UNDERNEWS

NOV 17, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com

1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770
202-835-0779 FAX

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WORD
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It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just, omnipotent
God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such
a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a
corporation that is losing money. - HL Mencken

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PAGE ONE MUST
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BRITAIN PLANS MASSIVE SPYING ON CARS. . . CAMERAS EVERY 400 YARDS

REGISTER, UK - A "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that logs
everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years
is now being built, according to an Association of Chief Police Officers
strategy document leaked to the Sunday Times. The system, which will use
Automatic Number Plate Recognition, and will be overseen from a control
centre in Hendon, London. . . The control centre is intended to go live
in April of next year, and is intended to be processing 50 million
number plates a day by year end. ACPO national ANPR co-ordinator John
Dean told the Sunday Times that fixed ANPR cameras already exist "at
strategic points" on every motorway in the UK, and that the intention
was to have "good nationwide coverage within the next 12 months."
According to ACPO roads policing head Meredydd Hughes, ANPR systems are
planned every 400 yards along motorways, and a trial on the M42 near
Birmingham will first be used to enforce variable speed limits, then to
'tackle more serious crime.'. . .

The primary aims claimed for the system are tackling untaxed and
uninsured vehicles, stolen cars and the considerably broader one of
'denying criminals the use of the roads.' But unless the Times has got
the spacing wrong, having one every quarter of a mile on motorways quite
clearly means they'll be used to enforce speed limits as well. . .
Otherwise, checking a vehicle's tax and insurance status every 15
seconds or thereabouts would seem overkill. . .

http://www.theregister.com/2005/11/15/vehicle_movement_database/

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90,000 DIE EACH YEAR FROM HOSPITAL INFECTIONS

JOHN BUNTIN, GOVERNING - Every year, an estimated 2 million Americans -
approximately 5 percent of hospital patients - contract a
hospital-acquired infection during the course of a hospital stay. Some
90,000 of them die - more than the number of people who die from breast
cancer or automobile accidents. And the situation is getting worse.
Since 1975, the infection rate has escalated by 36 percent.

For years, the medical establishment has downplayed the problem, seeing
it as a regrettable side effect of advances in medical technology and
practice. "We have patients that are older with more underlying
disease," explains Dr. Denise Cardo, director of the division of health
care quality promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. "We do many more underlying procedures than we did before.
We may have more infections, but that's very different from saying that
we're not preventing infections."

This position is, however, becoming less and less tenable. Researchers
have been gathering compelling evidence that measures as simple as more
vigorous hand-washing by hospital personnel could save as many as 30,000
patients a year. Moreover, a handful of hospitals, including Allegheny
General in Pittsburgh, have demonstrated that, with active and
appropriate procedures in place, some of the most dangerous infections -
infections that American hospitals have tolerated for decades - can be
dramatically reduced, indeed almost eliminated.

To a small but passionate number of policy makers and physicians, what
once appeared to be a tragic side effect of modern medicine now looks
increasingly like a case of inexcusable negligence. State legislators
and regulators are taking notice. Thirty-two states are currently
considering legislation that would require hospitals to report
hospital-acquired infection to state authorities. Six states - Florida,
Illinois, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia - have already
passed such legislation. But only one - Pennsylvania - is on the verge
of implementing a fully functional system.

http://www.governing.com/articles/8med.htm

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POCKET PARADIGM
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SAM SMITH - Years ago your editor first noted something curious. On or
about June 15 of every year, the mail - most noticeably news releases
- dropped off suddenly and continued in a somewhat tepid state until
Labor Day. Similarly, news itself dried up on or about the major
holidays absent the occasionally natural disaster or a foreign foe
disrespectful of our calendar.

This phenomenon led me to the conclusion that news was largely an
artificial creation of journalists and the appropriately named
newsmakers. . . a conspiracy to disrupt the otherwise placid lives of
citizens with distant matters of concern, terror, or curiosity.

I say this as an honest addict, admitting my role in this disreputable
business yet unable to change it.

This morning, however, I noted a sudden decline in news a whole week
before Thanksgiving. Never in my memory have so many fellow news
creators deserted their posts so prematurely. Is this a further sign of
America's decay, a collapse in the media's willpower to create news? Are
we headed towards TV shows bragging that they offer "A Bit of the News
Some of the Time?"

I hope not. Remember, fellow junkies if we don't make the news, who
will?

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POLITICS
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WOODWARD AND PLAME-OUT

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - WE HAVE LONG HELD Bob Woodward - as a senator once
said a colleague - in minimal high esteem. The problem has been we have
never been sure when we were reading first hand reporting or the second
hand distribution of dispatches from various elements of the
intelligence industry with which Woodward has been so curiously close.
For example, it is not particularly comforting to learn finally that the
iconic news story of our generation was really the handiwork of a high
FBI official.

But we are always looking for redemption wherever it can be found, and
thus are happy to share Ben Bradlee's assessment of Woodward's just
announced failure to reveal knowledge of Valerie Plame's career. Said
Bradlee, "I don't see anything wrong with that. He doesn't have to
disclose every goddamn thing he knows."

This is especially true if your boss is not Bradlee but a self-righteous
prig like Len Downie who doesn't even vote because it might tarnish his
faux objectivity. For the purposes of this grandly overblown affair,
Woodward did nothing wrong.

And for the purposes of the case at hand, Woodward's reticence to reveal
his knowledge has no legal import although it could clearly be used by
defense lawyers to minimize the matter to a jury and by the White House
for political gain.

Libby is accused, as CNN described it, of "lying to FBI agents and to
the grand jury about conversations with reporters."

These are serious charges but not particularly earth-shattering in the
hierarchy of Washington criminality, especially if your name is one most
never heard of before the indictment and not, say, Rove or Cheney.

There is, of course, the possibility that Woodward's broken silence is
not as disingenuous as it appears. There is, for example, the
interesting note in a Wall Street Journal article that "a former White
House official who worked closely with Mr. Woodward during the reporting
for the first effort, 'Plan of Attack,' says the president considers Mr.
Woodward among a small handful of reporters he trusts." On the other
hand, Woodward, Bradlee and the Post in general have longer and closer
ties with the intelligence industry that one would like in a newspaper.
It is certainly possible that the CIA's initial plan to retaliate
against the Bushies for revealing Plame's name has gotten a bit out of
hand and a retreat is underway. The problem with this theory is that a
decent intelligence operation could have seen this coming, but then . .
.

The CIA is not the only constituency for which this has become a bit of
a mess. We have argued from the start that the case has been overblown
(in part because Valerie Plame's own role in life may not have been as
covert as widely implied). More importantly, however, the assumption of
many liberals that the case will prove a WMD in their war against the
GOP merely adds to evidence of vacuity in the collective Democratic
mind. To test this out, simply stick to the letter P and count the
number of times you hear Democratic officials and liberal commentators
mention Plame as opposed to how often they discuss the deterioration of
America's pensions. If Plame wins the count, it's a sign that the GOP is
on its way to doing the same.

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STORM WATCH
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HOUSTON MAYOR SAYS FEMA BROKE ITS PROMISE

RALPH BLUMENTHAL and ERIC LIPTON, NY TIMES - Mayor Bill White of Houston
accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday of breaking
its promise to Hurricane Katrina evacuees by imposing strict limits on a
housing relocation program as it stops thousands of hotel subsidies.
"Great nations, like good people, keep their word," Mr. White wrote in a
letter about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other
senior emergency officials. On Monday, FEMA gave major cities like
Houston until Dec. 1 to sign leases for apartments for evacuees under
its existing reimbursement program. The agency limited the leases to
three months.

On Tuesday, the agency announced that also as of Dec. 1 it would stop
paying hotel bills for 50,000 families in hotels around the United
States, except in Louisiana and Mississippi, where the cutoff date would
be Jan. 7. Because of the three-month limit on leases, Mr. White said,
the leasing for more than 19,000 people who are still in hotel and motel
rooms in the Houston area was shutting down. The program, he said, has
been placing up to 500 people a day, and he appealed to FEMA to rescind
its order. "We can't get leases for three months," Mr. White told
reporters after a City Council meeting. "Landlords won't do that."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/national/nationalspecial/17hotels.html

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SCHOOLS & THE YOUNG
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SOME TRYING TO SAVE TIMES FOR THE ARTS IN SCHOOLS DESPITE TEST MANIA

JOSEPH POPIOLKOWSKI, STATELINE - Arts in education advocates, including
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), are on the offensive to try to keep the
fine arts from getting squeezed out as the federal No Child Left Behind
Act ratchets up pressure on schools to raise reading and math test
scores. Raising standards in arts education is a primary goal of
Huckabee's term as chairman of the Education Commission of the States, a
nonpartisan interstate compact on education. His own state is
emphasizing the arts as a regular part of schools' curricula with a new
law requiring 40 minutes of music and 40 minutes of visual art per week
for every elementary school student.

However, not every state offers the same arts enrichment opportunities.
Because the school day is only so long and schools are electing to
lengthen math and language arts classes, there's a growing trend to
relegate dance, music, theater and visual arts classes to lunch periods,
after school or on weekends, said Nancy Carr, a visual and performing
arts consultant for the California Department of Education.

California had appropriated arts education funding of $6.5 million
annually - one dollar for each student - for five consecutive years
until it was penciled out starting in the 2003-2004 school year. In
addition, the California Arts Council, which gives grants to community
arts organizations that may bring resources such as a painter or
Shakespeare troupe into classrooms, had its state funding gutted from
$36 million a few years ago to $4 million in 2004, Carr said. . .

The arts have been shown to be particularly helpful for at-risk groups,
which score notoriously low on nationalized tests and face steep dropout
rates. Dallas Arts Partners, a partnership between the city's school
district, government and cultural organizations, reported students with
a heavy arts involvement - especially special education pupils and
English language learners - scored higher on Texas standardized tests
than a control group. . . A study released Nov. 15 by the Arts Education
Partnership, a national coalition of arts, education, business,
philanthropic and government organizations, found high levels of student
development and teacher job satisfaction in 10 schools with high
concentrations of low-income students but vibrant arts programs. Still,
underperforming schools are more likely to hire a new math instructor
rather than an arts teacher for fear of looming penalties under the 2001
federal education reform law, said former Maryland State Arts Councilor
Mary Ann Mears, a sculptor.

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=68297


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POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
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WOMAN PUT ON FLIGHT WATCH LIST FOR ANTI-BUSH BUTTON

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ, LAS VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL - Dawn Hansen is Nevada
chairman of Mothers Against the Draft. Her husband, Christopher Hansen,
is the paralegal and retired contractor who served as chairman of last
year's failed "Axe the Tax" tax-rollback petition drive. The couple are
active in the Independent American Party; they're no wallflowers when it
comes to voicing their political views. But Dawn says she does not set
out to cause problems at the airport -- just the opposite. "I'm always
smiling and polite, I never wear anything that I think is going to set
off the alarms," she said.

She does wear a couple of political buttons, though. When I met with
Dawn last weekend she told me she was wearing exactly what she'd been
wearing as she entered the security checkpoint at Oakland International
Airport Aug. 27 -- a navy blue jacket with two small American flag pins
and two political buttons with writing on them. The larger one reads
"Dissent is Patriotic." The smaller, red one bears a smiling portrait of
President Bush, labeled "Daddy's Little War Criminal." She's convinced
that's what started the trouble.

"I went to show my ID, and the guy said, 'Oh, I don't need that.' But
when I went to show my boarding pass she looked at me, yanked it out of
my hand, undid the rope, and said, 'Come over here!' No 'Please,' no ID
check. Then she said, 'Give me your jacket!' They made me go through the
metal detector twice even though I didn't set it off either time. Then
this second woman said, 'You go sit down over there!' They wanded me,
they made me put my legs out, they went up inside my back and around my
boobs. "They passed my jacket from person to person, each security
person in turn was looking at the buttons. They asked me, 'Why are you
traveling with so much reading material?' "

Dawn says she was carrying seven or eight general circulation magazines,
a biography of Ben Franklin and Bob Woodward's latest book. "I did have
one subversive publication; I was carrying a copy of The New York Times.
. . They asked me why I was carrying so many legal documents. I'd been
in California helping my brother do some legal research on a case. . .

They finally let Dawn Hansen fly home. She called Southwest Airlines on
Monday morning and was referred to the Transportation Security
Administration. When she called the TSA, "I was informed I'd been put on
the watch list. I was not on any watch list before I went to Oakland. .
. "TSA told me I would be under that kind of security every time I fly.
TSA said I could fill out this big form that you can download from their
Web site, it asks for your Social Security number and three separate
forms of ID and all this information. ... I said, "You can forget that.
You're just data mining. You have no right to all that information.' And
they said, 'Well then you're going to have to go through it every time.'
"

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Nov-13-Sun-2005/opinion/4134998.html


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FURTHERMORE. . .
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DAVE ASTOR, EDITOR & PUBLISHER - Liberal columnist Robert Scheer, who
was dropped last week by the Los Angeles Times, has a new home newspaper
-- the San Francisco Chronicle. In a Wednesday note to readers,
Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz wrote that Scheer "has been a
frequent contributor to this page in recent years. Starting today, he
will become a weekly fixture. . . Scheer's column will be edited
through the Chronicle and we will have a chance to discuss ideas with
him -- though he will make the final call on topics for his column,
which will continue to be distributed through Creators Syndicate. It
will run in the Chronicle each Wednesday."

KAUS FILES - The old Clintonism: One Clinton succeeds in making both
sides think he agrees with them. The new Clintonism: One Clinton pitches
to one side while the other assuages the other side. Example: Hillary
carefully maintains her appeal to pro-war voters while her husband
denounces the war that she voted for as a "a big mistake." . . . A
two-person straddle was needed because Hillary isn't gifted enough a
talker to practice the old single-player Clintonism by herself.

GUARDIAN - It is unclear whether Frank Sinatra had in mind the red
velvet drapes of a crematorium when he sang about facing his final
curtain in My Way. But his best-known number emerged as the most popular
contemporary song played at British funerals. When not organizing the
final sendoff of 80,000 Britons each year, Co-operative Funeralcare
likes to compile charts of favorite numbers heard at funerals. Its
research reveals that popular songs now account for 40% of all music
chosen for funerals. Hymns account for 55% and classical works a mere
5%. My Way tops the pop chart, with Vera Lynn's possibly optimistic
We'll Meet Again sneaking in at No 10. Bette Midler (Wind Beneath My
Wings) is just behind Sinatra, ahead of Robbie Williams (Angels). Celine
Dion (My Heart Will Go On) and Tina Turner (Simply the Best) are fourth
and fifth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1644251,00.html

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FIELD NOTES
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812 WONDERS OF THE WORLD

SITE OF THE WEEK - In 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization sponsored an international agreement to start
a World Heritage List of sites that make up the heritage of all
humankind. There are now 812 sites on the list--812 world wonders--and
more are added every year. In 2001, the Taliban government of
Afghanistan used tanks, explosives, and anti-aircraft guns to destroy
two ancient and colossal statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan's Bamiyan
Valley. Outraged, Belgian photographer Tito Dupret started the World
Heritage Tour, an effort to photograph--using 360-degree panoramas--all
of UNESCO's World Heritage sites, recording them for posterity and
giving everyone virtual ownership of the cultural wonders of the world.
Just click and see the world's cultural riches now.

http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/map.html