Political
Blair blames spate of murders on black culture: Political correctness not helping, says PM: Community leaders react angrily to comments
Source: The Guardian 04/12/2007
Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.
One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.
Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".
It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.
Mr Blair's remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.
Giving the Callaghan lecture in Cardiff, the prime minister admitted he had been "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership. He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that "the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids".
Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: "When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?" Mr Blair said there needed to be an "intense police focus" on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders "taken out of circulation".
Last night, British African-Caribbean figures leading the fight against gang culture condemned Mr Blair's speech. The Rev Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of the main organisations working against gang crime, denounced the prime minister.
Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: "He makes it look like I said it's the black community doing it. What I said is it's making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they're doing. . . . He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children."
Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech."
Lee Jasper, adviser on policing to London's mayor, said: "For years we have said this is an issue the black community has to deal with. The PM is spectacularly ill-informed if he thinks otherwise.
"Every home secretary from [David] Blunkett onwards has been pressed on tackling the growing phenomenon of gun and gang crime in deprived black communities, and government has failed to respond to what has been a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection".
The Home Office has already announced it is looking at the possibility of banning membership of gangs, tougher enforcement of the supposed mandatory five-year sentences for possession of illegal firearms, and lowering the age from 21 to 18 for this mandatory sentence.
Answering questions later Mr Blair said: "Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don't think it's the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation.
"I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them."
Some people working with children knew at the age of five whether they were going to be in "real trouble" later, he said.
Mr Blair is known to believe the tendency for many black boys to be raised in families without a father leads to a lack of appropriate role models.
He said: "We need to stop thinking of this as a society that has gone wrong - it has not - but of specific groups that for specific reasons have gone outside of the proper lines of respect and good conduct towards others and need by specific measures to be brought back into the fold."
The Commission for Racial Equality broadly backed Mr Blair, saying people "shouldn't be afraid to talk about this issue for fear of sounding prejudiced".
Mr Blair spoke out as a second teenager was due to appear in court charged with the murder of 14-year-old Paul Erhahon, stabbed to death in east London on Friday. He was the seventh Londoner under 16 to be murdered since the end of January, and his 15-year-old friend, who was also stabbed, remains in hospital.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Sodomy Halts Debates on Bill
Political
Sodomy Halts Debates on Sexual Offences Bill
Source: All Africa 04/12/2007
Port Louis, Apr 12, 2007 (L'Express/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
Political debates on the Sexual Offences Bill - a piece of draft legislation that deals mainly with the stiffening of laws in cases of rape and other sexual offences - have stumbled upon the term "sodomy."
Not that the word is mentioned in this remarkable piece of legislation that in actual fact seeks to depenalize the act of sodomy. The bill is remarkable in the sense that the word sodomy is not used at all. We know the sexual act will be rendered legal - when the bill is voted - by the fact that "penetration of the penis" in the "anus without consent" will constitute a rape that will be subject to penal servitude not exceeding 45 years. At the end of the bill, the repeal of section 249 of the Criminal Code is provided for. As it stands now, section 249 provides that sodomy and bestiality are crimes punishable by a penal servitude of 5 years.
MMM leader Paul Berenger has not yet expressed himself on the matter and MSM leader Pravind Jugnauth has already at the outset opposed the depenalization of consensual sodomy, qualifying it as "immoral" and saying that Government's move was "a telltale sign of a society that was losing its values". Even within the majority alliance, the matter of sodomy is causing a rift and has prevented any dispassionate debate on the more important matter of harsher sentences for rapists.
The main criticisms against the depenalization of sodomy are that it is "immoral."The main arguments for it are that the right to practise sodomy is part of the broader constitutional right to sexual privacy. The debate in Mauritius is, however, slightly different.
In actual fact, the precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law but is typically understood by courts to include any sexual act, which does not lead to procreation. Furthermore, sodomy has many synonyms: buggery, crime against nature, unnatural act and deviant sexual intercourse.
Respect for individual private lives
While, in theory, this may include heterosexual oral sex, anal sex, masturbation and bestiality, in practice and - in general - such laws are primarily enforced against sex between men. Historians, however, dispute the reason for the emergence of such laws but they have roots in antiquity and are linked to religious proscriptions against certain sexual acts.
Contemporary supporters of sodomy laws argue that there are additional reasons for retaining them. They include public health concerns about anal sex or concerns that legalisation of homosexuality will lead to a declining population.
But more and more around the world, courts are striking down sodomy laws in decisions that gay rights supporters the world over have hailed as "historic." As an example, Justice Anthony Kennedy of the US Supreme Court wrote, "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. ( ) The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime". The petitioners in this case were homosexuals.
As mentioned earlier, the situation in Mauritius is slightly different. As a general rule, men homosexuals rarely publicise the fact that their sexual behaviour is in actual fact a crime according to Mauritian laws. And the police do not make it a regular practice of arresting homosexuals because they practise sodomy in the privacy of their homes. Sodomy between adults of different sex is also practised on a regular basis in Mauritius as elsewhere. When it is consensual, there is no question of a crime having been committed because it cannot be proved.
45 years behind bars
So the move by Government is purely a technical one. Attorney General Rama Valayden, aware of this absurdity in our laws, has chosen to justify Government's decision by saying that many women, because they have to find fault with their husbands whom they wish to divorce, often say the latter have engaged in sodomy. Not many lawyers agree but this is really beside the point.
After the proclamation of the Sexual Offences Act, nothing will have changed in the sexual behaviour of consenting adults. But when a man rapes another man or has non-consensual anal sex with a woman, instead of the actual five years, the rapist will be liable to a maximum of 45 years behind bars. To all intents and purposes, this is about the only change that the depenalization of sodomy will bring in the country.
The debate, however, will be anything but rational because in it will be mixed a large dose of political demagogy, religious zealousness and - let's face it - much hypocrisy.
Sodomy Halts Debates on Sexual Offences Bill
Source: All Africa 04/12/2007
Port Louis, Apr 12, 2007 (L'Express/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
Political debates on the Sexual Offences Bill - a piece of draft legislation that deals mainly with the stiffening of laws in cases of rape and other sexual offences - have stumbled upon the term "sodomy."
Not that the word is mentioned in this remarkable piece of legislation that in actual fact seeks to depenalize the act of sodomy. The bill is remarkable in the sense that the word sodomy is not used at all. We know the sexual act will be rendered legal - when the bill is voted - by the fact that "penetration of the penis" in the "anus without consent" will constitute a rape that will be subject to penal servitude not exceeding 45 years. At the end of the bill, the repeal of section 249 of the Criminal Code is provided for. As it stands now, section 249 provides that sodomy and bestiality are crimes punishable by a penal servitude of 5 years.
MMM leader Paul Berenger has not yet expressed himself on the matter and MSM leader Pravind Jugnauth has already at the outset opposed the depenalization of consensual sodomy, qualifying it as "immoral" and saying that Government's move was "a telltale sign of a society that was losing its values". Even within the majority alliance, the matter of sodomy is causing a rift and has prevented any dispassionate debate on the more important matter of harsher sentences for rapists.
The main criticisms against the depenalization of sodomy are that it is "immoral."The main arguments for it are that the right to practise sodomy is part of the broader constitutional right to sexual privacy. The debate in Mauritius is, however, slightly different.
In actual fact, the precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law but is typically understood by courts to include any sexual act, which does not lead to procreation. Furthermore, sodomy has many synonyms: buggery, crime against nature, unnatural act and deviant sexual intercourse.
Respect for individual private lives
While, in theory, this may include heterosexual oral sex, anal sex, masturbation and bestiality, in practice and - in general - such laws are primarily enforced against sex between men. Historians, however, dispute the reason for the emergence of such laws but they have roots in antiquity and are linked to religious proscriptions against certain sexual acts.
Contemporary supporters of sodomy laws argue that there are additional reasons for retaining them. They include public health concerns about anal sex or concerns that legalisation of homosexuality will lead to a declining population.
But more and more around the world, courts are striking down sodomy laws in decisions that gay rights supporters the world over have hailed as "historic." As an example, Justice Anthony Kennedy of the US Supreme Court wrote, "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. ( ) The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime". The petitioners in this case were homosexuals.
As mentioned earlier, the situation in Mauritius is slightly different. As a general rule, men homosexuals rarely publicise the fact that their sexual behaviour is in actual fact a crime according to Mauritian laws. And the police do not make it a regular practice of arresting homosexuals because they practise sodomy in the privacy of their homes. Sodomy between adults of different sex is also practised on a regular basis in Mauritius as elsewhere. When it is consensual, there is no question of a crime having been committed because it cannot be proved.
45 years behind bars
So the move by Government is purely a technical one. Attorney General Rama Valayden, aware of this absurdity in our laws, has chosen to justify Government's decision by saying that many women, because they have to find fault with their husbands whom they wish to divorce, often say the latter have engaged in sodomy. Not many lawyers agree but this is really beside the point.
After the proclamation of the Sexual Offences Act, nothing will have changed in the sexual behaviour of consenting adults. But when a man rapes another man or has non-consensual anal sex with a woman, instead of the actual five years, the rapist will be liable to a maximum of 45 years behind bars. To all intents and purposes, this is about the only change that the depenalization of sodomy will bring in the country.
The debate, however, will be anything but rational because in it will be mixed a large dose of political demagogy, religious zealousness and - let's face it - much hypocrisy.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
National Progressive Coalition
Political
Venture Philanthropy Goes Into Politics; The model, connecting wealthy investors with needy charities, has moved into the political arena with the New Progressive Coalition
Source: BusinessWeek Online 04/13/2007
In recent years, Silicon Valley venture capitalists have led a growing effort to transform the philanthropic sector through what's been dubbed "venture philanthropy". The efforts of folks like eBay (EBAY) founder Pierre Omidyar and Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz to use capital markets to solve social ills have struck a chord.
Sure, many of the benefiting businesses may not have the greatest profit margins, but already wealthy investors can measure their profits in terms of social capital [for example, how many meals were served to homeless people] as well as cash.
The business focus, meanwhile, brings metrics and efficiency to a sector renowned for just the opposite. Now, as the 2008 election approaches and campaigning heats up, a wealthy Silicon Valley venture capitalist is applying these VC techniques to politics. August Capital general partner Andy Rappaport and his wife, Deborah, have invested $1.5 million in a for-profit venture called the New Progressive Coalition.
NPC bases its business model on the idea that the progressive movement has historically supported candidates, not organizations--donations rise and fall with political races, while between elections, ideas and issues lag. The right, on the other hand, benefits from a robust network of think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute that keep ideas alive even when there's no election in the offing.
NPC hopes to use the Web to build a similar kind of infrastructure by connecting left-leaning organizations--many of which are newly formed grassroots groups with inexperienced leadership--with investors who are keen to provide ongoing time and money.
To build powerful progressive-thought leadership, "We need to experiment by supporting a large number of small efforts," says Rappaport. "Some will succeed, and we'll be able to throw more money and effort at them and build them to scale." As with the philanthropic venture organizations, shareholders will be able to measure their profits using a double bottom line--the monetary return that will keep the business afloat and the political return that will eventually build powerful think tanks that can keep step with the right.
Here's how the coalition works: Member organizations pay annual dues of up to $5,000 on a sliding scale, based on the size of their budgets. This allows them to be listed in the online "marketplace" and also gives them access to technical assistance and professional advice from NPC's 58-person advisory team, drawn from a variety of fields including marketing and finance.
So far, about 200 groups have signed on, including national pro-choice group Choice USA and independent online rag Alternet.org. Meanwhile, investors--so far, just 220--pay an annual membership fee of $250 for networking, events, publications, and help connecting to groups to which they can donate money and time. They can search the database online, or they can get more focused advice from NPC professionals.
The group's executive director, Kirstin Falk, worked on Wall Street and in a political nonprofit before she met the Rappaports and agreed to launch NPC, which is located in a former dot-com building in downtown San Francisco. Falk says there is a vast underserved group of potential donors who may lack the ability to write seven-figure checks, but who are nonetheless able to devote both money and time to the progressive causes they embrace.
She points to 1.16 million people in the U.S. who both make more than $150,000 and self-identify as progressive [according to a September, 2006, analysis conducted by Ammo Marketing). Yet according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks campaign contributions, just 130,000 individuals have given more than $2,000 to progressive candidates, groups, and political action committees [PACs].
Falk thinks the problem is that many of these people don't have an easy way to find groups that are meaningful to them. Therein lies an opportunity. By setting up NPC as a business, she hopes to be able to grow the matchmaking service to a size that will make it a one-stop shop for anyone interested in making a political donation to a liberal cause. "I think a lot of people have gotten stuck thinking every organization needs to be a for-profit or non-profit," says Falk. "Innovation doesn't really happen unless you break these silos down. It's less about the legal structure and more about what you want to accomplish."
Michael Kieschnick is president and co-founder of Working Assets--and one of NPC's biggest investors. During the 2006 election cycle, he asked NPC to identify groups that were doing cost-effective work on issues rather than candidates. The search turned up VoteVets.org, a PAC that strives to put into Congress war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are critical of the war's execution. VoteVets has been part of NPC since its launch. Kieschnick gave the PAC $100,000 and continues to support its efforts. "I've been an activist and donor on many issues. NPC is the only place that brings the two together," he says.
Meanwhile, membership organizations are just starting to reap the rewards of their affiliation. Roz Lemieux, executive director of the New Organizing Institute, has renewed her membership for a second year, paying $500 in 2007 to be a member of the NPC. The Washington [D.C.)-based, social welfare-focused nonprofit trains young political organizers on how to use technology to further progressive causes. Last year, one investor referred by NPC walked in the door two weeks before a large training, wrote a check for $2,000 on the spot, and volunteered full-time.
The investor later followed up with an additional $8,000. Beyond such donations, Lemieux has also relied on NPC for professional support. "They donated their space for an event we did in San Francisco, offered assistance finding a contract fundraiser, and forced my hand on tracking metrics," says Lemieux. "They're useful as a resource for operations and management and planning that help us be more fundable."
NPC has been running in beta since October, 2005, but it is just starting to gain momentum. In late March, the business was accepted into the Women's Technology Cluster, a prominent San Francisco tech company incubator, and Falk is preparing to hit Sand Hill Road for a second round of funding for NPC in the next month. Rappaport hopes that the for-profit model will pare down funding inefficiencies and allow the group to be self-sustaining. "Most progressive organizations struggle because of the fickleness of donors," he says. "Like a traditional startup, if we can get it to cash-flow positive, then an initial influx of startup capital is all it needs."
NPC plans to grow its staff from nine to 15 in the next couple of years, while its business plan talks about attracting 80,000 investors by 2011. Right now, the organization is focusing on expanding its product line. It recently launched a proprietary "political return on investment" tool, designed to measure success in six sectors: advocacy/organizing; electoral; idea generation/dissemination; infrastructure/capacity; leadership, and media.
It will include 54 measurements that cover everything from the average years of experience among the senior leaders to the percentage increase in the budget or revenue from the previous year. This will help investors to gauge which groups will most effectively use their donations. In the fall, they hope to launch political mutual funds. These will be pre-screened portfolios of organizations to which donors can contribute.
These are promising ideas, but it's still too early to say how successful NPC will be. Even Rappaport agrees, saying, "The ability of the organization to really deliver the goods is going to be a function of how fast it grows its membership."
Venture Philanthropy Goes Into Politics; The model, connecting wealthy investors with needy charities, has moved into the political arena with the New Progressive Coalition
Source: BusinessWeek Online 04/13/2007
In recent years, Silicon Valley venture capitalists have led a growing effort to transform the philanthropic sector through what's been dubbed "venture philanthropy". The efforts of folks like eBay (EBAY) founder Pierre Omidyar and Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz to use capital markets to solve social ills have struck a chord.
Sure, many of the benefiting businesses may not have the greatest profit margins, but already wealthy investors can measure their profits in terms of social capital [for example, how many meals were served to homeless people] as well as cash.
The business focus, meanwhile, brings metrics and efficiency to a sector renowned for just the opposite. Now, as the 2008 election approaches and campaigning heats up, a wealthy Silicon Valley venture capitalist is applying these VC techniques to politics. August Capital general partner Andy Rappaport and his wife, Deborah, have invested $1.5 million in a for-profit venture called the New Progressive Coalition.
NPC bases its business model on the idea that the progressive movement has historically supported candidates, not organizations--donations rise and fall with political races, while between elections, ideas and issues lag. The right, on the other hand, benefits from a robust network of think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute that keep ideas alive even when there's no election in the offing.
NPC hopes to use the Web to build a similar kind of infrastructure by connecting left-leaning organizations--many of which are newly formed grassroots groups with inexperienced leadership--with investors who are keen to provide ongoing time and money.
To build powerful progressive-thought leadership, "We need to experiment by supporting a large number of small efforts," says Rappaport. "Some will succeed, and we'll be able to throw more money and effort at them and build them to scale." As with the philanthropic venture organizations, shareholders will be able to measure their profits using a double bottom line--the monetary return that will keep the business afloat and the political return that will eventually build powerful think tanks that can keep step with the right.
Here's how the coalition works: Member organizations pay annual dues of up to $5,000 on a sliding scale, based on the size of their budgets. This allows them to be listed in the online "marketplace" and also gives them access to technical assistance and professional advice from NPC's 58-person advisory team, drawn from a variety of fields including marketing and finance.
So far, about 200 groups have signed on, including national pro-choice group Choice USA and independent online rag Alternet.org. Meanwhile, investors--so far, just 220--pay an annual membership fee of $250 for networking, events, publications, and help connecting to groups to which they can donate money and time. They can search the database online, or they can get more focused advice from NPC professionals.
The group's executive director, Kirstin Falk, worked on Wall Street and in a political nonprofit before she met the Rappaports and agreed to launch NPC, which is located in a former dot-com building in downtown San Francisco. Falk says there is a vast underserved group of potential donors who may lack the ability to write seven-figure checks, but who are nonetheless able to devote both money and time to the progressive causes they embrace.
She points to 1.16 million people in the U.S. who both make more than $150,000 and self-identify as progressive [according to a September, 2006, analysis conducted by Ammo Marketing). Yet according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks campaign contributions, just 130,000 individuals have given more than $2,000 to progressive candidates, groups, and political action committees [PACs].
Falk thinks the problem is that many of these people don't have an easy way to find groups that are meaningful to them. Therein lies an opportunity. By setting up NPC as a business, she hopes to be able to grow the matchmaking service to a size that will make it a one-stop shop for anyone interested in making a political donation to a liberal cause. "I think a lot of people have gotten stuck thinking every organization needs to be a for-profit or non-profit," says Falk. "Innovation doesn't really happen unless you break these silos down. It's less about the legal structure and more about what you want to accomplish."
Michael Kieschnick is president and co-founder of Working Assets--and one of NPC's biggest investors. During the 2006 election cycle, he asked NPC to identify groups that were doing cost-effective work on issues rather than candidates. The search turned up VoteVets.org, a PAC that strives to put into Congress war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are critical of the war's execution. VoteVets has been part of NPC since its launch. Kieschnick gave the PAC $100,000 and continues to support its efforts. "I've been an activist and donor on many issues. NPC is the only place that brings the two together," he says.
Meanwhile, membership organizations are just starting to reap the rewards of their affiliation. Roz Lemieux, executive director of the New Organizing Institute, has renewed her membership for a second year, paying $500 in 2007 to be a member of the NPC. The Washington [D.C.)-based, social welfare-focused nonprofit trains young political organizers on how to use technology to further progressive causes. Last year, one investor referred by NPC walked in the door two weeks before a large training, wrote a check for $2,000 on the spot, and volunteered full-time.
The investor later followed up with an additional $8,000. Beyond such donations, Lemieux has also relied on NPC for professional support. "They donated their space for an event we did in San Francisco, offered assistance finding a contract fundraiser, and forced my hand on tracking metrics," says Lemieux. "They're useful as a resource for operations and management and planning that help us be more fundable."
NPC has been running in beta since October, 2005, but it is just starting to gain momentum. In late March, the business was accepted into the Women's Technology Cluster, a prominent San Francisco tech company incubator, and Falk is preparing to hit Sand Hill Road for a second round of funding for NPC in the next month. Rappaport hopes that the for-profit model will pare down funding inefficiencies and allow the group to be self-sustaining. "Most progressive organizations struggle because of the fickleness of donors," he says. "Like a traditional startup, if we can get it to cash-flow positive, then an initial influx of startup capital is all it needs."
NPC plans to grow its staff from nine to 15 in the next couple of years, while its business plan talks about attracting 80,000 investors by 2011. Right now, the organization is focusing on expanding its product line. It recently launched a proprietary "political return on investment" tool, designed to measure success in six sectors: advocacy/organizing; electoral; idea generation/dissemination; infrastructure/capacity; leadership, and media.
It will include 54 measurements that cover everything from the average years of experience among the senior leaders to the percentage increase in the budget or revenue from the previous year. This will help investors to gauge which groups will most effectively use their donations. In the fall, they hope to launch political mutual funds. These will be pre-screened portfolios of organizations to which donors can contribute.
These are promising ideas, but it's still too early to say how successful NPC will be. Even Rappaport agrees, saying, "The ability of the organization to really deliver the goods is going to be a function of how fast it grows its membership."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Evolving Thoughts on Health Care
Politics & Economics --- CAPITAL: How the Thinking About Health Care Has Evolved
Source: The Wall Street Journal 04/12/2007
"Debating the ailments of the American health-care system is a chronic disease. It sometimes seems the same experts have been making the same points for decades: The U.S. spends more on health care than other countries, but doesn't have healthier people.
Americans with generous insurance use health care readily, and doctors provide it on demand because third parties pay the bill. And so on.
"I remember this from 1993," former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said this week at a Washington forum, recalling his years in the Clinton administration. "Every time I think about health care, I get a headache."
It would be easy to fill a column with the ways in which the health-care debate never changes. But, without offering optimism that a grand solution is imminent, three things are now apparent that -- if not new -- at least weren't widely appreciated 15 or 20 years ago.
Employer-based health insurance is slowly dying.
The notion that requiring employers to provide health insurance is the best route to universal coverage is fading. Sure, nearly 60% of Americans still get health insurance on the job. But even in a growing economy with a tight labor market, employer coverage is eroding. Fifteen years ago, says Joseph Antos of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, "large employers were concerned about rising health spending, but they were not leading the march to a big solution." Now they want out.
Employers -- either through premiums or through taxes -- will be paying part of the health-care tab for a long time, but there is surprising interest in requiring that every individual get health insurance, and then subsidizing those who can't afford it.
We don't know as much about medical science as we need to know.
It always has been true that there is a lot about disease doctors didn't know, and it is true doctors can cure diseases that were killers just a decade ago. But it is also increasingly clear that ignorance about what treatments work well and for whom is very costly, especially as new treatments are discovered and new technologies deployed. The flap over stents versus drugs for heart disease is only the latest example.
"I don't think there was very much recognition [15 years ago] about how little we know in areas that we spend large amounts of money on . . . ," says economist Gail Wilensky, a former Medicare administrator now at Project Hope, a global public-health charity. Dartmouth Medical School researchers have been showing for decades how differently medicine is practiced from one town to the next. There is surprisingly little agreement on what works and what doesn't. There is, however, a consensus that figuring that out is important and getting the health-care system to make better use of information technology is crucial to that end.
Americans want a lot of health care, are willing to pay for a lot of it and don't like their choices limited.
Maybe this isn't exactly new, but it is more certain. Americans rebelled against managed care, and particularly didn't like employers forcing them to enroll. "One of the lessons of the '90s is that every consumer insists on the right to choose a poor-quality physician," Ronald Williams, chief executive of Aetna Inc., said at that Washington forum, which was sponsored by the Hamilton Project, the outfit Mr. Rubin and others founded to devise ideas for centrist Democrats.
So no matter how many experts prescribe big integrated health-care plans as the best way to get medical care, Americans won't be forced into them. Some may choose such plans, but they want choice -- and politicians won't enact legislation that denies them choice.
Politicians and employers may, however, be willing to make Americans pay to satisfy their unlimited hunger for health care. President Bush, no fan of tax increases, has proposed raising taxes on those with the most generous health plans. Jason Furman, a former Clinton and Kerry campaign aide, floated a proposal this week that says Americans ought to pay more for the health care they buy (with the best-off paying more out of pocket than the poor.)
Some say the biggest change is that the anxiety of American workers and businesses about the costs and shortcomings of the U.S. health-care system have reached a crescendo and something big will happen soon. Could be. But we've heard that before.
One veteran of the health-care wars, Robert Reischauer, the former Congressional Budget Office director who now heads the Urban Institute think tank, observes a repeating 15-year cycle in which "building optimism and enthusiasm" about big-time health reform is "dashed by realities and politics."
Complaints about the American health-care system haven't -- yet -- produced the political will to do something, particularly since that something will pinch some big interests and generate fierce opposition no matter what form it takes. Some things don't change. "
Source: The Wall Street Journal 04/12/2007
"Debating the ailments of the American health-care system is a chronic disease. It sometimes seems the same experts have been making the same points for decades: The U.S. spends more on health care than other countries, but doesn't have healthier people.
Americans with generous insurance use health care readily, and doctors provide it on demand because third parties pay the bill. And so on.
"I remember this from 1993," former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said this week at a Washington forum, recalling his years in the Clinton administration. "Every time I think about health care, I get a headache."
It would be easy to fill a column with the ways in which the health-care debate never changes. But, without offering optimism that a grand solution is imminent, three things are now apparent that -- if not new -- at least weren't widely appreciated 15 or 20 years ago.
Employer-based health insurance is slowly dying.
The notion that requiring employers to provide health insurance is the best route to universal coverage is fading. Sure, nearly 60% of Americans still get health insurance on the job. But even in a growing economy with a tight labor market, employer coverage is eroding. Fifteen years ago, says Joseph Antos of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, "large employers were concerned about rising health spending, but they were not leading the march to a big solution." Now they want out.
Employers -- either through premiums or through taxes -- will be paying part of the health-care tab for a long time, but there is surprising interest in requiring that every individual get health insurance, and then subsidizing those who can't afford it.
We don't know as much about medical science as we need to know.
It always has been true that there is a lot about disease doctors didn't know, and it is true doctors can cure diseases that were killers just a decade ago. But it is also increasingly clear that ignorance about what treatments work well and for whom is very costly, especially as new treatments are discovered and new technologies deployed. The flap over stents versus drugs for heart disease is only the latest example.
"I don't think there was very much recognition [15 years ago] about how little we know in areas that we spend large amounts of money on . . . ," says economist Gail Wilensky, a former Medicare administrator now at Project Hope, a global public-health charity. Dartmouth Medical School researchers have been showing for decades how differently medicine is practiced from one town to the next. There is surprisingly little agreement on what works and what doesn't. There is, however, a consensus that figuring that out is important and getting the health-care system to make better use of information technology is crucial to that end.
Americans want a lot of health care, are willing to pay for a lot of it and don't like their choices limited.
Maybe this isn't exactly new, but it is more certain. Americans rebelled against managed care, and particularly didn't like employers forcing them to enroll. "One of the lessons of the '90s is that every consumer insists on the right to choose a poor-quality physician," Ronald Williams, chief executive of Aetna Inc., said at that Washington forum, which was sponsored by the Hamilton Project, the outfit Mr. Rubin and others founded to devise ideas for centrist Democrats.
So no matter how many experts prescribe big integrated health-care plans as the best way to get medical care, Americans won't be forced into them. Some may choose such plans, but they want choice -- and politicians won't enact legislation that denies them choice.
Politicians and employers may, however, be willing to make Americans pay to satisfy their unlimited hunger for health care. President Bush, no fan of tax increases, has proposed raising taxes on those with the most generous health plans. Jason Furman, a former Clinton and Kerry campaign aide, floated a proposal this week that says Americans ought to pay more for the health care they buy (with the best-off paying more out of pocket than the poor.)
Some say the biggest change is that the anxiety of American workers and businesses about the costs and shortcomings of the U.S. health-care system have reached a crescendo and something big will happen soon. Could be. But we've heard that before.
One veteran of the health-care wars, Robert Reischauer, the former Congressional Budget Office director who now heads the Urban Institute think tank, observes a repeating 15-year cycle in which "building optimism and enthusiasm" about big-time health reform is "dashed by realities and politics."
Complaints about the American health-care system haven't -- yet -- produced the political will to do something, particularly since that something will pinch some big interests and generate fierce opposition no matter what form it takes. Some things don't change. "
Bush Lengthens Tours of Duty
Political
"Bush Lengthens Tours of Duty In Combat Zones --- Step May Further Strain Military, Vex Congress; Political Timing in Play?
Source: The Wall Street Journal 04/12/2007
WASHINGTON -- In a move sure to increase the strain on the Army and aggravate tensions with Congress over an already unpopular war, the Bush administration announced that all active-duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will spend 15 months in the combat zones instead of 12 months.
The military's need for the step is straightforward: It will allow the Bush administration to maintain the president's recently implemented "surge" of 30,000 troops in Iraq for at least another 12 months, if President Bush decides that is necessary.
But the announcement comes at an awkward time for the administration in its struggles to maintain both public and congressional support for the Iraq war. The White House is trying to resist growing public calls to set a timetable for an American withdrawal from Iraq. The longer tours are also certain to ratchet up tensions with lawmakers as Congress and the White House move closer to open confrontation over an emergency war-spending bill, which Mr. Bush has promised to veto unless Democrats remove provisions calling for a pullout from Iraq next year.
Republicans acknowledged deep concern about a recent drumbeat of politically unpopular news about Iraq. On Monday, the Pentagon disclosed that 13,000 National Guard troops would soon be sent to Iraq, many for the second time, an announcement that sparked fierce criticism from governors and lawmakers from both parties.
From a long-term political standpoint, though, announcing those steps actually may help the White House manage the fallout. Some Republican congressional staffers argued that it may be better for the administration, already locked in a power struggle with Capitol Hill, to be sure all the difficult Iraq news emerges at once rather than in a steady stream of leaks and announcements to extend tours of troops as the 2008 election cycle grows closer. "It may be easier to take one big hit now than to suffer a death by a thousand cuts," said one senior Republican foreign-relations staffer.
Indeed, the Pentagon made no effort to downplay its decision, but rather had Defense Secretary Robert Gates announce it at a news conference. "This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step," Mr. Gates told reporters.
Democrats and a few Republicans were quick to criticize the move, arguing that the longer deployments would push the military closer to a breaking point. "The decision to extend the tours of U.S. service members by three months is an urgent warning that the administration's Iraq policy cannot be sustained without doing terrible long-term damage to our military," said Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Instead of escalating the war with no end in sight, we have to start bringing it to a responsible conclusion."
The Pentagon said the extension of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan to 15 months would have one beneficial effect for troops: Mr. Gates said the step would help guarantee that military personnel will have at least 12 months at home to get equipment, see their families and train for any future redeployments. "Instead of dribbling out these notifications to units, what we're trying to do here is provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families about how long their deployments will be and how long they will be at home," Mr. Gates said.
Senior military officials say troops should ideally get about two years at home between 12-month deployments to both rest up and prepare for the next round of fighting. In recent months the Army has struggled to field critical pieces of gear, such as the latest armored Humvees and some advanced surveillance equipment, to soldiers in time for their deployments. Because of the relatively short period of time between deployments, troops often are able to get only a rudimentary education in the culture and tribes of the areas to which they are being sent.
The heavy demand for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan also means there are few, if any, Army units back in the U.S. that are trained, equipped and ready to deal with other crises that might pop up around the world.
As a result, critics yesterday charged that extended tours in Iraq are breaking the Army. "The secretary's announcement extending the deployments of active-duty Army units is a stark admission that the administration's policies in Iraq are doing permanent damage to our military," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, (R., Neb.), who has been an outspoken critic of the war.
Mr. Gates rejected such suggestions, and pointed to the Army's ability to hit retention and recruiting goals as a sign that the service, while badly strained, isn't on the verge of breaking. "If the Army were broken, you would not see these kinds of retention rates and our ability to recruit," he said.
Still, the Army, which is currently in the process of adding 65,000 troops over the next five years to expand to an active-duty force of 547,000 soldiers, has had to pay a steep price to reach its recruiting goals in 2006, lowering standards to take a larger number of recruits who scored in the lower percentiles on aptitude tests or needed waivers of past criminal activity. The service has been able to meet retention goals for the enlisted ranks, but only by paying out about $735 million in retention bonuses in 2006 up from $85 million in 2003. Today, it is short about 3,000 active-duty officers, a deficiency that it says will grow to about 3,700 in 2008. It is down more than 7,500 reserve and National Guard officers, according to internal Army documents.
Yesterday's announcement doesn't necessarily indicate the administration will extend the surge of 30,000 troops into next year. Pentagon officials say they will re-evaluate their strategy in early fall. At the core of surge strategy is the belief that the extra troops can improve security and increase the chances that the current Iraqi government can win over an increasingly frustrated population.
"What we are doing . . . is buying time for the Iraqi government to provide the good governance and the economic activity that's required," said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Gates hinted at some frustration with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is dominated by Shiite Muslim parties and has been slow to reach out to Sunni Muslim groups, an essential step to ending the war. Asked if he was happy with the pace of reconciliation, Mr. Gates replied, "I'd like to see it be moving faster." "
Student Loan Changes: Sallie Mae
Political
Sallie Mae changes its student loan ways ; Deal aims to make process more openSource: USA Today 04/12/2007
Sallie Mae, the nation's largest private student-loan provider, agreed Wednesday to pay $2 million and to stop compensating financial aid officials with trips and other perks for serving on its student lending advisory boards. The lender -- which works with 5,600 schools and has nearly 10 million borrowers -- also agreed to stop running university call centers where its staffers often identified themselves as part of the university, rather than as part of Sallie Mae.
Its settlement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo comes a week after Citibank, the second-largest private lender, also agreed to a $2 million settlement. Settlement money collected from lenders will be used to educate students and their parents about loans, Cuomo said.
"The lending industry works when consumer confidence is high, and people have to trust the product they're buying," Cuomo says of his inquiry into the student loan industry.
"Our position is very simple: Loan decisions should be made in the best interests of the students, and not in the best interest of the school."
Sallie Mae acknowledges that it operated call centers for universities and paid for trips for financial aid officials to visit its loan-servicing center and to attend advisory board meetings.
The exact financial cost to students isn't clear. But Cuomo says financial arrangements between lenders and schools could add hundreds of dollars to a student's loan costs.
Preferred lender lists
At the center of the investigation are "preferred lender" lists - - recommendations made by colleges and universities to student borrowers. For a lender, the list is a powerful marketing tool. More than 90% of borrowers select a lender from their school's preferred lender list, Cuomo says.
Financial aid administrators say that in compiling the preferred lender lists, they look at a lender's customer service record, how it handles complaints and borrower discounts. But Cuomo's office has alleged that other factors have influenced their choices, including:
*Stock options. Six universities are the subject of investigations into whether their financial aid officials owned stock options in Student Loan Xpress, a lender that was on their preferred lists. CIT Group, the parent of Student Loan Xpress, has placed three top executives with the division on paid leave.
*Revenue sharing. In these arrangements, a lender offers payments to a school based on the number of students referred to the lender. Some schools have defended these deals because the money usually goes into the school's financial aid program. Cuomo has argued that they're illegal kickbacks that inflate the price that students pay for loans. Six schools have agreed to reimburse $3.27 million to students who took out loans when revenue sharing agreements were in effect.
*Inducements. Cuomo and other critics have alleged that lenders cultivate financial aid administrators with sports tickets, trips to exotic locations and other perks.
*Call centers. Some lenders also operate call centers for universities, identifying themselves as part of the university financial aid office rather than as a student-loan company. Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Sallie Mae, which operated call centers for 19 universities, says company employees identified themselves as part of the university only when college officials asked them to do so.
(Sallie Mae was created as a government-sponsored entity in 1972 but is now a private company.)
Critics worry that such arrangements inappropriately steer students to certain lenders. "How can (financial aid personnel) be providing objective information when they are actually working for the lender?" Cuomo asks.
Dallas Martin, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, says he doesn't believe the practices Cuomo has criticized are widespread but acknowledges that "some of the things that have come to light over the last couple of weeks have given me pause." The investigation points to the need for more disclosure, Martin says.
Helen Nunn, director of financial aid at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., says lenders occasionally bring food and office supplies when they visit but that doesn't influence which lenders make the school's preferred list.
Still, "I don't think it's a bad thing that lending practices are being investigated," Nunn says. "It makes people walk a little straighter."
My Rich Uncle, an aggressive new lender, argues that arrangements between schools and lenders make it difficult for it and other entrepreneurial companies to offer borrowers a better deal.
The federal government sets the maximum interest rate for federal student loans, now 6.8%. But lenders are allowed to offer a lower rate. So last year, My Rich Uncle announced that it would reduce the rate on its Stafford loan to 5.8% once a borrower started making payments.
My Rich Uncle also took out ads urging students to ask financial aid officials about inducements from other lenders. The company says no school has put it on its preferred lender list.
Worries on campus
The investigation comes as high school seniors have received financial aid offers and are in the process of deciding which school they'll attend this fall. Steven Roy Goodman, a college counselor in Washington, D.C., says two families have told him they're more closely scrutinizing communications from schools, "because in their minds, if the financial aid office can't be truthful, then how is the rest of the university to be trusted?"
Students who have already taken out loans are also wondering whether they got the best deal available. Padmini Iyer, a Columbia University senior from New Delhi, says there "is a lot of awareness" at Columbia about the allegations.
Iyer didn't use one of Columbia's preferred lenders. But she says that if she needed to borrow more, "I'd be 10 times more careful."
James Boyle, president of College Parents of America, says he's received a handful of e-mails from parents about the investigation. He says he believes the probe will lead to a "more consumer approach to student loans, with the student and their family driving the process, as opposed to schools and their preferred lenders."
The investigation could also strengthen support for the federal "direct lending" program, which has been championed by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Kennedy argues that the direct lending program is less costly for the federal government and free of conflicts of interest.
Direct lending schools don't have preferred lender lists. Students who attend those schools have only one option: borrowing directly from the federal government.
Critics of the direct lending program say that it's anti- competitive and that private lenders provide better service and benefits than the government. But Craig Munier, director of financial aid for the University of Nebraska, a direct-lending school, says the program allows his office to provide loans "ethically and without conflicts of interest."
Munier, who's chairman of the National Direct Student Loan Coalition, says his office still receives an occasional tin of cookies from a private lender. He says he removes the lender's name and puts the cookies out for students, or ships them to a homeless shelter.
"My colleagues will tell you that these little perks don't influence their decisions," Munier says. "My experience with banks is that they are pretty serious when it comes to money. If it's ineffective, why would they continue to do it?" "
The Price of Gas: Part V
This is my 5th post entitled "The Price of Gas"
Today I paid $2.91 per gallon to put gas in my car. I decided to only put in $14 bucks that put my tank at the half waypoint.
Pardon my French, but the current price of gas is bull shit. Everyone of these rich ass folk whom believe the general public is not affected are mistaken. There is no justified reason for the continued increases in gas prices.
There is an economic imbalance in the Oil industry and I’m speaking to you rich ass mother fuckers this imbalance will affect your business as the general public can no longer afford to purchase your products and services. Then I wonder if you will continue to sit back and say nothing about the greed found within the Oil industry. The economy is only a concept, it is Corporate Boards who set prices. This worsening situation is the fault of these irresponsible corporations.
And to you working people that buy the balcony you hear from talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and yes even our beloved President G.W. Bush, the fact of the matter is the oil industry is making profits they ARE NOT reinvesting into technology nor considering a responsibility to the cost incurred by their customers
I know this. It does not take any bit of intelligence to observe on the news that when the price of crude oil is constant or as it goes down the price at the pump continues to rise. The real reasons are black and white. It is the drive for corporate profits.
Checks & Balances Blog will join other organizations in exposing this swindle stealing Americans of our hard earned pay checks. I encourage you to not sit back and simply continue to pay these prices. This is not supply and demand at work. The profit made in the Oil industry is set at the highest of margins. No, let me emphasize NO NO NO NO other industry roll in the profits the oil industry does. So the Hell to proponents of capitalism! Don’t attempt to explain to me that these prices at the pump is simply the market at play.
Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? Gas prices were going up before and after. Seasonal mixes. Scares in Iran. What the hell? There’s always an excuse and the first person you’ll hear it from is the President. What the Hell? Impeach, he no longer is looking out for the public.
My choosing to buy a cheaper bar of soap is free capitalism. But when it comes to gas the consumer has no power. Capitalism fails in this situation. Yes I said, quote me 50 years from now. When it comes to the Oil Industry, CAPITALISM HAS FAILED!
I’m not some crazy left wing ideologue sponsored by some liberal organization. I’m a hard working American citizen that just made a financial choice not to fill my tank while I read headlines of Oil CEO’s retiring literally with a $$Billion bucks in their wallet.
What I believe to be solution; cut the fucking price of gas at the pump. Period (sorry kids).
Today I paid $2.91 per gallon to put gas in my car. I decided to only put in $14 bucks that put my tank at the half waypoint.
Pardon my French, but the current price of gas is bull shit. Everyone of these rich ass folk whom believe the general public is not affected are mistaken. There is no justified reason for the continued increases in gas prices.
There is an economic imbalance in the Oil industry and I’m speaking to you rich ass mother fuckers this imbalance will affect your business as the general public can no longer afford to purchase your products and services. Then I wonder if you will continue to sit back and say nothing about the greed found within the Oil industry. The economy is only a concept, it is Corporate Boards who set prices. This worsening situation is the fault of these irresponsible corporations.
And to you working people that buy the balcony you hear from talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and yes even our beloved President G.W. Bush, the fact of the matter is the oil industry is making profits they ARE NOT reinvesting into technology nor considering a responsibility to the cost incurred by their customers
I know this. It does not take any bit of intelligence to observe on the news that when the price of crude oil is constant or as it goes down the price at the pump continues to rise. The real reasons are black and white. It is the drive for corporate profits.
Checks & Balances Blog will join other organizations in exposing this swindle stealing Americans of our hard earned pay checks. I encourage you to not sit back and simply continue to pay these prices. This is not supply and demand at work. The profit made in the Oil industry is set at the highest of margins. No, let me emphasize NO NO NO NO other industry roll in the profits the oil industry does. So the Hell to proponents of capitalism! Don’t attempt to explain to me that these prices at the pump is simply the market at play.
Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? Gas prices were going up before and after. Seasonal mixes. Scares in Iran. What the hell? There’s always an excuse and the first person you’ll hear it from is the President. What the Hell? Impeach, he no longer is looking out for the public.
My choosing to buy a cheaper bar of soap is free capitalism. But when it comes to gas the consumer has no power. Capitalism fails in this situation. Yes I said, quote me 50 years from now. When it comes to the Oil Industry, CAPITALISM HAS FAILED!
I’m not some crazy left wing ideologue sponsored by some liberal organization. I’m a hard working American citizen that just made a financial choice not to fill my tank while I read headlines of Oil CEO’s retiring literally with a $$Billion bucks in their wallet.
What I believe to be solution; cut the fucking price of gas at the pump. Period (sorry kids).
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
"Nappy Headed Hoes"
Nappy describes hair texture "tightly coiled and or kinky hair. Some believe it was a term created by white people to bring African Americans down like the "n" word '******'.
A Hoe is a derogatory term for a woman, taken to mean that she is malicious, spiteful, domineering, intrusive, unpleasant or sexually promiscuous.
I just had to comment on these remarks by Don Imus. The critics are right Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can go a little over board but this person called hard working female college athletes "nappy headed hoes". Ha Ha, what was he drinking? A reasonable comment for some singers whom I will not mention whom market themselves as such, but these respectable young women didn't deserve this label.
The coach called these racist and sexist remarks. I agree. Go Rutgers!
A Hoe is a derogatory term for a woman, taken to mean that she is malicious, spiteful, domineering, intrusive, unpleasant or sexually promiscuous.
I just had to comment on these remarks by Don Imus. The critics are right Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can go a little over board but this person called hard working female college athletes "nappy headed hoes". Ha Ha, what was he drinking? A reasonable comment for some singers whom I will not mention whom market themselves as such, but these respectable young women didn't deserve this label.
The coach called these racist and sexist remarks. I agree. Go Rutgers!
Update: 04/12/07
Statement from Steve Capus, President, NBC News
Statement from Steve Capus, President, NBC News
MSNBCSource: 11 April 2007
NBC News President Steve Capus released the following statement regarding comments made last week by Don Imus on his radio show regarding the Rutgers University women's basketball team.
Effective immediately, MSNBC will no longer simulcast the "Imus in the Morning" radio program. This decision comes as a result of an ongoing review process, which initially included the announcement of a suspension. It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees. What matters to us most is that the men and women of NBC Universal have confidence in the values we have set for this company. This is the only decision that makes that possible. Once again, we apologize to the women of the Rutgers basketball team and to our viewers. We deeply regret the pain this incident has caused.
WHO'S BEHIND CRIMINAL BOT NETWORKS?
Interesting Tech article. I don't know much about this stuff but why don't anti-spam, virus and spy ware companies assemble teams to target these internet criminals? Also once these hackers demand money to be transfered via bank accounts can't law enforcement cooperate internationally to track down these dudes? It is in the best interest of the online community and e-commerce for government and business to work together and give due attention to this issue.
"Posted: Tuesday, April 10 at 07:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
They have infected perhaps 100 million computers with viruses, turning the PCs around the world into an army of willing criminal assistants known as “bots.” They are using those PCs to send out billions of spam e-mails and make millions of dollars by attacking Web sites and extorting their owners. They have even attacked the core computers that keep the Internet running smoothly. Who are they?
The answer to that question is elusive, but there are a few clues.
In part one of this series, we described the epidemic of hijacked computers that’s swept the Internet. Controlled by malicious programs, the computers are turned into robots, or bots, that are directed by criminals known as bot herders.
Part two looked at how profitable the bot business has become, leading hackers to engage in gang warfare in cyberspace for control of these hijacked computers -- a digital battle that has spilled out onto the Internet’s Main Street.
Today, we examine who is behind these networks of infected computers.
For years, computer hackers typically were precocious, anti-social teen-agers who committed digital violence just to get attention. But computer crime has grown up, and grown into a big business. Now it is used by highly organized gangs to steal millions of dollars.
The top gangs, most agree, are in Russia, Eastern Europe and Brazil, although there also are a few up-and-coming cybercrime syndicates in Asia.
Cybercriminals tend to be talented computer programmers who can make much more money stealing than working, the experts agree. There is so much money to be made in cybercrime that some observers speculate that terrorists are using it to raise money and support their organizations.
Computer security experts disagree on whether terrorists are involved in cybercrime, but there is one sure sign that computer crime has become a much more sober affair: Many experts interviewed for this story shied away from talking about the topic of who’s behind botnets, pointing to concerns for family safety.
"When I got into this, it was kind of a game," said one expert who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now, it's very serious. I wouldn't want my name attached (to comments about the topic)."
That's a new sentiment in an industry that has often been criticized for using hyperbole to generate publicity.
Recruited by professionals
Bot herders are still typically young – perhaps 18 to 25 -- often only a little bit older than a teenage hacker, says David Marcus, security research and communications manager with McAfee. They are nearly always men. And they often live in an area where traditional, big-money computing jobs are difficult to find.
"There are limited ways to make money," he said. "This is the way for them to make a lot." Marcus said he thinks organized crime is behind a lot of bot activity, but Mafiosi aren’t coding Trojan horse programs. Instead, their money funds hacker operations and is used to recruit computer savvy youngsters, he believes.
CLICK FOR RELATED CONTENT
THE LOWDOWN ON 'BOTS'IS YOUR COMPUTER A CRIMINAL?FIVE TIPS TO BOLSTER VISTA SECURITY"They watch for bright kids and they start them on small tasks, like ‘Find me 100 passwords and I'll give you 1,000 rubles,’” he said.
In more aggressive recruitment programs, organized crime will actually pay for a computer geek to get through college, essentially a hacker scholarship, said Marcus.
Some say there are as many as 45,000 different botnets sending out spam and being used for other cybercrimes, but Professor Randy Vaughn of Baylor University said he believes there are as few as six or seven major bot gangs and as few as 1,000 criminals controlling all the infected computers.
“And the number of genuine genius bot programmers is probably much smaller than that,” he said. “In each group there are a few geniuses and there are a bunch of groupies who hang around on the botnet and attempt to gain credibility with the botnet operators.”
The groupies hope to learn enough that they can control their own vast botnets, but in the meantime they act as money handlers or perform other menial tasks for the “genius” programmers, Vaughn said.
E-commerce nightmare. Bot herders aren't necessarily spammers, but the two are often linked, as virtually all spam is now sent from hijacked computers, experts say.
The Spamhaus top 10 list of worst spammers is now populated by Russians, Ukrainians and a Chinese ring.
Craig Schiller, a professor at Portland State University and author of “Botnets: The Killer Web Applications,” said those who designed the Internet wanted a system that would allow buyers and sellers to connect from around the globe. They had no idea that the network would become a platform for global crime, he said.
“This is the e-commerce that people dreamed about but didn't realize it was a nightmare,” said Schiller.
The arrest of three Russian bot herders last year offers a rare glimpse into the world where such nightmares are born.
Three men -- Alexander Petrov, Denis Stepanov and Ivan Maksakov – spent a year terrorizing e-commerce sites as part of a ring of 16 criminals. The ring used armies of computers to overwhelm gambling Web sites and other firms that could ill-afford Internet down time, then extorted money from the operators to halt the traffic flood.
Mikko Hypponen, a security expert at F-Secure, acted as a consultant to one victim, an online CD and DVD retailer. The store eventually paid a ransom of $40,000 to get its site back, he said.
In all, the hackers took in about $3.9 million in payments, according to evidence presented at their trial.
“And many companies invested much, much more paying to build a defense against these attacks,” Hypponen said. Russian media estimated the total damages caused by the group at $79 million.
The ransom money was wired in small amounts to 10 different bank accounts in Riga, Latvia, Hypponen said. So-called “money mules” – middle men who simply help move stolen money from one account to another, usually crossing borders along the way – picked it up from these accounts and wired the money to accounts in St. Petersburg or Moscow.
Another set of mules eventually brought the money to the small city of Balakov in western Russia. It was in Balakov that Maksakov, a 22-year-old student at the Balakov Institute of Engineering, Technology and Management, issued orders for the botnet attacks, according to Russian media reports. But while the orders were given in Balakov, the main computer server that controlled the attack was in Houston.
Russian police nabbed the threesome with the help of Scotland Yard by following the money trail, Hypponen said.
The three Russians were sentenced to eight years apiece in jail by a Balakov court last fall. But Hypponen said most of the gang remains at large, including several suspects in Kazakhstan.
Their exploits don’t rival those of Brazilian gangs, experts say. In 2005, more than 50 Brazilians were arrested after allegedly stealing $33 million with targeted, Trojan horse program that stole online banking passwords.
Domingo Montanaro, a computer forensics expert and banking consultant in Sao Paolo, Brazil, said Internet crime gangs there operate almost with impunity. In a recent case, he said, he helped nab a ring of 100 criminals that had gained access to 10,000 Brazilian bank accounts.
“Criminals in Brazil do some incredible stuff because police cannot fight them anymore,” he said. “They are not even using techniques to hide themselves. We only arrest maybe 3 or 4 percent of them.”
Driven by revenge
Some attacks are driven by revenge as well as financial gain.
Last year, a noted Russian spammer nicknamed PharmaMaster – he usually advertises pharmaceuticals – felt his business was endangered by a Silicon Valley anti-spam startup named Blue Security.
PharmaMaster initiated an attack that crippled Blue Security’s Web site. The firm countered by placing information about the attack on its corporate blog, hosted by popular blog site TypePad, owned by Six Apart Ltd. PharmaMaster then hired a bot herder to conduct a denial-of-service attack that shut down all of Six Apart’s blogs, including those hosted on its Typepad.com service.
Eventually, Blue Security surrendered and got out of the business of anti-spam software.
“PharmaMaster paid $1 million to take out Blue Security,” or about $2,000 an hour for the attack, said Schiller, the Portland State professor. “But (PharmaMaster) was making $3 million a month, so it was worth it.”
At the time, security experts said the Blue Security attack was so severe that only a few of the world’s largest corporations would have been able to withstand it.
Given the power that the bot herders wield, questions inevitably arise about whether terrorists are behind such crimes. There is no clear answer, and security experts are divided on the issue.
Terrorism link?
The discussion was energized by Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan last month, when she issued a report describing the recent arrest of about 50 hackers in Egypt and Lebanon.
“My hypothesis is that the computer brains are still in Russia and Eastern Europe, but some of their operations are being financed by terror organizations. I am hearing that,” she said. “If you were terrorists, wouldn’t you get in touch with these guys?”
Hypponen disagrees, saying there isn’t any evidence that terrorists are playing with bot networks.
“Sure it could happen some day. But I don’t have any information, or even any hearsay, that links this to terrorism,” he said.
There is plenty of evidence that organizations like al-Qaida are willing to use the Internet to get attention or to communicate, counters Schiller.
“I’d be surprised if (terrorists) weren’t using these (botnets),” he said. “In their charters they talk about using terrorism to further their aims. They are inclined to use technology against us; it is a huge force multiplier for them.”
Botnets are indeed a textbook example of a “force multiplier” -- one computer, telling 100 other computers, telling 10,000 others computers to attack someone or something.
That makes it inevitable that terrorists bent on disrupting communications and financial systems will at least attempt to harness their power.
But while terrorism’s link to botnets is tenuous at best, there is no doubt that real-world criminals already are using them to make big money. And given the alarm bells being rung in almost all corners of the computer security world, it seems likely that the botnet problem is going to get worse before it gets better. "
comments welcome
"Posted: Tuesday, April 10 at 07:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
They have infected perhaps 100 million computers with viruses, turning the PCs around the world into an army of willing criminal assistants known as “bots.” They are using those PCs to send out billions of spam e-mails and make millions of dollars by attacking Web sites and extorting their owners. They have even attacked the core computers that keep the Internet running smoothly. Who are they?
The answer to that question is elusive, but there are a few clues.
In part one of this series, we described the epidemic of hijacked computers that’s swept the Internet. Controlled by malicious programs, the computers are turned into robots, or bots, that are directed by criminals known as bot herders.
Part two looked at how profitable the bot business has become, leading hackers to engage in gang warfare in cyberspace for control of these hijacked computers -- a digital battle that has spilled out onto the Internet’s Main Street.
Today, we examine who is behind these networks of infected computers.
For years, computer hackers typically were precocious, anti-social teen-agers who committed digital violence just to get attention. But computer crime has grown up, and grown into a big business. Now it is used by highly organized gangs to steal millions of dollars.
The top gangs, most agree, are in Russia, Eastern Europe and Brazil, although there also are a few up-and-coming cybercrime syndicates in Asia.
Cybercriminals tend to be talented computer programmers who can make much more money stealing than working, the experts agree. There is so much money to be made in cybercrime that some observers speculate that terrorists are using it to raise money and support their organizations.
Computer security experts disagree on whether terrorists are involved in cybercrime, but there is one sure sign that computer crime has become a much more sober affair: Many experts interviewed for this story shied away from talking about the topic of who’s behind botnets, pointing to concerns for family safety.
"When I got into this, it was kind of a game," said one expert who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now, it's very serious. I wouldn't want my name attached (to comments about the topic)."
That's a new sentiment in an industry that has often been criticized for using hyperbole to generate publicity.
Recruited by professionals
Bot herders are still typically young – perhaps 18 to 25 -- often only a little bit older than a teenage hacker, says David Marcus, security research and communications manager with McAfee. They are nearly always men. And they often live in an area where traditional, big-money computing jobs are difficult to find.
"There are limited ways to make money," he said. "This is the way for them to make a lot." Marcus said he thinks organized crime is behind a lot of bot activity, but Mafiosi aren’t coding Trojan horse programs. Instead, their money funds hacker operations and is used to recruit computer savvy youngsters, he believes.
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In more aggressive recruitment programs, organized crime will actually pay for a computer geek to get through college, essentially a hacker scholarship, said Marcus.
Some say there are as many as 45,000 different botnets sending out spam and being used for other cybercrimes, but Professor Randy Vaughn of Baylor University said he believes there are as few as six or seven major bot gangs and as few as 1,000 criminals controlling all the infected computers.
“And the number of genuine genius bot programmers is probably much smaller than that,” he said. “In each group there are a few geniuses and there are a bunch of groupies who hang around on the botnet and attempt to gain credibility with the botnet operators.”
The groupies hope to learn enough that they can control their own vast botnets, but in the meantime they act as money handlers or perform other menial tasks for the “genius” programmers, Vaughn said.
E-commerce nightmare. Bot herders aren't necessarily spammers, but the two are often linked, as virtually all spam is now sent from hijacked computers, experts say.
The Spamhaus top 10 list of worst spammers is now populated by Russians, Ukrainians and a Chinese ring.
Craig Schiller, a professor at Portland State University and author of “Botnets: The Killer Web Applications,” said those who designed the Internet wanted a system that would allow buyers and sellers to connect from around the globe. They had no idea that the network would become a platform for global crime, he said.
“This is the e-commerce that people dreamed about but didn't realize it was a nightmare,” said Schiller.
The arrest of three Russian bot herders last year offers a rare glimpse into the world where such nightmares are born.
Three men -- Alexander Petrov, Denis Stepanov and Ivan Maksakov – spent a year terrorizing e-commerce sites as part of a ring of 16 criminals. The ring used armies of computers to overwhelm gambling Web sites and other firms that could ill-afford Internet down time, then extorted money from the operators to halt the traffic flood.
Mikko Hypponen, a security expert at F-Secure, acted as a consultant to one victim, an online CD and DVD retailer. The store eventually paid a ransom of $40,000 to get its site back, he said.
In all, the hackers took in about $3.9 million in payments, according to evidence presented at their trial.
“And many companies invested much, much more paying to build a defense against these attacks,” Hypponen said. Russian media estimated the total damages caused by the group at $79 million.
The ransom money was wired in small amounts to 10 different bank accounts in Riga, Latvia, Hypponen said. So-called “money mules” – middle men who simply help move stolen money from one account to another, usually crossing borders along the way – picked it up from these accounts and wired the money to accounts in St. Petersburg or Moscow.
Another set of mules eventually brought the money to the small city of Balakov in western Russia. It was in Balakov that Maksakov, a 22-year-old student at the Balakov Institute of Engineering, Technology and Management, issued orders for the botnet attacks, according to Russian media reports. But while the orders were given in Balakov, the main computer server that controlled the attack was in Houston.
Russian police nabbed the threesome with the help of Scotland Yard by following the money trail, Hypponen said.
The three Russians were sentenced to eight years apiece in jail by a Balakov court last fall. But Hypponen said most of the gang remains at large, including several suspects in Kazakhstan.
Their exploits don’t rival those of Brazilian gangs, experts say. In 2005, more than 50 Brazilians were arrested after allegedly stealing $33 million with targeted, Trojan horse program that stole online banking passwords.
Domingo Montanaro, a computer forensics expert and banking consultant in Sao Paolo, Brazil, said Internet crime gangs there operate almost with impunity. In a recent case, he said, he helped nab a ring of 100 criminals that had gained access to 10,000 Brazilian bank accounts.
“Criminals in Brazil do some incredible stuff because police cannot fight them anymore,” he said. “They are not even using techniques to hide themselves. We only arrest maybe 3 or 4 percent of them.”
Driven by revenge
Some attacks are driven by revenge as well as financial gain.
Last year, a noted Russian spammer nicknamed PharmaMaster – he usually advertises pharmaceuticals – felt his business was endangered by a Silicon Valley anti-spam startup named Blue Security.
PharmaMaster initiated an attack that crippled Blue Security’s Web site. The firm countered by placing information about the attack on its corporate blog, hosted by popular blog site TypePad, owned by Six Apart Ltd. PharmaMaster then hired a bot herder to conduct a denial-of-service attack that shut down all of Six Apart’s blogs, including those hosted on its Typepad.com service.
Eventually, Blue Security surrendered and got out of the business of anti-spam software.
“PharmaMaster paid $1 million to take out Blue Security,” or about $2,000 an hour for the attack, said Schiller, the Portland State professor. “But (PharmaMaster) was making $3 million a month, so it was worth it.”
At the time, security experts said the Blue Security attack was so severe that only a few of the world’s largest corporations would have been able to withstand it.
Given the power that the bot herders wield, questions inevitably arise about whether terrorists are behind such crimes. There is no clear answer, and security experts are divided on the issue.
Terrorism link?
The discussion was energized by Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan last month, when she issued a report describing the recent arrest of about 50 hackers in Egypt and Lebanon.
“My hypothesis is that the computer brains are still in Russia and Eastern Europe, but some of their operations are being financed by terror organizations. I am hearing that,” she said. “If you were terrorists, wouldn’t you get in touch with these guys?”
Hypponen disagrees, saying there isn’t any evidence that terrorists are playing with bot networks.
“Sure it could happen some day. But I don’t have any information, or even any hearsay, that links this to terrorism,” he said.
There is plenty of evidence that organizations like al-Qaida are willing to use the Internet to get attention or to communicate, counters Schiller.
“I’d be surprised if (terrorists) weren’t using these (botnets),” he said. “In their charters they talk about using terrorism to further their aims. They are inclined to use technology against us; it is a huge force multiplier for them.”
Botnets are indeed a textbook example of a “force multiplier” -- one computer, telling 100 other computers, telling 10,000 others computers to attack someone or something.
That makes it inevitable that terrorists bent on disrupting communications and financial systems will at least attempt to harness their power.
But while terrorism’s link to botnets is tenuous at best, there is no doubt that real-world criminals already are using them to make big money. And given the alarm bells being rung in almost all corners of the computer security world, it seems likely that the botnet problem is going to get worse before it gets better. "
comments welcome
Will Bush Compromise on Iraq?
Political
Bush urges talks over war funding, warns clock is ticking
Source: Agence France Presse 04/10/2007
FAIRFAX, Virginia, April 10, 2007 (AFP) -
US President George W. Bush on Tuesday invited leading US lawmakers to talks to end a stalemate over funding the unpopular war in Iraq, warning there was no time to lose.
Leading Democrats, while not refusing the invitation outright, said they would reject any talks with preset conditions in the dispute over a war spending bill that includes a schedule for troop pullout from Iraq.
"When it comes to funding our troops, we have no time to waste," Bush said, inviting "leaders from ... both political parties, to meet with me at the White House next week."
"I know we have our differences over the best course. These differences should not prevent us from getting our troops the funding they need," he said during a visit to war veterans in Fairfax, Virginia, close to Washington.
Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, are trying to end the war in Iraq by tying military funding to a withdrawal of US troops in 2008.
The House and Senate, which have both passed bills with different deadlines, must iron out the differences between their bills and send one to the president for his signature to become law.
With Iraq this week marking the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would reject any talks with preset conditions.
"The president is inviting us to the White House with preconditions. It's not the way we should operate. He must deal with Congress, we are an independent branch of government," Reid said.
The White House was careful to make clear that the invitation did not signal any readiness to compromise, and Bush repeated his vow to veto any legislation that ties release of war spending funds to a timetable for troop withdrawal.
"We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill, a bill that funds our troops, without an artificial timetable for withdrawal and without handcuffing our generals on the ground," Bush said.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino stressed that the president's invitation was "not a meeting in order to compromise."
"This is a meeting to discuss the way forward. Because the Democrats have to admit that they don't have the votes to override the president's veto. And at the same time they say that they want to fund the troops," she added.
"Maybe they need to hear again from the president about ... why he thinks that it is foolish to set arbitrary timetables for withdrawal."
In a joint statement Reid issued with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they said "any discussion of an issue as critical as Iraq must be accomplished by conducting serious negotiations without any preconditions.
"The president is demanding we renew his blank check for war without end ... we renew our request to work with him to produce a bipartisan bill that provides our troops and our veterans with every penny they need, but in turn, demands accountability."
Perino called the Democrats' statement "a knee-jerk reaction that's unfortunate."
Bush has called on a skeptical public to give his new "surge" strategy time to work, saying the commanders on the ground in Iraq were already seeing "encouraging signs" that an extra 25,000 troops being deployed in the country were helping to secure Baghdad.
"The Democrats who pass these bills know that I'll veto them, and they know that this veto will be sustained. Yet they continue to pursue the legislation. And as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field," Bush warned.
He said the military would soon notify Congress, which holds the power of the purse, that the army would need to transfer 1.6 billion dollars from other military accounts to cover the shortfall.
This was on top of 1.7 billion dollars already transferred in March, the president said.
If by May no bill on funding the war has been passed into law, the army could have to slow or freeze funding for depots where equipment is repaired and mull a delay to military training programs, Bush said.
"These actions are only the beginning. And the longer Congress delays, the worse the impact on the men and women of the armed forces will be," Bush said.
Bush urges talks over war funding, warns clock is ticking
Source: Agence France Presse 04/10/2007
FAIRFAX, Virginia, April 10, 2007 (AFP) -
US President George W. Bush on Tuesday invited leading US lawmakers to talks to end a stalemate over funding the unpopular war in Iraq, warning there was no time to lose.
Leading Democrats, while not refusing the invitation outright, said they would reject any talks with preset conditions in the dispute over a war spending bill that includes a schedule for troop pullout from Iraq.
"When it comes to funding our troops, we have no time to waste," Bush said, inviting "leaders from ... both political parties, to meet with me at the White House next week."
"I know we have our differences over the best course. These differences should not prevent us from getting our troops the funding they need," he said during a visit to war veterans in Fairfax, Virginia, close to Washington.
Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, are trying to end the war in Iraq by tying military funding to a withdrawal of US troops in 2008.
The House and Senate, which have both passed bills with different deadlines, must iron out the differences between their bills and send one to the president for his signature to become law.
With Iraq this week marking the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would reject any talks with preset conditions.
"The president is inviting us to the White House with preconditions. It's not the way we should operate. He must deal with Congress, we are an independent branch of government," Reid said.
The White House was careful to make clear that the invitation did not signal any readiness to compromise, and Bush repeated his vow to veto any legislation that ties release of war spending funds to a timetable for troop withdrawal.
"We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill, a bill that funds our troops, without an artificial timetable for withdrawal and without handcuffing our generals on the ground," Bush said.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino stressed that the president's invitation was "not a meeting in order to compromise."
"This is a meeting to discuss the way forward. Because the Democrats have to admit that they don't have the votes to override the president's veto. And at the same time they say that they want to fund the troops," she added.
"Maybe they need to hear again from the president about ... why he thinks that it is foolish to set arbitrary timetables for withdrawal."
In a joint statement Reid issued with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they said "any discussion of an issue as critical as Iraq must be accomplished by conducting serious negotiations without any preconditions.
"The president is demanding we renew his blank check for war without end ... we renew our request to work with him to produce a bipartisan bill that provides our troops and our veterans with every penny they need, but in turn, demands accountability."
Perino called the Democrats' statement "a knee-jerk reaction that's unfortunate."
Bush has called on a skeptical public to give his new "surge" strategy time to work, saying the commanders on the ground in Iraq were already seeing "encouraging signs" that an extra 25,000 troops being deployed in the country were helping to secure Baghdad.
"The Democrats who pass these bills know that I'll veto them, and they know that this veto will be sustained. Yet they continue to pursue the legislation. And as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field," Bush warned.
He said the military would soon notify Congress, which holds the power of the purse, that the army would need to transfer 1.6 billion dollars from other military accounts to cover the shortfall.
This was on top of 1.7 billion dollars already transferred in March, the president said.
If by May no bill on funding the war has been passed into law, the army could have to slow or freeze funding for depots where equipment is repaired and mull a delay to military training programs, Bush said.
"These actions are only the beginning. And the longer Congress delays, the worse the impact on the men and women of the armed forces will be," Bush said.
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