by Last Night in Little Rock

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has had an ongoing series: FEMA: A Legacy of Waste. They have a new entry today.

The Bush Administration earlier admitted in Congressional testimony posted on its own website that the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency is an "oversized entitlement program." The Sun-Sentinel investigation shows that is exactly how the Bush Administration treated it, doling out money to people not even harmed in storms, to cities not even touched by storms, and on and on.

by TChris

In a story that could have been entitled "Stupid Arrest of the Year," TalkLeft reported the plight of a 73-year-old diabetic grandmother and church elder who was arrested for allegedly looting sausages in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In defiance of the Constitution's prohibition of excessive bail, the woman's bail was set at $50,000. Her long overdue release from custody speaks to the power of the press:

Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private attorney, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.

Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press story, a local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance, setting up a sweet reunion with her daughter, grandchildren and 80-year-old husband.

Look for this prosecution to disappear quietly. A witness attests that the charge is bogus.

Outrage of the day: a 73-year old woman has been kept in jail on a $50,000 bond in New Orleans for looting $63.00 in sausages. To top it off, she says she's innocent.

Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000. Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

Family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat but was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store. Not even the deli owner wants her charged.

Read the whole thing, this is just crazy. She's now being held in the state prison.

by TChris

Douglas Dowd asks whether this description of the "New South," written in 1940, applies to the nation as a whole today:

Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too narrow concept of social responsibiity, attachment to fictions and false values..., too great an attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism... .

Dowd's answer, informed by history and current events, is here.

Via Steve Audio: The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights has sued Tyson Foods for maintaining segregrated bathrooms in its work area.

A lawsuit filed today alleges that Tyson Foods, Inc. is responsible for maintaining a segregated bathroom and break room, reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, in its Ashland, Alabama chicken processing plant. Twelve African-American employees filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, alleging that a “Whites Only” sign and a padlock denied them access to a bathroom in the Ashland plant. The complaint states that numerous white employees had keys to the bathroom that were not provided to African-American workers.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times today has an article entitled Disasters Waiting to Happen about the deteriorating levee system south of San Francisco Bay that keeps the Bay back and salt water out of the drinking water of millions of people in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The Chicago Tribune today has a classic editorial by John Kass: "Mother's remark puts silver foot in Bush's mouth."

by Last Night in Little Rock

George W. Bush "wanted posters" are available at CafePress (shirts), here, and here, for crimes against humanity.

And that was before he and his feckless lackies shamelessly scre**d the pooch on Katrina and still can't admit what the rest of the world already knows: George Bush is an insensitive punk who would sell out his own citizens for political gain, unless, of course, they are fat cat contributors to the Republican Party or the precious group of the rich that got tax refunds at the expense of the New Orleans levee project. In other words, less than 1% of the people, and the other 99% can be duped into voting for "homeland security." What a farce. Watching the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency is like watching a Three Stooges movie. If I wasn't so pissed, I would cry.

by TChris

If you steal a bottle of vitamins from Wal-Mart, you get prosecuted for a crime. If multinational drug companies steal hundreds of millions of dollars from California by overcharging for medicine, they get sued in a civil action. Seem fair?

Attorney General Bill Lockyer charged that the drug makers, including some of the world's leading pharmaceutical concerns, defrauded the state's Medi-Cal system for at least the past decade. ... "We're dragging these drug companies into the court of law because they're gouging the public on basic life necessities," Mr. Lockyer said at a news conference here. "This scheme has cost California taxpayers potentially hundreds of millions of dollars and is jeopardizing the public health by diverting money away from patient care."

Mr. Lockyer said that each of the companies made as much as $40 million a year in illegal profits. He said he hoped to recover that amount plus the triple damages allowed under the state's false claims act.

by TChris

Joseph Califano Jr. misses the point when he claims, “If you don’t reduce the use of marijuana, you can't possibly reduce illegal drug use because marijuana is far and away the most used drug.” Of course it is. It is among the safest of illicit drugs, and millions of world-wide tokers have learned that responsible use will not adversely affect their lives. Not only is it possible to “reduce illegal drug use” while largely ignoring marijuana use, it should be the government’s priority to help individuals reduce their reliance on drugs that have the greatest potential for dangerous abuse.

John Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, makes the same mistake when he tells reporters: “The issue here is not meth or marijuana. We’re concerned about substance abuse generally.” If we’re to take our drug policy seriously, shouldn’t reduction efforts be most closely targeted to the most dangerous drugs?

Focusing resources on marijuana users is wasteful. Between snacking and napping, pot smokers have little time (and even less energy) to rip apart the social fabric. If the government were serious in its desire to address actual (rather than imagined) social harm, it would direct its attention to predatory lenders.

by TChris

Our Justice Department at work: When a federal judge rules against the government, don’t bother to comply with the judge’s rulings. Just look for another judge.

Nine years ago, native Americans sued the Interior Department, alleging that the department had mismanaged royalties from their lands for a century. Their complaints are bolstered by congressional findings that the department had failed to make an adequate accounting of 260,000 Indian trust accounts containing $400 million, and by Sen. John McCain, who says the government “never really even made any serious attempt at keeping track of the revenues” it owed to native Americans.

District Judge Royce Lamberth, presiding over the ligitation, has been critical of the Interior Department’s failure to account for the money it owes to tribes. The Justice Department faults Judge Lamberth for holding Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt of court and for reminding the government that it has a shameful history of swindling native Americans.

This is a little off topic for me, but I got this e-mail, and wanted to share it. Just another reason the Republicans should not be in charge.

My 20 year old was diagnosed with Manic-Depression at the age of 8 years old. For the past 12 years he had been on 9 medications a day to maintain a reasonable level of stability. In June of 2005 his Doctor placed him on a new anti-convulsant/mood stabilizer along with an atypical antipsychotic that achieved a level of stability and functioning we had not seen in the last 12 years.

I went to refill his medication on July 19 , 2005 and much to my surprise, dismay and disbelief Medicaid refused to cover this Medically necessary drug , which by the way ran $130.00 for a 20 day supply. I spoke to our pharmacist, and my son's doctor, only to find out that even they had no for warning as to this Medication being on the list of No Longer Covered medications with Medicaid....

My son's doctor even applied for Medicaid authorization as Medically necessary for my son. He was promptly refused by Medicaid. It absolutely amazes me that a politician can make medical decisions of such proportions that can and will affect many people in a very negative way.

My son has gone from 9 medications a day down to 2 a day with the most impressive results and increase of functioning we have seen. I am totally in shock. This new medication has made it possible for my son to become a productive functioning member of society.

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