Arcata High Serves Up Flapjacks

Fundraiser benefits school’s Career and College Center

Humboldt Sentinel
11/30/08
By Sentinel Staff

ARCATA -- Arcata High School’s annual tradition of a holiday season pancake breakfast returns bright and early the Saturday after next, with proceeds going to the Career and College Center.

Tickets are available at the center or at the door, at a reduced rate of $5 for minors and the elderly, and $8 for adults. The pancake breakfast will take place in the AHS Multipurpose Room at the corner of Sixteenth St. and L St. For more information, call Maryse Hile at 825-2400, extension 2424, or e-mail her at mhile ~~AT~~ nohum.k12.ca.us.

Eureka Police Searching For Missing Woman

Christine Walters last heard from on Friday

Humboldt Sentinel
11/25/08
By Sentinel Staff

EUREKA - The Eureka Police Department is asking the public for help locating Christine Walters, 23, whose family has reported her missing. Christine has last heard from on Friday, Nov. 14. She is 5’4,” weighs about 100 pounds and has blondish-red hair and blue eyes.

People with information about Christine can call Police Services Officer Mary Anderson at 441-4300 or the EPD dispatcher at 441-4044.

Food Safety Tips For Holiday Feasts

Public health officials issue reminder on food handling

Humboldt Sentinel
11/24/08
By Sentinel Staff

EUREKA -- As the holiday season approaches, time-tested warnings concerning foodborne disease are once again on the banquet table.

Officials at the Public Health Branch of the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services issued a reminder this week to consumers about the importance of safe food handling to prevent foodborne illness.

Their specific tips include:

Keep hands and food contact surfaces clean. Wash them often.

Always wash your hands with warm, soapy water before and after handling raw foods, after using the toilet, after changing diapers, after handling pets, and routinely throughout the food preparation process. Dry the hands with a clean single-use paper towel. Persons with cuts or skin infections on their hands should not prepare food, unless gloves are worn.

Thoroughly clean all work surfaces, utensils, and dishes with hot soapy water, and rinse with hot water before and after each use. Knives, cutting boards, and meat grinders should be washed thoroughly (in the dishwasher, for example) before using them with other foods.

Keep foods separated. Don’t cross-contaminate.

Always wash fruits and vegetables in pre-cleaned sinks. Keep fruits and vegetables away from raw meats, poultry, eggs, fish, and any other raw animal product. Keep raw animal products separate from each other.

When tasting food, ladle a small amount of it into a small dish and taste with a clean spoon. Remove the dish and spoon from the area and clean when finished.

Refrigerate foods promptly.

Refrigerate or freeze turkey and other meats promptly after purchase. Prevent meat juices from spilling on and contaminating other foods or surfaces both at the market and at home. Refrigeration temperature should be kept at 41 °F or colder.

Thaw a frozen turkey inside the refrigerator in its original wrapping. Thawing a moderate-sized turkey in this manner may take two to four days. If time does not permit a gradual thaw, place the frozen turkey in a watertight wrapper and immerse in cold—not hot or warm—water until the meat is pliable. Change the water every half-hour.

Cook foods to proper temperatures.

Rinse the turkey thoroughly in cold water and drain well before cooking.

Stuffing should be cooked separately. If it contains fish, meat, or poultry, cook stuffing to a minimum internal temperature of 165 °F for at least 15 seconds.

Turkey should be placed immediately in a preheated oven set no lower than 325 °F. Turkey and other poultry should be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 165 °F for at least 15 seconds to kill pathogens that may be present. Always use a meat thermometer to ensure meat is thoroughly cooked. To accurately measure the temperature, insert a thermometer in the thickest part of the turkey thigh, but not against the bone. Turkey meat is thoroughly cooked when the hip joint moves easily and the juices run clear, not pink.

Steaks and roasts should be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F, and ground meat (except ground poultry) should be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 157 °F, or 155 °F for 15 seconds.

When leftovers are eaten hot, they should be heated to a minimum internal temperature of 165 °F, until hot and steaming throughout. Foods cooked or reheated in microwaves should be stirred or turned occasionally to ensure all parts of the food are thoroughly cooked. If using frozen meat, first microwave the meat until completely thawed, then follow with cooking. If microwaving is not possible, allow at least one-and-a-half times the usual cooking time to ensure the meat is sufficiently cooked throughout.
Refrigerate leftovers.

Turkey should be refrigerated in one of the following two ways: (1) Within two hours after it is cooked; OR (2) The turkey should be de-boned, sliced, or pulled into pieces no more than 2½ inches thick, immediately after cooking, and refrigerated in shallow containers. Store the meat, stuffing, and stock in separate containers in the refrigerator or freezer.

Do not eat leftover meat that has been refrigerated for longer than four days or eat leftover stuffing or gravy that has been refrigerated for longer than two days. If properly wrapped, leftover meat may be safely consumed after being frozen for one to three months.

Keep all cream, custard, and meringue pies, and any other foods with custard filling, refrigerated at 41 °F, except when being served.

These food safety tips should be followed every day of the year; not just during the holiday season.

Resources for information on food safety include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety at (800) 332-4010 and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline at (800) 535-4555. Consumers can also access the National Partnership for Food Safety Education’s “Fight BAC” (bacteria) Web page at www.fightbac.org.

Fritzsche Named To Global Conservation Panel

HSU professor to assess threats to marine species

Humboldt Sentinel
11/24/08
By Sentinel Staff

ARCATA -- A Humboldt State University fisheries professor is one of 18 scientists invited to an international conference in London in January to evaluate threats to endangered marine fish species.

Dr. Ronald A. Fritzsche, a professor of fisheries biology emeritus, is the only person from the U.S. west coast attending the conference.

A 1967 HSU grad and professor there since 1988, the former Department of Fisheries chair will attend the Sampled Red List Index Marine Fish Workshop.

The workshop will evaluate threats to about 350 species of marine fish, using data compiled for some 20,000 marine species to determine the risk of extinction.

The worshop is jointly organized by the Zoological Society of London and the Global Marine Species Assessment, headquartered at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.

Dr. Fritzsche is a world authority on pipefish, seahorses, cornet fish and trumpet fish, among others. He has worked for more than three decades with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to develop fish identification guides for fishery workers around the world.

He earned his Ph.D. in 1976 from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and was named Humboldt State’s Outstanding Professor for 1990-91.

Masked Man With Taser Robs Business Owner

Man mugged on Sunday night while entering vehicle

Humboldt Sentinel
11/23/08
By Sentinel Staff

EUREKA -- Police officers are searching for a man who robbed a Grotto Street business late Sunday using a taser.

The business’ owner was getting into his vehicle when a man brandished the taser at him, sparking it without touching him.

The robber took a bank bag with an undisclosed amount of cash and fled north from Grotto using the alley between D and E streets. The victim chased him for a distance but fell. The robber was last seen running westbound on Henderson Street.

After the robbery was reported to EPD at about 9:13 p.m., several units, including one with a tracking dog, searched the neighborhood but did not locate robber.

The robber, who was alone, was wearing a black ski mask with eye holes, a dark hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head and dark pants. He is described as being about 5’2” to 5’5” and 130 to 140 pounds.

Witnesses or anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call Officer Bill Dennison at 707-441-4044.

Eureka man busted for drugs after car chase

Kong Cheng booked on multiple charges, including possession of illegal switchblade

Humboldt Sentinel
11/22/08
By Sentinel Staff

A man who led Eureka police on a short car chase early Saturday has been jailed for drug charges.

Kong Cheng, 21, of Eureka, sped away from an officer who tried to stop him for a traffic violation near Del Norte and Williams streets at 1:21 a.m. Nov. 22.

Cheng ran stop signs for about a mile in his gold Honda Accord before finally pulling over on the 1800 block of Summer Street.

Cheng did not resist arrest and his three passengers were released. Officers searched the car and found seven packets of suspected crystal methamphetamine and a switchblade knife.

Cheng was taken to Humboldt County Correctional Facility, where he has been booked for possession and transportation of methamphetamine for sale, felony reckless evading, driving under the influence of an illegal substance, driving with a suspended license, and possession of an illegal weapon.

Food donations sought for Arcata Endeavor

HSU staff in push for food for homeless people, pets

Humboldt Sentinel
11/21/08
By Sentinel Staff

Humboldt State University staff are collecting donations for the Arcata Endeavor and BONES (Better Options for Neglected Strays) Pet Rescue until Thursday, Dec. 18. Bins are located in rooms 133, 285, 295, 345 and 413 of HSUs Student and Business Services Building.

Preferred non-perishable goods include beans, soups, canned meats and tuna, chili and stew, peanut butter, breakfast cereals, nutritional drinks, boxed or canned juices and canned fruits and vegetables. Recommended donations for BONES are dry foods of any brand for cats and dogs.

The Bush Pardons

The rule of law must be respected

Humboldt Sentinel
11/20/08
By Russ Feingold

A departing president probably can't help thinking about the judgment of history. At the end of eight years, President Bush likely isn't any different. With the nation's attention focused on his successor, it may seem as if there is little opportunity left for the current president to affect how he will be viewed. But there is one power left -- the power of the pardon -- that could, if it's abused, create a controversy that both the president and the public could live without.

The power of the pardon is close to absolute. Short of interfering with their own impeachment, presidents can pardon whomever they choose. At the end of his term, however, this president should think twice before issuing pardons that call his judgment, and the integrity of the rule of law, into question.

If President Bush were to pardon key individuals involved in the misdeeds of his administration, from warrantless wiretapping to torture to the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the courts would be unable to address criminality, or pass judgment on the legality of some of the president's worst abuses. Issuing such pardons now would be particularly egregious, since voters just issued such a strong condemnation of the Bush administration at the ballot box. There is nothing to prevent President Bush from using the pardon in such a short-sighted and self-serving manner -- except, perhaps, public pressure that may itself be a window on the judgment of history. Everyone who can exert that pressure, from members of Congress to the press and the public, should express their views on whether it would be appropriate for President Bush to use his pardon power in this way.

Controversial pardons are nothing new, of course. President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, which was a source of furious national debate, is perhaps the most famous of these. More recently, President Clinton issued a series of last-minute pardons that were highly criticized. Yet the power can also be used to show mercy -- Clinton used the pardon power a number of times to lessen the impact of draconian mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenders.

The use of the pardon power throughout history has been just as varied. Presidents Andrew Johnson, Buchanan and Carter used the pardon power to try to heal national divisions and promote unity. Buchanan, for instance, in return for an oath of loyalty to the nation, pardoned Mormon settlers in Utah who had been accused of treason. It was Johnson's extensive use of pardons after the Civil War that prompted Congress to try to limit the pardon power, which led to the Supreme Court's seminal decision, Ex parte Garland, confirming its nearly unlimited scope. The pardon power outlined in the Garland decision is sweeping -- "it extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission." But that doesn't mean that all pardons are appropriate or serve the common good. The current president's own father, George H.W. Bush, pardoned six participants in the Iran-Contra plan, including Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams and Bob McFarlane, whose trials might have exposed his own involvement.

Writing in the Garland case, the Supreme Court said of presidents' pardon power that "the benign prerogative of mercy reposed in him cannot be fettered by any legislative restrictions." The history of the use of the presidential pardons shows that while presidents sometimes exercise the benign prerogatives of mercy, that is not always their motivation. Nonetheless, while there may be almost no legal limits on presidential pardons, there certainly are limits to what the public will see as a reasonable use of the power. The current president, who has shown such disrespect for the rule of law during his term, will have a chance to show to all of us, and to history, whether he respects it enough not to short-circuit the judicial process after he leaves office.

Russ Feingold is a United States Senator from Wisconsin and a leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

When It's A Clear Day And You Can't See GM

What good is a financial sector with nothing to finance?

Humboldt Sentinel
11/18/08
By Paul Craig Roberts

"The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic Congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition,” reported the NY Times last Friday.

Wow! The entire country is steamed up over the Republicans bailing out a bunch of financial crooks who have paid themselves fortunes in bonuses for destroying America’s pensions. Why do Democrats want to protect Republicans from further ignominy by not giving them the opportunity to vote down a bailout for workers? Quick, someone enroll the Democratic Party in Politics 101.

GM’s divisions in Canada and Germany are asking those governments for help. It will be something if Canada and Germany come through for the American automaker and the American government doesn’t.

Conservative talking heads are saying GM is a “failed business model” unworthy of a $25 billion bailout. These are the same talking heads who favored pouring $700 billion into a failed financial model.

The head of the FDIC is trying to get $25 billion--a measly 3.5 percent of the $700 billion for the banksters--with which to refinance the mortgages of 2 million of the banksters’ victims, and Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Paulson says no. Why aren’t the Democrats all over this, too?

Apparently, the Democrats still think they are the minority party or else their aim is to supplant the Republicans as the party of the rich.

Any bailout has its downsides. But if America loses its auto industry, it will lose the suppliers as well and will cease to have a manufacturing sector. For years no-think economists have been writing off America’s manufacturing jobs, while deluding themselves and the public with propaganda about a New Economy based on finance.

A country that doesn’t make anything doesn’t need a financial sector as there is nothing to finance.

The financial crisis has had one good effect. It has cured Democratic economists like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman of their fear of budget deficits. During the Reagan years these two economists saw doom in the “Reagan deficits” despite the fact that OECD data showed that the US at that time had one of the lowest ratios of general government debt to GDP in the industrialized world.

Today Reich and Krugman are unfazed by their recommendations of budget deficits that are many multiples of Reagan’s. Moreover, neither economist has given the slightest thought as to how the massive budget deficit that they recommend can be financed.

Both recommend large public spending programs. Krugman puts a price tag of $600 billion on his program. If it takes $700 billion to save the banks and only $600 billion to save the economy, it sounds like a good deal. But this $600 billion is on top of the $700 billion for the banks, the $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the $85 billion for AIG. These figures add to one trillion five hundred eighty-five billion dollars, a sum that must be added to the budget deficit due to war and recession (or worse).

What we are talking about here is a minimum budget deficit of $2 trillion. The US has never had to finance a deficit of this magnitude. Where is the money coming from?

The US Treasury doesn’t have any money, and neither do Americans, who have lost up to half of their savings and retirement funds and are up to their eyeballs in mortgage and consumer debt. And unemployment is rising.

There are only two sources of financing: foreign creditors and the printing press.

I doubt that foreigners have $2 trillion to lend to the US. Thanks to the toxic US financial instruments, they have their own bailouts to finance and economies to stimulate. Moreover, I doubt that foreigners think the US can service a public debt that suddenly jumps by $2 trillion. At 5 percent interest, the additional debt would add $100 billion to the annual budget deficit. In order to pay interest to creditors, the US would have to borrow more money from them.

Economists and policy-makers are not thinking. This enormous financing need comes not to a well-managed economy that can take the additional debt in its stride. Instead, it comes to an economy so badly managed that there are no reserves.

Massive US trade deficits have been financed by giving up US assets to foreigners, who now own the income flows as well. Budget deficits from 6 years of pointless wars and from unsustainable levels of military spending have helped to flood the world with dollars and to drive down the dollar’s exchange value. Consumers themselves are drowning in debt and can provide no lift to the economy. Millions of the best jobs have been moved offshore, and research, design, and innovation have followed them. Considering America’s dependency on imports, part of any stimulus package that reaches the consumer will bleed off to foreign countries.

Generally, when countries acquire more debt than they can service, they inflate away the debt. If foreign creditors do not save the Obama administration, the Treasury will print bonds and give them to the Federal Reserve, which will issue money.

The inflation will be severe, particularly as Americans will not be able to pay for the imports of manufactured goods from abroad on which they have become dependent. The exchange value of the dollar will decline with the domestic inflation. Once inflation is off and running, the printing press dollars will only have goods made in America to chase after. The real crisis has not yet begun.

Paulson should rethink the automakers’ and FDIC’s proposals. A bank produces nothing but paper. Automakers produce real things that can be sold. Occupied homes are worth more then empty ones.

Paulson’s inability to see this is the logical outcome of Wall Street thinking that highly values deals made over pieces of paper at the expense of the real economy.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions." He can be reached at paulcraigroberts ~~AT~~ yahoo.com.

Motorcyclist Evades EPD Checkpoint, Crashes

First federally-funded checkpoint nets two DUI arrests

Humboldt Sentinel
11/14/08
By Sentinel Staff

EUREKA -- The first of a new system of checkpoints in the county seat resulted in eight arrests on Thursday, including a motorcyclist who failed to stop, evaded Eureka Police Department officers, and then crashed on southbound Hwy. 101.

Allen Guilliams, aged 30 of Eureka, rode his motorcycle into the checkpoint taking place yesterday evening at the intersection of Fourth St. and Commercial St. According to the EPD release, Guilliams passed a line of stopped cars on the right-hand side, and then accelerated and failed to stop for the screening officers.

EPD officer Drake Goodale caught up with Gilliams traveling at high speed southbound on Broadway near Sixth St. and activated his emergency lights and sirens in his attempt to pull the suspect over. Guilliams evaded the officer and sped south on Hwy. 101 at speeds reaching 90 miles per hour in this 35 mph zone.

Nearly a mile later, Guilliams lost control of his motorcycle at the 3200 block of Broadway and collided with a moving vehicle which was crossing Broadway. Guilliams was thrown from the motorcycle and landed on the pavement. He proceeded to get up and attempted to flee from officers on foot. Goodale was able to catch up with and detain Guilliams in the parking lot of Carl’s Jr.

After being treated for his accident-related injuries at a local hospital, Gilliams, a parolee, was booked into the county lock-up for felony evasion, driving while unlicensed, and a parole violation.

The checkpoint, which is funded by a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, also resulted in two arrests for driving under the influence, as well as 6 citations for driving without a license, including Guilliams. According to the EPD release, 402 vehicles in total passed through the checkpoint, where drivers were required to present their papers for inspection.

The Two Trillion Dollar Black Hole

A Credit Crisis or a Collapsing Ponzi Scheme?

Humboldt Sentinel
11/14/08
By Pam Martens

Purge your mind for a moment about everything you've heard and read in the last decade about investing on Wall Street and think about the following business model:

You take your hard earned retirement savings to a Wall Street firm and they tell you that as long as you "stay invested for the long haul" you can expect double digit annual returns. You never really know what your money is invested in because it’s pooled with other investors and comes with incomprehensible but legal looking prospectuses. The heads of these Wall Street firms have been taking massive payouts for themselves, ranging from $160 million to $1 billion per CEO over a number of years. As long as new money keeps flooding in from newfangled accounts called 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, 529 plans for education savings, and hedge funds (each carrying ever greater restrictions for withdrawing your money and ever greater opacity) everything appears fine on the surface. And then, suddenly, you learn that many of these Wall Street firms don't have any assets that anybody wants to buy. Because these firms are both managing your money as well as having their own shares constitute a large percentage of your pooled investments, your funds begin to plummet as confidence drains from the scheme.

Now consider how Wikipedia describes a Ponzi scheme:

“A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns (‘profits’) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi...One reason that the scheme initially works so well is that early investors – those who actually got paid the large returns – quite commonly reinvest (keep) their money in the scheme (it does, after all, pay out much better than any alternative investment). Thus those running the scheme do not actually have to pay out very much (net) – they simply have to send statements to investors that show how much the investors have earned by keeping the money in what looks like a great place to get a high return. They also try to minimize withdrawals by offering new plans to investors, often where money is frozen for a longer period of time...The catch is that at some point one of three things will happen:

(1) the promoters will vanish, taking all the investment money (less payouts) with them;

(2) the scheme will collapse of its own weight, as investment slows and the promoters start having problems paying out the promised returns (and when they start having problems, the word spreads and more people start asking for their money, similar to a bank run);

(3) the scheme is exposed, because when legal authorities begin examining accounting records of the so-called enterprise they find that many of the 'assets' that should exist do not."

Looking at outcomes 1, 2, and 3 above, here’s where we are today. The promoters have clearly not vanished as in outcome 1. In fact, they are behaving as if they know they have nothing to fear. As over $2 trillion of taxpayer money is rapidly infused through Federal Reserve loans and over $125 Billion in U.S. Treasury equity purchases to keep these firms from collapsing, the promoters are standing at the elbow of the President-Elect in press conferences (Citigroup promoter, Robert Rubin); they are served up as business gurus on the business channel CNBC (former AIG CEO and promoter, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg); they are put in charge of nationalized zombie firms like Fannie Mae (Herbert Allison, former President of Merrill Lynch); they are paying $26 million and $42 million, respectively, for new digs at 15 Central Park West in Manhattan, where their chauffeurs have their own waiting room (Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; Sanford “Sandy” Weill, former CEO of Citigroup, who put his penthouse in the name of his wife’s trust, perhaps smelling a few pesky questions ahead over the $1 billion he sucked out of Citigroup before the Fed had to implant a feeding tube).

We are definitely seeing all the signs of outcome 2: the scheme is collapsing under its own weight; there are panic runs around the globe wherever Wall Street has left its footprint.

But outcome 3 is the most fascinating area of departure from the classic Ponzi scheme. Legal authorities have, indeed, examined the books of these firms, except for one area we’ll discuss later. They found worthless assets along with debts hidden off the balance sheet instead of real depositor funds. Instead of arresting the perpetrators and shutting down the schemes, Federal authorities have developed their own new schemes and pumped over $2 trillion of taxpayer money into propping up the firms while leaving the schemers in place. Equally astonishing, Congress has not held any meaningful investigations. This has left many Wall Street veterans wondering if the problem isn’t that the firms are “too big to fail” but rather “too Ponzi-like to prosecute.” Imagine the worldwide reaction to learning that all the claptrap coming from U.S. think-tanks and ivy-league academics over the last decade about efficient market theory and deregulation and trickle down was merely a ruse for a Ponzi scheme now being propped up by a U.S. Treasury Department bailout and loans from our central bank, the Federal Reserve.

Fortunately for American taxpayers, Bloomberg News has some inquiring minds, even if our Congress and prosecutors don’t. On May 20, 2008, Bloomberg News reporter, Mark Pittman, filed a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) with the Federal Reserve asking for detailed information relevant to whom the central bank was giving these massive loans and precisely what securities these firms were posting as collateral. Bloomberg also wanted details on “contracts with outside entities that show the employees or entities being used to price the Relevant Securities and to conduct the process of lending.” Heretofore, our opaque central bank had been mum on all points.

By law, the Federal Reserve had until June 18, 2008 to answer the FOIA request. Here’s what happened instead, according to the Bloomberg lawsuit: On June 19, 2008, the Fed invoked its right to extend the response time to July 3, 2008. On July 8, 2008, the Fed called Bloomberg News to say it was processing the request. The Fed rang up Bloomberg again on August 15, 2008, wherein Alison Thro, Senior Counsel and another employee, Pam Wilson, informed the business wire service that their request was going to be denied by the end of September 2008. No further response of any kind was received, including the denial. On November 7, 2008, Bloomberg News slapped a federal lawsuit on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, asserting the following:

“The government documents that Bloomberg seeks are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression. The effect of that crisis on the American public has been and will continue to be devastating. Hundreds of corporations are announcing layoffs in response to the crisis, and the economy was the top issue for many Americans in the recent elections. In response to the crisis, the Fed has vastly expanded its lending programs to private financial institutions. To obtain access to this public money and to safeguard the taxpayers’ interests, borrowers are required to post collateral. Despite the manifest public interest in such matters, however, none of the programs themselves make reference to any public disclosure of the posted collateral or of the Fed’s methods in valuing it. Thus, while the taxpayers are the ultimate counterparty for the collateral, they have not been given any information regarding the kind of collateral received, how it was valued, or by whom.”

As evidence that Bloomberg News is not engaging in hyperbole when it uses the word “cataclysmic” in a Federal court filing, consider the following price movements of some of these giant financial institutions. (All current prices are intraday on November 12, 2008):

American International Group (AIG): Currently $2.16; in May 2007, $72.00

Bear Stearns: Absorbed into JPMorganChase to avoid bankruptcy filing; share price in April 2007, $159

Fannie Mae: Currently 65 cents; in June 2007 $69.00

Freddie Mac: Currently 79 cents; in May 2007 $67.00

Lehman Brothers: Currently 6 cents; in February 2007, $85.00

What all of the companies in this article have in common is that they were writing secret contracts called Credit Default Swaps (CDS) on each other and/or between each other. These are not the credit default swaps recently disclosed by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC). These are the contracts that still live in darkness and are at the root of why the Wall Street banks won’t lend to each other and why their share prices are melting faster than a snow cone in July.

A Credit Default Swap can be used by a bank to hedge against default on loans it has made by buying a type of insurance from another party. The buyer pays a premium upfront and annually and the seller pays the face amount of the insurance in the event of default. In the last few years, however, the contracts have been increasingly used to speculate on defaults when the buyer of the CDS has no exposure to the firm or underlying debt instruments. The CDS contracts outstanding now total somewhere between $34 Trillion and $54 Trillion, depending on whose data you want to use, and it remains an unregulated market of darkness. It is also quite likely that none of the firms that agreed to pay the hundreds of billions in insurance, such as AIG, have the money to do so. It is also quite likely that were these hedges shown to be uncollectible hedges, massive amounts of new capital would be needed by the big Wall Street firms and some would be deemed insolvent.

Until Congress holds serious investigations and hearings, the U.S. taxpayer may be funding little more than Ponzi schemes while companies that provide real products and services, legitimate jobs and contributions to the economy are left to fail.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at pamk741 ~~AT~~ aol.com.

Bernie Worrell Brings Funk Stylings To Town This Saturday

Woo Warriors and Seneca to touch down at Red Fox

Humboldt Sentinel
11/13/08
By Sentinel Staff

P-Funk founder and former Talking Head member Bernie Worrell is bringing his Woo Warriors to the Red Fox Tavern this Saturday along with Seneca.

To the musically literate, Bernie Worrell needs no introduction, with his work as Musical Director of Parliament Funkadelic and his contributions to Talking heads almost legendary. Twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, songs he’s contributed to such as “Burning Down The House” and “Flashlight” are anthems for a generation. As one of the most sampled musicians in history, Worrell’s funky licks have graced hit songs by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, En Vogue and many more.

"When you talk about putting Bernie in a genre, he's really one of the few musicians that transcend language,” Philip Di Fiore stated in the release. “You really can't put him in a genre or classify his playing with words. He'll sabotage that and purposely make you sit there and really think about what he's doing, instead of trying to talk about it. It is very difficult."

Worrell's early years were spent studying at the New England Conservatory of Music and the Julliard School of Music, giving him a structural foundation on which to base his stratospheric playing. He cites his classical training as a big reason why Parliament-Funkadelic sounded so different from other funk bands of the day. When asked about influences, Worrell lists musical giants such as Ray Charles, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Smith, Oscar Peterson, and Thelonious Monk as making a strong impression on him as a budding performer. Now it is Worrell who is cited as an influence by many of today's generation of players.

Worrell is in high demand as a performer with acts such as Bootsy's New Rubber Band, Jack Bruce & The Cuicoland Express (featuring Vernon Reid) and rapper Mos Def's rock band Black Jack Johnson. He's collaborated in the past with seminal artists such as The Rolling Stones, Bill Laswell, The Pretenders, Soul Asylum, and Jody Watley, and has also been involved in scoring a few movies, most notably Ice Cube's "Friday."

Currently, Worrell is on the road with Eric McFadden Trio as a reoccurring special guest, Global Noize, Method of Defiance and soon reigniting his own supergroup Bernie Worrell and The Woo Warriors. He's also been working with Les Claypool of Primus as part of Col. Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, featuring Claypool, Buckethead, Brain... a strange match up of unique talents if ever there was one.

This Passion Presents show starts at 10:30 p.m. at Red Fox Tavern, located at 415 Fifth Street in Eureka. Tickets are $18 for this 21-and-over show. For samples of Worrell’s tunes with the Woo Warriors, check out www.bernieworrellandthewoowarriors.com.

No Crime, No Foul For The Political-Media Club

Happy days for clubby, self-delusional "journalists"

Humboldt Sentinel
11/13/08
By Chris Floyd

One of the biggest problems clogging and clotting our political discourse has been the near-total merging of the media and political classes over the last few decades. Or rather, the completely false and fatuous fantasy on the part of big-time journalists that they are actually part of the same clubby circle as politicians who operate the levers of power. The politicians have made good use of this collective, self-serving delusion, of course, demeaning themselves now and then with chummy repartee and private get-togethers with the hacks they despise, in exchange for puff-ball treatment in print and on air. The late Tim Russert was the greatest exemplar of this pernicious development, of course; he became a veritable sewage pipe for the Beltway barons to pump out their bilgewater to the public at large by virtue of his weirdly inverted journalistic philosophy: every thing any poobah ever said to him was strictly off-the-record, unless they gave him specific permission to transmit their sacred utterances.

But this crippling condition is rife throughout the media industry. I've always remembered a particularly flaming example speared from the pages of the Washington Post (another of the great sewage pipes of our time) by the ever-howling Bob Somerby:


Ted Koppel had purchased his latest fast car. And he wanted to show this new “baby” off. And then he had it! He knew what he’d do! He’d show it off to one of the world’s most powerful men—one of the men he allegedly “covers.” Indeed, we’ll let Colin Powell take the story from there. Powell was speaking at a roast Thursday night. His remarks were transcribed and presented in Saturday’s Post. Every American should read them and ponder their meaning:

POWELL (10/14/04): Every couple of years, Ted will come by my house on the spur of the moment and we'll sit in the back yard and have a cup of coffee. And he's usually driving one of his hot cars. He always has a fast car of some kind. And so about, oh, four or five years ago, he came by the house and he had this real muscle car, and after we had a cup of coffee and chatted for a while, he says, “You've got to take it out and drive it, Colin. You've just got to drive this thing. I want you to feel that power.”

I said, “Okay, Ted. You want to go with me?”

“No, you go. I'll just wait right here in front of the house.”

And so I go out and up 123 in McLean. I will not tell anyone how fast I was going by the time I hit the CIA turnoff, but it didn't take me long to get there. And I came back around, pulled up in front of my driveway, and felt something go boom. And I got out of the car and the right rear tire was flat. There must have been about two inches of air left in it.

I said, “Oh, my gosh, Ted. I'm so sorry. I messed up your car.”

And he comes back, “Oh, it's okay, it's okay. I've got to go now.”

So I went to the back of the car and I looked at the tire. There was no tread on it. The wires were coming through. This guy had sent me out to speed up and down 123 with this car that had no tires on it. And I said, “Ted, how much are they paying you at ABC, man? Surely you can do better than this.”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Everyone laughed at the fatuous story, because the tale had been told by a powerful man. And by the way, in answer to Powell’s question, how much are they paying Koppel at ABC? They’re paying him millions of dollars—and he makes a joke of his responsibilities by driving around in his fast muscle cars, playing best buddy with the powerful people whom he allegedly “covers.”...What makes it amazing is the way these people discuss this conduct right out in public! ... Over the course of the past few years, we’ve discussed Bob Schieffer playing golf with George Bush; Gwen Ifill giving home-cooked meals to Condi Rice; and Tim Russert off at Don Rumsfeld’s Christmas party, loudly telling all in attendance about his dreams of the previous night. All of these people then go on the air and pretend to “cover” the people they pal with. Are you really surprised when a flunkee like Ifill goes on the air and rolls over for Condi? Or when all the rest of her compromised cohort pretend that the session was boffo?

No, Bob, we weren't surprised back in 2004, and we aren't surprised today. Take for example the piece below by Salon.com's own Joan Walsh, who would certainly consider herself one of the fiercest critics of the Bush Administration around. Yet here she is, deeply stirred by Condi Rice's tribute to the historical significance of Barack Obama's election:

Am I a total sap to find Condoleezza Rice's reaction to Barack Obama's victory moving? She looked like a little girl on Christmas. She looked 20 years younger, at least. That grim mask of determination and repression was gone.

Asked about the election results, she made unsurprising but pleasant remarks about the greatness of this country: "You just know that Americans will not be satisfied until they do form that perfect union." Then she added: "I just want to close on a personal note: As an African-American, I'm especially proud, because this is a country that's been through a long journey, in terms of overcoming wounds ... That work is not done, but yesterday was obviously an extraordinary step forward."

It wasn't really what she said, but the look on her face as she said it. A genuine grin kept breaking through the mask. Her eyes were glistening. She couldn't contain her excitement, though she was trying.

Walsh then goes to relate this rather boilerplatish enconium -- which differed very little from the sumptuous rhetoric that George W. Bush was given to read acknowledging the racial breakthrough of the vote -- to Rice's personal history, noting that the Secretary of State had been raised in Birmingham, that bastion of segregation, and had been friends with one of the four young girls killed by the racist bombing of a Baptist Church there in 1963. Of course, a young African-American girl in such circumstances would have been traumatized by the incident, and by the whole experience of growing up in that poisonous atmosphere (in a place that would have very much been considered "the real America" by the Sarah Palins of that day -- and of this day as well). And yes, one can see that such an experience might cause someone to react not by opposing the prevailing power structure but by identifying with it, clinging to it for protection, as Rice has done throughout her career.

That's an understandable human story. But Rice did not stop there, did not simply become a right-wing academic or corporate boarder, etc. She kept on going, right into the very inner circle of power. And there, she became -- and remains -- a very direct accomplice and perpetrator of mass murder, with the blood of a million innocent human beings on her hands. No one and nothing on earth forced her to do this. She has done it willingly and proudly, with eyes wide open. She has not shown the slightest remorse for the unspeakably horrific human cost of the war that she helped bring about and perpetuate. In any remotely just world, she would already be standing in the dock for war crimes.

And remarkably, Walsh seems to be aware of the fact that Rice is a mass murderer -- but she refuses to let this unseemly truth interfere with the cozy emotional moment she thinks she is sharing with a fellow member of the media-political club:

I know, plenty of people who grew up where and when she did were radicalized by it instead, and devoted their lives to civil rights and social justice. I know, she bears enormous responsibility for the nightmare of the Iraq war. But since this is a day to appreciate the opening to change that Obama's election creates, I think it's a day to be happy to see Condi Rice happy, and to hope she puts her experience and intelligence to work undoing the wrongs of the Bush administration.

My word, yes! Let's be happy that Condi is happy! Let's not put Condi on trial for war crimes, or bother her with investigations and tribunals. Let's not take her to Fallujah and put her in front of, say, a woman who has seen her own children blown to bits just like the four little girls in Birmingham. Why would we do that? In fact, what would be the point of raking up all that old dirt again on anybody? We don't need trials and investigations. We don't need justice. What we really need is for Condi Rice to "put her experience and intelligence to work" for us. Maybe she could join Obama's team, just like her partner in mass murder, Colin Powell. Wouldn't that be an opening to change that we can believe in?

Powell, then Condi -- hey, what about Dick Cheney? Sure, he "bears enormous responsibility for the nightmare of the Iraq war" -- but he's still got a lot of "experience and intelligence" that we could draw on. Imagine old Dick -- the greatest bureaucratic infighter of our time -- clearing away the red tape for Obama's programs!

So this is how it's going to be. Not only is Obama not going to pursue any kind of criminal investigation of war crimes, torture, concentration camps, warrantless spying and the innumerable other high crimes of the past eight years -- he is not even going to be pressured to do so, not even tepidly, by the leading lights of the "progressive" movement.

I'll bet that makes Condi really happy! And we're all happy for her, of course.

Chris Floyd is an award-winning American journalist, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Regime. He can be reached at his blog, www.chris-floyd.com.

Constitutional Dead Letters

Numerous provisions of basic law are never enforced

Humboldt Sentinel
11/12/08
By Roger Roots

Historians of Soviet Russia occasionally note that the communist workers’ paradise was originally intended to adhere to a written constitution that expressly guaranteed freedoms such as speech, press and assembly. In practice, however, none of the freedoms guaranteed in the Soviet constitution were recognized in the country’s legal system, and millions of dissenters and suspected dissenters were imprisoned or killed for disagreeing with the commissars of the state.

The United States Constitution, by contrast, is thought to be in good standing. Yet there are numerous provisions of the U.S. Constitution that are never enforced. These provisions, analogous to "dead letters" in the U.S. Postal System, are either totally ignored by federal judges or given such a narrow construction that they might as well not exist. As columnist and curmudgeon Joseph Sobran has written, the Supreme Court has, in essence, exercised a "line-item veto" over the document, totally ignoring provisions that interfere with the justices’ national vision or social objectives.

When the Supreme Court switched to discretionary certiorari in 1925 (thus allowing the court to pick and choose its own docket), the Court paved the way for a highly selective treatment of the Constitution. While some constitutional provisions (e.g., the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment) are routinely accorded Supreme Court consideration, many others are almost completely ignored.

It can hardly be a coincidence that all of the dead letters happen to place limitations on the scope and power of government. In contrast, the few provisions of the Constitution granting powers to government have been interpreted expansively. The clause giving Congress power to regulate interstate commerce, for example, has been interpreted by the courts to allow Congress to imprison people for acts that can be linked to either commerce or interstate activities only by a tenuous series of conceptual inferences.

There are even provisions which were included in the Constitution to limit government but which have now been interpreted to empower government. The Takings Clause, which states that no person shall be deprived of property "without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation," was recently construed by the Supreme Court to give government at all levels near carte blanche power over all property. In a 2005 decision entitled Kelo v. City of New London, the Court reinterpreted the phrase "for public use" to mean for whatever use any government desires – including private use.

Similarly, the Fifth Amendment Grand Jury clause was placed in the Constitution in order to limit government but has now been interpreted in a way that empowers government. As the criminal law grew more complicated during the 1800s, courts began allowing public prosecutors to appear and discuss cases before grand juries (a practice strictly forbidden at the time of the Founding). This became embedded in grand jury practice by the 1900s. Today’s Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state that prosecutors may be present before grand juries at all times and prohibit grand jurors from issuing independent presentments.

There is nothing new about this insidious trend. The Necessary and Proper clause was originally intended to bind Congress to legislating only in ways that were "necessary" to carry out the few limited powers the national government had been granted. By the early nineteenth century, however, the Supreme Court had already interpreted "necessary and proper" to mean only "proper" – in the eyes of the government. As Jefferson observed, "[t]he natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

Courts have increasingly subjected all rights mentioned in the Constitution to balancing tests, meaning that rights have become mere interests to be balanced against the (always pressing) interests of government. Thus, it is asserted that "no rights are absolute" and that courts may deny the application of a right where "the Government’s regulatory interest in community safety

. . . outweigh[s] an individual’s liberty interest." However, the Supreme Court has abandoned any pretense of balancing tests with regard to governmental powers (such as those found in the Tax Clause or the Spending Clause), for which the Constitution’s provisions are described as plenary.

Some rights enshrined in the Constitution are rendered dead by the lack of any remedy to enforce them. For example, in 1974, the Supreme Court held that no taxpayer ever has standing to challenge the secret budget of the CIA (which clearly violates Article 1’s requirement that "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account . . . of all public Money shall be published").

Finally, there are newly invented "maxims" of law that have crept into modern jurisprudence by means of pronouncements that they are long-recognized. One such so-called maxim originated with Justice Stone’s "Footnote Four" in the 1938 case of United States v. Carolene Products Company. Justice Stone proclaimed that most congressional enactments are "presumed constitutional" and will be struck down only if they blatantly contradict explicit constitutional protections. Stone’s "presumption of validity" has been cited in dozens if not hundreds of appellate decisions to turn away constitutional challenges.

As many scholars have pointed out, this "presumption of constitutionality" was enunciated nowhere in the many letters and speeches that punctuated ratification debates in the late 1700s. In fact, Founding-era voices more than occasionally expressed the opposite opinion. A widely-distributed editorial by Alexander White, a member of the First U.S. Congress from Virginia, proclaimed (in opposition to proposals for a bill of rights) that "In America it is the governors not the governed that must produce their Bills of Rights: unless they can shew the charters under which they act, the people will not yield obedience." Moreover, the Carolene Products presumption of validity can be said to overrule the plain text of the Ninth Amendment ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people") as well as the Tenth Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to the States . . . or to the people").

A list of other recently invented "maxims" would include (1) Justice Robert H. Jackson’s proclamation in 1949 that the Constitution is not a "suicide pact" (i.e., it should never be interpreted to mean the government is not always in control), and (2) the doctrine of "harmless error" (invented in 1967 in Chapman v. California) by which an appellate court may concede a constitutional violation but uphold a criminal conviction by proclaiming that the defendant would have been convicted even if the Constitution had been followed. There are also insidious doctrines such as "sovereign immunity" (which allows government agents to escape liability for illegal acts – on the ground that they are with the government) and the "state secrets" doctrine (which deprives citizens of any redress by the assertion that proof of a constitutional violation would expose intelligence sources or methods), which are found nowhere in the text or the original understanding of the Constitution.

Of course, liberty dies incrementally, and the leviathanic government we see today took generations to bring about. It has been largely forgotten that the prohibition of intrastate liquor sales in the early twentieth century required a constitutional amendment (the Eighteenth) because policymakers and judges recognized that Congress had no constitutional authority to regulate intrastate sales of any commodity. The Supreme Court even wrote in a 1932 decision that "sales of [ ] forbidden drugs qua sales" was "a matter entirely beyond the authority of Congress." The recent Gonzales v. Raich decision (upholding federal drugs laws as trumping California’s medical marijuana protections) highlights the fact that recent generations of Supreme Court justices have amended the Constitution without formal process.

A list of constitutional dead letters follows below. I honestly don’t know what weight to give some of the Bush Administration’s "unitary executive" practices such as its warrantless domestic eavesdropping and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which amount to complete abdications of the procedural rights laid out in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments. (If such matters are considered, it becomes arguable that the entirety of the Bill of Rights is a dead letter even if some of the rights are partially recognized for some people.) The list enumerated below, to paraphrase the dead-lettered Ninth Amendment, should not be considered all-inclusive, and there are, no doubt, other dead-lettered constitutional provisions I have neglected to identify.

* The House origination clause, Art. 1, § 7, requiring that all "Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives," has been rendered a dead letter by neglect. As Congressman Ron Paul has pointed out, the 2008 bank bailout bill with all its tax implications was deliberately introduced in the Senate after House members rejected it – a plain violation of this clause. Similar practices have gone on for many years.

* The congressional declaration of war clause, Art. 1, § 8. No "war" in the constitutional sense has been declared since 1941, although the executive branch has engaged in numerous undeclared wars and military escapades around the globe.

* The public accounting clause Art. 1, § 10: As already discussed, the secret budget of the CIA is in plain conflict with Article I of the Constitution ("No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time").

* The Legal Tender Clause, Art. 1, § 10, prohibiting states from making "any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." The application of the Federal Reserve Act and many other statutes and executive orders are in plain violation of this clause. State and Federal governments demand and provide payment in paper currencies that are unbacked by any precious metals.

* The prohibition against bills of attainder, Art. 1, §10 – which was supposed to ensure that no one could ever be punished by the legislature – has been addressed only four times by the Supreme Court. Congress regularly enacts new laws placing extrajudicial punishments on various groups (felons, convicted sex offenders, disfavored corporations such as Wal-Mart, and even entire industries (e.g., "Big Tobacco")).

* The Contract Clause, Art. 1, § 10, prohibiting states from impairing contractual obligations. Long dead and buried. Today the federal courts uphold wage, work, production, pricing, licensing and advertising regulations of every manner, irrespective of the Contract Clause.

* The Second Amendment right to bear arms. Despite the recent Heller decision (which issued a "landmark" ruling that the Amendment protects an individual right), there are still thousands of felons and other persons in federal prison for the mere possession of firearms. No defendant has ever been released from prison or cleared of gun charges in federal court on account of judges recognizing the right to bear arms. The gist of the Heller decision is that the Amendment protects a "reasonable" right to bear government-approved arms so long as you are government-approved. Of course, such a limited and conditional reading of the Second Amendment renders it a dead letter. The leaders of the American Revolution were themselves accused (and some convicted) felons, and several were notorious criminals (e.g., John Hancock, an accused tax evader and smuggler; John Paul Jones, a twice-indicted murderer who adopted his name as an alias to avoid arrest).

* The Fifth Amendment Grand Jury clause. While federal grand juries do still exist, they are now wholly subject to the control of federal prosecutors – the very persons the Clause was intended to limit. The grand juries known to the Framers were civilian institutions that acted independently of prosecutors, could investigate prosecutors, and could indict prosecutors. Today, prosecutors dispense all evidence, witnesses and testimony to the grand jurors, who then retire to a deliberation room to vote on whether to approve the prosecutors’ wishes. (A "no" vote will just mean that the prosecutors will coerce another grand jury to vote on the same case.)

* The Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy clause. Today, the federal government commonly charges defendants who have been previously charged with essentially the same offense in state court (and vice versa). This usually happens after an acquittal or a "light" sentence in the first prosecution. Because Congress has federalized almost every state crime over the past four decades (something the Founders could never have imagined), federal and state prosecutors are able to get two bites at the apple despite the double jeopardy clause.

* The Sixth Amendment right to jury trial in criminal cases. My inclusion of this one may puzzle some readers, because thousands of jury trials take place in American courtrooms annually. But the right to jury trial has been stripped for the vast majority of criminal prosecutions. Supreme Court rulings beginning in the late 1800s confined this right to cases of "serious" rather than "petty" crimes (i.e., punishable by less than six months’ imprisonment). This distinction exists nowhere in constitutional text, which explicitly guarantees a jury trial "[i]n all criminal prosecutions " and for "all crimes." The change has allowed government to impose its will on the populace with far greater efficiency. Justices Black and Douglas observed in a 1970 concurrence that their colleagues on the Supreme Court had effectively amended the Constitution by applying a balancing test and that "[t]hose who wrote and adopted our Constitution and Bill of Rights engaged in all the balancing necessary. They decided that the value of a jury trial far outweighed its costs for " all crimes" and "[i]n all criminal prosecutions."

* Of course, plea bargains have replaced jury trials in most "serious" cases, allowing government to prosecute and imprison a far higher proportion of the American population than the Framers could have anticipated. And even where defendants take their charges to trial, they are tried before emasculated juries that are ordered to follow the judges’ interpretations of the Constitution and the laws. The Founders would have condemned this wholesale takeover of juries by modern judges.

* The Sixth Amendment vicinage clause (requiring an "impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed"). In practice today, most federal court proceedings have been centralized into the largest urban areas of each federal court district, leaving rural defendants in many cases to face trials before urban juries drawn from jury districts that do not include the scene(s) of the alleged offense(s).

* The Seventh Amendment right to jury trial in civil cases where the amount in controversy exceeds twenty dollars ($20). The eternal drive of government officials at every level to collect petty duties, traffic and parking tickets, fees and other tributes has necessitated that they circumvent the plain language of the Seventh Amendment. Today the Seventh Amendment is one of three articles in the Bill of Rights not incorporated into state court practice by the Fourteenth Amendment. Even in federal courts, the civil remedies mandated by the Seventh Amendment are painted into an extremely narrow corner.

* The Ninth Amendment protection of other "rights retained by the people." As already discussed, this important provision, insisted upon by the Anti-Federalists in 1791, has been dead-lettered by a combination of judicial doctrines, maxims and sophistries that in essence leave the people with few or no reserved rights.

* The Tenth Amendment. At the heart of the Supreme Court’s dead letter file is the abandonment of federalism in order to create a centralized regime run from Washington. Under the Founders’ intent, of course, each state was to retain its own sovereignty while the federal government was to act as the states’ mutual delegate in matters of foreign and interstate affairs. The absence of this rule in the pre-amendment Constitution precipitated massive resistance across the colonies. Yet today the federal courts regard the Tenth Amendment as a quaint "truism" – a mere statement that the States get to keep whatever jurisdiction is not overtaken by the federal government.

* The Fourteenth Amendment Privileges and Immunities clause, which was intended to require states to recognize legal rights recognized by the federal government and other states, was mostly dead-lettered in 1873 in The Slaughterhouse Cases, in which the Supreme Court held the provision applied primarily to freed slaves. In recent decades, courts have looked to the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause to replace the dead-lettered Privileges and Immunities clause.

* The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which requires that "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened," has been rendered a dead letter by means of the Supreme Court’s "standing" jurisprudence.

Dr. Roger Roots, J.D., Ph.D. is an attorney and criminologist from the state of Montana, and can be reached at rogerroots ~~AT~~ msn.com.

Missing Hunters Rescue Themselves

Search-and-rescue sent to find overdue hunters in Mill Creek

Humboldt Sentinel
11/12/08
By Sentinel Staff

HOOPA -- A hastily organized search for two hunters in the Mill Creek area was called off after the men made their way out of the woods and were discovered by a Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office deputy.

Larry Jordan and Anthony Obie of Hoopa had left yesterday on a hunting trip, but had not shown up that evening at a designated pick-up point for a ride back to town, according to a family member. The HCSO was contacted at 2:30 a.m. today regarding the missing men, which led to the deployment of deputies, Sheriff’s Posse volunteers, U.S. Forest Service personnel as well as friends and family of the hunters. Four-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles and a Mobile Command Center were also deployed.

At 10:30 a.m. a deputy spotted the pair walking on Lower Long Ridge Road, just four miles off of Big Hill Road. The deputy was informed by the men that they had underestimated the time they needed to return to the pick-up point, and had thus built a makeshift shelter to wait out the night in. The two were uninjured and in good health, the HCSO stated in a release.

Sheriffs Capture Child Abuse Suspect

Deputies tipped off, discover wanted man in Eureka

Humboldt Sentinel
11/12/08
By Sentinel Staff

EUREKA -- A McKinleyville man charged with child abuse and torture of his own daughter was discovered and arrested in Eureka today thanks to an anonymous tip.

At approximately 10:00 a.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office deputy Kenny Dison received a tip concerning Fernando Joel Calderon, who has been sought for the last week by law enforcement. Dison responded to an apartment on the 1300 block of I St. in Eureka and located Calderon, who was arrested and taken into custody without incident.

Deputies received a child abuse report last week after family members had become alarmed at the child’s condition after she returned from an unsupervised visit with Calderon. The victim’s injuries were significant enough that they required medical treatment.

Calderon was transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility where he was booked for charges that include torture, inflicting unjustifiable pain upon a child, and inflicting an injury upon a child. Additionally, Calderon had outstanding warrants for driving on a suspended license and a probation violation. He is not eligible to post bail due to the status of the warrants. He is expected to be arraigned by Friday.

Mateel Celebrates With Ponche At Annual Membership Meeting

Dinner, concert free for MCC members, $10 otherwise

Humboldt Sentinel
11/12/08
By Sentinel Staff

REDWAY -- The Mateel Community Center is celebrating its twenty-third anniversary this Friday at its Fireman’s Hall facility at 59 Rusk Ln.

On tap for MCC members are the tunes of Ponche, which follows the annual membership meeting, where community members will elect members of the non-profit’s Board of Directors

The Mateel Community Center seeks to involve all segments of the community in the creative actualization of a cultural vision embracing diversity, vitality, justice and sustainability, according to its mission statement. Its programs and events serve changing community needs, emphasizing the performing and visual arts.

Tickets are available for $10 for non-members, and admission is free to any member of the MCC. For more information, call 923-3368 or visit www.mateel.org.

Open Letter To The Lamest Duck

A special Veteran’s Day message to President Bush

Humboldt Sentinel
11/11/08
By Cindy Sheehan

Dear George,

I am writing this to you on the fifth Veteran's Day I have mourned the death of my son, Casey Sheehan. Casey was a soldier in the Army. You killed my oldest son with your lies and greed for Empire. Casey never became a Veteran because he came home in one of those pesky flag draped coffins that your mother doesn't want to bother her "pretty mind" with.

During that other illegal and immoral war that you and your VP, Dick, had the good sense to dodge, your mother never had to go through one second of worry for your safety, did she? You were too busy doing your drugs and going AWOL to bother her "pretty mind" about that. What galls me the most when I think about my brave and honorable son's needless and untimely death, is that you were so cowardly and worthless when you were his age and you had the nerve to condemn thousands of our children to death or disability with your lies.

George, I have written you letters before. I have demanded your resignation and also promised you that I would work for your impeachment. If you remember, I even started a peace camp of thousands of protesters outside your Crawford ranch and I even tried to get into Congress so I could impeach your criminal hide. You never answer my letters and you have never had the integrity to tell me what "Noble Cause" killed my son. This is the last letter you will receive from me while you are infecting our Oval Office, but it won't be the last time you hear from me.

George, I guess I could "rest on my laurels" and allow you to slink off into the quiet desperation of leaving the White House as the most detested President in American history, but that is not enough for me: Millions are dead, wounded, displaced and suffering life-long pain because of your actions. You are the number one terrorist in the world today and this country catches, tortures and prosecutes "terrorists" doesn't it? Haven't you said so yourself? You have turned the USA into a nation of imperial mobsters and we have the ignominy of being torturers and you do not deserve to retire with any kind of peace or honor.

George, if Nancy Pelosi and the other complicit Congressional leaders won't hold you accountable, I will. This nation has a very short memory and we have been assaulted on a daily basis by your arrogance and stupidity and most of America is buying the hype of pre-packaged and aggressively marketed, Hope, but I don't have the option of burying your deadly legacy like it never happened and moving on. The hole in my heart that used to contain the living and breathing presence of my son will never heal and you are the one who put it there. If you think you are going to live a comfortable life in Dallas, or Paraguay, or wherever, a la Johnson, Nixon, McNamara or Kissinger, you are wrong.

George, this country too hastily moved on from the abomination of Vietnam and we never healed from that horror because we never did the hard work of holding American leaders accountable for crimes against humanity. If history repeats itself, as it tends to do, you won't be held accountable for your crimes, but I won't let you forget the faces of my son, Casey and his comrades or the legion of faces of the Afghan and Iraqi dead. Are your dreams haunted by the souls of the people massacred by your hubris?

If I have to buy or erect a billboard near your home and plaster it with the faces of the people you murdered, I will. I will also work with my contacts in the international community to have you indicted for crimes against humanity. I will do whatever it takes to be the thorn in your side as you have been my sorrow. There are many people around the world who thirst for justice and healing who will join me in this noble cause.

This Nation forgot the faces of the 58,000 plus Americans and millions of Vietnamese who were slaughtered for imperial greed, but they won't forget the faces of the ones you have sacrificed on your altar of deception or the ones who will be sacrificed for the President Elect's continued War OF Terror. If Obama does not declare a speedy and complete end to the USA's war of terror on the world, someone should set up camp at his vacation home (which I bet will be nicer than Crawford, TX in August).

On this Veterans Day, I make this pledge to you. Unless we stop the bloody tide of war for profit and US hegemony by seeking justice for your war crimes and crimes against our Constitution, more Casey's will die and more countries that unfortunately lie in the path of imperial conquest will be decimated.

On this Veteran's Day, I also send my love and support to the Vets from all wars who live on our streets and are substance abusers because they can't get help from this hypocritical government. My heart goes out to all Gold Star Mothers who have nothing but a box of medals, a triangular folded flag and memories of a dead child and regrets for a life not lived with him/her. The war machine in collaboration with our government chews people up and rolls on oiled with pain.

George you broke your oath to "faithfully" execute your office and you betrayed the troops that you command due to nothing but election fraud, but I will not break my promise to you.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Austin Sheehan (U.S. Army (dec.), KIA in Sadr City, Baghdad on April 04, 2004).

HSU Breaks Ground For New Dorm Complex

Community center, 434 beds with price tag nearing $38 million

Humboldt Sentinel
11/11/08
By Sentinel Staff

ARCATA – For the first time in over a decade, Humboldt State University is building a new set of dorms to house its growing student population.

Continuing its extensive modernization projects, Humboldt State University begins work Nov. 10 to provide the campus with a state-of-the art community center and retail space.

Scheduled for occupancy in Fall 2010, the nearly $38 million College Creek Apartments will house 434 beds in four buildings. A regulation NCAA synthetic turf soccer field utilizing recycled rubber will adjoin the new facilities.

A typical unit will house three bedrooms, double occupancy, with two baths and a living area.

The 15,000 square-foot community center will be home to a full roster of campus activities and meeting rooms available for most of the same uses as those in the existing Jolly Giant Commons.

Funding is provided by state bonds segregated from the University’s operating and academic budgets.

The new construction site is bounded by Fourteenth Street to the south, College Avenue (“Willow Walk”) to the east, Harpst Street to the north and L.K. Wood Boulevard to the west.

Harpst Street between Rossow Street and L.K. Wood will be moved north to align with Harpst Street between Rossow and B Streets. That will remove the ‘jog’ in Harpst Street.

Construction fencing has gone up and site development and earthmoving is likely to start next week. The Harpst Street parking kiosk and permit dispenser will be removed and, starting Wednesday, November 19, parking information and permit issues will be administered 24 hours daily at the University Police Department window in the Student Business Services Building. A new temporary parking information booth will be built on north Rossow Street. A new drive-through will be installed in the north of the Mai Kai lot near the base of the Gist Hall staircase.

Metered curbside parking will be eliminated from the south sides of Rossow and Harpst Streets and the north end of Rossow beyond the parking lot entrances. Although the south end of Rossow will narrow, access to the Harry Griffith Hall lot and the Child Development Laboratory will remain open.

The north end of Rossow beyond the entrance to the Gist Hall lot and the Mai Kai lot will be closed to vehicular traffic.

Although the initial phase of construction will have little impact on vehicular and pedestrian traffic, subsequent phases will require extensive travel restrictions. For example, installation of a new sewer line on College Avenue will severely restrict pedestrian access and may force a temporary re-routing of foot and bicycle traffic.

Parking on Rossow Street will be off-limits temporarily and the south sidewalk of Harpst Street will be closed as well. Pedestrian access on the L.K. Wood sidewalk will be detoured while the contractor makes utility connections.

Closures, restrictions and detours will be communicated and posted in advance. A new Web site will be activated shortly at the Facilities Management site.

Construction will be halted on Commencement and other key campus dates. Final landscaping plans will be reviewed by collaborative academic and administrative teams, taking into account sustainability and native vegetation.

Humboldt County Concedes Measure T ‘Null And Void’

County agrees to pay out $44k; no sign of financial support from Democracy Unlimited

Humboldt Sentinel
11/10/08
By Charles Douglas

Already on its death bed after a federal court injunction issued by Judge Susan Illston in September, Measure T is now officially deceased and buried at an expense of over $100,000 to local taxpayers.

A proposed settlement signed on Nov. 7 and filed in federal district court in San Francisco today has conceded the illegality of Measure T, otherwise known as the Humboldt County Ordinance to Protect Our Right to Fair Elections and Local Democracy, which was adopted in a 2006 campaign marred by heavy personal attacks made by its proponents from its proponents at Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County.

“Judgment shall be entered…that Measure T violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, as incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment…that Measure T violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the stipulated judgment stated. “Measure T shall be declared unconstitutional, and therefore wholly null and void, and without any legal effect whatsoever.”

The agreement was reached between the San Francisco law firm of Renne, Sloan, Holtzman and Sakai, which represented Humboldt County, and the Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed suit in August on behalf of O & M Industries of Arcata and Mercer-Fraser Company of Eureka -- local firms which wished to make modest contributions to the campaign of Johanna Rodoni to retain her Second District seat on the Board of Supervisors.

These companies ran afoul of Measure T, which sought to strip constitutional rights from all corporations, as well as to ban “non-local corporations” -- defined as any incorporated firm with even a single shareholder or employee residing beyond the county line -- from making any monetary or non-monetary contribution to any county-level campaign.

“This settlement vindicates fundamental rights of free speech,” PLF Attorney Damien Schiff stated in a release. “Measure T was an attempt to strip businesses and employers of the freedom to participate in the political process. Nothing could be more at odds with the letter and spirit of the Constitution.”

The settlement also orders Humboldt County to pay the legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs within 60 days, which total $44,000. County officials estimate that their own legal expenses in defense of Measure T bring the butcher’s bill for local taxpayers to just above $100,000.

The proponents of Measure T, the “Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights” -- a front group for Democracy Unlimited -- swiftly issued a condemnation of local elected officials, with HCCR spokesperson and DUHC executive director Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap accusing the entire five-member Humboldt County Board of Supervisors of having no integrity.

“While this is a sad day for democracy, the fight is far from over. Past social movements like the civil rights struggle, the abolitionists, women's suffragists and the trade unionists have shown us that when people don't back down, justice ultimately prevails,” said Sopoci-Belknap in a release. “All movements have their wins and losses, and the movement for local democracy and citizen sovereignty over large corporations will prevail. Humboldt County will play a role regardless of whether the current Board of Supervisors have the integrity to stand with us.”

The integrity of Sopoci-Belknap and her DUHC “non-profit” is itself at question, however, in light of their promises that Measure T would survive challenges to its constitutionality, not to mention promises by DUHC to cover the entire cost. DUHC held a series of fundraising forums in Eureka and Arcata over the last few months to help “defend” Measure T, and also had a “Donate Now!” advertisement on their votelocalcontrol.org website next to their statement concerning the Measure T defeat. No funding, nor the “free legal help” pledged during the Measure T campaign, was ever forthcoming from Democracy Unlimited, their HCCR front group, or any other Measure T supporters, leaving county taxpayers with the bill during an economic crisis.

“The whole thing, doesn’t it just kind of reek of fiscal irresponsibility?” asked Redwood ACLU vice chair Greg Allen of Arcata in an interview with the Sentinel today. “There’s never any discussion of what this costs, and the county is very economically strapped now. I don’t find it impossible that a couple of people could lose their jobs because of Measure T, we’re in a hiring freeze and we’ve got to pay for all this somehow.”

Allen and the Redwood ACLU supported the lawsuit against Measure T due to their commitment to defending free speech rights in local elections. Allen and the publisher of this newspaper were subjected to hate-filled personal attacks from Sopoci-Belknap and other Measure T proponents on KMUD radio during the original campaign, when they were called “nutcases” and “trust fund babies” for voicing concerns with the ill-fated ballot initiative. Allen went on in his interview to dispute Sopoci-Belknap’s notion that the county should have continued to appeal the federal court injunction.

“I don’t see any understanding or grasp of the economics of this, that [Democracy Unlimited] apparently thinks that the county should pay for them to have their day in court when it’s probably that the county’s own attorney told them this isn’t going to fly,” Allen said. “It might be reasonable if these [DUHC] folks paid for it, but they don’t really contemplate that. If they went on to lose in trial court, do they want the county to appeal it? Where does it end?”

Allen estimated that even one more round of court wrangling would cost the county a further quarter of a million dollars, although this didn’t dissuade Sopoci-Belkap from insisting on a different course of action by local elected officials.

"We are deeply dismayed that our elected officials bowed so easily to the pressure from the corporate-backed Pacific Legal Foundation," stated Sopoci-Belknap. "We have offered help and support to the Board of Supervisors to do the right thing every step of the way - instead they chose to make this decision without soliciting input from the people of Humboldt County who were looking to them to defend our rights and respect our authority to determine what is best for our local elections."

Allen responded by defending the “prudence” of the Board of Supervisors in declining further appeals in defense of Measure T.

“To even suggest that it has anything to do with the integrity of the Board of Supervisors is an outrage,” Allen said. “I guess it’s easier to talk about integrity when it’s somebody else’s money. Unfortunately these are difficult economic times and Humboldt County is having very real economic problems. How responsible would it be to continue to pour money into a black hole with the chances of winning almost zero? It’d be tremendously irresponsible…the real truth is that they had a statute that was very defectively drawn by non-attorneys and I believe the voters were misled.”

Allen and the ACLU have also been subject to attacks from Kim “Verbena” Starr, who is the operator of an alphabet soup of local organizations such as RCC (Redwood Curtain Copwatch, TPP (The People Project), PARC (People’s Action Resource Center) and others. Starr sent out an e-mail to her “vervain” distribution list in September which assailed the ACLU and several members of its Board of Directors for speaking out against Measure T.

“My advice: Steer clear of the Redwood Chapter ACLU,” Starr stated. “Why would anyone need the ACLU’s (sic) ‘help’ to oppose Measure T while a huge right wing (sic) law firm (featuring Ronald Regan video (sic) on its website) is already brining a case against it.”

Starr went on to attack Christina Allbright, the chair of the Redwood ACLU, for being a public defender, as well as the publisher of this newspaper, who she accused of “personal paranoia.” She also accused Redwood ACLU officer Stephen Davies for “having yet to win a lawsuit in his over 10 year (sic) career,” even though Davies has won several lawsuit for various clients. Allen defended his fellow Boardmembers and the reputation of the ACLU against Starr’s accusations

“The outcome was really never in doubt, and the only thing that the ACLU supported was the right of free speech, no more, no less,” Allen said. “To even suggest that the ACLU was on the side of anybody but the principle of free speech is patently absurd. This initiative was extremely and profoundly flawed, and on constitutional grounds, it was absurd. Most corporations are mom and pop businesses, and [Starr and Sopoci-Belknap] don’t have any concept of that at all.”

In their objections to Measure T, the ACLU called for election reforms that would meet constitutional muster, and Councilmember Jeff Leonard has since set a town hall meeting to discuss the potential for campaign finance reform in Eureka next week.

Charles Douglas is the publisher of the Humboldt Sentinel. He can be reached at his blog, Vagabond Journalist, at charlesdouglas.us.

“Depaver Jan” Lundberg Sets Sail To Westhaven

“Depaver Jan” Lundberg Sets Sail To Westhaven
Former oil analyst-turned-enviro holds benefit concert for Sail Transport Network

Humboldt Sentinel
11/10/08
By Sentinel Staff

Jan Lundberg, formerly of considerable repute in the local activist community as organizer of the former Alliance for a Paving Moratorium in Arcata, is coming back to town on Saturday, Nov. 22 at the Westhaven Center for the Arts.

A former oil analyst and publisher of The Lundberg Report, Lundberg has since moved on to organize the Sail Transport Network, a grassroots effort to shift long-distance transportation patterns back to an old technology, wind power.

“Depaver Jan,” once the lead singer of the Depavers -- whose 15 minutes of fame were to be had playing their song “Have A Global Warming Day” on National Public Radio -- is on a solo acoustic tour these days with upbeat eco-originals.

Jan invites you to imagine, "Can you picture ocean-based renewable- energy passage and trade, with acoustic music?"

Jan's musical influences include Dana Lyons, Bob Dylan and John Lennon, as well as baroque and Greek. He sailed to Greece when very young, and this resulted in a half-Greek daughter named Spring, known for producing the Hootenanny songbook for activists around the campfire.

Besides “Have a Global Warming Day” Jan will play many of his other activist ditties such as “Get Up and Change the World,” “Green Is The Shelter” and “Against The Law” -- as performed and recorded by The Depavers. Musician friends are apt to join him on stage!

"All my songs come from dreams, for the music and lyrics. The one exception is 'Party On Fossil Fools,' a fun and futuristic rocker with an aspect of The Pixies," Lundberg stated in a release.

Past performances that Depaver Jan has given include spontaneously opening for Country Joe McDonald at People's Park last year in Berkeley for the anniversary of the resistance to the state four decades ago. With Jan on stage on mandolin was Ayr, a depaver and activist who bottom-lined the UC Berkeley tree sit to protect the Memorial Oak Grove (destroyed by the University of California this fall).

Jan has also performed in Mexico City in April for a gathering of environmentalists, and he played a long set in London after his appearance in 2003 as Jan Lundberg the oil analyst at The Institutue of Petroleum two days after two million protesters marched against the impending Iraq War.

Concert goers are encouraged to car pool or take the bus and bicycles!

Tickets are available at a sliding scale of $1 to $100, with snacks and drinks available separately. The show starts promptly at 7:30 p.m. Call 677-9493 to make reservations, and to find out more about the Sail Transport Network, visit www.SailTransportNetwork.org.

HSU Champions International Education

International education experts tackle immigration, globalization

Humboldt Sentinel
11/10/08
By Sentinel Staff

ARCATA -- Humboldt State University is hosting a series of panels, presentations, informational sessions and cultural events next week to increase local understanding of an increasingly interconnected world.

For the seventh straight year HSU is hosting International Education Week in partnership with the Departments of State and Education. Officials are inviting the public to take advantage of more than 40 hours of panels, presentations, informational sessions, and cultural events from Sunday, Nov. 16, through Thursday, Nov. 20.

The week itself is a unique academic experience, said Selma Sonntag, Professor of Politics, Fulbright Scholar and past chair of HSU’s International Advisory Committee. More than 30 students earn academic credit as part of a colloquium jointly sponsored by a half-dozen departments across the University, from Anthropology to World Languages & Cultures. But the events are directed ultimately at the campus and the community at large, Sonntag emphasized. “What people see and hear during IEW broadens horizons.”

Starting the week’s events will be two keynote addresses by visiting speakers who have noted careers in world affairs. Ron Schmidt, Fulbright Scholar, Professor of Political Science and past recipient of the Outstanding Professor award at CSU Long Beach, will discuss “Immigrants and America’s Future: What Are the Stakes? Why Should We Care?” at 7:00 p.m. Sunday evening in Goodwin Forum. Schmidt’s research focuses on the incorporation of immigrant communities in the U.S. and abroad, with emphases on language policy, ethnic and racial politics and Latino issues.

The following evening, Monday, at 7:00 p.m. in the Kate Buchanan Room, Al Sweedler, Assistant Vice President for International Programs at San Diego State University, will speak on “Engaging Students & Faculty in Study Abroad.” A Professor of Physics, Sweedler is founder of SDSU’s Center for Energy Studies and Co-Director of its Institute of International Security and Conflict Resolution. He has investigated the impact of energy use in the U.S.-Mexico border region and worked extensively on the relationships among energy, arms control and international security.

Tuesday will feature a talk by HSU Geology Professor and Scholar of the Year Lori Dengler on “Chasing Tsunamis: A Global Perspective.” She will speak at 7:00 p.m. in the Kate Buchanan Room.

Students from abroad are among the presenters and they are “excited to participate and to educate their peers and community members about the countries they come from,” observed Marci Fradkin, International Programs Coordinator. According to Fradkin, a growing number of international students—approximately 140 this year, a record—are attending HSU from some 35 countries. Reciprocally, more than 180 HSU students went abroad during 2007-08.

Among the many other events are panels led by faculty, staff and students on Living in the Middle East, Militant Islam & American Foreign Policy and Cross-Cultural Experiences; scholarly presentations on Nationalism & the Olympics, Cultural Globalization & the Call Center Industry and International Perspectives on Family Planning; information sessions on International Work, Volunteer and Study Abroad Opportunities; an International Fashion Show; a multi-ethnic Noodle Tasting; and “Walk on the World,” an interactive experience in which participants literally globetrot with the aid of oversized maps covering the floor of the Kate Buchanan Room. Most will take place in Goodwin Forum (Nelson Hall East) or the Kate Buchanan Room at University Center. A detailed schedule and directions are available at www.humboldt.edu/iew.

Sponsored by HSU’s Office of International Programs and the International Advisory Committee, International Education Week showcases the involvement of faculty, staff, students and community members in a wide variety of international initiatives. “California State University has determined that global awareness should be a pillar of the education we provide to our students,” said Guy-Alain Amoussou, Professor of Computing Science and HSU Director of International Programs. “We often speak of Humboldt County being hidden behind the Redwood Curtain,” he noted, “but like anywhere else, the North Coast is connected to the rest of the world in a thousand different ways. This week’s events highlight HSU’s links to important global networks and enhance the diversity of the mind of our community.”

The State Department emphasizes that international education readies U.S. citizens to live and work in an increasingly “globalized” world. It is also a vital service industry, bringing more than $14.5 billion into the U.S. annually.

“At a time when America is involved in two wars and faces an international financial crisis, it has never been more important to enrich the cultural sophistication and international awareness of our citizens,” added Stephen Jenkins, Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of Humboldt State’s International Advisory Committee. “Through our activities during International Education Week, the scholars and students of this University are showing a commitment to develop the level of awareness needed to solve crucial problems and create a future of productive and even joyful global relations.”

IEW was first held in 2000 and is now marked by communities and universities in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Pot Wins in a Landslide

A thundering rejection of America’s longest war

Humboldt Sentinel
11/10/08
By Rob Kampia

Voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana.

On Tuesday, largely under the radar of the pundits and political chattering classes, voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana.

Michigan voters made their state the 13th to allow the medical use of marijuana by a whopping 63 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin ever for a medical marijuana initiative. And by 65 percent to 35 percent, Massachusetts voters decriminalized the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, replacing arrests, legal fees, court appearances, the possibility of jail and a lifelong criminal record with a $100 fine, much like a traffic ticket, that can be paid through the mail.

What makes these results so amazing is that they followed the most intensive anti-marijuana campaign by federal officials since the days of "Reefer Madness." Marijuana arrests have been setting all-time records year after year, reaching the point where one American is arrested on marijuana charges every 36 seconds. More Americans are arrested each year for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking, just possession -- than for all violent crimes combined.

And the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, with “drug czar” John Walters at the helm, has led a hysterical anti-marijuana propaganda campaign. During Walters' tenure, ONDCP has released at least 127 separate anti-marijuana TV, radio and print ads, at a cost of hundreds of millions of tax dollars, plus 34 press releases focused mainly on marijuana, while no fewer than 50 reports from ONDCP and other federal agencies focused on the alleged evils of marijuana or touted anti-marijuana campaigns.

Walters himself campaigned personally in Michigan against the medical marijuana initiative, calling it an "abomination" and claiming yet again that there is no evidence that marijuana has medical value -- an assertion flatly contradicted by at least four published clinical trials in just the last two years.

In Massachusetts, the state's political and law enforcement establishment lined up solidly against the marijuana decriminalization initiative, including both Republican and Democratic politicians and all 11 district attorneys -- several of whom actually admitted to having smoked marijuana. They warned of rampant drug abuse and crime should the measure pass, simply ignoring the fact that no such thing has happened in the 11 other states (including California, Ohio and New York) that have had similar laws for years.

Voters were having none of it, giving a thumping rejection to government officials’ lies and hysteria in both states. Americans have taken a hard look at our national war on marijuana and rejected it for the cruel, counterproductive disaster that it is.

The voters are right. Of over 872,000 arrests in one year, 89 percent are for possession only.

What has this gotten us? Not much. Marijuana arrests weren't the only thing that set a record last year. So did the number of Americans who have tried marijuana. Usage rates came down marginally in the last few years but are still higher than in the early 1990s. Marijuana is our nation's number one cash crop.

The one thing our costly and futile efforts to "eradicate" marijuana have accomplished is to create a boom for criminal gangs, to whom we've handed a monopoly on production and distribution. Unlike producers of legal drugs like beer, wine or tobacco, these criminals pay no taxes and obey no rules. Their illicit efforts despoil our national forests and bring violence and destabilization to Mexico.

For years, politicians who know our current marijuana laws make no sense have been afraid to change them for fear of political retribution. The voters' thundering rejection of our misguided war on marijuana shows that those fears are misplaced.

It's time for Congress and the new administration -- not to mention state governments around the country -- to listen to the public. It's time for a new approach.

Rob Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, DC.