Category: Jennifer Mann
Controversy Renews Over Draft
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29-Whether you call it whistle-blowing, dirty politics or just plain spam- the widely circulated e-mail describing President Bush’s plan to reinstate a military draft has once again stirred public angst, even in the face of repeated denials by administration officials.
The e-mail, which first surfaced sometime around June, points to pending legislation that “will time the program’s initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 – just after the 2004 presidential election.” The email concludes, “The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public’s attention is on the elections.”
Critics have argued that the e-mail is a misdirected attempt to batter the Republican administration before the November election, noting that both of the proposed bills mentioned are sponsored by Democrats. Both Republicans and Democrats also have said that there is little likelihood of any sort of action on the legislation as the proposals have sat in committee for more than a year.
The Universal National Service Act of 2003, introduced by retiring Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., reads, “It is the obligation of every citizen of the United States, and every other person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a period of national service.” There were no co-sponsors for this legislation, and it has been in the Committee on Armed Services with no legislative action since it was first introduced in January 2003.
The twin version introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., received 14 cosponsors but also has been dormant, sitting in the Subcommittee of Total Force in the Committee on Armed Services since February 2003.
According to Jocelyn Hudson, staff assistant for Sen. Hollings, it is likely the Senate version of the legislation will die once Sen. Hollings leaves this year. “It is not going anywhere,” Hudson said. “Not a chance.”
Emile Milne, spokesman for Rep. Rangel, said the same of the House version when commenting for the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. “Rangel hasn’t pushed the issue,” he said.
A military draft has not been in place since the Vietnam War ended in 1973. Since then, the military has been operating fully on recruitment and re-enlistments rather than conscription.
The Selective Service System is an independent agency that oversees this process, and also hires and trains volunteers to serve on local draft boards. While all men are required to register for possible military service upon turning 18, the Selective Service System notes that “even though he is registered, a man will not automatically be inducted into the military.” According to the Selective Service, as of September 2003, 93 percent of men 18 to 25 had registered, making approximately 13.5 million individuals draft-eligible.
The e-mail argues that $28 million that has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System budget to prepare for a military draft, and states that the Pentagon has “quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide.”
However, according to the 2004 White House budget, the Selective Service System appropriations have remained flat, at $26 million as was the case in previous years.
Pat Schuback, spokesman for the Selective Service System, also answered the charge regarding draft board positions in an interview with the Associated Press in November 2003, when the recruitment move first garnered attention.
According to Schuback, a routine hiring notice posted on www.defendamerica.mil, a Pentagon Web site about the war on terror, led to a flurry of inquiries and rumors of a coming draft. Reading, “Serve Your Community and the Nation – Become a Selective Service System Local Board Member,” it called for volunteers to fill board positions which would oversee applications for deferments, postponements and exemptions from military service, in the case of a draft.
But, Schuback explained, the system of recruiting draft board members had already been in place for many years, since the system was reinstituted in 1979. And because a draft board term runs 20 years, many positions had just recently been vacated by those who had signed up for the program at its inception.
Attention wrought by the hire notice, and the proliferation of rumors since, has led the Selective Service System to post a response on its website.
“Notwithstanding recent stories in the news media and on the Internet, Selective Service is not getting ready to conduct a draft for the U.S. Armed Forces — either with a special skills or regular draft,” the posting reads. “Rather, the Agency remains prepared to manage a draft if and when the President and the Congress so direct. This responsibility has been ongoing since 1980 and is nothing new.”
Despite all of these considerations, critics of President Bush have continued to fuel the speculation.
“The Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards, as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place,” independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said in an April press release.
Others have argued that regardless of intentions, a military draft will be all but inevitable if the administration continues on the path it has taken in Iraq.
“A key issue for young Americans and their families to consider as they prepare to cast their votes in the upcoming presidential election is the real likelihood of a military draft being reinstated if George W. Bush is re-elected,” former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who challenged Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote on the Democracy for America website.
Claiming the Armed Forces are being drastically understaffed and the National Guard stretched thin, Gov. Dean wrote, “President Bush will be forced to decide whether we can continue the current course in Iraq, which will clearly require the reinstatement of the draft.”
These allegations also have floated around the campaign trail, with John Kerry making references to a draft possibility, and his running mate John Edwards saying in West Virginia last week, “There will be no draft when John Kerry is president.”
To counter, last week Vice President Dick Cheney assured voters in Oregon that he didn’t foresee a return to the draft, short of a national crisis occurring on the scale of World War II. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an address to the Heritage Foundation on May 17 said, “I can’t imagine our country going back to a draft. We don’t need it.”
Keith Olson, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, said that despite the back and forth between politicians and the like, the truth of the matter will not be resolved anytime soon.
“I really think it is a marginal issue. There’s no possibility of anything happening before the November election,” he said. “But after the election, if we continue with what we have started, the Pentagon is going to have problems getting enough troops. Inevitably, we’ll have to have a draft if we keep on the road we’re on, and the structure is enough in place that it won’t be very hard to do so.”
Concern Grows Over Vaccine Supplies
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28-For Sen. Larry Craig, R.-Idaho, the image from last year's flu scare still rings clear: hundreds of people lined up outside grocery stores and local clinics, waiting for hours in order to get the prick in the arm that translates to good health. The vision speaks clearly to last year's -and in all probability, this year's-demand for vaccinations, Sen. Craig said on Tuesday, speaking in front of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which he chairs. Yet as the nation's cry for immunization increases, questions linger over whether the three U.S.-licensed influenza vaccine manufacturers can supply what is needed, he said.
"Many of us questioned for the first time [last year], whether we can assume that everyone who needs a vaccine can obtain one," Sen. Craig explained.
Last year, almost 36,000 Americans died from exposure to the flu and another 200,000 were hospitalized. Of note, Sen. Craig said, is the fact that almost 90 percent of those who died were over age 65.
"This is a killer of elderly Americans and it ought to be viewed that way," Sen. Craig said. "The statistics are just black and white when it comes to that issue."
Influenza, more commonly known as the flu, is a respiratory disease that typically occurs during the winter months and can cause disease among all age groups. Rates of infection are highest among children, but as occurred last year, rates of serious illness and death are typically highest among persons over 65.
Because the strains of the virus mutate so rapidly, vaccines must also be continually updated. And with a shelf life of roughly one year for each vaccine, it is difficult for the government and state agencies to maintain the necessary stockpiles.
This is one of the difficulties that Sen. Craig and experts in disease control and prevention discussed on Tuesday.
Dr. Stephen Ostroff, who is deputy director for the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said local preparation is the key to making it through flu season unscathed. With approximately 100 million doses of the influenza vaccine available for the upcoming season, the question is not whether there will be enough vaccines available, but whether they will be distributed evenly and provided to those individuals who are most in need.
Failure to do the latter, he said, is what caused many of the problems during the 2003 flu season, even though a record number of 83 million Americans were immunized last year.
"Last year, unfortunately, was one of the anomalies," he said. "The demand for influenza vaccine in the United States exceeded what had been experienced in previous influenza seasons. We believe this shortage resulted from the early onset of the influenza season, which occurred during the months that the vaccination usually takes place, and the widespread media reports of influenza-caused deaths among children."
That is why, Ostroff said, CDC officials have encouraged health centers and vaccine distribution sites to start promoting the vaccine now. The goal is to prevent a last minute surge of requests like the one that occurred last year. CDC officials also have urged states to develop a contingency plan in the case that a rush for vaccines occurs nonetheless. In its recommendations, the CDC cites the importance of a tiered vaccination approach in which high-risk individuals like seniors would be allowed the immunization first. In Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health has ordered influenza vaccine from two different manufacturers: 168,000 doses of FluZone® manufactured by Aventis and licensed for use in persons over 6 months of age, and 462,000 doses of Fluvirin®, manufactured by Chiron and licensed for persons over 4 years of age.
While officials are not required by law to do so, they try to direct these vaccines to high-risk populations first, said Alfred DeMaria, the department's director of communicable diseases. But community health centers are reluctant to turn people away, he said, so instead they will try to send the message out ahead of time, explaining the need to give priority to high-risk individuals.
"And most people cooperate, because those high-risk people are their grandparents and children," De Maria said.
There is no practical way to try and screen those coming in for vaccinations, he said. Furthermore, a large portion of the vaccinations are distributed by private medical professionals, over which the state has no control.
There are still some, however, who believe the federal government should be playing a larger role. Janet Heinrich, of the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, believes there should be set guidelines, and not just recommendations, that ensure distribution to high-risk individuals.
"The situation is no different today [than from last year]," she said. "The CDC plan describes federal responsibilities, but leaves important questions on deliverance unresolved."
DNA Bill Moves Forward
WASHINGTON, Sept 22 -- Kirk Bloodsworth was the first. When a Baltimore County judge convicted him on March 8, 1985, of sexual assault, rape, and first degree murder, 23-year-old Bloodsworth was sentenced to death.
In 1989 it happened again in Massachusetts. An 11-year-old Roxbury girl was raped after being abducted from her school bus stop. She described the attacker to her mother, who then based on her daughter's description, pinpointed a man and reported him to the police. The man was Marvin Mitchell, then 48, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
But both men were innocent. Bloodsworth spent nine years in prison before becoming the first person in the nation to be freed based on DNA evidence in 1994.
And then on April 23, 1997 Mitchell won a new trial based on DNA testing that excluded him as the attacker. He was freed, after serving eight years in jail.
According to Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), of 116 individuals in 25 states have been released from death row after being wrongfully convicted since 1976, 12 were released based on DNA evidence proving their innocence.
"Some of them came within days, hours, of being put to death," Delahunt said Wednesday. "Imagine the potential miscarriage of justice if these individuals had not had access to DNA technology."
And still, Delahunt said, there is no federal law that properly ensures access to DNA technology for persons who claim to be wrongfully convicted.
This week, the nation came one step closer. Yesterday, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved the "Justice For All Act of 2004," which includes Delahunt's "Innocence Protection Act" that he introduced more than four years ago.
The new bill, expected to reach the House floor for a vote next week, includes provisions to protect victim's rights, test both a backlog of forensic data and more than 300,000 kits used to collect evidence of rape nationwide. And as per Delahunt's provisions, the bill ensures access to DNA technology for those who maintain their innocence.
Introduced by Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wisc.), the bill would provide almost $1.3 billion to programs protecting both criminals' and victims' rights. It also would authorize grants for monitoring of death penalty trials.
"This brings together the most important DNA considerations to come out of Congress," Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), senior Democrat on the committee, said at the hearing Wednesday
The Senate Judiciary Committee also approved its version of the bill, "Advancing Justice through DNA Technology Act," on Tuesday. The House bill contains many of the same provisions as the bi-partisan bill sponsored by Sen. Judiciary Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee's senior Democrat.
A number of organizations and individuals already have spoken in support of the legislation
"The legislation, which passed in the committee in an 11 to 7 vote, is an important step forward for innocent victims of crime and for innocent people who might otherwise be sentenced to death," said John Terzano, director of The Justice Project, a non-partisan organization in Washington that advocates for social justice. "The leaders in the U.S. Senate Judiciary took an important step today. We strongly encourage the Senate and President to follow in their lead."
Bloodsworth, the first to be exonerated on DNA evidence and the man whose experience plays prominently in Delahunt's quest for legislation, issued his own letter to Congress last May. "I spent nine years of my life in prison, two of them on death row, for a crime I did not commit," he wrote. "And I am dedicated to making sure this never happens to anyone else. I will continue my quest to find solutions to our broken and flawed criminal justice system."
"No one," he wrote, "should have to wait 20 years for justice."
Delahunt said yesterday that he could not agree more wholeheartedly.
"I served as a district attorney for more than 20 years," he said, "I remember the mistakes, more than the true convictions. And I remember the victims, the victims of the criminal justice system gone wrong."
Ocean Study Results Released
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24--The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy presented its final report to Congress this week, calling for an overhaul in the nation's governance of ocean and coastal regions, which includes greater accountability for regional and state concerns.
The commission delivered its report on Monday, culminating three years of study and 18 visits to coastal regions and ocean sites nationwide, including a series of nine public hearings. Boston was the host of one of these meetings in July 2002.
According to retired Adm. James D. Watkins, the commission chairman, one of the challenges the group recognized early on was the need to bring state and regional needs back into the process at the federal level. "Perhaps the most important change in the final report is our effort to emphasize and to clarify the important role of the state," he said.
Also, he said, there is a need to simplify the process by which the nation's coastal regions are governed. "By focusing on state and local needs," he said, "we saw our mandate as recommending changes in the federal system that will facilitate the collective development of a national ocean policy while lessening bureaucratic roadblocks."
Currently, a hodgepodge of state and federal agencies has oversight of each coastal region, making it difficult to complete projects without months and even years of approval processes. Furthermore, because there are multiple organizations on the national level that play the same role-but with different regional jurisdictions-there is a lack of cohesiveness from the top and poor communication between regions that may have the same needs.
These "bureaucratic roadblocks" have become very familiar to those at Cape Wind Associates, a Boston-based company which has set its eye on building the nation's first offshore wind farm five and a half miles off the south shore of Cape Cod.
While there have been strong stances both for and against this proposed project in the past years, the primary hold-up in the authorization process has been due to an ambiguity over which agency has the jurisdiction to make such a decision. It was not until last June that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston decided that the Army Corps of Engineers would have final regulatory oversight.
And the group still faces extensive regulatory review, Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said. "Right now, Cape Wind is undergoing a review involving 17 federal and state agencies," he pointed out. "What we are talking about at this point is a non-polluting, clean energy project.yet it is clear that this clean energy project is already undergoing a tougher review than any of the dirty power plants."
Gov. Mitt Romney, who has opposed the Cape Wind project, issued a letter to the Ocean Commission in May, saying the Cape Wind project acts as an example of the obstacles the states still face.
"The Cape Wind project has revealed significant gaps in state and federal authority to permit offshore uses and lease ocean space," he wrote. "Federal law.does not require consultation with governors of affected states." Romney noted that the preliminary report presented a more corrective direction for future projects, even though it would not change what occurred during the process with Cape Wind.
Housing Trust Preserved
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23-Massachusetts Representatives Barney Frank (D-4th) and Michael Capuano (D-8 th ) joined an effort Thursday to force the House to vote on a bill seeking to preserve low-income housing for 1.5 million families over the next decade.
The bill was introduce by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but has been bottled up for over a year. Sanders, Frank, Capuano and others are hoping to use a parliamentary tool known as a discharge petition, to force a floor vote on the legislation, which neither the House Financial Services Committee nor House leaders have acted upon.
A successful discharge petition requires 218 signatures, a majority of House members, and the two Massachusetts' legislators bring the total to more than 127. They hope to reach 218 by before Congress leaves for the year in October.
Frank joined the co-sponsors in promoting the discharge legislation Thursday at a press conference. Speaking later during an interview, Frank said, "We have a terrible crisis in America and it is especially bad in our area. We do not have enough affordable housing."
As of Thursday, no Republican representatives had signed the petition legislation. A number of Republicans, he said however, had signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. "This is going to be a test of whether or not they are hypocrites," Frank said.
The legislation seeks to preserve 1.5 million units of affordable housing for low-income families over the next 10 years by establishing a trust fund. That would then provide states with funding for the construction of new housing, acquisition of real property, housing rehabilitation, and affordable housing incentives. Five percent of the grant amounts could also be used for operating costs of non-profits developing affordable rental housing.
"To me this is just the smallest possible step we could take that indicates that the federal government actually cares about affordable housing," Capuano, a sponsor of the discharge petition, said Wednesday.
He blasted the Republican House leadership for not acting on the bill. "That tells us that we do have a federal housing policy," he said. "And that policy is-we don't like affordable housing."
"The Republicans have refused to let it come to the floor," Frank added with his own criticism. "The Republican leadership is very undemocratic."
Forty-five percent of funds received by each state would have to go to families whose incomes fall below 30 percent of the area or state's median income, whichever is higher. At minimum, 30 percent would also go to families earning the minimum wage, and no more than 25 percent would go to the development, rehabilitation or preservation of existing affordable housing (either rental or homeownership).
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), which has led a campaign in support of the legislation, Massachusetts families earning $21,643 or less would fall into the 30 percent of the state median category and receive the bulk of the funding. In New Bedford, where 30 percent of the area median income is $15, 810, residents would qualify for the fund based on the state median income requirements.
"The idea is that the funds would be available to help communities, and then it would be as flexible as possible as long as communities meet some broad guidelines," said Kim Schaffer, outreach director for the NLIHC.
NLIHC shows data indicating a full-time (40 hours per week) worker in Massachusetts would have to earn $22.40 per hour in order (approximately $40,000 annually) to afford a two-bedroom rental unit at the state's Fair Market cost. Its data is based on 2000 U.S. Census data on family median income estimates and 2003 Consumer Price Index Data from HUD.
The legislation, Schaffer said, is much needed. "We get calls everyday from people who have been at their ropes," she said. "For every 4 families that need assistance, only one is receiving it. That really speaks to the dire shortages we are facing."
