When Will Los Angeles Run Out of Water? Sooner Than You Think

According to the current thinking of most climatologist, the southwestern states of the United States and the northern states of Mexico will be in perpetual draught by 2100. To survive, residents of those areas are going to have to make major adjustments in their life styles, water usage, water management and their treatment of their natural environments. I've already started changing the landscaping in my own yard to one of draught tolerant plants that are local natives and draught resistant plants from South Africa. But the only thing that will really motivate the residents of those area to start conserving water resources now is to charge considerably more for the water they use than they are presently paying.

Fred

***********************

When Will Los Angeles Run Out of Water? Sooner Than You Think.
By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted October 4, 2008.

L.A. has two options: Pray for rain, or suck off Northern California's supply. Guess which one it's going to try first? Tools

Somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming""

Los Angeles has been sleeping far too long. But the question is not when will it wake, but rather what it will do once it does wake and realize the water is gone.

"We are way better than Third-World countries with no water supply," explains California Department of Water Resources drought coordinator Wendy Martin, "but it will take a significant change to keep ours."

Martin is speaking of California at large, but the science is in and the climate crisis isn't hard to figure out. Water isn't a renewable resource, so that makes Los Angeles the state's parched yet still bloated problem.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the state's water reserves are nearly finished, which leaves California with two options: Pray for rain, or suck off Northern California's supply. Guess which one it's going to try first?

If you guessed both, you're right. Indeed, California will revive a decades-old plan for a statewide water bank that will flow water to where it is needed most. Right now that means it flows from Northern California farmers and others to agencies in Southern California, whose citizens have lately been engaging in Option Two rather than studying up on reality -- specifically, the geographical and environmental kind.

"We as a state entity looking out for the broader good," Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow told the Times, "are not going to allow somebody to have 100 percent supplies and be hosing off sidewalks while a community has no fire protection and poor-quality water to drink."

He may not have mentioned Los Angeles by name, but anyone who has ever read Day of the Locust or seen "Chinatown" could tell you that Los Angeles has always been a managed fantasy. Like its redheaded stepchild Las Vegas, it's a consumption and recreation oasis in the desert running on Hollywood simulations and immigrant labor, which is to say distractions from its more geographical reality.

It has water on its beaches, but rarely anywhere else. For that, it has drained someone else's supply for centuries. Which brings us back to the future of Los Angeles, whose Sierra snowpack will likely evaporate under the weight of global warming's changed game.

With declining snowfall and earlier snowmelts, there is nothing Los Angeles can do but borrow someone else's water and get its hyperreal and hyperconsumptive act together. "Los Angeles doesn't treat water like it lives in a desert," explains Martin. "Our director made it clear that we would not impact Northern California so Southern California could wash off their driveways. People who are participating in the bank will have to be forced to change their behavior."

Behavior modification is the only way Los Angeles can extend, but not prevent, what some scientists are saying will be a permanent drought for not just the sunshine-and-noir metropolis but also for most, if not all, of the American Southwest. Sustainability exercises and policies will go a long way to mitigating the desert's reclamation of its lands from Hollywood and Hummers, but the Dust Bowl had nothing on what's coming to California. And it's coming to stay.

"I don't know what permanent drought even means," admits Martin. "We have recorded the history of water in California for over 100 years, and that's nothing. We don't know where we are at. But what permanent drought means to me is that if we are getting drier, then we need to change the way we use our water."

Martin suggests the usual no-brainers: Short showers, low-flow everything, no lawns, total conservation, and so on. But these are all wonderful solutions in search of a population that cares. A recent sustainability forum attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, L.A. Department of Water and Power, Heal the Bay, and more was a wonderful outreach opportunity, with one all-important caveat: Attendance wasn't mandatory.

And therein lies California's problem, especially if it wants to prevent a NorCal/SoCal showdown over blue gold that could rewrite the state's borders. The drought that California, and especially Los Angeles, faces is a life-threatening crisis that has been treated like a cold. There is no corner of the city or state that it will not touch. If not treated immediately, it will start out as a serious pain in the ass, forcing citizens to alter their behavior and consumption with restrictive codes and financial penalties.

Then it will worsen, as the division between who gets water (the rich, the north) and who doesn't (the poor, the south) causes rampant itching and, as author Nathanael West predicted, lots of burning of lots of things.

Once malignant, it will force evacuations and realignments. By 2100, you will not recognize it. But even at this late date, I am watching the citizenry piss its water away, unaware of how it appeared in the first place. I see hybrids for sure, but also vacant mothers in empty Hummers.

I see water gushing into the gutters, carrying grime, toxins and other destructive chemicals into the sea, whose desalination remains one of Los Angeles' only playable cards on the hustler's table. I see extravagant lawns that are like gorgeously tended middle fingers to reality, which, like death and taxes always, has a way of winning in the end.

Most importantly, I see a public unready to accept the inevitable: That it lives in a desert, and that the desert is going dry with accelerating lethality. "I put this down to the myth of abundance that we all grew up with, coupled with a false First-World belief that technology can fix whatever goes wrong," says Maude Barlow, a water commodification and policy expert and the author of Blue Gold and Blue Covenant.

"We all learned long ago that water circles through the hydrologic cycle and we cannot destroy it, but this is patently false. Yet it is still held dear to our hearts. Now that the evidence is before our eyes, rather than changing our behavior, we trust that some modern machine will take care of us. We simply cannot come to think of ourselves as just another species that must adapt or die."

The good news is that eventually the planet takes care of these decisions for us if we don't act on them. Sustainability options are available, from the no-brainers mentioned by Martin to more ambitious exercises in solar development, water conservation and onward.

As the planet changes, so may its people, who have survived droughts and ice ages with ingenuity and hardiness. Indeed, the science of conservation is on the cusp of a cultural breakthrough, and the only thing that can stop it is, say, America nuking Iran or electing someone who will only push it harder down its destructive path. Which is why it is imperative that the United States, and its slumbering cities, get on the same page.

"What we are starting to see, and the science is supporting it over time," adds Martin, "is that the weather patterns are shifting and the trajectory is upward on continued diminishment. What we do know is that, because of the depletion of the aquifers, it will take a gully-washer to just get us back to square one. But we still abuse the resource, and we can't afford to do that anymore. People need to understand the true value of water. What amazes me is that it doesn't take much effort to do the right thing."

And that doesn't just go for the people, but also the politicians they elect to represent their best interests. And right now, that means taking control of what's left of California's water. The state will have to sooner or later, unless it wants to leave life's necessities to the stock market.

"The situation is such that the state may have to take control eventually of its water resources as a public trust, and allocate on a priority basis," counsels Barlow. "Water for ecological health of the system first, for drinking water and restricted daily use for citizens, water for local food production, and water for commerce and export last. As for water trading, I warn people against allowing it to become controlled by private brokers."

But you can't commodify what you can't capture, and the public and the brokers that rip it off won't have gushing taps forever. Again, behavior modification will only postpone the inevitable. Eventually, Los Angeles will walk off into the sunset a desert reclaimed. Like other desert cities, it may survive the transformative upheaval, but it will have to suck water from sand to stay alive in its current state. Water wasters might want to get to work on finding a new state. Of mind, if possible.



See more stories tagged with: water, california, drought, water scarcity, water shortage
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

GOP Strategists Whisper Fears Of Greater Losses in November

Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel's seat is being targeted by the Democrats for a takeover. I personally would love to see that buffoon bite the dust in November's election. The worry I have is that the Democrats will do something really stupid, shoot themselves in the foot and lose an election that is being handed to them on a silver platter by the Republican leadership. The Democratic Party has a long history of very effectively snatching defeat out of victory.

Fred

**********************

GOP Strategists Whisper Fears Of Greater Losses in November

By Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer and Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 4, 2008; A11

With the party already struggling to generate enthusiasm for its brand, Republican strategists fear that an outpouring of public anger generated by Congress's struggle to pass a rescue package for the financial industry may contribute to a disaster at the polls for the GOP in November.

"The crisis has affected the entire ticket," said Jan van Lohuizen, a Republican consultant who handled the polling for President Bush's reelection campaign. "The worse the state's economy, the greater the impact."

Republicans are trying to defend at least 18 House seats in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, economic trouble spots that double as election battlegrounds. Rising unemployment, the meltdown in the housing market, and a credit crunch besieging consumers and manufacturers alike were factors in Sen. John McCain's decision Thursday to pull campaign resources out of Michigan. The McCain campaign's exit from the state leaves a pair of vulnerable Republicans, Reps. Tim Walberg and Joe Knollenberg, with a weakened party infrastructure heading into Nov. 4. Attempting to sound optimistic, Knollenberg, who opposed the bailout bill on Monday but supported a revised version yesterday, said simply, "I am going to fight harder."

In the Senate, where Democrats have been on offense all year as they try to attain a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority, Republican incumbents are suddenly teetering in North Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia because of the economic crisis, according to several GOP strategists closely tracking the contests.

The pessimism in the GOP ranks reflects a striking shift in momentum in the four weeks since the Republican National Convention, when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made her national debut and rallied conservatives, helping to fuel the perception that longer-shot Democratic targets were drifting out of reach.

"If you turn the clock back two or two and half weeks, you could make a plausible argument that if a couple of things go our way we will lose three to four Senate races," said one Republican strategist. "Now we will lose six to eight." Polling in most Senate races over the past 14 days has shown a five-point decline for the Republican candidate, the strategist said.

The picture in the House is similar. The generic ballot test -- a traditional measure of broad voter attitudes -- has also moved decisively in Democrats' direction in recent days. The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal and Associated Press polls showed voters favoring a generic Democratic candidate for Congress over a generic Republican by 13 points, while a recent Time magazine poll gave Democrats a 46 percent to 36 percent edge.

GOP operatives said the party's declining fortunes are rooted in a series of events over the past two weeks, including McCain's decision to suspend his campaign in order to help broker a deal on the rescue plan and Republican opposition that doomed the bill in a House vote on Monday. Those incidents helped reinforce voter impressions that Washington is broken and that Republicans bear the brunt of the blame, the party insiders said.

In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, more than half of all voters said they were "very concerned" that the failure of the first bailout vote would cause a "severe economic decline." By a ratio of 2 to 1, they blamed the legislations' defeat on Republicans.

Neil Newhouse, a partner in the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, echoed van Lohuizen's sentiment. "The bailout crisis has had a corrosive effect on the national political environment, and that impacts not just John McCain, but GOP candidates up and down the ticket," he said.

The proximity to the election added to the chaos on Capitol Hill this week as lawmakers sought to pass a $700 billion package to stabilize banks and financial markets. In the House, most vulnerable Republicans opposed the version that failed on Monday, as well as the revamped legislation that passed easily yesterday. But in the Senate, which voted Wednesday, just two vulnerable Republicans, Sens. Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.), opposed the bill (along with the only Democrat who is seen as endangered, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu).

Seven Republicans who are being targeted for defeat by Democrats backed the plan: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), and Sens. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Ted Stevens (Alaska); Norm Coleman (Minn.); Gordon Smith (Ore.), Susan Collins (Maine) and John E. Sununu (N.H.).

Some states that have been hit particularly hard economically saw fractures within their delegations. In Michigan, Knollenberg switched his vote from no on Monday to yes on Friday, while Walberg voted no both times. Asked whether he changed his mind out of concern for his reelection, Knollenberg shrugged and responded, "This is politics." But he added that supporting the bailout "is really what's best for the community."

In North Carolina, the package was opposed by both vulnerable GOP incumbents, Dole and Rep. Robin Hayes. Dole's Democratic challenger, state Sen. Kay Hagan, also announced her opposition. Rep. Sue Myrick, one of the few Republicans in the state whose seat is considered relatively secure, was one of 25 GOP members who switched from no to yes. "I may lose this race over this vote," Myrick said. "But that's okay, because I believe in my heart that I'm doing the right thing."

Phil Singer, a former aide to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign who is currently advising several Democratic Senate candidates, said the current financial crisis provided a new opportunity to remind voters that President Bush remains the leader of the Republican Party. "The 'GOP candidate equals George Bush' argument was growing stale in the absence of any fresh proof points," said Singer.

Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the GOP's chief deputy whip, urged Republicans to go home and talk about kitchen-table issues such as the price of gas. "That's what this election is going to be about," he said, "and people are going to ask, 'Whose vision do we ascribe to?' " But it could take time to change the subject, Cantor acknowledged, depending on how quickly the crisis shows signs of easing.

Compounding Republican problems is a continued fundraising deficit that has left the party largely powerless to defend its congressional candidates against a televised Democratic onslaught. At the start of September -- the last time financial figures were available -- the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee held a $40 million cash-on-hand edge over its GOP counterpart and was advertising in 41 House districts, compared with just two districts in which the National Republican Campaign Committee was on the air.

The gap was less daunting on the Senate side, where the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee held a $7 million cash edge over the National Republican Senatorial Committee at the start of September. However, the DSCC spent $13.6 million in August -- largely on television ads -- while the NRSC dropped just $3.6 million.

That spending deficit and the economic reverberations are being felt most strongly in North Carolina, where Hagan appears to have moved into a lead over Dole. The DSCC has spent more than $3.5 million on ads painting Dole as out of touch with average North Carolina voters, and even Republicans acknowledge that the attacks have taken their toll. Independent polling puts Hagan's lead at three to eight points.

In Oregon, state House Speaker Jeff Merkley (D) has taken to the television airwaves to attack Sen. Gordon Smith (R) for his vote in favor of the rescue plan. "In this economy, who is really on your side?" asks the narrator in Merkley's ad, saying that Smith supported a "trillion-dollar blank check for Wall Street." Polling in that race shows a virtual dead heat.

U.S. loses 159,000 jobs in September, worst one-month drop in five years

Most economic pundits in the US have been in deep denial doing everything they can not to utter the "R" (Recession) word and offering hope to the masses that the US economy will not go into recession. Now those economic pundits are daring to utter the words that not only is the US going into an economic RECESSION but could go into a very deep and prolonged DEEP RECESSION - comparing it to the very "deep recession" experienced in 1929 and the early 30s in the US. The things that have kept the present US economy from going into a full blown and devastating DEPRESSION have been the programs instituted back in the 1930s by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Social Security, Workmen's Comp and Unemployment Benefits (Insurance).

Fred

***********************


U.S. loses 159,000 jobs in September, worst one-month drop in five years

Economists say the accelerating pace of unemployment, combined with the most severe credit crisis since the Great Depression, makes the label of 'recession' increasingly likely.

By Maura Reynolds and Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 4, 2008

WASHINGTON -- As the presidential election season nears its climax, there is growing evidence that the country is slipping into the deepest recession in decades.

The latest marker came Friday, when the government reported that employers shed 159,000 jobs in September, far more than expected. That was the worst one-month drop in more than five years and brings to 760,000 the number of jobs that have disappeared this year.

"This should remove any lingering doubts that the economy is in a recession," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "The rate of job loss is accelerating and the unemployment rate is virtually certain to cross 7% early in 2009."

Perhaps most telling was the reaction of Edward Leamer, director of the respected UCLA Anderson Forecast, who has repeatedly predicted that the country will narrowly skirt recession. He called the payroll decline "the first number that is really bothersome to me" and added, "August was probably the first recession month."

August was when the unemployment rate jumped from 5.7% to 6.1%. That rate, calculated using a survey different from the one used to determine job losses, was unchanged at 6.1% in September. Economists took little comfort in that, however, pointing out that the jobless rate doesn't count people who have given up looking for work, nor those who have had to settle for part-time work.

"Factoring in discouraged workers, unemployment is closer to 7.9%," said University of Maryland economist Peter Morici.

LeAndrae Coates, a 37-year-old former optician, is trying to stay out of the ranks of the discouraged.

On Friday, he was working the computer job banks at an employment center in Lincoln Heights run by the Arbor Education and Training group. For the last six months, he's been going to the job center four days a week, and he sends out about 10 job applications a week. In that time, he's gotten only one in-person interview.

Coates said hiring managers have told him that they're accepting only part-time workers because they can't afford to pay full time. He now regrets leaving a part-time job as an optician for an eyeglass company in search of full-time work.

"The problem with this economy is different now than when I first started in the workforce," Coates said. "It's harder to get a job lately, and a lot of companies are downsizing."

The economy's fate is bearing down on the presidential contest, with Americans telling pollsters that economic recession is their top concern. Both major candidates -- Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama -- addressed job losses from the campaign trail.

Speaking in a windy high school football stadium in Abington, Pa., Friday, Obama contended that the loss of payroll jobs was a direct result of the economic philosophy embraced by McCain and the Republican administration.

"This is the economy that my opponent said made 'great progress' under the policies of George W. Bush, and those are the economic policies that he proposes to continue another four years," Obama said. "So when Sen. McCain and his running mate talk about job killing -- that's something they know a thing or two about."

McCain, in turn, blamed entrenched politicians in Washington and greedy interests on Wall Street for the nation's economic turmoil, and told supporters in Pueblo, Colo., that the consequences were most dire for hardworking Americans like themselves.

"No one in this room doesn't know someone that's struggling to keep their job, their home, their healthcare, educate their kids," he told thousands packed into a town hall at the Massari Arena at Colorado State University's Pueblo campus. "There's no one in this room that doesn't know that this is the most severe financial crisis we have faced in our lifetime, and there's no easy answers to it."

"Our first goal and our only objective is to help Main Street, not Wall Street and not the corruption and evil that's in Washington, D.C., either," he said.

The unexpectedly high job losses -- many analysts had expected the number to be closer to 100,000 -- came on the same day that the House of Representatives successfully passed the $700-billion rescue plan for the financial system. Despite that vote, stocks declined Friday, in part because of anxiety over the economy.

The grim employment picture also triggered speculation that the Federal Reserve would attempt to pump some adrenaline into the faltering economy soon by lowering its benchmark interest rate, now at 2% -- perhaps acting even before its regularly scheduled meeting at the end of the month.

"With all economic signs flashing recession, we expect a 0.5% rate cut from the Fed this month," said Peter Kretzmer, senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York.

Economists noted that the bad job news was no longer confined primarily to the construction and manufacturing sectors. September's report showed sharp job losses across the board, encompassing stores, hotels, restaurants and temporary employment.

"The job losses in retail trade, leisure and hospitality and employment services -- those are ripple effects," said Harry Holzer, a labor economist at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Urban Institute.

Holzer said he believed the unemployment rate was likely to climb in coming months. One reason is that the September data -- collected until about the third week of the month -- did not fully reflect the convulsions on Wall Street and in banking, including the Sept. 25 collapse of Washington Mutual Inc., the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

He and other economists say the downturn could turn into the worst since 1981-82, which lasted 16 months and saw unemployment rates approach 11%. The 1990-91 and 2001 recessions each lasted eight months.

"I think there's a good chance this one will be more severe than the last two," Holzer said, "because the last two were not accompanied by the widespread financial crisis that we have now."

UCLA's Leamer explained that job losses have a cascading effect in the economy: Workers who lose their jobs curtail spending, which depresses demand, which diminishes profits, which in turn causes more job losses.

"It's very worrisome because the labor market is the amplifier" for other negative economic trends, Leamer said. "If people still have their jobs and income, they will maintain their spending patterns tenaciously. But people who lose their jobs change their behavior overnight."

Nivia Soto, a 41-year-old former garment worker, has lost two jobs in five months and is in the midst of just that sort of belt-tightening.

She has stopped shopping at Trader Joe's, instead searching for better bargains at discount stores. She downsized to basic cable TV. Weekend dinners out, shopping trips and her buying a new car every few years are now memories.

"I'm doing a lot of praying, and that's what's helping," said Soto, who was also at the Lincoln Heights job center. "You can feel people getting scared, because the hard days are coming. There's not a lot of jobs out there."

The sour economy points toward a dismal holiday shopping season for retailers. For the first time in a decade of making projections, Marshal Cohen is predicting an outright decline in holiday sales.



"Consumers are just not feeling rosy," said Cohen, who studies the retail industry for market research firm NPD Group. "They don't have the ability to stretch their credit, and they're feeling very concerned. It's certainly going to slow the early momentum of the season, and if you impede that, it's going to take an awful lot to regain it."

The shorthand definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of a decline in gross domestic product. But the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end, does not have a set definition and dates recessions only once they are over.

However, the NBER's deliberations tend to give heavy weight to unemployment.

"There is little question we are in a serious labor market downturn [and] whether the National Bureau of Economic Research eventually calls it a recession is irrelevant from the standpoint of workers," said Alan Krueger of Princeton University, former chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department. "I suspect that the labor market will continue to weaken before it improves."

That's one reason the House voted Friday to extend unemployment benefits an additional seven weeks beyond the standard 26 weeks for most workers and 39 weeks for workers in hard-hit states.

Although the House gave the extension a strong 368-28 vote, it's not clear whether it will become law any time soon. The Senate adjourned a day earlier without acting on the issue and has no plans to return until after the election.

With only six weeks to go before his unemployment benefits run out, Tom Della Flora, 50, of Columbus, Ohio, said he's swallowing hard and searching for temporary work instead of full-time.

"With the economy the way it is, nine months is just not a lot of time," the former lumberyard worker said. When the housing market imploded, he was laid off a job making $19 an hour at a retail lumberyard. "It's kind of a scary thought how long we can last."

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

tiffany.hsu@latimes.com

Reynolds reported from Washington, Hsu from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

OIC Report of Politics As Usual from the White House

TPMmuckraker sheds light on the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General's report on the White House's deliberate political interference and manipulations for the termination of U.S. attorneys for not following in lock step the political agendas of the George W. Bush Administration.

Fred

*******************

The OIG Report: Tying Up Loose Ends
By Kate Klonick - October 1, 2008, 3:00PM

In the almost two years that TPMmuckraker has been covering the scandal over the removal of the U.S. attorneys, there have been many questions raised over the reasons behind the firings. On Monday, the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General's report answered some of those, but raised others. While it concluded that only three of the firings were carried out for political reasons or to interfere with active prosecutions, it could not gather sufficient evidence to conclude the rest of the firings were politically based. Regardless, the report strongly condemned the DOJs overall mishandling of the firings, calling the process "fundamentally flawed . . unsystematic and arbitrary."

As we wrote earlier this week, the report reveals that Todd Graves, David Iglesias and Bud Cummins were fired for reasons of politics, not performance.

The report lays out the investigations into each of the remaining U.S. attorney firings, but repeatedly states that its analysis and investigation were "hindered" due to many witnesses' "lack of recall"; the refusal of many witnesses to cooperate with the investigation or give testimony; and the administration's stonewalling in disclosing documents. Citing these obstacles, the report hedges its findings, requesting a prosecutor to continue the investigation with the power to compel testimony.

In the case of Margaret Chiara, the former Western Michigan U.S. attorney, the report could find no evidence that the rumors that Chiara was in a lesbian relationship with one of her subordinates were behind her removal.

Chiara has stated publicly that she believes the rumors -- which she called "false and malicious" in a statement yesterday from her attorney -- were the reason for the loss of her position.

Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California, was believed to have been asked to resign over her prosecution of former Executive Director of the CIA, Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who bribed former Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham and Foggo. But the report "found no evidence" to support those claims, stating that "the investigation and prosecution of Cunningham and Foggo were aggressively pursued by career prosecutors in Lam's office, both during and after her tenure."

Instead, the report supports the Department's previous claims that Lam was removed because of her poor statistics on gun and immigration prosecution statistics -- but blames the DOJ for poor handling of her removal.

In the case of Daniel Bogden of Nevada, little was known about his removal, except that he had not been diligent in prosecution of obscenity cases. The report found the claim to be behind Bogden's removal, but added some color to the removal. Interestingly, the report found that the complaints of Bodgen's dalliance in obscenity prosecutions were made by Brent Ward, the head of the DOJ Obscenity Prosecution Task Force -- who was friends with Attorney General Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson's brother and had direct conversations with Sampson regularly.

When questioned by the DOJ, Sampson stated he "did not recall whether those complaints played a role in the decision to remove Bogden," a response the report found "particularly suspect, given his role in the removal process."

In Arizona, Paul Charlton's termination was believed to be connected to his investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, but the report states that it could find no evidence to support that claim. Charlton had previously clashed with Main Justice on a decision he made to not seek the death penalty on a case involving a murder that transpired during a drug deal. Charlton believed it was this death penalty case as well as his policy of tape recording interrogations that led to his removal -- theories the IG report confirmed as the primary reasons for his dismissal.

Lastly, there is Seattle's John McKay who was believed to have been fired over his failure to prosecute voter fraud related to the 2004 Washington governor's election.

McKay famously received a call from Ed Cassidy, chief of staff to Washington Rep. Richard Hastings (R) asking about his prosecution, to which McKay responded, "Ed, I'm sure you're not about to start talking to me about the future direction of this case," after which Cassidy quickly ended the call.

Hastings claimed ignorance and told investigators that "he could not remember telling Cassidy to call McKay. . . or whether Cassidy had told him he had done so."

The report also mentions a meeting in Washington between McKay and White House Counsel Harriet Miers in which Miers reportedly asked McKay "why Republicans in the state of Washington were angry with him."

The report concludes that the "evidence suggests" that the primary reason for McKay's removal was an argument with Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty over an information sharing program -- not because of failure to prosecute voter fraud as McKay conjectured.

The OIG report, though nearly 400 pages long, is far from comprehensive. The investigation lacked the power to compel testimony or documents outside of the Justice Department and were consequently limited in their investigation. As a result, the report is forced to reserve judgment on whether many of the firings were inappropriately political, though it recommends that a prosecutor be appointed to look into whether crimes were committed.

Nora Dannehy, appointed on Monday by Attorney General Michael Mukasey will take up that mantle. It remains to be seen if that will be enough to ferret the truth out of unwilling witnesses and departments.

Mexico Gets the Wall Street Jitters

For many years there has been a saying in Mexico, "When the US sneezes Mexico catches pneumonia.

Fred

October 1, 2008

Economic News

Mexico Gets the Wall Street Jitters

After months of denials, a dose of reality is starting to sink in with
some Mexican government officials. While still insisting that the economic
fundamentals in Mexico are sound, Calderon administration officials are
beginning to join others in voicing concern about events north of the
border.

Monday's Wall Street plunge also sent the Mexican stock market into a
dive, with the Bolsa plummeting by more than 6 percent, though it quickly
regained ground the following day like its deeper-pocketed big brother in
the north.

Illustrating the close ties between the US and Mexican companies, several
Mexican-owned firms that trade on Wall Street were among the big losers
September 29, including cement giant Cemex, construction king ICA and
Homex, the popular developer of working and middle-class homes in Ciudad
Juarez and elsewhere in the country.

On a recent visit to Ciudad Juarez, Gustavo Enrique Madero, coordinator of
the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in the Mexican Senate,
admitted he was chilled by talk comparing the current economic scene with
1929.

"I believe the crisis in the US could favor Obama," Madero added.

Already, three key Mexican economic sectors are experiencing repercussions
from the crisis on Wall Street and on Main Street USA- tourism, export
manufacturing and migrant remittances.

Hosting few foreigners overflowing with wads of cash like in the good old
days, tourist communities have been feeling the pinch for some time now.
Important international flights have been cancelled because of high fuel
costs, and some development projects put on hold. Originally scheduled to
begin service this year, a Spanish-owned cruise ship, "The Ocean Dreamer,"
postponed sailing the Mexican Pacific Riviera until next year.

In the state of Chihuahua alone, more than 26,000 jobs were lost in the
export-for-assembly sector since the first of the year, while auto exports
to the US decreased 2.4 percent during the first 8 months of the year.

"We are in a complicated stage in that the US market is falling 16.6
percent and that affects all of us who export to that country," said
Eduardo Solis Sanchez, president of the Mexican Automobile Industry
Association.

Budget and Taxation Secretary Agustin Carstens predicted last week that
the economic malaise in El Norte means that remittances from Mexican
migrants will decrease between 7 and 8 percent this year, adversely
impacting hundreds of thousands of Mexican families which depend on
dollars sent by relatives. Remittances brought $25 billion in income to
Mexico in 2007, but were already slowing down compared with past years.

Ironically, the best news dollar recipients have received in a good while
came this week when the peso lost value to the dollar. For much of 2008,
the dollar has bought far fewer pesos than in previous years.

Agreeing that the remittance and export sectors faced tough times, Bank of
Mexico President Guillermo Martinez still maintained that his country's
financial system is well-capitalized and unlikely to be as affected as the
remittance and export sectors.

The question of credit availability, however, is beginning to stir anxiety
in Mexico. Most Mexican banks are owned by foreign corporations which
could turn off or tighten up the money spigot. For instance,
Citigroup-owned Banamex is estimated to control nearly 30 percent of
consumer credit in Mexico.

Early this week, it was announced that Citigroup is gobbling up the
troubled Wachovia bank in the US for two billion dollars.

"To the extent that Citigroup needs capital, all of its branches and
entities that are scattered across the globe could obtain this capital and
have a direct impact on lending," observed Luis Garcia Pena, director of
the Investra Inteligencia Patrimonal economic analysis firm.

A high Citigroup official, meanwhile, raised another red flag about bad
Mexican credit card debts. Although the number of bad credit card debts in
Mexico officially stands at 6.6 percent, studies attributed to Banamex
have identified the six main banks in Mexico as holding an overdue credit
card debt portfolio of 16.2 percent. Banamex's own percentage of such bad
loans sits at 8.2 percent.

"We are still in a good position to correct it," said Manuel Medina Mora,
president of Citigroup for Mexico and Latin America. "It does not benefit
anyone in the country that the level of debt of many of our families and
individuals is high and causing them credit problems…"

According to the Bank of Mexico, 26 million credit cards are circulating
in Mexico; the country's bad credit card debts increased 53 percent during
the past year.

Mexico confronts still another potential problem with its oil exports.
Until now, high prices have helped stave off some effects of the US
slowdown on the Mexican economy, but sliding prices for crude spell
trouble for a country dependent on petroleum exports for nearly half its
social services budget.

As in the US, economic issues are taking front and center on the
political stage. Speaking to a large Mexico City rally against the
privatization of the national Pemex oil company on September 28, former
2006 presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador proposed an
emergency 10-point program. Drawn partly from his Alternative Project of
the Nation, Lopez Obrador called for spending $40 billion on emergency
public sector jobs, pensions for all senior citizens and more grants for
students, among other measures. Also, he proposed building three new
refineries to cut down on gasoline imports and save money.

The left opposition leader said his economic stimulus package could be
financed by re-shaping spending priorities in the Calderon
administration's current budget.

"It is undeniable that the economic situation of the country is in genuine
deterioration and if the direction is not corrected, the situation is
going to get worse and it will be the poor people who will be the most
impacted." Lopez Obrador contended. "All of us will suffer, though,
because in a society the destinies of some are tied to the destinies of
others,"

In a departure from past statements that there would be zero negotiation
with the political right, Lopez Obrador invited all the nation's political
actors to come together around a common rescue package. The former Mexico
City mayor, however, conditioned an agreement on the non-privatization of
Pemex.

Asked about Lopez Obrador's proposal, PAN Senate leader Madero said he was
grateful for the initiative but not the preconditions.

"I would like to respectfully tell Mr. Andres Manuel Lopez thanks for the
proposals, but it is not necessary to put conditions," Madero said.
"Dialogue is constructed in a situation of debate, and not by impositions
and restrictions for the dialogue.

In Mexico's executive branch of government, officials reaffirmed they were
prepared to weather any economic storm. "I have been instructed that we
should be on top of the markets and give them punctual follow-up, so as to
take pertinent measures if necessary," said Calderon cabinet official
Agustin Carstens.


Sources: Univision, September 30, 2008. El Diario de Juarez/El Universal,
September 30, 2008. International Herald Tribune/Associated Press,
September 30, 2008. El Sur, September 29, 2008. Article by Xavier Rosado.
El Universal, September 29 and 30, 2008. Articles by Ricardo Gomez,
editorial staff and the Notimex news agency. Lapolaka.com, September 27,
2008. La Voz de Nuevo Mexico/Agencia Reforma, September 26, 2008. La
Jornada, September 25, 26, 28, 29, 2008. Articles by Victor Ballinas,
Andrea Becerril, AFP and Notimex. El Diario de Juarez/Agencia Reforma,
September 22, 2008.


Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu

The House of Death Ciudad Juarez Mexico

This Illegal behavior in some US Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies is not uncommon. I have personally witnessed or became directly aware of it along the California/Baja California Border and in several Central American and South American countries over the past 40 plus years. Too often our Federal agents aren't always the guys in the White Hats. Fred

******************************

The House of Death
An interview with DEA whistleblower Sandy Gonzalez

Radley Balko | September 30, 2008
ReasonOnLine

Sandalio “Sandy” Gonzalez recently retired after a 32-year career in law enforcement, 27 as an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), eventually ascending to his highest-ranking position as head of operations in South America.

Three years ago, Gonzalez’s career came to an abrupt end after he blew the whistle in a horrifying case now known as the “House of Death,” in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stand accused of looking the other way while one of their drug informants participated in torturing and murdering at least a dozen people in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The House of Death case was first reported by journalist Bill Conroy on Narco News, a website that covers the Latin American drug trade. Conroy, a reporter for a business journal in San Antonio, Texas who covers the drug war in his spare time, has had his own problems with federal retaliation. Federal agents have visited both his home and his office since he began reporting on the case.

At the center of the House of Death case is Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, also known as “Lalo,” a federal drug informant the U.S. government has over the years paid more than $220,000. Lalo was a valuable asset. He had worked his way into the upper echelons of Mexico’s Juarez drug cartel. As of 2003, Lalo was one of the federal government’s key contacts in an investigation targeting Heriberto Santillan-Tabares (“Santillan”), the cartel’s third in line behind leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. Fuentes and Lalo worked closely together on a number of drug smuggling operations, and Lalo’s esteem in the cartel grew with Santillan’s ascendance.

In August 2003, Santillan and Lalo commited their first murder at the abandoned house near the Texas-Mexico border—the House of Death—torturing and killing a man named Fernando Reyes, a Mexican attorney and childhood friend of Santillan. After the murder, Lalo briefed his handlers at ICE about what he had done. ICE agents would later testify that word of Lalo and Santillan’s first murder went out to ICE and Justice Department officials in Mexico City, El Paso, and Washington, D.C., including the office of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton. But the federal government allowed the investigation to continue. Over the ensuing months eleven more people would be murdered at the House of Death, including a legal U.S. resident, at torture sessions Juarez cartel elites would grotesquely refer to as carne asadas, or “barbecues.”

In January 2004, while under torture at the House of Death, one man gave his captors the address of a DEA agent assigned to the agency’s office in Juarez. The gruesome murders of Mexican citizens may not have moved the U.S. government to cut short its investigation, but threats against a federal agent apparently did. Gonzalez, who was in Washington at the time, received news of the threat, and flew to El Paso to oversee the crisis. Over the next several weeks, Gonzalez grew increasingly outraged as he learned about ICE’s handling of Lalo and the Santillan investigation.

Rather than give up a drug operation (and apparently an unrelated cigarette smuggling operation), Gonzalez learned that federal agents had allowed a paid government informant to participate in a dozen brutal murders—all but the first of which could have been prevented.

When Gonzalez sensed that internal investigations of the case were headed toward a cover-up, he fired off a letter to his counterpart at ICE demanding he take responsibility. Gonzalez’s letter reached the highest levels of the Justice Department, including the desk of DEA Administrator Karen Tandy.

But instead of praising Gonzalez’s efforts to expose this egregious mishandling of a paid government informant, Tandy and other government officials reprimanded him for creating a record of ICE’s transgressions. Tandy and U.S. Attorney Sutton called Gonzalez “hysterical,” warning him not to talk to the media. They eventually forced him into an early retirement in 2005.

Since then, Gonzalez has been frustrated in his attempts to get the executive branch, Congress, or the media to investigate what happened in Juarez.

In August, reason Senior Editor Radley Balko spoke with Gonzalez by phone.


reason: When did you first hear about the House of Death murders?

Gonzalez: In January 2004. I was in the D.C. area on business when one of my assistants called me and said that Customs or ICE had contacted our office, and said that we had to evacuate all of our personnel from the Juarez office because they were in danger. I didn’t wait to get into specifics at the time. I just issued instructions to my staff to assist our Mexico City office and ICE in whatever they were doing.

So, that was the first inkling. When I went back to El Paso, I started looking into it. I started getting reports of what was going on, and eventually dug until I learned about the murders. I then spoke to my counterpart at ICE, and when I got the picture of what was going on, I just couldn’t believe it. It was outrageous.

reason: You then wrote a letter detailing what you knew and demanding an investigation. Who got a copy of that letter? And what was the reaction to it?

Gonzalez: This all started as a threat against some agents and their families. So even if ICE didn’t want to get into the murders, they had to at least investigate the threats to the agents. The DEA flew in a supervisor from Mexico City. He was operating out of my office in El Paso. When I finally found out what was going on with the House of Death, I wrote the letter to my counterpart at ICE. The letter basically said to him: Unless you can come up with a really good explanation, you’re responsible for this whole mess. These were murders, and we had the possibility of federal agents looking the other way, knowing the murders were taking place. Allowing an informant to take part in violent crimes is a very serious matter, so I also sent a copy to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Their reaction was completely negative. The U.S. Attorney never even contacted me to discuss the matter. Instead, he complained about me directly to the Justice Department. I got a call from the number three person in the DEA, who instructed me not to talk to the media, and not to write any more letters. He told me that everyone was very upset. No one wanted to discuss the issues I had raised. They just wanted me to shut up. I think at that point they realized that this whole mess was now a matter of record. So they went after the guy who put it on the record.

reason: You’ve said you wrote the letter because you saw signs that the investigation was looking more like a cover-up than an actual investigation.

Gonzalez: DEA was doing their investigation and ICE was doing theirs. When the officials met in Washington, it became clear to me that what was being reported by ICE and what was being reported by DEA were very different. I said “bullshit.” I mean, this is murder we’re talking about here—multiple murders—and something’s got to be done.

reason: At that point, the DEA had already dropped Lalo as an informant, right?

Gonzalez Yeah. They dropped him the previous July after he was caught at the border with an unauthorized stash of marijuana.

reason: But ICE kept using him—not only after he’d been caught smuggling while working as an informant, but after they learned that he had participated in a murder while on their payroll.

Gonzalez: Correct.

reason: Why do you think they kept using him? Did they want to get more information on the cartel, or were they using him in other cases that they didn’t want to compromise?

Gonzalez: I think it was a combination of those two things. They were also using him in some huge cigarette smuggling case. And of course he was well into this cell of the Juarez cartel. As long he was there, he could provide information.

reason: So of the 12 murders at the House of Death, in how many cases did ICE agents have prior knowledge that one was about to take place?

Gonzalez: That’s the big question. That’s why they don’t want an investigation.

reason: There’s evidence that there were at least two where they had advance knowledge, correct?

Gonzalez: Lalo gave an affidavit or a declaration to the Mexican authorities where he admitted to taking part and/or being present—and it’s been a long time since I’ve read that—in five murders.

reason: If ICE had handled the situation properly after they learned of the first murder, do you believe the subsequent murders could have been prevented?

Gonzalez: Oh, absolutely. I mean, after the first murder, they had all the evidence they needed. At the time that first murder took place, we already had a prosecutable drug case against Santillan. And then we had the murder on top of that.

reason: After all this, the main target of the investigation—Santillan—was only charged with drug trafficking. He pled guilty, and received a 25-year sentence. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton dropped five murder charges against him—all committed at the House of Death. Do you think Sutton was afraid of what would come out in a trial where Lalo and Santillan were called to testify?

Gonzalez: Oh, there’s no question about that. No way they could afford to put Lalo on the stand and have him testify to all of this.

Remember, he had a drug case before the first murder took place. That’s the case that he pled guilty on. The murders had to be dismissed because the government’s star witness and informant, Lalo, would have had to testify that he took part in them. At that point, any defense attorney worth his salt would’ve gotten out of Lalo that he was reporting these murders to federal agents before they happened.

reason: The DEA administrator at the time, Karen Tandy, has admitted in court testimony that she gave you the only poor performance review of your career because of your letter calling for an investigation into the murders. That led to your retirement. Have any of the ICE officers who handled the Lalo case been held accountable—criminally, professionally, or otherwise?

Gonzalez: Not to my knowledge. I doubt it. I would have heard about it.

reason: Have you had any indication that Congress might step in? Have you talked to anyone on Capitol Hill?

Gonzalez: Back in 2005 I went and briefed the senior staff of two senators.

reason: Which ones?

Gonzalez: [Iowa Sen. Charles] Grassley and [Vermont Sen. Patrick] Leahy. I think what happened is one of the members of Leahy’s staff was a Justice Department officer who was on loan on a detail to the senator’s staff. I think she knew Johnny Sutton. She worked out of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. She knew Sutton personally and throughout the whole interview she was antagonistic. My guess is that she railroaded the whole thing.

reason: You eventually won a lawsuit and a settlement from the federal government. What exactly did the jury determine in that case?

Gonzalez: I was suing the government for retaliating against me when I blew the whistle on some missing drugs on another case in Miami. But I amended the lawsuit to include their retaliation for my letter in the House of Death case. This was an ongoing pattern of discrimination and retaliation against whistle-blowing that began in Miami and continued in El Paso. Believe it or not, the government tried to use the letter against me in the case. The jury didn’t buy it.

reason: What were the terms of the settlement?

Gonzalez: The jury ruled in my favor and awarded me $85,000. Both parties appealed, and the government settled for $385,000. But the jury that heard all of the evidence ruled in my favor. Of course, the government didn’t admit to doing anything wrong.

reason: Some of the families of the people murdered at the site brought a class action suit against the federal government for its complicity in their deaths. Do you know the status of that case?

Gonzalez: The judge threw it out. I don’t know if they’ve appealed, but I don’t think they had a chance. I mean, these federal judges, they’re not really independent. They like to say they are, and I guess maybe some of them are, but most of them will rule in favor of the government every time.

reason: The Department of Homeland Security is now trying to deport Lalo back to Mexico, where he’ll almost certainly be murdered. Two questions. First, what is their stated reason for deporting him? And the more obvious question—do you think they’re trying to deport him because he’s likely to be killed?

Gonzalez: There’s no doubt in my mind that they’re trying to deport him because they know he’ll be killed. It gets rid of the main witness against the government should someone ever look into this.

I don’t know the stated or official reason they’re trying to deport him. I would guess that it’s because he’s an illegal alien, or something like that.

I mean, they want him dead. There’s no question about it.

reason: He has asked that if he is deported, it be to someplace other than Mexico. The government is arguing against that, too.

Gonzalez: I wasn’t aware of that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. All I know is that they are trying to get rid of him so he can get killed. Once he’s out of the picture, there’s no way this case can be revived, because all the other witnesses are government agents.

reason: Tell me about the Joint Assessment Team Report.

Gonzalez: The Joint Assessment Team was two guys from Customs, two guys from ICE, and two guys from DEA who were to go in and interview everybody and then hopefully come to a conclusion about what happened. They did that. They interviewed over 40 people, including me, and issued a classified report. But when I asked for a copy during discovery, they would only release the portion that was their interview with me. They said the rest of the report was “national security.”

So I was the agent in charge of that whole area, and they never showed me the results of the report. The only thing I can conclude from that is that what they found out was not pretty, and they weren’t about to tell me that I was right. They also never showed it to the regional DEA director in Mexico City, who had also signed on to my letter. Odd that neither he nor I received a copy of the report, isn’t it?

reason: You’ve had a long career at the DEA and you’ve seen two pretty serious abuses of power in that time. In both the House of Death and the Miami cases, you took more punishment for blowing the whistle than the people actually involved in the corruption.

Gonzalez: There’s no question.

reason: How widespread do you think these abuses of the informant system are in federal law enforcement?

Gonzalez: Well, I’m not sure that there is an “informant system.” I think every agency has its own rules and regulations regarding informants. It all has to do with individuals and how they handle their informants, but in general I think there is a tendency throughout the government to cover up misconduct, whether it’s informant-related or otherwise. At least in the law enforcement agencies.

reason: You said at a conference earlier this year that while corruption is a problem, the bigger problem is that federal prosecutors don’t hold corrupt agents accountable. Is that an accurate assessment of your opinion?

Gonzalez: Yes. In the House of Death case, the prosecutor’s office is involved, the U.S. Attorney is involved. So it gets covered up. If there had been no involvement of the prosecutor’s office in the misconduct, they might have gone after some of the agents. But Sutton’s people were in the thick of things. So, you know, it gets covered up.

reason: Have the higher-ups in Sutton’s office, the DEA, or ICE been questioned about the case? About why they allowed it to continue?

Gonzalez: No. Who’s going to question them? No one made the decision to investigate the initial misconduct, so everyone’s off the hook. I mean, the key person here is United States Attorney Sutton. He’s independent from Washington in the sense that if he decides to conduct an investigation, it gets done. I guess conceivably he could get enough pressure from the DOJ to step on it, but by then, so many people would know about it, it would turn into a major scandal. But if the U.S. Attorney wanted—if he had wanted this looked into—it would’ve happened.

reason: You’re now retired after a career in the federal government. What have you taken away from all of this?

Gonzalez: I think the American people would be justified in believing that their own government may be as corrupt as any of the countries our government criticizes for corruption.

reason: You’ve had more than a 30-year career as a DEA agent and you’ve seen all of this corruption go down. Has it caused you to rethink or reconsider the War on Drugs?

Gonzalez: I’m not ready to say that we should legalize drugs, if that’s what you’re talking about. I just don’t think that the problem has been dealt with properly. I think that we probably should concentrate more effort on demand reduction than give, for example, the Pentagon a bunch of money so they could run their ships and planes and say that it’s detection and monitoring, which doesn’t work.

Maybe concentrate more on education, when kids are young—making an effort in their formative years to make it so that they don’t ever think of using drugs. I know this is wishful thinking but just going at it through enforcement alone...I think it’s been shown that it really doesn’t work. We’re successful in putting people behind bars, but then other people take their place right away. It’s a never-ending cycle.

You Can Always Count On Americans...

One of my friends in Germany sent me this wonderful quote of Sir Winston Churchill that so aptly applies to our government's efforts to untangle the economic mess they created for this country. I checked out the quote and YES - Winston Churchill actually said it. That man was an absolute political genius.

Fred

***********************

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
Winston Churchill

Statins Prevent Artery Ageing

Great news for those of us old farts who are taking prescribed Statins to lower our "Bad Cholesterol" and increase our "Good Cholesterol.

Fred

*****************************

Statins 'prevent artery ageing'
Drugs given to heart patients to lower cholesterol may have an additional benefit - keeping their blood vessels feeling younger.

Advanced heart disease patients have arteries which have effectively aged faster than the rest of their bodies.

University of Cambridge scientists, writing in the journal Circulation Research, say statins may be able to hold back this process.

They hinted the same drugs might also prevent damage elsewhere in the body.

It's an exciting breakthrough to find that statins not only lower cholesterol but also rev up the cells' own DNA repair kit
Professor Martin Bennett
Cambridge University
Statins are seen as a key tool in the fight against heart disease, and in low doses have been made available "over-the-counter" at pharmacies.

While it has been known for some time that they can lower cholesterol levels, this did not fully account for the benefits experienced by some patients, and evidence is growing that they can boost the function of the cells lining the heart arteries.

The Cambridge study adds to this evidence, and may shed light on how statins do this.

Cells in the body can only divide a limited number of times, and in patients with heart disease, the rate of division in these arterial cells is greatly accelerated - dividing between seven and 13 times more often than normal.

As the cells "run out of " divisions, they can suffer DNA damage, and do not work as well.

One of the important roles of these cells is to keep the artery clear of fatty "plaques" which can expand and block them, causing angina or heart attack.

Cancer clue

The research found that statins appear to increase levels of a protein called NBS-1, which is involved in the repair of DNA within cells. This means they may be able to hold off the effects of old age in the artery wall for a little longer.

Professor Martin Bennett, who led the research, said: "It's an exciting breakthrough to find that statins not only lower cholesterol but also rev up the cells' own DNA repair kit, slowing the ageing process of the diseased artery.

"If statins can do this to other cells, they may protect normal tissues from DNA damage that occurs as part of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer, potentially reducing the side-effects."

Professor Peter Weissberg, the British Heart Foundation's medical director, added: "Too much cholesterol in the blood induces a repeated cycle of damage and repair in the blood vessel wall which results in a heart attack if the repair mechanism is inadequate.

"Statins protect against heart attacks by reducing cholesterol levels and subsequent damage to the vessel wall - this research has shown they may also enhance the blood vessels' natural repair mechanisms."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7637937.stm

Published: 2008/09/28 23:13:23 GMT

In Memory of Paul Newman

A Great Man. A Great Philanthropist. A Great Father. A Great Husband. A Great Actor.

Revoking Independence...?

Subject: Revoking independance...?

A Message adapted and updated from Mr. John Cleese:


To the Citizens of the United States of America:


In light of the strong possibility you are about to elect an elderly

gentleman with a bad temper and a lady who thinks she can run foreign

policy because she can see Russia from her house as President and

President-In-Waiting of the USA and thus to risk Life As We Know It for

everyone else on the Planet, we hereby give notice of the revocation of

your independence, effective immediately.


Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties

over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which

she does not fancy). She won't actually be in charge, but she'll greet

foreign leaders as necessary and not put her foot in it or vomit on

anyone at a state dinner.


Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for

America without the need for further elections. You aren't very good at

elections, and unlike the ATM's from the same manufacturer, your voting

machines don't give receipts. So Prime Minister Brown will instead

choose someone who does not have his or her hand in the till and has

significant experience in running Big Things. You have not had one of

those for almost a decade and trust me, it is a big plus. And there

won't be any of that hanging chad nonsense and the three hour wait for

voting while poor or black.


Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. They have given away too much

of your money already to rescue incompetent business executives and soon

your American Dollars will resemble Zimbabwean Dollars in total

worthlessness. There is no free lunch you know. Although we originally

let you get away with secession because King George was robbing you

blind, recent events demonstrate that your present leaders are doing

much worse things and unfortunately you have not noticed.


A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether more

than half of you still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

Information to the contrary will again be provided by the rest of the

world and we request you read it this time and refrain from invading the

wrong country ever again if you possibly can.


To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following

rules are introduced with immediate effect:


You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.


1. Then look up aluminum, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be

amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.


2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and

'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without

skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the

suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to

acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').


3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises

such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of

communication.

There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your

behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of

the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn

your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.


4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. But we have a

lot of Bank Holidays you will enjoy instead. In our country we still

have several banks.


5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,

lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and

therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent.

Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to

sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then

you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.


6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything

more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you

wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.


7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for

your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we

mean.


8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will

start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you

will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of

conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you

understand the British sense of humour.


9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been

calling gasoline), roughly $9 per US gallon. Get used to it. Your

driving armoured cars to buy groceries is unnecessary, boorish and

killing the planet.


10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French

fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato

chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in

animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar. And the term

Freedom Fries will not be used in future. Lets remember the French were

right and you were wrong, though it pains me to say so.


11. We will require that people running things, like your government,

are at least moderately competent and not related by blood or bribes to

those who benefit from their decisions. We know it makes you more cozy

when your leaders know as little as you do, but, honestly, it is short

sighted: you need doctors who know more about medicine, pilots who know

more about flying and leaders who know more about leading.


12. We respectfully request you give up this notion that Politics is

Entertainment, and that very complicated things have to be explained to

you in less than fifteen seconds. If you wanted to have a democracy,

honestly, you really should have taken the time to understand things a

bit before you voted. May I suggest the startling notion that

politicians don't need to look good to do a good job? And it really is

acceptable if they are a bit boring, so long as they do their homework.


It's especially important as evidently you have not done yours. Poor

old Al Gore and John Kerry. And by the way, are you happy now that you

chose a Governor for California based on his teeth?


13. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually

beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to

as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be

referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are

pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be

due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth -- see

what it did for them.


14. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as

good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to

play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English

dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to

having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.


15. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of

proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in

time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American

football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds

or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try

Rugby -- the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they

regularly thrash us.


16. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to

host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played

outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a

world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn

cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first in their

country. The seven out of ten who don't own a passport will need to get

one first.


17. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.


18. An Internal Revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's

Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all

monies due (backdated to 1776). Although this will raise your taxes,

remember that the Neoconservatives will no longer be robbing you blind

and so your Dollars will stop shrinking. Didn't you know that inflation

and government bailouts of huge companies were really paid for by you?

We must do something about your educational system. What on earth is

going on over there? Are you oblivious to the crushing debt you are

leaving your children? You might as well throttle them now.


19. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 PM with proper cups, never

mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in

season.


God Save the Queen. At least God won't instruct your President to

invade any more wrong countries.

The Passing of Paul Newman

It was sad to learn of Paul Newman passing away from complications from cancer. But, 83 years of age is not a bad time to go. I loved all his films including the one he hated (The Chalice). All of his "Newman's Own" products are superior in taste and quality to anything else available on the grocery store shelves. That product line (a hobby of Paul's) donated all its profits to charities and became a cash generating machine for those organizations. He leaves behind an enviable legacy and example for others who achieve similar greatness. Fred