Bush
administration changed the program's goals, instructing the Treasury
Department to pump tax dollars directly into banks in a bid to prevent
wholesale economic collapse.

The program set restrictions on some
executive compensation for participating banks, but did not limit
salaries and bonuses unless they had the effect of encouraging
excessive risk to the institution. Banks were barred from giving golden
parachutes to departing executives and deducting some executive pay for
tax purposes.

Banks that got bailout funds also paid out millions
for home security systems, private chauffeured cars, and club dues.
Some banks even paid for financial advisers. Wells Fargo of San
Francisco, which took $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money, gave its
top executives up to $20,000 each to pay personal financial planners.

At
Bank of New York Mellon Corp., chief executive Robert P. Kelly's
stipend for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his
$975,000 salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost
$178,879. Kelly also received $846,000 in relocation expenses,
including help selling his home in Pittsburgh and purchasing one in
Manhattan, the company said.

Goldman Sachs' tab for leased cars
and drivers ran as high as $233,000 per executive. The firm told its
shareholders this year that financial counseling and chauffeurs are
important in giving executives more time to focus on their jobs.

JPMorgan
Chase chairman James Dimon ran up a $211,182 private jet travel tab
last year when his family lived in Chicago and he was commuting to New
York. The company got $25 billion in bailout funds.

Banks cite
security to justify personal use of company aircraft for some
executives. But Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., questioned that rationale,
saying executives visit many locations more vulnerable than the
nation's security-conscious commercial air terminals.

Sherman, a
member of the House Financial Services Committee, said pay excesses
undermine development of good bank economic policies and promote an
escalating pay spiral among competing financial institutions -
something particularly hard to take when banks then ask for rescue
money.

He wants them to come before Congress, like the automakers did, and spell out their spending plans for bailout funds.

"The tougher we are on the executives that come to Washington, the fewer will come for a bailout," he said.

___

On the Net:

SEC Filings & Forms: http://www.sec.gov

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act: http://www.treas.gov/initiatives/eesa/

© 2008 the Associated Press

I don't see this as "totally empty" for a number of reasons.

It was supported by the Libertarians, the Greens, a large chunk of Democrats, and probably some Republicans, too. Mr. Smyth felt is was important enough to have this go down on record, rather than to trust it to the whims of this or a future city government.

I very much appreciate the fact that Mr. Smyth and the others on the council who supported going on the record with the resolution put principle before accomodating the mayor's wishes. 

Even the mayor, for all her fire and brimstone, thought it was a big enough deal to complain mightily about it. If it is so empty, the best thing to do would have been to ignore it. She could not. She seems to feel she needs to throw her metaphorical chairs in public, unlike the last mayor, who liked to pitch real chairs in private when POed.

And I see no reason why this couldn't have gone before the people in the form of a referendum, other than that this idea was "not invented here" by the mayor herself.

I believe it's also the case that there has been some expansion of the city info available online in Urbana. Of almost equal importance is making the user experience on Urbana's website better. It causes me problems every time I use it, too many bells and whistles, I suppose. It certainly suffers by comparison to the Champaign County website, which isn't perfect, but is a damn sight better than the city's.

From what I've seen of the mayor's histrionics, this is far more about trying to maintain a monopolistic majority than anything else. Whether or not she wants to admit it, Urbana would be far better off if IRV was enacted, because that would ensure a progressive majority, instead of only a Democratic majority. The mayor seems to insist on retaining exclusive control of power for the Democrats, instead of being willing to work across a broader and deeper coalition. So be it. The more energy she puts into that, the farther the fall when change comes.