Showing posts with label American Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Studies. Show all posts

Apr 17, 2011

In southwest Va., as more need help, aid organization has less to give


By Eli Saslow, Saturday, April 16, 8:22 PM

PULASKI, Va. — The destitute people who line up outside her office are asking for more help than ever. The organization where she works has less than ever to give. It falls on Denise Hancock to navigate the chasm in between, so she rubs her forehead, opens her office door and calls out into the waiting room. “Come on in,” she says.

The first client this morning at the Pulaski Community Action office is a young woman with tangled hair and smudged eyeliner, a single mother of two who lost her job at Shoney’s restaurant. “You’re my last resort,” she says, handing over a piece of paper stamped, “Urgent: Termination Notice.” It is an electric bill for $510.15 with full payment due immediately. “Can you help me?” she asks.

Hancock purses her lips, already knowing what will come next. She punches numbers into a calculator and then begins the same conversation she will have 14 more times on this day alone.

“I’m really sorry,” she says. “All we can afford to give right now is $35.”

This is how Hancock spends her days: caught in a constant tug-of-war between competing economic disasters. She works for an emergency assistance program in a town where one-third of people live in poverty and a record number rely on food stamps. While the talk in Washington and on Wall Street is about signs of economic recovery, people here in southwest Virginia come to Hancock’s office seeking the basics for survival: Food. Shelter. Work. Formula for a newborn. Medication for a failing heart.

At a time of such high demand, poverty-assistance programs across the country are facing a financial crisis of their own. Hancock’s organization, which totals four employees in a rundown, two-story house, is almost out of money. Local businesses that once donated thousands each month have yet to donate a single dollar this year. As the national deficit continues to skyrocket, federal and state governments are proposing the most severe budget cuts to social service programs in decades, threatening to reduce spending by 50 percent or more.

Now Hancock, a 43-year-old single woman with no savings account, worries about much more than how much money is left to give. She also worries about losing her own job.

But she is still employed on this day, at least, and now the young mother in her office begins to plead.

“Ma’am, only $35?” she says. “That’s not gonna make a dent. How can we survive with no heat, no stove, no washing machine, no microwave?”

“Okay, honey. Okay,” Hancock says. “Let’s take a look and see what we can do.”

She logs onto her computer, which contains a database of all 2,799 people who have come into this office for help in the last six months. The emergency assistance program has existed in Pulaski for almost 50 years, but only recently has the caseload started to grow by a few hundred people each month.

“I have a few standard questions that I have to ask for our records,” Hancock tells the young mother. “Is your income still zero?”

“Yes.”

“Still getting food stamps?”

“Yes.

“Still providing for all three people in the house?”

“Yes.”

Hancock studies the woman’s file. Outside the door, she can hear other voices in the waiting room, where the characters change but the conversation never does. The only topic that matters in Pulaski, a town of 9,000, is what has been lost: 3,000 textile jobs in the last decade, the Wal-Mart, the Main Street barbershop and all eight restaurants downtown. What remains are mostly vacated furniture factories with busted-out windows, churches, pawnshops and a food kitchen for the poor where Hancock herself eats lunch because it helps cut back on expenses. Only a year ago, the emergency assistance office routinely handed out $1,000 in vouchers each week. Now it has less than $1,000 total in its bank account until more donations come in.

“I’m sorry,” Hancock says, finally. “But $35 is the best we can do.”

“We’re going to be out on the street,” the woman says.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Hancock says. “But we’re hurting, too.”






Twenty miles away, at a coffee shop in Blacksburg, Va., Hancock’s boss works on a math problem of her own. Terry Smusz, the executive director of New River Community Action, runs 11 poverty-assistance organizations in southwest Virginia on an annual budget of $7 million. Now she studies a pie chart illustrating the sources of her 2010 funding, three-quarters of which is in doubt. “All these pieces of the pie are just disappearing,” she says.

Fifteen percent of her budget is federal stimulus money, a one-time influx that will be spent by this summer.

Seven percent is state funding, which the Virginia General Assembly voted to cut by more than 60 percent a few weeks earlier.

Two percent is private donations, which have declined to record lows.

Forty-eight percent comes from the federal budget, all at stake as Democrats and Republicans make proposals to Congress that would drastically change how the country fights poverty.

For 30 years, the federal government has funded poverty-assistance programs through the Community Services Block Grant, which distributes money to individual states that divide their share among thousands of local organizations. The grant demands minimal federal oversight, and some politicians have long disparaged it as wasteful or inefficient. But never before has it been targeted like this.

“This is the hardest time we’ve ever had financially,” Smusz says. “Everyone is tightening up, which creates a huge trickledown effect.”

The trickledown began in January, when President Obama, confronted with a staggering $14 trillion in national debt, announced during his State of the Union address that his 2012 budget would include “cuts to things I care deeply about, for example community action programs in low-income neighborhoods.” A former community organizer in Chicago, Obama proposed eliminating the $700 million block grant program and replacing it with $350 million in competitive grants, meaning some programs would receive nothing as early as next year.

That news spread to a network of 1,065 community action agencies across the country, where directors said they would be forced to lay off employees, close job training centers and shutter homeless shelters if Obama’s budget cuts are approved by Congress later this year. In existence since 1964, the Community Action Partnership worked with more than 20 million people last year when a record 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty.

One of those 1,065 directors, Smusz, called a meeting with her financial advisers to discuss worst-case scenarios, including one that would involve closing the entire agency within two years. “This would fundamentally change who we are and what we do,” she says. Already she has sent an e-mail to her staff warning that “cuts will need to be made to personnel — possibly positions, hours and/or fringe benefits.”

Finally, the trickledown effect reached the two-story house in Pulaski, where people gather around a tray of day-old bread in the lobby, share the grim details of their finances and come away with $35 vouchers that cover a tiny fraction of their bills. Food prices here have jumped 8 percent in the last year; electricity bills are up an average of 20 percent.

The office’s four employees are all local women, each with more than a decade of community action experience. Hancock is the only one who works on the first floor of the house, which means she sees the most traffic, sometimes counseling 30 people per day. She is a college graduate who has devoted 15 years to social service, but she still makes less than $26,000 per year.

It has always been a hard job, but lately there are days when it feels untenable. People here seem more desperate than ever, she says, and more likely to snap. Now the police sometimes drop by the office to make their presence known, and management has installed an emergency buzzer on the side of Hancock’s desk in case she feels threatened. Now bosses distribute training manuals on how to defuse “emotional situations” and industry experts talk about increased risks of burnout and “vicarious traumatization” for social service workers dealing with the ruins of a historic recession.

Hancock doesn’t much believe in any of that. Sometimes her day ends with a headache or a little back pain, and lately she needs a cigarette on the porch between appointments to calm her nerves. But it’s the people she counsels who are really suffering, she says. And for every one who is likely to snap, there are all the others.

Those are the ones she remembers from earlier this year, when, as a last resort, the emergency office placed an advertisement in the local newspaper asking for donations. The results began arriving in the mail a few days later: envelopes filled with $1 bills and sent from addresses listed in the agency’s database, a surge of donations from the very welfare recipients who come to the office for help.






Hancock is supposed to spend about five minutes with each client. Her job, officially, is to distribute vouchers and ask a few basic questions for record­­­-keeping — income amount, food stamp status and number of residents in the house.

But she also believes it is her job to listen, which means her sessions stray off script and last 20 minutes or more. “People who are suffering need to be heard,” she says, and that much she knows. Five years ago, her only son, Buck, committed suicide at 15. Hancock found him hanging from a tree in the backyard early the next morning. She wanted to sell the house or at least cut down the tree, but she couldn’t afford to do either. So instead she mounted a quilt made of Buck’s old T-shirts on the wall in her living room, put his name on her license plate, adopted eight dogs to keep her company and tore through mystery novels to occupy her mind. She saw a counselor and joined a support group. Being with other people kept the loneliness at bay. Talking helped.

So now, when people come into her office, she speaks in a constant hum even as she listens. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, I know. Oh, honey. Oh, Lordy.” She makes eye contact. She never looks at the clock. She tells them: “I shop at Family Dollar. I know what it’s like to be poor.” Mostly, she nods in affirmation and listens to their stories.

Into her office comes a 56-year-old named Sam: “I’ve been calling into the radio station, putting an ad on the air looking for work — any work — but there ain’t nothing. Nothing in this damn town. We’ve been staying out in the street three nights, then sleeping over with my nephew and them. Now we’ve found a place real cheap out in Newbern. Good news is, we’ve got either the security deposit or the rent. Bad news is, we don’t got both.”

Next is Cari, with long black hair and a too-small T-shirt: “I used to work over at the foundry, melting liquid iron, but that’s been a year and a half ago at least. My husband and me are living with a friend now. He’s real good to us, but food goes fast.”

Next is a 29-year-old who wants gas money to visit a sick grandfather: “I need a tank and some Tylenol.” Next is a woman with an electric bill for $422.13 who bounces her right knee compulsively and adds the numbers on the bill again and again: “This can’t be right, can it? No, this can’t be right.” Next is a regular client, an ex-convict who comes each month for food, and Hancock walks next door to the pantry and fills four Save-A-Lot plastic bags with chicken gizzards, canned beans, cheese, peanut butter, tuna, ramen noodles and generic-brand cereal. “This is great,” the man says, rifling through the bags to see what’s inside. “This is my grocery shopping.”

Next is a woman with a $210 water bill . . . and a homeless teenager carrying his belongings in a duffel bag . . . and a father of two hoping to pick up some cereal. Hancock gives him three boxes and watches him head out the door. The waiting room is empty. The office is quiet. Finally.

“I can’t take no more today,” Hancock says. “I need a cigarette.”

She walks out to the sloping front porch and lights up a Pyramid 100. A battered Ford truck pulls up across the street. The driver climbs out and starts walking toward the porch. “Oh no,” Hancock says. “Another.”

It’s almost 4:30 p.m., a full hour after she is scheduled to stop seeing clients. Two of her co-workers have already gone home for the day and the other is about to leave. But Hancock stubs out her cigarette, smiles at the woman and holds open the front door. The client follows her into the office, and Hancock sits down at the computer. For now, she still has a little money left to give out. For now, this is still her job.

“Okay,” she says, looking across the desk, beginning the same conversation again. “Income still zero, honey?”



saslowe@washpost.com
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Apr 14, 2011

‘Spillionaires’ are the new rich after BP oil spill payouts

"We're Getting There"Image by drp via Flickr
By Kim Barker | ProPublica, Wednesday, April 13, 6:29 PM

The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of money.

So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames: “spillionaires” or “BP rich.” Others hurt by the spill wound up getting comparatively little. Many people who got money deserved it. But in the end, BP’s attempt to make things right — spending more than $16 billion so far, mostly on damage claims and cleanup — created new divisions and even new wrongs.

Some of the inequities arose from the chaos that followed the April 20 spill. But in at least one corner of Louisiana, the dramatic differences can be traced in part to local powerbrokers.

To show how the money flowed, ProPublica interviewed people who worked on the spill and examined records for St. Bernard Parish, a coastal community about five miles southeast of downtown New Orleans.

Those documents show that companies with ties to parish insiders got lucrative contracts and then charged BP for every possible expense. The prime cleanup company submitted bills with little or no documentation. A subcontractor billed BP $15,400 per month to rent a generator that usually cost $1,500 a month. Another company charged BP more than a $1 million a month for land it had been renting for less than $1,700 a month. Assignments for individual fishermen also fell under the control of political leaders.

“This parish raped BP,” said Wayne Landry, chairman of the St. Bernard Parish Council, referring to the conduct of its political leadership. “At the end of the day, it really just frustrates me. I’m an elected official. I have guilt by association.”

The economic benefits rippled throughout the gulf. In the six months after the spill, sales tax receipts, a key measure of economic activity, rose significantly in eight of the 24 most affected communities from Louisiana to Florida. In only one community, in Mississippi, did receipts dip significantly.

Sales tax collections from Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish rose more than 71 percent. And St. Bernard had a bigger jump than anywhere. That parish collected almost $26.8 million in sales and lodging tax receipts in the six months after the spill, almost twice as much as over the same period in 2009. Flush with cash from cleanup and claims, many fishermen bought new boats and trucks. Sales at the nearest Chevrolet dealer rose 41 percent.

Parish president’s powers

Just days into the crisis, St. Bernard’s parish president, Craig Taffaro Jr., invoked a Louisiana law to declare a 30-day emergency and handle the crisis without most normal government checks and balances. He chose the prime contractor that supervised the cleanup. He and people close to him decided which fishermen would be hired to put out booms and search for oil.

In some ways, parish residents seemed to view the disaster and BP’s culpability as an opportunity to recover from earlier blows. St. Bernard bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded almost every home in August 2005. Population dropped almost in half, from about 67,000 in 2000 to 36,000 in 2010, largely because people didn’t go back after Katrina and the hurricanes that followed. Before the spill, the parish slashed its budget by 11 percent, cutting garbage collection, the fire department and mosquito control. There was just no money.

The spill changed that. Fishermen were paid to lay out protective booms to try to corral the oil. Contractors were hired to manage the cleanup and provide security. Claims money began flowing to people who said their lives had been upended by the crisis.

The St. Bernard government was among the first to benefit, snagging a $1 million check for oil-spill expenses. Parish employees went shopping for cameras, printers, a file cabinet, staplers and 712 shirts emblazoned with the parish name. Taffaro and other officials said the parish shouldn’t have had to spend its own resources to respond to the spill. The shirts were necessary to identify employees at the cleanup site, they said.

Some of the money also went to overtime pay for more than 40 parish employees, including three who claimed overtime for picking up dog food for the animal shelter. St. Bernard’s homeland security director, David Dysart, a salaried employee, got almost $23,000 for working 497 hours of overtime in less than seven weeks, a fact first reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Dysart did not respond to a query about his overtime.

As the money flowed, complaints spread. Subcontractors said those at the top of the cleanup creamed off money, while those at the bottom earned much less for doing the actual work.

BP provided only limited information to ProPublica. The federal government ceded control of cleanup spending to BP, and the U.S. Coast Guard, the federal agency most involved with overseeing BP’s response, said BP was spending whatever was required to clean up the spill.

Taffaro and other St. Bernard officials refused to respond to public-records requests ProPublica began filing in November. When asked again last week why the parish hadn’t provided any records, Dysart said that he would be happy to help but that filling the request would take time and cost a lot of money.

“I’m in the process of really, truly trying to assist you,” said Dysart, who is also the parish’s interim chief administrative officer.

In response to questions submitted by ProPublica last month, Taffaro said through his spokeswoman that he can approve overtime for salaried employees in extenuating circumstances and that Dysart eventually decided to stop taking overtime. Taffaro said that paying overtime for picking up dog food was necessary because the spill had caused fishermen to abandon their dogs.

Politically connected firms

Many companies and people earning big money in St. Bernard Parish had connections to parish powerbrokers, according to court documents, parish records and interviews done by ProPublica.

BP based its cleanup operation in the parish on land leased by Amigo Enterprises, which had been paying less than $1,700 a month to the Arlene and Joseph Meraux Charitable Foundation, according to the nonprofit’s most recent tax returns. But Amigo billed BP more than $1.1 million a month, BP spokesman Joe Ellis said. One of Amigo’s owners was St. Bernard’s sheriff of 26 years, Jack Stephens, who was also on the Meraux Foundation board.

Anthony Fernandez Jr., Stephens’s cousin and manager of Amigo Enterprises, said BP’s figure of $1.1 million was too high, but he refused to provide the actual amount. Stephens didn’t return calls for comment.

BP had no comment on the allegations that it was overcharged.

The company that benefited most from BP’s checkbook was Loupe Construction, a small, family-owned business. On May 5, Taffaro chose Loupe to manage the cleanup in St. Bernard, a contract that would eventually be worth as much as $125 million. Until then, its main job in St. Bernard had been helping to rebuild levees.

Taffaro said he selected Loupe after asking for proposals from several companies. The decision didn’t sit well with everyone.

“That company had no particular expertise in oil mitigation — none,” said Landry, the parish council chairman. “But we’ve been kept in the dark on the entire operation. Pardon the pun, but we’ve been left out of the loop.”

Company owner Paul Loupe referred questions to his attorneys. One, Karl Dix, said the company was chosen because of its levee projects and heavy construction work and because it was available. “There was this urgent need to start work immediately to protect the coastline,” Dix said.

After Taffaro named Loupe as the lead contractor, there was a feeding frenzy to get hired by the company. People with little connection to commercial fishing used old boats or bought new ones and signed up to work. Companies from Washington State, Nevada and Mississippi came to town. Everyone wanted a piece, just as after Hurricane Katrina. Only this time, the federal government wasn’t footing the bill. A reviled corporation was, and the prices reflected that.

BP sent a letter to the company in late August stating that all of Loupe’s invoices lacked the proper documentation.

“There was a lot of gouging,” said David Northcutt, who worked for a Loupe subcontractor and has since sued for unpaid wages. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of people.”

As the cleanup dragged on, Loupe faced a cash-flow problem. For help, Loupe turned to Park Investments, a local company that primarily develops shopping malls. Park Investments and its related companies had done business with plenty of parish officials, including Stephens, the sheriff.

Although a search of court records showed that Park Investments rarely made such loans, the company agreed to loan Loupe an unspecified amount of money, with BP payments as collateral.

Park Investments and companies run by its two top executives donate frequently to Taffaro and other politicians, both statewide and nationally.

Confusing claims process

By fall, the small amount of oil that had hit parish waters was mostly gone, and the fishermen were getting the bulk of their BP money through the claims process, not the cleanup. The $20 billion compensation fund that BP and the federal government set up in August would run for three years, pay people who could prove damages from the spill and in theory avoid costly court battles.

Kenneth Feinberg, who administers the fund, said his team was initially overwhelmed by the number of claims it received.

The system didn’t differentiate between fishermen who got cleanup jobs with BP and those who didn’t. The amount people received for their initial six-month emergency claims was based on the paperwork they submitted, not their actual losses.

One man who earned $67,000 in 2009, fishing crabs and hunting a swamp rat called nutria, got $100,000 for his six-month claim. That was on top of $90,000 for working on the cleanup and $20,000 he received in initial BP claims. In the eight months after the spill, he made $210,000, more than three times his 2009 income.

But Thomas Gonzales, who said he filed $90,000 in taxable income in 2009, received only $22,000 in his six-month payment. “They’re giving the money to the young generation,” said Gonzales, who is 73. “They figure I got one foot over the hole.”

Many fishermen fretted that businesses that had been hurt by the recession, not the spill, were getting BP money: hairdressers, waiters, restaurant owners.

Felesia Carter, a manager at St. Bernard’s only off-track betting parlor, said customers were gambling away claims money. Her business was so good, she said, that employees worked overtime.

“I don’t understand how BP is just giving its money out like this,” Carter said. “Give it to the people who deserve it.”

Kim Barker is a writer for ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit news organization that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. A longer version of this article appears on the organization’s Web site. ProPublica’s research director, Lisa Schwartz, and researchers Kitty Bennett, Sasha Chavkin and Liz Day contributed to this report. To see a ProPublica story and video about a gulf fisherman, go to propublica.org/delacroix.


health-science@washpost.com
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Apr 13, 2011

$4-a-gallon gas fueling fears for US economic recovery

NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 20:  Traders work minutes ...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
By Michael A. Fletcher and Ylan Q. Mui, Tuesday, April 12, 9:12 PM

Gasoline prices are soaring toward $4 a gallon, a threshold that some analysts say will damage the fragile economic recovery and crimp consumer spending just as families are planning their summer vacations.

Higher prices saddle businesses with higher transportation costs, causing them to either swallow them or pass them along to already strapped customers. As gasoline costs go up, consumers are left with less money to spend elsewhere. And there is evidence that the hike at the pump is beginning to push drivers off the road.

Gasoline prices, which are approaching record levels, “are going to have a very profound effect on the economy,” said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland.

D.C. resident Amber Sutton, who drives 25 miles each way to her job in Woodbridge, said rising gasoline prices have caused her to cut back on restaurants and other entertainment.

“I already was spending a ton on gas,” she said. “But now it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline Monday was $3.79 — up more than a dime from the previous week and 93 cents from a year earlier, according the Energy Information Administration. In California, the average is now $4.16, and prices are above $4 a gallon at some stations in the District and elsewhere.

Prices have risen so high, so fast that some market analysts predicted a sell-off in the short term. That sentiment sent crude oil prices tumbling Tuesday for the second consecutive day, dragging stock markets down about 1 percent, as evidence grew that escalating prices are beginning to threaten the global economic recovery.

But Morici and other economists say the pullback may only provide temporary relief at the pump and that higher prices could be here to stay.

Gasoline prices peaked in July 2008, when a gallon of regular sold for an average of $4.11 nationally. Some analysts fear prices could again approach that level in the near future, since demand for gasoline generally rises in the warm-weather months.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans says higher prices could slow their spending in other areas in the months ahead, according to a Deloitte survey of consumers’ spending intentions.

“We have an au pair from France, and she recently filled up our minivan and gave me a bill for $70,” said Melanie Janin, a mother of three from Bethesda. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ”

Already, motorists are cutting back on driving because of the increasing prices. “We are seeing some deterioration in U.S. motor gasoline demand . . . as pump prices near $3.75 a gallon,” which is when demand got soft in 2008, said David Greely, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “As the market moves to higher prices, the likelihood that you’re going to weaken demand increases.”

Bill Simon, chief executive of Wal-Mart U.S., said recently that the retailer sees fewer customers when gas prices begin to rise, because its mammoth stores are typically farther away than local grocery and convenience stores.

But as the spike continues, customers begin consolidating shopping trips and are more likely to visit just Wal-Mart instead of a handful of smaller retailers, Simon said. “We know that gas prices are going to continue to challenge people.”

New reports from Goldman Sachs and the International Energy Agency were the triggers for Tuesday’s $3.67-a-barrel drop in the price on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where a barrel of the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate closed at $106.25.

Oil prices above $100 will hurt the recovery, the IEA report said. “Economic impacts from high prices are never instantaneous, and often take months to materialize, but preliminary data for early 2011 already show signs of oil demand slowdown,” the IEA report said. “Unfortunately, the surest remedy for high prices may ultimately prove to be high prices themselves.”

Fears of continued Middle East unrest and the possibility that supply disruptions could spread beyond Libya have driven up the price of Brent crude, another key oil benchmark that is used by about two-thirds of the world, from $100 a barrel in mid-February to $125 a barrel last Friday, a level not seen since May of the record-setting 2008. Yet inventories and spare production capacity are bigger this year than they were then, Goldman noted.

Goldman Sachs analysts did not change their target prices, which are $105 a barrel for Brent much of this year with a rise to $120 a barrel by the end of 2012. Brent prices closed at $120.66 a barrel Tuesday, down $3.32, after reaching 21 / 2-year highs Monday.

Recent oil price hikes increasingly look like the result of speculation. Saudi oil ministry officials, worried that prices are so high that they might lower consumption, have contacted major oil companies offering additional supplies. But the firms responded that they have ample supplies.

“I think you are starting to see that the market might have overextended on prices,” said Frank A. Verrastro, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But even though crude prices are retreating, there is no telling how low they will go, or when the price decreases will show up at the pump, he said.


fletcherm@washpost.com


muiy@washpost.com
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Obama risks losing liberals with talk of cutting budget

President Barack Obama, runs away from the fam...Image via WikipediaBy Zachary A. Goldfarb and Peter Wallsten, Wednesday, April 13, 11:00 AM

President Obama faces a growing rebellion on the left as he courts independent voters and Republicans with his vision for reducing the nation’s debt by cutting government spending and restraining the costs of federal health insurance programs.

Key liberal groups, which helped elect Obama in 2008, are raising concerns that he has given up political ground to Republicans, allowing the message of reducing government to trump that of creating jobs and lowering the unemployment rate.

Seizing on Friday’s deal, which would cut $38.5 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget, activists on Tuesday threatened to sit out the 2012 presidential campaign if Obama goes too far with further cuts.

“The fundamental problem in our country right now is unemployment and a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, an advocacy group for the poor. “It appears the president is fighting on the wrong terrain and is conceding that the only thing we should be talking about is how to bring down the deficit.”

The clash over government spending — coming as Obama prepares to make a major speech on fiscal discipline Wednesday — is the latest example of the frayed relations between the president and a broad coalition of union and activist groups.

The dispute also underscores a key question about what will define the coming year for Obama: an attempt to defend longtime Democratic priorities over Republican objections or an effort to seek compromise and control the national debt.

The White House is responding to concerns about spending cuts by saying that the president is working to preserve important programs that help the economy grow — such as investments in education — while taking seriously the need to reduce the debt. The White House also has said that any reductions in government entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid must be accompanied by tax increases on the rich and cuts in defense spending.

“We can take a balanced approach toward reducing our deficit in the long term while protecting the investments which will enable us to grow in the 21st century,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.

The White House on Tuesday dispatched David Plouffe, one of Obama’s senior advisers, to meet with progressive groups at their routine coordinating meeting at the Capital Hilton, according to people knowledgeable about the meeting.

In the past, Obama has expressed exasperation with left-leaning groups because they had not credited him with achieving some of their goals, such as making affordable health care more widely available, under difficult political circumstances.

Since the budget deal was reached Friday, the White House has sounded two competing themes. It has trumpeted the cuts as being among the largest annual spending reductions in history, while arguing that they wouldn’t undermine economic activity.

“[W]hile the level of cuts was high . . . it does not have a negative impact on our economy,” Carney said. “The highest principle the president took into this negotiation was that we must not do anything that harms our recovery.”

But many liberals said Tuesday that they feared Obama had taken steps that would damage the economy. Leading liberal columnists joined with activists to pounce on the White House, questioning why the president is apparently embracing the image of deficit cutter rather than job creator.

Those frustrations have followed dismay on the left over Obama’s health-care law and the tax deal he negotiated with Republicans in December — not to mention elements of the administration’s foreign and trade policies.

The liberal activist group MoveOn.org, whose vast membership mobilized for Obama’s election in 2008, issued an e-mail blast to members Tuesday decrying the president’s deal with the GOP last week and the prospect that he might embrace some of his deficit commission’s ideas on deficit reduction.

Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn, said many of its 5 million members “worked their guts out” to help elect Obama. But, after the recent string of dealmaking with the GOP and the president’s apparent willingness to compromise on entitlements, he said the base could well stay home in 2012.

“If the president and the Democrats don’t stand up to Republicans, I don’t see people coming out and doing the work that it would take to get them elected,” Ruben said. “If they came out to vote, these die-hards might vote for the president, but whether they open their wallets and their hearts and their address books and hit the pavement, that’s a totally different thing.”

A liberal group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said Tuesday that more than 60,000 liberals responded to an e-mail by committing not to donate to Obama’s reelection campaign if he cuts Medicare or Medicaid spending.

Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Obama has apparently “abandoned” his earlier view that increased spending was needed to stimulate the economy. And that suggests he may look for a bargain on entitlements.

“If he feels like the path of least resistance is to cut a deal, even if that means unwinding Medicare and substantial cuts to Social Security, I think he might do that,” Baker said.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)--an avowed liberal who nevertheless is part of a bipartisan group of senators working on deficit reduction--said he understood the frustration of liberal advocates, but believes strongly that Obama has no better choice.

“We’re going through the stages of grief when it comes to our national debt, certainly on the left,” Durbin said at a breakfast with reporters Wednesday morning sponsored by Bloomberg News. “. . .At the end of the day, this is going to be a painful process.”

The near-budget shutdown of last week, Durbin said, and the need to dramatically cut domestic spending, “has been a wake up call to the left: that if you don’t move in a new direction to deal with this, then there’s going to be a re-run of this season opener with regularity.”

Some liberal activists say they recognize that Obama faces difficulties.

“I don’t think the president can be an inactive observer to a debate that is clearly going to be front and center in Washington — and that’s the deficit,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

He said the speech on Wednesday will offer the perfect opportunity for Obama to rebut Republicans’ claims that the best way to cut the deficit is simply by drastically slashing government programs.

goldfarbz@washpost.com

wallstenp@washpost.com
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Apr 9, 2011

Our Cowardly Congress



By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

This isn’t government we’re watching; this is junior high.

It’s unclear where the adults are, but they don’t seem to be in Washington. Beyond the malice of the threat to shut down the federal government, averted only at the last minute on Friday night, it’s painful how vapid the discourse is and how incompetent and cowardly our leaders have proved to be. A quick guide:

Democrats excoriated Republicans for threatening to shut down the government, but this mess is a consequence of the Democrats’ own failure to ensure a full year’s funding last year when they controlled both houses of Congress.

That’s when the budget should have been passed, before the fiscal year began on Oct. 1. But the Democrats were terror-stricken at the thought of approving spending bills that Republicans would criticize. So in gross dereliction of duty, the Democrats punted.

• Republicans say they’re trying to curb government spending and rescue the economy — but they threatened to shut down the government, even though that would have been both expensive and damaging to our economy.

The shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996 cost the federal government more than $1.4 billion, the Office of Management and Budget reported at the time. Much of that sum was for salaries repaid afterward for work that employees never did because they were on furlough. There were also lost fees at national parks and museums: tigers must be fed at the zoo, even if nobody is paying to see them.

It’s particularly reckless and callous to threaten a shutdown when the economy is already anemic. Among the federal workers and contractors potentially losing paychecks, some would miss payments on their homes, their credit cards or their children’s college tuition.

• Republicans are posturing against abortion in a way that would increase the number of abortions.

Conservatives have sought to bar federal funds from going directly to Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund. The money would not go for abortions, for federal law already blocks that, and the Population Fund doesn’t provide abortions. What the money would pay for is family planning.

In the United States, publicly financed family planning prevented 1.94 million unwanted pregnancies in 2006, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. The result of those averted pregnancies was 810,000 fewer abortions, the institute said.

Publicly financed contraception pays for itself, by reducing money spent through Medicaid on childbirth and child care. Guttmacher found that every $1 invested in family planning saved taxpayers $3.74.

As for international family planning, the Guttmacher Institute calculates that a 15 percent decline in spending there would mean 1.9 million more unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 more abortions and 5,000 more maternal deaths.

So when some lawmakers preen their anti-abortion feathers but take steps that would result in more abortions and more women dying in childbirth, that’s not governance, that’s hypocrisy.

• The House Republican budget initiative, prepared by Representative Paul Ryan, would slash spending and end Medicare and Medicaid as we know them — and it justifies all this as essential to confront soaring levels of government debt. Mr. Ryan is courageous to tackle entitlements so boldly, and he has a point: we do have a serious long-term debt problem, and Democrats haven’t had the guts to deal with it seriously.

Unfortunately, the new Republican initiative would worsen government debt problems, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The C.B.O. (whose numbers Republicans regularly use to attack Democrats) estimates that with current trends, debt will reach 67 percent of gross domestic product in 2022. But it finds that under the Republican plan, because of increased tax cuts, debt would reach 70 percent of G.D.P.

In other words, the Republican position is that America faces such a desperate debt crisis that we must throw millions under the bus — yet the result is more debt than if we do nothing.

What does all this mean? That we’re governed by self-absorbed, reckless children. Further evidence comes from a new study showing that American senators devote 27 percent of their press releases to “partisan taunts” rather than substance. “Partisan taunting seems to play a central role in the behavior of many senators,” declared the study, by Justin Grimmer of Stanford and Gary King of Harvard.

A bewildered Chinese friend asked me how the world’s leading democracy could be so mismanaged that it could shut down. I couldn’t explain. This budget war reflects inanity, incompetence and cowardice that are sadly inexplicable. I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter
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Jan 24, 2011

Hearings on Muslims trigger panic

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2011; A01

WESTBURY, N.Y. - They called it a summit to teach Muslims how to fight prejudice and fear. But all day long, fear was inescapable in the fluorescent-lit meeting hall of the Long Island mosque.

The top issue on everyone's mind this month at the Islamic Center of Long Island was this: What could be done to stop planned congressional hearings on alleged hidden radicalism among American Muslims and mosques?

The House hearings, scheduled to begin next month, have touched off a wave of panic throughout the U.S. Muslim community, which has spent much of the past year battling what it sees as a rising tide of Islamophobia. Conference calls, strategy sessions and letter-writing campaigns have been launched. Angry op-eds have compared the congressional inquiry to McCarthyism and the World War II persecution of Japanese Americans.

But for those who gathered at the Long Island mosque, the coming hearings represented not just a political issue, but a personal one. For the man organizing the hearings was the very lawmaker who was supposed to represent them in Washington - Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). Long before he had become their enemy, he had been one of their community's closest friends.

"He used to come to our weddings. He ate dinner in our homes," said the mosque's chairman, Habeeb Ahmed, a short medical technologist with graying hair sitting near the front. "Everything just changed suddenly after 9/11, and now he's holding hearings to say that people like us are radical extremists. I don't understand it."

At the meeting that day, Ahmed, a 55-year-old immigrant from India, was surrounded by more than a hundred Muslim leaders from New York and beyond.

There were Sunnis and Shiites. There were doctors, engineers and pharmacists who had left Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh to remake their lives in the United States. There were African Americans who had embraced Islam decades ago and new converts who were learning what it meant to be Muslim in America.

Some had flown in from as far away as Chicago. But most were regulars at the local Islamic center, including Ghazi Khankan, who had been one of its earliest members and had defended it for years against King's scorn.

"We have nothing to hide," Khankan said. "No matter what King says, others know that we are a peaceful community."

Although no member of the Islamic Center has ever been accused of terrorism, King has singled out the mosque as a hotbed of "radical Islam" and called its leaders extremists who should be put under surveillance. He maintains that most Muslim leaders in the United States aren't cooperating with authorities, even as arrests of homegrown terrorists are rising.

Now, as the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King said he is finally in a position to do something about it.

"My first goal is just to have people even acknowledge this as a real issue," King said. "This politically correct nonsense has kept us from debating and discussing what is one of this country's most vital issues. We are under siege by Muslim terrorists."

For years, such statements by King have provoked anger among Muslims in his district, but with the hearings looming, there is also a sense of shame and regret. Long Island Muslims worry that what began long ago as a broken relationship between them and their congressman could soon pose a threat to the entire U.S. Muslim community. Friend, then foe


The Islamic Center of Long Island sits just beyond the boundaries of New York's 3rd District. It is an imposing green-domed building nestled amid suburban split-levels and cul-de-sacs.

Muslims were once a rarity here, but a wave of immigration in the 1980s changed that. Today, 70,000 Muslims are estimated to live on Long Island, worshiping at about 22 mosques.

With 400 members, the Islamic Center is one of the largest and most prominent of the mosques. It took the lead in hosting the recent all-day summit for Muslim leaders, at which the discussion often devolved into anguished debate over how to deal with King.

We should pray for him, some said. We should try to vote him out of office, others said. One man proposed organizing protests outside King's congressional office. Another said that kind of reaction would play into the congressman's hands.

The concern has plagued the Westbury mosque for nine years. But it was not always so.

During King's earliest days as a congressman, he gave speeches at the Islamic Center and held book signings in the prayer hall. He took in Muslim interns and was one of the few Republicans who supported U.S. intervention in the 1990s to help Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In return, the Westbury mosque presented him with an award for his work in the Balkans. Many of its leaders regularly contributed to his campaigns, often paying $500 a person to attend his fundraisers.

King was even the main guest of honor on the day of greatest pride for the community: the 1993 opening of its long-awaited $3 million prayer hall, which many proudly note was built completely with locally raised funds. For years, a picture of King cutting the ceremonial ribbon hung on the bulletin board by the mosque's entrance.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. A breach of faith


In the weeks after the twin towers crumbled and the Pentagon burned, local reporters swarmed Long Island's mosques looking for reaction.

On Oct. 18, Khankan and another Westbury mosque leader were quoted in the local paper, repeating conspiracy theories that it wasn't Muslims who had orchestrated the attacks.

"Who really benefits from such a horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims and Arabs?" asked Khankan, the mosque's interfaith director at the time. "Definitely Muslims and Arabs do not benefit. It must be the enemy of Muslims and Arabs. An independent investigation must take place."

Safdar Chadda, a dentist from Pakistan who was then co-president of the mosque, speculated that "the Israeli government would benefit from this tragedy by now branding Palestinians as terrorists and crushing them by force."

Their statements infuriated King, who had lost friends in the attacks, as had many in his district, which lies 30 miles east of Manhattan.

"At this key moment for our country, the worst attack on us in history, these people who I thought were my friends were talking about Zionists and conspiracies," he said. "They were trying to look the other way while friends of mine were being murdered."

The day after the newspaper article appeared, the mosque's founder, Faroque Khan, went to a neighboring synagogue in a largely unsuccessful attempt to retract and explain what members of his mosque had said.

In the weeks that followed, Khan and others issued progressively stronger statements condemning al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for the attacks. They forwarded these to King's office, but the damage was already done.

To King, the fact that those words were ever uttered branded the mosque's leaders as radicals.

When told that King had specifically cited his statements after Sept. 11 as the turning point, a pained look spread across Khankan's face.

"You have to understand the confusion and shock at the time," said Khankan, who is 76, with a shuffling walk and a shock of white hair.

Tapes of bin Laden had just been released in which he praised but was not yet openly taking responsibility for the attacks. Many at the mosque recalled that Muslims had been immediately and falsely blamed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

After Sept. 11, Muslim children were being bullied at school, and someone had shot a pellet into the Islamic Center's window.

Khankan said he had spent most of his life working for Muslim groups, trying to create a bridge between outsiders and his community. That his words may have helped plant the seed for King's hearings, he said, is a heavy burden.

"I just wish I could talk to Pete today," he said. "I want to say to him: 'Tell me what I said or did so I can explain it. Give me a chance to clarify.' "

Targeting extremists




Since then, King has not set foot in the Islamic Center. Over the past decade, he has become one of the country's loudest voices on the dangers of Islamic extremism.

He has called for ethnic and religious-based profiling of air passengers and told Politico that there are "too many mosques in this country." He later tried to clarify that remark, saying he meant that "too many mosques in this country are not cooperating with law enforcement and too many have been taken over or are heavily influenced by extremists."

Of late, he has repeatedly alleged that 85 percent of U.S. mosques are run by radical extremists - an assertion he attributes to a 1999 statement by Sufi leader Hisham Kabbani at a State Department forum. It was rejected at the time by every major Muslim organization in the country.

But for some of King's Muslim constituents, his most hurtful words came in the form of his 2004 novel, "Vale of Tears." The story revolves around a fictional congressman who stumbles across a plan by terrorists - who are associated with a Long Island mosque and work with al-Qaeda and remnants of the Irish Republican Army - that could kill hundreds.

King dedicated the novel to "those who were murdered on September 11" and explained his purpose in the preface: "It describes how vulnerable we can become if we lower our guard - for even the slightest moment - and if we fail to recognize that our terrorist foes comprise a worldwide network with operatives active within our borders." Homegrown terrorism


Few take issue with King's assertion that homegrown terrorism is rising greatly.

In the past two years, according to Justice Department statistics, nearly 50 U.S. citizens have been charged with major terrorism counts - all of them allegedly motivated by radical Islamic beliefs.

But many law enforcement leaders disagree with King's allegation that most Muslim leaders do not cooperate with authorities. In the past, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has praised the community. And in a speech last month, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said: "The cooperation of Muslim and Arab American communities has been absolutely essential in identifying, and preventing, terrorist threats. We must never lose sight of this."

Experts also point to a string of recent terrorism cases that were foiled or reported by Muslim leaders.

Within King's district, Nassau County Lt. Kevin Smith said he couldn't recall the last time police received a tip from local mosques. But the detective said: "It's hard for us to judge what that means - whether that's because they're not reporting something or if there's just nothing to report. On the whole, though, I think we have a good relationship with the mosques in our county." Working with King


Many Muslim leaders say that after years of reaching out, they've given up on changing King's mind. At the Islamophobia summit, one man compared it to hitting his head against a brick wall: "If nothing changes, why keep beating yourself up?"

But one leader stood up and urged the crowd to keep trying. His name was Mohammed Saleh, and to the surprise of many, he called King a reasonable man.

"I have met King recently and talked to him," said Saleh, 63, a balding, bespectacled immigrant from Bangladesh. "In many ways, he is a good man."

Their relationship, Saleh said later, began as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks. As one of King's constituents, Saleh asked for help because someone with his name was on the government's airport watch list and he was being detained on international flights.

King helped devise a system by which Saleh could call authorities a few days in advance when he flies. Since then, Saleh has organized fundraisers for King and arranged for him to meet others in his circle of Bangladeshi Muslims.

Some Muslims question why Saleh would raise money for a man who regularly attacks their community. But as a pharmacist who has spent his life weighing dosages and prescriptions, Saleh said he has scrutinized the political makeup of King's district - a conservative strip amid a largely Democratic state. King won 72 percent of the vote in last year's election, he notes.

"I am a pragmatist, and it's clear we have to learn to work with Mr. King," Saleh said.

Saleh also says that as one of King's Muslim constituents, he bears a responsibility for King's views on Muslims. "If it was a broken relationship that sent King on his path now," Saleh said, "perhaps a new relationship will lead him back."

So, he spent most of last week trying to meet with King to express his concerns about the hearings and ask King to make sure they are fair.

In response, King said he is willing to listen but plans to push ahead with the hearings no matter how uncomfortable they may be for Muslims in his district or nationwide.

"This was not a fight I was looking for," King said. "I originally came into this as a supporter and friend of the Muslim community. But now we are facing a danger from within. And we need to see it and recognize it, because it's not something we can ignore anymore."

Staff researchers Jennifer Jenkins and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Jan 16, 2011

Returning to public, with more caution


By Philip Rucker and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 16, 2011; A01

LAS VEGAS - When Rep. Shelley Berkley decided to hold a "Congress on Your Corner" event here Friday, her plan was to prove that fear hadn't changed the way Congress works. She wound up proving the opposite.

Berkley's event in a small office building off the Strip featured a folding table, two flags and 60 constituents.

And at least 10 police officers.

"I hope this isn't the wave of the future," the Democrat said as she arrived and saw the officers. She hadn't asked for that level of protection: The Las Vegas police decided she needed it. "This should not be the way we have to do business in this country."

This week, it was.

The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in Tucson a week earlier left the powerful on Capitol Hill grappling with a very human fear: Just how risky, they wonder, is a life spent shaking hands with strangers?

For members of Congress, it was a week spent reassuring family members and making emergency plans with their staffs. Whose job is it to call 911? Who knows CPR? They read old hate mail, replayed memories of threats. Should we have reported that guy?

A few members talked about arming themselves. One suggested encasing the House's public galleries in Plexiglas.

By the end of the week, a handful started putting on their smiles and going out in public again. Politics is built in part on illusions, but this was a hard one: Do something that was previously utterly routine - and pretend it still was.

"I thought it was very important to send a signal to my constituents and let them know we're open for business," said Berkley, a congresswoman as loud and pugnacious as her city.

In addition to the police, a man stood behind Berkley as she met small groups of residents. It was her son Sam, 25, who had decided she needed him, too.

Historically, the most dangerous part of a lawmaker's job has been not violence, but travel. At least 29 members of Congress have died in accidents involving planes, automobiles and ships. One, Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), was killed when a Soviet fighter jet shot down his airliner in 1983.

Historians count six lawmakers who have been killed by strangers. They include a Republican congressman shot down in Arkansas in 1868, a House member from Texas who died in a riot in 1905 and two senators, Huey P. Long (D-La.) and Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), who were assassinated. Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.) was killed in 1978 by members of the Jonestown cult in Guyana. Another lawmaker while fighting in the Civil War.

Other attacks have occurred, including one in 1954 when Puerto Rican nationalists shot five members from the House gallery. All survived. In 1998, a gunman killed two Capitol Police officers near an entrance to the building.

Congress members say they knew - at least in theory - that their job might put them in danger. To lower their risk, they used little tricks: Hold town hall meetings in churches or schools, where people are socialized to behave. When someone goes on a wild-eyed rant, start your answer by thanking them. It lowers their temperature.

This week, however, it occurred to some that they might not have understood the dangers after all.

On Thursday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) sat down with her staff to talk about the Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson. She got a shock: One aide opened a drawer and pulled out a folder of letters, received in recent years, that they had never shown to the congresswoman.

One said, "You will soon be assassinated." Another said, "They know where you and your family members live." A third said, "It is time for the patriot movement to take things into their hands."

Freshman Rep. Rick Berg's wife and mother called to ask about his safety. "This has been a real transition in our life," he said. "I'd never considered this, and I don't think they'd ever considered this, a life-threatening job."

Berg's biggest fear is that constituents will be too frightened to attend public events featuring members of Congress, saying that the killing of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green in Tucson will give pause to anyone considering taking a child to a civic activity such as a town hall meeting.

"As a parent, I'd think twice about it, certainly if I were going to one in a big city," said Berg (R-N.D.).

This week, the House's sergeant-at-arms urged members to contact law enforcement officers in their districts. He also suggested installing a "panic button" at local offices so staff members could call police without picking up a phone.

Other members thought of more drastic measures. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he would consider carrying his Glock 23 more often so that, if necessary, he could shoot back. "I'd hate to be in a situation where I don't have the tool to do what needs to be done," he said.

Although the Capitol is protected by roadblocks, metal detectors and hundreds of armed police, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) wants another layer. An aide said Burton plans to reintroduce a bill that would enclose the House's public galleries in something like Plexiglas, the kind of arrangement that shields liquor-store clerks.

Some members - concerned about protecting themselves and the constituents who come out to meet them - have sought advice from freshman Rep. Michael G. Grimm (R-N.Y.), who worked as an undercover agent for the FBI.

Grimm already views the world as though he were a hunted mobster: He sits facing the door, looks for emergency exits and notices when people tug at their waistlines. Too much, and they could be carrying a gun. But, after the Tucson shootings, Grimm thought his staff needed more preparation.

He asked one staff member, a retired New York police detective, to lead quarterly classes in which people are assigned roles in a disaster.

"Know what your function is," Grimm said: These could include performing CPR, calling 911 or making detailed mental notes of an attacker's height and hair color. The detective could try to calm a potential attacker. "And know multiple functions - in case one of the victims, God forbid, is the retired detective."

Members said their families began calling in the hours after the attack, pressing them: Could this happen to you?

"I don't tell them when I receive threats. I don't want them to worry," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). But this week, the conversation was unavoidable: Besides the Giffords shooting, there were news reports about a 2009 case in which a man threatened to attack Lofgren on the street.

"Most of this is not to be taken seriously," the congresswoman told her family. "But, you know, when you say that . . . they're thinking, 'Gabby got shot on Saturday.' "

On Capitol Hill, the week passed in a foggy suspension. There was some talk of gun control: Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), whose husband was killed in a shooting rampage in 1993, said she plans to introduce a bill that would ban high-capacity gun magazines.

Only at the end of the week did lawmakers begin to talk about other political issues, as Republicans planned for a vote on repealing the new health-care law.

And, as the days passed, a few lawmakers ventured out again for public events. In fact, members said they heard constituents worrying about them.

"They're thanking me and telling me to keep safe," Lofgren said. "That's new."

Security precautions varied. In Silver Spring on Saturday morning, Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) didn't alert police before she made an appearance during a food drive at a Giant grocery store. Edwards arrived with only two of her staff members, chatted and playfully bagged groceries for an hour, then left.

In Minneapolis, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) drew about 100 people to his own "Congress on Your Corner" event. As he sat at a wooden table and took questions, two police officers stood a few feet away.

"I'm very insistent that we have visible, strong security," said Ellison, one of two Muslim members of Congress, who has received threats and angry letters. "Not for myself, I don't think I need any. I think people need to feel safe and be safe."

Ellison said that, for now, a visible security presence made people feel at ease. "We will remain vigilant, but the necessity to have two uniformed people there may not exist in a month or two," he said.

In Las Vegas, Berkley's constituents waited in folding chairs, then went in to see her alone or in small groups. They wanted to talk about foreclosures, taxes, Medicare benefits, or just to have their picture taken.

"After the tragedy in Arizona, we've got to show support for these people," said Cliff Arnold, 67, a retired hard-rock miner who had come to ask Berkley's advice about a problem with the Internal Revenue Service. He thanked her for holding the event. "They're just as vulnerable as a soldier in Iraq. It takes a lot of courage to do this work."

Berkley said she was glad she held the event. Talking to one constituent, she said, "We're going to do another one of these."

Then she turned to the plainclothes officers standing around her. "Sorry, guys," she said.

ruckerp@washpost.com fahrenthold@washpost.com

Fahrenthold reported from Washington. Staff writers Paul Kane, Ben Pershing, Lois Romano and Sandhya Somashekhar in Washington and Nia-Malika Henderson in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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Dixie and D.C. region drift farther and farther apart

By Steve Hendrix
Sunday, January 16, 2011; A01

Dixie Liquor stands alone. The Georgetown shop, which has been casting its neon glow across M Street NW for more than 50 years, is the only business in Washington and one of the few left in the region with the word "Dixie" in its name.

And it's not just the D-word. The region's Southern accent is also becoming measurably less pronounced, linguists say. The Confederate flag doesn't fly much in these parts anymore. Korean barbecue has taken its place alongside the Southern pit-cooked variety in many neighborhoods, and the "sweet tea line" that once stretched across Virginia has gotten blurry.

In all, according to academics and cultural observers, the Washington area's "Southernness" has fallen into steep decline, part of a trend away from strongly held regional identities. In the 150th anniversary year of the start of the Civil War, the region at the heart of the conflict has little left of its historic bond with Dixie.

"The cultural Mason-Dixon line is just moving farther and farther south as more people from other parts of the country move in," said H. Gibbs Knotts, a professor at Western Carolina University who, with a colleague, conducted a survey of Dixie-named businesses as a way to measure the shifting frontiers of the South. (The Mason-Dixon line, which set the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, was the symbolic divider between North and South in the Civil War era.) "From what we're finding, D.C. and Virginia are not appearing very Southern at all these days," Knotts said of the survey, published last year.

The trend has been decades in the making, of course. But some observers say the evolution is nearly complete, in good part because of the stepped-up migration of Northerners and immigrants into the Washington area.

"I do think we've reached a critical mass of some kind - we're not a real Southern state anymore," said former Virginia state senator Russell Potts, 71, a longtime lawmaker from Loudoun County and an independent gubernatorial candidate in 2005. "I happen to believe that southern Virginia now actually starts down near Richmond. You can't even say that Fredricksburg is Southern."

That's about right, said Sharon Ash, a University of Pennsylvania linguist and co-author of the 2005 Atlas of North American English. A 1941 study placed the Washington area in the South for pronunciation purposes. But her atlas now draws that line about 45 miles north of Richmond, which was the capital of the Confederacy.

"We put Washington and the northern part of Virginia in what we call the Midland, which also includes Philadelphia and Pittsburgh," Ash said. "Migration patterns are changing things everywhere." No clear boundaries


With all due respect to 18th-century surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, drawing hard lines around a cultural region is always an imprecise exercise, said Harry Watson, director of the Center of the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, which last month published several papers on the subject. Pockets of Southernness pop up far from the 11 states that made up the Confederacy, Watson said, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Bakersfield, Calif.

"We are never going to get any hard and fast answers on exactly where the South is unless, God forbid, there's another Southern nation with fortified borders," Watson said.

But the frontiers of the core South are clearly shifting away from Northern Virginia and Washington, he said.

"That whole area feels more metropolitan than it does Southern," said Watson, who is based in another evolving corner of the South: Chapel Hill, N.C. "Down here, we make jokes about occupied Northern Virginia."

To northbound Interstate 95 lovers of Southern food, Northern Virginia used to mark the "sweet tea line," beyond which diners could no longer expect to find the hyper-sugared version of the South's national beverage.

A researcher, looking at where McDonald's franchisees stopped offering sweet tea, once mapped the line just north of Richmond. But the chain took sweet tea across the country in 2008 and it is now available nationwide.

In his own attempt to quantify the shifting sands of regional identity, Knotts and a colleague last year reproduced a 1970s study that looked at what names businesses choose for themselves (they excluded the widespread Winn-Dixie grocery stores so as not to skew the sample). The "Dixie" that once proudly figured on signs throughout the region has largely receded to a pocket of the old South in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

"I would have been shocked to find much identification with Dixie in places like Northern Virginia," Knotts said. "And we didn't."

The Old Dominion received a "D score" of 0.03, which means that three Dixie names were found for every 100 with the word "American." Overall, the study ranked Virginia - along with Florida, Oklahoma and West Virginia - as "Sorta Southern," the least Southern of three categories. Richmond saw its embrace of Dixie business names cut in half since 1976, from 0.12 then to 0.05 last year.

In the District, the D score was never very high, Knotts said. The Georgetown liquor store was the only Dixie business in town both in 1976 and today.

Whether Washington should be defined as a Southern city has been a debate since the Civil War, when it was the seat of the Northern government but a hotbed of rebel sympathy. In modern times, the question has been more cultural than political. Washington's split personality was forever summarized by John F. Kennedy's worst-of-both-worlds description of it as a"city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." Different perspectives


As the hub of the nation's government, Washington is always home to thousands of newcomers, some of whom cling to their hometown identities. Those who arrive from the North often see the area as Southern, and those from the South feel a Northern vibe.

But Greg Carr, who grew up in Nashville, sees Southern markers here. Carr, chairman of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, said he recognizes the fading signs of the Old South in this region.

"For black folks, this is still very much a Southern city," Carr said. "D.C. has very little in common with a stereotypical Northern city."

Carr cited the presence of an entrenched black elite in Washington as a characteristic of Southern cities, along the lines of Atlanta and Charlotte. Its still-living history of sharply segregated neighborhoods is another sign, as well as the paucity of white ethnic neighborhoods, such as Italian or Irish sections of Baltimore, New York and Boston.

"Even the architecture is more Southern," Carr said. "You have no concrete canyons in Washington."

Even as black residents from other states and countries move to Washington in greater numbers, the cultural feeling of African American communities remains Southern, he said.

"Anacostia, that's the South over there," Carr said. "Folks with their shirts off washing their cars, waving at you as you pass by. That's Southern."

And at least one major retailer still views Washington as a Southern market. Although Safeway has no stores in the deep South, the supermarket chain says its cluster of stores between Culpeper, Va., and Frederick, Md., posts the company's biggest sales of such regional offerings as fried chicken, ham hocks and other "country meats," collard greens and sweet potatoes, spokesman Greg TenEyck said.

Adrienne Carter, 66, is a big buyer of such ingredients. Along with her husband, Alvin, Carter owns the Hitching Post, a soul food restaurant on Upshur Street NW. To her, Washington remains Southern, but the feeling is fading.

Although never as common in Washington as in other Southern cities, the number of neighborhood places serving fried chicken, fish, macaroni and cheese, greens and other Southern delicacies has declined in recent decades.

"I remember my father going to places up and down Ninth and U" streets, Carter said. "Now they call that area Little Ethiopia."

Jan 3, 2011

5 Good Books about Muslim Cultures and America


After 9/11, many books were published about America's relationship with the Muslim world. Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are in the news daily, and it is clear that there is a lot most of us do not know about the history, culture and religion of these countries. Fortunately, there is a way to learn more about Islam, and Islamic countries' relationships with America, without reading dry, political books. These books on Islam and America are informative, but read like good novels.

'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini

'The Kite Runner' by Khaled HosseiniRiverhead
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a gripping, page-turning fiction novel about a boy in Afghanistan who moves to America in the 1980s and how a haunting incident from his childhood draws him back to the country as an adult despite the dangers of the Taliban. This is a must read! The Kite Runner is great for learning about Afghanistan.

'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini

'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini Riverhead
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is superbly written, has a page-turning story, and will help you learn more about Afghanistan. In his follow up novel to The Kite Runner, Hosseini has once again created a heartbreaking masterpiece that connects readers with life in Afghanistan over the past several decades and highlights the common hopes, dreams and struggles that make us human.

'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver RelinPenguin
Three Cups of Tea is the true story of Greg Mortenson's adventures building schools in remote Northern Pakistan. It is an inspirational nonfiction book and a great way to learn more about Islam. Three Cups of Tea is great for learning about Pakistan.

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'Reading Lolita in Tehran' by Azar Nafisi

'Reading Lolita in Tehran'Random House
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi is the true story of an underground women's book club in Iran. Part literary criticism, part history of the Islamic Revolution, Reading Lolita in Tehran will especially appeal to book clubs and readers who will understand comparisons between the novels the women read and the situation in Iran. Reading Lolita in Tehran is great for learning about Iran.

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'Terrorist' by John Updike

'Terrorist' by John UpdikeKnopf
Terrorist by John Updike is a novel about an 18-year-old boy in NJ who is recruited to take part in a terrorist attack. In Terrorist, Updike imagines how an Islamic fundamentalist sees America. Terrorist is great for thinking about Islamic fundamentalism.

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