Saturday, October 17, 2009

“City preparing to fight expected lawsuits over Honolulu rail - Honolulu Advertiser” plus 4 more

“City preparing to fight expected lawsuits over Honolulu rail - Honolulu Advertiser” plus 4 more

City preparing to fight expected lawsuits over Honolulu rail - Honolulu Advertiser

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 06:54 PM PDT

Honolulu city officials are asking for $300,000 to fight off potential legal challenges to a planned $5.5 billion elevated commuter rail.

Most of that money — $250,000 — would go to local law firm Carlsmith Ball LLP to defend an anticipated lawsuit challenging whether project officials complied with environmental laws, according to a resolution passed during an executive session of this month's City Council Executive Matters Committee meeting.

That resolution, along with another seeking $50,000 to pay for the services of the Kobayashi, Sugita & Goda law firm, were made public recently. Kobayashi, Sugita & Goda would be hired to fight any potential legal challenges to rail-related contract awards.

The proposals to hire outside attorneys are expected to come before the council at its Oct. 27 meeting.

City spokesman Bill Brennan was unavailable to answer questions about the proposals.

City Council chairman Todd Apo said the pre-emptive arrangements with law firms could save the city money while preventing delays.

"It's going to save us money because I think there's a high expectation, a high probability of lawsuits on those two issues," he said. "If you're able to prepare for that as opposed to trying to rush on that last minute, you're going to be able to better represent the city and you're going to save the city money."

The city plans to start construction on the 20-mile East Kapolei to Ala Moana train in December. That timetable is contingent on the project receiving federal approval of an environmental impact statement. That approval could trigger a lawsuit questioning whether the city adequately explored alternatives such as an at-grade train system, or managed, elevated highway lanes.

Arrangements for outside legal representation are premature, said councilman Charles Djou.

"There is no plaintiff, there is no lawsuit," he said. "I can't remember a time when we've retained outside counsel for a potential lawsuit.

"This begs the question, — how confident are you that you did your (environmental impact statement) correctly and that you did the procurement for the rail system correctly?"

According to the proposed resolutions, lawyers representing the city won't be paid more than $295 an hour.

It's unclear who will file a lawsuit against the rail project; however, potential parties include environmental/cultural groups, private landowners or other special interests.

Rail opponent Cliff Slater would not comment on whether he would be involved in such a challenge.

Slater and his group the Alliance for Traffic Improvement filed a suit against the city's previous mass-transit plan, a Bus Rapid Transit system. They argued that the service would violate federal environmental laws and add extensively to traffic congestion on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikíkí.

Plans to launch the so-called BRT were called off because of a change in political will and the loss of federal funds.

Slater said he wasn't surprised the city already is preparing to fight legal challenges.

"It shows how really deficient they believe the (environmental impact statement) will be," he said. "They've got plenty to be worried about."

Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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Fulbright scholar offers glimpse into Muslim world - Muskogee Daily Phoenix

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 06:47 PM PDT

Published October 17, 2009 08:39 pm -

Fulbright scholar offers glimpse into Muslim world
That doesn't just mean Middle East, he says

By Cathy Spaulding
Phoenix Staff Writer

When Fulbright Scholar Dr. Mukhtasar Syamsuddin discusses the "Muslim World," he has several different world to discuss.

"The Islamic culture is the only one in the world based on the Koran, but the Muslim culture is a social construct," he said. "There are Muslim Americans, Muslim Canadians, Muslim Arabs, Muslim Indonesians."

Syamsuddin, a Muslim Indonesian, will share these worlds with Northeastern State University over the next six weeks through the Fulbright Visiting Specialists Program. Syamsuddin is the first Fulbright Scholar to be hosted by NSU.

Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government's flagship international educational exchange program.

Syamsuddin teaches philosophy and philosophy of religion at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. Theme of his Fulbright visit is "Direct Access to the Muslim World."

Garments Syamsuddin said he wears in his home country reflect what he said was the diversity of Muslim culture.

Holding his hands to his shoulders, Syamsuddin explained "the clothes you wear must cover your body from here to your foot. You have to do this primarily when you go to pray.

Syamsuddin wore a wrap-around sarong in two hues of green to show what Indonesian Muslim men wear. Muslim men in Arabia usually wear looser floor length robe-like garments he said. Syamsuddin also wears trousers.

He said Muslim women in Indonesia wear headscarves, but "they're just closing up their hair, not closing up their eyes."

"In Iran, women close up all of their body but their eyes," he said.

Syamsuddin said he also will spend his six-week visit clarifying Islamic terms such as "jihad," which, he said, are misunderstood.

"Jihad is to do your religious commitments truly," he said. "It does not mean you have to fight against another Muslim or another person. Terrorism is not an expression of jihad."

He said jihad is a misunderstood word "not just in America, but in the Islamic world itself."

He said Islamic terrorists see unbelievers as the enemy and have tried to kill them.

""But according to Islamic teaching, the unbeliever is not the enemy," he said. "One Islamic teaching is to keep their life in harmony, not in conflict and not to kill."

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Goldman Can Spare You a Dime - New York Times

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 07:23 PM PDT

AT the dawn of the progressive era early in the last century, muckrakers attacked the first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, for creating capitalism's most ruthless monster. "The Octopus" was their nickname for Standard Oil, the trust that controlled nearly 90 percent of American oil. But even in that primordial phase of the industrial era, Rockefeller was mindful of his public image and eager to counter it. "His great brainstorm," writes his biographer, Ron Chernow, "was undoubtedly his decision to dispense shiny souvenir dimes to adults and nickels to children as he moved about." Who could hate an octopus tossing glittering coins?

It was hard not to think of Rockefeller's old P.R. playbook while watching Goldman Sachs's behavior when the Dow hit 10,000 last week. As leader of the Wall Street pack, Goldman declared surging profits, keeping it on track to dispense a record $23 billion in bonuses for 2009. But most Americans know all too well that only the intervention of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money saved Goldman from the dire fate of its less well-connected competitors. The growing ranks of under-and-unemployed Americans, meanwhile, are waiting with increasing desperation for a recovery of their own.

Goldman is this century's octopus — almost literally so. The most-quoted sentence in financial journalism this year, by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, describes the company as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." That's why Goldman's chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, recycled Rockefeller's stunt last week: The announcement of Goldman's spectacular third-quarter earnings ($3.19 billion) was paired with the news that the company was donating $200 million to its own foundation, which promotes education. In Goldman dollars, that largess is roughly comparable to the nickels John D. handed out to children a century ago. At least those kids could spend the spare change on candy.

Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting crusade ultimately broke up Standard Oil. Though Goldman did outlast three of its four major rival firms during last fall's meltdown, it is not a monopoly. And there is one other significant way that our 21st-century vampire squid differs from Rockefeller's 20th-century octopus. Americans knew what oil was, and they understood how Standard Oil's manipulations directly affected their pocketbooks. Even now many Americans don't know what Goldman's products are or how it makes its money. The less we know, the easier it is for reckless gambling to return to capitalism's casino, and for Washington to look the other way as a new financial bubble inflates.

As Wall Street was celebrating last week, Congress was having a big week of its own, arousing itself to belatedly battle some of the corporate suspects that have helped drive America into its fiscal ditch. The big action was at the Senate Finance Committee, which finally produced a health care bill that, however gingerly, bids to reform industries that have feasted on the nation's Rube Goldberg medical system. At least health care, like oil, is palpable, so we will be able to keep score of how reform fares — win, lose or draw. But the business of Wall Street, while also at center stage in a Congressional committee last week, is so esoteric that the public is understandably clueless as to what, if anything, the lawmakers were up to, if anyone even noticed at all.

The first stab at corrective legislation emerging from Barney Frank's Financial Services Committee in the House is porous. While unregulated derivatives remain the biggest potential systemic threat to the world's economy, Frank said that "the great majority" of businesses that use derivatives would not be covered under his committee's much-amended bill. It's also an open question whether the administration's proposed consumer agency to protect Americans from mortgage and credit-card outrages will survive the banking lobby's attempts to eviscerate it. As that bill stands now, more than 98 percent of America's banks — mainly community banks, representing 20 percent of deposits — would be shielded from the new agency's supervision.

If it's too early to pronounce these embryonic efforts at financial reform a failure, it's hard to muster great hope. As the economics commentator Jeff Madrick points out in The New York Review of Books, the American public is still owed "a clear account of the financial events of the last two years and of who, if anyone, is seriously to blame." Without that, there will be neither the comprehensive policy framework nor the political will to change anything.

The only investigation in town is a bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission created by Congress in May. It is still hiring staff. Its 10 members are dispersed throughout the country, and, according to a spokeswoman, have contemplated only a half-dozen public sessions over the next year. Such a panel, led by the former California state treasurer Phil Angelides, seems highly unlikely to match Congress's Depression-era Pecora commission. That investigation was driven by a prosecutor whose relentless fact-finding riveted the country and gave birth to the Securities and Exchange Commission, among other New Deal reforms. Last week, we learned that the current S.E.C. has hired a former Goldman hand as the chief operating officer of its enforcement unit.

Even as we wait for Congress and its inquiry to produce results, the cultural toxins revealed by our economic crisis remain unaddressed by the leaders in the private and public sectors who might make a difference now. Blankfein may be giving $200 million to "education," but Goldman is back to business as usual: making money by high-risk gambling, with all the advantages that the best connections, cheap loans from the Fed and high-speed trading algorithms can bring. As the Reuters columnist Rolfe Winkler wrote last week, "Main Street still owns much of the risk while Wall Street gets all of the profit."

The idea of investing in the real economy — the one that might create jobs for Americans — remains outré in this culture. Credit to small businesses remains tight. The holy capitalist grail is still the speculative buying and selling of companies and the concoction of ever more esoteric financial "instruments." The tragic tale of Simmons Bedding recently told in The Times is a role model. This successful 133-year-old manufacturing enterprise was flipped seven times in two decades by private equity firms. Investors made more than $750 million in profits even as the pile-up of debt pushed Simmons into bankruptcy, costing a quarter of its loyal workers their jobs so far.

Most leaders in America are against this kind of ethos in principle. Last month the president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, contributed a stirring essay to The Times regretting that educational institutions did not make stronger efforts to assert the fundamental values of pure intellectual inquiry while "the world indulged in a bubble of false prosperity and excessive materialism." She rued the rise of business as the most popular undergraduate major, an implicit reference to the go-go atmosphere during the reign of her predecessor, Lawrence Summers, now President Obama's chief economic adviser.

What went unsaid, of course, is that some of Harvard's most prominent alumni of the pre-Faust era — Summers, Blankfein, Robert Rubin et al. — were major players during the last two bubbles. As coincidence would have it, the same edition of The Times that published Faust's essay also included an article about how Harvard was scrounging for bucks by licensing a line of overpriced preppy clothing under the brand Harvard Yard. This sop to excessive materialism will be a scant recompense for the $11 billion Harvard's endowment managers lost in their own bad gamble on interest-rate swaps.

Obama has also passed through Harvard. (Disclosure: so did I.) He too has consistently said all the right things about the "money culture" of "quick kills and bloated bonuses," of "reckless behavior and unchecked excess." But the air of entitlement that continues to waft from his administration sends another message.

In particular, the tone-deaf Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, never ceases to amaze. His daily calendars reveal that most of his contacts with the financial sector in the first seven months of 2009 were limited to the trinity of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan. And last week Bloomberg News reported that his inner circle of "counselors" — key advisers who, conveniently enough, do not require Senate confirmation — are largely drawn from the same club. It's hard to see how any public official can challenge a culture that he is marinating in, night and day.

Those Obama fans who are disappointed keep looking for explanations. Is he too impressed by the elite he met in Cambridge, too eager to split the difference between left and right, too willing to compromise? As he pursues legislation, why does he keep deferring to others — whether to his party's Congressional leaders or the Congressional Budget Office or to this month's acting president, Olympia Snowe? Why doesn't he ever draw a line in the sand? "We know Obama has good values," Jeff Madrick said to me last week, "but we don't know if he has convictions."

What we also know is that if Teddy Roosevelt palled around with John D. Rockefeller as today's political class does with Wall Street's titans and lobbyists, the tentacles of the original octopus would still be coiled tightly around America's neck.

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Resilient Cavs again win hard way - Daily Press

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 07:59 PM PDT

Dave Fairbank

October 18, 2009

COLLEGE PARK, Md.

If Al Groh ever needs proof of the value of perseverance, all he need do is cue the DVD of Virginia-Maryland 2009.

If Ralph Friedgen ever suffers with back pain or maybe a throbbing knee, all he need do is cue the same DVD. Guaranteed the discomfort he feels from watching that will take his mind off of any other ache.

Groh's Cavaliers continued their October Lazarus act with Saturday's 20-9 win over Maryland and did so in conditions that only ducks and Scottish golfers could love.

They produced minimal offense. They did without their most productive running back. They watched their starting quarterback carted away from the field and saw him return to the sideline on crutches.

They saw Friedgen's Terrapins repeatedly get to their front porch, but once again the couch and the cabinets they piled against the door held.

And suddenly, the team that lost to William and Mary to begin the season has won three straight and leads the ACC's Coastal Division. Who'da thunk it?

"That's one of our cultural values," Groh said. "You don't develop that during the course of a game — 'All right, fellas, you need to persevere.' You do that as you build the philosophy and the culture into which players come.

"One thing that these players and their predecessors have proven is that they have a tough shell. They're pretty hard to crack."

What was tough to crack, again, was Virginia's goal line. For the third consecutive game, the Cavaliers' front-line defenders didn't allow a touchdown.

In the past three games, the Cavs have permitted a total of 19 points and a paltry 237 yards per game — defensive numbers that are, dare we say it, very much like those often associated with the commonwealth's other major-college football factory.

"They've been playing lights out. Really, they've been playing well the whole season," said Virginia quarterback and relief pitcher Marc Verica, who played the last quarter-plus when starter Jameel Sewell injured his right ankle.

"Initially, in our first few games on offense," Verica said, "we really put them in a couple tough spots. But they've been playing well the whole season. Now that the offense is starting to catch up, we're really seeing how good of a unit they really are."

The defense had to be good Saturday. To say that Virginia's offense caught up is being generous, since the Cavs generated just 108 yards in the final three quarters.

Take away a gift 28-yard, flat-on-his-back reception by Rashawn Jackson midway through the third quarter, a play that eventually led to a Robert Randolph field goal, and the productivity was even more anemic.

In fact, the Virginia defense produced the game's only two touchdowns. Defensive end Nate Collins did his runaway dump-truck imitation, with a 32-yard interception return off of a tipped pass that gave the Cavs the lead for good.

The Cavs' defense, combined with desperation time for Maryland, produced the exceedingly rare 2-yard touchdown drive in the waning minutes. Jackson was the recipient of that good fortune and amassed half of his 90 yards in the fourth quarter, assuming the role of sidelined Terp nuisance Mikell Simpson.

Terp types will lament four turnovers and two missed field goals that could have changed the complexion of the game, and certainly the play-calling late. But it's tough to fault Maryland kicker Nick Ferrara, whose misses were at least partially the result of bad footing and slick footballs.

As for the turnovers, that seems to be who the Terps are. They entered the game minus-10 in turnover margin, and Saturday's conditions didn't contribute to sure hands.

"I told them," Friedgen said, "until we stop turning the ball over, we can work 24 hours a day and they can work as hard as they want to work, we are just giving games away. I don't think the teams we're playing are better than us, but we just keep shooting ourselves in the foot. Until that gets corrected, it's not going to happen."

While Maryland looks for solutions, Virginia continues a trend. The Cavs have won 10 of their last 11 October games dating back to 2007 and, for the second consecutive season, overcame a poor start with a simple formula.

"Getting better," Groh said. "Just staying with it. Coming out every day. Not listening to anybody who speaks in another direction toward them. Just believing in themselves, believing what they're taught, believing in the plan. Continue to work at it.

"We've had some precedent to that around here. So when we say that you just keep grinding that way and keep fighting, it's not something that hasn't happened here. There's a little history here with it, so they believe it."

Dave Fairbank can be reached at 247-4637 or by e-mail at dfairbank@dailypress.com. For more from Fairbank, read his blog at dailypress.com/fromthetarpit.

Next game

Next game

WHO: No. 19 Georgia Tech (6-1, 4-1 ACC) at Virginia (3-3, 2-0).

WHEN: Noon Saturday.

TV: Raycom

Dave Fairbank can be reached at 247-4637 or by e-mail at dfairbank@dailypress.com

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Art in the Park - First Coast News

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 06:19 PM PDT

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Families and art enthusiasts gathered at the sixth annual Art in the Park.

Art in the Park is an interactive art and multicultural entertainment event for the entire family.

The free event put on by JaxParks offers an opportunity for people on the First Coast to experience a mix of cultural and interactive entertainment, participate in hands-on art activities and browse exhibits by local artists.

People of all ages tried their hand at a number of activities including painting, drawing, origami, clay works, ceramics, sidewalk chalk art, traveling keyboards, musical instruments and a variety of make-and-take arts and crafts.

In addition, the event also featured entertainment and performances by CEROC Swing Dancers, Grupo Bantu Beira Mar - Brazilian Entertainment Troupe, Tribe Vestah Belly Dance Troupe, Taylor Crystal Bells bell ringers, the Aerial Tribe Band and more.

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