Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEdNews

These three sentences prove why Generals are not paid to determine political policy:

“The border should not be militarized,” said National Guard Chief Steven Blum at Thursday’s press conference in Austin. “We made a conscious choice not to use the National Guard as a police force. We should intervene to save lives, not to take them.”

If the plain speaking General were paid to make policy, we would stop at the first sentence and scrap the deployment of National Guard to the border. But there’s more.

In the logical transition that Blum makes from police to military between sentences two and three, his propositions make it seem like the real function of a police force is to take lives not save them. Again, this kind of plain speaking would have policy consequences quite different from the ones being made by politicos. Especially if we add to the consequences of police work the entire network of jails and prisons, we could ask, are the police saving lives or taking them?

The third sentence on its own terms suggests sending the Guard to rescue people from the border desert, preventing the summer death toll from climbing with the heat. But as if to interrupt the startling revolution inaugurated by his logic, the General gives us three more sentences to hear.

“This is not a military mission,” Blum said. “This is not militarizing. This is not an invasion.”

Here, with his thrice repeated invocation of the great Hegelian “this”, the General switches his propositions from universals to existentials, proving Hegel’s thesis that “this” can be anything, anywhere, anytime.

In “this” the General speaks just the facts: he is not commanding a military mission, his troops are not militarizing anything, and (presumably since the Guard will keep to this side of the Rio Bravo, etc.) this is not an invasion.

Is it the general’s fault that he is speaking exactly from where he has no real business being? And isn’t it only a matter of time before this happens to any other general in the USA?

Added Paul McHale, the Pentagon’s assistant defense secretary for Homeland Defense: “We would send the wrong message to our friends and neighbors to the south to have a large, visible buildup along the border.”

Back to universals. A border buildup would send the wrong signal. You have to supply what follows. Are we not sending troops to the border? Yes we are. Are they not visible or large? In this question lies the crossroads to our logical challenge.

If the military force is visible and large, it will send the wrong signal to “our friends to the south.” If we are not sending the wrong signal, “our friends” should try to see it as invisible and small (and there is a case to be made for this along a line that stretches a couple thousand miles.)

But the military deployment of 6,000 troops, half of whom will stand guard along the border, must be visible and large enough for something. Otherwise, why is the Pentagon’s man standing here? So let’s leave aside for now the likelihood that we are sending the wrong signals to our friends.

If the troops being deployed by the Pentagon are not police, and if they are not military, then what are they large and visible enough to accomplish? And however we answer the question, don’t we already have the marks of a demoralizing mission from a military point of view? Another nonmission with a nonpurpose that troops will be ordered to do?

In fact, the troops will be large and visible enough to stand as uniformed symbols of something. But what? What is being signified in this pure surface of a nonmission in uniform? Collective fear? State identity? Here we begin to see a psy-ops borderland where (in the language of Slavoj Zizek) the real meets reality right along the line where we make our existence into what we need to be.

To answer the question of what this mission is, one must ask the egos of the people for whom this signifying is taking place.

Which brings us to the saddest part nearly, because the saddest thing isn’t the need of millions to see this pure image of the uniform standing between self and the Other. One hardly expects to be free of “friends and neighbors” such as these, who know that they need it.

The saddest part is the indifference of millions for whom, even in times instructive as these, the haunting by this pure, uniformed symbol only serves to ask why we have failed to speak the truth: you’re dead, now go away! Thanks to Austin American-Statesman reporter Mark Lisheron for these quotes taken from the Friday paper. They echo KVUE’s live television report from Camp Mabry: the military is not militarizing.

Among Democrats widely quoted as opposing Bush’s plan to send National Guard to the border is Sylvestre Reyes, Democratic Congressman from El Paso and a 26 (and 1/2) year veteran of the border patrol.

During congressional debate last week on the National Defense Authorization Act, Reyes spoke favorably of “close cooperation” between the military and the border patrol, but he drew the line against deploying troops.

Reyes, who once served as Sector Chief of the El Paso border patrol, praised Defense Department contributions to “Joint Task Force North” along the border, “in specific consortium projects such as building roads, building infrastructure support such as strategic fencing in certain parts of the border area.” But when it came time to vote on authorization to send troops (in the form of the paradoxically titled Goode amendment) Reyes was strongly opposed:

“The reality of this amendment is that it is very expensive. It provides authority to the Department of Defense that already exists with the President of the United States should an emergency come up or an emergency exist. It is a bad idea because we need trained, experienced professionals on that border. That border is way too dangerous for us to be sending troops that are trained primarily for combat into a law enforcement situation, understanding that that capability is in reserve, because the President of the United States has that authority.”

Joined by Ortiz

Joining Reyes in opposition to a militarized border was Rep. Solomon Ortiz:

“I have been a law enforcement officer, and served in the Army,” said Ortiz, who once served as Sheriff of Nueces County. “We are talking about two vastly different things–protecting the borders–and using the military in law enforcement.”

Ortiz favored other plans endorsed by Bush during Monday night’s speech, such as more detention centers for OTMs (other than Mexicans) and more border guards.

“Even if we caught every single illegal immigrant crossing our border, we would still have no place to hold them, and we would be forced to release them–as we are doing now,” said Ortiz.

“We should be focused on the need for professional law enforcement officers/intelligence associated with knowing who is coming across our borders … and providing funds to hold them,” concluded Ortiz in extended remarks inserted into the Congressional Record of May 11, 2006.

Hypocrisy as Crisis

Hypocritical is a word that Reyes used to discredit the push for troops when other measures would deflate the “pull” to which illegal immigrants respond.

“One of the things, an observation that I will make about us is that oftentimes we are very hypocritical about the things that we say versus the things that we do in the people’s House,” said Reyes.

“In 1986, we passed employer sanctions to address the pull factor in the issue of illegal immigration and immigration reform. This Congress failed to fund employer sanctions, failed to fund the very vehicle that would have addressed the pull factor.

“For the last 10 years that I have been in Congress, we have been debating troops on the border. I would say to my good friend from West Virginia, my good friend from Arizona, my good friend from California, if we are interested in controlling the border, if we are truly interested in doing a good job for the American people, then let’s fund employer sanctions. And short of that, let’s fund H.R. 98, which gives us a fraud-proof Social Security card and a system where employers would be accountable. You would eliminate the pull factor. We wouldn’t need to have this useless debate on troops on the border.”

Reyes’ approach to border security earns the veteran border patrol officer a ranking of zero percent from the hard-line immigration watchdogs at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Nukular Sanity, Too

Among his more interesting rankings is a 78 percent record from SANE, “indicating a pro-peace voting record.” Reyes voted against authorizing an invasion of Iraq in Oct. 2002.

As ranking member of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, Rep. Reyes on May 10 addressed nuclear war policies, and indicated that Congress is charting a less hawkish trajectory than one recently revealed by Pentagon watchdogs.

In the short time that I have, I want to highlight three areas of bipartisan agreement: ballistic missile defense, conventional global strike capability, and operationally responsive space.

H.R. 5122 redistricts missile defense funding from longer-range programs, such as a multiple-kill vehicle, to near-term needs, such as buying upgrades for the Patriot and Aegis interceptors that can protect our servicemembers and allies today.

While we might disagree about whether further adjustments or reductions are possible from within the $10.4 billion for missile defense programs, I commend the subcommittee chairman for this good-faith effort and great work on this bipartisan agreement. This bill clearly reflects a bipartisan desire to obtain effective missile defense capabilities aimed at defeating real threats.

The bill also slows down development of an dvanced global strike capability using the Trident missile in a conventional capacity. While not precluding development of this capability, the subcommittee has concerns that basing a conventional Trident missile on a traditionally nuclear platform could lead to misinterpretation by both our friends and potential adversaries of a launch of a conventional missile. There are real strategic implications of pursuing this capability. We must ensure that we have done all we can to avoid the potential for conflict escalation through misinterpretation.

Finally, the bill as reported contains a $20 million add for operationally responsive space to encourage the Pentagon to pay more attention to the potential of smaller and less expensive satellites that might complement or supplement current expensive satellite systems designed for both military and intelligence purposes. We cannot expect small satellites to meet all mission requirements, but we need a more robust, focused effort to seriously explore their potential given the spiraling acquisition costs of our major satellite programs.

Mr. Chairman, there are differences in the way we approach some of these issues, but as we have seen this afternoon everyone gets an opportunity to express their views. Time does not permit me to describe in detail the rest of our subcommittee’s mark and important issues, but I again want to thank our chairman, Mr. Everett, for his bipartisan leadership, our chairman of the committee and ranking member, and I commend this bill to my colleagues and hope that everyone will support this.

As with his hard-earned background in border enforcement, Reyes drew praise from a colleague for having been “to the warfighting theaters more than any other Member of either body in this Congress.”–gm

‘Serious Questions’ posed by Congressman Reyes in a May 12 Press Release:

• Which troops will be deployed and how will this deployment affect the ongoing commitment of 24,000 Army National Guard troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? How will this affect the 24-month call-up restriction?

• Under what authority will troops be deployed?

• What is the projected cost of a troop deployment to the Southern border, and have funds been identified for allocation to this new mission?

• What are the rules of engagement under which these troops will serve?

• Which agency will lead the operations? Will military troops be under the control of the civilian leadership of the Border Pa
trol which has the primary responsibility for securing our nation’s borders?

• What provisions have been made for the detention of persons in the border region by military members?

• What plans have been made to ensure that interoperable communications are available to allow military and civilian law enforcement personnel to communicate?

• Will Air Force or the other military branches provide air support? Has the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for aerial surveillance been coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration and will UAV aircraft including the Air Force’s Predator be available to support this troop deployment in light of the shortage of these air vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan?

PS: a footnote on the temptations of border technology.<

In a telephone conversation last week, an L.A. activist talked about “neo-liberalism.” It is a crucial term for globalization activists, but it can be confusing for audiences in the USA, since it denotes right-wing privatization. We’ll use the term in an effort to accustom local readers to international dialogue. At any rate, the Center for Public Policy Priorities has presented an excellent summary of events regarding a Texas experiment with neo-liberalism in human services, pasted below–gm
Background: Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment (IE&E)

The 2003 Legislature directed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to change the way people apply for public benefits, including Medicaid, CHIP, Food Stamps, and cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), by cutting state workers and relying heavily on telephone call centers.

HHSC was given the option to either operate or outsource the call centers, and opted to turn over a large portion of eligibility system operations to private contractors. HHSC dubbed the new system Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment (IE&E).

The state entered into a contract that included not just the new call centers, but also CHIP eligibility services, several major Medicaid contracted services, and maintenance of the new eligibility computer system (TIERS) the state had been developing for years.

HHSC planned to close 99 of its 381 eligibility offices by the end of 2006, with four new call centers playing a major role in processing applications and renewals. Eventually, clients would be able to apply via the Internet as well.

Children’s Problems Soon Apparent

The new contractor took over CHIP enrollment and renewal for the entire state in November 2005. Transition to the new IE&E system began in Travis and Hays counties in January 2006, and was scheduled to “roll out “ (phase in) across the state over a 10-month period. (This first phase of the IE&E roll-out also affected a small number of clients who used to live in Travis and Hays counties, whose cases were processed and remain in the new TIERS system.)

Serious problems with processing CHIP renewals and new applications for CHIP and Children’s Medicaid soon became apparent: Children’s Medicaid enrollment dropped an unprecedented 29,000 from December 1 to January 1; CHIP renewal rates plummeted from 84% to 52%; and new CHIP enrollees diminished to half their usual level.

By early March it was clear that the Medicaid decline was not a temporary aberration, CHIP renewals remained dismally low, and disenrollments surged (see table, page 7). Child health advocates shared their concerns with HHSC officials and the press. HHSC extended CHIP coverage for about 6,000 children whose parents had not been given proper or accurate notice by the contractor of their correct enrollment fees.

USDA Oversight

Meanwhile, it was also becoming clear that processing of Medicaid and Food Stamps renewals and applications in Travis and Hays counties was significantly backlogged. Problems there with the IE&E pilot (run by the same contractor) included the same issues plaguing the CHIP/Children’s Medicaid operations—multiple computer system issues, training deficits, flawed processes, and staffing shortfalls—but clients’ woes were compounded by the acute and worsening under-staffing of HHSC’s eligibility offices statewide.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA, which oversees the Food Stamp Program) conducted a Program Access Review of IE&E operations in late March, which included conference calls with community groups, legal services, and anti-hunger advocates to hear their reports on the roll-out.

IE&E Roll-out Delayed for 30 Days…

On April 5, HHSC Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced the agency would delay IE&E roll-out to the next planned region (Hill Country counties) in order to make technical and operational improvements and would review the system’s readiness again in 30 days. HHSC cited the need for “better training for customer service representatives in the call centers, a process to more quickly resolve complicated cases, better reporting tools to track cases and workload, and improved data collection.”

In April legislative hearings, HHSC officials acknowledged many problems with the IE&E transition and contractor including serious state staffing deficits. Based on their review, USDA officials conveyed to HHSC in April their concerns about the project including lack of timeliness in application processing, inability of the contractor’s front-end computer system to interface with TIERS (adding to backlogs), high call abandonment rates and long hold times at the call center, and lack of correct policy knowledge by contractor staff.

USDA’s independent project monitor identified several fundamental concerns: inadequate readiness testing of computer functions, a roll-out timeline that was too fast to allow for identification and resolution of all problems, inadequate staffing levels, insufficient training of private contractor staff, and shortcomings in some aspects of call center technology.

On April 11, HHSC announced that a new $3 million marketing and public information campaign for CHIP and Children’s Medicaid would begin in May (these activities had been largely abandoned after the budget-cutting 2003 legislative session). While notable agency efforts to improve the CHIP and IE&E processes produced a temporary improvement in call abandonment rates and hold times in April, problematic application and renewal trends and client complaints showed little if any improvement.

On reaching the deadline for determining CHIP enrollment for May, HHSC faced terminating a record number of nearly 50,000 children in a single month, for a dismal renewal rate of only 23.5% (compared to a fiscal year 2005 average of 80%). The agency elected instead to continue coverage of 27,768 children for an additional month while their families were given more time to provide missing information or to submit payments.

…And Now On Hold Indefinitely

On May 4, the HHSC Commissioner announced findings of its 30-day review. Importantly, this announcement indicated that the original roll-out schedule has essentially been suspended indefinitely until problems can be resolved. HHSC would retain 1,000 of the 1,900 state eligibility workers it had planned to lay off, and the remaining layoffs would be postponed for 12 months.

It is important to note that this decision did not increase the number of state staff working in the system; it simply reduced and postponed the planned reduction in staff.

Revised procedures announced by HHSC included: having state eligibility workers in the Midland call center oversee private “customer service” staff to ensure they give out correct information; returning most processing of Travis and Hays Medicaid and Food Stamp cases from contractor staff to state workers; new policy training of customer service staff; a new “escalation” process for directing complex policy questions from contractor staff to state workers, and new training for private workers on how to use the contractor’s and the state’s computer systems.

The announcement also noted that many contractor workers were unable to locate information that was already in their system. HHSC’s May 4 announcement also detailed changes to the contractor’s CHIP/Children’s Medicaid operations, including extending timelines for collection of missing information and enrollment fees, allowing third-party verification of income, and accepting some missing information via telephone (rather than extended postal exchanges that cause children to lose coverage through missed deadlines).

H
HSC staff, the HHSC Office of Inspector
General, and independent evaluators would examine various aspects of the contractor’s performance and processes. The state pledged to more carefully oversee contractor correspondence with families, and to seek stakeholder input in improving those communications. Grave Concerns Remain in Early June Advocates and providers welcomed HHSC’s decision to postpone the rollout, and support its efforts to improve the system and involve advocates in these activities.

However, grave concerns remain for CHIP, Medicaid, TANF and Food Stamps for several reasons. CHIP applications and renewals—and a significant share of new applications for Children’s Medicaid—are still being operated exclusively by the new contractor, because CHIP eligibility has always been primarily operated by a private contractor.

Thus, state workers cannot step in to fix the problems, and HHSC’s contingency plans to stop the dramatic decline in CHIP must instead rely largely on the contractor’s ability to resolve the problems.

On May 25, the Texas CHIP Coalition submitted a letter to HHSC Commissioner Hawkins detailing recommended steps needed to reverse the decline in CHIP and Children’s Medicaid enrollment. The letter (located at (http://www.cppp.org/research.php?aid=534) noted that the new contractor’s CHIP performance has “serious and as yet unresolved problems”, which did not bode well for the same contractor’s take-over of major responsibilities for Medicaid and Food Stamps under IE&E, potentially affecting more than 4 million Texans (thirteen times the size of the CHIP program) including children, the aged, and Texans with disabilities.

The Coalition urged HHSC to make successful reversal of the problems with CHIP a prerequisite for any further roll-out of the IE&E model. Detailed CHIP statistics have not yet been released for June 2006, but preliminary data show that CHIP enrollment fell to 293,564, a drop of 5,212 children from May.

On June 2, HHSC issued a press statement announcing that it would continue to extend deadlines for enrollment fees and missing information to protect children form losing their health coverage and give the agency and the contractor more time to correct the problems causing the decline.

Meanwhile, parents continue to report applications and renewals that appear to have been lost or delayed for months. In the third week of May, the “call abandonment” rate for IE&E was over 22%, and for the CHIP/Children’s Medicaid line was over 41% (average hold times were 6 and 15 minutes, respectively). Get the full report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities

By Jose Angel Gutierrez

Originally published en espanol in La Estrella newspaper of Fort Worth, reprinted by permission of author.

The idea of an economic boycott by immigrants in the US on May 1st is a good one. The economic might of immigrants, legal or not, in the United States is two-fold: labor power and consumer power. California Gov. Pete Wilson proposed and supported Proposition 187 which contained the basic anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant provisioins of the current James Sensenbrenner bill that passed the US House of Representatives last December 2005. In both cases persons of Mexican ancestry in the US rose in opposition and organized massive protests.
The idea of a national boycott was discussed by various leaders and attempted. I know some of us put up signs on our doors then: No Compro/No Trabajo. The media then like now said our boycott was ineffective. Employers then like now told employees they would be fired if they did not show up for work or participated in protests. Nothing much has changed.

If you want to change public policy and law, you must challenge it and be prepared to pay the consequences. In this case who is really needed? Is it our labor that is more important or is it that we have a job that is more important?

Several so called “leaders” are flying off to Mexico to discuss how to stop the boycott. President Fox is not interested in upsetting the dialogue and relations between him and Bush. Mexico is the largest trading partner of the US in the Americas.

Immigrants of all types, Cuban, Indian, Vietnamese, Dominican, Mexican, Salvadoran, Polish, Greek, etc. earn money in the US and send some to their homeland. These remittances save the US government lots of money in foreign assistance they do not have to send those governments. And these government get this money “free” without any effort. They enjoy the benefits of these immigrants working outside their country.

I do not know how effective the boycott will be but two things are sure. First, US workers will once again join the rest of the world in celebrating May 1st as the Day of the Worker internationally. The US government broke away from that tradition to split US workers from the international community and allows Labor Day on the first Monday in September. The US government shot and killed labor protestors during the Haymarket Riots in 1896. Thereafter, organized labor in the US chose to celebrate on another day not in May.

Second, economic boycotts work best when you have a specific target. A target in 1987 was Disney Corporation because they gave money to the advocates of Proposition 187. In 2006 the target some boycott organizers suggest ought to be is James Sensenbrenner. He is the heir to the Kimberly Clark fortune. They make Kleenex, Kotex, Depends, Scott tissue, Pull-ups, Huggies, Little Swimmers, Viva, and Cottonelle products. We all use them at sometime.

There is also Kimberly Clark de Mexico, SA. If Sensenbrenner does not want Mexicans in his midst then why should Mexicans buy his products?
Third, some of us will pay the price and boycott. I will not work that day. I will show a movie during a lunch hour at the university where I work about the greatest tennis player of all time, Pancho Gonzalez. Come visit, it is free on May 1, noon, University Hall Room 121 (University of Texas – Arlington).