NYT Wants Government To Regulate Waste Plants

Opinion/Editorial


 

 

  Of all things now the New York Times wants the federal government to regulate chemical (waste/dung) plants. More and more BS pun intended BIGGER GOVERNMENT influence in our lives.

  This mornings lead OPED shows this to be the case "A Failure to Police Chemical Plants" is the title.

  It begins "The deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., in April has highlighted glaring shortcomings in federal and state regulation of facilities that produce, store and use toxic chemicals.The casualties in Texas — 14 killed and nearly 200 injured — were shocking, but the fact is that chemical disasters imperil millions of Americans who live and work close to industrial plants in dense cities and sprawling suburbs. Last November, the Congressional Research Service identified 2,560 facilities that could each put more than 10,000 people at risk in the event of an accident. Last year, 1,270 people died in more than 30,000 chemical spills and accidents. The Texas catastrophe showed that federal regulators have been far too lax in their oversight of ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer at the center of this explosion. The West Fertilizer Company stored 540,000 pounds of the stuff at its plant in 2012 (it is unclear how much it had in April). In spite of the potential risks posed by the fertilizer, plants are allowed to keep it near residential areas. Plants with large quantities are required to tell the Department of Homeland Security how they keep the material secure, but the West plant did not bother to do so. More broadly, the explosion is a reminder that the Obama administration has failed to uphold a promise the president made as a candidate in 2008 to require the industry to switch to safer chemicals and processes wherever feasible. The Environmental Protection Agency could compel plants to switch their materials and methods by invoking the general duty clause of the Clean Air Act, which calls on them to prevent accidental release of dangerous chemicals and to minimize the consequences of such releases.Wow they actually went after Obama for a change LOL!

 And the NYT actually gives Bush credit for something OMG! is the earth shifting LOL."Many environmental groups and Christine Todd Whitman, an E.P.A. administrator during George W. Bush’s first term, have lobbied for such a change. But the agency has not required the switch to safer technology, under pressure from the industry, which argues that such a mandate would be costly and cumbersome.

  But as always is the case with the NYT they have to revert back to the liberal game of race and victimization "The health risk is particularly great for the poor and racial minorities, who are more likely to live in communities near facilities using hazardous materials. Much of this is the result of racial politics that put dangerous plants in segregated and poor neighborhoods where land is cheap. Restrictive zoning laws and subtler forms of discrimination can also make it hard for the poor and members of minority groups to move to nicer neighborhoods. A study published in the American Journal of Sociology in 2010 found that black and Hispanic families tended to live in areas with more industrial pollution than whites — even with similar levels of education and income.

 No how about where governments build housing for those on welfare and those who can't get off their asses to save their lives.

  It goes on "For example, more than 40,000 people live in a three-mile radius around a Citgo oil refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex., which uses a host of flammable and toxic chemicals, including butane and hydrogen fluoride. This population has an estimated per capita income of $12,700, and nearly 90 percent of those people are Hispanic or black, according to an analysis of E.P.A. and census data by an alliance of environmental groups known as the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. By contrast, the State of Texas has an average per capita income of about $25,500, and about 50 percent of its population is Hispanic or black.

Similar disparities exist around the country in places like Detroit and northern New Jersey, and they have persisted for decades in spite of the increased awareness of environmental injustice since the 1980s, when several important studies documented the problem in detail.

In 2009, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have required the riskiest plants to switch to safer technology, but the Senate did not adopt the legislation. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced a similar bill in January, but it is unlikely to advance given the partisan gridlock in Washington.

Some chemical companies have voluntarily adopted safer materials and methods. In 2009, Clorox said it would switch its seven bleach plants from lethal chlorine gas to a safer process that uses “high-strength bleach” as a raw material. Such efforts are welcome, but policy makers cannot wait for the industry to move to safer technologies on its own. It is critical for the E.P.A. to take action under the power it already has.

  The NYT can't get away from the race card. Many of the aforementioned Hispanics are probably Mexican immigrants (some legal and but for the most part an educated guess mostly ILLEGAL) well since its Texas a little common sense here go back home then and get off welfare.

NYT Needs To Take A Huge Step Back



Opinion/Editorial

 

 

  People need to understand that when the media especially those in the liberal left wing media e.g. here the New York Times mention the nasty Washington insider lingo like BIPARTISANSHIP it does not mean that it is good for the country.
 Those who don't understand the way politics is conducted in this country or those that are ill informed on the issues whenever they here BIPARTISAN or with ship added on the end people that don't understand what's going on get all warm and fuzzy inside.
 This mornings OPED is no different in the NYT entitled "First Steps to a Better Immigration Bill" while mentioning BIPARTISANSHIP they still go on the attack I'm LMAO too.
 It begins "After the Senate Judiciary Committee ended its first day of marking up an 867-page immigration bill on Thursday, plunging into the details of what could be the most ambitious overhaul of the system in a quarter-century, one thing was clear: it is a lot better to be deep in the weeds of a complicated bill than trapped in the desert of a stalemate, which is where immigration reform has been since the last big bipartisan bill collapsed in 2007.Since that failure the country has lined up solidly in favor of comprehensive reform, and members of Congress are pushing forward to fix the immigration system in all the ways it is broken — at the border and in the workplace, in the clogged lines of hopeful immigrants waiting to get in, and for the 11 million living here outside the law, waiting to become Americans. That the Senate bill’s sponsors, four Republicans and four Democrats, have stuck together and gotten it this far is evidence that Washington’s ability to get anything done through bipartisanship and compromise is not entirely dead.
 One thing that is important to remember that when the NYT talks or mentions about compromise its the RINO republicans that meet in the middle with the far left.
 It goes on "That message has not reached some Republicans on the committee — notably Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ted Cruz of Texas — who spent their time trying to drag the debate back to the border.(in other words Republicans the few that there are left that want to follow our Constitution)      

Mr. Grassley offered an amendment that would essentially abolish the path to legalization by tying it to border-sealing benchmarks that would be impossible to meet. Mr. Sessions proposed having not one border fence but two, a double-walled barrier across 700 miles of desert. Mr. Cruz went all in, saying he wanted to triple the number of Border Patrol agents and quadruple the cameras, sensors, drones, helicopters and other equipment there.

Mr. Cruz, a Tea Party darling who in a very short Senate career has already developed a reputation for incoherence and reflexive truculence, did not say where a debt-ridden America would get tens of billions of new dollars to dump along the Rio Grande or give any evidence as to why this was necessary. Nor did he impress anyone when he baldly insisted that the committee was rejecting all efforts to enhance border security. In fact, the committee passed amendments to spread security measures across the entire border, not just at certain hot spots; to tighten auditing of border spending; and to add private landowners along both borders to a task force overseeing border security.

What these border-fixated senators — and their counterparts in the House — refuse to accept is that they have already won the argument. Though the 2007 bill died, practically every enforcement goal in it has since been met. The border is already more militarized than ever.(this is an outright lie)

As Senator Charles Schumer of New York astutely noted, in a fairly heated exchange, the Republicans who keep talking about border security are really concerned with something else. What bothers them is the idea of ever legalizing the 11 million people who live on this side, not that side, of the border. They have no plan to deal with them, and no other ideas than to block the bill that would bring them onto the right side the law.

And neither do the Demorats  right Schumer. Notice the NYT say 11 million people no how about the fact that probably over three fourths that .75 are here ILLEGALLY or as you leftists love to put undocumented.

The worst border amendments were defeated on Thursday. Some good amendments passed, including one from Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, that requires border agents to ask people they detain about spouses and children, and to consider family unity and safety when holding or repatriating anyone. Another would withhold reimbursement for expenses incurred by state and local police departments that practice racial profiling.Here we go again racial profiling same old BS crap.       

The markup of the bill resumes Tuesday and may continue for weeks. There are hundreds more amendments, including many important ones that would improve the bill.

The Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, has amendments that would extend family-sponsorship rights to gay and lesbian couples, a serious omission in the current bill. That will be a contentious one, because Republicans have declared that marriage equality is a deal-breaker.

There are some strange amendments, like one from Mike Lee of Utah that would exempt an array of domestic servants, including coachmen, footmen, butlers and valets from laws that prohibit hiring the undocumented. And there are many more poison pills, designed to break apart the coalition and return the system to the failed status quo.No NYT you're the very heart of the failed status quo.       

Here is a perfect example of the BS BIPATISANSHIP crap On their first day of wrangling with the bill, most of the senators showed a commitment to fairness and compromise, qualities that could lead the Senate to pass legislation that will help generations of new Americans. Congress needs to keep moving forward, leaving the enforcement-only minority stuck in the desert, perhaps someday to realize that the argument they cling to is well and truly dead.

 

Wrong Way Is The Correct Way According to the NYT

Opinion/Editorial


 

 

 Budget cuts are at the center of this mornings New York Times lead OPED. Of course they are whining to no avail on why the cuts are there.
 The title is "Heading the Wrong Way" of the piece. It begins "At first glance, the latest economic growth report, released Friday, appears to show the economy revving up. In reality, the economy is either stuck in low gear, or worse, slowing to a stop as budget cuts harm not only the users of overstretched government services but the overall economy. This precarious situation urgently calls for more federal spending, not less, though that message has been lost on Congress."
 Same ol same ol more spending. Just for the record the two terrorists from the Boston Marathon they were both on public assistance aka welfare.so we need deep spending deep spending cuts.
 It continues their frivolous argument "From January through March, the economy grew at a modest annual rate of 2.5 percent, compared with a measly 0.4 percent in the last three months of 2012. That seems like a big jump, but it was less than economists expected and does not alter the big picture. Since the recession ended in mid-2009, quarterly growth has averaged around 2 percent. Every acceleration from that pace has inevitably petered out, which is why unemployment is high and pay is low nearly four years into what is officially an economic recovery.

Worse, there are signs in the latest report of a renewed slowdown. Excluding inventories, which tend to artificially depress growth in some quarters and raise it in others, growth in the first quarter of 2013 was only 1.5 percent, compared with 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 2.4 percent in the third quarter.Underneath it all is the fiscal drag from ill-advised and ill-timed austerity measures. With the expiration this year of the payroll tax break, personal income declined sharply last quarter, forcing consumers to draw on their savings to support their spending. That is unsustainable, presaging weaker consumption in the months to come and, with it, weaker overall growth.       

At the same time, cutbacks in government spending took a big chunk out of growth, reflecting, in part, the onset of automatic budget cuts under the sequester. The hit from lower public spending will only intensify in the quarters to come as the sequester takes full effect, threatening to push growth below its already paltry 2 percent average.There is a tendency, in the gloom, to look for bright spots. Housing, for example, showed continued growth in the first quarter, but it was more than offset by the drag from cuts in government spending. If overall growth remains sluggish or even slows down, that could overwhelm the housing recovery, because the pace of home sales is inseparable from the pace of the economy. Without enough growth to power jobs and pay, potential homeowners will simply not have the income and credit profiles to buy.Lack of demand is also bound to take an increasing toll on corporate earnings, which also have been a bright spot. Already, some prominent companies, including I.B.M. and Caterpillar, have reported disappointing results, a reflection of waning demand not only in the United States but in recessionary Europe and in China, where growth has been below expectations. The longer and more widespread the weakness is, the less faith investors will have in the ability of the Federal Reserve to engineer a rebound. The real danger in the Fed’s efforts to revive the economy is not that its actions will cause inflation — of which there is no evidence — but that they will fail to revive the economy by any meaningful measure, denting investor confidence and, in the process, the stock market.That is not to blame the Fed. For years, Congress and the Obama administration have been working at cross-purposes to the Fed, as strategies to cut the budget have taken priority over strategies to increase growth, jobs and pay. Republicans have insisted on austerity for ideological and political reasons. The administration has done better by adding new taxes and investments to the cuts, but the reductions are still deep and damaging. The budget fights have endured even as the intellectual arguments for near-term deficit reduction have collapsed. They have endured even as the economies that have enforced budget cuts most strenuously have contracted, notably in Britain and in much of the rest of Europe. And they endure even as the United States remains impaired by fiscal wounds that are, unfortunately and undeniably, self-inflicted.

  As you can see the NYT theology is to spend spend  and spend and spend more of $$$$ that is not theirs usual liberal ungodly theology
 

 

Nerve Of NYT To Print OPED After Boston Tragedy



Opinion/Editorial



   It's official the New York Times have turned against America and her better interests.Last week was bad with their baby killing glorification to this week on immigration.
  This mornings lead crap heap "Immigration and Fear" is the piece of garbage today.
  It begins "Much of the country was still waking up to the mayhem and confusion outside Boston on Friday morning when Senator Charles Grassley decided to link the hunt for terrorist bombers to immigration reform.“How can individuals evade authorities and plan such attacks on our soil?” asked Mr. Grassley, the Iowa Republican, at the beginning of a hearing on the Senate’s immigration bill. “How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the U.S.?”

The country is beginning to discuss seriously the most sweeping overhaul of immigration since 1986, with hearings in the Senate last week and this week, and a possible vote by early summer. After years of stalemate, the mood has shifted sharply, with bipartisan Congressional coalitions, business and labor leaders, law-enforcement and religious groups, and a majority of the public united behind a long-delayed overhaul of the crippled system. Until the bombing came along, the antis were running out of arguments. They cannot rail against “illegals,” since the bill is all about making things legal and upright, with registration, fines and fees. They cannot argue seriously that reform is bad for business: turning a shadow population of anonymous, underpaid laborers into on-the-books employees and taxpayers, with papers and workplace protections, will only help the economy grow. About all they have left is scary aliens. There is a long tradition of raw fear fouling the immigration debate. Lou Dobbs ranted about superhighways from Mexico injecting Spanish speakers deep into the heartland. Gov. Jan Brewer told lies about headless bodies in the Arizona desert. And now Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, is warning of radical Islamists posing as Hispanics and infiltrating from the southern border. But the Boston events have nothing to do with immigration reform. Even if we stop accepting refugees and asylum seekers, stop giving out green cards and devise a terror-profiling system that can bore into the hearts of 9-year-olds, which seems to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s age when he entered the United States, we will still face risks. And we will not have fixed immigration. There is a better way to be safer: pass an immigration bill. If terrorists, drug traffickers and gangbangers are sharp needles in the immigrant haystack, then shrink the haystack. Get 11 million people on the books. Find out who they are. The Senate bill includes no fewer than four separate background checks as immigrants move from the shadows to citizenship. It tightens the rules on employment verification and includes new ways to prevent misuse of Social Security numbers. It has an entry-exit visa system to monitor traffic at borders and ports. And if we are serious about making America safer, why not divert some of the billions now lavished on the border to agencies fighting gangs, drugs, illegal guns and workplace abuse? Or to community policing and English-language classes, so immigrants can more readily cooperate with law enforcement? Why not make immigrants feel safer and invested in their neighborhoods, so they don’t fear and shun the police? Why not stop outsourcing immigration policing to local sheriffs who chase traffic offenders and janitors? As we have seen with the failure of gun control, a determined minority wielding false arguments can kill the best ideas. The immigration debate will test the resilience of the reform coalition in Congress. Changes so ambitious require calm, thoughtful deliberation, and a fair amount of courage. They cannot be allowed to come undone with irrelevant appeals to paranoia and fear.

  Hello NYT wrong again about fees and fines that they will never pay because they will cry racism.Oh by the way who is fouling up the immigration debate with lies and BS you are.Oh and the OUTLANDISH statement that the events in Boston have nothing to do with immigration reform has everything to do with it.

Most Disgusting Vile OPED FROM NYT

Opinion/Editorial


 

 

 I hate to say it but this takes the cake as far as overboard editorials from the New York Times, literally this is the most vile, disgusting, putrid form of writing that I have ever come across and I have seen BS as you all know from this paper the NYT.
 To celebrate a victory is one thing such as an election win and gloat as they do when they win their elections of course on their false pretenses.
 But to gloat in an editorial about the death of another human being and gloating about the deaths of millions upon millions of innocence is downright evil.
 This mornings lead OPED in the NYT entitled "Courage in Kansas."
 Here it is in its entirety.
   Nearly four years after an anti-abortion extremist opened fire and killed a Wichita abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller, as he stood in the foyer of his church, a new medical clinic offering comprehensive reproductive health services — including abortions through the first trimester of pregnancy — opened on April 3. It is in the building that once housed Dr. Tiller’s clinic.
 Wichita, a city of about 400,000 people, has been without any abortion services since Dr. Tiller’s murder. Women needing abortions have had to travel long distances, stealing time away from jobs and family, to exercise their constitutionally protected right to one of the nation’s most common medical procedures.

The new clinic, called the South Wind Women’s Center, will not be performing late-term abortions as Dr. Tiller did. But the fact that it has opened at all is remarkable, and is a tribute to the perseverance and courage of those involved in the project, especially Julie Burkhart, a former colleague of Dr. Tiller who directs the Trust Women Foundation, which owns the clinic. Her struggle to open the facility after the murder, and now to keep it open in the face of continuing threats and acts of intimidation, and amid escalating efforts in Kansas and other Republican-led states to stigmatize and restrict abortion in defiance of Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court rulings, is both inspiring and instructive.

For months after Dr. Tiller’s death, Ms. Burkhart says, she thought hard about whether she wanted to join with others to try to open a new clinic, knowing it would be “the challenge of our lives.” His old building was chosen as the site not because of the symbolism, but for its layout, she says, which works better for patients and doctors than other buildings in the area.

Anti-abortion groups responded by trying, unsuccessfully, to get the local planning commission to rezone the site to keep out medical services, and by filing bogus complaints with building inspectors and fire marshals in an effort to shut down renovations. The harassers even filed a complaint with the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, the state body that regulates medical providers, alleging the illegal practice of medicine when the clinic was not even open.

Ms. Burkhart’s own home has been picketed twice in the last few months. The second time, she saw a sign pointed at her house that said, “Where’s your church?” — a reference, which she found “incredibly frightening,” to Dr. Tiller’s murder at his church. She has obtained a temporary protection order against the fanatic who led the picketing, and she is seeking a permanent one. There is now tighter security at her home and the clinic, she says.

The South Wind clinic is to be staffed by three doctors whose names have been withheld to help protect their safety. Only one of them lives in Kansas. The other two will be flying in from out of state, emulating the practice in several other states, like Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota, where doctors’ fears about personal safety and being ostracized in their communities, combined with a shortage of physicians with training in abortion care, make it necessary to import doctors.

Special precautions are planned for transporting the doctors to and from the airport. Recently, one of the doctors who will be commuting from another state to work at South Wind received a harassing phone call from Troy Newman, head of the extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. Mr. Newman got through by posing as a reporter and then posted his surreptitious recording of the conversation on the organization’s Web site, along with the physician’s name. “I was terrified for a while,” says the doctor, who remains committed to the Wichita job.

Two weeks ago, David Leach, from another radical group, Army of God, posted on YouTube a chilling recording of his recent jailhouse conversation with Scott Roeder, the convicted murderer of Dr. Tiller, in which both men seemed to suggest that some like-minded anti-abortion terrorist might kill “Julie Darkheart,” Mr. Roeder’s insulting name for Ms. Burkhart. By opening the clinic in Dr. Tiller’s building, Ms. Burkhart has made herself a “target,” both men said on the tape, which was first reported by RH Reality Check. “I don’t know if anyone will pick up the gauntlet,” Mr. Leach says ominously, adding that he hadn’t known Mr. Roeder would act until he did.

Local law enforcement needs to be on alert, as does the F.B.I. and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., who should assess the situation and determine whether federal marshals need to be deployed to protect Ms. Burkhart, clinic personnel and the facility itself.

Dangerous and unconstitutional legislative restrictions, unceasing harassment, threats of violence and fearful doctors having to hide their identities for self-protection: this is what it means to be on the front line of trying to deliver legal and necessary reproductive health care to women in Wichita and other parts of the country where zealous right-wing politicians and activists on the political fringe currently hold sway.

So why does Ms. Burkhart persist in this battle? “The frustrations and dangers are real, and sometimes it’s scary,” she says. “But just because we happen to be in a more conservative area in the Midwest doesn’t mean women don’t need good, safe medical care. We have work to do here and patients to see in this clinic.”

  Now please tell me that the NYT is not gloating and basking in the sunlight over this disgusting vile crap.

 

New NYT Blame Game On Court Vacancies

Opinion/Editorial



 

 

  Now the New York Times Editorial board has to whine about of all things court vacancies throughout our federal court system now they are legal experts what a joke.
  The title of their lead OPED this morning is "Courts Without Judges" which should be the least of anyone's concerns.
  It begins "The number of vacancies on the nation’s federal courts has reached an astonishingly high level, creating a serious shortage of judges and undermining the ability of the nation’s court system to bestow justice.Of 856 federal district and circuit court seats, 85 are unfilled — a 10 percent vacancy rate and nearly double the rate at this point in the presidency of George W. Bush. More than a third of the vacancies have been declared “judicial emergencies” based on court workloads and the length of time the seats have been empty. By far the most important cause of this unfortunate state of affairs is the determination of Senate Republicans, for reasons of politics, ideology and spite, to confirm as few of President Obama’s judicial choices as possible.Numbers compiled by the Senate Judiciary Committee tell the story. Mr. Obama’s nominees for seats on federal courts of appeal, the system’s top tier below the Supreme Court, have waited an average of 148 days for their confirmation vote following the committee’s approval, more than four times longer than Mr. Bush’s nominees. For Mr. Obama’s nominees to federal district courts, the average wait time has been 102 days, compared with 35 days for Mr. Bush’s district court choices."
 When in doubt blame the Republicans same ol same ol from NYT.
 It goes on "The prestigious and important United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit offers a particularly striking example of Republican obstructionism. The 11-seat court rules on most appeals from federal regulatory agencies and has exclusive jurisdiction over national security matters. It has four vacancies; the last time the Senate confirmed someone to the court was 2006.Mr. Bush appointed four judges to the court, a feeder to the Supreme Court, but whether the Senate will allow Mr. Obama to appoint any remains to be seen. Mr. Obama’s first nominee for the court, Caitlin Halligan, withdrew from consideration last month after Senate Republicans filibustered for a second time. Those critics echoed the National Rifle Association’s ridiculous portrayal of her as a legal activist outside the mainstream because she had filed a brief in opposition to the gun industry when she was New York State’s solicitor general.The real reason, as everyone knows, was to prevent Mr. Obama from adding balance to a generally conservative court. He may fare better with his latest nominee, Sri Srinivasan, a lawyer whose background working in the United States solicitor general’s office under both President Bush and President Obama should help his chances.Nominees for other important government posts have also been held up for partisan reasons. Some Republicans say this is simply payback for the Democrats’ filibustering of Bush nominees. But while neither party should be in the business of obstructing judicial nominees, unless they are unqualified or unacceptably extreme, a retaliatory response based on politics hurts all who rely on courts to protect their rights and uphold the law.It is also worth noting that Mr. Obama has not been putting forth candidates with strong ideological profiles. His nominees are decidedly moderate, which was not always true of the Bush judicial choices that the Democrats felt compelled to filibuster."

                          Here are the numbers according to the NYT's account

               

 Mr. Obama could help reduce the problem by speeding up his nominations. The White House appears to have sharpened its focus since the election, but currently, 62 district and circuit court vacancies have no nominees. The Halligan filibuster got some Democratic senators talking about a bolder strategy, including revisiting filibuster reform and making it harder for senators to torpedo or delay nominations to judicial vacancies in their home states. Another proposal is to have Mr. Obama make simultaneous nominations to fill the four vacancies on the District of Columbia Circuit, which would force Republicans to come up with plausible reasons to oppose each of them. In the face of political paralysis, these ideas are worth embracing.
 I'd like to make a point how about following the Constitution instead of making up rules as they go along from both sides of the political aisle in the Senate. And quit playing politics and get it done.
 I can certainly understand the vacancies from the 9th Circuit Court which of course the NYT fails to mention is in California the most liberal whacked out circuit court in the country due to their past lame brained leftist decisions.

Bleeding Heart Boston Globe Editorial Defends Scumbag

Opinion/Editorial


 

Editorial

DiMasi deserves consideration for ‘compassionate release’

 

 March 22, 2013

 

 Federal authorities have the power to grant early prison release for “extraordinary and compelling reasons” — what is commonly known as “compassionate release.” Such leniency has mostly been granted to prisoners who are clearly dying — a standard that might exclude the ailing former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi. By various accounts, the 67-year-old DiMasi is weak and fed by a stomach tube as he is treated for a rare form of throat and tongue cancer at a North Carolina prison hospital, but his immediate prognosis is unclear.

For the sake of DiMasi and others who may be similarly afflicted, federal prison authorities should interpret the release statute in a broader way, looking at the totality of the circumstances: the seriousness of the prisoner’s condition; the dangers to the public presented by his or her release; the nature of his or her offense; and the potential benefit in receiving medical care in a private setting where his or her condition can be monitored by relatives and friends.
By those standards, DiMasi might well be a candidate for release, and he deserves consideration. The once-powerful speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives is only in the second year of an eight-year sentence for political corruption, stemming from kickbacks given to DiMasi’s associates in exchange for his support in obtaining government contracts. His long prison sentence was welcomed by many in Massachusetts as an acknowledgment of the seriousness of his breach of faith; and it shouldn’t be foreshortened for anything less than extraordinary circumstances. However, DiMasi’s condition is quite serious, according to his wife and lawyer, and the message sent by releasing him wouldn’t diminish the deterrent effect of his sentence. It would be viewed as an act of compassion — nothing more or less.
Federal authorities have already shown their toughness in dealing with the former speaker. The Bureau of Prisons ignored a recommendation from the judge who presided over his trial that DiMasi be assigned to a federal prison in Ayer, so he could receive treatment for heart ailments and be closer to his wife, who suffers from breast cancer. Instead, he was sent to a federal prison in Kentucky. Then, according to DiMasi’s wife and his lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, prison authorities ignored DiMasi’s request for medical treatment when he first reported suspicious swelling in his throat and neck. Months later, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer — the most advanced form. His condition has since deteriorated.

Compassionate release is rare throughout the federal prison system, according to a 2012 study by Human Rights Watch and the inmate advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Federal courts have the authority to grant early release, but judges first need a motion from the Bureau of Prisons. The bureau rarely presents prisoners’ cases to the courts, the study concluded.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons didn’t respond to questions seeking more information about DiMasi or details about the compassionate release policy. According to the Human Rights Watch study, the Bureau of Prisons makes motions on behalf of only about two dozen people a year, out of a federal prison population that now exceeds 218,000.
Compassionate release shouldn’t be reserved for only the last few weeks of life; DiMasi deserves a chance to argue for his freedom as a show of compassion.

Commentary

Funny where was the Compassion for the taxpayers of Massachusetts getting screwed by this scumbag