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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (14582)	3/13/2006 7:10:00 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 542907

"Frist Suggests Original Port Deal Could Still Be Viable by Joe Gandelman Majority Leader Bill Frist now suggests that it could turn out that the controversial ports deal may not be not dead after all: Congress will closely watch a Dubai-owned company to be sure it transfers its U.S. port operations to an American company, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday. But Frist, R-Tenn., acknowledged that if an American buyer is not found, and the Bush administration determines there are no security risks, a deal for DP World to manage and operate major U.S. ports still could go through. "If everything that the president, the administration has said, and that is that there is absolutely no threatening or jeopardy to our security and safety of the American people ... I don't see how the deal would have to be canceled," Frist said on ABC's "This Week." Frist apparently didn't hear some GOPers such as Rep. Duncan Hunter (who has said on numerous TV and radio shows that he gave some troubling information to George Bush personally), nor has he apparently read the comments from politicos and others opposed to the deal once it had been announced that DP World would shed its U.S. operations. Here's what Hunter said on Fox News yesterday: Well, the president has an arm of government. It's called the Committee on Foreign Investment, CFI. It is supposed to look at these foreign acquisitions and look at them from a security standpoint. These folks let him down. The Dubai government in 2003 shipped 66 nuclear triggers, high-speed switches that can be used to detonate nuclear weapons — allowed that shipment to go to Islamabad, even while we had an American agent standing on the dock asking the customs director of Dubai not to let this shipment go. That information was not given to the Committee on Foreign Investment. They didn't get it. They let him down. They did a superficial look at this thing. And when the president turned to his people that he'd relied on, they gave him the go sign. They had rubber stamped this thing. So they let him down. And you know, I gave the president the federal district court documents, the affidavits of our customs agents, and he was very interested in getting those before they made the decision to — before Dubai pulled the plug on this thing. So I think the president, having all the information, would have stopped this deal. Whether the deal is one that would realistically pose a security risk is true or not, the fact is that there was a firestorm over this issue and an effective case was not made ahead of its announcement to either Congress or the American people. If it turns out that the deal still goes through there would be a firestorm because it would again raise a credibility issue. Some would ask why an American company couldn't be found, and the media would check to see if there had been other companies that could handle it. All, most likely, against the backdrop of a mid-term election year. Is it even remotely possible that this is in the cards? Well, if you read political tea leaves, although it's hard to tell, Senator John Warner pointedly suggested Congress not pass any laws on this issue: Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has acted as an important go-between for DP World and the administration. On behalf of DP World, Warner previously announced the company's offer to submit to an unusual, broader security review over the deal and then last week, in the full Senate, he announced its decision to transfer its U.S. operations to an American company. "We've got to wait and see how that's achieved," Warner told CNN's "Late Edition." "But I do not think Congress should take any more action on this ports issue. Put its attention on legislation to strengthen port security and to rewrite the CFIUS law," he said. So there is an outside chance, at least, that the controversy over this issue may not be over." themoderatevoice.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (14582)	3/13/2006 8:30:09 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542907

I tend to approve of the zero-tolerance stance. It seems to have worked - although it does need to be combined with targeted and increased policing in the areas. And it simply makes the streets feel safer and people are happier on them, which is good. Here's one famous UK example. And we don't have 'declining effects from crack wars' or hugely increased abortion rates as significant factors here... news.bbc.co.uk

To: Lane3 who wrote (14582)	3/13/2006 10:37:58 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 542907

The cracks in 'broken windows' Nice catch. Very interesting. Much research is always better than little or none. Bratton is wrong to consider the earlier "broken windows" finding sacrosanct. They may turn out to be right or better than other explanations but they always need testing.

To: Lane3 who wrote (14582)	3/13/2006 1:49:34 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 542907

They found that the actual level of physical disorder-the number of boarded-up buildings, for example-wasn't the most important factor in making people think their neighborhood was disordered: It was the number of black, and to a lesser extent Latino, neighbors. I would interpret the data thus: white people have more economic options than blacks and Latinos. If white people don't want to live in a neighborhood, there's probably something wrong with it. It's a chicken-and-egg phenomenon. But let's use my own neighborhood as an example. I live almost in Fairfax City, in one of those neighborhoods where the only way in and out is one street, and at the entrance to my neighborhood used to be a couple of blocks of old-style Fairfax City houses, that is to say, one story, built during WWII out of crappy material, less than 1500 sq. feet. Let's say 1200 sq. ft. And while I don't know how these particular houses came to be condemned, they were all condemned, for years. The house next door to mine was a rental house, in truly crappy condition, the neighbors say, until the guy next door bought it and fixed it up. He was sort of a pioneer. The entire block was racially mixed, and getting more so, and then the developers got approval to tear down the condemned houses and build McMansions, and now the neighborhood is getting whiter all the time. I did like the mix, personally. But I'm weird. Point being -- this story does tend to prove the Broken Windows theory, but thusly: people with options don't want to live in crappy neighborhoods, so the neighborhood gets crappier all the time. Self-perpetuating slide down the social scale. It's not racism that causes the slide -- the slide makes the neighborhood blacker, but the blacks are also poorer. Could be any reason -- I've seen neighborhoods destroyed by freeways, I've seen neighborhoods destroyed by smells, I've seen neighborhoods destroyed by noise. People with options just don't want to live there. And don't.