Shameful Medical Treatment of Immigrant Detainees

The Washington Post has conducted an investigation into medical care at U.S. detention centers housing immigration violators. Its conclusion:

Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse. Actions taken -- or not taken -- by medical staff members may have contributed to 30 of those deaths, according to confidential internal reviews and the opinions of medical experts who reviewed some death files for The Post.

According to an analysis by The Post, most of the people who died were young. Thirty-two of the detainees were younger than 40, and only six were 70 or older. The deaths took place at dozens of sites across the country. The most at one location was six at the San Pedro compound near Los Angeles.

More...

In conducting the examination, the Post examined:

thousands of pages of government documents ... They include autopsy and medical records, investigative reports, notes, internal e-mails, and memorandums. These documents, along with interviews with current and former immigration medical officials and staff members, illuminate the underside of the hasty governmental reorganization that took place in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

How did we get here?

After Sept. 11, the Bush administration transferred responsibility for border security and deportation to the new Department of Homeland Security, which gave it to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) -- a reconfiguration of the decades-old Immigration and Naturalization Service -- in 2003, the year the Post used as the starting point for counting detainee deaths. Each year since, the number of detainees picked up for deportation or waiting behind bars for political asylum has skyrocketed, increasing by 65 percent since July 2005.

As for where these detainees are being held:

These way stations between life in and outside the United States are mostly out of sight: in deserts and industrial warehouse districts, in sequestered valleys next to other prisons, or near noisy airports. Some compounds never allow detainees outdoor recreation; others let them out onto tiny dirt patches once or twice a week.

But they have lawyers, right? No.

Detainees are not guaranteed free legal representation, and only about one in 10 has an attorney. When lawyers get involved, they often have difficulty prying medical information out of the bureaucracy -- or even finding clients, who are routinely moved without notice.

Since 2001, more than 300,000 immigrants have been subjected to detention. There are insufficient resources allotted to their medical care. And, the bureacracy involved in getting medical help is intensive and cumbersome:

When doctors and nurses at the immigration compounds believe that detainees need more than the most basic treatment, they have to fax a request to the Washington office, where four nurses, working 9 to 4, East Coast time, five days a week, make the decisions.

Agency officials, doctors and medical staff are nervous about liability. They should be.

"Dogs get better care in the dog pound," said Catherine Rouse, a contract nurse at an Arizona detention center who quit after two months last year because she saw what she regarded as "scary medicine" in the prison: patients taken off medications they needed and nurses doing tasks they were not qualified to do. "You don't treat people like that. "

I'm just scratching the surface of the article, I hope you will read the whole thing.

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Hillary's Mother's Day Pitch In WV

Pretty effective:

[Hillary Clinton] held a “Mother’s Day Celebration” in . . . the so-called “Home of Mother’s Day.” Clinton told the crowd that she drew inspiration from the example of women who came before her, be they historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Sally Ride or her own mother and grandmother. “Women have been standing up for what we believe in, defying convention and going forward for a long time,” she said.

She also acknowledged that women, including herself, have “experienced a moment along the way when your own sense of limitless possibility collided with a harsher reality." "Women face a lot of barriers, some visible, some invisible,” she said. “And in 2008, it’s really important we recommit ourselves to making sure that our daughters and our sons have an equal chance to lead and serve in the future.”

. . . [Clinton] said her favorite [e-mail] was from a woman named Angela who urged her to “keep strong.” “It’s not over until the lady in the pantsuit says it is,” Clinton said, quoting the letter. . . . “Happy Mother’s Day,” the woman wrote to Clinton. “Hopefully I’ll be wishing you one next year as president. You have already succeeded at the world’s hardest job, being a mother. The second hardest job should be a breeze for you.”

Nice.

By Big Tent Democrat

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Rahm Emanuel: Kennedy, that's "Uncalled for and
Wrong"

From the diaries, Jerome What exactly is "uncalled for and wrong?" Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy's comments regarding the possibility of a Obama/Clinton ticket in November. Late last week, the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/288362221/381

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Rahm Emanuel: Kennedy, that's "Uncalled for
and Wrong"

From the diaries, Jerome What exactly is "uncalled for and wrong?" Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy's comments regarding the possibility of a Obama/Clinton ticket in November. Late last week, the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/288362221/381

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The Neoconomy: can a Democratic president really
untangle this mess

Not if the statistical measures used by our government continue to be bent to make direct comparison impossible. From the Libertarian Ayn Rand, we got Objectivism, which I prefer to call ‘Capitalism Gone Wild.’ Ronald Reagan defeated Carter by using a Misery Index Carter himself had highlighted in 1976, which measured inflation and unemployment, combined.The [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/05/11/the-neoconomy-can-a-democratic
-president-really-untangle-this-mess/

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Rahmbo Blasts Kennedy's Attack On Clinton

Good on Rahmbo:

[Rahm] Emanuel called to assail Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, for remarks he made when asked about the possibility of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois choosing Mrs. Clinton, of New York, as his running-mate. “I have a lot of respect for Ted Kennedy, but I don’t know how the hell he comes off saying that,” said Mr. Emanuel, who has ties to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama and has not endorsed in the race. “The gratuitous attack on her is uncalled for and wrong. He is a better senator than that comment reveals.

(Emphasis supplied.) Good on Rahmbo. and I think probably good on the Obama campaign who might have spurred Rahmbo to do this.

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Late Edition: Roy Blunt Confirms McCain is Third
Bush Term: And I think thats a good thing

Bless his little heart, let’s have House Minority Whip Roy Blunt on every week to talk up John McCain’s candidacy!  Talk about living within a bubble, Blunt thinks nothing of touting the McSame presidency as a Bush third term, despite the record disapproval rating for the man and the vast majority of the country believing [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/11/late-edition-roy-blunt-confirms-mccain-i
s-third-bush-term-and-i-think-thats-a-good-thing/

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Sunday Night Math Homework: Electoral Votes

Lambert at Corrente does the heavy lifting. An overview of the Democratic nominating process is posted here.

My view of the math is found at The Electoral Map and the Battleground States. It's based on William Arnone's analysis here.

The three of us concur: Hillary has a better chance of accumulating the electoral votes necessary to beat John McCain. It doesn't mean we think Obama can't do it. It means we think Hillary is a surer bet.

All comments related to the electoral math vote count are welcome. As Lambert says, "please do not clutter up the discussion thread with meaningless repetition of [Obama] talking points; if you have nothing new to offer, kindly hold your peace.]

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A Defense Of Obama On Iraq

Barack Obama was right and courageous to oppose the Iraq Debacle in 2002. No one should ever try and diminish that. What he did once he became a Senator, well that is a different story. But his 2002 speech struck the right chord with me. The estimable Susie Madrak cites a NYTimes article where some are quoted as taking issue with one passage of the speech:

[Obama] was also careful to emphasize that there were times when military intervention was necessary. . . . Mr. Obama’s refrain about supporting some wars perplexed some in the crowd.

An event organizer, Carl Davidson, recalled that a friend “nudged me and said, ‘Who does he think this speech is for? It’s not for this crowd.’ I thought, ‘This guy’s got bigger fish to fry.’ At the time, though, I was only thinking about the U.S. Senate.”

I do not care who it was for - it was absolutely right in my opinion. It was the view expressed by Wes Clark and Howard Dean in 2003. It is the classic Democratic liberal view of foreign policy and national security. Most importantly, it was and is right.

Speaking for me only

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Hoyer's and Rockefeller's Strange Corporate
Bedfellow

AT&T's 2007 Financial Review [pdf] includes this brief snippet:

NSA Litigation There are 24 pending lawsuits that allege that we and other telecommunications carriers unlawfully provided assistance to the National Security Agency (NSA) in connection with intelligence activities that were initiated following the events of September 11, 2001. In the first filed case, Hepting et al v. AT&T Corp., AT&T Inc. and Does 1-20, a purported class action filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, plaintiffs allege that the defendants have disclosed and are currently disclosing to the U.S. Government content and call records concerning communications to which Plaintiffs were a party. Plaintiffs seek damages, a declaratory judgment, and injunctive relief for violations of the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and other federal and California statutes. We filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. The United States asserted the "state secrets privilege" and related statutory privileges and also filed a motion asking the court to either dismiss the complaint or issue a summary judgment in favor of the defendants. The Court denied the Motions to Dismiss of both parties. Specifically, the Court ruled that the state secrets privilege does not prevent AT&T from asserting any statutory defense it may have, as appropriate, regarding allegations that it assisted the government in monitoring communication content. However, with regard to the calling records allegations, the Court noted that it would not require AT&T to disclose what relationship, if any, it has with the government. We and the U.S. government filed interlocutory appeals in July 2006. The case was argued before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on August 15, 2007. We are awaiting a decision. Management believes these actions are without merit and intends to vigorously defend these matters.

Part of AT&T's vigorous defense and fight for amnesty appears to be the deployment of a well-known right-wing "think tank," Frontiers of Freedom in the districts of freshman Democrats, including Kirsten Gillibrand and Tim Walz.

A local blog, Bluestem Prairie, decided to do a little digging with a stellar report about the organization that was joining in on the attack with these robocalls.

Turns out, the FF has been fronting for corporations, including, AT&T for a while now. Here's what Common Cause has uncovered:

Frontiers of Freedom does not disclose its financial backers, but the Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that the organization's main contributors were corporations such as Philip Morris, ExxonMobil and RJ Reynolds Tobacco.^[38] At the time, Frontiers of Freedom lobbied heavily against environmental regulations designed to reduce global warming,^[39] and also railed against plaintiffs who sued the tobacco companies after contracting lung cancer from smoking.^[40]

More recently, the Larstan Business Group accused Frontiers of Freedom of engaging in Astroturf lobbying on behalf of the telephone companies.^[41]   Larstan's report, it should be noted, was commissioned by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association,^[42] the main trade association for the cable television industry.

The report points out that Frontiers of Freedom has flip-flopped from being a critic of the telephone industry, to being one of its champions.  According to Larstan, in 2004, Frontiers of Freedom lambasted "the Bell monopolies" for not "do[ing] any of the
heavy-lifting normally associated with a free market,"^[43] and instead relying on government regulation to build their business. But in 2005, the organization praised the merger of AT&T and SBC Communications^[44] - two of the telephone industries biggest players - and also endorsed^[45] the Bell-backed regulations designed to ease their entry into the cable television business.  Qwest Communications has alleged that Frontiers of Freedom accepts contributions from AT&T.[46]

That charge from Qwest was leveled by Michael Ceballos, president of Qwest's operation in Wyoming, in an opinion column written in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle on July 27, 2005 (now offline, obtained through subscription) written in response to another by FF's founder, Malcom Wallop (former Senator from Wyoming):

As Mr. Wallop noted, he has over the years written critical columns about Qwest. Mr. Wallop is the founder and chairman of Frontiers of Freedom. AT&T contributes to this organization. The timing and distribution of these columns have occurred during times when AT&T was in a dispute with Qwest. We are not surprised at the timing of Mr. Wallop's column because Qwest has recently expressed concern over the proposed merger of AT&T and SBC.

As noted, FF doesn't disclose its financial backers, and a search of AT&T's site has yet to produce conclusive proof that AT&T is currently bankrolling the organization. But given their commitment to AT&T and their diligence in their "grassroots" lobbying for AT&T in that merger and now for telco amnesty, it seems a likely conclusion. Particularly when one considers the group's history with Exxon:

If you were the least bit nervous about all the worrying reports - from leading scientists, insurance companies and even the Pentagon - about human-induced climate change, don't worry: the Frontiers of Freedom (FF), a right-leaning think tank, is here to reassure you.

FF has established the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) to alert "policy makers, the media, and the public to unreliable scientific claims and unjustified alarmism which often lead to public harm." If you are so inclined, you can subscribe to the "non-profit, non-partisan" Climate & Environment Weekly, CSPP's email bulletin that keeps track of why climate change is not the problem many make it out to be.

But if you want to find out who funds FF's climate change program, you won't find out by checking their website or annual report. However, over at ExxonMobil's website you'll discover that the CSPP was established in 2002 with a $100,000 grant from the world's biggest oil company.

ExxonMobil is so supportive of FF that in the last five years it has invested another $617,000 of shareholder cash to promote "informed discussion" on climate change issues.

They've also been active in "Hands Off the Internet," the astro-turfing group that fronts for AT&T and the other telephone and cable companies fighting against Net Neutrality. And in fighting  a pro-consumer effort in the Minnesota legislator that "would guarantee customers accurate information about billing and service area coverage." They've also been neck-deep in the recent debate over the Air Force's huge tanker contract, weighing in on the side of Boeing.

Looking into that deal, and the "public policy" groups involved in the process, the Washington Post noted:

Welcome to that special place where business and Washington intersect, where things often are not what they seem and keeping track of the players and their motives is as hard as following the aces in hands of a cardsharp... The companies have engaged top-shelf public relations specialists, opinion shapers and former military officials who now serve as their consultants. And they have enlisted vocal and sometimes stealthy support from policy and nonprofit groups, endorsements that carry the aura of integrity.

Which brings us smack dab back to telco amnesty and the fight over the FISA bill. What was true for the Northrop/Boeing contretemps is true for the fight for amnesty these groups. For all the urgent and inflammatory rhetoric about national security; for every group with a noble sounding name like Defense of Democracies, or Frontiers of Freedom, this fight is about corporate power and influence over the public good.

A group like Frontiers of Freedom has no higher concern than how well the pockets of its cronies are lined at the public expense, and in the great Reagan economic tradition, how much of that lucre trickles down to them. And make no mistake, their efforts are geared toward one key goal: electing Republicans to allow this cozy little system to be perpetuated.

That these groups exist and that they have undue influence on policy in a Bush administration is not great revelation. But any Democrat throwing their lot in with them to support the Protect AT&T Act should go in with their eyes wide open, and realize that in doing so, they are potentially sowing the seeds for their own potential defeat.

Furthering the aims of these organizations, of AT&T, of the Republicans at the expense of all else--little things like "First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act"--is a short-sighted and self-destructive path for any Democrat.

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