Wall Street Abandons Dems, Obama For GOP; Banker's Revenge

GOP Chases Wall Street Donors


Republicans are stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street, trying to capitalize on an increasing sense of regret among executives at big financial institutions for backing Democrats in 2008.

In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

GOP strategists hope to benefit from the reaction to the White House's populist rhetoric and proposals, which range from sharp critiques of bonuses to a tax on big Wall Street banks, caps on executive pay and curbs on business practices deemed too risky.

Democrats have dominated Wall Street's fund-raising circles in recent elections. Mr. Obama himself raised millions of dollars from employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other Wall Street firms.

Now, at least some Wall Street executives have reduced their political contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates, according to fund-raising reports and interviews with executives at financial-services firms.

Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama's efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations. The Republican leader also said he was disappointed many on Wall Street continue to donate their money to Democrats, according to the people familiar with the matter.

A spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan declined to comment.

"I sense a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of buyer's remorse on Wall Street," said Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the second-ranking House Republican and a top Wall Street fund-raiser for his party.

A complete picture of Wall Street's 2009 campaign donations won't be available for a few weeks. Through the third quarter, campaign-finance reports show that some major Wall Street players began sending an increasing share of their donations to Republicans. Many of those donations came toward the end of this period, because many banks had essentially shut down their political giving at the height of the financial crisis.

Through the first nine months of 2009, about 54% of donations from Bank of America Corp.'s political action committee and employees went to Republicans, according to campaign-finance data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That was a switch from the 2008 campaign, when 56% of the company's donations went to Democrats. Shirley Norton, a BofA spokeswoman, said it doesn't base PAC donations on party affiliation.

Donations from the PACs and employees of J.P. Morgan and Citigroup also trended toward Republicans during the same period, according to the data. Spokeswomen for the banks declined to comment.

During the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama received nearly $15 million in donations from people who worked in the securities and investment industry, according to the CRP data. Employees of Goldman Sachs donated nearly $1 million to his campaign. By contrast, Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, received $8.7 million from the securities and investment sector, according to the data.

Wall Street executives who supported Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign said there had been growing signs of discontent. These Democrats predicted that the unease would depress fund raising as the 2010 election heats up.

One major Democratic fund-raiser on Wall Street said that some people who raised money for Mr. Obama's campaign felt burned. "They put themselves on the line internally with their companies for Obama, and now they look stupid," this person said.

The White House referred calls seeking comment on Wall Street donors to the Democratic National Committee. A DNC spokesman said: "It's not surprising that Republicans are seeking money from the same banking industry they are the champions of. The relationship between Wall Street and Republicans is symbiotic."

Recently, Mr. Obama has repeatedly blasted the banking industry and Wall Street in speeches, leading critics to charge that he is vilifying Wall Street for political purposes.

"I see people that philosophically oppose Obama's policies getting a lot more engaged," said former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, who now serves as the vice chairman of investment firm UBS Securities LLC.


Sources: Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, TPM, The Daily Beast

U.S. Supreme Court Reviews Honest Services Law...Anti-Corruption & Fraud

US Supreme Court Justices to Weigh Honest-Services Law


An unusual coalition of groups has come together to criticize the Federal Government’s increasing reliance on a statute that is commonly used but little understood: honest-services fraud.

The Honest-Services Law, on the federal books since 1988, broadly requires that public and corporate officials act in the best interests of their constituents or employers.

It has become an important tool for federal prosecutors, who used it successfully against the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and many of his associates. It is an element of the cases against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois; the former New York State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno; and former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama.

Prosecutors have described the law as a valuable instrument against corruption at a time when officials have become increasingly sophisticated at covering their tracks.

But critics say it is used too broadly, is applied inconsistently, and too often criminalizes behavior that fails to merit the full weight of federal prosecution. The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law in this term, with two coming up for oral argument on Tuesday.

Opposition to use of the law has emerged from across the political spectrum, from the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Washington Legal Foundation on the right, to the more left-leaning National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

“Could an insincere sermon at Sunday religious services come within the statute?” asked the chamber, half sarcastically, in a brief to the Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia has been harshly critical of the honest-services law, writing in a recent dissent that it has been applied to “a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.” He said that it “invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators, and corporate C.E.O.s who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct.”

One of the two cases coming before the court next week involves Conrad M. Black, the newspaper executive who was convicted of defrauding his media company, Hollinger International. He is arguing that the law should not be applied to him because he did not contemplate “economic harm” to Hollinger.

In the second, Bruce Weyhrauch, a former Alaska state legislator, was convicted of failing to disclose a conflict of interest. He had not violated state law, however, and argues that the federal prosecution on honest-services charges violates important principles of federalism.

The third case, to be argued later in the term, involves Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron. He is arguing that the honest-services law is unconstitutionally vague.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group, scoffed at the idea that the law is so vague that people do not know when they have crossed the line, especially in the three cases before the Supreme Court.

“If you go to those cases — Black, Skilling and Weyhrauch — and look at what they did, a kindergartner knows that they were wrong,” she said. “It’s not credible that those guys really had no idea that what they were doing would get them into trouble. What they thought was that they wouldn’t get caught.”

The watchdog group’s brief to the Supreme Court called the law “an indispensable weapon in the prosecutorial arsenal for fighting government corruption” since it offers “a much easier evidentiary burden” than bribery law.

Critics of the law, however, say that its vagueness is used to bolster corruption cases in which the evidence might be weak or the offense, while perhaps distasteful, is minor.

That is the argument of Larry Remer, a political consultant in San Diego who faced multiple felony charges after successfully running a bond campaign for a community college. After the campaign was over, and the campaign fund depleted, a video production company sent in a bill for $5,800. The college president proposed paying the bill with public money, ostensibly by buying outtakes from the video company, though it is illegal to use public money for such a campaign.

Federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Remer and the college president in 2004 on a range of charges related to the improper use of taxpayer money, including honest-services charges. Mr. Remer said he was baffled by the case.

“I do understand the need to get the sleazebags,” said Mr. Remer, whose case ended in a mistrial and a plea of guilty, along with the college president, to misdemeanor charges of improperly using public money, not honest-services charges. “But let’s get them with real laws. Let’s not just say we need to get this guy, so we’ll use this law because it can be melted to meet our needs.”

The United States attorneys office in San Diego declined to comment on the case.

The honest-services statute grew out of the Supreme Court’s earlier attempts to rein in the widening use by prosecutors of mail and wire fraud laws, said John C. Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School.

In a landmark 1987 decision, the Supreme Court limited mail and wire fraud prosecutions to cases involving tangible goods like money and property, and not the “intangible right” of the people to good government.

Within a year, however, Congress restored the prosecutors’ flexible tool by passing the current law.

Since then, critics argue, chaos has resulted, with significant differences across the country in the ways that the statute is interpreted.

Bennett L. Gershman, a professor at Pace University Law School, said the power of prosecutors to overreach by focusing on a person to prosecute and then finding a law to apply “is not only subject to abuse under the honest-services theory, but has been abused” in cases like those involving Mr. Siegelman, the former Alabama governor.

The charges against Mr. Siegelman, including honest-services fraud, concerned a contribution from a businessman, Richard M. Scrushy, to an issue campaign advocated by the governor, who later reappointed Mr. Scrushy to a state hospital board.

The Department of Justice has conducted an investigation of the case and found no misconduct in the prosecution; Mr. Siegelman’s supporters say the investigation was poorly conducted. Mr. Siegelman has appealed to the Supreme Court, which has not decided whether to take up the case.

Ms. Sloan, of the watchdog group, said that if prosecutors abused the statute, “it doesn’t mean the whole statute is at fault.”

“It means the prosecutors made some bad decisions,” she said.

Richard L. Thornburgh, who was attorney general when the honest-services law was passed, said he expected the Supreme Court to issue “something fairly sweeping” since it had taken on so many honest-services cases.

But, he added, “I think they can do it without doing violence to proper law enforcement.”


Sources: NY Times, Wikipedia

High Court Examines Life Imprisonment For Juveniles Who Commit Non-Homocidal Crimes

(Part 1 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing the seriousness of the new federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. This video is targeted towards urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in Boston by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace, Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)



(Part 2 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing The seriousness of the new Federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)











High court looks at life in prison for juveniles


A seemingly divided Supreme Court wrestled Monday with whether teenagers can be locked away forever for their crimes. The question arose in two cases involving Florida men who are serving life prison terms with no chance of parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. Their lawyers argue that the sentences for people so young are cruel and unusual, in violation of the Constitution, because young people have greater capacity to change.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the Supreme Court opinion four years ago that ruled out the death penalty for people under 18, judging them less responsible than adults. So most eyes were on him Monday as the court considered whether to extend that rationale to life without parole sentences.

But Kennedy offered little hint of his position, at one point suggesting it might be difficult to distinguish between juveniles and adults in cases that do not involve the death penalty.

"Why does a juvenile have a constitutional right to hope, but an adult does not?" he asked.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg provided a possible answer, wondering whether teenagers can be accurately evaluated at the time they are sentenced. It may be possible that only after some years have passed that the state can determine, "Has this person overcome those youthful disabilities?" she said.

A second chance?

On the other side of the issue, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether every last juvenile offender had to be given a second chance. "Some of the actual cases in which this sentence has been imposed in Florida involve factual situations that are so horrible that I couldn't have imagined them if I hadn't actually seen them," Alito said, recounting two that involved the rape of children.

In the two cases before the court, Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman when he was 13 and Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17.

Graham, now 22, and Sullivan, now 34, are in Florida prisons, which hold more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

The justices could distinguish between the two based on the difference in their ages at the time of the crimes: It could rule that someone as young as Sullivan was must eventually be considered for parole without granting Graham any relief from his sentence.

Sullivan's lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, stated his basic argument simply: "To say to any child of 13 that you are only fit to die in prison is cruel." Sullivan would be resentenced to 40 years in prison if he were to win his case at the high court, he said.

Kennedy's opinion in 2005 was rooted in two principles — that death is different from other punishments and that children are less culpable than adults.

Following that ruling, Stevenson noted that juveniles on death row in Florida — all convicted of murder — "got a better sentence than Joe Sullivan," life prison terms with the possibility of parole.






US Supreme Court Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.

It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.

Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."

Sullivan is represented by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, who said his client's sentence is no different from the punishment the court found unconstitutional.

"They are both effectively death sentences," Stevenson said in an interview. "One is death by execution, and the other is death by incarceration, but they are both terminal sentences."

Only two 13-year-olds in the country have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes that were not homicides, Stevenson said, and both of them are held in Florida.

Florida officials would not discuss Sullivan's case before the November arguments, but their brief to the court said states are within their rights to lock up forever those thought to pose a perpetual threat to society.

"There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery," Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar wrote.

Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

A range of issues

In accepting both cases and deciding to hear them separately, the court gives itself a wide range of issues to ponder. The justices may rule that such sentences are acceptable for 17-year-olds, for instance, but not 13-year-olds. They could look at the relative seriousness of the crimes, or differentiate the non-homicides in both cases with crimes in which someone is killed.

Sullivan, who his lawyer said had been living on the streets since he was 10, had a troubled history with the law. He had 17 offenses before the crime at issue. In 1989, he and two friends burglarized the home of a 72-year-old woman one day while she was away, then returned later. The woman was raped by one of the juveniles; she never saw his face, identifying him only as a "dark, colored boy." But she remembered that he said something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."

At the one-day trial, Sullivan was made to say the words over and over. The victim listened and said: "It's been six months. It's hard, but it does sound similar."

The other boys singled out Sullivan as committing the rape.

"The conviction itself was very questionable," Stevenson said. "We do think he's innocent."

But that is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court. Stevenson only seeks to have Sullivan, now 33, resentenced so that at some point he becomes eligible for release.

Stevenson contends that Florida made no conscious policy decision that 13-year-olds should be eligible for life without parole for a non-homicide. No state that has debated the question has set the age that low. Instead, he said, Sullivan and others were caught up in a legislative reaction to escalating crime.

"What happened is we lowered the minimum age for trying kids as adults and brought them into the adult system, and we expanded the range of very harsh sentences for an adult, and these two things have collided," he said.

Besides the two Floridians serving life sentences for non-homicides committed at 13, seven others have received that sentence for crimes resulting in a death, Stevenson said.

An Index of Mercy

But the state of Florida and its supporters said that is evidence that the sentences are carefully applied to the worst of the worst.

"It is a rare and agonizing decision to sentence a juvenile to life-without-parole," said a brief filed by Louisiana and 18 other states. "But rare does not mean unconstitutional. Rather, rarity is an index of mercy -- of reluctance to take this severe step."

The National District Attorneys Association, supporting Florida, said that while life without parole for juveniles might be unusual, "permanent incarceration for the most violent, hardened juvenile offenders is by no means 'cruel.' "

Sullivan and Graham are supported by a wide-ranging group of organizations: the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and academics and social scientists who argue that juveniles cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. For the same reason, they say, younger teenagers are not entrusted with decisions such as voting, marrying or drinking.

A group of educators and social scientists told the court that such research was crucial to the 2005 decision that juveniles should not be subject to the death penalty. "The principal purposes of sentencing -- punishing the culpable and deterring the rational -- are not furthered by denying the possibility of parole to adolescents," the group said.

Graham and Sullivan are also supported in an unusual friend-of-the-court brief by former juvenile offenders such as Simpson, director and actor Charles Dutton, and a poet, a software executive and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"At some point, you have to look at them again and ask, 'What have you done with your life?' " said Simpson, who said that as a youth he burned down an abandoned federal building, destroyed property and fought with a police officer. "Maybe 90 percent of them you throw back in, but what about the other 10 percent?"



View Larger Map

Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, US Probation Department, 4Peace, Stop Handgun Violence Inc., Google Maps

Life Sentences For Youth Violates Constitutional Rights...US Supreme Court To Decide

(Part 1 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing the seriousness of the new federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. This video is targeted towards urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in Boston by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace, Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)



(Part 2 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing The seriousness of the new Federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)





US Supreme Court Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.

It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.

Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."

Sullivan is represented by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, who said his client's sentence is no different from the punishment the court found unconstitutional.

"They are both effectively death sentences," Stevenson said in an interview. "One is death by execution, and the other is death by incarceration, but they are both terminal sentences."

Only two 13-year-olds in the country have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes that were not homicides, Stevenson said, and both of them are held in Florida.

Florida officials would not discuss Sullivan's case before the November arguments, but their brief to the court said states are within their rights to lock up forever those thought to pose a perpetual threat to society.

"There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery," Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar wrote.

Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

A range of issues

In accepting both cases and deciding to hear them separately, the court gives itself a wide range of issues to ponder. The justices may rule that such sentences are acceptable for 17-year-olds, for instance, but not 13-year-olds. They could look at the relative seriousness of the crimes, or differentiate the non-homicides in both cases with crimes in which someone is killed.

Sullivan, who his lawyer said had been living on the streets since he was 10, had a troubled history with the law. He had 17 offenses before the crime at issue. In 1989, he and two friends burglarized the home of a 72-year-old woman one day while she was away, then returned later. The woman was raped by one of the juveniles; she never saw his face, identifying him only as a "dark, colored boy." But she remembered that he said something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."

At the one-day trial, Sullivan was made to say the words over and over. The victim listened and said: "It's been six months. It's hard, but it does sound similar."

The other boys singled out Sullivan as committing the rape.

"The conviction itself was very questionable," Stevenson said. "We do think he's innocent."

But that is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court. Stevenson only seeks to have Sullivan, now 33, resentenced so that at some point he becomes eligible for release.

Stevenson contends that Florida made no conscious policy decision that 13-year-olds should be eligible for life without parole for a non-homicide. No state that has debated the question has set the age that low. Instead, he said, Sullivan and others were caught up in a legislative reaction to escalating crime.

"What happened is we lowered the minimum age for trying kids as adults and brought them into the adult system, and we expanded the range of very harsh sentences for an adult, and these two things have collided," he said.

Besides the two Floridians serving life sentences for non-homicides committed at 13, seven others have received that sentence for crimes resulting in a death, Stevenson said.

An Index of Mercy

But the state of Florida and its supporters said that is evidence that the sentences are carefully applied to the worst of the worst.

"It is a rare and agonizing decision to sentence a juvenile to life-without-parole," said a brief filed by Louisiana and 18 other states. "But rare does not mean unconstitutional. Rather, rarity is an index of mercy -- of reluctance to take this severe step."

The National District Attorneys Association, supporting Florida, said that while life without parole for juveniles might be unusual, "permanent incarceration for the most violent, hardened juvenile offenders is by no means 'cruel.' "

Sullivan and Graham are supported by a wide-ranging group of organizations: the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and academics and social scientists who argue that juveniles cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. For the same reason, they say, younger teenagers are not entrusted with decisions such as voting, marrying or drinking.

A group of educators and social scientists told the court that such research was crucial to the 2005 decision that juveniles should not be subject to the death penalty. "The principal purposes of sentencing -- punishing the culpable and deterring the rational -- are not furthered by denying the possibility of parole to adolescents," the group said.

Graham and Sullivan are also supported in an unusual friend-of-the-court brief by former juvenile offenders such as Simpson, director and actor Charles Dutton, and a poet, a software executive and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"At some point, you have to look at them again and ask, 'What have you done with your life?' " said Simpson, who said that as a youth he burned down an abandoned federal building, destroyed property and fought with a police officer. "Maybe 90 percent of them you throw back in, but what about the other 10 percent?"



View Larger Map

Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, US Probation Department, 4Peace, Stop Handgun Violence Inc., Google Maps

Justice Ruth Ginsburg Is Very Sick, Hospitalized At Washington Hospital Center

Justice Ginsburg at Washington Hospital Center


Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is at Washington Hospital Center this evening after falling ill at the Supreme Court this afternoon. Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Ginsburg fell ill after receiving an intravenous iron therapy. Arberg said Ginsburg felt better after being attended by a physician at the court, but was taken to the hospital as a precaution.

Ginsburg's health has been a concern since the 76-year-old justice was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this year. In February, doctors removed her spleen and a tiny tumor on her pancreas. Ginsburg said the operation was a complete success, and that she was cancer-free. She underwent what she called a precautionary round of chemotherapy in the spring, but never missed a day of the court's public sessions.

She has kept up a rigorous schedule of speaking engagements and work on the court and has said she does not plan to leave the court for years.

A statement from the court follows:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was taken to the Washington Hospital Center this evening after feeling ill in her Chambers earlier in the day. The Justice felt ill at 4:50 p.m., about an hour after an iron sucrose infusion to treat an iron deficiency anemia that was administered at the Office of the Attending Physician.

The Justice underwent a comprehensive assessment of health in July 2009. This involved medical evaluation, imaging scans, and comprehensive blood tests. The result of this evaluation was that she was in completely normal health with the exception of a low red blood cell count caused by deficiency of iron. Intravenous iron therapy was administered in a standard fashion.

One hour following the completion of this infusion, she felt faint, developed light headedness and fatigue. Medical assistance was summoned from the Office of the Attending Physician and medical evaluation disclosed a slightly low blood pressure which can occur following this treatment. She was monitored at the Court, blood tests were performed and she was found to be in stable health. Fluids were administered and her symptoms improved, but she was taken as a precaution for evaluation at the Washington Hospital Center at approximately 7:45 p.m.



View Larger Map

Sources: Washington Post, PBS, Wikipedia, Google Maps

Charlotte-Meck Schools Allow Wealthy (White) Parents To Have Their Way...District Remains Racially Segregated

(Johnathan Kozol: Segregated Schools are the Shame of the Nation.)

(Jonathan Kozol's talks about his follow up book to his award winning eye opener "Savage Inequalities". He paints a picture as shocking as it is shameful.)






CMS posts options for shifting students


New proposals that would shuffle students in popular magnets and some affluent close-in neighborhoods turned up the volume Wednesday on a student-assignment controversy that already has hundreds of families up in arms.

A complex set of plans to relieve crowding at Eastover Elementary went online after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools offices closed at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Parents in the Dilworth neighborhood began organizing within the hour.

Those plans involve moving some Eastover students into the high-poverty First Ward Elementary and/or swapping magnet and neighborhood-school buildings.

Fierce debate over sending students from Myers Park to East Mecklenburg High has been building for a month, with meetings for and against the move drawing hundreds. The options posted Wednesday include reassigning families who live in the Cotswold Elementary attendance zone, moving students who attend Myers Park's International Baccalaureate magnet program or delaying action.

The school board will discuss the options Tuesday and decide whether to schedule community meetings on the plans.

The elementary and high school options both involve complex projections on how changes would affect crowding, academics, busing and poverty levels. Some board members and candidates say the current board should wait until after the November election, when the new board can review guidelines for student assignment before making explosive changes.

“To tweak boundaries again and impact tons of neighborhoods is not the way to do it,” vice chair Kaye McGarry said Wednesday.

If the board moves ahead, it will have to launch a sped-up review and vote by November to be ready for the 2010-11 school year.

Eastover changes

Eastover Elementary, viewed as one of CMS's most desirable neighborhood schools, has grown by almost 200 students over the last five years. It had 593 enrolled as of the 10th day of school, an increase of 30 over last year, and has set up classrooms in the auditorium.

One CMS option would have Eastover swap buildings with Myers Park Traditional, a magnet in a larger building nearby. However, that would leave the Eastover building overcrowded with magnet students.

Another would move about 110 students from Eastover to First Ward, which will lose a magnet program next year. The overwhelming majority of First Ward students are black and from low-income homes, while Eastover is majority white and low poverty. The change would make little difference in Eastover's demographics, according to CMS projections, but would reduce First Ward's poverty from 82 percent to 67 percent and boost white enrollment from less than 1 percent to 21 percent.

A variation on that option would put the First Ward students, including those moved from Eastover, into Dilworth Elementary, which is now an arts magnet. First Ward would become the arts magnet.

High school plans

Wednesday brought the first formal glimpse of options for Myers Park and East Meck highs. But rumors have been flying since shortly after the unanimous Aug. 11 school board vote to consider shifting students from Myers Park, which has almost 3,000 students, to East Meck, which will drop to about 1,500 after a new high school opens in Mint Hill in August.

After board member Trent Merchant said in a radio interview that moving Cotswold into the East Meck attendance zone would be the logical move, Cotswold residents promptly organized to resist that shift.

Meanwhile, East Meck supporters geared up to argue that losing so much enrollment would remove skilled teachers and shrink academic options for the remaining students. Tuesday night, a group of East Meck backers asked the board to move the Cotswold zone to their school.

The CMS staff plans to put that option on the table, along with three proposals to leave boundaries intact but move some or all of Myers Park's IB magnet students.

Any changes in Myers Park's IB program, which is considered one of the district's most successful magnets and a distinguishing part of the school, are likely to draw objections. Myers Park has 556 IB magnet students drawn from southern and western Mecklenburg County.

Tuesday's board meeting, which is open to the public but will not include public comments, starts at 6 p.m. at the Government Center, 600 E. Fourth St.



View Larger Map

Sources: Charlotte Observer, CMS, C-Span, US Dept of Ed., NY Times, Wikipedia, Youtube, Creepygif.com, Coverbrowser.com, Segregated Schools.com, Google Maps

Fair Elections Laws In Trouble?...US Supreme Court To Decide

NY Times----

A Threat to Fair Elections


The US Supreme Court may be about to radically change politics by striking down the longstanding rule that says corporations cannot spend directly on federal elections. If the floodgates open, money from big business could overwhelm the electoral process, as well as the making of laws on issues like tax policy and bank regulation.

The court, which is scheduled to hear arguments on this issue on Wednesday, is rushing to decide a monumental question at breakneck speed and seems willing to throw established precedents and judicial modesty out the window.

Corporations and unions have been prohibited from spending their money on federal campaigns since 1947, and corporate contributions have been barred since 1907. States have barred corporate expenditures since the late 1800s. These laws are very much needed today. In the 2008 election cycle, Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13.1 trillion and profits of $605 billion. That dwarfs the $1.5 billion that Federal Election Commission-registered political parties spent during the same election period, or the $1.2 billion spent by federal political action committees.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the limitations on corporate campaign expenditures. In 1990, in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and again in 2003, in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, it made clear that Congress was acting within its authority and that the restrictions are consistent with the First Amendment.

In late June, the court directed the parties to address whether Austin and McConnell should be overruled. It gave the parties in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission a month to write legal briefs on a question of extraordinary complexity and importance, and it scheduled arguments during the court’s vacation.

All of this is disturbing on many levels. Normally, the court tries not to decide cases on constitutional grounds if they can be resolved more simply. Here the court is reaching out to decide a constitutional issue that could change the direction of American democracy.

The court usually shows great respect for its own precedents, a point Chief Justice John Roberts made at his confirmation hearings. Now the court appears ready, without any particular need, to overturn important precedents and decades of federal and state law.

The scheduling is enormously troubling. There is no rush to address the constitutionality of the corporate expenditures limit. But the court is racing to do that in a poorly chosen case with no factual record on the critical question, making careful deliberation impossible.

Most disturbing, though, is the substance of what the court seems poised to do. If corporations are allowed to spend from their own treasuries on elections — rather than through political action committees, which take contributions from company employees — it would usher in an unprecedented age of special-interest politics.

Corporations would have an enormous say in who wins federal elections. They would be able to use this influence to obtain subsidies, stimulus money and tax loopholes and to undo protections for investors, workers and consumers. It would take an extraordinarily brave member of Congress to stand up to agents of big business who then could say, quite credibly, that they would spend whatever it takes in the next election to defeat him or her.

The conservative majority on the court likes to present itself as deferential to the elected branches of government and as minimalists about the role of judges. Chief Justice Roberts promised the Senate that if confirmed he would remember that it’s his “job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”

If the court races to overturn federal and state laws, and its well-established precedents, to free up corporations to drown elections in money, it will be swinging for the fences. The American public will be the losers.



View Larger Map

Sources: NY Times, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps

Will US Supreme Court Decide How Execs Are Paid?...To Hear Case This Fall

NY Times----


Last summer, Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge, issued a surprising and prescient dissent. Executive pay is out of control, he said, and the marketplace cannot be trusted to rein it in.

Judge Posner is a conservative with libertarian leanings, and he is a leader of the law and economics movement associated with the University of Chicago. He often relies on economic analysis in his judicial decisions, and he believes that many questions are best sorted out by the marketplace.

But corporate America has insulated pay decisions from market discipline, Judge Posner wrote. “Executive compensation in large publicly traded firms often is excessive,” he added, “because of the feeble incentives of boards of directors to police compensation.”

The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall, as anger over huge bonuses paid to the executives of failing firms continues to grow. The case, Jones v. Harris Associates, may turn out to be the court’s first significant statement on the corporate culture that helped lead to the Great Recession.

The case arose from the enormous fees mutual funds pay to their investment advisers. A three-judge panel of Judge Posner’s court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, threw out a lawsuit brought by the investors in three Oakmark mutual funds who said the funds had overpaid their investment adviser, Harris Associates.

The panel decision, written by Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, another leader of the law and economics movement, said the marketplace can be trusted to regulate fees. Judge Posner, dissenting from the full court’s decision not to rehear the case, said competition had not been effective in the keeping compensation under control.

Before last year’s market collapse, the mutual fund industry held more than $11 trillion in retirement and personal savings, and it paid advisers perhaps $100 billion in fees.

Mutual funds are odd enterprises. They are typically formed and run by their investment advisers, which select the fund’s board of directors. That board then negotiates the adviser’s fees.

Here is how Warren Buffett analyzed the situation in his 2003 letter to shareholders: “Year after year, at literally thousands of funds, directors had routinely rehired the incumbent management company, however pathetic its performance had been. Just as routinely, the directors had mindlessly approved fees that in many cases far exceeded those that could have been negotiated.”

The plaintiffs in the case before the Supreme Court claimed that Harris Associates had charged their funds twice as much as it charged its unaffiliated clients, like pension funds.

The Oakmark funds paid Harris Associates 1 percent of the first $2 billion in assets; independent clients were charged roughly one-half of 1 percent of the first $500 million. One percent of a billion dollars is nice work if you can get it.

“Mutual funds rarely fire their advisers,” Judge Easterbrook acknowledged. But, he continued, “investors can and do ‘fire’ advisers cheaply and easily by moving their money elsewhere.” A 2007 study from John C. Coates IV and R. Glenn Hubbard supported this conclusion, finding that mutual fund fees are kept in check by the movement of investors’ money.

But a brief supporting the plaintiffs filed in the Supreme Court by three economists, Ian Ayres, Robert E. Litan and Joseph R. Mason, questioned that study. New research in behavioral economics, the brief said, showed that most investors have a very poor grasp of rudimentary truths about probability and a disproportionate aversion to taking losses.

Mutual fund investors thus tend to look at past performance rather than fees. And they have a tendency to sell winning investments too early and hold losing ones too long.

Even if mutual fund investors could be counted on to act rationally, the economists’ brief said, they do not have ready access to the information they need to make sensible choices.

Instead of counting on investor behavior to keep fees in check, the brief concluded, courts should look to how much advisers charged independent clients like pension funds. A supporting brief from the federal government made the same point.

There is academic research to support this view, too.

“In contrast to mutual fund investors,” Diane Del Guercio and Paula A. Tkac wrote in a 2002 study , “pension clients punish poorly performing managers by withdrawing assets under management and do not flock disproportionately to recent winners.”

But Judge Easterbrook questioned the value of such comparisons. The two kinds of clients, he said, may have different needs. In its brief urging the Supreme Court not to hear the case, Harris Associates added that the Oakmark funds had outperformed “virtually every fund in their peer groups.”

Still, the tide seems to be turning toward skepticism about outsize compensation. In April, a month after the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from Judge Easterbrook’s decision, the federal appeals court in St Louis allowed a suit against another investment adviser, Ameriprise Financial, to go forward. It was the first ruling in favor of unhappy mutual fund investors suing over advisers’ fees since Congress imposed a fiduciary duty on advisers in 1970.

Judge Easterbrook said the law had only a minor role to play, requiring no more than making sure that advisers “make full disclosure and play no tricks.”

But when public sentiment, economic research and even Judge Posner argue for more vigorous judicial examination of whether compensation is fair, the Supreme Court may just agree.



View Larger Map


Sources: NY Times, Flickr, Google Maps