Followers

Monday, June 25, 2007


June 24, 2007
Border Crossings
In a World on the Move, a Tiny Land Strains to Cope
By JASON DePARLE
MINDELO, Cape Verde — Virtually every aspect of global migration can be seen in this tiny West African nation, where the number of people who have left approaches the number who remain and almost everyone has a close relative in Europe or America.

Migrant money buoys the economy. Migrant votes sway politics. Migrant departures split parents from children, and the most famous song by the most famous Cape Verdean venerates the national emotion, “Sodade,” or longing. Lofty talk of opportunity abroad mixes at cafe tables here with accounts of false documents and sham marriages.

The intensity of the national experience makes this barren archipelago the Galapagos of migration, a microcosm of the forces straining American politics and remaking societies across the globe.

An estimated 200 million people live outside the country of their birth, and they help support a swath of the developing world as big if not bigger. Migrants sent home about $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined. Those sums are building houses, educating children and seeding small businesses, and they have made migration central to discussions about how to help the global poor. A leading academic text calls this the “Age of Migration.”

But it is also the age of migration alarm, as European ships patrol African coasts to intercept human smugglers and new fences are planned along the Rio Grande. Countries that want migrant muscle and brains also want more border control. Many of them see illegal migrants as a security threat, especially in a terrorist age, and worry that large-scale migration, even when legal, can undercut wages, require costly services and subject national identities to bonfires of religious and cultural conflict.

The stakes can be seen here in Mindelo, a semicircle of barren hillsides that gaze out at the only sign of natural life, a beckoning sea. In a country with little rain and a history of famine, migration began as a necessity and became part of the civic DNA. You can dine at Café Portugal, drink at the Argentina bar and stroll Avenida da Holanda.

Yet Holland — the Netherlands — now requires would-be migrants to pass a test on Dutch language and culture. Other countries have raised the cost of visa applications, discouraged applicants by requiring them to travel to the Cape Verdean capital, Praia, and placed new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants. While the Netherlands has long been a favorite destination for residents of this island, a Cape Verdean song now warns that “Holland belongs to the Dutch.”


Watch out
Because they can make you go back swimming
And you’ll get home with seaweed in your teeth


Mindelo, Cape Verde’s second-largest city, contains 63,000 people and about as many variations on the migrant’s tale. On the hillside neighborhood of Monte Sessego, Maria Cruz, 70, beams at the living room suite her son sent from Rotterdam. Out toward the airport, Stenio da Luz dos Reis, 17, studies Dutch and hopes to join his mother in the Netherlands. Down by the beach, Orlando Cruz, 46, stares at vacant tables. He fell off a ladder in New Jersey and used the insurance money to start a hotel and restaurant, which are now nearly empty.

As construction racket fills her half-finished house, Evanilda Lopes, 27, speaks freely about the fraudulent papers that got her to the Netherlands. As he hustles change for his H.I.V. medication, Manuel Gomes, 41, is equally frank about the crimes that got him deported from Providence, R.I. He moved there as a child and grew up wild — selling drugs, stealing cars and burglarizing homes. Now like hundreds of others deported here from the United States, he finds himself a man without a country, exiled to a world no less foreign for having been the place of his birth.

“You have a Cape Verdean here who would cut his right arm off to go back,” said Mr. Gomes, who lives in a one-room hovel without running water or electricity.

If Cape Verde is the Galapagos of migration, Jorgen Carling, a Norwegian geographer, is its Darwin. A rising star on the academic circuit, Dr. Carling, 32, visited Cape Verde 10 years ago, taught himself Kriole, the local language, and has been returning ever since.

“Cape Verde is a showcase of the contradictions and frictions of global migration,” he said. “It is in a quite dramatic transition — from being so dependent on migration to trying to cope with a world in which borders are closing.”

The tensions he cites abound. Migration reduces poverty. But it increases inequality between migrants and others back home. Migration can express family devotion. It can also strain family bonds.

And while migration may be at record levels, so is the frustration of people who want to migrate but cannot. That is because as migration grows, the desire to experience its economic rewards grows even faster.

“Migration is probably more important to more people than it has ever been,” said Dr. Carling of the International Peace Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Oslo. “But what characterizes the world today is also the feeling of involuntary immobility.”

These conflicts can be seen in a block home on a dusty hill where migration unites and divides four generations. At 79, the owner, Antonia Delgado, is old enough to remember famines, and she spent decades living in a shanty made of used oil drums. Thanks to the money her son sent from the Netherlands, she has four rooms, electric lights and indoor plumbing.

But she no longer has the son. He stopped calling more than five years ago, and she is not sure if he is alive. “I’m very worried,” she said. “He helped me so much.”

Now she relies on money sent by a second family migrant, her granddaughter Fatima, a nanny in Portugal. That brings Ms. Delgado monthly support of $135, but leaves her raising her granddaughter’s son, an 11-year-old with a missing front tooth and irrepressible smile.

The boy, Steven Ramos, is sorting through parallel complexities. His mother’s salary buys school supplies, martial arts lessons and the occasional DVD. But she left five years ago and has come home only once. His father works in the Netherlands and rarely calls. Steven called him “ingrote” — for ungrateful — choosing a Cape Verdean term for migrants who forget those left behind.

Though Steven’s mother now has a work permit, she cannot get a visa for Steven, who has spent his childhood thinking their reunion was imminent. He cried when her recent visit ended but cast her departure in traditional Cape Verdeans terms, as something natural, necessary and good. “I cried, but I wasn’t sad because I knew she needed to go,” he said. “ She went to give us better conditions.”

An Identity Linked to Migration

Without migration, Cape Verde would not exist. The 10-island chain, 385 miles off the coast of Senegal, was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portugal settled it with two migrant streams — Europeans and African slaves. Cape Verde became a creolized mix of both continents and a supply depot for the slave trade.

Mass emigration began in the late 1800s on whaling ships that brought Cape Verdeans to New England. It continued after World War II with European guest-worker plans, which sought temporary labor but brought permanent settlement.

Those same plans brought Turks to Germany, South Asians to Britain and North Africans to France, and a generation later, many Europeans remain concerned about continuing cultural conflicts. “We asked for workers, but we got people,” is a famous European lament.

Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975, about the time the guest-worker plans ended. Still, Cape Verdean migration continued — legally (through family reunification laws) and illegally (through visitors who stay after visas expire). Many people here travel on tourist visas, then seek a European or American citizen to marry, often of Cape Verdean ancestry.

Migration is so central to their identity, Cape Verdeans often boast that emigrants outnumber the people who remain. That is true, Dr. Carling said, only when counting emigrants and their descendants. By that standard, he estimates there are 460,000 Cape Verdeans on the islands and 500,000 overseas, including 265,000 in the United States. “Sodade,” the hit by Cesaria Evora, a Mindelo resident and a Grammy award winner, conveys “longing, longing, longing for my island.”

Some scholars argue that migrants form a record share of the world’s population, though weak data make historical comparisons difficult. Despite current alarm, migration is likely to grow. Rich economies with aging work forces need labor. Workers in poor countries need jobs. Border crossings are hard to prevent, and the rewards of moving have never been greater. The average pay raise awaiting today’s unskilled migrants, in inflation-adjusted terms, is about twice as high as that which greeted migrants a century ago, during the last great period of global migration.

Economists generally argue that migration has helped rich economies expand by supplying needed labor, though some low-skilled domestic workers may suffer wage reductions because of increased competition.

From the start, Cape Verde has embraced its emigrants — as kinsmen, investors, lobbyists for foreign aid, safety valves for population growth and eventually as voters. With migrant help, Cape Verde has doubled its per capita income since 1990, to about $2,100, a high figure by African standards. Remittances, the sums that migrants send home, make up 12 percent of the gross domestic product and once were twice as high. Migrants elect their own representatives to the National Assembly.

More broadly, however, development experts are split on the effects of migration. Remittances feed and shelter the poor, and migrants sometimes return with new business contacts and ideas. But migration can also drain countries of talent and promote dependency, among individuals and governments. No country has climbed out of poverty through migration alone. Despite the economic progress here, the unemployment rate hovers above 20 percent and the fastest-growing industry, tourism, is dominated by low-wage jobs.

While Dr. Carling admires Cape Verde’s ability to invent itself as a nation beyond borders, he also sees problems with the constant emphasis on departures. It can weaken relationships, he said, leave marriages short-lived and promote indifference among students and workers. “The possibility of relying on remittances — and the prospect of going abroad one day — can alienate you from the environment here,” he said.

Even as Cape Verdeans struggle to get out, others are migrating in. This, too, is characteristic of the age of migration — most “sending” countries are also “receiving” countries, underscoring how universal the phenomenon is. Nearly half the migrants from poor nations move to other poor nations.

Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente, is filled with Chinese shopkeepers chasing new markets and West African peddlers fleeing homelands torn by war and worse poverty. Many hope to move on to the Canary Islands, which are part of Spain, aboard dangerous smuggling boats on journeys that kill hundreds if not thousands every year.

“This is life and death,” said Emmanuel Kofi Cathline, a local peddler who migrated from Ghana 17 years ago and once made money here helping migrants book the illegal journeys. Though crackdowns have chased him from the business, he remains loyal to what might be called the global migrants’ creed. “If a place is no good, change it,” he said. “Go to another place!”

A Test of Optimism

For all the rising barriers, many Cape Verdeans remain confident they will leave. Mr. da Luz dos Reis, the teenager studying Dutch, answered the door in a blaze of sartorial optimism: orange shorts and orange shirt — can you guess the Dutch national color? — with the word “Holland” stretched across his back.

His mother left for the Netherlands six years ago to work as a maid, and his younger sisters just joined her. Having passed his 16th birthday, Mr. da Luz dos Reis was left behind, with a workbook containing 100 questions in Dutch.

Thirty will appear on a test. No. 62 asks if it is important to learn Dutch quickly. (It is.) No. 59 asks if wife beating is permissible. (It is not.) Mr. da Luz dos Reis pays $70 a month for a tutor and must take the test in Dakar, two hours away by plane. But he is not one to gripe.

“It’s good,” he said of the test. “Then we get there with an idea of what it’s like.” Besides, he added, “it’s their country.”

Across town, Evanilda Lopes, 27, has more experience and less optimism. A stylish woman with rhinestones on her Coco T-shirt and blond extensions in her hair, she was raised on reports of fashion and comfort from six older siblings in Europe. She left school at 17 and spent five years seeking a tourist visa, which arrived only after she had created a fictitious bank account and job. “It was the way I could go,” she said.

Things soured in the Netherlands. Her aunt lined up three Dutch men for her to marry, but Ms. Lopes rejected them all. The atmosphere in the house grew hostile. Ms. Lopes moved in with a Dutch plumber, and they had a child they named Giovanni. Cohabitors in the Netherlands have residency rights, but when the relationship expired so did her permission to stay.

She came home last fall with a cache of the luxury goods she had gone to Europe to find — belts, handbags, sandals, perfume. She sold them on the streets and made enough money to start building a home for her and Giovanni, 5, who has just come home to a country he does not know.

Ms. Lopes alternately calls her time in the Netherlands a blessing and a curse. “I was young and I didn’t know life was so hard,” she said. With a half-finished house and half-formed plans, she has her shoes on one shore, her mind on another and her innocence lost somewhere in between.

In a World on the Move, a Tiny Land Strains to Cope - New York Times

In a World on the Move, a Tiny Land Strains to Cope - New York Times
Is Illegal Immigration the Greatest Threat to Blacks Since Slavery?
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New America Media
Posted on June 22, 2007, Printed on June 25, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54991/
Flamboyant arch black immigration foe Ted Hayes has repeatedly called illegal immigration the greatest threat to black America since slavery? This eye-catching, over-the-top, outrageous bit of hyperbole has set more tongues wagging than celebrity sex gossip. It will probably do more than that on June 23. It could start a riot. That's the day that Hayes and a handful of other black immigration opponents will march through a black neighborhood in Los Angeles trying to rally blacks to their anti-immigration banner. Immigration reform proponents have plastered the area with leaflets blasting the march and vow to confront the anti-immigration marchers.

Though the march is unique, blacks have been loudly protesting illegal immigration since it became a stormy national issue and ripped apart Congress last year. In May 2006, an odd assemblage of writers, preachers, a homeless rights advocate, professional anti-immigration advocates, and a few local black community residents from the Washington, D.C. area, grabbed some momentary camera time with a press conference in Washington, D.C. They called themselves Choose Black America and claimed that the overwhelming majority of black Americans agreed with them that illegal immigration was the prime threat to blacks.

This was hardly a spontaneous gathering of public-spirited blacks outraged over the impact of illegal immigration, and neither was their red-hot rhetoric against the bill. The Federation for American Immigration Reform paid for the airfare, hotel accommodations, and expenses for most of the participants as well as the rental fee for the press conference. The organization has long demanded the toughest possible immigration laws and the tightest possible border control enforcement. But the participants had made their point, and it was that there a few noted blacks that are willing to put their bodies and faces in front of a camera, and oppose immigration reform, and weren't scared at being branded bigots in the process.

Their Washington, D.C. flutter was the high water mark for the black immigration foes. With the death of the immigration reform bill in Congress, the group quickly vanished from the public's radarscope. However, when the Senate briefly resuscitated the bill in April, black immigration opponents got a new lease on life. The Los Angeles march gives them another chance to tap into the ambivalence, frustration, unease, and even anger among many blacks over illegal immigration.

The signs that illegal immigration touched a sore nerve in many blacks were there all along. The first big warning sign of black frustration with illegal immigration came during the battle over Proposition 187 in California in 1994. White voters voted by big margins for the proposition that denied public services to undocumented immigrants. But nearly fifty percent of blacks also backed the measure.

Republican governor Pete Wilson shamelessly pandered to anti-immigrant hysteria and rode it to a reelection victory. Wilson also got nearly 20 percent of the black vote in the 1994 election. It was double what Republicans in California typically get from blacks. Wilson almost certainly bumped up his black vote total with his freewheeling assault on illegal immigration. Blacks have also given substantial support to anti-bilingual ballot measures in California.

More than a decade later black attitudes toward illegal immigrants, which almost always is seen as Latino illegal immigrants, was put to the electoral test in Arizona with another ballot initiative. Proposition 200 mandated tough sanctions on employers for hiring illegal immigrants, and tighter border enforcement. Exit polls showed that more than 65 percent of blacks backed the measure. As with Proposition 187 in California a decade before, it passed by a landslide.

The vote by blacks on the anti-illegal immigration ballot measures and their antipathy to illegal immigration as measured by the polls flies in the fact of the staunch support that mainstream civil rights organizations and most of the Congressional Black Caucus have given to the passage of a comprehensive, liberal immigration reform law. It even contradicts the polls that showed during the great immigration debate last year that blacks by big margins backed liberal immigration reform.

Yet there was a kicker in those polls and that was the issue of jobs. Blacks expressed deep worry that they were slipping further behind in the battle for more jobs. And that's a legitimate fear. Blacks suffer the highest rates of unemployment of any group in America. The job crisis has had an especially devastating impact on young, marginal-skilled and educated black males. In the eternal hunt for scapegoats to dump blame for the job crisis on, illegal immigration is the softest of soft targets.

But that's wrong-headed, misguided, and fraught with peril. The prime cause of chronic black unemployment is corporate downsizing, and outsourcing, the massive cuts in federal and state job and skills training funds and programs, the reluctance and flat-out refusal of many employers to hire those with criminal records, and the sneaky and open racial discrimination by private employers.

None of that matters to the rabid black immigration reform foes, and for now they're banking that the horror some blacks have over illegal immigration will propel a few souls into the streets in Los Angeles on June 23. They hope that they'll be cheered on by many more who won't march. No matter what happens, though, they've done a great job in further polarizing blacks and Latinos. That's the greatest threat of all.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October.
T R A N S C R I P T

CJOB RADIO

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

“Breakfast with the Premier”



LARRY UPDIKE:

Premier, thank you for joining us as always. I’m looking at your vehicle over here and I see the yellow ribbon and I don’t know what to make about this move in Toronto of removing them, what do you have to say about it?

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, we support the troops, the troops from Shilo and the 17 Wing located in Manitoba and the reservists that are going over there fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan, we support our troops, they’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Some of them have lost their lives fighting on our behalf and if anybody wants to get rid of a yellow ribbon in Toronto we’ll take it in Winnipeg.

LARRY UPDIKE:

I see you’re wearing one on your lapel, you feel strongly about this?

PREMIER GARY DOER:

I do. I think it’s really important to support the decision of the federal government for this mission, United Nation troops are there. We know that the Taliban was involved in training the Al Qaida terrorists and certainly I personally support the mission, have from the beginning after 9/11, and we have to demonstrate our support for the troops, and I think wearing the yellow ribbon is good way to do it. I think it’s very important to show that we appreciate the ultimate sacrifice that they are making for us and the tremendous sacrifice families make when their loved one are over there in a theatre of conflict and a theatre of danger.

LARRY UPDIKE:

We’ve had lots of moisture lately, I think you’re off to Shellmouth Dam today, isn’t it today?



PREMIER GARY DOER:

We’ve had lots of moisture. We’ve gone from virtual drought on the east side of Lake Winnipeg last fall to a lot of replenished lakes and overflowing lakes and rivers and that’s good for preventing forest fires and replenishing some of the water. On the west side we’ve had… you’ve seen the water moisture levels in Saskatchewan and Calgary, or Alberta rather, and also in western Manitoba. We’re visiting the Shellmouth Dam area, which is a dam that protects all of Manitoba for flooding. It’s also a dam that preserves water flow to protect water quality on the Assiniboine River later on in the year when it gets lower, but we want to make sure that we visit with the farmers who may be adversely impacted by the high water levels and the operation of the dam, and I promised them last year when I visited them that I’d be in touch with them. We’re trying to deal with their issues that are unique in a unique way, and they’ll be touring me around the Shellmouth Dam area today with a couple of other cabinet ministers.

LARRY UPDIKE:

You heard first here yesterday at CJOB 68 about the Air Canada maintenance base, but I haven’t had a chance to get your reaction here this morning.

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, certainly the lay-offs that have been announced in British Columbia and Vancouver are serious for the maintenance structure of Air Canada. It has a bumping implication for Winnipeg because of the seniority clauses. The potential or actual sale of the maintenance operations across Canada to a different company has created anxiety, I think, on the shop floor, and Richard Cloutier had that report yesterday. Our view is this is a very productive maintenance centre. In fact, it does work for other airlines, including Jet Blue in Winnipeg because of its profitability. We will continue to contribute to the Air Canada maintenance base with reasonable and affordable energy costs and investments in training, but we, whether it’s a bus company that was a risk a couple of years ago or Air Canada maintenance base that’s dealing with some of uncertainty with a new owner, we will work with the employees and with whoever the owner is going to be to ensure they know that the healthy order book is in Manitoba because of the productive employees here, so that will be our message to whoever eventually owns this maintenance base in Winnipeg.

LARRY UPDIKE:

I’m in conversation with Premier Gary Doer, this is CJOB 68, broadcasting live from Robin’s at Fermor and Lagimodiere. The provincial indoor smoking ban is going to be argued in court on Friday. I don’t know how flexible you are about talking about court cases, but here’s a challenge that we haven’t heard of before.




PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, there’s two issues to the court decision. One is the issue of smoking, and we have agreed to implement the smoking ban in all areas where we have the rights of gaming. For example, the proposed Headingley First Nation gambling site with smoking, we have made that a condition of our VLT’s to implement the spirit and the wording of the court decision, and we’re trying to do that as all the new agreements become open, but the ability to have affirmative action, as we do now in Wuskwatum for hiring and training Aboriginal People that live adjacent to dams, we think is critical for the future development of Hydro. You’re not going to have development of hydro in the future without partnerships with the people that have lived there for 6,000 years, so the issue that’s being reported as a smoking issue, it’s bigger than that. For us, it’s the issue of being able to have training and affirmative action to deal with 120 years of Canadian history where people were taken away from the economic means, denied the opportunity to participate in their former resources, and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and we believe that economic development opportunities is the way to start reversing Canadian history and we believe that that includes hydro-electric development where people live and have lived for 6,000 years.

LARRY UPDIKE:

Sometimes more media than protestors show up at demonstrations. Now I want to say this, the U of M students are demonstrating this morning against proposed new lab fees and there are charges that, you know, the tuition fees are going up, they’re just going up through other means.

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, we gave the universities over 7% increase in funding and Manitoba’s tuition fees have gone… they’re amongst the lowest in Canada, we’ve kept them very low. There was a report out just recently that indicated that the debt students have when they come out of university has been reduced dramatically, which we think is good because then they can afford to buy a home or vehicle here in Manitoba and stay in Manitoba. We’ve also put in measures that they can deduct the cost of tuition after they graduate if they stay in Manitoba, so that is another very, very attractive package. I respect the right of people to demonstrate in a democracy, and obviously any fee that’s put on as for users is a burden on students, but we think in terms of making universities affordable we have worked very carefully to make sure that happens.

LARRY UPDIKE:

All right, you went to St. Paul’s, here we are at Robin’s and of course, the Clansmen, the Murdoch Mackay Clansmen, the donuts, the proceeds are going to them, in part, this morning, did you play football?

PREMIER GARY DOER:

I was in a twilight of a mediocre sports career, I played football for St. Paul’s. The Clansmen look pretty big here, you know, and everybody in Transcona should be supporting this team. I think their first game is against Oak Park and they’re raising money today, and they look pretty formidable out here in the parking lot, so I think high school football is great. I think we’ve got, in this area of the city, we’ve got a new team in Elmwood last year, now, this team, the Clansmen, I think it’s great. Participating in sports, I think, is wonderful in high school, at the high school level, and as I say, they look like they could take us on, Larry.

LARRY UPDIKE:

They’re mean as dogs aren’t they? Anyway, Premier, we’re out of time, thank you for yours.

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Thank you, good luck to the team.
T R A N S C R I P T

CJOB RADIO

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

“Breakfast with the Premier”



LARRY UPDIKE:

Premier, thank you for joining us as always. I’m looking at your vehicle over here and I see the yellow ribbon and I don’t know what to make about this move in Toronto of removing them, what do you have to say about it?

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, we support the troops, the troops from Shilo and the 17 Wing located in Manitoba and the reservists that are going over there fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan, we support our troops, they’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Some of them have lost their lives fighting on our behalf and if anybody wants to get rid of a yellow ribbon in Toronto we’ll take it in Winnipeg.

LARRY UPDIKE:

I see you’re wearing one on your lapel, you feel strongly about this?

PREMIER GARY DOER:

I do. I think it’s really important to support the decision of the federal government for this mission, United Nation troops are there. We know that the Taliban was involved in training the Al Qaida terrorists and certainly I personally support the mission, have from the beginning after 9/11, and we have to demonstrate our support for the troops, and I think wearing the yellow ribbon is good way to do it. I think it’s very important to show that we appreciate the ultimate sacrifice that they are making for us and the tremendous sacrifice families make when their loved one are over there in a theatre of conflict and a theatre of danger.

LARRY UPDIKE:

We’ve had lots of moisture lately, I think you’re off to Shellmouth Dam today, isn’t it today?



PREMIER GARY DOER:

We’ve had lots of moisture. We’ve gone from virtual drought on the east side of Lake Winnipeg last fall to a lot of replenished lakes and overflowing lakes and rivers and that’s good for preventing forest fires and replenishing some of the water. On the west side we’ve had… you’ve seen the water moisture levels in Saskatchewan and Calgary, or Alberta rather, and also in western Manitoba. We’re visiting the Shellmouth Dam area, which is a dam that protects all of Manitoba for flooding. It’s also a dam that preserves water flow to protect water quality on the Assiniboine River later on in the year when it gets lower, but we want to make sure that we visit with the farmers who may be adversely impacted by the high water levels and the operation of the dam, and I promised them last year when I visited them that I’d be in touch with them. We’re trying to deal with their issues that are unique in a unique way, and they’ll be touring me around the Shellmouth Dam area today with a couple of other cabinet ministers.

LARRY UPDIKE:

You heard first here yesterday at CJOB 68 about the Air Canada maintenance base, but I haven’t had a chance to get your reaction here this morning.

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, certainly the lay-offs that have been announced in British Columbia and Vancouver are serious for the maintenance structure of Air Canada. It has a bumping implication for Winnipeg because of the seniority clauses. The potential or actual sale of the maintenance operations across Canada to a different company has created anxiety, I think, on the shop floor, and Richard Cloutier had that report yesterday. Our view is this is a very productive maintenance centre. In fact, it does work for other airlines, including Jet Blue in Winnipeg because of its profitability. We will continue to contribute to the Air Canada maintenance base with reasonable and affordable energy costs and investments in training, but we, whether it’s a bus company that was a risk a couple of years ago or Air Canada maintenance base that’s dealing with some of uncertainty with a new owner, we will work with the employees and with whoever the owner is going to be to ensure they know that the healthy order book is in Manitoba because of the productive employees here, so that will be our message to whoever eventually owns this maintenance base in Winnipeg.

LARRY UPDIKE:

I’m in conversation with Premier Gary Doer, this is CJOB 68, broadcasting live from Robin’s at Fermor and Lagimodiere. The provincial indoor smoking ban is going to be argued in court on Friday. I don’t know how flexible you are about talking about court cases, but here’s a challenge that we haven’t heard of before.




PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, there’s two issues to the court decision. One is the issue of smoking, and we have agreed to implement the smoking ban in all areas where we have the rights of gaming. For example, the proposed Headingley First Nation gambling site with smoking, we have made that a condition of our VLT’s to implement the spirit and the wording of the court decision, and we’re trying to do that as all the new agreements become open, but the ability to have affirmative action, as we do now in Wuskwatum for hiring and training Aboriginal People that live adjacent to dams, we think is critical for the future development of Hydro. You’re not going to have development of hydro in the future without partnerships with the people that have lived there for 6,000 years, so the issue that’s being reported as a smoking issue, it’s bigger than that. For us, it’s the issue of being able to have training and affirmative action to deal with 120 years of Canadian history where people were taken away from the economic means, denied the opportunity to participate in their former resources, and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and we believe that economic development opportunities is the way to start reversing Canadian history and we believe that that includes hydro-electric development where people live and have lived for 6,000 years.

LARRY UPDIKE:

Sometimes more media than protestors show up at demonstrations. Now I want to say this, the U of M students are demonstrating this morning against proposed new lab fees and there are charges that, you know, the tuition fees are going up, they’re just going up through other means.

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Well, we gave the universities over 7% increase in funding and Manitoba’s tuition fees have gone… they’re amongst the lowest in Canada, we’ve kept them very low. There was a report out just recently that indicated that the debt students have when they come out of university has been reduced dramatically, which we think is good because then they can afford to buy a home or vehicle here in Manitoba and stay in Manitoba. We’ve also put in measures that they can deduct the cost of tuition after they graduate if they stay in Manitoba, so that is another very, very attractive package. I respect the right of people to demonstrate in a democracy, and obviously any fee that’s put on as for users is a burden on students, but we think in terms of making universities affordable we have worked very carefully to make sure that happens.

LARRY UPDIKE:

All right, you went to St. Paul’s, here we are at Robin’s and of course, the Clansmen, the Murdoch Mackay Clansmen, the donuts, the proceeds are going to them, in part, this morning, did you play football?

PREMIER GARY DOER:

I was in a twilight of a mediocre sports career, I played football for St. Paul’s. The Clansmen look pretty big here, you know, and everybody in Transcona should be supporting this team. I think their first game is against Oak Park and they’re raising money today, and they look pretty formidable out here in the parking lot, so I think high school football is great. I think we’ve got, in this area of the city, we’ve got a new team in Elmwood last year, now, this team, the Clansmen, I think it’s great. Participating in sports, I think, is wonderful in high school, at the high school level, and as I say, they look like they could take us on, Larry.

LARRY UPDIKE:

They’re mean as dogs aren’t they? Anyway, Premier, we’re out of time, thank you for yours.

PREMIER GARY DOER:

Thank you, good luck to the team.
Summary for the week ending June 22, 2007

The inaugural sitting of the first session of the 39th Manitoba legislature adjourned following passage of a throne speech that reflected the commitments made to Manitobans during the recent provincial election, action to move forward with Budget 2007 and notification the government will reintroduce 22 bills this fall.

The house also passed Bill 2, which provided interim supply of $5.4 billion for provincial operating expenditures and $446 million for capital expenditures. Bill 2 provides the government spending authority for provincial programs and services until the 2007-08 estimates can be fully reviewed and approved by members of the legislature when the house reconvenes in the fall.

As agreed by all parties, the house will return Sept. 25 to conclude the budget process and address bills introduced prior to the election. The house will adjourn Nov. 8 and return Nov. 20 with a throne speech. The house will then rise Dec. 06. The 2008 spring sitting will commence April 9 and adjourn June 12.

* * *

The Manitoba government and several American organizations are appealing the North Dakota Department of Health’s decision to weaken the environmental standards governing the operation of the Devils Lake outlet. The appeal will be filed in North Dakota Supreme Court .

At issue is the North Dakota Department of Health’s 2006 decision to weaken the sulphate standards in the outlet’s original operating permit. The changes allow for Devils Lake waters to be discharged into the Sheyenne River when the sulphate levels are higher than allowed by the original permit (up to 450 milligrams per litre).

* * *

The Red River has joined the Canadian Heritage Rivers System. The Red becomes the 37th river to be designated to the CHRS and the fourth Canadian heritage river in Manitoba, joining the Hayes, the Bloodvein and the Seal rivers.

* * *

The province has announced it has joined with six western U.S. states and British Columbia in the Western Climate Initiative. Through the initiative, states and provinces will work together to identify, evaluate and implement ways to collectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the region and to achieve related co-benefits.

* * *

The province has announced that four species have been declared as threatened and an additional species declared as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The Sprague’s pipit, hairy prairie-clover, buffalo grass and hackberry have been confirmed as threatened and the Ross’s gull has officially been declared as endangered. These species require this level of protection because of limited distribution, low numbers or their dependence on specialized habitats.

* * *

The province and the City of Winnipeg have signed a memorandum of understanding to grant protection to the city’s waterways and natural areas as part of the province’s protected areas network. Winnipeg would be the first community in Manitoba with areas receiving the province’s protected areas designation.

* * *

Assistance application forms are in the mail to eligible Assiniboine Valley agricultural producers who experienced flooding and crop loss in 2005 and 2006 along the Assiniboine River from Shellmouth to Brandon due to unanticipated rainfall and operation of the Shellmouth Dam.

The $2.4-million assistance initiative is being administered by Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation (MASC). The deadline for filing completed applications is Aug. 31. Applications can be returned to producers’ local MASC insurance offices using the return envelope included in the application package.

* * *

The province announced that Moose Lake will receive provincial funding for youth to participate in a cadet training program, designed to teach music, leadership and team-building skills to Aboriginal youth.

The province also acknowledged the contributions of eight Aboriginal women at a ceremony recognizing the grandmothers by presenting shawls which signify the 13 moons and sacred women’s teachings as well as the overall life and hope. The province has helped fund the ceremony since it started six years ago.

* * *

In partnership with the University College of the North (UCN), the province has announced $625,000 in provincial funding to support a 25-seat licensed practical nursing (LPN) program at St. Theresa Point First Nation, which opened May 1.

In addition to the LPN training program, a portion of the funding will be used to upgrade UCN’s regional centre in St. Theresa Point. UCN has also provided the students with pre-course training, which has provided the courses and skills required for student success in this demanding program.

* * *

The province has announced that 65 municipalities across the province will receive $5.4 million for the cost of replacing handi-transit vehicles.

Municipalities participating in the province’s Mobility Disadvantaged Transportation program will receive the funds based on a formula that takes into account vehicle replacement cost and usage. Funding is being provided through a one-time payment to ensure resources are available when needed for a vehicle purchase.

Provincial funding for today’s announcement has been allocated from the federal Public Transit Capital Trust.

* * *

The governments of Canada and Manitoba have announced over $900,000 in homelessness funding for Uturn 3, a Brandon-area Youth for Christ project that will provide transitional housing and skills development to youth in need.

* * *

The province has announced the launch of BizPaL in Brandon, a new online business permit and licence service that helps entrepreneurs find the information needed to start, operate or grow their business.

Area business owners and entrepreneurs can access the service by visiting www2.gov.mb.ca/bizen/wizard/welcome.aspx and www.brandon.ca/bizpal. Additional project history and information, as well as to access the websites of participating partners available at www.bizpal.ca.

* * *

The province has announced that a new Winnipeg-based mobile command support unit will ensure the Office of the Fire Commissioner will provide faster response and support to the city of Winnipeg and surrounding areas for fire, police and other emergencies.

The vehicle is equipped with portable and mobile communications equipment, basic life-support emergency medical equipment, a computer system and an accountability system to keep track of response personnel.

* * *

A team of 40 forest firefighters and four natural resource officers from Manitoba Conservation’s Fire Program is in Quebec to help battle forest fires.

Manitoba is also sending an air tanker group consisting of two CL-215 water bombers and a spotter aircraft to the province. Manitoba assisted Quebec last month with an air tanker group.

Of the 147 fires in Manitoba to date, 128 are related to human activity. Manitobans are reminded that open fires are prohibited from April 1 to Nov. 15, except under authority of a burning permit or in approved fire pits such as campfire grates in provincial campsites.

* * *

The Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health reports the numbers of Culex tarsalis mosquitoes identified in southern Manitoba for the week of June 3 are higher than usual for this time of year.

Earlier this week, Manitoba’s mosquito surveillance program identified the first Culex tarsalis mosquito samples infected with West Nile virus in Manitoba in 2007. Two samples of Culex tarsalis collected during the week of June 3 from adult mosquito traps in the town of Boissevain in the Assiniboine health region were positive for West Nile virus. The risk of West Nile virus is considered low and adult mosquito control has not been recommended at this time.

More information about West Nile virus is also available from Health Links–Info Santé at 788-8200 or 1 888 315-9257.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Kim Chan: The Zen of Comedy | New York Times Video

Kim Chan: The Zen of Comedy | New York Times Video


IN DEPTH
Consumers
Where old clothes go: Pedernales
The seamy side of donated clothing
Last updated June 18, 2007
By Sabrina Saccoccio, CBC News
A few weeks ago, Sebastian Velez spotted smoke from rising from the mountainside in Pedernales, a small border town in the Dominican Republic. Pedernales is the end of the road in the Dominican Republic between Santo Domingo and Haiti — a sleepy town set up to protect the capital from "invasions of Haitians." Although this time Velez knew immediately what it signalled, that wasn't the case the first time he encountered the smoke two years ago.
People scavenge through used clothing dumped at Pedernales, a small border town in the Dominican Republic. (Sebastián Vélez/Permission of author)
Velez, a Harvard University entomologist, happened upon the fires when he was studying bark beetles in the area's untouched forests. He also visits Pedernales to visit a local school that he and his colleagues are raising money to help build.
The flames come from blazing bales of Tommy Hilfiger jeans, cotton T-shirts and miscellaneous winter coats. The reds, greens and plaids are spilled out of a flatbed truck's cargo container at a dumpsite near the port town and set on fire.
Pedernales is home to one cement factory, an aluminum mining operation and a facility whose sole purpose is to sort and burn used clothing from North America.
End of the line
In the past an armed guard accompanied the delivery truck taking unwanted clothing from the Pedernales facility to a dump. Scavengers at the site would collect the garments to sell in shops or to local merchants.
That custom has changed, largely due to the frenzy over potentially valuable clothing in the piles.
Velez said sometimes there's a great find among the clothing heaps, which explains the occasional media image of poor Caribbeans dressed in designer shirts and hats.
It's the quest for those high-quality garments that led to tragedy and even one death among the scavengers.
"There are packs that hold jeans and very valuable stuff ... so people start jumping on the truck as it is moving," recounted Velez.
"One guy got entangled with the tire, and it ran over him and killed him. They have had many accidents like broken legs when the [clothing] packs fall on people."
After the fatal accident, the truckers began routinely setting the clothes on fire to discourage people from attacking the vehicle to scavenge the contents.
In what Velez calls a symbiotic relationship, now the driver and guard will allow the scavengers 10 minutes of sifting, in exchange for manually unloading the sacks of clothes that get stuck in the cargo bay when the truck dumps its load.
Once that time is up, the driver and guard, who work for the clothes sorting facility, set the piles ablaze.
Guard prepares to light clothing on fire. (Sebastián Vélez/Permission of author)
A sorted affair
Like most factories in the Caribbean, there aren't any signs on the exterior of the sorting shop, but Velez knows that people working there make about $180 US a month. Drivers take in around $100 US, the Dominican Republic's minimum salary.
"Most of it is coming from the U.S. because the boxes are from department stores saying Kmart or Wal-Mart. But they don't necessarily come from there. I think they're mostly coming from charities, because they're used clothes," said Velez. "They look exactly like what you would find in the Salvation Army and Goodwill."
That's not a problem for the local scavengers or people from surrounding regions who come to grab clothes to sell in retail stores or merchants picking up sacks from the sorters.
There's still a living — even a good living by local standards — to be made by selling used clothes that have made it all the way to the end of the line in Pedernales.
As Velez explained, "I talked to a couple who bought their house selling the clothes they collected there, but a house in Pedernales costs only $3,000."

Monday, June 18, 2007





Miss America calls for Internet safety


By Sean Murphy, Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY — Having already helped police target sexual predators online, Miss America Lauren Nelson now is teaming with a security software company to help educate parents and children about dangers on the Internet.
Nelson, 20, will join officials from Symantec as a tractor-trailer with the latest in digital technology travels to stores, camps and universities across the country, trying to bring together parents with little Internet familiarity and their cyber-savvy children.


'AMERICA'S MOST WANTED': Lauren Nelson's Internet predator sting
"Hopefully we can help close that gap and create a dialogue with kids and parents about Internet safety," Nelson said. "We're doing things all over the country and speaking about the issue."

Nelson made Internet safety her platform issue, prompted in part by an experience she and two of her friends had with a stranger they encountered on the Internet when they were about 13.

"We were chatting innocently on the computer when we were approached by an older gentleman," the Lawton beauty queen said. "He later sent inappropriate pictures of himself, and that's when we alerted our parents.

"If it was a problem seven years ago, it's an even bigger problem now."

In April, Nelson helped investigators in Suffolk County, N.Y., with an undercover sex sting. Eleven men were arrested after Nelson created an online profile of a 14-year-old girl that included photographs of her as a teenager.

"Doing the sting operation really opened my eyes to the way these predators work," Nelson said. "They can be any age, look any way and have any background."

While parents may fear the prospect of their children being approached by a stranger on the Internet or lured away to a face-to-face meeting, a much more common danger for children on the Internet is cyberbullying, said Marian Merritt, an Internet safety advocate for Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec.

Merritt described cyberbullying as using the Internet or digital technology to harass someone by posting things like hurtful comments, misrepresentations or unflattering photos. With the growing popularity of social networking sites like MySpace, surveys show more than 40% of teens have experienced some form of cyberbullying in the last year, Merritt said.

"These things can be incredibly damaging, especially to a young child," she said. "An adult can have a hard time, but for a kid it can be even worse."

Pakistan parliament protests knighthood honors for Rushdie

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani lawmakers passed a government-backed resolution Monday demanding Britain withdraw the knighthood awarded to author Salman Rushdie, condemning the honor as an insult to the religious sentiments of Muslims.
In the eastern city of Multan, hard-line Muslim students burned effigies of Queen Elizabeth II and Rushdie. About 100 students carrying banners condemning the author also chanted, "Kill Him! Kill Him!"

On Saturday, Britain announced the knighthood for the author the of The Satanic Verses in an honors list timed for the official celebration of the queen's 81st birthday.

Lawmakers in Pakistan's lower house of parliament on Monday passed a resolution proposed by Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sher Afgan Khan Niazi who branded Rushdie — who was born in India into a Muslim family — a "blasphemer."

"The 'sir' title from Britain for blasphemer Salman Rushdie has hurt the sentiments of the Muslims across the world. Every religion should be respected. I demand the British government immediately withdraw the title as it is creating religious hatred," Niazi told the National Assembly.

Lawmakers voted unanimously for the resolution although one opposition member, Khwaja Asif, said it exposed a contradiction in the government's policy as an ally of Britain in the international war on terrorism.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said Rushdie's knighthood would hamper interfaith understanding and that Islamabad would protest to London.

"We deplore the decision of the British government to knight him. This we feel is insensitive and we would convey our sentiments to the British government."

Iran on Sunday also condemned the knighthood for Rushdie.

Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a 1989 fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill the author because The Satanic Verses allegedly insulted Islam. The threat forced Rushdie to live in hiding for a decade.

The British High Commission in Islamabad defended the decision to honor Rushdie — one of the most prominent novelists of the late 20th century whose 13 books have won numerous awards, including the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children in 1981.

"Sir Salman's honor is richly deserved and the reasons for it are self-explanatory," said spokesman Aidan Liddle.

June 17, 2007
Erasing Tattoos, Out of Regret or for a New Canvas
By NATASHA SINGER
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Kelly Brannigan was suffering from a case of tattoo remorse.

Just a year ago, Ms. Brannigan, 24, who holds up Case No. 24 as one of the models on the NBC game show “Deal or No Deal,” had been full of hope when she and her fiancé had each other’s names tattooed across their inner wrists.

But now, when she looks at the letters — P-A-T-R-I-C-K — she is reminded of the failed relationship.

For help, she turned to Dr. Tattoff, a chain of tattoo removal stores where nurses use lasers in a series of treatments to break down tattoo pigments. Dr. Tattoff is part of a growing industry catering to people who may not have thought about the implications of “forever” the first time around.

Removing tattoos is costly, uncomfortable and time-consuming, but the affinity for body art is so strong that some people say they do it to clear space to tattoo all over again.

Many dermatologists specialize in laser tattoo removal, and some laser hair-removal centers are adding services. In California, there are removal centers like Dr. Tattoff, Tat2BeGone and Tattoo MD.

Most of Dr. Tattoff’s clients are women ages 25 to 35, said James Morel, the chief executive of the company, which has given more than 13,000 tattoo laser treatments since opening here in 2004. “Maybe women are getting more tattoos than they used to,” Mr. Morel said, “or maybe they just have a higher level of tattoo regret than men.”

On the horizon is a development that could change the very nature of tattooing: a type of ink encapsulated in beads and designed to break up after one treatment with a special laser.

The technology for the ink, called Freedom-2, was developed by scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brown and Duke Universities. It is to go on sale this fall.

“We think the fence-sitters who always wanted a tattoo but have been afraid of the permanence will jump in and get tattoos,” said Martin Schmieg, the chief executive of Freedom-2. “But as your life changes from young to middle-aged to older, from single to married to divorced, you get tattoo regret, so we think the tattoo removal market will increase as well.”

There are no hard statistics on tattoo removal, but Catherine A. Kniker, a senior vice president for Candela, a laser manufacturer, calculated that Americans may have 100,000 laser tattoo removal treatments this year.

Tattoos have been used for centuries to reflect changes in life status, whether passage into adulthood or induction into a group like the military or a gang. In recent years, tattoos have also become a fashion accessory, a trend fueled by basketball players, bands and celebrities.

A report by the Food and Drug Administration estimated that as many as 45 million Americans have tattoos. The report based the number on the finding by a Harris Interactive Poll in 2003 that 16 percent of all adults and 36 percent of people 25 to 29 had at least one tattoo. The poll also found that 17 percent of tattooed Americans regretted it.

A tattoo that cost several hundred dollars could require several thousand dollars and many laser sessions to remove. Dr. Tattoff charges $39 per square inch of tattoo for each treatment.

Devices called Q-switched lasers are used to shatter tattoo pigment into particles that are cleared by the body’s lymphatic system. Full removal takes an average of eight treatments, spaced at least a month apart, using different Q-switched lasers for different-colored inks, said Dr. Suzanne Kilmer, a dermatologist and laser researcher in Sacramento.

Each treatment incrementally fades the tattoo. Some patients are left with pristine skin, others with a shadow or white spots, Dr. Kilmer said.

Many states allow nurses to perform laser treatments. But Dr. Kilmer said patients would be better off going to experienced dermatologists who owned a variety of lasers and were trained to treat possible complications like allergic reactions.

Some researchers are trying to determine whether tattoo removal treatments affect the lymph nodes. Researchers in Europe reported that lasers used on certain pigments had created toxic or carcinogenic byproducts.

“You would be concerned about where the pigment goes, how long it is there and at what concentrations,” said Paul C. Howard, director of the Center for Phototoxicology at the National Toxicology Program of the Food and Drug Administration, which is also researching pigments.

Still, last month, Dage Decuir, a comptroller at a construction company, was at Dr. Tattoff continuing treatments to remove a cat from her chest and a pig from her arm, which would otherwise distract from her strapless wedding gown.

Roger Rodriguez, himself a tattoo artist, was having an amateur tattoo removed. The tattoo — his mother’s name, Margarita, in wobbly calligraphy that had been partly covered with a sprawling tattoo of his last name — had been done when he was 12.

“The back is good real estate,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “We are bulldozing everything so I can have a blank canvas again.”

Recently, Dr. Eric F. Bernstein, a dermatologist and laser researcher in Bryn Mawr, Pa., was treating David Donch, of Collingswood, N.J.

Mr. Donch, a substitute teacher, wanted to erase black-and-white scenes of suffering souls and multicolored stained-glass windows that enveloped his lower right leg — a task that could take as many as 30 treatments, Dr. Bernstein said.

Mr. Donch said the treatments felt like rubber bands being snapped against his skin but that it was worth it. “As I am getting older and planning to start a family and get my teaching certificate, I am more aware that appearances are important,” Mr. Donch said.

Ms. Brannigan of “Deal or No Deal” said she was happy to see the name of her former fiancé fading from her wrist. She said she had learned an important lesson: “I’m not going to get a tattoo of another guy’s name until I get married.”
AlterNet: Blogs: Video
Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime
By Russell Mokhiber, AlterNet

Posted on June 16, 2007,The following is text from a speech delivered by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.

20. Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.

Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.

The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.

The savings and loan fraud -- which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" -- cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.

And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year -- and on down the list.

19. Corporate crime is often violent crime.

Recite this list of corporate frauds and people will immediately say to you: but you can’t compare street crime and corporate crime -- corporate crime is not violent crime.

Not true.

Corporate crime is often violent crime.

The FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year.

Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice.

These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. Yet, they are rarely prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws.

18. Corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live.

The mafia, no.

The gangstas, no.

The street thugs, no.

But the corporate criminal lobby, yes. They have marinated Washington -- from the White House to the Congress to K Street -- with their largesse. And out the other end come the laws they can live with. They still violate their own rules with impunity. But they make sure the laws are kept within reasonable bounds.

Exhibit A -- the automobile industry.

Over the past 30 years, the industry has worked its will on Congress to block legislation that would impose criminal sanctions on knowing and willful violations of the federal auto safety laws. Today, with very narrow exceptions, if an auto company is caught violating the law, only a civil fine is imposed.

17. Corporate crime is underprosecuted by a factor of say -- 100. And the flip side of that -- corporate crime prosecutors are underfunded by a factor of say -- 100.

Big companies that are criminally prosecuted represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of corporate wrongdoing.

For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are hundreds of others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught.

For every company convicted of polluting the nation’s waterways, there are many others who are not prosecuted because their corporate defense lawyers are able to offer up a low-level employee to go to jail in exchange for a promise from prosecutors not to touch the company or high-level executives.

For every corporation convicted of bribery or of giving money directly to a public official in violation of federal law, there are thousands who give money legally through political action committees to candidates and political parties. They profit from a system that effectively has legalized bribery.

For every corporation convicted of selling illegal pesticides, there are hundreds more who are not prosecuted because their lobbyists have worked their way in Washington to ensure that dangerous pesticides remain legal.

For every corporation convicted of reckless homicide in the death of a worker, there are hundreds of others that don’t even get investigated for reckless homicide when a worker is killed on the job. Only a few district attorneys across the country have historically investigated workplace deaths as homicides.

White collar crime defense attorneys regularly admit that if more prosecutors had more resources, the number of corporate crime prosecutions would increase dramatically. A large number of serious corporate and white collar crime cases are now left on the table for lack of resources.

16. Beware of consumer groups or other public interest groups who make nice with corporations.

There are now probably more fake public interest groups than actual ones in America today. And many formerly legitimate public interest groups have been taken over or compromised by big corporations. Our favorite example is the National Consumer League. It’s the oldest consumer group in the country. It was created to eradicate child labor.

But in the last ten years or so, it has been taken over by large corporations. It now gets the majority of its budget from big corporations such as Pfizer, Bank of America, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Kaiser Permanente, Wyeth-Ayerst, and Verizon.

15. It used to be when a corporation committed a crime, they pled guilty to a crime.

So, for example, so many large corporations were pleading guilty to crimes in the 1990s, that in 2000, we put out a report titled The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s. We went back through all of the Corporate Crime Reporters for that decade, pulled out all of the big corporations that had been convicted, ranked the corporate criminals by the amount of their criminal fines, and cut it off at 100.

So, you have your Fortune 500, your Forbes 400, and your Corporate Crime Reporter 100.

14. Now, corporate criminals don’t have to worry about pleading guilty to crimes.

Three new loopholes have developed over the past five years -- the deferred prosecution agreement, the non prosecution agreement, and pleading guilty a closet entity or a defunct entity that has nothing to lose.

13. Corporations love deferred prosecution agreements.

In the 1990s, if prosecutors had evidence of a crime, they would bring a criminal charge against the corporation and sometimes against the individual executives. And the company would end up pleading guilty.

Then, about three years ago, the Justice Department said -- hey, there is this thing called a deferred prosecution agreement.

We can bring a criminal charge against the company. And we will tell the company -- if you are a good company and do not violate the law for the next two years, we will drop the charges. No harm, no foul. This is called a deferred prosecution agreement.

And most major corporate crime prosecutions are brought this way now. The company pays a fine. The company is charged with a crime. But there is no conviction. And after two or three years, depending on the term of the agreement, the charges are dropped.

12. Corporations love non prosecution agreements even more.

One Friday evening last July, I was sitting my office in the National Press Building. And into my e-mail box came a press release from the Justice Department.

The press release announced that Boeing will pay a $50 million criminal penalty and $615 million in civil penalties to resolve federal claims relating to the company’s hiring of the former Air Force acquisitions chief Darleen A. Druyun, by its then CFO, Michael Sears -- and stealing sensitive procurement information.

So, the company pays a criminal penalty. And I figure, okay if they paid a criminal penalty, they must have pled guilty.

No, they did not plead guilty.

Okay, they must have been charged with a crime and had the prosecution deferred.

No, they were not charged with a crime and did not have the prosecution deferred.

About a week later, after pounding the Justice Department for an answer as to what happened to Boeing, they sent over something called a non prosecution agreement.

That is where the Justice Department says -- we’re going to fine you criminally, but hey, we don’t want to cost you any government business, so sign this agreement. It says we won’t prosecute you if you pay the fine and change your ways.

Corporate criminals love non prosecution agreements. No criminal charge. No criminal record. No guilty plea. Just pay the fine and leave.

11. In health fraud cases, find an empty closet or defunct entity to plead guilty.

The government has a mandatory exclusion rule for health care corporations that are convicted of ripping off Medicare.

Such an exclusion is the equivalent of the death penalty. If a major drug company can’t do business with Medicare, it loses a big chunk of its business. There have been many criminal prosecutions of major health care corporations for ripping off Medicare. And many of these companies have pled guilty. But not one major health care company has been excluded from Medicare.

Why not?

Because when you read in the newspaper that a major health care company pled guilty, it’s not the parent company that pleads guilty. The prosecutor will allow a unit of the corporation that has no assets -- or even a defunct entity -- to plead guilty. And therefore that unit will be excluded from Medicare -- which doesn’t bother the parent corporation, because the unit had no business with Medicare to begin with.

Earlier, Dr. Sidney Wolfe was here and talked about the criminal prosecution of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of OxyContin.

Dr. Wolfe said that the company pled guilty to pushing OxyContin by making claims that it is less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications and that it continued to do so despite warnings to the contrary from doctors, the media, and members of its own sales force.

Well, Purdue Pharma -- the company that makes and markets the drug -- didn’t plead guilty. A different company -- Purdue Frederick pled guilty. Purdue Pharma actually got a non-prosecution agreement. Purdue Frederick had nothing to lose, so it pled guilty.

10. Corporate criminals don’t like to be put on probation.

Very rarely, a corporation convicted of a crime will be placed on probation. Many years ago, Consolidated Edison in New York was convicted of an environmental crime. A probation official was assigned. Employees would call him with wrongdoing. He would write reports for the judge. The company changed its ways. There was actual change within the corporation.

Corporations hate this. They hate being under the supervision of some public official, like a judge.

We need more corporate probation.

9. Corporate criminals don’t like to be charged with homicide.

Street murders occur every day in America. And they are prosecuted every day in America. Corporate homicides occur every day in America. But they are rarely prosecuted.

The last homicide prosecution brought against a major American corporation was in 1980, when a Republican Indiana prosecutor charged Ford Motor Co. with homicide for the deaths of three teenaged girls who died when their Ford Pinto caught on fire after being rear-ended in northern Indiana.

The prosecutor alleged that Ford knew that it was marketing a defective product, with a gas tank that crushed when rear ended, spilling fuel.

In the Indiana case, the girls were incinerated to death.

But Ford brought in a hot shot criminal defense lawyer who in turn hired the best friend of the judge as local counsel, and who, as a result, secured a not guilty verdict after persuading the judge to keep key evidence out of the jury room.

It’s time to crank up the corporate homicide prosecutions.

8. There are very few career prosecutors of corporate crime.

Patrick Fitzgerald is one that comes to mind. He’s the U.S. Attorney in Chicago. He put away Scooter Libby. And he’s now prosecuting the Canadian media baron Conrad Black.

7. Most corporate crime prosecutors see their jobs as a stepping stone to greater things.

Spitzer and Giuliani prosecuted corporate crime as a way to move up the political ladder. But most young prosecutors prosecute corporate crime to move into the lucrative corporate crime defense bar.

6. Most corporate criminals turn themselves into the authorities.

The vast majority of corporate criminal prosecutions are now driven by the corporations themselves. If they find something wrong, they know they can trust the prosecutor to do the right thing. They will be forced to pay a fine, maybe agree to make some internal changes.

But in this day and age, in all likelihood, they will not be forced to plead guilty.

So, better to be up front with the prosecutor and put the matter behind them. To save the hide of the corporation, they will cooperate with federal prosecutors against individual executives within the company. Individuals will be charged, the corporation will not.

5. The market doesn’t take most modern corporate criminal prosecutions seriously.

Almost universally, when a corporate crime case is settled, the stock of the company involved goes up.

Why? Because a cloud has been cleared and there is no serious consequence to the company. No structural changes in how the company does business. No monitor. No probation. Preserving corporate reputation is the name of the game.

4. The Justice Department needs to start publishing an annual Corporate Crime in the United States report.

Every year, the Justice Department puts out an annual report titled "Crime in the United States."

But by "Crime in the United States," the Justice Department means "street crime in the United States."

In the "Crime in the United States" annual report, you can read about burglary, robbery and theft.

There is little or nothing about price-fixing, corporate fraud, pollution, or public corruption.

A yearly Justice Department report on Corporate Crime in the United States is long overdue.

3. We must start asking -- which side are you on -- with the corporate criminals or against?

Most professionals in Washington work for, are paid by, or are under the control of the corporate crime lobby. Young lawyers come to town, fresh out of law school, 25 years old, and their starting salary is $160,000 a year. And they’re working for the corporate criminals.

Young lawyers graduating from the top law schools have all kinds of excuses for working for the corporate criminals -- huge debt, just going to stay a couple of years for the experience.

But the reality is, they are working for the corporate criminals.

What kind of respect should we give them? Especially since they have many options other than working for the corporate criminals.

Time to dust off that age-old question -- which side are you on? (For young lawyers out there considering other options, check out Alan Morrison’s new book, Beyond the Big Firm: Profiles of Lawyers Who Want Something More.)

2. We need a 911 number for the American people to dial to report corporate crime and violence.

If you want to report street crime and violence, call 911.

But what number do you call if you want to report corporate crime and violence?

We propose 611.

Call 611 to report corporate crime and violence.

We need a national number where people can pick up the phone and report the corporate criminals in our midst.

What triggered this thought?

We attended the press conference at the Justice Department the other day announcing the indictment of Congressman William Jefferson (D-Louisiana).

Jefferson was the first U.S. official charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Federal officials alleged that Jefferson was both on the giving and receiving ends of bribe payments.

On the receiving end, he took $100,000 in cash -- $90,000 of it was stuffed into his freezer in Washington, D.C.

The $90,000 was separated in $10,000 increments, wrapped in aluminum foil, and concealed inside various frozen food containers.

At the press conference announcing the indictment, after various federal officials made their case before the cameras, up to the mike came Joe Persichini, assistant director of the Washington field office of the FBI.

"To the American people, I ask you, take time," Persichini said. "Read this charging document line by line, scheme by scheme, count by count. This case is about greed, power and arrogance."

"Everyone is entitled to honest and ethical public service," Persichini continued. "We as leaders standing here today cannot do it alone. We need the public’s help. The amount of corruption is dependent on what the public with allow.

Again, the amount of corruption is dependent on what the public will allow."

“"f you have knowledge of, if you’ve been confronted with or you are participating, I ask that you contact your local FBI office or you call the Washington Field Office of the FBI at 202.278.2000. Thank you very much."

Shorten the number -- make it 611.

1. And the number one thing you should know about corporate crime?

Everyone is deserving of justice. So, question, debate, strategize, yes.

But if God-forbid you too are victimized by a corporate criminal, you too will demand justice.

We need a more beefed up, more effective justice system to deal with the corporate criminals in our midst.

Russell Mokhiber is the editor of Corporate Crime Reporter.
Op-Ed Contributor
The Supreme Court’s Bonus Babies
By DAVID LAT
Washington

AFTER the Supreme Court’s term ends this month, the nine justices will go their separate ways for the summer. A few weeks later, their 36 law clerks — the young legal geniuses who spend a year assisting the justices in selecting cases for review, preparing for oral argument and drafting opinions — will leave the court’s marble palace at 1 First Street for good.

Most of these clerks will join elite private law firms. This is not surprising, since firms entice them with signing bonuses that are expected to reach $250,000 this year — paid on top of starting salaries approaching $200,000. Thus some former clerks, in their first year practicing law, will earn twice as much as their former judicial bosses (the chief justice earns $212,000 a year; his colleagues earn $203,000 each).

These gargantuan clerkship bonuses have their critics, including some of the justices themselves. They are attacked as the private sector’s way of luring some of the profession’s most promising new members away from more worthwhile enterprises. But this is exactly backward: these outsized bonuses, while questionable investments for the law firms, are actually healthy for the legal system as a whole.

From a narrowly economic point of view — focusing on the actual work the clerks will perform, and setting aside the law firms’ quest for prestige and bragging rights — it is difficult to understand why firms fight for the right to shower 26-year-olds with cash. Clerkships tend to attract, and justices tend to hire, academic or intellectual types. Once in private practice, these lawyers typically gravitate toward more academic fields like appellate litigation (the former practice area of Chief Justice John Roberts). It’s a field characterized by relatively low billable hours and profit margins compared to, say, time-intensive trials or high-margin merger-and-acquisition work.

By virtue of their clerkship experience, clerks do have specific expertise in Supreme Court litigation. But practice before the court is, even for the most elite firms, a tiny field. Moreover, former clerks are ethically barred from practicing before the court for two years after their clerkships (by which time they may no longer be at the firm).

Perhaps the best justification for eye-popping clerkship bonuses is that Supreme Court clerkships correlate strongly with legal genius; the clerk jobs are so coveted that those who get them must be the best legal minds. The problem with this “screening function” justification, however, is that the law-clerk hiring process isn’t entirely merit-driven. The justices consider qualities other than legal acumen when picking clerks (as they are perfectly entitled to do). The former Chief Justice William Rehnquist favored applicants who played tennis. Hugo Black, who was from Alabama, had a soft spot for clerks from Southern law schools. And all the justices interview prospective clerks to assess personality fit — which makes sense, since they will be working closely with their clerks for an entire year.

For every Supreme Court clerk, there is another similarly gifted lawyer who could do law firm work just as well, but who narrowly missed out on a high court clerkship. Such “near-misses” are like generic drugs, or store-brand paper towels: they perform the same function, at a fraction of the cost. For every $250,000 Supreme Court clerkship bonus, a firm could pay five clerkship bonuses of $50,000 — the going rate — to former appeals court clerks who just missed out on clerking for the Supreme Court (disclosure: I’m one of those former appeals court clerks who didn’t get a golden ticket).

The bigger point is that even if the astronomical Supreme Court clerkship bonuses may be dubious investments for law firms, they are good news for our legal system. Here’s why: by promising clerks a financial windfall on the back end of their clerkships, firms encourage bright young lawyers — many of whom carry loads of educational debt — to render service to the court and country. The bonuses place clerks in a similar (or superior) position financially to their classmates who went directly into private practice instead of clerking for two years (the first with a lower-court judge, the second with a Supreme Court justice). The bonuses can be viewed as an after-the-fact supplement, paid for by the private sector, to comparatively modest clerkly wages (less than $65,000 a year).

The financial freedom supplied by these bonuses can allow the clerks who decide against a corporate career to move on more quickly to what truly interests them — academia, government practice or public-interest law. Law firms end up in effect subsidizing less wealthy precincts of the profession.

In recent years, the practice of law at the nation’s largest firms has become much more of a business and much less of a profession. Firms have been squeezing more billable hours out of their associates, abandoning less lucrative practice areas and showing the door to partners who don’t bring in enough business — measures that would have been unheard of in the profession’s more genteel days.

So this bizarre competition among prestige-hungry law firms to collect the most young legal rock stars actually represents a healthy check, however modest, on this profit-maximizing behavior. By harnessing irrational law firm egotism to serve the rest of the profession, enormous clerkship bonuses achieve an impressive, increasingly difficult feat: getting top law firms to contribute to something other than their own bottom line.

David Lat is the editor in chief of Above the Law, an online legal tabloid.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007


13, 2007
Judge Tries Suing Pants Off Dry Cleaners
By ARIEL SABAR and SUEVON LEE
WASHINGTON, June 12 — Roy L. Pearson Jr. wanted to dress sharply for his new job as an administrative law judge here. So when his neighborhood dry cleaner misplaced a pair of expensive pants he had planned to wear his first week on the bench, Judge Pearson was annoyed.

So annoyed that he sued — for $67.3 million.

The case of the judge’s pants, which opened for trial in a packed courtroom here on Tuesday, has been lampooned on talk radio and in the blogosphere as an example of American legal excess. And it has spurred complaints to the District of Columbia Bar and city officials from national tort reform and trial lawyer groups worried about its effect on public trust in the legal system.

“I don’t know of any other cases that have been quite this ridiculous,” said Paul Rothstein, a professor of law at Georgetown University.

The trial, laced with references to inseam measurements, cuffs and designer labels, got off to a rocky start. Judge Judith Bartnoff of District of Columbia Superior Court limited Judge Pearson’s last-minute bid to broaden aspects of his case and cut short his efforts to portray himself as a “private attorney general” championing the rights of every Washington consumer.

“You are not a we, you are an I,” Judge Bartnoff said in one of several testy exchanges with Judge Pearson, 57, who is representing himself. “You are seeking damages on your own behalf, and that is all.”

Later, while recounting the day he says the cleaners tried to pass off a cheaper pair of pants as his, Judge Pearson began to cry, asking for a break and dabbing tears as he left the courtroom.

The lawsuit dates back to spring 2005. Mr. Pearson, a longtime legal aid lawyer, was appointed to a new job as a District of Columbia administrative law judge.

Judge Pearson says in court papers that he owned exactly five suits, all Hickey Freemans, one for each day of the workweek. But the waistlines had grown “uncomfortably tight.” So he took the suits to Custom Dry Cleaners, in a strip mall in gritty northeast Washington, for alterations.

When the owners, Korean immigrants who came to America in 1992, could not find one pair of pants, Judge Pearson demanded $1,150 for a replacement suit. The owners did not respond; he sued.

Using a complicated formula, Judge Pearson argues that under the city’s consumer protection law, the owners, Soo and Jin Chung and their son, Ki Chung, each owe $18,000 for each day over a nearly four-year period in which signs at their store promised “Same Day Service” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” In opening statements, Judge Pearson cast himself as a victim of a fraud on a historic scale, perpetrated by malicious business owners who had no intention of delivering on those promises.

“You will search the D.C. archives in vain for a case of more egregious or willful conduct,” he told the court. He called a series of witnesses who complained of rude or unresponsive treatment at Custom Dry Cleaners.

The defendants’ lawyer, Christopher Manning, told the judge that his clients were the victims. He characterized Judge Pearson as a man embittered by financial woes and a recent divorce, who had nursed a grudge against the Chungs since a spat over a different pair of pants in 2002.

“The plaintiff has decided to use his intimate knowledge of the District of Columbia laws and legal systems to exploit non-English-speaking immigrants who work in excess of 70 hours per week to live the American dream,” Mr. Manning says in court papers.

Mr. Manning said there was no mystery about the whereabouts of the pants: They have been hanging in his office closet for a year. Judge Pearson, however, has said those are “cheap” knockoffs the Chungs had substituted for his pinstriped Hickey Freemans.

He has rejected three settlement offers, the latest, in March, for $12,000. Last week, Judge Pearson revised a few claims and lowered his damages request to $54 million.

Judge Pearson’s future as an administrative law judge is in limbo. His two-year term expired on May 2, and a judicial panel has yet to decide on his reappointment.

In the meantime, Judge Pearson remains on the city payroll as an attorney adviser to the Office of Administrative Hearings, at a salary of $100,512.

Monday, June 11, 2007

June 11, 2007
Economic Life After College
Commencement is a time for idealism.

But economic reality is lurking everywhere, and new college graduates are vulnerable to ambush. They have been told repeatedly that a college degree is an open sesame to the global economy. But that’s not necessarily so, according to new research by two economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Frank Levy and Peter Temin.

It is true that people with college degrees make more money than people without degrees. The gap has narrowed somewhat in recent years, which is disturbing. But the earning power of college graduates still far outpaces that of less-educated workers.

The bad news, though, is that a college degree does not ensure a bigger share of the economic pie for many graduates. In recent decades, Mr. Levy and Mr. Temin show, only college-educated women have seen their compensation grow in line with economywide gains in productivity. The earnings of male college graduates have failed to keep pace with productivity gains.

Instead, an outsized share of productivity growth, which expands the nation’s total income, is going to Americans at the top of the income scale. In 2005, the latest year with available data, the top 1 percent of Americans — whose average annual income was $1.1 million — took in 21.8 percent of the nation’s income, their largest share since 1929.

Administration officials, and other politicians and economists, often assert that income inequality reflects an education gap. But Mr. Levy and Mr. Temin show that in the case of men, the average bachelor’s degree is not sufficient to catch the rising tide of the global economy.

They argue that the real reason inequality is worsening is the lack of strong policies and institutions that broadly distribute economic gains. In the past, for example, a more progressive income tax and unions fostered equality. Affirmative action has also helped and probably accounts, in part, for the pay growth of college-educated women. But such institutions have been eroding and new ones have not yet emerged. At the same time, corporate norms that restrained excessive executive pay have also eroded, making the income gap even greater.

Mr. Levy and Mr. Temin conclude that only a reorientation of government policy can restore general prosperity. That’s a challenge to the nation’s leaders and today’s graduates. America needs them to build the new institutions for a global economy.

Friday, June 08, 2007


Grey’s’ says so long to Isaiah Washington
Actor says ‘I’m mad as hell’ after learning show did not renew his contract

LOS ANGELES - Isaiah Washington has lost his job on the hit ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” five months after creating a furor with his use of an anti-gay slur.

Washington’s contract option was not renewed for next season, series producer ABC Television Studios said Thursday.

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” Washington said in a statement released through his publicist, Howard Bragman, without elaboration.

He drew fire after using the anti-gay epithet backstage at the Golden Globe Awards in January while denying he’d used it previously on the set against cast mate T.R. Knight.

Gay rights groups and cast member Katherine Heigl, who publicly denounced Washington, were among his most vocal critics.

“This is something that will have changed the scope of his life,” Heigl told Entertainment Weekly last month. Washington was “sorry and embarrassed” for the mistake, she said.

Washington tried to make amends and said he was seeking therapy.

He also met with officials from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and filmed a public service announcement in which he said “words have power” to hurt or heal.

The May finale of “Grey’s Anatomy” opened the door for the departure of his character. Burke was on the verge of marrying Dr. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), but her doubts at first delayed and then derailed their splashy wedding.

Later, Yang found that Burke cleared out his favorite possessions from their apartment.

In May, Bragman said the actor intended to spend the summer working and not worrying about the show. Washington intended to continue his charity work in Sierra Leone, which a DNA test showed to be his ancestral home, and work on an independent movie

Monday, June 04, 2007


June 3, 2007
Quivering
Sex, With Consequences
By RANDY KENNEDY
AT least since Ovid, sex has been the theme music in much of Western literature, played at variable volume in all its many keys: sex as fate, as fun, as tedium and emotional torture, as stand-in for religious devotion and, until not that many decades ago, as the fastest way in fiction to lose honor, home and head.

Lately, though, it seems that a slight virginal breeze has been blowing through the worlds of publishing, theater and Hollywood.

Ian McEwan’s new novel, “On Chesil Beach,” a best seller in Britain that will be published here this week, spins the coital clock back to 1962, dissecting in almost clinical detail the wedding night of Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, two English virgins who not only have no idea what they’re doing but cannot even pillow-talk about it, living “in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible,” as the first sentence says. In the fall, Tom Perrotta, the author of “Little Children,” which was made into the popular movie last year, will publish “The Abstinence Teacher,” a novel with almost as much heavy breathing as his previous one, but whose plot turns on a suburb’s battles over the chastity of its youth, with conservative Christianity as the backdrop.

Add to this “Spring Awakening,” the dark, unlikely Broadway musical hit about sexual ignorance and repression in late-19th-century Germany, nominated recently for 11 Tony awards, and it means there’s a lot of imaginary non-sex happening. Or at least a lot of waiting and wondering, longing and thinking, before sex happens on more consequential, even fateful, terms than has been the case in fiction or theater for quite a while.

Many reviewers of Mr. McEwan’s book have noted that to put sex back in its old perch among literature’s most momentous plot elements (alongside truth, money, family, honor and God) the author set his story in 1962. Of course this is the year just before the one that the poet Philip Larkin established sarcastically (but with some reason) in his often-quoted “Annus Mirabilis” as the all-important dividing line:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.

In Edward and Florence’s world, Mr. McEwan writes: “The Pill was a rumor in the newspapers, a ridiculous promise, another of those tall tales about America.” They move awkwardly and painfully toward consummation in an “era — it would end later in that famous decade — when to be young was a social encumbrance,” one “for which marriage was the beginning of a cure.”

There is something quintessentially British in their troubles. (It’s almost laughable, for example, to imagine a French couple in their place, even in 1962.) And of course, sex with consequences didn’t go away with the pill, in life or in novels, even those peopled with sexual-revolution partisans like the ones created by John Cheever, John Updike and Joan Didion. Then came AIDS, which united sex and death in a more real way than the Victorians ever did, providing the playwright Tony Kushner and others with a powerful metaphor.

But there is a sense that these recent artistic creations are partly a response, maybe partly unconscious, to the current state of sex in our society, where it can often feel like just another form of the cheap entertainment and distraction that now pushes in from all sides. That impression is fed by proliferating cable channels and the Internet, where the leak of the latest celebrity sex video already seems like a weary ritual, not more much momentous than the latest short-lived reality series.

In “The Abstinence Teacher,” Mr. Perrotta pokes a lot of fun at the cadre of Christian hardliners who go after an honest-talking high school sex-ed teacher, Ruth Ramsey. But behind the humor, you can sense the writer’s sympathy with their desire to create more meaning in human relations, even if he disagrees with their methods and ends. And in the person of the abstinence teacher, one JoAnn Marlow — who describes herself as 28, a competitive ballroom dancer who likes Coldplay and riding on her boyfriend’s Harley — he creates a character whose gray constantly peeks out from behind the black-and-white. She has probably had a breast job. But she is a virgin, who tells a student assembly that when she finally has sex, “mark my words, people — it’s going to be soooo good, oh my God, better than you can even imagine.”

The same yearning to drag sex back into the foreground in a more meaningful way — if only as a great storytelling device, particularly for its comedic value — is also at work in the movies of Judd Apatow, the creator of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and the new “Knocked Up,” about post-pregnancy reality. The movies’ sexual-references-per-line-of-screenplay ratio easily matches that of the “American Pie” series, but the intentions are worlds apart. As the Times film critic A. O. Scott noted of “Knocked Up,” in a rare observation for any comedy: “The film’s ethical sincerity is rarely in doubt.”

The sociologist Alan Wolfe, who has conducted hundreds of interviews over the last two decades for books about the country’s beliefs and politics, said he saw a reflection in such works of the way people seem to struggle now for a greater sense of societal structure. “They do want to go back to a more conventional sexuality, morality, whatever,” said Mr. Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. “But they do not want to go back to an era of repression. So a kind of muddled, middle position is where it seems to me that most Americans are these days.”

Mr. McEwan’s novel, set back in that earlier era, uses the period and its stifling mores not for humorous purposes but for ironic ones, it seems, showing us from the vantage point of the present a kind of loss of innocence impossible in fiction set in the here and now — while at the same time reminding us what that “innocence” really meant.

“There’s always an attraction, I think more for the English novelist than the American, in the opportunities offered by repression: what can’t be said, what won’t be said, what characters can’t even say to themselves,” he said in a recent podcast with The Times Book Review.

It’s certainly not attractive to everyone, especially those who remember well enough what the era felt like. Jane Smiley’s most recent novel, “Ten Days in the Hills,” is also about sex — a whole lot of it, generally the casual kind, described as graphically as Mr. McEwan’s non-sex is described. She said she felt a different impulse as a novelist in today’s society. She wanted to create a group of contemporary characters for whom sex was not meaningless but also not meaningful in an exaggerated, fetishistic way — just another of the ways humans communicate, trying to say those things that can’t be said.

“All the things they do in the book are examples of relating to each other in a more or less loving way,” said Ms. Smiley, 59, born a year after Mr. McEwan. “All of the interactions are equalized.”

“By the time the book was published I’d actually sort of forgotten that there was a lot of sex in it,” she said, laughing. She said she planned to read Mr. McEwan’s book, but added that his was a journey she wanted to take only in fiction: “I wouldn’t go back to 1962 for a hundred million dollars.”