From Xico

A really exceptional blog: Bracing Views

I know some of my friends think I'm a raving lefty, a signed-up member of Antifa WAAAY to the left of Bernie Sanders, a very vocal supporter of Alexandria Ocasio.Cortez and her squad.  Even if you do, I urge you to take a look at a blog called Bracing Views written by William J. Astore, a twenty-year veteran of the US Air Force who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He has taught at the Air Force Academy and the US Navy Postgraduate School.  He is a captivating writer as well as extremely insightful.  LOOK HIM UP!

Questions, Questions, Questions about Nancy Pelosi

I know,I know. She thinks she's got the best way to cream Donald Trump.  So many lawsuits will bury him when he leaves office, he won't be able to breathe.

BUT meanwhile, every day some environmental protection, some civil right, some necessary social protection is being undone. Another of his allies is put forth to head a government agency. How many more until November 21?  And what if he wins?  And if he doesn''t, what if he resigns just before his presidency is over and Mike Pence exonerates him?

YIKES!!!

I know it's not anything she would deliberately do, but what if she's so convinced of her rightness and with her followers on short leashes (maybe a little Trump-like) and she is leading the country down the garden path to the destruction of its democracy.

Wjy o why can't she do what's RIGHT, not what she perceives will work.  She is being amoral at best. By not following the law and holding impeachment hearings, she is making it okay for the next speaker to evade the law.  In fact, she is taking McConnell one step further than he has gone.

What if the Senate doesn't go along?  THEY will be the ones who can be held up to the light of day for going along with our gangster president.

Being open, honest and strong will win more than being slimy as she's being right now.

PLEASE, Nancy for us ordinary citizens, forget your rich, rich friends and go for impeachment. Be a DEMOCRAT!

More or less what you wanted to know about Hillary´s healthcare proposals' pros and cons

Don McCanne <[email protected]>	10:32 (hace 1 hora)
para Quote-of-the-D.

  

MedPage Today

March 15, 2016

Clinton's Health Plan Gets Mostly Passing Grades From Policy Experts (Mostly passing, say I, but lukewarm at best)

By Joyce Frieden

 

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's ideas for improving the Affordable Care Act (ACA) drew cautious praise from health policy scholars, but they said they had no chance of enactment without a major change in Congressional attitudes.

 

"If we're really serious about getting to the general uninsured and getting costs down, and it's a choice between scratching everything and starting over [or] building on the Affordable Care Act ... I would build on what Clinton's talking about," Ken Thorpe, PhD, of Emory University in Atlanta, said in a phone interview.

 

Clinton's plan is "Very much a small adjustment to ACA, and in the climate we have, getting anything through [Congress] is a real challenge," said Paul Hughes-Cromwick, MA, of the Center for Sustainable Health Spending at the Altarum Institute, in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Most of what she's talking about is very small, and some things are already happening."

 

On her website, Clinton lists the following planks among those in her healthcare proposal:

 

*  Make premiums more affordable and lessen out-of-pocket expenses for consumers purchasing health insurance on the ACA exchanges. This would include a tax credit of up to $5,000 per family to offset a portion of out-of-pocket and premium costs above 5% of income.

 

*  Support new incentives to encourage all states to expand Medicaid. Clinton proposes allowing any state that signs up for the Medicaid expansion to receive a 100% match for the first 3 years.

 

*  Invest in navigators, advertising, and other outreach activities to make exchange enrollment easier. Today, as many as 16 million people or half of all those uninsured are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid or an exchange plan. Clinton plans to invest $500 million per year in an aggressive enrollment campaign.

 

*  Expand access to affordable healthcare to families regardless of immigration status. Clinton "believes we should let families -- regardless of immigration status -- buy into the Affordable Care Act exchanges," according to her website.

 

*  Continue to support a "public option." Clinton wants states to be able to establish a public option under which people could buy into a publicly funded health insurance plan.

 

*  Defend the ACA. "Hillary will continue to defend the ACA against Republican efforts to repeal it," the website said. "She'll build on it to expand affordable coverage, slow the growth of overall health care costs (including prescription drugs), and make it possible for providers to deliver the very best care to patients."

 

*  Lower out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and deductibles. "Hillary believes that workers should share in slower growth of national healthcare spending through lower costs," according to the website.

 

*  Reduce the cost of prescription drugs. "Hillary believes we need to demand lower drug costs for hardworking families and seniors."

 

*  Transform our healthcare system to reward value and quality. "Hillary is committed to building on delivery system reforms in the Affordable Care Act that improve value and quality care for Americans."

 

Compared with the plan offered by Clinton's Democratic primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who wants to institute a single-payer "Medicare-for-all" program, hers is "definitely more realistic," said Michael Sparer, PhD, JD, of Columbia University in New York City, in an interview. However, "a lot depends on what happens to Congress as well [if she becomes President]. If something would change in Congressional makeup, I think she has a pretty clear fix-it agenda."

 

Even without such a change in Congress, "she will try to use whatever authority under ACA to encourage states to experiment," he added.

 

Similarly, Elbert Huang, MD, MPH, at the University of Chicago, said he was impressed by the level of specificity in Clinton's plan, especially compared with those of Sanders and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

 

Jon Oberlander, PhD, of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, agreed in an email that, overall, Clinton's plan is "more than realistic" -- "if we are to continue to make progress in reducing the uninsured population, making Obamacare more affordable for Americans with modest incomes is imperative. Politically, however, even these incremental measures are not so easy."

 

However, Oberlander continued, "As for [Clinton's] public option ... its chances of enactment in the current Congressional environment are zero. Even if Democrats retake majorities in Congress in 2016, it would face an uphill path to enactment."

 

A federally run public option, he said, "is symbolic politics, something that liberal Democrats like that allows Clinton to counter Sanders' single-payer proposal."

 

Clinton's Medicaid expansion proposal "will be incredibly tricky to pull off politically," said David Becker, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, in an email to MedPage Today.

 

"Even in a state like Louisiana where Medicaid expansion will take effect on July 1, it is somewhat unlikely that Republican senators and representatives would support expanding federal support. This proposal also assumes that states that have already expanded their programs will be happy to support the extension of funding without asking for something in return."

 

As to spending more money on navigators, "I'm not entirely sure this is money well spent," Becker said. "People that are eligible but not enrolled for public health insurance programs tend to be low-utilizers who re-enroll when they need care. Although marketing and outreach efforts have varied across the states, the benefits of increased spending on these efforts are not clear."

 

Clinton's proposal to lower out-of-pocket costs might work with plans on the insurance exchanges, said Alan Sager, PhD, at Boston University, but is incompatible with the economics of private insurance.

 

"For private employers it's very tough today, since employers and their benefits advisors think that higher out-of-pocket costs are the one tool they can wield to contain their healthcare costs," Sager said in an email. "Many economists fantasize that higher out-of-pocket costs will somehow shoehorn size 10 healthcare into size 5 free-market competition. And some reporters and 'consumer advocates' fantasize that better information about price and quality will make us healthcare super-shoppers."

 

Sager added, "Without real cost controls -- not widely supported politically by Americans -- out-of-pocket costs will continue to look to many people like the only game in town" for restraining overall costs.

 

He also dismissed the "reward value and quality" part of Clinton's plan, calling it "tough to do without torturing hospitals and doctors to make them give us still more data. And they control the data so they can game the measures of value/quality if they want."

 

David Howard, PhD, another Emory University scholar, told MedPage Today that he was troubled by Clinton's proposing of new spending without suggesting how the costs would be offset.

 

"Clinton promises new subsidies for people who buy insurance on the exchanges, new subsidies to help offset out-of-pocket costs, and additional funds to subsidize state Medicaid expansions," he wrote in an email. "At a time when the federal government is struggling to afford entitlements, it is irresponsible to promise new spending without offsetting spending reductions elsewhere."

 

Jan Carney, MD, MPH, at the University of Vermont in Burlington, said she is concerned about what's missing from all the candidates' proposals, including Clinton's.

 

"Public health issues such as infant mortality, obesity, HIV, injuries, homicides, and drug-related deaths all represent preventable contributors to health care costs," she said in an email. "These specific areas (where we do much worse than other countries) and other areas of public health, would make a strong addition to this national healthcare discussion."

 

Christopher Jones, PhD, of the Vermont Center for Clinical and Translational Science, in Burlington, named another topic of concern: biocybersecurity. “Health information has a longer shelf life than financial information and when both are sold on the black market, it is health information that commands a higher price,” he said in an email. “This will most assuredly be a concern for the Democratic candidate when s/he gets elected.”

 

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Washington-Watch/ElectionCoverage/56734

 

Comment by Don McCanne

 

Not a very exciting article. And that’s the point. When you read Hillary Clinton’s proposals, they all fall under the category of mere tweaks to our current dysfunctional system.

 

Tens of millions will remain uninsured; underinsurance will not be eliminated; Medicaid would be expanded without addressing its deficiencies in access; administrative excesses, including waste in marketing would increase; the undocumented would be allowed in without a way to pay for it; an ineffectual public option would continue to be offered through Section 1332 waivers; and so forth. Lower co-pays and deductibles along with a higher tax credit would be helpful, but to be effective, it would require significantly higher taxes when we have a Congress that continues to resist, on a bipartisan basis, any tax increases.

 

Although the title of this article indicates that the health policy experts cited give her efforts a “passing grade,” they basically do not see much more than fine tuning of the status quo. There is no suggestion that we could achieve reform goals of universality, affordability, increased provider choice, greater access, greater administrative efficiency, and optimal equity in the financing of health care.

 

Many of the Clinton measures proposed would further increase health care spending while falling short on goals. That would be a shame when instead we could place effective controls on spending through a single payer national health program - an improved Medicare for all - while achieving all of the listed goals of reform.

 

 

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is a nonpartisan educational organization. It neither supports nor opposes any candidates for public office.

 

 

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Hillary for President? Yikes, No! Look at Her Foreign Adventures

People, you really ought to look at Hillary's foreign policy as secretary of state before you vote for her.  There is a pile of destructive actions (to be polite).  The most recent reported on is in Haiti.  Before that there is Libya -- I'm not talking about Ben Ghazi -- as reported in two NY Times articles here and here and a video here.  Googling Hillary Libya will get you many more critical articles.  Then there is Honduras here:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/10/hillary-clinton-needs-to-answer-for-her-actions-in-honduras-and-haiti/. there are plenty of other articles if you google Hillary Honduras.  Then there's Mexico.  Mexico's narcoquagmire owes at least some of its mess to Clinton's stands and actions. Here . is one article: http://fpif.org/hillary-clintons-dark-drug-war-legacy-mexico/  I know more about this because I live in Mexico and read about it and talk about it all the time.  But this article is a good start, and again, googling will get you a lot more. Then there's her push for a no-fly zone over Syria, which was criticized for being unfeasible and was something Obama himself didn't want.  Then of course there's her vote for war in Iraq.  

When I watch her in debates and town hall meetings, she seems too confident, not introspective, deaf to cultural and local political issues, unaware that she is involved in decisions to take human lives.  I just don't trust her to be president.

Bernie vs. Hillary: Yes Bernie Can

In their usual condescending way, in their Sunday Review, the editors of The New York Times dissed Bernie Sanders and chances he might have to get things done if he were elected president.  I wonder just how effective Hillary would be: how many enemies she has; who would cross the party divide to support her; what her big corporate donors would do if she turned on them out of principle, say to stop fracking or to do away with privately financed prisons. First of all, in that very same New York Times you can find an article offering some insight into Bernie´s effectiveness here.  Furthermore here is a summary of some of the things Bernie could do without having to get the support of Republican legislators:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-bernie-sanders-solutions-would-dramatically-improve-wages-poverty-and-inequality

In their editorial in the Sunday Review, the Times said that Revolutions are bottom up, not top down.  This is silliness. Revolutions have LEADERS who often are the ones who give form to the inchoate yearnings of the people. In the US, I don´t think Sanders means a Cuban-style revolution, but rather movements that give voice to the very legitimate claims people have about the dominance of corporate wealth in our economy, about climate change, about unequal chances.  I don´t trust Hillary to help these voices make changes.  

 

 

 

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I really, really do not like Hillary Clinton

At a recent interventional cardiologist meeting recently Hillary gave her medical talking points.

The Fee-for-Service Debate

Edward Kulich, MD: "The political atmosphere regarding healthcare falls short in its attempt for a 'one-size-fits-all' approach. Hillary Clinton addressed a room full of interventional cardiologists, with an average salary of $400,000, while not addressing a room full of pediatricians, who earn, on average, $130,000. However, the medical school debt is the same for specialists and primary care doctors -- approaching $200,000."

Brian Flyer, MD: "Her comments suggest how out of touch she really is with healthcare. The problem with government intervention, is that they equate healthcare with insurance coverage. They miss the crux of the system, which is the doctor-patient relationship. The choices many specialists make to get by is really gaming the system. They make so little for their cognitive efforts, that they end up ordering unnecessary tests."

As I've said many times, here in Mexico we have fee for service medical care and doctors who do, when necessary, make home visits.  If we come to need sophisticated cancer treatment which really, really would improve our quality of life and not leave us lying on a hospital bed, then we might go to one of the cancer hospitals in the Land of the Free (my friend Susan's name for it).  

I really really really hope that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, even Joe Biden can push Hillary out of running.  She hasn't shown any indication of using her time to really learn about the issues, how people feel about them, their history.  Her understanding of foreign places, especially Mexico which is saddled with the Merida Initiative remains limited to that which high placed diplomats and officials give her.  

Snowden, et al, the NSA and the US government through the eyes of our David Brooks

Not the David Brooks of the NY Times, but the fearless* David Brooks of Mexico's La Jornada. Here is a translation of some of what he has to say in his column American Curios about the treatment Snowden and some people we don't hear about often in the US press -- people who have also sought to bring attention to the abuses of the NSA.  President Obama said there were other ways Snowden could have brought attention to problems he saw.  I'm not so sure.  The translation is mine.

The Dissidents by David Brooks, August 5, 2013

Almost everyone spoke about how they believed the official rhetoric of their country, in the mission of the United States as the world guardian of democracy, as a beacon of the hope for liberation, as an example for humanity.

Almost all remember that because of this, they added to the ranks of intelligence agencies, the armed forces, the Department of State, and the FBI.  And they remember when, with this noble dedication,they denounced and revealed what looked like abuse, corruption or the violation of those ideals so often repeated by the representatives and leaders of the country.  And they were expelled from their worlds and some were condemned as traitors.

Seven of them have been or are accused by the government of Barack Obama under the Law of Espionage and other laws for divulging "official secrets through the the media, more than twice the number of cases under all previous presidents combined.  The government asserts that all these cases are strictly legal matters, not political, and reject the idea that the accused might be 'denouncers' or 'dissidents'.  The government maintains that they are simple criminals who violated not only laws, but "public confidance". In effect, they are traitors.

Two of them are in headlines around the world: the soldier Bradley Manning, whose court martial is being held to determine criminal conviction for various charges, including five under the Law of Espionage. The other, Edward Snowden, who was just given political asylum in Russia, has so far managed to escape US authorities and charges under the same law.

Among the other five whistle blowers is Thomas Drake, a high ranking analyst with the NSA who expressed concerns to his superiors about the violations of the privacy of Americans on the part of the agency and later talked to a reporter about abuses and bad administrative practices in the NSA.  In spite of the fact that the criminal case against him, under the Law of Espionage, was dismissed, he has been blacklisted....The former member of the Air Force and CIA analyst is now working in an Apple store.  

John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, was condemned to two and a half years in jail because he spoke to journalists, including one from the New York Times, giving them the names of two former colleagues who had employed torture tactics in interrogations.  Stephen Jin-Woo, a State Department contractor, faced charges of leaking information to the journalist James Rosen, of Fox News (who, it was later revealed, was spied on by the FBI).  Shamai Leibowitz, former FBI translater, leaked transcripts of telephone [interventions] of the Israeli Embassy in Washington in efforts to influence American public opinion.  Jeffrey Sterling, former CIA agent was declared not guilty of leaking information about US plans to sabotage a nuclear plant in Iran to James Risen of the New York Times.  Risen has refused to identify his source, and Obama's government has succeeded in getting a court to order him to do it or face prison.

....

Although authorities insist that they are only applying the law, critics suspect that it is really an effort to suppress the freedoms of expression and the press, and especially to suppress dissidence within official ranks.

Many remember that this Law of Espionage was employed initially as a political weapon against dissidents when it was passed in 1917, when the US entered World War I. It was used against socialists, anarchists, and pacifists that opposed the war, including among others Eugene Debs (who spent five years in jail).....and it was used to deport Emma Goldman and hundreds of foreigners who criticized war policy. 

Perhaps for some in government, the biggest worry is if expressions such as the following multiply, resulting in "secrets" revealed:

"I have served in the military industrial complex for ten years, first as a soldier in Baghdad, and now as a defense contractor.  When I entered, I believed in the cause.  I was ignorant, naive and I was deceived.  It has been shown that the narrative given by the State, which the mainstream media echoes, is false and criminal.  We have become that which we thought we were fighting. Recent revelations by valiant journaalists about war crimes, including the dirty counterinsurgency wars, terrorism by drones, the suspension of due process, torture, massive surveillance... have shed light on the true nature of the US government... Some will say I am being irresponsible, impractical and irresponsible.  Others will say I'm crazy.  I have come to believe that the true craziness is not to do anything.  While we are sitting in comfort, blind before the injustices of the world, nothing will change.... I was only a soldier, and now I am a low level administrator. However, I've always believed that if every soldier through down his rifle, war would end. Consequently, I throw down mine."  This is the letter of resignation of Brandon Toy, administrator of a combat artillery vehicles project for a division of General Dynamics, one of the principle Pentagon contractors.

'Those who can give up an essential freedom for a bit of temporary security deserve neither security or freedom.' -- Benjamin Franklin

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What I find compelling about this column is that it really makes me think about what would be a real threat to US security; what freedom of speech and the press really should entitle us to.  I was a child in the 1950s and I remember my parents being truly frightened by McCarthyism.  I am very glad they taught me that freedoms were most important for those who weren't in the complacent (or not complacent) mainstream.

*I call David Brooks fearless because he writes columns about what he perceives as problems in the US while working in the US.  

Related articles

Snowden: I acted because Domestic Spying actually worsened under Obama

People, This is Not Just Nuts, It's a Plague upon Our House

The punitive immigration bill is about as hostile a bill as I can think of is.  And the so-called "Border Surge" especially so.  Our history is littered, and I mean LITTERED with actions provoked by race and ethnic hatred.  And generally this hatred has been stirred up by people with their own often economic or power-hungry interests at heart. As Americans, we certainly haven't taken the words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to heart:

            Give me your tired, your poor

            Your huddled masses

            Yearning to breathe free,

            The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

            Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

            I lift my lamp beside te golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, an American Jew and a woman, wrote them in 1886 as an entry in a contest for a poem for the base of the Statue, part of a benefit auction for the pedestal.  It wasn't put on until 1903, and it was after it was that the statue became a welcoming symbol for immigrants.

Lazarus herself was inspired to claim a more active role as a Jew following pogroms in Russia.  Of course Jews in the US have and continue to suffer from prejudice.  Catholics have and do, too.  And of course there are Muslims to bait.  Which brings us to ethnic groups. In the US, prejudice has thrived against European immigrant groups, especially Irish and Italians and probably Eastern Europeans.  I'm not mentioning the Germans in and after the Second World War.  The Japanese aren't Europeans, but they were our enemy during the World War II.  Japanese who had lived their lives in the US were put in concentration camps on US soil. Of course, the worst and most brutal prejudice, racism, has been against blacks, Indians and Latinos/as.  Perhaps the only group not subject to prejudice, or at least a prejudice which has hurt it, has been that made up of white Protestants males, especially white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males who for much of our history filled the halls of wealth and power.  This is not to say that these various groups don't have prejudices against each other, because they do.  And among the most progressive of us, unexamined, often harmful prejudices linger.

As I indicated, the Immigration Reform bill currently before Congress is a remarkably harsh bill. Here I am interested in the section on border security part.  The whole thing is called the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (gimme a break).  Recently amended to include what its authors, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota call a "border surge"  it would DOUBLE the number of border patrol agents to almost 40,000, add 700 miles of fencing and include infrared ground sensors, thermal imaging cameras and a fleet of, you guessed it, DRONES.  All this at a cost of (gulp) 40 BILLION DOLLARS.  Various writers have pointed out that we are living in financially tight times and that there are a LOT of things that could benefit from 40 billion dollars.  Lindsay Crouse in the NY Times says the nation's infrastructure could be one beneficiary.  He mentions that te American Society of Civil Engineers says it will cost $20 billion a year to repair our nation's bridges.

I have often suspected that the increase in funding for border security has more to do with keeping defense contractors happy since we don't have Iraq and Afghanistan to splurge on anymore.  I'm not in anyway alone.  See this article on the ABC/Univision site, for instance. 

There is no pretext anymore that this "border security" is for the purpose of catching terrorists. (And none so far as I know have been captured at the border, but I may be wrong.)This because a vociferous group of US citizens want to keep Mexicans and others from Latin America OUT and politicians are fanning their desires. This hostility to people crossing the border without papers is crazy.  If you are one of those who supports this immigration bill with its "border surge" and says, "I'm not really prejudiced but...", ask yourselves what it is you are so afraid of.  Perhaps the ghosts of Indians and blacks slaughtered by whites have inhabited the bodies of Mexicans?

US-Mexican Drug War Policies Changing?

Update: My friend Babs has undertaken the challenging job of proofreading this post.  I obviously need help in this department.  I hope her efforts make it easier for you to read!

You wouldn't know it by reading the NY Times, but under the chairmanship of John Kerry, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee has criticized the US role in the drug war with Mexico in an articulate and useful manner. David Brooks (not the NY Times David Brooks) reports on this in an article headlined on the front page of yesterday's La Jornada. Below I translate most of it.

There does seem to be some significant shifting of positions.  This link sends you to a more US-oriented critique of US drug policy from David Simon, creator of the classic HBO series, The Wire.

I don't think there's any hope of overcoming the horrendous divide between Democrats and Republicans for the next US presidential election.  I am no fan of Obama's, but if only because there's more of a chance for a LITTLE bit of reason to guide policy under Obama, I guess at this  point I think it is important to vote for him.

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The deployment of armed forces to combat narcotraffic in Mexico has been "ineffective" and has even managed to worsen the violence concluded a report of the US Senate distributed today.  It proposes a change of strategy, including sending more US personnel and money to prepare and facilitate police and judicial reforms necessary to reduce violence in our neighboring country.

The report, prepared by the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate was ordered by its chairman, Democratic Senator John Kerry, with the objective of offering a context for the development of bilateral strategies with the new Mexican president.

The diagnosis offered in the report confirms that "an extensive dependence of the military to confine illegality and directly confront the narcotrafic cartels appears to have been, in great measure, ineffective and, in some cases, has exacerbated the violence suffered by civilians." It indicates that in spite of the significant increases in the effort of President Felipe Calderón, "his anticrime strategy centered on combatting the capos has been amply criticized for putting Mexicans' daily necessities for security at a lower level."

Although it praised the efforts of President Calderón as well as the high level of bilateral cooperation which has been developed in recent years because of the Merida Initiative, the report maintains that the strategy has left "doubts" among the population about whether it can triumph owing to the "inability of the government to suppress the hyperviolence that is going on in certain parts of Mexico.  Put simply, the majority of Mexicans lack confidence in the main tools the federal and state authorities use to comb at crime, with the police and the judicial system, given its history of widespread corruption and ineffectiveness."  Furthermore, [the report] points out " the worrisome increase of allegations of serious violations of human rights against civilians by military personnel."

Senator Kerry declared, when releasing the report, that "the presidential transition in Mexico offers a new window for discussing Police Reforms in Mexico, It recommends that the US government increase its support for judicial and police reform at federal and state levels, with funds from the Merida Initiative for some 250 million dollars annually for four years.  Thee funds include supporting US training of Mexican agents.

It appears that this recommendation implies a redoubling of efforts.  The investigators of the Senate say that both governments already support the creation of an academy of public security for training state police of the whole country, and that such an academy has already opened its doors in May, 2012 in Puebla.  The investigators add that the Mexican government increased from three to eight the states considered priorities for receiving US assistance in the "professionalization of police" in the context of the Merida Initiative.  At this time, they report that with this effort, the United States is putting "expert consultants" in the police academies of Chihuahua, Nuevo Le{on, Sonora and Tamaulipas as well as helping to create specialized teams of state police in at least 21 states.

The authors of the report suggest that the US government increase efforts to implement mechanisms of accountability within the federal and state police in order to prevent corruption and abuse of human rights.

Reiterating that the deployment of the military to combat organized crime has had "limited success and, in some cases, has led to the violation of human rights," the report indicates that US efforts to increase police capacities will help to reduce the role of the armed forces in re-establishing internal security.

It recommends that the US government continue strengthening the investigative skills of the office of Attorney General, as they are also improving these skills at a state level.  Under this rubric, the report said that the Agency for International Development (USAID) is already present in seven Mexican states in the implementation of judicial reforms including investigative abilities and that expanding this effort to thirteen other states is being considered.

At the same time, the US Department of Justice is doing something similar at the federal level in Mexico, including giving courses on new investigative procedures and training personnel in the Attorney General of the Republic´s office.

Although the report does not dwell on the point, it recognizes that it has "to do more" to deal with problems in its own country which contribute to the violence in Mexico, such as reducing the demand for illicit drugs, lessening the flow of weapons into the countr to the south, and combatting money laundering in US financial institutions.

 

Hillary Clinton Speaks Truth to Power

From Andrew Sullivan

8 Jun 2012 08:12 PM

Quote For The Day

"Some believe that when it comes to counterterrorism, the end always justifies the means; that torture, abuse, the suspension of civil liberties – no measure is too extreme in the name of keeping our citizens safe. But unfortunately, this view is short-sighted and wrong. When nations violate human rights and undermine the rule of law, even in the pursuit of terrorists, it feeds radicalization, gives propaganda tools to the extremists, and ultimately undermines our efforts. The international community cannot turn our eyes away from the effects of these tactics because they are part of the problem. I know that the United States has not always had a perfect record, and we can and must do a better job of addressing the mistaken belief that these tactics are ever permissible," - secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

8 Jun 2012 08:12 PM