---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 10:26 AM
Subject: re:No Conflict of Interest Found in Favorable Review of Keystone Pipeline
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The Obama/Holder department of Justice clings to a pattern of enforcing internal Executive-branch guidelines in place of the law.  In the Durham investigation, it was asked not whether CIA agents, officers and contractors had broken the law, but whether they had violated internal DoJ guidelines. Now it emerges that the Keystone Pipeline was held to just such an extra-legal standard, asking not whether a conflict of interest existed--as forbidden by statute--but whether the report met internal guidelines.
   But our president and his cabinet are charged not with the enforcement of guidelines that they make up inside the executive branch. It is their job as our constitution provides to "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed". And guidelines promulgated inside the executive branch, whether secret or published, never amount to "laws".

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/us/politics/no-conflict-of-interest-found-in-favorable-review-of-keystone-pipeline.html?_r=0

No Conflict of Interest Found in Favorable Review of Keystone Pipeline

By CORAL DAVENPORTFEB. 26, 2014

WASHINGTON — A State Department contractor who prepared an environmental analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline did not violate conflict-of-interest rules, even though the contractor had previously done work for TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline, a State Department inspector general’s investigation concluded on Wednesday.

The results of the investigation could further pave the way for the Obama administration to approve the 1,700-mile, $5.4 billion pipeline, which would move oil from forest in Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast. The pipeline has become a critical cause to environmentalists, who view President Obama’s ultimate decision as a reflection of his commitment to fight climate change. They have rallied, protested and been arrested by the thousands in an effort to pressure him to reject the project.

Supporters of the pipeline, particularly Republicans and the fossil fuel industry, hailed the new report, saying it further strengthened their case.

• . 26, 2014

“Another day and another government report that finds no reason to continue blocking this common-sense, job-creating project,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, said in an email. “It’s long past time the president stop pandering to his extremist allies and just approve it so we can get people back to work.”

Opponents of the pipeline said the new report would do nothing to dampen their fight against it.

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters are expected to march on the White House, handcuff themselves to the gates and get arrested in a further effort to try to persuade Mr. Obama to reject the project.

“Secretary of State John Kerry inherited this mess, and now it’s time for him to bring it to a close by stating what is obvious — that this pipeline is not in our national interest,” said Elijah Zarlin, a campaign manager atCredo, a group organized against the pipeline. “If he doesn’t, more than 78,000 Americas stand ready to risk arrest to stop the White House and the State Department from putting the oil industry’s interest before our national interest, and recommending approval of Keystone XL.”

The inspector general’s report comes after a State Departmentenvironmental review last month concluded that construction of the pipeline would not substantially worsen carbon pollution because most future economic outlines project that the Alberta oil would be extracted and transported to market whether or not Keystone is built.

Environmentalists sharply criticized that report, as well as an earlier draft, which is what led to the inspector general’s investigation. The draft included analysis by a contractor, Environmental Resources Management, or ERM, which had previously done work for TransCanada. Last year, theSierra Club and several other environmental groups wrote a letter to the State Department’s inspector general calling for an investigation into a possible conflict of interest in the preparation of that draft.

The inspector general’s report concludes that the State Department’s process in selecting ERM followed, and was at times more rigorous, than was prescribed by agency guidance.

• FEB. 20, 2014

The report concludes that ERM fully disclosed its prior work history — including its work with TransCanada — and completed all previous work with TransCanada before undertaking the Keystone review.

The inspector general’s office notes that it began the review in response to the environmental groups’ letter, but determined, after a preliminary inquiry into the situation, that it did not warrant a criminal investigation.

The report does note that in two instances the State Department made “deviations” from its prescribed guidance on conflict of interest, but concludes that those deviations “did not adversely affect the selection process.” The report does recommend that the State Department improve its conflict of interest procedures.

Conti

For the time being, the fate of the pipeline rests in the hands of Mr. Kerry, who is studying the 11-volume environmental review and determining whether the project is “in the national interest.” Mr. Kerry, who has made climate change a signature issue of his tenure as secretary of state, will make a recommendation on the project to Mr. Obama.

On Monday, governors meeting with Mr. Obama in Washington said the president indicated that he would make a decision on the pipeline soon.

“He seems to be on board with the pipeline,” said Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a Republican who supports the pipeline. “I’m encouraged by what he said. He didn’t say yes or no, but I’m encouraged that he’ll make the right decision.”

The inspector general’s report is unlikely to silence calls from environmentalists or liberal Democrats for Mr. Obama to reject the pipeline.

On Tuesday, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking for a separate investigation of the State Department’s process for selecting contractors to perform the environmental impact study.

On Wednesday, Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Environment Committee, held a news conference calling on the Obama administration to conduct an investigation into the impact of the pipeline on public health.

“The Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement was woefully inadequate regarding human health impacts, and we believe it is critically important that peer-reviewed research on these issues is fully considered before any decision is made on the Keystone XL pipeline,” Ms. Boxer wrote in a letter to Mr. Kerry.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:09 PM
Subject: re: What the West Must Do for Ukraine
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

  Few have benefited more graphically from Helmut Kohl's broad vision than has Angela Merkel.  Without his bold push for unification, she would still be pent in a shrivelling East Germany rather than leading the wealthiest state in Europe. But Kohl's vision was always bigger than Germany's borders.  Now, even before retiring the cost of reunification, Germany is called on to draw Ukraine out of the Russian sphere and into the West.  There will be bumps, and there will be costs. But that's what real leaders undertake.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/what-the-west-must-do-for-ukraine.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

What the West Must Do for Ukraine

By ULRICH SPECKFEB. 23, 2014

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Continue readontinue reading the main story

BRUSSELS — Thanks in part to the coordinated efforts of Germany, Poland, France and the United States, irrevocable change has finally come to Ukraine, with President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s flight from Kiev and Parliament’s vote to call for new elections in May.

But the powers still have urgent work to do. Ukraine could either descend into chaos or right itself on a path toward a new democratic stability. The European powers and the United States must offer the country all possible support to move toward the latter.

The first and most urgent step for Western leaders is to send unequivocal messages to Moscow that any support by Russia for the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine to break away from the rest of the country would be met harshly, and result in a general reconsideration of relations with Russia on all levels.

• FEB. 23, 2014

In parallel, they must make sure that their own resources, and those of the European Union institutions in Brussels, are available to political leaders in Kiev to assist them in their transition to a new regime.

Moreover, Ukraine’s crisis isn’t just political: The country faces economic default without support. It had been relying on Russia for that help, and now Europeans and Americans must quickly work with the International Monetary Fund to provide a financial lifeline to Kiev and to prepare longer-term economic-assistance programs; they must also be ready to give direct emergency aid by themselves, if needed.

Simply by announcing a readiness to commit to these steps, they would be providing enormous help to the forces committed to change in Ukraine.

Besides getting through the first days and weeks, there are two great political risks the West must help Ukraine to address. One is the inevitable attempt to undermine an emerging order. The protest movement that began last November, centered in Kiev’s Independence Square, has won. But it is quite possible that the forces that supported the former regime, especially in the east and south of the country, are going to contest the new order.

And it is questionable whether the Kremlin will accept a loss of influence in Ukraine. Mr. Putin had high hopes of making Ukraine a key ally in his planned Eurasian Union. He may have decided that Mr. Yanukovych was too unreliable an ally, but that does not mean he will accept a revolution against him. (Mr. Yanukovych, who reportedly fled to the eastern city of Kharkiv, near the border with Russia, said he had been forced to leave the capital because of an illegal “coup d’état.”)

The second risk is that the new regime will look like the one installed after the Orange Revolution in 2004: years of painful stalemate, political institutions blocking each other, permanent infighting and no clear separation between political and economic power.

It is primarily up to the Ukrainian people to put their still-young country on a new path. Many have demonstrated incredible courage over the last weeks. But a post-Yanukovych Ukraine will still be a fragile state with weak institutions.

Since it declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has lived uncomfortably between the European Union and Russia. Despite some progress, it failed to build stable and trustworthy institutions. That’s why so much of the country has put its hopes in the European Union; Ukrainians saw that their neighbors who had joined it — Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia — were doing very well. All the bloc offered last year was an “association,” which does not include the promise of membership, and a free-trade agreement.

Because the offer was so weak, the door was open for Mr. Putin to sabotage it and for Mr. Yanukovych to reject it. Now the European Union needs to come back with a better offer — not just association, but membership.

Continue reading the main

Doing so would unleash a new dynamic. It would embolden a new leadership in Kiev and give them enough authority to push through painful but necessary economic and government reforms. A process of transformation would kick off. Urgently needed foreign investment would rush in. It would signal to the entire country that a better future is possible.

His successor, and Ms. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, continued on that path. But Ms. Merkel, in office since 2005, has been reluctant to follow in their steps so far. Wary of Russian opposition and unwilling to press a more active foreign policy, Berlin in recent years has been reluctant to provide leadership in eastern Europe.The key to this approach lies in Berlin. In the 1990s, it was Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Angela Merkel’s mentor, who pushed through the enlargement of the European Union to include former members of the Soviet bloc as a way to stabilize Germany’s Eastern neighborhood.

Ms. Merkel must now show courage and strategic competence. If Eastern Europe becomes unstable, Germany will be affected too — and deeply so. Only Berlin has the necessary weight and connections to bring all key players on board to make significant change possible.

Seen by many as the European Union’s leading power, Germany can bring France on board, a necessary condition for getting the bloc fully behind a new approach to Ukraine. Moreover, Berlin, with its strong economic ties with Moscow, is able to keep the West’s relations with Moscow on track. And Berlin pulls enough weight in Washington to put together a common trans-Atlantic strategy.

In the last weeks and days in Ukraine we saw how fast things can deteriorate in Eastern Europe. Germany and the European Union must significantly step up their engagement and be ready to take more risks. If Berlin does not take the lead, nobody else will.

Ulrich Speck, a foreign policy expert, is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, the European center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Can God Make It in Hollywood?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 9:08 AM
Subject: re: Can God Make It in Hollywood?
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Anyone proposing to bring God to the silver screen is obviously tempted to start with a best seller. The Mahabharata belongs to Bollywood and the Koran is widely considered to be off limits. That leaves the Bible. So special praise is due to Joseph Gordon Levitt who dared to wrap his debut film "Don Jon" around Martin Buber's "I and Thou".  This is religion as theme, not as plot-line. The metaphor for encountering the divine--ultimately face-to-face--is sex. Unsurprisingly, this was too subtle for American film critics.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/sunday-review/can-god-make-it-in-hollywood.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0

Will the Net Stay Neutral?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 7:58 AM
Subject: re Will the Net Stay Neutral?
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    By the time that presidents Roosevelt and Taft took on the rail trust, the first automobiles were puttering around the countryside. A great visionary might have speculated that trucks could come to challenge the railroads to transport commodities to market. But the interstate highway system was still decades in the future, and the threat to our economy was present.  the railroads--as "common carriers" were forced to carry goods for large producers and small at the same rates.     Today, it is possible that the stranglehold of the few internet providers will be broken by upcoming technologies. But it would be foolish to wait for that. We have statutes in place right now to keep the marketplace competitive. It is for our Executive to name the internet system as a "common carrier" and to enforce the law on it.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/22/opinion/nocera-a-free-net-one-way-or-another.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

As Obama Vows to Act on Climate Change, Justices Weigh His Approach

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 9:33 AM
Subject: re: As Obama Vows to Act on Climate Change, Justices Weigh His Approach
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    When the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, it became the law of the land. From that moment forward, it is for the Executive to protect the American people from airborne pollutants. Unless congress were to repeal the Clean Air Act--and overcome a presidential veto of that repeal--neither Congress nor the Coal lobby have anything  further to say on the matter. It is for our Executive--through the EPA and the DoJ--to protect us from carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are important pollutants.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/us/politics/in-emissions-case-supreme-court-to-consider-the-limits-of-obamas-authority.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 8:20 AM
Subject: re: The Prodigal Sons
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Now David Brooks repents his austerianism--not because it's bad economics (we've known that since Herbert Hoover)--but because he's a nice guy. Does he think his patrons on the Right will forgive his apostasy out of Christian charity? Or does he trust that they're too dim to notice that he's talking about economic policy?
    It would be funny to watch him squirm if he hadn't been party to justifying five years of disastrous economic stagnation.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/opinion/brooks-the-prodigal-sons.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0

The Opinion Pages|OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Prodigal Sons

FEB. 17, 2014

David Brooks

We take as our text today the parable of the prodigal sons. As I hope you know, the story is about a father with two sons. The younger son took his share of the inheritance early and blew it on prostitutes and riotous living. When the money was gone, he returned home.

His father ran out and embraced him. The delighted father offered the boy his finest robe and threw a feast in his honor. The older son, the responsible one, was appalled. He stood outside the feast, crying in effect, “Look! All these years I’ve been working hard and obeying you faithfully, and you never gave me special treatment such as this!”

The father responded, “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” But he had to celebrate the younger one’s return. The boy was lost and now is found.

Did the father do the right thing? Is the father the right model for authority today?

The father’s example is especially pernicious now, the critics continue. Jesus preached it at the time of the Pharisees, in an overly rigid and rule-bound society. In those circumstances, a story of radical forgiveness was a useful antidote to the prevailing legalism.The father’s critics say he was unjust. People who play by the rules should see the rewards. Those who abandon the community, live according to their own reckless desires should not get to come back and automatically reap the bounty of others’ hard work. If you reward the younger brother, you signal that self-indulgence pays, while hard work gets slighted.

But we don’t live in that kind of society. We live in a society in which moral standards are already fuzzy, in which people are already encouraged to do their own thing. We live in a society with advanced social decay — with teens dropping out of high school, financiers plundering companies and kids being raised without fathers. The father’s example in the parable reinforces loose self-indulgence at a time when we need more rule-following, more social discipline and more accountability, not less.

It’s a valid critique, but I’d defend the father’s example, and, informed by a reading of Timothy Keller’s outstanding book “The Prodigal God,” I’d even apply the father’s wisdom to social policy-making today.

We live in a divided society in which many of us in the middle- and upper-middle classes are like the older brother and many of the people who drop out of school, commit crimes and abandon their children are like the younger brother. In many cases, we have a governing class of elder brothers legislating programs on behalf of the younger brothers. The great danger in this situation is that we in the elder brother class will end up self-righteously lecturing the poor: “You need to be more like us: graduate from school, practice a little sexual discipline, work harder.”

But the father in this parable exposes the truth that people in the elder brother class are stained, too. The elder brother is self-righteous, smug, cold and shrewd. The elder brother wasn’t really working to honor his father; he was working for material reward and out of a fear-based moralism. The father reminds us of the old truth that the line between good and evil doesn’t run between people or classes; it runs straight through every human heart.

The father also understands that the younger brothers of the world will not be reformed and re-bound if they feel they are being lectured to by unpleasant people who consider themselves models of rectitude. Imagine if the older brother had gone out to greet the prodigal son instead of the father, giving him some patronizing lecture. Do we think the younger son would have reformed his life to become a productive member of the community? No. He would have gotten back up and found some bad-boy counterculture he could join to reassert his dignity.

The father teaches that rebinding and reordering society requires an aggressive assertion: You are accepted; you are accepted. It requires mutual confession and then a mutual turning toward some common project. Why does the father organize a feast? Because a feast is nominally about food, but, in Jewish life, it is really about membership. It reasserts your embedded role in the community project.

The father’s lesson for us is that if you live in a society that is coming apart on class lines, the best remedies are oblique. They are projects that bring the elder and younger brothers together for some third goal: national service projects, infrastructure-building, strengthening a company or a congregation.

The father offers each boy a precious gift. The younger son gets to dedicate himself to work and self-discipline. The older son gets to surpass the cold calculus of utility and ambition, and experience the warming embrace of solidarity and companionship.

Iran Delivers Surprise, Money, to Jewish Hospital

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 9:18 AM
Subject: re: Iran Delivers Surprise, Money, to Jewish Hospital
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Whatever the Mullahs' agenda--and no one should be fool enough to think that they're playing only one game at a time--they have telegraphed strenuously that they will no longer underwrite Israeli militarism. For too long, Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu each justified his own saber-rattling by appeal to the other's wild rhetoric.

   But Ahmadinejad is gone. And Bibi looks increasingly like history has passed him by. Rouhani and Abbas are scoring all the rhetorical points and most of the international sympathy as Bibi keeps fighting a battle that's long over.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/world/middleeast/iran-delivers-surprise-money-to-jewish-hospital.html?_r=0

A Report's Real Message: It Wasn't About Health Care

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:37 PM
Subject: re: A Report's Real Message: It Wasn't About Health Care
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The ACA ("Obamacare") is a messy half-measure addressing coverage but not healthcare per se. As such, its effects on employment are slight. Real healthcare reform will put 400,000 health insurance company employees out of work and free them to do something productive instead of shuffling papers and trying to deny patients coverage. Because everyone will have the same, federal coverage.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/a-reports-real-message-it-wasnt-about-health-care/

The Gospel According to Paul

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 8:36 AM
Subject: re: The Gospel According to Paul
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    If she should decide to run for the White House in 2016, Hillary's biggest problem will not be Monica; it will be WalMart. While it made sense for Arkansas' biggest corporation to put the governor's wife on the payroll--despite her lack of any relevant experience--21st century voters should question whether this is an appropriate relationship of business to government.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/dowd-the-gospel-according-to-paul.html?_r=0