Prison Riots Spotlight Court De-Segregation Edict

A riot among predominately Latino and black inmates Saturday night at a medium security prison in Chino, Calif., injured 250 in which 17 remained in hospitals this morning. All were inmates in the 11-hour melee which razed one dormitory in flames and seriously damaged another six.

The riot turns the spotlight on the California penal system which the Los Angeles Times contends is the most overcrowded in the nation. Chino's California Institution for Men is desegregated in compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court order.

I'm in favor of desegregation but forcing it upon a penal colony made up of members of black, Latino and Aryan Nation gangs is akin to throwing a match on gasoline.

All the news about the prison riot is controlled by Lt. Mark Hargrove, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. In no way am I impugning Hargrove's honesty and integrity. But it is my experience in covering prison riots that spokesmen are hampered by their own bias against those they are guarding and political agendas.

Consider this.

The recent budget signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger cut $1.2 billion to run the state's prisons which houses 158,000 prisoners. A correction officers association said 20,000 prisoners would need to be released to maintain security at the prisons. Chino was designed for 3,000 medium security prisoners in 1941 and now houses 5,900.

A panel of three federal judges just last week called conditions "appalling" and ruled the state must release 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards. This follows a Supreme Court decision in 2005 that the practice of segregating prisoners by ethnic groups was illegal.

Hargrove said some inmates were being transferred to other prisons and the remainder will sleep under hastily-erected tents until the damaged dormitories are refurbished. All prisons in Southern California were put on lockdown as a result of the riot. Visitation was suspended until further notice.

“All races had injuries,” Hargrove said of the weekend riot. “But there are a greater number of injuries among Hispanic and black inmates. And we did have another incident that occurred in May, a riot between blacks and Hispanics, and this may be associated with that incident.”

Barry Krisberg, the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, told the New York Times the riot illustrated growing cost overruns and pending cuts.

“There are proposals to eliminate all programs including reducing visiting days for inmates participating in programs,” Krisberg said. “But if you isolate these men from their families and cut down even the most basic educational and counseling programs, you’re going to create more idleness, and this is what happens."

I would not underplay the role of racial conflict among the warring gangs. It smacks at the heart of the recent Senate confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomajor in which she had said her ethnic roots might play a role in her judicial decisions. Judges most sensitive to racial dynamics might be more aware of the pitfalls of forcibly confining black and Latino and Aryan Nation zealots in the same cell.

Those Town Halls -- Ouch!

Several weeks ago, about 425 active and retired employees of The San Diego Union-Tribune were asked in an email newsletter they publish what they would do if they were dictator for a day. Naturally, most of the replies were humorous. Allow me to don the imperial crown for a moment.

I would tell the demonstrators disrupting town hall meetings with their elected representatives on the proposed health care reform legislation to shut the you-know-what up and stop acting like unruly Third World agitators. A grown-up needs to step in and take charge of these unruly events and restore a sense of civility.

Ain't gonna happen. I'll tell you why.

The debate has evolved into a confluence of diametrically opposed political and economic positions in regards to delivering our health care. It is the new mother of hot button issues surpassing all others including the most important one of all -- jobs.

Its foundation is the simple premise that health care represents 16% of our nation's gross national product and escalating at an alarming rate while delivering poorer results compared to other industrialized countries.

Most polls show people overwhelmingly favor heath care and insurance reform. The devil is in the details.

That's the first problem. Congress before its summer recess drafted several bills with President Obama sitting on the sidelines offering only broad principles of what he wants, yet he is the guy ramrodding the legislation as part of his signature change agenda. As House and Senators return to their home districts this August to hold their traditional town hall meetings, they are forced to defend or deflate a bunch of proposals that no where near are close to become law. As a result, their minions are acting like dogs barking, jumping and snapping at imaginary buzzing flies.

The second problem is the Congressional Democrats. The liberals and moderates are divided over the basic Old Democratic platform for universal health care delivered by a single-payer or public option plan that would compete with the private insurance carriers. The wedge dividing the groups include TV ads by liberal interests such as MoveOn.Org targeted at several key "Blue Dog" Democrats.

Problem No. Three is opposition to all the reform plans offered by Democrats from the Republicans and their vocal and influential talk radio, television and websites. Lobby groups representing health industry moguls not only have donated big bucks to both Democrats and Republicans but have paid for smear campaigns urging people to attend the town hall meetings for the sole purpose of disruption and creating chaos.

American politics have always carried rowdy overtones. The difference in today's world is television, the Internet, YouTube and Twitter. The constant repetition of showing film clips of unruly town hall events no matter how exaggerated eventually imbeds in the public awareness a belief that something is wrong. And the wrong in this case translates in favor of those who oppose health reforms.

Of all the arguments cited at the town hall meetings, only one resonates with an element of legitimate concern. That is the cost to implement the reforms at a time the federal budget is $1.3 trillion overdrawn and the Chinese holding the pink slip to our national debt.

Most of the other arguments are based on lies and fears fed by rabble rousers on both sides of the issue.

The Republicans certainly outflanked and outsmarted the Democrats in taking their propaganda battles to the town halls. An emergency meeting at the White House developed this strategy among the Democrats: “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard."

The New York Times offers this round-up on the shenanigans.

Ode To A Living Will

I wrote my living will yesterday rather than posting my column. It served a myriad of purposes, the least of which gave the gatekeeper a day off fending those slings and arrows from both extremes of the political spectrum picking apart my prose and carrying on about stuff I didn't write nor intend but rather squabbling among themselves over some intangible twist introduced by gremlins commenting on that post. (Just kidding, folks.)

It felt oh so good mocking with in-your-face defiance those Republican Congressmen who stood on the floor of the House and at press briefings claiming an obscure provision in the health insurance reform legislation drafts that the government is poised to commit euthanasia on the elderly. Just to refresh your memories, that section, if it passes into legislation, would allow Medicare a once-every-five-years payment for voluntary doctor and patient counseling on options how us geezers wish to die. In other words, the government will pay to have someone help you write your living will.

Living wills along with last wills and testaments are good. It allows the patient to decide for himself and get his house in order. It avoids Terri Shiavo scenarios in which her husband wanted to mercifully end her life after years in coma and her parents wanted to prolong it.

I'm no different than millions of others who view life coming to its ultimate end. The finality is breath taking. What happens after that is a new journey none of us really know, for sure. You reach a point where finally you don't see yourself as indestructible, immortal and Master of the Universe as you did in your twenties. You recognize those really dumb decisions made in a course of a lifetime and have reconciled yourself to live with them. As the lyrics say in that famous song recorded by Frank Sinatra, "I did it my way."

Actually, my living will is a misnomer. It is a list of preferences spelled out in order for my son and my doctor know what to do when the time finally comes. Among them is a DNR. For you youngsters, it means Do Not Resuscitate. I have nary a clue when that time will come other than glancing at the life expectancy schedules written by those morbid underwriters.

I'll be damned to be included in what a Dartmouth University survey determined that the last six months of an elderly person's life costs $46,000 in medical bills. It's not that I want to save the taxpayers and all the others in my insurance pool a dime. Is my life so precious that spending $35,000 on an operation which stands a 20% chance of survival and prolonging my sorry state an extra few days or months worth the expense?

The important issue is quality of life, not the cost or some moral issue relating to sanctity-of-life and damn the torpedoes. I suppose my views fit nicely with the ancient Greeks who limped into the forests to die.

In my case, the estate I leave to my son and two grandchildren is a joke. I mean, after my son clears out my stuff and holds a garage sale to dispense of it, he may wind up with $2.50. At least that ghoul humor is shared by my son. But, the memories I leave and the legacy I left are priceless.

That is why I prefer cremation. Take the ashes some convenient time, drive to the Pacific Ocean and drop them in the surf where I spent my youth and were the most carefree period of my life. No funeral or memorial services. Just a wake among friends and family and let the good times roll.

I'll have a smile on my face when I meet that tired out gatekeeper in the sky.

Slick Willie Clinton To The Rescue

The propaganda wheels are spinning in overdrive as former President Bill Clinton returns from his North Korea journey with released hostages, journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

The New York Times in its NEWS report SPECULATED in its FIRST paragraph that Clinton's successful mission opens the door for fruitful negotiations between the two countries over the nuclear weapons issue.

John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Bush administration, charged the Obama administration violated the cardinal rule to never negotiate with terrorists despite the feel-good, short-lived euphoria that the two prisoners were returned home safely.

The North Korean news agency said Clinton apologized to their dear leader Kim Jong-il for the two women's transgressions. In Africa, Bill's wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in more diplomatic terms that was total BS.

We won't know what the former president said and observed until he briefs Obama -- even that may be under wraps indefinitely -- or one of the envoys that accompanied him on the trip speaks out of school.

We do know Clinton NEVER would have accepted the invitation from the Koreans and Obama himself had the release of the prisoners not been negotiated as a done deal in advance.

What I find rather amusing is Kim has this "thing" for Bill Clinton. According to the NYT article and another filed by Bill Solomon of the Wall Street Journal, their sources believed Kim was seeking to turn back the clock and resurrect a relationship with Clinton that came close to formally ending the Korean War in late 2000. Writes Solomon:

Former U.S. officials said Clinton was seriously contemplating a trip to Pyongyang during his final weeks in office to explore agreements to end North Korea's missile program and get Washington and Pyongyang off the war footing they had held ever since an armistice ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. A formal peace accord was never signed and the U.S. has maintained tens of thousands of troops on South Korean soil.

Mr. Clinton's trip would have followed the October 2000 visit to the White House by North Korea's then second-highest military officer, Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok. The North Korean commander and the Clinton administration signed a memorandum of understanding calling for the official end of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula.

These same pundits believe Kim is seeking credibility for his much maligned nation he brought upon himself by showing the world he is willing to sit down with a former president of the United States and pardon two women his kangaroo court system found guilty. That's the Western explanation. The Eastern expression is "saving face." The reality is Kim used Euna Lee and Laura Ling as pawns for something we'll learn about in the near future.

As for the NYT story, it did go to great lengths citing mostly unnamed sources of the POSSIBILITY that talks on nuclear sanctions could be opened directly between the two countries.

Which brings us back to Mr. Bolton who, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, never seems to go away. Says he:

The point to be made on the Clinton visit is that the knee-jerk impulse for negotiations above all inevitably brings more costs than its advocates foresee. Negotiating from a position of strength, where the benefits to American interests will exceed the costs, is one thing. Negotiating merely for the sake of it, in the face of palpable recent failures, is something else indeed.

He carries this feel-good diplomacy several steps farther:

With three American hikers freshly in Tehran's captivity, will Clinton be packing his bags again for another act of obeisance? And, looking ahead, what American hostages will not be sufficiently important to merit the presidential treatment? What about Roxana Saberi and other Americans previously held in Tehran? What was it about them that made them unworthy of a presidential visit? These are the consequences of poorly thought-out gesture politics, however well-intentioned or compassionately motivated. Indeed, the release of the two reporters -- welcome news -- doesn't mitigate the future risks entailed.

While Bolton may be an old sourpuss, such is not the case with NYT columnist Maureen Dowd who imagined conversation between the unusually disciplined Clinton and the giddy Kim. Dowd recalled an international incident last month when Hillary said that, as a mother, she understood that the North Koreans were simply unpopular and unruly children misbehaving to get attention. A North Korean spokesman countered that Hillary was “a funny lady” and that “sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”

You can picture a charming Bill putting matters in perspective: “Pay no mind to that, Kimmie. She’s an amazin’ woman, but she just goes off sometimes. You should hear what she calls me when she gets riled up. An unruly teenager and then some.”

Jeez, my guess was Kim, a notorious drinker of scotch and viewer of porn movies and actresses, envied Clinton for his sordid tryst in the Oval office with an intern. A lot of stories those two could swap.

Just joking. In truth, Clinton always has been more universally popular in foreign countries and it is remarkable he has both mellowed and matured with age, carving out a new legacy as global humanitarian and now fix-it man.

Do I read into this a new, reinvigorated Clinton era with Hillary poised in the wings to seek the presidency in 2016? No.

Clunker Program Toys With Our Weakness

I was watching video clips of Republican congressmen criticizing the ever-popular "cars for clunkers" program and it got me thinking. Here is one scenario: If there is anything Americans love most, it's their cars and bargaining a good deal buying one.

The government's auto stimulus program plays right into that emotional bonding by offering up to $4,500 credit for trading in their old gas-guzzling vehicles which are destroyed forever and replaced by higher-mileage and more efficient new models.

Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for The Los Angeles Times, calls it a win-win-win-win deal with unintended consequences. I agree but for different reasons.

Goldberg argues correctly that poorer people with shaky credit are stuck with their old cars. When they go to trade in their heap for a newer used model the price of that clunker has risen because so many have been taken off the highways.

My question is what happens when the government dole runs out. Even if the Senate this week joins the House bill adding $2 billion to the program, all the experts say that money will be drained by September if not sooner.

At least it was fun while it lasted. I fear all the program is doing is planting a green shoot in the ground only to see it whither. Consumers will back away in hordes, returning auto dealership showrooms to funeral parlors on a dark day. All that was gained was fizzled and the automobile manufacturers which began increasing production will again turn off the spigot.

In other words, the government played mind games with our emotional weaknesses for naught. I hope I'm wrong because what happened with the first burst of $1 billion into the market worked wonders. Here are some of the numbers:

-- By this morning 157,000 transactions worth $664 million were recorded by the National Traffic Safety Administration which runs the program. Eighty-three percent of the vehicles traded in were trucks or SUVs, while 60% of the vehicles purchased were passengers cars, for an average increase in fuel efficiency of 61%.

-- Another $2 billion would generate the sale of about 500,000 more vehicles. Ford said its sales rose 2.4 % in July from the same month last year, its first year-over-year increase since November 2007. General Motors Co., Chrysler Group LLC and Ford Motor Co. accounted for 47% of the new vehicles purchased.

The LAT's Goldberg contends most of the buyers cashing in their clunkers were waiting all along to take advantage of the free-money program and suggests when that source dries up so does the car buying binge.

Indeed, Washington is agog with its own success, stunned to discover that Americans like getting free money. That this news shocked so many on both the right and left shows how thick the Beltway bubble really is.

Goldberg than says what's really troubling him:

Besides, maybe some people would be smarter to buy a savings bond or max-out their kid's college fund or -- here's a crazy thought -- buy health insurance. But instead they've been seduced into spending the equivalent of their (dollars) on a car they don't really need...

Under the government's program, my tax dollars are being diverted to people with cheap cars so they can buy expensive ones. That's just really inefficient wealth distribution, not wealth creation.

U.S. Health Reform From The Eyes Of A Canadian Medic

The August recess by Congress will make or break the healthcare insurance reform plans as advocates on all sides will make their pitch to the people. The battles will be fought primarily in town hall meetings and media commercials.

I forecast a major glitch in this scenario. Opponents will stack the town hall meetings and those who should listen most likely will be on vacation. As far as I can tell, the Obama administration must answer this question:

How can you cover the estimated 47 million uninsured Americans without raising taxes and increasing the deficit while at the same time not reducing benefits to those already insured? I have an un-American possible solution which I will address later.

The August blitz is intended to drive home the message that revamping the healthcare system will protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, such as refusing patients with pre-existing conditions, according to the game plan reported in The New York Times by reporters Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David M. Herszenhorn.

“I think what we want to communicate is that this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, adding, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.”

This is where it gets confusing because later on in the NYT story is a statement from Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans who "noted that the industry had endorsed many of the administration’s proposed changes, including ending the practice of refusing coverage for pre-existing conditions."

So who's telling the truth? I'm convinced not many. For example, if America's Health Insurance Plans group is on record supporting most of Congress's proposals, why is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promising a “drumbeat across America” to counter what she termed a “shock and awe, carpet-bombing by the health insurance industry to perpetuate the status quo”?

Borrowing an old Indian phrase, these people are talking with forked tongues. Pelosi, many of the 52 conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats and others in addition to Republicans all have received an aggregate of millions of dollars in campaign finance contributions from health field providers. That's one cynical perception.

What gives? One aspect of health insurance reform strongly urged by liberal Democrats is a government-run public option to compete against the private carriers and opposed by Ignagni's group. Many fear this will lead to a single-payer system patterned after those run in Canada and the Euro nations.

So what's wrong with a nationalized health care system? Depends what side of the equation you believe. I suppose for every 10 Canadians you could find, a majority would support your view whether you're for or against it. I'm a skeptic culled over the years listening to people defend or bash hot button issues. I prefer to listen to someone who knows what he's talking about.

Such a person is Michael M. Rachlis, a Canadian physician, health policy analyst and author in Toronto who wrote an op-ed article for today's Los Angeles Times. Here are some salient lessons Rachlis said we should consider:

Lesson One -- Single payer will provide insurance to nearly all Americans, an estimated one million filing bankruptcy each year because of catastrophic medical bills.

Lessons Two and Three -- Single payer can reduce duplicating administrative costs and negotiate lower prices. Canada spends 10% gross national product on health care; the U.S. 16% an $800 billion difference. The U.S. Medicare system has about 80% lower overhead than private Medicare Advantage policies.

Lesson Four -- Single payer can deliver more services because of lower overhead. Although there is a shortage for heart surgeries, Canadians live three years longer than Americans and the infant mortality rate is 20% lower.

Lesson Five -- Canadian healthcare delivery problems often cited by critics have nothing to do with its single-payer system and can be fixed by re-engineering for quality. Canadians wait months for an appointment with family physicians, elective surgeries and managing chronic disease. Rachlis said streamlining their own system has improved and cited an experimental model in Toronto where you can now get your hip assessed in one week and get a new one, if you need it, within a month.

Rachlis ends his article in bombastic style:

Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same. The U.S. media, legislators and even presidents have claimed that our "socialized" system doesn't let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It's Americans these days who are restricted to "in-plan" (HMO) doctors.

Unfortunately, many Americans won't get to hear the straight goods because vested interests are promoting a caricature of the Canadian experience.

The Art Of Stealing The Other Guy's Property

I would suggest must reading of Ian Shapira's story in today's Washington Post for those of us who use the Internet to write articles and opinion pieces plundered from reliable properties such as WaPo, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and others of that ilk.

Shapira said his ego was stoked when the snarky cultural website Gawker cherry picked the best lines from his 1,500-word article on "Anne Loehr, who charges her early-Gen-X/Boomer clients anywhere from $500 to $2,500 to explain how the millennial generation (mostly people in their 20s and late teens) behaves in the workplace."

When Shapira's editor deflated his ego by asking him where's his outrage, the reporter began reflecting on the dwindling demise of working for great newspapers with generous pay and perks, a meltdown chiefly caused by Internet freeloaders stealing this hard-earned, vetted material. Pouring salt on the wound is some sites placing ads along side their stolen stories but absolutely no compensation for the newspaper or its authors.

If you read Shapira's entire article which I did, you must feel some pangs of guilt. If not, I suggest you take a crash course in economics, plagiarism and sensitivity training. I mean, you're heartless, man.

At any rate, in my case, I confess crimes as accused in the article such as linking the story but failing to mention the newspaper or reporter and quoting it exhaustively throughout the post.

I promise never to do that again. I will link, attribute and keep the quotes gleamed from the story at a bare minimum. Call it Remmers Rule No. 1 in blogosphere posting. I should have known better. I have been on the flip side of this having spent 26 years in the newspaper business and never credited, let alone reimbursed, when AP and UPI and Copley News Service ran my photos and stories verbatim.

Meanwhile -- and I know I will catch hell for this -- Saturday's firestorm throughout many websites, including TMV, blazed with rumors that former Alaska Gov. Sara Palin and husband Todd were getting a divorce. There were no prima facia facts in any of the accounts I read.

The frenzy was disgusting. Let's assume for a moment the rumors were false. Can we expect a correction -- or, God forbid, an apology -- from the blogs? I'm not holding my breath on that ever happening.