Senators May Attach Strings to Federal Surplus Programs for Local Police

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is considering legislation to improvement management of the Pentagon's 1033 program.

 

Invoking  images of 20-ton armored vehicles confronting unarmed protestors after last month’s police shooting of a black youth in Missouri, senators on Tuesday quizzed agency officials on tightening oversight of federal programs that transfer surplus equipment to local law enforcement and provide anti-crime grants under post 9/11 calculations.

The result, said speakers at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, could be legislation to more closely monitor  the types of weapons the government gives away while improving training in police sensitivities to the intimidating effect of heavy weaponry in local communities.

“Since 1997, federal agencies have supplied over $5 billion in surplus Department of Defense supplies and equipment to law enforcement,” noted Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del. , adding that the Justice and Homeland Security departments both administer multi-million-dollar grant programs that also can pay for military-style gear such as armored vests and vehicles. “We have responsibility to ensure accountability of funds and equipment provided by the federal government to state and local police. It is our job to ensure that these programs provide value to police, the communities they serve and the taxpayer.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., fresh from frequent visits to the troubled town of Ferguson, said, “I  saw first-hand how aggressive tactics used in the name of crowd control, like a sniper pointing a rifle at an unarmed protester, are not consistent with our First Amendment rights. He did not deserve to be treated like an enemy combatant.”

Acknowledging the simultaneous need to protect uniformed law enforcement officials, McCaskill said the legislation she is considering must improve management of the 1033 program, set up by Congress in the early 1990s to allow local communities to take advantage of Defense Department surplus furniture, microwaves and vehicles, as well as pistols, rifles and armor. 

Also commonly transferred to states and communities are the 14-ton-plus Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicles, which, McCaskill said, in states such as Texas and Florida are more common in city governments than in the National Guard. “Any vehicle, even if painted black and used with discretion, can be intimidating and may be asking for militarization,” she said. In addition, as much as 36 percent of what the Pentagon gives away is “brand new,” she thundered. 

“What you gave away this year I guarantee you bought this year—it drives me crazy.”

McCaskill also complained that DHS and Justice do not track the anti-crime grant money closely enough, and provide insufficient training in use of the federal equipment.

Witnesses from the agencies agreed that oversight could be improved and said they were working closely with a White House unit exploring what went wrong in Ferguson. Alan Estevez, principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, defended the existence of a surplus. 

“As the force structure changes, as the budget changes under the Budget Control Act, things we thought we’d need we no longer need,” he said. 

The Defense Department “does not have the expertise” to train or determine how local police departments select and use the surplus equipment, he testified. He told the lawmakers his job is to provide “good stewardship for the taxpayer dollar” in forwarding the materials to 8,000 local agencies in 49 states and territories. About 96 percent of the goods are “non-controlled,” he said, meaning the localities can use them as they see fit, but the remaining 4 percent are “controlled” weapons, including night-vision goggles and Humvees, for which the Defense Department retains title for accountability.   

But Estevez agreed that the Pentagon’s consultation with Justice on the 1033 program’s risks “is currently lacking.”

Brian Kamoie, assistant administrator for grant programs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said all spending is monitored by inspectors general and state auditors, and that resources are allocated according to crime and terrorism “risk profiles” created by intelligence staffs, which prompted the Homeland Security secretary to designate 39 highest-risk communities this year. “We work closely with states and tribes on oversight,” he said, citing the response to last year’s Boston Marathon bombing as an example of effective “planning, equipment, training and exercises” by DHS and other law enforcement components.

Karol Mason, assistant attorney in Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, said her agency’s Justice Assistance Grants based on formulas factoring in population and violent crime frequency “improve effectiveness and efficiency of the justice system.” There are quarterly and annual reports to assure against misuse, she said, and the department conducts a police public contact survey to gauge police interaction with citizens to provide data on excessive use of force. “We continue to bring the latest knowledge and best tool to this problem,” she said.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., the panel’s ranking member, asked why localities need MRAPs and who decides if delivery is appropriate. He also challenged the FEMA officials’ claim that federal funds were key to capturing the surviving Boston bomber, “who was found when a guy spotted him in his backyard boat and called 911,” Coburn said.

Kamoie disagreed, pointing to infrared vision equipment that played a role. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was puzzled that 12,000 bayonets are among the items available to states for free from DoD, and noted that such equipment is explicitly “not supposed to be used for riot suppression.” The FEMA official agreed, saying his agency, once it learns the final facts on what federal weapons were present in Ferguson, will take corrective action. 

The reason the program has gone on, said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is that “local police departments get things for free from federal government, where the saying is, ‘use it or lose it.’ ”

BLOGGER'S NOTE :  I cannot believe that I am agreeing with the likes of Senator Tom Coburn - from Oklahoma.  Grandma Margaret was wrong, some days there is something new under the sun.  

Robert McDonnell throws his wife under the bus at trial

Former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell walks to his corruption trial. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

 

 

By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer August 21 at 8:03 PM

How far would you go to stay out of jail? Would you publicly humiliate your wife of 38 years, portraying her as some kind of shrieking harridan? Would you put the innermost secrets of your marriage on display, inviting voyeurs to rummage at will?

For Robert McDonnell, the former Virginia governor on trial for alleged corruption, the answers appear to be: “As far as necessary,” “Hey, why not?” and “Sounds like a plan.”

 

McDonnell’s testimony this week in a federal courtroom in Richmond about his wife’s psychological turmoil has been both cringe-worthy and compelling. It has been clear for some time that McDonnell’s strategy for winning acquittal amounted to what could be called the “crazy wife” defense. But only when he took the stand did it become apparent how thoroughly he intended to humiliate the “soul mate” he still claims to love.

McDonnell disclosed Thursday that he moved out of the family’s home shortly before the trial began. “I knew there was no way I could go home after a day in court and have to rehash the day’s events with my wife,” he testified.  I guess not. Anyone who said such things in public about his or her spouse would be advised to clear out.

McDonnell testified that Maureen McDonnell was so volatile that the entire staff at the governor’s mansion signed a petition threatening to quit if her behavior didn’t improve. “She would yell at me,” he told the court. “She would tell me I was taking staff’s side, that I didn’t know what was really going on over there.”

He said he believed his wife needed professional counseling, though it was unclear whether he tried very hard to convince her to seek it. He spoke of the family’s severe financial problems, which included large credit card bills, and said that “it just seemed like there was too much stuff that she was buying.” Prior testimony has indicated, however, that unwise real estate investments caused most of the problem — and that Robert McDonnell, not Maureen, ran the family finances.

The former governor’s defense presented a private note he wrote to his wife in 2011 that said, in part, “You told me again yesterday that you would wreck my things and how bad I am. It hurt me to my core. I have asked and prayed to God so many times to take this anger away and heal whatever hurt is causing it . . . some going back years and years. He has not yet answered those prayers.”

To top it off, when McDonnell was asked by his lawyer if he thinks his wife had a “strong emotional attachment” to another man, he answered, “Yes.” When pressed whether this encompassed a physical affair, he said tepidly, “I don’t believe so.”

No, I wouldn’t recommend that he go home just yet.

Why is McDonnell trashing his wife in such a caddish manner? Because the man with whom Maureen McDonnell had that emotional bond, entrepreneur Jonnie Williams, gave the McDonnells more than $177,000 in gifts and loans. Prosecutors allege that McDonnell — in return — helped promote Williams’s firm, Star Scientific, which made dietary supplements.

McDonnell’s defense is basically that it was his wife who had the close relationship with Williams and was the beneficiary of most of his largess, which included a lavish shopping trip to New York. From other testimony, however, we know that there were gifts that more directly benefited McDonnell — golf clubs, greens fees, a Rolex, trips on a private jet, the use of a Ferrari.
McDonnell claims that, in any event, he didn’t promise or deliver anything out of the ordinary to Williams in return. If Williams believed otherwise, then the profligate, needy, “emotional” Maureen McDonnell must have given him the wrong impression.

It is sad that a politician with a reputation as a Virginia gentleman would mount such an ungallant defense. And it is clear that in this case, at least, it took two to make a dysfunctional marriage.
After all, McDonnell has testified about occasions on which he did take the side of staff members in disputes with his wife, rightly or wrongly. He has said he was happy about her friendship with Williams. He has told of being “emotionally, physically unavailable” to his wife. He has confessed to working late because “I couldn’t come home and listen” to her complaints.

A jury will decide whether McDonnell was an honest public servant. By his own account, he wasn’t much of a husband.

Here’s Jonnie: Cue the rapt gaze from former Va. first lady Maureen McDonnell

Witness Jonnie Williams arrives with his attorneys to testify in the trial of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell at the federal courthouse in Richmond on Thursday. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

By Petula Dvorak Columnist July 31 at 2:35 PM

RICHMOND — There are no innocents among the star characters in Courtroom 7000, where the former governor of Virginia and his wife are standing trial in a federal public-corruption case.

The prime players are all manipulators — the helmet-haired politician who once aspired to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.; his striving, ex-cheerleader wife; and the fast-talking nutritional supplement entrepreneur. 

On Wednesday, the rapt gaze of former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell followed Jonnie Ray Williams, a former car salesman turned nutraceutical entrepreneur, as he strode across the courtroom and took the witness stand for the first time. I was waiting for her to clasp her hands together and moon, “Oh, Jonnie,” or maybe blow him a kiss. 

Her puppy crush is a sad act scripted to avoid jail time for allegedly selling the prestige of the governor’s office in exchange for the Rolex on her husband’s wrist, the Ferrari joy ride, the private jet trips, the $70,000 life raft to save a real estate investment, the vacation at the lake house, the help with a daughter’s wedding, the fancy golf gear and the rounds of golf Bob McDonnell and his sons played at $300 a pop.

No wonder one of the jurors got sick in the middle of the trial this week.

 

It’s no secret that the picture-perfect political families we see on campaign posters are usually the Dysfunctional Family Robinson behind closed doors. Governors can be especially messy when it comes to family affairs. 

Think of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the baby he conceived with the housekeeper and somehow managed to keep hidden from his wife, Maria Shriver, for more than a decade. Or New Jersey’s James E. McGreevey, married with two kids, coming out of the closet 10 years ago and resigning over a consensual affair with a man. Or the scandal that engulfed South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, who briefly disappeared five years ago, purportedly “hiking the Appalachian trail,” and then left office in disgrace after admitting that he actually had been with a mistress in Argentina. 

Or if you want to go all the way back to 1973, we can talk about Maryland’s Marvin Mandel, who announced that he was in love with another woman and then watched helplessly as his wife, Bootsie, barricaded herself in the governor’s mansion in Annapolis. 

Governors, they’re just like us.

The McDonnells are no different. They were an upper-middle-class family with five kids when they landed in a high-profile world of money and prestige. They were in over their heads.Williams saw them as an easy target — self-made folks who never saw a silver spoon until they earned one themselves.

So here comes this guy with a company called Star Scientific and a private plane and cash. He keeps pestering their 19-year-old son to play golf. He takes the wife on a high-end Manhattan shopping spree. He flies commercial so the McDonnells can have his Learjet. He pays for part of the McDonnell daughter’s wedding. When Williams and his wife go to the governor’s mansion for dinner, they bring the first lady a wallet to match the tres pricey purse from that New York retail binge.

 

“I have a background in nutritional supplements, and I can be helpful to you,” he testified that the first lady had told him. “. . . The governor says it’s okay for me to help you.”

Williams told the court that he called Bob McDonnell to double-check on this relationship. Not only did the guv say it’s all good, he wrote Williams a nice e-mail the next day, to thank him for what was by then $65,000 in checks to bail him out.  And then the governor showed up at Williams’s events. The first lady began promoting Williams’s product, a nutritional supplement whose main ingredient is a chemical found in tobacco. It was all business.

This wasn’t about a disintegrating marriage and an emotional, needy wife. This was a couple who presented themselves as a shining example of all that is moral and righteous. And once Virginians, believing that they were good people, had put McDonnell in office, they allegedly sold off what the people of Virginia had given them — the public trust. That’s why they were charged in a 14-count federal indictment.

Most of us play by the rules, refusing to give in to greed on a daily basis. Every single day in America, a police officer rejects a bribe, a truck driver fills out his mileage without any fudging, a reader pays for a newspaper at the box instead of swiping it off someone’s stoop, a store clerk gives change without trying to pocket an extra $5. Integrity and honesty abound in this country.

The McDonnells, by contrast, seemed all too eager to cash in. Ferraris? Plane rides? Golf clubs? A wedding catered? They knew better.

Did Williams want to be friends with the McDonnells? “He’s a politician. I’m a businessman,” Williams deadpanned. “This was a business relationship.”

All the lovesick melodrama about the first lady having a crush on Williams has probably been manufactured by the defense attorneys. Maybe they have some evidence to back up this story line. But when this scandal began, Bob and Maureen McDonnell showed up in court holding hands, presenting themselves as a solid, Christian couple.

Now they are changing that narrative, walking in and out of court in separate entourages, riding different elevators, brushing past each other without even making eye contact. The staging borders on ridiculous. They are doing nothing more than selling Virginians another tale.

The saddest thing about the whole affair? She probably never even got to have one..

Obama Punks the GOP on Contraception

 

By Amanda Marcotte

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Update, July 8, 2014: This two-year-old post has been getting a lot of attention the past few days. Here is a followup on what's happened with the contraception mandate since this post was originally published.

After two solid weeks of Republicans rapidly escalating attacks on contraception access under the banner of "religious freedom," Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing: an accommodation of religiously affiliated employers who don't want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer.

Insurance companies are down with the plan, because as Matt Yglesias explained at Moneybox, contraception actually saves insurance companies money, since it's cheaper than abortion and far cheaper than childbirth. Because the insurance companies have to reach out to employees directly, there's very little danger of women not getting coverage because they are unaware they're eligible.

That's the nitty-gritty. The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about. (As Dana Goldstein reported in 2010, before the religious liberty gambit was brought up, the Catholic bishops were just demanding that women be denied access and told to abstain from sex instead.)

With the fig leaf of religious liberty removed, Republicans are in a bad situation. They can either drop this and slink away knowing they've been punked, or they can double down. But in order to do so, they'll have to be more blatantly anti-contraception, a politically toxic move in a country where 99% of women have used contraception.

This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps

or as renamed by the Blogger

Unfuc#ingbelievable

By Darlena Cunha July 8 at 12:00 PM

 

Darlena Cunha is a former television producer turned stay-at-home mom to twin girls. She blogs daily at http://parentwin.com, and writes for The Huffington Post and Thought Catalog. She’s been published in McSweeney’s, The Feminist Wire, and OffBeat Families, amid dozens of others.

 

(Patrick Semansky/Associated Press)

Sara Bareilles played softly through the surround-sound speakers of my husband’s 2003 Mercedes Kompressor as I sat idling at a light. I’d never been to this church before, but I could see it from where I was, across from an old park, abandoned in the chilly September air. The clouds hung low as I pulled the sleek, pewter machine into the lot. But I wasn’t going to pray or attend services. I was picking up food stamps.

Even then, I couldn’t quite believe it. This wasn’t supposed to happen to people like me.

* * *

I grew up in a white, affluent suburb, where failure seemed harder than success. In college, I studied biology and journalism. I worked for good money at a local hospital, which afforded me the opportunity to network at journalism conferences. That’s how I landed my first news job as an associate producer in Hartford, Conn. I climbed the ladder quickly, free to work any hours in any location for any pay. I moved from market to market, always achieving a better title, a better salary. Succeeding.

2007 was a grand year for me. I moved back home from San Diego, where I’d produced ‘Good Morning San Diego.’ I quickly secured my next big gig, as a producer in Boston for the 6 p.m. news. The pay wasn’t great, but it was more than enough to support me. And my boyfriend was making good money, too, as a copy editor for the Hartford Courant.

When I found out I was pregnant in February 2008, it was a shock, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Two weeks later, when I discovered “it” was actually “they” (twins, as a matter of fact), I panicked a little. But not because I worried for our future. My middle-class life still seemed perfectly secure. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to do that much work.

The weeks flew by. My boyfriend proposed, and we bought a house. Then, just three weeks after we closed, the market crashed. The house we’d paid $240,000 for was suddenly worth $150,000. It was okay, though — we were still making enough money to cover the exorbitant mortgage payments. Then we weren’t.

* * *

Two weeks before my children were born, my future husband found himself staring at a pink slip. The days of unemployment turned into weeks, months, and, eventually, years.

Then my kids were born, six weeks early. They were just three pounds each at birth, barely the length of my shoe. We fed them through a little tube we attached to our pinky fingers because their mouths weren’t strong enough to suckle. We spent 10 days in the hospital waiting for them to increase in size. They never did. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my babies to put on weight. With their lives at risk, I switched from breast milk to formula, at about $15 a can. We went through dozens a week.

Photo courtesy of Darlene Cunha

In just two months, we’d gone from making a combined $120,000 a year to making just $25,000 and leeching out funds to a mortgage we couldn’t afford. Our savings dwindled, then disappeared So I did what I had to do. I signed up for Medicaid and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

It’s not easy. To qualify, you must be pregnant or up to six months postpartum. I had to fill out at least six forms and furnish my Social Security card, birth certificate and marriage license. I sat through exams, meetings and screenings. They had a lot of questions about the house: Wasn’t it an asset? Hadn’t we just bought it? They questioned every last cent we’d ever made. Did we have stock options or pensions? Did we have savings? I had to send them my three most recent check stubs to prove I was making as little as I said I was.

On top of this, I had to get my vitals checked and blood work taken to determine whether I was at risk of improper nourishment without the program. It’s very bourgeois. Not. But I did it.

* * *

Driving to the WIC office the first time was scary. It wasn’t an office, like I’d thought it would be. It was the basement of a dreary church. We sat in disused pews, waiting to be called for our coupons, which would get us some tuna, some cheerios, a gallon of milk, baby formula.

Using the coupons was even worse. The stares, the faux concern, the pity, the outrage — I hated it. One time, an old, kind-looking man with a bit of a hunch was standing behind me with just a six-pack of soda, waiting to check out. The entire contents of my cart were splayed out on the conveyor belt. When he noticed the flash of large white paper stubs in my hand, he touched me on the shoulder. I was scared that he was going to give me money; instead he gave me a small, rectangular card. He asked me to accept Jesus into my heart so that my troubles would disappear. I think I managed a half-smile before breaking into long, jogging strides out of there, the workers calling after me as to whether I still wanted my receipt.

That was one of the better times. Once, a girl at the register actually stood up for me when an older mother of three saw the coupons and started chastising my purchase of root beer. They were “buy two, get one free” at a dollar a pop.

“Surely, you don’t need those,” she said. “WIC pays for juice for you people.”

The girl, who couldn’t have been more than 19, flashed her eyes up to my face and saw my grimace as I white-knuckled the counter in front of me, preparing my cold shoulder.

“Who are you, the soda police?” she asked loudly. “Anyone bother you about the pound of candy you’re buying?”

The woman huffed off to another register, and I’m sure she complained about that girl. I, meanwhile, thanked her profusely.

“I’ve got a son,” she said, softly. “I know what it’s like.”

* * *

That’s the funny thing about being poor. Everyone has an opinion on it, and everyone feels entitled to share. That was especially true about my husband’s Mercedes. Over and over again, people asked why we kept that car, offering to sell it in their yards or on the Internet for us.

“You can’t be that bad off,” a distant relative said, after inviting himself over for lunch. “You still got that baby in all its glory.”

Sometimes, it was more direct. All from a place of love, of course. “Sell the Mercedes,” a friend said to me. “He doesn’t get to keep his toys now.”

But it wasn’t a toy — it was paid off. My husband bought that car in full long before we met. Were we supposed to trade it in for a crappier car we’d have to make payments on? Only to have that less reliable car break down on us?

And even if we had wanted to do that, here’s what people don’t understand: The reality of poverty can spring quickly while the psychological effects take longer to surface. When you lose a job, your first thought isn’t, “Oh my God, I’m poor. I’d better sell all my nice stuff!” It’s “I need another job. Now.” When you’re scrambling, you hang on to the things that work, that bring you some comfort. That Mercedes was the one reliable, trustworthy thing in our lives.

That’s how I found myself, one dreary day when my Honda wouldn’t start, in my husband’s Mercedes at the WIC office. I parked gingerly over one of the many potholes, shut off the purring engine and locked it, then walked briskly to the door — head held high and not looking in either direction.

To this day, it is the single most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done.

No one spoke to me, but they did stare. Mouths agape, the poverty-stricken mothers struggling with infant car seats, paperwork and their toddlers never took their eyes off me, the tall blond girl, walking with purpose on heels from her Mercedes to their grungy den*.

I didn’t feel animosity coming from them, more wonderment, maybe a bit of resentment. The most embarrassing part was how I felt about myself. How I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have that I felt ashamed to be there, with that car, getting food. As if I were not allowed the food because of the car. As if I were a bad person.

We’ve now sold that house. My husband found a job that pays well, and we have enough left over for me to go to grad school. President Obama’s programs — from the extended unemployment benefits to the tax-free allowance for short-selling a home we couldn’t afford — allowed us to crawl our way out of the hole.

But what I learned there will never leave me. We didn’t deserve to be poor, any more than we deserved to be rich. Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment. I still have to remind myself sometimes that I was my harshest critic. That the judgment of the disadvantaged comes not just from conservative politicians and Internet trolls. It came from me, even as I was living it.

BLOGGER'S NOTE:  If she is looking for sympathy, she won't find it here.  "Their grungy den" - you were happy to go there and get something free.  It was your grungy den too.  And personally, I don't think you should have been able to get a penny - not one WIC slip.  When REAL poor people ask for help from the government, the first thing they are asked is, what do you have and who are you related to - which is the seque to "sell that, and go live with them."   

Where were your parents?  Where were his parents?  Did they know they had grandchildren?  Why didn't you pack your bags and head back to that "white, affluent suburb" until your husband got a job?  Why did you choose to take limited resources from people who REALLY need them, from people who have no other choice?  I hope it wasn't so that you could write this story.

On N.C.’s Outer Banks, scary climate-change predictions prompt a change of forecast

 

If the state ever activates the Web site that lets potential investors search by address, Kelly said, “all of a sudden, those properties would be worthless.”

 

 

 

By Lori Montgomery June 24 at 7:37 PM

NAGS HEAD, N.C. — The dangers of climate change were revealed to Willo Kelly in a government conference room in the summer of 2011. By the end of the century, state officials said, the ocean would be 39 inches higher and her home on the Outer Banks would be swamped.

The state had detailed maps to illustrate this claim and was developing a Web site where people could check by street address to see if their property was doomed. There was no talk of salvation, no plan to hold back the tide. The 39-inch forecast was “a death sentence,” Kelly said, “for ever trying to sell your house.”

So Kelly, a lobbyist for Realtors and home builders on the Outer Banks, resolved to prove the forecast wrong. And thus began one of the nation’s most notorious battles over climate change.

Coastal residents joined forces with climate skeptics to attack the science of global warming and persuade North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature to deep-six the 39-inch projection, which had been advanced under the outgoing Democratic governor. Now, the state is working on a new forecast that will look only 30 years out and therefore show the seas rising by no more than eight inches.

Environmentalists are appalled, and North Carolina has been lampooned as a hotbed of greedy developers trying to “outlaw” the rising tide. Some climate-change experts are sympathetic, however, calling the rebellion an understandable reaction to sea-level forecasts that are rapidly becoming both widely available and alarmingly precise.

 

 “The main problem they have is fear,” said Michael Orbach, a marine policy professor at Duke University who has met with coastal leaders. “They realize this is going to have a huge impact on the coastal economy and coastal development interests. And, at this point, we don’t actually know what we’re going to do about it.

Cities such as Norfolk and Miami have embraced the data, identifying inundation zones as a first step toward planning — and seeking federal funds for — sea walls, floodgates and other forms of protection. On lonelier stretches of the U.S. shoreline, however, government aid seems less likely than interference and abandonment, and the forecasts are sparking deep anxiety about the future.

In the Carolinas and Southampton, N.Y., isolated enclaves of ultra-rich shore-front owners have moved preemptively to build private bulkheads to protect their homes from the rising sea. But such fortifications are not an option on the Outer Banks, a string of narrow barrier islands dotted with busy beach towns, isolated fishing villages and stretches of wild seashore. In spots, the islands are barely 100 yards wide.

“We don’t have any tools in our toolbox other than retreat,” Kelly said on a recent morning in a sunny Manteo cafe that would be underwater if the sea were 39 inches higher. “In the backs of their minds, what everyone is thinking is that they just want people off the Outer Banks.”

Long before that would happen, though, Kelly worries that codifying the 39-inch forecast would crush the local economy, which relies entirely on tourism and the construction, sale and rental of family beach houses. In Dare County alone, the islands’ largest jurisdiction, the state has identified more than 8,500 structures, with an assessed value of nearly $1.4 billion, that would be inundated if the tides were 39 inches higher.

 

Even with an eight-inch forecast, 414 Dare County properties worth $70 million would be marked for inundation. If the state ever activates the Web site that lets potential investors search by address, Kelly said, “all of a sudden, those properties would be worthless.”

Nationwide, $700 billion of coastal property could be below mean sea level by the end of the century — and an additional $730 billion could be at risk at high tide — without new policies to forestall climate change, according to a new report by the Risky Business Project, a high-powered group of financial and political figures who are set to meet Wednesday with senior Obama administration officials.

Some of the biggest West Coast businesses are pushing Congress and state government to act on climate change legislation. But it’s less about global warming and more about their bottom lines. (Pamela Kirkland / The Washington Post) 

 

So far, locals say there is no sign that the housing market on the Outer Banks is suffering. Nags Head’s town manager, Cliff Ogburn, said that the town is doing a booming business in building permits and that “occupancy is as high as it’s ever been,” having rebounded from the dark days before 2011. That is when Nags Head and Dare County spent $36 million to repair severe erosion on 10 miles of beachfront, where encroaching waves had claimed nearly a dozen houses and the seaside swimming pool at the Nags Head Comfort Inn.

Now the beach looks great, the tourists are back and Duck, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills are talking to the county about beach nourishment projects of their own.

“We lose beach because the water is rising equal to the thickness of two nickels every year,” Bobby Outten, the manager of Dare County, said on a recent tour of the restored shoreline. “Some call it sea-level rise, but from our perspective it’s erosion, and we’ve been living with it forever.”

The arrival of man-made beaches on the Outer Banks has drawn the disapproval of some environmentalists. For generations, the islands have moved with the waves and human settlements have moved with them. These days, however, the islands are so heavily developed, houses threatened by the surf often have nowhere to go.

Beach nourishment offers a temporary solution. But as the sea rises, it “ceases to be cost effective and it becomes obvious that something else has to happen,” said Spencer Rogers, an erosion specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant, a research consortium based at North Carolina State University.

“If things get to the worst extent, then we’re going to be abandoning places,” Rogers said. “There won’t be any option.”

Outten acknowledges that nourishment is a temporary fix, but he argues that it protects property, beautifies the shoreline and keeps the local economy humming. Besides, he said, it’s the only option he’s got.

“What is it you would ask us to do differently right now? Tell people to move away?” Outten said. “Preaching abandonment is absurd. People would go in the closet and get the guns out.”

That’s nearly what happened when local officials caught wind of the 39-inch forecast. The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission, which regulates land use in the state’s 20 coastal counties, had asked its science panel to assess vulnerability to sea-level rise, which was then becoming a hot topic nationally.

In 2010, the panel reviewed the scientific literature and concluded that the seas along the North Carolina coast could rise anywhere from 15 inches to 55 inches over the coming century, a forecast in line with projections by federal agencies and various other states.

But the science panel took a step further. For planning purposes, it said, the state should figure on 39 inches by 2100. So the commission drafted a policy declaring sea-level rise “a pervasive and persistent hazard” and ordering coastal counties to use the 39-inch forecast for private development and public infrastructure projects.

If adopted, the policy would have made North Carolina the first state to issue such a precise forecast for sea-level rise, said Skip Stiles, who tracks state activity on climate change for Virginia-based Wetlands Watch. Bob Emory, the Coastal Resources Commission’s chairman at the time, said its members “had no idea we were opening up a can of worms.”

The worms hit the fan in January 2011, when the commission rolled out the policy in a closed-door briefing for Carteret County.

“They said there were numerous things the county had to start doing: Raise roads, elevate bridges, rezone land. Any property affected by 39 inches, they wanted to be rezoned as uninhabitable,” said John Droz, a local physicist who was quickly recruited by Carteret County officials to undertake an independent review of the 39-inch forecast.

Emory disputed that account, saying the commission had no intention of demanding such drastic action. “We were not at the stage where there was enough certainty to say you can do this here, you can’t do that there,” he said.

Nonetheless, the Carteret County chairman fired off a letter asking neighboring counties for help “repudiating the proposal.” The science was uncertain, he wrote, there was no assessment of economic impact and there were no maps to show what it all meant.

By July, when Kelly walked into that meeting of federal and state planning officials, the state had maps. And the news was not good.

At 39 inches, the backside of the Outer Banks was gone. So was most of Roanoke Island. Inland, it was worse. On the gentle slope of the piedmont, every foot of sea-level rise would inundate roughly 1,000 acres. Pamlico Sound would look more like the Chesapeake Bay — one of the most profound transformations of coastline predicted anywhere in the country.

Rumors spread, and members of the state’s environmental community fanned the flames, musing publicly about an end to new construction on the Outer Banks and the possible abandonment of Highway 12, the islands’ wave-battered, much-repaired lifeline.

A member of the science panel, geologist Stanley Riggs, published a book likening the islands to a “string of pearls” that would soon be separated by shoals unable to support a fixed highway. In Dare County, this spawned dark jokes about getting to work by kayak.

In 2012, the General Assembly agreed that the state was moving too fast. Lawmakers set aside the 39-inch forecast and ordered the commission to draft new projections that take into account dissenting views on sea-level rise and its causes.

The state’s new Republican governor appointed a new coastal commission chairman, Frank Gorham, an oil and gas man who announced this spring that the new forecast would be limited to 30 years.

With the 100-year forecast, “we just lost credibility,” Gorham said. “If you have a 30-year period, people will take it more seriously.”

Rogers, who has served on the commission’s science panel since its inception, predicts that the new forecast will look pretty much like the old one, which concluded that the sea would rise at roughly historic rates through 2050. Only in the latter half of the century is sea-level rise projected to accelerate sharply. But that lies outside the scope of the new forecast, which is due out next year.

With their bureaucratic victory, coastal leaders are postponing the inevitable, environmentalists say.

“I can see their point. They’re saying, ‘How do we know the sea is going to rise 39 inches in 100 years?’ And the truth is, we don’t. But you’ve got to start planning for something,” said Andrew Coburn, associate director of Western Carolina University’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines.

“They’re trying to ignore the problem, hoping it will go away.” Outten, the Dare County manager, says he is not ignoring the forecast, though he does pray it’s wrong.

In the meantime, he said, “it doesn’t seem reasonable to invest today’s tax dollars and punish the public for a problem that is 100 years away and may not exist. We aren’t arguing with science. We’re just trying to be reasonable.”

  

 

Rodanthe, NC

Rodanthe, NC

 Blogger's Note:  In celebration of the good people you rarely hear about;

Beekman Winthrop, who investigated 1970 killing, dies

“I was appalled that such a thing could still happen in the United States of America in the 1970s,” he told The Post in 1974.

 

By Matt Schudel, Published: May 21 

Beekman Winthrop, an independently wealthy descendant of a prominent New England family, whose ancestors included the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was a freelance investigative reporter in the early 1970s, when he learned of an unsolved killing in rural South Carolina.

When not living in Washington, Mr. Winthrop spent several months a year at a 25,000-acre family estate in Allendale County, S.C. Not far away, in the town of Fairfax, S.C., a young black man was shot and killed shortly after midnight on May 16, 1970.

When local law enforcement agencies failed to charge anyone in the case after two years, Mr. Winthrop launched what The Washington Post described as “a one-man crusade to find the killers and bring them to justice.”

Mr. Winthrop, who spent more than a year investigating the killing, died May 6 at his home in Washington. He was 73.  The cause was kidney cancer, his wife, Phoebe Jane Winthrop, said.
Warned by a state law enforcement official to stay away from the case, lest he be injured or killed, Mr. Winthrop was arrested for posing as a law enforcement officer. Charges were dropped. Members of his family also opposed his quest.

“My family jumped right through the wall when they found out I was involved,” Mr. Winthrop told The Post. “They’re conservative. They say it’s not our fight.”

But Mr. Winthrop decided to take up the fight for justice for 18-year-old Wallace Youmans, who was killed by a shotgun blast while walking past a white-owned store. From a newspaper, Mr. Winthrop learned of the deathbed confession of a former town constable, who told local NAACP officials that he and five other white men had planned and carried out the killing. It was apparently in retaliation for the wounding of a white man, who was allegedly shot by African American assailants during a racial disturbance.

Mr. Winthrop spent more than $4,000 and interviewed 75 people before compiling a 110-page report, which he delivered in 1973 to the news media and to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
A month after receiving the report, the Justice Department reopened its investigation.

Within six months, five men were arrested in connection with Youmans’s death. Three were current or former police officers. At their trial in 1974, two of the defendants were acquitted, and charges against the other three were dropped. But, according to news reports, Mr. Winthrop’s dogged pursuit of the evidence changed the racial climate in Allendale County and made him a hero to local black community. Some of the men put on trial quietly moved away.

Beekman Winthrop was born April 6, 1941, in Boston. His family’s fortune derived from banking.
Mr. Winthrop became interested in civil rights during his childhood in New York City, where he and a friend were the only white members of an otherwise all-black Boy Scout troop.

He was a graduate of the private Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., and received a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1963 and a master’s degree in urban planning from Columbia in 1965.

After attending the Harvard Divinity School, Mr. Winthrop settled in Washington in 1969 and worked for the nonprofit Center for Community Change. He won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1972 for an article in the old New South magazine that showed how poor environmental conditions in South Carolina affected the health of children.

In later years, Mr. Winthrop worked for family businesses and as a private investment manager. He had homes in Washington and Luray, S.C. Survivors include his wife of 44 years, the former Phoebe Jane Wood of Washington and Luray; a son, Dudley Winthrop of Washington; a brother; a sister; two half-brothers; two half-sisters; and two granddaughters.

One of the journalists Mr. Winthrop approached about the Youmans killing, Mark Ethridge of the Charlotte Observer, published a novel loosely based on the case in 2006. The book was the basis of a 2012 film, “Deadline,” starring Eric Roberts.

Mr. Winthrop explained that he took up the case of Wallace Youmans because “I was appalled that such a thing could still happen in the United States of America in the 1970s,” he told The Post in 1974.

“I guess we all feel we’d like to amount to something and do something meaningful with our lives. I felt that the Youmans case was my opportunity to step in and make a difference.”

 A Few Thoughts from Washington Post Columnists on Race:

 

 

By Editorial Board, Published: April 28

WHEN JUSTICE Sandra Day O’Connor gave affirmative action a 25-year reprieve, it seemed like more than enough time. Surely after another quarter-century of progress in racial relations, “the use of racial preferences,” as Justice O’Connor wrote, “will no longer be necessary.”

That was 11 years ago. Given the loathsome racism exposed in the past few days, it’s harder to be sanguine about that quarter-century. First it was Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose lawbreaking was being celebrated by Republican senators Rand Paul (Ky.) and Dean Heller (Nev.) until Mr. Bundy began extolling the virtues of slavery for African Americans.

Then came the taped remarks ostensibly of basketball team owner Donald Sterling chastising his girlfriend for associating with African Americans: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” In a curious response, Mr. Sterling and his Los Angeles Clippers organization said they “do not know” if the tape is “legitimate” but that Mr. Sterling “feels terrible that such sentiments are being attributed to him.” As Post columnist Sally Jenkins and others have pointed out, this is not the first time that offensive comments have been “attributed to” Mr. Sterling.

Whenever such ugly sentiments surface, many white Americans who like to think that the country has moved beyond rank racism profess astonishment. Many black Americans see in that astonishment proof of the obtuseness, willful or otherwise, that prevents whites from acknowledging the obstacles African Americans still face. Optimists in this case might note that Mr. Bundy (age 67) and Mr. Sterling (80) are of a generation that Justice O’Connor expected would be gone from the scene by her deadline. Yet even optimists have to be dispirited by the revelation of such casually accepted racism.

Two data points don’t prove Justice O’Connor wrong, nor do they make a definitive case for or against affirmative action. They do, however, take us back to the rationale for diversity that Justice O’Connor was defending in 2003. To consign Bundy-style ignorance to history, the country needs younger people of all races interacting, including in law schools (the subject of the 2003 case) and other educational venues.

As the justice wrote then, in Grutter v. Bollinger: “The Law School does not premise its need for critical mass on ‘any belief that minority students always (or even consistently) express some characteristic minority viewpoint on any issue.’ To the contrary, diminishing the force of such stereotypes is both a crucial part of the Law School’s mission, and one that it cannot accomplish with only token numbers of minority students. Just as growing up in a particular region or having particular professional experiences is likely to affect an individual’s views, so too is one’s own, unique experience of being a racial minority in a society, like our own, in which race unfortunately still matters.”

Only 14 years to go, and Justice O’Connor’s observation seems no less true.

ght, and V. Stiviano, left, watch the Clippers play the Los Angeles Lakers during an NBA preseason basketball game in Los Angeles on Monday, Dec. 19, 2010.Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s apparent behavior is disgusting and outrageous, and he should be ousted from the NBA. He also needs to be thanked. Mr. Sterling’s blistering, bigoted blather has exposed not only his reprehensible personal sociology but also the flawed NBA ownership system, a club so inalienably linked to white privilege that it is just as liable for Mr. Sterling’s racist views as the man himself.

 

 

 “Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts:

 ‘I do not belong here. ”   

 

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

 

By Robert Barnes, Published: April 22

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s fierce defense of the affirmative action efforts such as the ones that helped move her from a Bronx housing project to the upper echelons of American law found renewed voice Tuesday in an impassioned dissent that accused colleagues of trying to “wish away” racial inequality — and drew a tart response from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

In her most personal moment in 41 years on the court, Sotomayor read part of her dissent from the bench to emphasize her disagreement with six colleagues who upheld Michigan’s constitutional amendment banning the consideration of race in public university admissions.

It is a 58-page dissent, longer than the combined efforts of four other justices who wrote. The court’s first Latina justice directly took on Roberts’s view that the nation’s continued reliance on racial classifications hinders rather than promotes the goal of a color-blind society.

Sotomayor noted Roberts’s famous statement in a 2007 opinion that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  Too simplistic, she said.

“This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable,” Sotomayor wrote. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”

She added: “As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.”

Roberts responded with a short, sharp statement of his own.

“To disagree with the dissent’s views on the costs and benefits of racial preferences is not to ‘wish away, rather than confront’ racial inequality,” Roberts wrote.  “People can disagree in good faith on this issue, but it similarly does more harm than good to question the openness and candor of those on either side of the debate.”

Sotomayor, 59, has spoken extensively about how affirmative action was key to her rise from a public housing project where her parents spoke only Spanish. The search for minorities to diversify student bodies in the 1970s won her invitations and scholarship offers from Ivy League schools she had only just learned existed.

She excelled at Princeton, winning the top undergraduate prize, and went to Yale Law School. But she has drawn diametrically different lessons about the experience than Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s only African American, who said affirmative action cheapened his Yale Law degree.

Thomas did not write separately in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. But Sotomayor, joined in the dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, devoted pages to the country’s “long and lamentable record of stymieing the right of racial minorities to participate in the political process.”

And she said her colleagues ignored “the importance of diversity in institutions of higher education” and the decision “reveals how little my colleagues understand about the reality of race in America.”

Sotomayor filled her dissent with a detailed history of the court’s decisions regarding political empowerment and efforts by majorities to dilute the strength of minorities. She reprinted pages of graphics showing the decline of minorities at top universities in California and Michigan since the states prohibited the use of racial considerations.

She even wrote that she was not going to use the term “affirmative action” because of its connotation of “intentional preferential treatment” such as quotas, because the court has outlawed such practices. Instead, she called it a system of “race-sensitive admissions policies.” 

But the most striking part of the dissent was a rebuke to “the view that we should leave race out of the picture.”

“Race matters,” she wrote, to the minority teenager who sees “others tense up as he passes;” to the young person addressed in a foreign language although she grew up in this country; to the young woman who is asked “No, where are you really from?”

“Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here,’ ” Sotomayor wrote.

Roberts repeated Sotomayor’s words before coming to the opposite conclusion.

“It is not ‘out of touch with reality’ to conclude that racial preferences may themselves have the debilitating effect of reinforcing precisely that doubt, and — if so — that the preferences do more harm than good,” he responded.

The debate provides a remarkable view of the court’s ideological split. But it is unlikely to change many minds — not of those who support what is a step-by-step effort by Roberts to remove racial classifications, or of those who support Sotomayor’s defense of what is clearly a minority view on the court.

Justices are not appointed by presidents “unless they have strong opinions,” said Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (R). “I think there are strong passions on each side of this argument.”

BLOGGER'S NOTE:  The conservative opinion may have won the decision but Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor brings to the table what Roberts can only dream of understanding.  Moreover, it's unfortunate that all his experience and education seems, for him, to negate any possibility that he is wrong.  WRONG as two left feet.  WRONG seven days a week and twice on Sunday.  WRONG.  WRONG.  WRONG.  And people like that don't usually wake up; their wrongheaded ideas are too much a part of who they are.

Justice Department prepares for clemency requests from thousands

• 573
• Share to Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn
• Add to PersonalPost
• Share via Email
• Print Article
• More

By Sari Horwitz, Published: April 21 

The Obama administration is beginning an aggressive new effort to foster equity in criminal sentencing by considering clemency requests from as many as thousands of federal inmates serving time for drug offenses, officials said Monday.

The initiative, which amounts to an unprecedented campaign to free non­violent offenders, will begin immediately and continue over the next two years, officials said. The Justice Department said it expects to reassign dozens of lawyers to its understaffed pardons office to handle the requests from inmates.

Video: Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that the Justice Department anticipates receiving thousands of applications for clemency from non-violent drug offenders.

Sari Horwitz APR 21

“The White House has indicated it wants to consider additional clemency applications, to restore a degree of justice, fairness and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. “The Justice Department is committed to recommending as many qualified applicants as possible for reduced sentences.”

Holder has announced a series of initiatives to tackle disparities in criminal penalties, beginning in August when he said low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations would not be charged with offenses that call for strict mandatory sentences. He has traveled across the country to highlight community programs in which nonviolent offenders have received substance-abuse treatment and other assistance instead of long prison sentences.

Underlying the initiatives is the belief by top Justice Department officials that the most severe penalties should be reserved for serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers. On April 10, after an endorsement from Holder, the U.S. Sentencing Commission — the independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal judges — voted to revise its guidelines to reduce sentences for defendants in most of the nation’s drug cases.

In the meantime, however, thousands of inmates are still serving federally mandated sentences that imposed strict penalties for the possession of crack cocaine. The Fair Sentencing Act, which President Obama signed in 2010, reduced the disparity between convictions for crack and powder cocaine, and Obama has called sentences passed under the older guidelines “unduly harsh.” The law also eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the simple possession of crack cocaine.

“There are still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime — and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime,” Holder said Monday. “This is simply not right.”

For about two decades, strict sentences were imposed on offenders convicted of trafficking or possession with intent to traffic crack cocaine in the belief that the substance was more addictive than powder cocaine, inexpensive and linked to violent crime.

But in 2002, the sentencing panel found that sentencing guidelines were based on misperceptions about the relative dangers of crack cocaine compared with other drugs. The commission also found that the disparity had created a racial imbalance in which harsh sentences had been disproportionately imposed on minorities, particularly African Americans.

In December, Obama commuted the sentences of eight inmates serving long prison terms for crack-cocaine convictions handed down before the 2010 law was passed. Six of the eight were serving life sentences, including two who had not previously been convicted. Each of the eight had served more than 15 years for a crack offense.

Under the 2010 law, the same people would have received shorter prison terms and, in some cases, completed their sentences.

On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole is expected to announce details about the new criteria the Justice Department will use in considering clemency applications and how the department plans to review those applications.

The department has asked the American Civil Liberties Union and other nonprofit groups to help identify candidates for clemency. Some of those groups are likely to help inmates submit the necessary paperwork.

“Once these reforms go into effect, we expect to receive thousands of additional applications for clemency,” Holder said. “And we at the Department of Justice will meet this need by assigning potentially dozens of lawyers — with backgrounds in both prosecution and defense — to review applications and provide the rigorous scrutiny that all clemency applications require.”

White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said Obama has directed the department to improve its process for clemency recommendations and try to recruit more applicants from the federal prison population of low-level drug offenders.

In a speech at New York University’s law school last week, Ruemmler said clemency is an important “fail-safe mechanism” in the criminal justice system.

“When a worthy candidate runs out of other options,” she said, “the president has the power to correct an injustice that no one else has.” 


Katie Zezima contributed to this report.

BLOGGER'S NOTE:  I am for whatever it takes to get  people of color out of prison and into the type  opportunities for a second (or third) chance, that heretofore only white people have been able to get.