"Crimes against humanity In America"

Thursday, March 10, 2005

"Crimes Against Humanity in America"

....So I don’t get it, if you were at a hospital with an operation – with operating room not having the money to sterilize the scalpel and instrumentation –you would expect everyone with a license to report the problem to the state authorities –let alone the threat a huge legal suit.

So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.

I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.

We killed Dontel Jeffers

By Peter Pollard March 16, 2005


I AM RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dontel Jeffers. Not because of any act of violence I committed against the 4-year-old boy who died in foster care in Dorchester on March 6. I never met him or even heard his name until his death.

I am responsible for the death of Dontel Jeffers because of my silence.

After serving 14 years as a frontline social worker for the Department of Social Services, I know his death is the direct, predictable result of a system overburdened, underfunded, and largely ignored, except when a tragedy involving an abused or neglected child erupts in the headlines. Then, as a community, we look for somewhere to point a finger of blame.

I'll start with me.

For 14 years, I struggled with my colleagues at DSS, many of whom had dedicated their entire working lives, committed to the seemingly impossible task of protecting children from physical, emotional, and sexual violence and neglect. In most instances, by the time families came to our notice, the children were already seriously harmed. Our efforts to help were stymied by severely limited funding for therapy, nearly nonexistent pediatric psychiatric services, courts so clogged that trials to determine a child's future often stretched out for more than a year, and a foster-care crisis so dire that good homes are drowned in placements, and that the temptation to accept mediocre caregivers has become too great to resist.

DSS is so overwhelmed with casualties, it is reduced to operating like a field hospital, making triage decisions on small children's lives. But as a social worker, I felt we were the frontline defense, doing our best with what we'd been given. So I'll admit that when I had misgivings about a foster home or a residential placement or a hospital discharge, I often saw no choice but to accept quietly what I knew was inadequate. And though lack of alternatives was a factor, I'm embarrassed to admit that that calculation inevitably also included loyalty to the system, to my coworkers, and fear of the personal consequences of rocking the boat.

But I should have been shouting, openly declaring that those inadequacies threatened the very children we were trying to help.

I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are thousands of social workers, agency managers, community mental health workers, foster parents, judges, police and probation officers, attorneys, and teachers who every day see firsthand the evidence of the gradual diminishment in these already victimized children's lives.

Each in his own way has accepted the limitations of the system, passing from anger to frustration to resignation to quiet defeat. They should be shouting too, declaring that our refusal to do more is in fact society's crime of neglect.

As adults, we pay lip service to our commitment to keep children safe. But we don't have the courage to really face the depth of their vulnerability or the enormity of our failure. If you want proof, try breaking the silence by bringing up child abuse at a social gathering. Collectively, we've handed that ugly topic over to someone else. We've horribly shirked our personal responsibility to protect Dontel Jeffers and thousands like him who are our neighbors.

For Dontel, it's too late. But as a community, we should be openly declaring our willingness to open our eyes and our hearts to provide the enormous resources required to save the others. Effective early intervention could ultimately bring huge benefits in the form of well-functioning families and curtailed cycles of violence, sexual abuse, homelessness, and substance abuse. But the investment has to be made because it's right, not just because it's cost effective.

I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are you.


Peter Pollard, a social worker for 14 years at the Department of Social Services, is a graduate student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.


© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
GLOBE EDITORIAL
Questions on a tragedy
March 16, 2005
THE DEATH of Dontel Jeffers, a 4-year-old foster child, remains under investigation. One investigator has cited signs that the boy was beaten. Regardless of whether the March 6 death, in Dorchester, is ruled accidental or the result of a criminal act, it is fair to ask if the tragedy was the result of a system failure within the Department of Social Services and its orbit of private contractors or was an extraordinary occurrence.

Oversight did break down in at least one area. Normally, both a DSS social worker and a social worker associated with the private provider of specialized foster care services would visit the foster home within about a week of placement. DSS Commissioner Harry Spence says a DSS social worker had arranged such a meeting for March 2, but the foster mother canceled the visit. No visit had been conducted by the foster care contract agency Massachusetts Mentor, according to Spence.

Jeffers suffered from emotional disabilities and had been placed in so-called therapeutic foster care on Feb. 24 with a 24-year-old foster mother who also cared for her own toddler. Nothing about the foster mother raised red flags, according to Spence. Before taking Jeffers into her home, the foster mother had received training to deal with emotionally disturbed children from Massachusetts Mentor, the DSS contractor specializing in out-of-home and in-home care for the disabled. The foster mother passed a criminal background check and had cared for foster children on eight other occasions, according to Spence.

There is no way to know if a timely home visit might have revealed potential for danger. But the rationale for contracting out specialized home care to private providers like Massachusetts Mentor is based, largely, on the better staff-to-client ratios and administrative supports found in the private social service agencies. If private providers fail to perform up to par in areas like home visits, the Legislature should consider bringing the tougher foster care cases back under the roof of DSS.

While the Jeffers investigation continues, the governor and Legislature should also be thinking about how best to serve the state's 11,000 foster care children, including the roughly 3,000 emotionally disturbed youngsters who require specialized foster care in home settings. Right now, it is possible for a foster care parent who is found unfit by one contractor to affiliate with a new agency with little fear that the records will follow, although no evidence has surfaced that this applied to the Jeffers case. But access to records is a key area for reform.

Budget cuts in recent years also hurt efforts to recruit new foster parents, as do low per diem payments.

The investigation is ongoing, and so should the efforts to improve the quality of foster care in Massachusetts.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Historic Housing Bubble -Reuters

We got to figure out what broadly happens in real estate price rises -what does the home owner do with it-is it saved in the the appreaciation or used to boost credit card debt or consumer purchasing. What's the relationship is real estate price rises, debt and maintianing the economy -what %?



March 10, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Five Years Later and Still FloatingBy JAMES GRANT

ODAY marks the fifth anniversary of the peak of the great millennial stock market. What were you doing when the lights began to dim? Were you a bull or a bear? Rich or otherwise?

What about today? Are you inoculated against the new alleged sure things? Or perhaps you believe in the permanent hegemony of the dollar in the world's currency markets? In the inevitability of rising house prices? Or of falling interest rates? Answer true or false: the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is clairvoyant.

From the March 2000 top to the October 2002 trough, the United States stock market gave up more than half of its quoted value, some $9.2 trillion. Five years ago today, Cisco Systems was the world's biggest company by market capitalization. Its line of business, the computer networking business, was universally heralded as the industry of the future. Owners of Cisco still devoutly hope it is. They have lost 75 percent of their investment.

Americans hate to lose, especially when it comes to money, and they've demanded an accounting of the misdeeds of the bubble era. A certain number of former chief executives, like Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom, have had to answer the charges against them in court. And Congress, in 2002, overhauled and stiffened the nation's securities laws. But the chairman, governors and staff of the Federal Reserve have yet to be called to account.

Booms and busts are recurrent in history and in nations. In not every episode was there a culpable central bank. But in virtually every case, there was a clever neighbor. The unbearable sight of a neighbor getting rich in the stock market in the late 1990's made millions of Americans bipolar. Shopping at Wal-Mart, they would pay any price except full retail. Investing in the stock market, however, they would pay nothing but.

By the late 1990's, stocks had lost any connection to the value of the businesses in which they represented partial ownership. Picture an artful consumer settling into a discounted hotel room for the night. Now try to imagine this savvy individual formulating a calculated financial decision to make a meal of the $10 cashews and the $6 candy bars on sale in the hotel minibar. That was Wall Street a half decade ago.

And, to a lesser but still striking degree, it is still Wall Street today - and Main Street, too. The Federal Reserve did not stand idly by after the bubble burst. It radically reduced the interest rate it controls (the so-called federal funds rate), pushing it from 6.5 percent in May 2000 to 1 percent by June 2003. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed, had worried about a stock market bubble as early as 1995, had warned against "irrational exuberance" in 1996, and batted around the possibility that there might, indeed, be a stock-market bubble in discussions with his Federal Reserve colleagues as late as 1999.

But he was not the man to stick a pin in the bubble. Indeed, he himself became a vociferous booster of the "New Economy." In a speech he gave only four days before the Nasdaq touched its high, he sounded as if he were working for Merrill Lynch, cheering that "the capital spending boom is still going strong." Should the boom turn to bust, the chairman had testified before Congress less than a year before, the Fed would "mitigate the fallout when it occurs and, hopefully, ease the transition to the next expansion."

In so many words, Mr. Greenspan promised that the Fed would make money cheaper and more plentiful than it would otherwise be. He would override the market's judgment with his own. Nobody in earshot quoted the words of the German central banker Hjalmar Schacht, who protested in 1927: "Don't give me a low rate. Give me a true rate, and then I shall know how to put my house in order." Someone should have. Interest rates are the traffic lights of a market economy. To investors, they signal when to go and when to stop. Under the Fed's bubble recovery program, every interest-rate light turned green.

With no lights flashing red or even amber, investors sped through the financial intersections. They paid more for houses, office buildings and junk bonds than they would have if interest rates were not hugging 40-year lows. The proliferation of dollars helped to lift the stock market out of its doldrums - though the doldrums of 2002 were singularly shallow ones. In comparison to earlier bear market lows, bargains were scarce on the ground (by March 2000, stocks were uniquely overvalued; never before had a dollar of corporate earnings been so costly to buy). At the checkout counter, inflation was well-nigh invisible. On Wall Street, however, it was - and still is - on the rise.

To hear Mr. Greenspan tell it in 1999, post-bubble damage control was as simple as cutting interest rates. He passed lightly over the possible consequences of the rates he cut. The list so far includes a bubble-like housing market (geographically localized but ferocious), an overheated debt market (this one spans the globe) and a steady depreciation in the foreign exchange value of the dollar. Consuming much more than it produces, the United States emits hundreds of billions of greenbacks into the world's payment stream every year - about $600 billion in 2004. The recipients of these dollars willingly invest them in American assets if the price is right. On the evidence of the dollar's decline, the price - the available rate of return - is too low.

Ultra-low interest rates not only serve to inflate the value of bonds, stocks and real estate. They also entice investors in those assets to employ the elixir called "leverage." Leverage means debt. Borrowing at 2.5 percent, a speculator can invest at 3 percent and still make a handsome living - if he or she can be sure when 2.5 percent might be raised to 2.75 percent or 3 percent.

The Fed is happy to oblige. Forswearing the element of surprise in its policy actions, it has told the market exactly what it proposes to do. Paying close attention, professional investors, including thousands of hedge funds, have borrowed fearlessly. A little fear would help to improve the quality of financial stewardship.

"A stock well bought is half sold," said the Wall Street ancients. What they meant is that success in investing depends on one's entry price. As Congress debates an overhaul of Social Security to permit tax-advantaged saving by millions of new investors, a passage from the new Berkshire Hathaway annual report warrants attention. "We don't enjoy sitting on $43 billion of cash equivalents that are earning paltry returns," writes Warren Buffett, Berkshire's chairman. "Instead, we yearn to buy more fractional interests similar to those we now own or - better still - more large businesses outright. We will do either, however, only when purchases can be made at prices that offer us the prospect of a reasonable return on our investment."
Five years later, the bubble is still unpopped.

James Grant, the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, is the author of "John Adams: Party of One."

Historic Housing Bubble -Reuters

The Wall Street Journal speaks of a "Real Estate Foreign Affair" in 3/9 B section, talks of the dollar devaluation and the massive foreign purchase of American real estate -that is inflating American real estate.



UPDATE 1-American household wealth surges to new record—Fed

Thu Mar 10, 2005 01:05 PM ET

By Laura MacInnis

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - Rising real estate prices and a resurgent U.S. stock market pushed the net wealth of American households to a record $48.53 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2004, the Federal Reserve said on Thursday.

In its quarterly "Flow of Funds" report, the central bank said household balance sheet values rose nearly $2 trillion above $46.59 trillion in the third quarter. U.S. household net worth pierced a new record in each of 2004's four quarters.

Higher values for real estate, equities and mutual funds led the fourth quarter net worth jump, the Fed said. Pension fund reserves and Treasury securities also posted big gains.

Residential real estate prices, boosted by historically low mortgage loan costs, continued to rise in the fourth quarter to $17.165 trillion and contributed to the gain in wealth.

Household balance sheets also benefited from buoyant stock markets in the period. The S&P 500 index gained nearly 8.7 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial index rose 7.7 percent and the Nasdaq was up 14.7 percent in the fourth quarter, Reuters data showed.

Net worth figures are not adjusted for seasonal factors.

Elsewhere in the report, the Fed said borrowing outside the financial sector rose at a seasonally adjusted 8.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the same rate as in the prior three months. Third quarter non-financial debt was first reported growing a weaker 7.4 percent rate.

For 2004 as a whole, the Fed said debt incurred by households, non-financial businesses and the federal and local governments rose 8.5 percent compared with 8.0 percent in 2003.

The total level of U.S. non-financial debt outstanding at the end of 2004 was $24.2 trillion, the Fed said, of which government debt made up $4.4 trillion.

Household debt grew 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter after a 11.5 percent expansion in the earlier period. The Fed said the quarterly deceleration reflected slower growth in mortgage debt and consumer credit.

Household debt increased 11 percent for 2004 as a whole, compared with a 10 percent gain in 2003, the Fed said. It attributed the 2004 pickup to higher demand for mortgage debt, as well as a slight rise in consumer credit. (Additional reporting by Michael Flaherty in New York)
Reuters 2005

"Crimes Against Humanity in America"

....So I don’t get it, if you were at a hospital with an operation – with operating room not having the money to sterilize the scalpel and instrumentation –you would expect everyone with a license to report the problem to the state authorities –let alone the threat a huge legal suit.


So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.


I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.


Article published Mar 10, 2005



Missing point on mental health

An article in the Herald dated Feb. 18, indicates that many are still taking bites out of the cute and harmless "Crazy for You" bear. I don't know if it is a peculiarly American trait or if we just raise it to an art form: grab onto a simplistic symbol or an inaccurate sound bite, blow it out of proportion and make it the focus of anger and debate, thereby missing the big picture.

I continue to struggle with mental illness, and I have received treatment in the Rutland area. Several years ago while participating in a treatment program at Rutland Mental Health, it was apparent that a dedicated management and staff were working very hard to provide optimum patient care on an inadequate budget. While at the Rutland Regional Medical Center for stabilization, I observed patients whose options for extended or follow-up care were severely limited by availability and affordability. A number of these patients had no choice but to return to the same situations that had exacerbated their conditions in the first place. In both of these cases the caregivers were dedicated, and the patients were trying hard. There are simply large gaps in mental health programs. Isn't this a better reason for discussion, anger and action than a toy?

If you want to discuss corporate business ethics, sensitivity and connection to communities, may I suggest you focus on whether companies treat their employees with respect by providing living wage, adequate and affordable health care and reasonable retirement benefits?

If you need a research project, may I suggest you investigate whether possible changes in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or other components of the social safety net may make an already tenuous mental health situation even worse.

To focus attention on a stuffed bear presented for sale with tongue firmly planted in check is akin to criticizing the color of the life boats on the Titanic while ignoring the fact there are too few of them.

LEONARD M. POWERS Jr.

Rutland Herald


Article published Mar 10, 2005

VSEA wants mental health change in jails

MONTPELIER — The union for Vermont's government workers is calling for mental health services in Vermont's prisons to be performed by state workers rather than a private contractor.

The Vermont State Employees' Association's proposal, which is expected to be unveiled later this week, charges that the private company that has the contract is not performing adequately and might be charging too much.

An economic analysis by the association found that the company, run by Dr. Paul Cotton, is getting nearly $1.2 million in surplus profit over the three-year contract — in addition to the 11 percent profit typical for Vermont health care providers.

The contract is for $5.1 million over that term.

"We feel delivery of services is not adequate," said Nicole Dewing, a lobbyist for VSEA who drafted the proposal.

Corrections officers, whom the union represents, are left to deal with mentally ill prisoners and are not given training the contractor is supposed to provide, Dewing said.

"Our members are very unhappy with services they provide to the inmates," she said. "Services are not prompt. (Officers) are left dealing with the mentally ill inmates … which they have not been trained for."

John Hollar, an attorney for Cotton, said that allegation is unsubstantiated.

"They have consistently done training at the facilities," he said.

Training needs to be balanced against the need for mental health services, but if the Department of Corrections asks for more training of officers it will get it, he said.

"We are not aware of any concern from the department on any lack of training," Hollar said. "There is an enormous need within the Corrections Department for patient care."

Last month, Cotton's Burlington-based company had 2,500 patient contacts with inmates, Hollar said.

"It's just an enormous volume of patients that they see," he said.

VSEA and its members are not the only ones who have had problems with the company. A 2004 audit by then-state auditor Elizabeth Ready found that the company and its predecessor had billed for services that were never provided. The company returned $143,000 in a settlement with the state.

Changes in the contract with the company cleared up those issues, which centered on whether the company was billing for a 40-hour work week or less than that, Hollar said. He is not aware of any other systemic billing issues between the company and the state, he said.

But some are not so sure.

Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, said he first became aware of problems with mental health services in the prisons after an inmate's suicide.

"Prior to that, there had been all kind of warning sings," Illuzzi said.

Corrections officers, prisoners and inmate advocates all told him about widespread problems in mental health services, and he is still getting such calls, he said.

"What has changed is a reasonable question," Illuzzi said. "Why has the department continued to contract with the same provider when it was determined that payments were received and services not provided? It strikes me as (though), despite the investigation, nothing has substantially changed."

Robert Hofmann, who recently became commissioner of corrections, said he will study the mental health contract and how services are provided.

"This is an area that I am very interested in understanding more about," he said. "There are scores of issues, and there are probably a dozen or 15 top issues … I would put this as one of those I need to review and I am anxious to do so."

The questions about the mental health contract arise as another prison health contract is also generating controversy.

The New York Times recently ran stories on problems and alleged abuses by a for-profit company, Prison Health Services.

That company recently won a contract to provide health care in Vermont jails.

"We certainly are aware of the accusations in the New York Times report," Hofmann said.

The contract with Prison Health Services has a series of safeguards and oversight provisions, he said.

"We already were geared up to oversee this much more actively than any other contract I am aware of," he said.

Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.

The connection between Hinsdale’s Monument road and Manhattan’s Bowery Street –A nation’s disgrace

http://villagevoice.com/

An Elegy for the Bowery

The Last Days of Loserville Once home to hustlers, drunks, and bohemians, America's slummiest street has turned into a new millionaire's row

by Joy Press March 1st, 2005 1:01 PM


….It's just a construction site now, girders and planks strewn on the floor. Instead of giant picture windows and balconies, there are unfinished walls and a sheer drop. But use your imagination: In a few months, this will be a glorious 16th-floor penthouse, complete with panoramic views, Sub-Zero fridge, and Italian bathroom fixtures. For $4.4 million, you can hover over all of downtown Manhattan like some kind of god, absorbing the sunlight that once flowed west down Spring Street. You can gaze down upon the crumbling tenements far below you, the lamp stores, the scrawny men who shuffle in and out of the flophouse next door. Your address is 195 Bowery and you are part of the transformation of a street once synonymous with bleak failure into a new millionaire's row….

See also the “The Endangered Garden” and “The Last of the Mohicans” articles in Loserville.

http://www.ij.org/private_pr
property_backgrounder.html


Coveting Thy Neighbor's Land in New London


……In early 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it would build a $270 million research facility in New London. [2] Pfizer bought the land along the Thames River from the State for $10 million. The company and other development groups associated with the project are slated to receive at least $118.2 million in federal and state subsidies over 13 years….

What you should remember NYC’s mayor Rudy Guliani’s policy of taking vagrants off the streets –which translates into our present high percentage of our jail population being the mentally disable –many term it as our American Gulag.


....Well, I was out there at my Hinsdale post office protesting the construction and debris incineration plant on this beautiful blue-sky morning. Again, I am wondering what the meaning of this is for all of NE –indeed for the nation. What economic and national political factors are driving this –what sector of the population benefits?

Many people think we are in an unsustainable economic bubble with housing shortages and unbelievable housing prices increasing –and just check out the construction materials (like plywood and cement) price spikes and shortage. We got record-breaking housing starts –and we got heavy turbulence for the middle and poor class with housing affordability. I guess the free market is broken here. You understand what I saying –you work hard and play by the rules –this doesn’t mean you are going to have an enriching life with adequate time for your family.

What you got is living further distances from your job, and we are all living more time in our cars because of inadequate investment in our educational and transportation infrastructures –and a higher risk of having a traffic accident. Let alone insurance prices are rising also… What we got here friends, is building Saddam Hussein like Mac-palaces for a segment of our population –and I might add, through there influences, they are removing human dignity to an enormous percentage of our population. We are building Hussein like palaces in the USA –instead of building schools, roads, and electrical infrastructure projects. You understand where this is going, is we are giving unprecedented tax and investments breaks to our higher incomes –and the results of this excess capital to the rich is undermining the dreams of our democracy to the middle and poor class. Do not kid yourself –the democrats are up to there neck with this corruption, as with the republicans.

According to the New York Times, metro New York City is seeing a historic building boom leading to a revolutionary change in the city’s skyline on the big buildings. Many areas in the city are seeing massive reconstruction of old buildings into new upscale housing. Check out the apartment and housing price increases in Bill Clinton’s Harlem in NYC. The middle class cannot afford any of this housing –they are seeing this throughout the big city NE. New Jersey is seeing a 30% increase in real-estate prices a year –what is the % rise of your raise this year?

So the question is what are the economic drivers of the increasing demand for the need of construction and debris removal industry. What is the magnitude of the increase in the future for this need? What are the percentage increases from all of the areas? Who profits most from the explosion of real-estate appreciation –who are the losers?

We are seeing a developing national slow motion catastrophe; where most of our young children will never be able to afford their own homes -let along afford a roof over their heads. Fundamentally, we are seeing a huge failure of our free market to provide a space for our young children within basic human rights to “be free” –we are enslaving the younger generation and the poor, in housing price and rental bondage. This is an unprecedented failure of the American dream for the next generation –and it is a direct threat to our national unity and structure.

I think what you will be seeing is huge run-up in housing prices driving construction materials price spikes –leading to a collapse in the housing sector, leading to mind numbing scandals and bankruptcies when the collapse comes. Are we already seeing that, with Fanny May and Freddy Mac, where our elites and CEO compensation with a lack of morality; the corruption and lying becomes the prime driver of our national cultural ethics and morality in the management of our nation’s housing needs and economic development? Is it all about an elite game of self interest that is undermining national cohesiveness?

It questions corruption on a massive national scale; it questions all of our conscience with facilitating this inhumanity, seeing how the management of housing policies comes from “We the People”. This questions the basic human dignity needs of adequate housing for all of us -if even one human lack dignity on this planet, then we all our lacking in some dignity within ourselves. The few of us are bulldozering unconscionable profits at the expense of basic human rights.

This is becoming “bigger” a than an Enron style scandal, where the elites our gaming the rules of the electric grid and withholding the use of many power plants to increase electric prices –where all our politicians gain advantage from the housing shortage and increasing prices –where our housing policy and local rules are facilitating this unsustainable pyramid scheme.

Why don’t we just turn our Constitution into a money making endeavor –where everyone gets to purchase freedom through a set price –we would have the fairest democracy in the world, with setting a transparent price on human dignity?

So what is the real story with the increasing needs of the construction and debris incineration/dump industry telling us; what is the magnitude telling us?

My friends, though the incineration controversy in Hinsdale NH, we are watching the making of history on a breath taking national scale.

It just might indicate that human dignity is for sale through the action of our governmental housing policies and the powers of our elites to enslave the majority of us.


An Elegy for the Bowery:
· Noise on Music Central From minstrelsy to vaudeville and Monk to punk, never under-estimate urban ugliness By Robert Christgau

· Mose Is Back in Town By Toni Schlesinger

· The Endangered Garden AvalonBay makes concessions, but will Liz Christy's trees and plants survive? By Danial Adkison

· The Last of the Mohicans Searching for a place to flop on what was once skid row By Darren Reidy


http://www.ij.org/private_property/connecticut/con_
property_backgrounder.html


Coveting Thy Neighbor's Land in New London


……In early 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it would build a $270 million research facility in New London. [2] Pfizer bought the land along the Thames River from the State for $10 million. The company and other development groups associated with the project are slated to receive at least $118.2 million in federal and state subsidies over 13 years….

….But the New London City Council authorized the NLDC to use eminent domain to force Fort Trumbull residents to give up their homes and businesses. The NLDC remains unapologetic about the use of eminent domain to accomplish its redevelopment plan. As former NLDC President Claire Gaudiani, who initiated the destruction of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, said in a speech to higher education and civic leaders justifying the NLDC's actions in Fort Trumbull, "Anything that's working in our great nation is working because somebody left skin on the sidewalk."[1][5] Thus, according to Gaudiani, the home and business owners must be sacrificed for the supposed "greater good" of the community….

…….A notable exception to the NLDC's plan to clear-cut the neighborhood is the Italian Dramatic Club, a politically connected "social club" of Connecticut's political establishment, which is located in the very same neighborhood as all the homes targeted for destruction. Among the Italian Dramatic Club's patrons was former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, who helped direct much of the State funding for the NLDC's work in New London and who resigned in June 2004 amid an ethics scandal. The club was informed in September 2000 that it could remain in the neighborhood.[2][6] The un-elected NLDC decision to preserve the politically powerful Italian Dramatic Club while demanding that New Londoners move out led Fort Trumbull homeowner Matt Dery to quip that the NLDC's actions in his neighborhood have been both shameful and shameless.…..


………Three of the property owners in the lawsuit have homes in so-called Parcel 3 of the redevelopment area. That parcel is slated for development as privately owned office space. Four of the property owners live in Parcel 4A of the project. Throughout much of the battle over Fort Trumbull, the NLDC had no specific plan or use for the site; it simply wanted to acquire the land, bulldoze the homes and businesses, and then sell it to developers. This led the Institute for Justice, which represents the property owners for free, to question, "How can you have a Ôpublic use' for taking someone's property, which the Constitution demands, when you don't know what that use will be?" (More recently the U.S. Coast Guard has made overtures to construct a museum on the site.)…….


Institute for Justice http://www.ij.org/


Lawsuit Challenging Eminent Domain Abuse in New London, Connecticut –some amazing information –check out the magnitude of the bulldozing throughout our nation….

Is it our nation tax policy that is at the root cause of our incineration and debris troubles?


http://www.ij.org/private_property/connecticut

Thanks,
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH

Winchester/Ashuelot paper mill –corruption.

“What we really need with the Winchester/Ashuelot paper mill –is a public accounting of all the public monies, incentives, borrowing, and tax breaks given to this plant.

I guess I would worry about the justification of private borrowing –seeing how that led to the downfall of American Tissue. It would not be bad to look at the Berlin mill in the same lens. What is a rather well warn path throughout New Hampshire with all the Mill closings and economic development –is that there has been a lot of ineffective governmental help in an attempt to help prevent most of these mill closing. But I don’t think the beneficiaries have been the employees with grave threats against their jobs –but on a cadre of special interests crooks, like lobbyist, lawyers, politicians, real-estate people, banks and politically connected non transparent quasi governmental economic (re)development authorities. We are even worrying about the meaning of the non profit TIP –where they create economic development –and then get compensated by diverting taxes to the communities for a long period of time into their own account.”

“So, a lot of this governmental help in grants, borrowing and regulatory assistance ends in creating an unconscionable profit opportunity to a select group of people –this drives up debt in these failed ventures charged to the public through governmental and quasi governmental authorities. It limits the mitigation of local economic damage when a business closes. What you got is a group of corrupt insiders who untransparently control a huge amount of public resources (tax monies) –these guys are scratching each others back with special deals that unbelievably enrich themselves in the tragic face of many families losing a livelihood.

So I’d like to see the compensation and bonus plans for the officials of these authorities –and asked if there are any conflict of interest issues here. I would also included all the related issues like how NHDES paid for the recent pollution services with the leaking heating fuel oil tanks, I might add I think they paid for the pollution sampling wells too.

This just might be a lens where the public gets to see how corruption is played in Monadnock regions, in the name of employee and family altruism when faced with a loss of a business.


You see, I am asking what is the meaning of this. The situation frames it in the preview of a private company -it always has. But I have faced these guys -the corporation the federal and state officials, our local politicians, who were blatantly lied to my face in front of a massive corruption issue. They all play stupid. You see, it is always about a business privacy issue to the regulator and the politicians -when somebody asked for transparency and accountable for these governmental officials.


I see it as the typical way our local political system interact with the public on our economic interest -and I can make the case that our economic and educational depravation of this area is a result of our political dysfunction. You understand, when we allow these things to go on between the officials and business, we ask for corruption, and by that, we invite poverty into our area.

I don't know, I think in metro area we would get a local politician to stand up next to a microphone, telling us that this is an intolerable situation, focusing a lot of media attention of the act of this company - talking about how hard it's been on the employees in the last five years... one way or another, we would get to the bottom of what's going on, and send signal to the rest of the businesses that this is improper behavior.

So I would say in this way -it is in the typical dysfunctional ways that individuals, the media, the bureaucracies and the politicians -over and over again sees these things -that this is what drives local economic deprivation and stagnation.

"We have such a political vacuum in our area.”

Governors Work to Improve H.S. Education

Governors Work to Improve H.S. Education

The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.

"We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work," said Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, as the state leaders convened for the first National Education Summit aimed at rallying governors around high school reform.

The governors say they want to emerge Sunday with specific plans for enacting policy, weary of statistics showing that too many students are coasting, dropping out or failing in college.

At least one agreement is likely. Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and corporate leaders, plans to announce Sunday that roughly 12 states are committing to raise high school rigor and align their graduation requirements with skills demanded in college or work.

The high school summit drew at least 45 governors from the 50 states and five U.S. territories, along with top names in U.S. industry and education. The leaders broke into groups late in the day to debate ideas, and planned to do the same through Sunday.

Most of the summit's first day amounted to an enormous distress call, with speakers using unflattering numbers to define the problem. Among them: Of every 100 ninth-graders, only 68 graduate high school on time and only 18 make it through college on time, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Once in college, one in four students at four-year universities must take at least one remedial course to master what they should have learned in high school, government figures show.

The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.

"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they're working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

Summit leaders have an ambitious agenda for every state: to raise the requirements of a high school diploma, improve information sharing between high schools and universities, and align graduation standards with the expectations of colleges and employers. Governors say they're in a position to unite the often splintered agendas of business leaders, educators and legislatures.
But such changes will take what Gates singled out as the biggest obstacle: political will.

Requiring tougher courses for all students, for example, could face opposition from parents and school officials, particularly if more rigor leads to lower test scores and costly training.

Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., said the most reliable predictor of success in college is a student's exposure to challenging high school courses _ and that governors know they must act.

"This is an issue that transcends all those typical things that cause people to split in different directions," Huckabee said.

The governors also planned to meet with President Bush and his Cabinet while in Washington.

The summit is the governors' fifth on education, but the first devoted to high schools. The original governors' education summit, organized by the first President Bush in 1989, is credited with spurring a movement of basing student performance on higher standards.

Warner has made improving high schools the centerpiece of his chairmanship of the National Governors Association, which is co-sponsoring the summit with Achieve. He is considered a possible candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.

Among the more high-profile governors who did not attend Saturday were two Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother.
___
On the Net:
National Education Summit:

Our area, the Forth Estate and Corruption –that deforms the life of our children.

Well, the UN says that poverty and corruption are inextricably linked. We know that in my corner of the state of NH -we are poor, economically disadvantaged and educationally deprived. I could make the case that our schools are inadequate because of our poor economic growth. I believe there are massive amounts of political corruption going on throughout our area. I believe the corruption facilitates the self-interest of a very few. I believe that businesses do not want to move to our area because of this corruption and the poor education of our children –where the insiders control all the rules and property. So, the very few control for their self interest, finds that it’s to their benefit to maintain the politics and government in a primitive form –to leash the creatively of the people for their own interest. Even the financing of development is based on the self-interest of the few.

What we know for a fact is that in our area is poverty and corruption deforms the lives of the many-through many generations -the local newspapers and media plays a huge role in maintaining the privilege of the few. When you have a forth estate who has become weak and shallow –who doesn’t drive its population toward non corruption and improvement –then special interest deforms the potential of a whole regions. The primary driver of corruption ends up being the weakness of the forth estate.

What this area needs is new competitors against the current set of media player in our area. We should figure out a way to fold in the new way of information dispersal, blogging and the typical forms of information media –newspapers and local cable channel. These new sources of the forth estate should drive a brand new set of political leaders into office.

Did you see the National Governors Association meeting on the national crisis of in high schools –this is the first time that I have admired CEO Gates of Microsoft.

Stellar black hole within an organization –within multiple organizations

From: Michael Mulligan

Date: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:59 pm Subject: Re: [Root_Cause_State_of_the_Practice_II] apparently safe systems can drift into failure




What's the book?

I could make the case that all genocides are generated by scarce resources. The population begins to feel the results of scarce resources –begins to feel they are being unfairly victimized, gets angry, with a political leader coming to the scene flipping the anger onto a subset of the population or neighbor. It is like taking candy from a baby. So are our brains hard wired by evolution to bond together when faced by scarce resources, are predisposed to violence in order to eat –with a skilled leader able to take advantage of this shortcoming? What’s that mean to our modern organizations?

Well from what I’ve seen, it could be looked as in the event horizon of a black hole star. We know the gravitation power of the star sucks light back to itself. From what I understand, that on the other side of the horizon nothing matters, not even the question of what is on the other side. I guess all the properties of the universe breaks down even including time and space.

So, as the problems of a facility increments up, you get the culture to increasingly “rule up” –it eventually leads to an avalanche. By ruling up, I mean the organization across a host of individual and bureaucratic manners begins to limit internal and external transparency –they limit transparency by a set of rules –those that are documented, and those that agreed upon by the individuals. The rules that limit communication are applied over and over again you get to the point that it is internalized. You get into these cold mechanical logic systems –and new information in the worst systems is never allowed in, and the truth is never allowed out. Once you get to the point of no return –much like an avalanche, there is nothing you can do to stop the process until the energy is expended.

Of course, the event horizon can be a continuum, but is it razor thin. Once you are standing on that horizon –you really can’t tell how close you are to the beginning of the avalanche -might have already started that can’t be stopped. Even when you put together in you mind that a future accident is a sure thing, there is nothing you can do to interrupt it because it might have already begun, and the bureaucratic system is automatically set up to block out all information that an accident is around the corner –or begun.

So let say you wake up inside one of these systems, whereby you pose a question asking is a accident around the corner -has it begun– the immunity of the dysfunctional system is already fully geared up, thus there is a huge immunity response such the person who begins to question the system rules is quickly isolated and thrown out. So everyone in the system then recognizes that a non believer will be thrown out.

I can make the cause that the dysfunctional system has infected similar other systems –whereby they have influence the regulators and the politicians. This organization has become extraordinarily dangerous tothe surrounding and society in general.

So a person who has perceived that something is wrong knows enough to go to knowledgeable outsiders –might not realize that the regulator, media and politicians are already been co-opted. So you go to the regulator to make a complaint before the accident –the regulator has already been trained to not accept any new information or you must have absolute quality of information that nobody has.

A person who is a wake in this system has two choices –he either believes that he is the last sane person inthe world or that the he is the only one who is insane.

Do you understand what I am saying –when you get into one of these black holes –none of us has the prior experience or education to recognize what we are in, never mine be able to interact with the system –never mine that there is no independent entities skilled at recognizing, coming in and retraining the organization –don’t forget all the otherorganizations…regulators…politicians…into becoming healthy again.

So can two unrelated dysfunctional organizations come together –then come up with a generic virus to co-opta bigger part of our political system?Thanks,mike mulliganHinsdale, Nh

Skipping stones and NH Paper Mill

From: Michael Mulligan Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 1:33 pm Subject: Re: [rootcauseconference] RE: Evidence Question #1


I mean what is the function of a RCA or any of the other problem analysis?

Are you people dealing with the “idealogs of objective philosophy” managers who demand absolute proof –especially if you run up against one of their interest? Maybe it goes; before you attack me as incompetent manager before the accident and attack the system of self interest that sustains my power –you will have to have absolute proof based on complicated set of rules for evidence gathering. So is RCA based upon looking through the rear view mirror –based on the extraordinary processes of evidence qualification?

I remember working on the issue on our local nuclear plant of high river water temperatures during the drought of 1998/99. We knew the upstream temps were getting near the design limits –and on a national level, we wondered what the meaning of magnitude of licensing changes that up’d the limits by a few degrees in the depths of the NE droughts. You will remember the results of the European adventure with a summertime heat wave –with this threatening the operation of many French nuclear power plants.

So my 6 year old son asked me of go throw rocks in the waters of the Ashuelot River –just a small stream nearmy house. We are skipping stones in the river, and I am mulling the meaning of the extraordinary low flowsof the river, as I see only a sliver of stream water in the Ashuelot -you know my mind is spinning wondering what the meaning of all this is in the issue of global warming. I am really involved with monitoring the flows of the rivers on the USGS web pages during these times.

It is a this point that I notice the water has a milky tint to it. I remember being upstream a few miles the day before looking at the same river –with my mind spinning on the issues of droughts and low flows. I then think in my minds eye that yesterday’s water was clear, while today’s has a milky tint to it.

It came from the puny upstream paper/tissue mill. I called the state environmental people –they are so disorganized I got disconnected from their office phone system six times before I talked to the pollution office. I remember finally getting the inspector to meet me at the site–he tells me with a straight face that this stream of milky white substances bubbling out of the rocks below the sludge lagoon, with him saying straight face to me “everyone thinks this is pollution, but I know it isn’t because I’ve tested it.” I tell him all the little streams that are feeding the river are dry now –we are in a historic drought –how can it be a natural spring. This is coming from that leaking lagoon above us.

This ended up with a 300 to 400 million dollar fraud case and bankruptcy against the CEO of the corporation -believe it was the forth largest tissue maker in the USA.I got them to build a new lagoon. I couldn’t imagine the consequences of this with looking at that tinted water with my son.

So from the get-go I acted on filaments of information –none of it was qualified. Matter of fact, if you would have asked me to put it in a qualified process, it would have inhibited me from acting on the slivers of truth that I though I saw. You understand, my mind was spinning on a completely different issue –but that spinning mind and the innocent pleasure of my son got me to the edge of the stream –one who I had walked by for weeks. So if you would have asked me to qualifythe evidence -you would have limited my minds ability to allow the opportunity of chance.

So let’s say I didn’t have an interest with the river temperatures at the nuclear power plant –I wouldn’t have had the information foundation of the special conditions at hand, or the minds interest that got me to the point of detecting that subtle milky appearance of the water. What gets you to the point, where a thought from the back of your mind says that something is wrong with the color water? How does the mind connect all these subtle differences in unrelated areas by chance? Think about all that wasted neural activity that is designed to catch that 1 and 10,000 chance of success. I tell you something, there is an enormous amount of thinking that goes on in the subconscious level -and it smashes throught the rules that we build.

I think that by depending on the mindset of the typical rules of evidence –you limit these interconnection in you mind.

But I guess the problem is, how do you persuade the guy next to you to see what you see. I guess we got to that point when the CEO was removed.thanks,mike

Winchester NH Paper Mill lays off help

April 4, 2013:
The Death Of American Tissue Corporation Oct 6, 2012

Article Published: Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 7:08:25 AM EST

Paper mill lays off help

I was the guy who raised the issue of the defective lagoon back in the 2001 timeframe –it led to the shutdown of the Winchester mill and the bankruptcy of American Tissue in a 300 million dollar CEO scam. Actually, I knew the defective lagoon was just a huge symptom of a regulatory and political dysfunction going across both political parties.

About three months ago 2004/2005- I got fed up again seeing milky white lagoon waste being discharged from their diffuser pipe in Wincheste. I walked into the site and made a complaint, talked to the Keene Sentinel –made a complaint to the NHDES –and then called the Monadnock Economic Development Corp. I left a recorded message on President Jack Dugan message machine –basically saying that with all of your money that you loaned them –that they are going to blow their repayment to you if they are caught polluting again like they did in 2000.

I told him I got insider information, that in response to the pollution case in 2000, they were forced to bring in an outside sampling company to sample the plant discharges –but the facility figured out that the outside company sampled every morning at a specific time -7AM or 8AM –thus for the sample time they could clean up the sample discharge line –then once the outside company left, they could discharge at illegal rates. This was want I’d seen many times recently– a 50 foot plume of waste going down the river. You should asked Mr. Dugan if he heard my message.

I am still confused with grants and loans –grants needing no repayments and these other loan repayments. We were always worried about the restartup of this facility. It is my understanding that the new owner were related to the past owner. We were always worried about it being another fraud being over layered on top of another. In other words, they started up that facility knowing the future life was limited by the old plant equipment and poor business environment of the paper industry –but they wanted to get the public loans, then fraudulently bleed those monies into their personnel accounts. I would now be worried that some of these quasi public bureaucracies being involve in, and having individuals involved in illegal kickbacks.

I remember being called to the Winchester site just before the 2002 startup -telling me to look at what is parked next to the old, old building. There was this brand new black “mile long limo” parked right outside the main office –the plant was not in operation yet. I did send a e-mail to the Keene Sentinel about the limo.

You got the contrast with the empty facility being build before the 1920’s; with employees being out of work for over a year; with the financing being done by the public monies without transparency -and a brand new limo sitting outside supposedly transporting the new owners. What a waste of resources –and it implied the troubles of the employees were just beginning.



Paper mill lays off help

By ANDREW RAGOUZEOS Reformer Staff

WINCHESTER, N.H. -- One of the town's largest employers, Atlantic paper mill, shut down its operation Friday, laying off its entire staff, workers say.

"I've been told by a good source that the factory closed temporarily to improve its equipment, and they plan to re-open ... in a matter of months," Selectwoman Susan Newell said Friday.
"I can't have an opinion until we learn more about what's going on."

Asked if the company had closed, a man answering the phone at Atlantic's Winchester plant on Friday said, "Actually, I can't say anything at this point."

Calls placed to plant supervisor Dean Nutter revealed that his telephone had been disconnected.
"The supervisors called us all in at 8 a.m. to tell us we were all being let go, the whole place, about 60 workers," an employee, who declined to give his name, said. "They're not doing this to screw everybody. It's to better the mill, really -- so they can stop losing money, improve the machines and find more regular customers and re-open."

Atlantic Paper & Foil Corp. purchased the Lost Road mill property in 2002 after the town of Winchester and the Monadnock Economic Development Corp. secured a $700,000 Community Development Block grant to help subsidize the company's move to Winchester.

Once the plant was up and running by March 2003, the town's unemployment rate dropped from 5.2 percent to 4 percent, according to the New Hampshire Rural Development Council.
Monadnock Economic Development Corp. President Jack Dugan said Friday evening that he had not been notified of the closing. "As far as I know [Atlantic has] been making their loan payments," Dugan said. "They obviously know how to get in touch with us. But we haven't been notified about this."

Atlantic Paper & Foil's headquarters is in Hauppauge, N.Y.

Andrew Ragouzeos can be reached at aragouzeos@reform-er.com.

El Niño

El Niño


Hmmm…..

I will bet you will be seeing this in the media. So we have a mild to moderate El Niño now –with enormous results up and down the west today, and I do believe what we are seeing in NE is related to El Niño.

So are the consequences for the same size and magnitude El Niño bigger than the past. So as we go up in global warning, a moderate El Niño will lead to severe results –thus a severe magnitude El Niño next time will lead to a 4X severe consequence in the future. So what are the relationships to consequence?

The god gene and neurotransmitters -how beautiful are you?

The god gene and neurotransmitters –how beautiful are you



“The fundamental physical and functional unit of heredity, responsible for specific traits such as eye color. A gene is an ordered sequence of nucleotides located in a particular position on a particular chromosome that encodes a specific functional product (i.e., a protein or RNA molecule). A gene is written in a code of four letters: A, C, T and G, representing four chemicals, and depending on the gene, these letters are repeated a certain number of times. The smallest human gene contains 252 repetitions of these letters, while the longest one repeat them more than a million times. There are approximately 30,000 genes in the human genome. (See also Gene Sequencing)Source : Human Genome Project Information; PhRMA Genomics”


So when I am in utter awe with looking up at the Nevada stars in the desert; when I can’t feel the difference between what I am looking at and my individuality –so I am dealing with the mechanical interaction from a sequence of chemicals that engineered the physical makeup of my body through my chromosomes. So it is the level of my electric impulses in my brain, it’s interaction with the chemical and hard matter of my brain –is that creating the awe, loving and pleasant feeling in my head. So when I think of the quantum side of it –could there be an outside the universe force that I can invite in –such that it interacts with the little machines in my cells and brain.


I think its like going down the road at 30 MPH –seeing the speedometer reading 30 MPH. I mean, you can point to that speedometer knowing you are going 30 mph, but has it been accurately calibrated. Then we know that the car velocity is a factor of the spin of the earth, how fast we go around the sun, how fast the sun moves in the Milky Way, and what the milk way does in the universe.

So I think it’s the closest thing to the universe with having sex with us –is when we, through our own means, discover the more accurate lens in which we see ourselves in this matrix - when we see more accurately the mystery of the makeup of the universe -we we know that we have understood something in a new and differance way.


So I would like to get together more than a few highly educated experts sitting at the edge of our most current knowledge, all speaking in plain language –explaining to us the make up of genes, chromosomes, brain structure and there operations, the chemical and molecular activity - how this fits into the complexity of sub atomic physics and quantum mechanics. So can they explain to us how genes and chromosomes in us works. Isn't there a little more magic in those dual spaghetti strings and t he chemical sequences?


So I think you would find that in the past few years we have discovered amazing new interrelationships in these fields. I would see it as climbing a mountain, where the higher you go up, ever step you increase the view to an amazing degree – but on that next every step of the way, you realize that the “beyond the horizon” gets bigger than what you could imagine.


So if you think our bodies and cells have little tractor trailers running around, those little machines, then the universe would be happy with that. But I think the universe would be more happy with us discovering the seemingly secretes behind the structure of our inner world.

I think the more we discover about the secretes of this universe, the more we will appreciate that we are closer to Jesus (or any prophet in other religions) -"you can be even better than even I"–such that as we get closer to the top of the mountain, we will continuously marvel at infinite beauty of the makeup up of the universe –and this would be a true mirror reflection of how beautiful the universe knows we are.

.

"Homeshoring" -The race to the bottom- "outsourcing"

"Because of the increasingly politicized debate about offshore outsourcing in terms of US jobs as well as concerns about quality and security, there has been a concomitant trend of companies utilizing agents working from their homes," said Loynd.


Need customer service? Just call home

By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff February 19, 2005

Not all call center work is going to India; some US companies are shifting customer-service call-center jobs to workers' homes.

Known variously as "homeshoring," "homesourcing," or "onshoring," the practice lets companies avoid medical insurance, overtime pay, and other expenses while guaranteeing a flexible workforce that can be increased or decreased as needed.

"This is the ultimate flexible workforce," says Barry Bluestone, an economics professor at Northeastern University. "It's when we need you, for as long as we need you. It offers tremendous flexibility for the employee, particularly for stay-at-home mothers and people with disabilities."

Yet the practice also has its drawbacks for the home-based worker, according to Bluestone.
"The downside is that it can be incredibly irregular employment in some cases," he says, "and it often comes with no benefits."

Of the 4 million call-center workers in the country, more than 100,000 are based at home, says Stephen Loynd, an analyst at Framingham-based research firm IDC.

Cost savings is the primary reason for the growth in home working, Loynd says. The owners of traditional call centers incur an estimated $31 per hour in real estate, operations, and labor costs, but virtual call centers spend about $21 per hour.

But the practice is also gaining momentum as a reaction to concerns related to sending work overseas.

"Because of the increasingly politicized debate about offshore outsourcing in terms of US jobs as well as concerns about quality and security, there has been a concomitant trend of companies utilizing agents working from their homes," said Loynd.

Already 20 percent of US firms rely on some home-based call-center workers, say consultants Booz Allen Hamilton.

The pay for these home-based workers is generally more than traditional office-bound agents -- $10 to $15 an hour versus $7 to $9 per hour -- although home-based workers are responsible for more expenses, and frequently are working without benefits.

Pamela Brackett, 41, of Bellingham, accepted a job with Texas-based Working Solutions, a firm that provides home-based workers to companies, in September 2003. Previously Brackett worked as a computer support technician and manager. When she was laid off, her rheumatoid arthritis forced her to limit her job search. Brackett is among 22,000 Working Solutions agents who make data entries, transcriptions, reservations, or perform other services from home. The job does not provide her with health insurance or other benefits.

Brackett said that her Working Solutions arrangement is a mixed bag compared to her previous job. "The other job had full-time benefits," she said. "But convenience is everything to me. No matter how badly I might be feeling, I can make it to my phone."

For companies, the advantage of a home-based workforce is clearer. In November, for example, Office Depot, the office supply retail chain, declared plans to shut down several in-house call centers and shift that work to Florida-based Willow CSN Inc., a virtual call center that employs 2,200 home-based independent customer service agents in several states.

"We had about a dozen call centers, and now there are two," said Brian Levine, a spokesman for Office Depot. "We announced that we would be doing this, and we are now phasing it in. We will save in the millions."

He said the company advised nearly 1,000 full-time call-center workers affected by the change to apply for work at Willow CSN.

Now, said Levine, "We don't pay benefits, so that is good from a business standpoint."
Alexa Bona, a research director at Gartner Inc., the business research and analysis firm, says companies save about 20 to 30 percent by not offering benefits.

Low-cost airline Jet Blue employs about 2,000 home-based reservation agents, virtually the entire department, in Salt Lake City. Unlike many contractors who work from home, the airline's agents receive benefits, said spokesman Gareth Edmondson-Jones.

But labor unions say that, benefits or no benefits, home work arrangements are not a boon to workers. "The employer has no investment in infrastructure and, frankly, workers can become disposable parts of the production chain," said Tony Daly, a researcher at the 700,000-member Communication Workers of America. "Yet, workers bear the risk. They put in their DSL lines; they outfit their offices; they pay for the phone calls or Internet service."

Willow CSN agents receive $13 to $14 per hour or more, depending on the hours. Compensation is based on the number of calls a contractor answers correctly in a certain period of time.
Esther DeJesus, 41, of Orlando, Fla., began working for Willow CSN a year ago. She says she answers calls for Office Depot and two other firms four days a week and some weekends, earning $1,300 to $1,500 every two weeks. She pays $37.50 per month to access the Willow CSN 24-7 computer support desk.

DeJesus relies on her husband's job for health benefits.

Working Solutions pays its contractors $10 to $15 per hour in 15-minute increments. Client estimates of call volume determine how many agents are assigned, said Tim Houlne, chief executive.

To do her job, Brackett uses her computer to connect with Working Solutions' central computer and exchanges information directly with the virtual call center's clients. She splits her hours, working from 10 a.m. to noon, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. because she cannot sit in one spot too long. "I would not be able to work if I could not work from home," said Brackett. "If I had to go out to a job everyday, I could not keep it. I would have to call in sick too often. This allows me to continue to contribute to the household. My body failed me, but my mind did not."


Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.

Wal-Mart and Indonesian sweat shop labor new nuclear power plant!

BG-Need customer service? Just call home-2/05



"Because of the increasingly politicized debate about offshore outsourcing in terms of US jobs as well as concerns about quality and security, there has been a concomitant trend of companies utilizing agents working from their homes," said Loynd.


2/18/05
“…Additionally, using techniques developed in Japan and elsewhere, the plants of the future will likely employ extensive modular construction techniques, with modules barged in from distant ports to be assembled with massive cranes. This modular construction provides licensees with the opportunity to increase quality and “reduce costs”…. There will be challenges associated with this verification, however, given that the staff may need to inspect modules during their construction overseas since there may be limited access to components once a module is installed at the facility….”

You see these guys have no idea about how our popular political cultural images will interplay with these new techniques –like our trade deficit, illegal immigration, globalization, third world sweat shops without regulations, potential subtle terror sabotage of the modules…ect.

What you are going to get is – do you want a massive Wal-Mart nuclear power plant that was constructed by Indonesian sweat shop labor –by kids being paid 25 cents an hour with no labor or quality laws?

Come on they are going to say it’s going to be unprecedented with the majority of the fuel and construction being done by non American sources. The scandal not even mentioned is how much of the engineering is going to be foreign done on the internet –like in India- whereby they undercut the wages of the USA white collar engineers, architects and designers. Will they say our universities aren't putting out enought engineering graduates in the appropriate the quantity and qualities?

It’s going to be slave labor and slave engineering done on the internet.

NRC “Not Your Father’s Nuclear Regulator”

Was the NRC answering my critisms?




“Not Your Father’s Nuclear Regulator”

The Role of the Licensing Process in the Future of Nuclear Energy

Jeffrey S. Merrifield, CommissionerU.S. Nuclear Regulatory CommissionatNuclear Energy Conference:Opportunities for Growth and Investment in North AmericaWashington, D.C.

February 16, 2005

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to be here this morning. Given the dynamic state of the nuclear industry today, it seems quite clear why this conference is focusing on the opportunity for growth. As a Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), I cannot be an advocate of nuclear power. Nonetheless, neither can I ignore the direction this industry is going. To meet our mission of protecting public health, safety and the environment, our agency must be prepared for this changing future. Today, I would like to discuss my personal views on how the NRC’s licensing process will play a critical role in the development of a growing nuclear industry. The process is more predictable than it was in years past, and it has been improved to recognize technological breakthroughs in reactor design and lessons learned from years of operating experience. I would also like to share with you a brief summary of the challenges we have yet to resolve in the licensing of new power reactors.

In the past, the NRC has shouldered much of the criticism for the fact that no new power reactors have been constructed in the United States in the last twenty years. Truth be told, the uncertainty of the NRC’s regulatory and hearing processes was a major contributor to the industry’s decision not to venture in this direction. Regulatory instability, however, is no longer the convenient excuse for the failure of nuclear power plants to be built. Twenty years ago, ten years ago, or maybe even five years ago, that view may have been justified, but today, it is not.
Like those in the military who are faulted for always preparing to fight their last war, individuals who are stuck in the past, but who fail to learn and evolve from those lessons will not be able to accurately understand where they are going in the future. Some of you who have heard me speak before will recognize that I like to weave lessons from the past with my own views of where we are going. More so than any other technology, it is critically important that both the regulator and the leaders of the nuclear sector understand and learn from past successes and mistakes.

From a regulatory perspective, I think it is useful to compare where the nuclear sector is today with where it was twenty years ago. Looking back at 1985, a number of factors combined to portend a very dark outlook for the future of nuclear power. At that time, the nuclear fleet consisted of 89 units, 16 of which had been in an extended shutdown for six months or more. As a whole, the fleet was operating at a capacity factor of 63%. Consumer prices, although lower than the late 70's, were still high by today’s levels with inflation running at 3.55% percent and a prime interest rate of 10% percent. The price of nuclear fuel had skyrocketed to costs averaging 1.28 cents per kilowatt-hour and there was no relief in sight.

This grim financial outlook was only partially responsible for the decline in nuclear power that occurred in the mid-eighties. In 1985, public support for nuclear power was running barely over 50%. A seemingly low percentage, which would be further degraded a year later with the accident at Chernobyl. Construction of new plants, which had previously been predicted to explode during this time period, was coming to a dramatic halt. Costs for those plants still under construction were growing exponentially due to post-Three Mile Island changes imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the failure of utility managers to hold down costs. The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board had challenges opposing operating licenses for 14 different reactors on its docket in 1985. By that year, the Shoreham operating license proceeding had already been on the docket for eight years and the Seabrook proceeding had been under review for over three years. The bankruptcy of Public Service of New Hampshire was just a mere three years away. Given these statistics, it is no wonder that utilities decided to pull the plug on the construction of 38 units between 1980 and 1985. Finishing off this bleak picture, Wall Street, which is an enormous player in deciding whether plants will be built, had no stomach and no interest for this technology.

What has changed? Well, for one thing, the NRC has made dramatic changes to the way we conduct business. License renewals and power uprates are two clear examples that demonstrate how the NRC has honed its licensing process to be significantly more efficient and effective. I doubt that anyone would have been willing to place a bet in 1985, or even 1995, that the NRC would be able to renew the licenses of one third of our 103 unit fleet in a period of just over six years, with a review time averaging approximately 22 months for most applications. Nor would it have been anticipated that the agency would have approved over 100 power uprates totaling over 4,000 megawatts electric. Similar efficiencies in licensing spent fuel storage casks, and on-site spent fuel storage facilities demonstrate the agency’s commitment to holistic improvement to our regulatory review processes. While we have had some operational miscues, including the core offloading and safety culture issues at Millstone in the mid 90s and more recently the vessel head degradation at Davis-Besse, I think I can confidently say that the NRC knows much more about regulating these reactors than we did 20 years ago, and the safety of these plants has been significantly enhanced since that time.

All of the examples I just mentioned, however, relate to operations at currently licensed facilities, so I imagine you are asking yourselves “but what about the licensing of new reactors?” As you know, the two-step process by which we historically licensed power reactors was considered cumbersome and unpredictable. First, licensees were required to navigate the NRC’s technical review and hearing processes to obtain a construction permit. Once granted, licensees would sink millions of dollars into constructing the facility. After construction was substantially completed, the licensee was again required to submit to an NRC review process, as well as run the gauntlet of the operating license hearing. This left many of the most controversial issues to the end of the licensing process, often resulting in considerable delay to completion, and in some cases, like the Seabrook and Shoreham facilities, a complete halt to the project.

The NRC recognized the need for a simpler, more predictable licensing process and it had already taken steps to revise its regulations when Congress modified the Atomic Energy Act to provide the statutory authority for a new, progressive one-step licensing process. The NRC implemented this legislation through promulgation of Part 52, which as you well know, can be credited with a significant role in the growing desire in the industry to explore new construction possibilities. The Part 52 licensing process is designed to resolve the more controversial issues earlier in the process, prior to undertaking a huge investment in construction. This change will allow licensees, as well as their investors, to have more financial certainty in making a multi-billion dollar investment.

Licensing Becomes More Efficient
Part 52 established three new pieces of our licensing structure. First, we developed an early site permit process, which allows licensees to seek pre-approval of sites for new reactor units. By obtaining an early site permit, applicants can significantly reduce licensing uncertainty because site-related issues are resolved and presumed final for purposes of litigation. We have already received three applications for early site permits from existing licensees and are currently in the middle of the two-year review and adjudication process for these licenses. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, these reviews should be completed by early next year.

Next, we created standard design certifications. Here, the NRC extensively reviews a reactor design and then approves the design for general use through notice and comment rulemaking. Use of a pre-approved design in a combined license application removes consideration of design aspects from the staff’s licensing review. We have already approved three designs, and the NRC staff has recommended that a fourth design be published for public comment in the next month. The NRC is also engaged in conducting pre-design review or preliminary review discussions with six different companies (GE, AECL, Framatome, PBMR Ltd., Toshiba, General Atomics and Westinghouse), so we could potentially see several more design applications emerge from these efforts in the near future.

Finally, we created the combined license which grants an applicant both a construction permit and operating license. This reduces regulatory risk for applicants by limiting adjudication of licensing issues to one hearing, instead of the two required under the previous licensing process. Applicants can further reduce regulatory uncertainty by utilizing an early site permit and design certification in their combined license applications. Three different consortiums of utilities have announced that they want to explore this new licensing process, with even more companies that may choose to go forward on their own.

NRC Safety Reviews Improved By Technology
I am proud to say that it is not only our licensing process that has been improved. Significant changes have been made over the last 10 years to refine the effectiveness and efficiency of our safety reviews. The Commission, on which I have now served for six and a half years, has demanded constant improvement on the part of our staff, while remaining ever vigilant of our safety mission. Virtually every schedule provided by our staff is continually met with one question from the Commission: “Is this the best we can do?”

Evolutions in technology are one of the reasons the staff has been able to reduce the time for safety reviews while increasing staff confidence in our quality assurance findings. Take the example of reactor design reviews. Twenty years ago, one of the complications the NRC faced in reviewing designs for nuclear power plants was the unique nature of the designs provided by our licensees. Faced with designs that were constantly changing and that often had to be modified during the course of construction, the NRC was confronted with significant complications in conducting effective and timely reviews. Such late hour changes also provided yet another opportunity for opponents of these plants to claim that the designs were unsafe and not subject to sufficient NRC review.

Today, the picture is much different. The widespread use of computer-aided design has significantly advanced the quality of the design materials that are reviewed by the NRC staff. This technological advance, coupled with a more advanced nexus between the design and how the construction will actually be carried out, has resulted in the staff feeling more confident in making quality assurance findings. This also reduces the likelihood that a design will need to be changed during construction, thereby reducing licensee costs and workload for the NRC staff. Given the fact that most combined license applicants will reference a pre-certified design that has already been extensively reviewed by the staff, safety reviews for new licenses should be much more effective, predictable, and timely.

Adjudication of License Applications
Another highly significant, but not so obvious process improvement at the Commission is the manner in which we conduct legal proceedings. Without fanfare, last year the Commission issued a change to Part 2 of our regulations, which governs the rules of practice for our adjudicatory process. The amended regulations tailor hearing procedures to the different types of licensing activities in order to better focus the limited resources of involved parties and the NRC. One of the more noteworthy changes was establishment of specific timelines for our judges on how long a legal proceeding should take. This will allow the judges to take a more active role in case management and conduct a more efficient review of contentions brought before the Commission. Another significant change established the use of more informal procedures for the conduct of most proceedings. Now, rather than endless debates between competing experts, and unfocused and unending hearings, our judges will be able to concentrate on the facts and reach common sense, safety-focused decisions in a timely way.

As an attorney, I recognized the inherent weaknesses in our former process, and I am convinced that these changes will improve the efficiency of our legal proceedings. I must mention, however, that shortly after the final rule was published, it was challenged in Federal court by several public interest groups. The crux of the petitioners’ challenge was that the rule violated the Atomic Energy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by abolishing formal hearings in reactor licensing cases. In December, however, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals struck down this challenge and upheld the view of the Commission.

Our changes to the adjudicatory process did not stop with revision of our procedures for the conduct of hearings. We are also working to bring in new, highly qualified judges to conduct the proceedings. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (Board) is blessed with an excellent Chief Judge, Paul Bollwerk, who has worked tirelessly to replace vacancies on the Board created by the aging workforce issues facing the nuclear industry as a whole. His efforts have also been aimed at ensuring adequate staffing for potential Yucca Mountain proceedings.

The Commission, recognizing the need for outstanding judges, has recently assumed a role where we personally interview the finalists for open Board positions. Within the last year, we have hired three new legal judges and three new technical judges, whom I believe will significantly enhance our capabilities to conduct effective safety reviews. This influx of highly qualified judges, combined with the enhancements to our regulations under Part 2, will hopefully erase some of the lingering concerns about regulatory instability within our agency and establish improvements to our legal proceedings that will endure well beyond my tenure on the Commission.

Construction of New Plants
Improved NRC licensing and legal processes are not the only reasons I see the industry heading into an era of growth. Evolutions in technology will change the way in which new plants will be manufactured and constructed. Computer aided manufacturing allows for an even greater ability to meet customer requirements, and also brings with it a greater confidence that the NRC’s quality assurance requirements will be met. With no existing domestic capabilities to manufacture large components such as steam generators, pressure vessels, or pressurizers, our licensees, as well as our staff, will need to spend time in Europe and Asia assuring that these components meet our requirements. CAD/CAM design and manufacturing, when effectively tied to an excellent quality assurance program, will assure that far distant markets make no difference in producing safe, high caliber components.

Construction of new plants may be approached in a modernized fashion as well. For the first time, detailed engineering of the entire plant will essentially be complete by the start of construction. Additionally, using techniques developed in Japan and elsewhere, the plants of the future will likely employ extensive modular construction techniques, with modules barged in from distant ports to be assembled with massive cranes. This modular construction provides licensees with the opportunity to increase quality and reduce costs. At the same time it presents our agency with opportunities to improve inspection techniques since modules for each plant will contain similar technology. Once the staff verifies the quality assurance and safety of a particular module, it can more easily effectuate safety enhancements for all modules to follow. There will be challenges associated with this verification, however, given that the staff may need to inspect modules during their construction overseas since there may be limited access to components once a module is installed at the facility. As we prepare for the possibility of new plant orders, we are actively working to prepare our staff and modify our procedures to meet these new demands. While unforeseen challenges will invariably arise, we can and shall meet them consistent with our safety mission.

Future Challenges
Earlier, I spoke about regulatory instability no longer being a convenient excuse. So as not to appear entirely sanguine about the work our agency has to do, I would focus briefly on two areas that I believe will require the continued attention of the Commission.
The first, which affects both currently operating reactors and new reactors alike, is security. Quite obviously in a post-9/11 environment, our agency has expended considerable time and resources in meeting this challenge. The nation’s nuclear power plants, which were highly secured prior to September 11th, have been required to beef up security by adding a significant number of guards, increased weaponry, improved training requirements, and other numerous and costly security enhancements. According to industry figures, almost a billion dollars have been spent in improving the security at the plants. Despite having handed down a series of orders mandating these changes, the Commission and its staff recognize the progress that has been made, and realize that we need to achieve a new normalcy. In my view, 2005 will be the year where we change our focus from requiring new security enhancements for licensees, to stabilizing our current security requirements for the new world we face. For me, the enhanced, robust security programs of our licensees have achieved just about everything we can reasonably demand of a civilian security force.

The second issue, which could potentially have considerable impact on the construction of new reactors, is management of agency resources. As I mentioned previously, the NRC has several early site permit applications and one design certification under review, several other reactor designs are nearing submission for certification, and three different consortia have expressed interest in testing our combined license process. These submittals, coupled with the regular business of license renewals, power uprate requests, rulemakings, and security issues, have stretched our existing agency resources further than I would have imagined. Add in the possibility of a Yucca Mountain high level waste respository application and we could be facing a significant resource crisis. My fellow Commissioners and I are aware of the potential resource challenges and have tried to address them through the agency’s Strategic Plan and our senior agency management. Nonetheless, this will remain a significant challenge.

Conclusion
Referring back to my earlier comments, it is easy to see how far the nuclear sector has come if you look at today’s statistics. We now have a nuclear fleet of 103 units that is operating at a capacity of approximately 88% with no units in regulatory shutdown. Safety factors at these plants continue to be at very high levels. Inflation is running at 2.68% with the current prime interest rate at 5.5%, which is just over half its level in 1985. The price of nuclear fuel, although higher than the recent past, is 0.44 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is one third of the price in 1985. Today, 65% of the American public is supportive of building new nuclear power plants, which is significantly larger than times past. And as I have said at length, the NRC of today is a far more efficient, effective, timely regulator of the safety of our nation’s nuclear fleet

Today, you may hear some speakers express concerns as to whether the NRC licensing process will work as promised. And I am sure that some of these people will remain concerned about this issue no matter what information I share with you today. Albert Einstein once said that “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried something new.” We are working through a new licensing process and the complications posed by new plant designs. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes, but we are committed to meeting these challenges head on. It is my personal belief that the NRC is prepared to review and resolve potential regulatory problems and safety concerns in a timely manner. Compared with where this industry was in 1985, things are far different, and while there may be a myriad of reasons why Wall Street and the nuclear utilities have hesitated to build new nuclear power plants, blaming the NRC should no longer be the principal reason.

Thank you very much.

The Potential Future of Nuclear Power

From: "Mike Mulligan" <steamshovel2002@y...> Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:40 pm Subject: Re: VY fire loop service life


You mark my words –when the first spade slices into the ground forthe next generation of nuclear plants –the whole way the public and media looks at the industry will change.

Will the NRC and industry be ready for this onslaught -absolutely not. They have been protected from the harsh realities of the truth as seen by the outsiders. All of these political credit card dinners, all of the special Washington relationships, all of the insider monies and all of the monies for the NEI -all the other special interest has done nothing but weaken the industry –its beenpolitical welfare for the nuclear industry and their political friends. So when the first spade slices into the dirt –this whole horrible weak structure is going to collapse. It's going to expose all of the corrupt political interaction of the regulator and the nuclear industry, from decades back to current.

You guys think you got political protection on licensing of the new plants; what a con game of gigantic proportions to the financers of the next plants. It is nothing but an illusion like Enron here–it going to evaporate with the repeated incompetence as seen in theoperational problems with the first generation plants, with thismagnifying the media's need to see more problems in the newconstruction.

We are going to dump new regulation on the industry and it's going to make your head spin –we are going to have the politician's bytheir necks and we won't let go –they are going to be fighting for their political lives through a blizzard of corruption issues. Your competitors are going to superimpose the problems of the old fleet onto this new generation even before they begin operating –the stupid public won't be able to understand the difference.

The public is going to utterly lose faith in you people before the main disconnects gets closed for the first time –as this becomes apparent you will have to restrict even more information from the public-with this pissing off the public and media even more. You see, the public will lose faith in our politico's and politician'sability to manage nuclear technology and the nuclear industry, maybefor decades.

It is going to be a national tragedy of historic proportions -the death of your dreams is going to slip right before your fingers. It's going to be an embarrassment of national proportion –the world going to ask why doesn't America have the ability of managing these projects, as the rest of the world does. It is going to be anenormous national embarrassment.

What a joke with the Bush administration, it's absolutely telegraphing political weakness as seen by the politicians; it shows how tenuous the politician's trust of the public with nuclear power. Bush puts all his nuclear power plant cards on the table only afterhe knows he can't get voted into office again –what a horrible signof political and public weakness with the nuclear industry. For the politicians nuclear power is truly radiactive.

You understand what I am saying the technology might be there –but bureaucracy across the board is extremely brittle and sitting on the edge of failure! It won't be a technical failure, it will be another political and bureaucratic failure -it's so sad.

mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH