The Fight for Fircrest

Fircrest School in Shoreline is a nationally acclaimed "Center of Excellence" at which for more than 40 years profoundly disabled citizens have been cared for. But its cottages are closing one by one and its residents are being evicted into community homes. According to DSHS and legislative documents, this process will end with complete closure by 2007.

AFSCME members (including national AFSCME president Gerald McEntee), SEIU members, and a bipartisan representation of Washington State legislators rallied and marched in Shoreline on May 15th to protest the closure. At the rally, the slow eviction process was described by Fircrest supporters as a "Trail of Tears" and illustrated by Jeanelle Baldwin, who told the story of her quadriplegic daughter Sherry. Sherry died in March 2000, six weeks after being forced out of Fircrest into a series of community homes in which she sustained a variety of injuries.

(Washington State Employee, May 2004)

Ridership increasing on trains and buses

Total ridership for the first quarter of 2004 increased 23 percent over the same period in 2003, says Sound Transit (ST), a regional organization which provides mostly long-distance public transit from Olympia to Everett. Every weekday the ST Express regional buses, Sounder commuter trains and Tacoma Link light rail trains together carry more than 32,000 passengers. Even factoring out Tacoma Link light rail, which started operating last August and already averages more than 2,200 riders every weekday, ridership for Sounder and ST Express was still up 13 percent over the first quarter of 2003.

Seattle officials hire ex-FBI agent to battle minor-party privacy

Election law normally requires candidates to submit information about their donors, including names and addresses and their employers' names, but in August 2003, Judge Robert Lasnik issued a temporary injunction that allowed Linda Averill, the 2003 Freedom Socialist Party candidate for Seattle City Council, to submit this information in coded form. Averill requested the exemption because donors to minor parties have been exposed to harassment and retaliation. Allowances such as this have existed since disclosure laws were passed in the 1970s (FSP and the Socialist Workers Party have received them before), when the US Supreme Court recognized a lesser need for disclosure by minor parties, especially given the threats of violence against them. FSP and the group Radical Women received threats in 2003; one read, "I can't wait to kill you."

Seattle city officials are paying retired FBI career agent James Wright $350/hour to testify in Averill v. City of Seattle. To support the city's attempt to overturn the exemption, Wright claims that these threats are not to be taken seriously. Why are city attorneys spending thousands of dollars to do this? One interpretation is that Seattle's Democratic Party hopes to squash competition from the left by eliminating exemptions for socialist parties.

(Freedom Socialist, June-July 2004)

Rethinking the Roadless Rule

Native Forest Network, a local conservation group, has issued a report stating that 9.5 million acres of currently roadless areas in Montana and Idaho could be opened to logging and road building. This would happen if the Roadless Area Conservation Rule is reversed, which is expected. The Roadless Rule was enacted in January 2001 after a two-to-three year process that involved over 600 public meetings held by the Forest Service and consideration of comments by two million people, 95 percent of which favored full protection.

But a District Court judge in Wyoming enjoined the Roadless Rule in July 2001, declaring that it violated the National Environmental Protection Act and the Wilderness Act. In the two years since Department of Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman pledged to uphold the Roadless Rule, her undersecretary, Mark Rey, has worked to "gut" the Rule, NFN says; now, the Agriculture Department is "considering its options."

(Missoula Independent, May 20-27, 2004)

Older women's healthcare prospects grim

A new report released by the Older Women's League (OWL) reveals that, though more Americans lack healthcare insurance than ever before, aging women are particularly vulnerable. In Oregon, Measure 30 raises the bar on eligibility for the Oregon Standard Health Plan starting this summer. At a time when healthcare costs are soaring, this creates a crisis for under- and uninsured women who are approaching 65 - that is, too young to receive full Medicare benefits.

Women in that demographic group are especially vulnerable for a number of reasons. Some depend on a husband's health insurance but find that, when widowed, COBRA coverage is available for only 18 months. As the primary caregivers of children, women on average spend 14 years out of the workforce.

OWL advocates a single-payer system of universal healthcare, to be introduced through a Medicare buy-in option for those aged 55-65. The OWL report also calls for repeal of the Medicare Drug and Modernization Act of 2003, in order to preclude the privatization of Medicare.

(The Portland Alliance, June 2004)

Two Oly Activists write home from palestine

In a letter to Works In Progress newspaper of Tacoma, Siouxzie Morrison and Trent Lutzke describe their efforts to stop the destruction of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. They attend protests at various checkpoints and public squares, frequently encountering other protesters and large numbers of Israeli activists. At one protest at the Kissufim checkpoint, more than 1000 protesters had arrived, including twelve packed buses from all over Israel.

At one point, they examined a parked D-9 bulldozer - the same kind that killed fellow Olympia activist Rachel Corrie in 2003 - and determined that its driver did see Rachel. "If you take one step back from the blade (2-3 feet), you can make eye contact with the driver." Near the end of their letter, Trent and Siouxzie report, "As we said in our last update, we have met awesome Israeli activists this way. Any of you who had doubts about Israelis, we have stories that will surely change your minds."

(Works in Progress, June 2004)

Gov't Warns Publishers: Don't Edit

In September 2003, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said that literary and scientific manuscripts from Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan were subject to trade embargoes, unless the documents were "camera ready." This meant that publishers would need government permission to make routine edits on these documents, even edits to correct spelling or grammar.

After publishers and First Amendment advocates condemned this action, OFAC relaxed its rule in April 2004 to allow style and copy editing, though restraints remain on collaboration and editing for substance. NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin said, "it's absurd to treat publishers of scientific papers and works of fiction as if they were 'trading with the enemy.' This interpretation will undermine both our knowledge base and a cornerstone of democracy - free speech and the free exchange of ideas. In the effort to promote freedom abroad, the government seems willing to sacrifice it at home."

(Censorship News, Newsletter of the National Coalition Against Censorship [NCAC], Spring, 2004)

Halliburton: "Don't Worry About Price"

Two whistleblowers have stepped forward to detail procedures Halliburton has used to extract more profit out of its contracts with the US Army. Some of its strategies caused Halliburton to directly overcharge, others led it to accept - or even invite - overcharging by its own vendors, and then pass the excess charge on to the Army and the taxpayer. The whistleblowers described the following patterns:

• Telling employees that price does not matter - Halliburton frequently told employees not to worry about high prices charged by vendors because the Army would reimburse.
• Avoiding competition among vendors - Halliburton strove to keep purchase orders under $2500 to avoid having to obtain bids from multiple vendors. It broke up large purchase orders to get them below $2500.
• Inviting unjustifiably high quotes - Halliburton buyers routinely told vendors that they would accept any quote below $2500 for a requisition, regardless of the actual cost of the requisition. This invited vendors to overcharge.
• Relying on an inadequate list of preferred vendors - Halliburton's buyers often relied on a list of preferred Kuwaiti vendors that often charged outrageous prices.

(Multinational Monitor, March 20, 2004)