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My European co-workers want to know why progressives aren't singing and dancing in the streets over the reduction in reproductive care in the mandatory minimums insurance industry protection act of 2010. Its slightly hard to explain, but they thought Obama the Candidate was RFK+MLK and haven't gotten over the odd continuity of most things wrong.
The US is now entering the Japan (Imperial) vs China range of years of aggression.
Update 2/22/10: google.cn is redirected to google.co.hk.
I may be in Stockholm, but at least a third of my attention is focused on Beijing, and the technical agenda that arose from some very thoughtless policy acts by the big guys at ICANN. I'm counting weeks until some very hard choices are made public.
The latest version of S 773 the revised Cybsersecurity Act of 2009, can be downloaded from the Senate Web site.
A committee summary is available here.
I'll have more on this, for now, the links.
Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation. And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people. I believe health care is a civil right. Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph.
I have spent my life struggling for the rights of working class people and for health care. I grew up understanding firsthand what it meant for families who did not get access to needed care. I lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including in a couple of cars. I understand the connection between poverty and poor health care, the deeper meaning of what Native Americans have called "hole in the body, hole in the spirit." I struggled with Crohn's disease much of my adult life, to discover sixteen years ago a near-cure in alternative medicine and following a plant-based diet. I have learned with difficulty the benefits of taking charge personally of my own health care. On those few occasions when I have needed it, I have had access to the best allopathic practitioners. As a result I have received the blessings of vitality and high energy. Health and health care is personal for each one of us. As a former surgical technician I know that there are many people who dedicate their lives to helping others improve theirs. I also know their struggles with an insufficient health care system.
There are some who believe that health care is a privilege based on ability to pay. This is the model President Obama is dealing with, attempting to open up health care to another 30 million people, within the context of the for-profit insurance system. There are others who believe that health care is a basic right and ought to be provided through a not-for-profit plan. This is what I have tirelessly advocated.
I have carried the banner of national health care in two presidential campaigns, in party platform meetings, and as co-author of HR676, Medicare for All. I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer. The first version of the health care bill, while badly flawed, contained provisions which I believed made the bill worth supporting in committee. The provisions were taken out of the bill after it passed committee.
I joined with the Progressive Caucus saying that I would not support the bill unless it had a strong public option and unless it protected the right of people to pursue single payer at a state level. It did not. I kept my pledge and voted against the bill. I have continued to oppose it while trying to get the provisions back into the bill. Some have speculated I may be in a position of casting the deciding vote. The President's visit to my district on Monday underscored the urgency of this moment.
I have taken this fight farther than many in Congress cared to carry it because I know what my constituents experience on a daily basis. Come to my district in Cleveland and you will understand.
The people of Ohio's 10th district have been hard hit by an economy where wealth has accelerated upwards through plant closings, massive unemployment, small business failings, lack of access to credit, foreclosures and the high cost of health care and limited access to care. I take my responsibilities to the people of my district personally. The focus of my district office is constituent service, which more often than not involves social work to help people survive economic perils. It also involves intervening with insurance companies.
In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final health care bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care. I have seen the political pressure and the financial pressure being asserted to prevent a minimal recognition of this right, even within the context of a system dominated by private insurance companies.
I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is. My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported. I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary. I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.
However after careful discussions with the President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Elizabeth my wife and close friends, I have decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation. If my vote is to be counted, let it now count for passage of the bill, hopefully in the direction of comprehensive health care reform. We must include coverage for those excluded from this bill. We must free the states. We must have control over private insurance companies and the cost their very existence imposes on American families. We must strive to provide a significant place for alternative and complementary medicine, religious health science practice, and the personal responsibility aspects of health care which include diet, nutrition, and exercise.
The health care debate has been severely hampered by fear, myths, and by hyper-partisanship. The President clearly does not advocate socialism or a government takeover of health care. The fear that this legislation has engendered has deep roots, not in foreign ideology but in a lack of confidence, a timidity, mistrust and fear which post 911 America has been unable to shake.
This fear has so infected our politics, our economics and our international relations that as a nation we are losing sight of the expanded vision, the electrifying potential we caught a glimpse of with the election of Barack Obama. The transformational potential of his presidency, and of ourselves, can still be courageously summoned in ways that will reconnect America to our hopes for expanded opportunities for jobs, housing, education, peace, and yes, health care.
I want to thank those who have supported me personally and politically as I have struggled with this decision. I ask for your continued support in our ongoing efforts to bring about meaningful change. As this bill passes I will renew my efforts to help those state organizations which are aimed at stirring a single payer movement which eliminates the predatory role of private insurers who make money not providing health care. I have taken a detour through supporting this bill, but I know the destination I will continue to lead, for as long as it takes, whatever it takes to an America where health care will be firmly established as a civil right.
I said years ago that Italia Federici was not the "little fish" everyone made her out to be... And now she's back.
Recently we in CORE discussed some city TLD possibilities in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Gulf. Of course, we shouldn't expect Israeli municipal public administrations to prefer a Swiss non-profit, we're too German, and then there's the American Preference, which can't be overcome while AIPAC lives and controls the majorities of both political parties in Washington, an artifact of the pretense that the Zionist Entity is a European State (outside of Europe, but not a colony) and not a West Asian State, yet unacceptable to most of the European political notions of law and legitimacy.
So the Israeli municipalities, in fact all of the Israeli business will go to Reston, a short commute from Washington, for reasons of state. This leaves us with ... I suppose the possibility of proposing something for the Jerusalems. It is trivial under the current new gTLD rules (DAGv3 now being updated to v4 in time for the Bruxelles / Brussel ICANN meeting in June) to block an application for Jerusalem. One, or the other, or both, of the potential applicants, the Israeli and the Palestinian mayoral offices can object to an application for a "unified" but unacceptably dominated by one party or the other cityTLD. That leaves two applications, one for "West" Jerusalem, and one for "East" Jerusalem (with both supporting both Hebrew and Arabic scripts due to the pervasive bilingualism of both areas of the city), or one application by a third party trusted by both administrations to place collective goals above schismatic goals.
It is something we'll discuss.
The phone rang, I picked it up, said "Hello" and listened. Nada. I said "Hello" again. Again, nada. And again. And then I hung up the phone. And then I remembered that I was scheduled to be joined in on a concall with Al Gore.
Oh well. Its not like he's going away.
This week I'm spending 45 minutes with Sam in his 5th grade classroom, being his aide during math period. The text ICSD is using is "Everyday Math".
Sam's class didn't have math for the last three days of last week, and the first two days had been calculator exercises, which Sam did with some real interest, so I didn't aide him the first two days of last week.
Today when I came to class Sam was already in his desk, a good sign. The problem to be worked was comparing fractions ... with a ruler. The children didn't know to factor out, or how to simply change the representation of two fractions by multiplication by n/n. They were shown the trick, but as a trick, not as a mere exercise in representation, having no mysterious of magical powers, an act of mere bookkeeping, so that two fractions could be commensurate -- have the same measure.
The ED material was uneven. Which of the following are equivalent: 1/2, 2/4, 4/8, 4/5. No common factorization and cancellations. We stopped after doing some comparisons.
The speculators lost their wager, the "Expression of Intent" was voted down. The Deleware-Dollar bubble was holed, and the new gTLD application process, at the very least, and perhaps the operational requirements, is now, in theory, not a rigid $185,000 (plus the non-fee costs such as the inflated operational requirements) barrier to applicants from outside what I think of as the access-to-Delaware-corporate-law-facilities and use-currency-equivalent-to-US-dollars perimeter that surrounds the OEDC economies.
Two big wins to celebrate by ... going back to bed.
An interesting, and gratifying day, starting at 3am and ending at 10am. Steve Crocker, ICANN Board and former SSAC Chair comments from the Board side of the dias to CEO Rod Beckstrom that his rhetorical flurishes of Internet-is-dying-DNS-is-fragile are unsubstantiated, followed by ccNSO Chair Chris Despain from the floor who comments to CEO Rod Beckstrom that his alarmist rhetoric is harmful and the claim of ccTLDs going dark are false, followed by Roddney Joffee of UltraDNS/NeuStar who comments remotely to CEO Rod Beckstrom that his claims of increased attacks aren't supported by data, followed by the GAC rep from Canada asking CEO Rod Beckstrom if, among those large number of important countries he's contacted and gotten the data supporting his claims, he's contacted Canada. The answer was painful to watch. In his prior job at some time he's been to Canada.
So we've had our little Joe McCarthy moment, our bank sheet of paper with the names of communists in the State Department and the War Department waving moment.
When he was asked about the prayer thing when the meeting started, he blamed the Africans.
More useful was the High Security Zone Advisory Group followed by the wicked interesting presentation on the Waledac system and the civil prosecution by Microsoft. Buried in the wicked interesting presentation was the surprising realization that law enforcement is the last place to go, and civil action very effective. A very surprising and important message.
Today the Board held a closed "workshop" (vote alignment session) on the "Expression of Interest". I've commented that it is a bad idea until I'm blue in the carpal tunnels.
Today something important occurred. Congress debated the Afghan War.
Marcos is such a fool.
Enom is reported to have obtained a trademark for the sequence of letters "b", "l", "o", "g". In that order. In what jurisdiction this absurdity has occurred I don't yet know but when any TLD operator receives a registration request for the domain *blog*.TLD, where the "*" matches any zero or more characters before, and after the substring "blog", they may, in short order, receive a trademark-based claim to that domain.
Is that cute or what?
Today I sent out invitations to Verisign, Afilias, and NeuStar, all of whom I know or presume have responded to the New York City RFP for a .nyc to make presentations to ISOC-NY on April 10th at NYU. I'll present CORE's proposal and perhaps our competitors will show up to show off theirs.
Of course, who ever wins, the City of New York will have to give *blog*.nyc to Enom ... or tell Enom to go back to being channel registrar milking strings of resellers.
How to describe a bottom-up, multi-stakeholder organization which imposes, from the staff general counsel, unilateral conditions upon the contracted parties? Over the unanimous objections of the contracted parties? Peter Dengate-Thrush appears to be heedlessly striding off into the heroic testosterone soaked drama as the man who must be obeyed, and Rod Beckham appears to be a simple Garth clone at his side, mashing infrastructure security (recall, the DNS is a high value target for sophisticated I/O actors with state, or near-state resources) and retail cops-and-robbers crap into a meaningless glop of mindless mandates.
Watching the Board members present while Peter reversed utterly his position at Seoul made me wonder who on the Board is actually sharp enough to be useful. Obviously the half that were there agreed with the idea that unanimous non-consent from registries and registrars is not important enough to look into.
The following is a dangerous piece of idiocy taken from the transcript of Rod Beckstrom's speech to the Governmental Advisory Committee. The speaker is the Bush Appointee who the serious people in the NSA had no use for as the "CyberSecurity Uber-Foo", so a few days shy of a year in a nominally operational billet the guy bailed for softer pastures. The audience are mid- to low-level bureaucrats, many of which I know, who attend ICANN meetings representing their governments generally peripherial interest in the primarily commercial, North American and European, Verisign and Intellectual Property dominated fraction of "Internet Governance".
I want to share one last piece of information with you: an observation I feel obligated to share as the CEO of ICANN, particularly under the AoC paras 3 and 9.2, which refer to the security of the domain name system.Paragraph 3 refers to ICANN's role and requirement to preserve the security of the DNS globally. What I want to share with you as representatives of many Governments of the world is that the DNS is under attack today as it has never been before.
I've personally consulted with over 20 CEOs of the top registries and the top registrars globally, all of whom are seeing increasing attacks and complexity of attacks and who are extremely concerned.
The DNS is more fragile and vulnerable today than it has ever been and it could stop at any given point in time, literally. It's never stopped: it has been slowed down through attacks, and the Kaminsky exploit that was disclosed only 18 months ago or so could have been used to fundamentally cripple the DNS. That system is used 1 trillion times per day and your economies depend upon it.
It can stop or it can be materially damaged and harmed. It is under attack. Parts of that system are in your countries and I will be writing you a letter and asking you for what is happening in the DNS in your countries because we are seeing new levels of wildcarding that is occurring at the telecom / service provider level, synthesis of DNS providers interrupting DNS requests, and providing false data and information for commercial and other purposes. But the system is under full-scale attack and I am extremely concerned - as the CEO of ICANN I wanted to let you know that, and we're all in this together.
I have met with heads of cyber-security or technical infrastructure of 3 of the largest countries on Earth who are concerned as well. I am sharing this because I am gravely concerned and we need your help. So we're going to be asking you for your advice on domain name security and on the DNSCert and what can be done a particularly learn from your CERTs as well - what has been accomplished in your countries. I have experience with CERTs in several countries but we need to learn more. So that will be coming and I just want to express my concern to this group because I don't want to wait until Brussels.
It is bad enough we have eager morons ready to substitute retail cops-and-robbers for critical infrastructure security, now we have the recent hire CEO going all Iraqi WMD.
My day began coordinating (an upscale version of "meddling in") a presentation from the Haitian network community to the African national registry operators, at 4:30am Eastern, 5:30am Atlantic, and 12:30pm Nairobi.
This was followed by hours of listening to ICANN staff present on the Guidebook, the Four Overarching Issues, Vertical Integration and Single Registrant, and of course, the "Expression of Intent (EOI)" proposal that came out of a competitor's coordinated effort to flood the microphone at the Seoul meeting. Later in the day the GNSO Council and Governmental Advisory Committee Joint Meeting took the polish off the poisoned EOI apple.
Odd having a work day end in the mid-morning. I've got a letter to write pointing out that the decision to have just one "cost recovery bag" to put all applications in means that the applications by the Scots, the Welsh, the Basques, ... the cities of Barcelona, Paris, New York, ... which don't require evaluation intended to sort out which speculators-cum-investors manage to wrest {"shop", "sport", "web", ...} from all other like-minded speculators-cum-investors, and which of their monitization schemes are insufficiently toxic to cause immediate harm yet able to prevent their registry from most of all possible paths to ruin (the dead now are ".pro", ".name", ".travel" and ".mobi", though these deaths are all artfully packaged as "sales" rather than "registry failover") are subsidizing the mess of for-profit applications.
The canonical response when someone points out the high cost for applicants from outside of North America and Europe is that they, whether a community or a city or even a business, are looking for an exception to a fair process, for a subsidy, rather than the other way around, looking for relief from paying a speculators-and-other-idiots tax.
Just how much money does it really, really cost, to evaluate the request by the Scottish Authority or the Basque Autonomous Region or the Parking Authority of the City of Barcelona to hire a registry operator and proceed to operate a registry in their respective public interest?
If the answer is always the same as it costs Bonnie and Clyde to open up .bank, and the Scottish Authority or the Basque Autonomous Region or the Parking Authority of the City of Barcelona also have to wait until after all the Bonnies and the Clydes have set up their herds of cash cows to be allowed to act in the public interest ... is the problem too small to solve?
Update: The African national registry operators will "make every effort to put [ICANN CEO Rod Beckham] on the spot with the Haitian situation tomorrow [when the ICANN conference formally opens, though the real meeting began 36 hours ago]". I'm proud of both ends of the link. The Africans made the Haitians their peers, not just a basket case, viewed through the lenses of the donor nations, and the Haitians embarked across the Atlantic.
The resignation of Eric Massa creates an open race in the district just west of Ithaca. Rep. Massa had come around to viewing the tobacco taxation issue, that is, the State's claims that it could tax economic activity on the Seneca Reservation, as contrary to public policy. A good thing in a Representative.
In the 2008 race, John R Kuhl Jr (R) raised $1,500,000, picking up 49% of the vote, to Eric Massa's $2,151,657, picking up 51% of the vote. Act Blue accounted for 17% of what Eric Massa's team raised. The DCC accounted for less than 1%. On the other side of the dial, Corning Glass alone accounted for 5% of John Kuhl's take. The district went the other way at the top of the ticket, with John McCain and Sarah Palin picking up 51% to Barack Obama and Joe Biden's 48%.
Corning Mayor Tom Reed has picked up seven of the eight county GOP chairmen in the 29th District, and John Kuhl's responsive statement left open the possibility that he would contest the election.
So who are the Dees?
And there's an outsider, David Nachbar, a senior executive at Bausch and Lomb, who ran against Eric Massa in 2007. He has money and the primary will be won by a mere plurality, under 25% of the vote, if even half the field remain on the ballot and run active, competent campaigns.
I'm participating remotely in the 37th ICANN meeting, after attending the previous seven meetings in Los Angeles, New Delhi, Paris, Cairo, Mexico, Sydney and Seoul. Two of my co-workers are in Nairobi, and today's agenda is the GNSO meeting -- the agenda is here. There are 52 people in the room, and the same number participating remotely. Tomorrow's meeting will be in a room twice the size.
The remote participation has been effective, the chat window has been bigger than a postage stamp, though it would be improved if it maintained state, as each "end of session" leaves the previously chatting participants (myself in Ithaca and some people in Reston at "Nairobi West") isolated until the next "session" begins, and there is no carry-over of chat state from session to session (or when I'm logged out by InterTube glitches), the audio quality acceptable and the elevator music is light European classical between sessions ...
Bill Drake from the Non-Commercial Constituency (NCUC) asks the cost-and-equity question during the EOI session. Is the $55k cost fair to developing country applicants? The response Kurt Pritz gives is cost-recovery, side-stepping the issue that policy, rather than profit driven applications, don't require the elaborate evaluation that, in other conversations, in particular the conversation around the unilateral amendment of the Registry Accreditation Agreement, of registrar-space gaming moving into the registry-space, Kurt describes as absolutely compelling. The short answer is not that poor communities and African municipalities are seeking subsidy from the rich Americans and Europeans, but are seeking to end their subsidy of rich Americans and Europeans who seek to game the rules and enrich themselves.
Odd how the "equity" claims are offered to advance inequity.
I'm attempting to coordinate a Haitian Registry and Network Recovery update for tomorrow's General Assembly meeting of the AfTLD (African Top-Level Domain registry operator group), which concludes the Introduction to Registry Operations Course (IROC) which CORE has sponsored in part, along with ISOC, ICANN, and AfriNIC and which is taught using materials developed by the NSRC. Reynold Guerrier will be speaking at 5:30am, Port au Prince time, 4:30am Ithaca time, to the AfTLD GA shortly after lunch, Nairobi time. I will need caffine.
Update: Success on the African end of things, and the Port au Prince end of things. The AfTLD GA will spend a quarter of an hour on an update from Port au Prince, with Q&A. Now how early will I have to go to bed in order to be awake at 4am? Hmm. Now looks pretty good...
I came 10 minutes early to pick up Sam and the teaching assistant was handing out certificates from WorldMathsDay ... the numbers were in the low hundreds, several below 200, few above 400, a 500, a 600, an 800 ... the children were exited and gaily got up from the circle on the carpet to accept their certificates ... Sam maintained his profile-to while his classmates were all facing-to the front. Then she called Sam. He raised his hand when called and took the certificate, then threw it on the floor in front of himself. 866. The highest in the class.
As the children zipped out in the usual confusion Sam handed me the certificate and his snow boots saying only "Here." As the class streamed past us I overheard one boy say "Sam's really good at math."
Music to my ears. Respect from a classmate.
When blogroll amnesty day came out, and the A listers dropped all their lower-ranked-than from their sidebars, Jon and Skippy were the strongest critics, voices for preserving the commons from its ruin. Melissa writes RIP Jon Swift
His work is at Jon Swift, He was "a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues."
This week I'm spending 45 minutes with Sam in his 5th grade classroom, being his aide during math period. The text ICSD is using is "Everyday Math".
The worldmathsday.com website was unusable due to load, so my "day off" test of the system (aka "fade the prompt) was a non-lieu. Tomorrow and Friday are half-days so that Parent-Teacher conferences may happen. Sam's teacher and I see each other daily, so that's a meeting not needed, but I've Jonah's team to see, then Kezzie's teacher, and then swimming.
Ah! I've just been interrupted by Sam who would like to do worldmathsday. At home, at 6:28pm, after swimming! I need to make dinner anyway.
This week I'm spending 45 minutes with Sam in his 5th grade classroom, being his aide during math period. The text ICSD is using is "Everyday Math".
Today the ED curriculum was not touched. Instead the lights were dimmed and a laptop connected to the worldmathsday.com website, and the teaching assistant walked through logging in and doing a few of the one minute level 1 arithmetic drills -- spiced up by the where-in-the-world-is eye candy of creating competitive associations for the duration of the one minute drill.
Then it was troop down the hall to the library and the laptop car, remove and return with a laptop, and follow the demo with each student's individualized user name and password. I set up the laptop, Sam is no where near Jonah in computer agility, and ran started the first drill. Sam laboriously (leftie and fine motor challenged) found the digits above the letters on the keyboard and the return and later the backspace keys for entry and correction, and proceeded to do drill after drill after drill.
All around us was cacophony, kids shouting about how they hated Canada or how funny their avatar looked or that they were tired of always getting the UK, or simply reciting each problem and its answer, with the volume that excitement always brings children. Sam worked on, unaffected. The three-strikes is not low-keyboarding skills, or high latency, or manual dexterity challenged friendly. I'd prefer to see incorrect answers detracted from the total rather than have the kid filed out during the drill. Sam failed out once, his "competitors" in the UK and the Gulf States and Canada occasionally failed out as well.
In the evening, I set Sam up again with my laptop, and off he went, doing drill after drill, happy with the geographic eye candy (maps are his thing, after dinosaurs), and the kids from Oz had a higher fail rate, and Sam too had higher latency, leading to some errors, than earlier in the day.
Afterword: The next morning at drop off I let the teacher know that I'd be leaving Sam on his own today, and she mentioned his evening drill time and remarked that he was among the most improved. I mentioned that I thought it was just keyboarding. I'll find out at 2pm how Sam's first math-without-aide has been. Fingers X'ed.
Dear Indian Country
This is the third letter in a series of open letters I’m sending to Indian Country to answer questions that you have asked me about settlement of the Cobell class action lawsuit. Prior Ask Elouise letters can be found on the settlement website: CobellSettlement.com and here at Wampum Ask Eloise, Week of February 21 and Ask Eloise, Week of February 14. We also have a “frequently asked questions” section to answer the most common questions we’ve received: Frequently Asked Questions. I can’t answer every question, but I will try to answer as many as I can every week.
Why are resource mismanagement claims included in the proposed settlement and how were they valued as part of the $1.4 billion amount of the settlement? The settlement agreement covers claims that have been part of the Cobell case since it was filed on June 10, 1996, as well as other resource management claims that will be included in an amended complaint. Cobell has always demanded the correction and restatement of accounts and the restitution of profits unlawfully taken from individual Indian trust beneficiaries as a result of the government’s breaches of trust. Importantly, resource mismanagement claims necessarily are included in the accounting claim to ensure a full and complete accounting of the IIM Trust and the effective enforcement of plaintiffs’ vested and constitutionally protected property rights.
Individual class members may opt out of the settlement to pursue individual damages claims arising out of the government’s mismanagement of his or her natural resources. So while resource mismanagement claims are included in the proposed settlement, each class member has the right to decide whether his or her resource mismanagement claims should be resolved through the settlement.
Resource mismanagement claims are included for two principal reasons. First, the government insisted that resource mismanagement claims be included in the settlement. Otherwise, the government would not settle the case. The government stated that it is essential to “turn the page” so that it could build a better relationship with Indian Country, which it felt could only be achieved through what it says is a “global peace.”
Second, I and class counsel concluded that it is fair to include such claims so long as class members may elect to opt out of that portion of the settlement. Thus, if a class member wants to litigate his or her own resource mismanagement claims, that may be done readily and without compromise. But, because it is very expensive and highly unlikely that many beneficiaries have the financial resources to bring their own damages claims, the settlement allows class members who do not opt out of the settlement to be compensated fairly. For an overwhelming number of beneficiaries, settlement of historical damages claims for additional compensation not only is a good option, it is the only way many could be compensated for the harm done to them by the government. The opt-out provision provides each class member fair and meaningful options.
The settlement value of historical resource mismanagement accounting claims was negotiated by the parties. The total amount represents a fair resolution for plaintiffs’ accounting, restitution, and damages claims, considering the risks associated with indefinite litigation, including the absence of any time limit to reach final judgment in the case, the mortality rate of class members, and our understanding of the current litigation environment.
Who represented these claim-holders' interests during the settlement negotiations? I and class counsel represented all class members during the settlement negotiations. In the fairness hearing, the district court, in accordance with due process principles, would determine whether the amount negotiated is fair and whether the class representatives and counsel have adequately represented the class as a whole. After almost fifteen years of intense litigation over the government’s mismanagement of individual Indian trust assets, I and class counsel have the most significant, relevant and practical experience with stated claims of the class. But, you need not rely solely on our judgment in that regard because such matters are determined independently and in accordance with governing law by the presiding U.S. District Judge.
How will the new class be identified? There are two classes resolved by the settlement agreement: the historical accounting class and the trust administration class. Government records, to the extent available, will be used to identify members of the trust administration class. But we know that the government’s records do not identify or locate all members of the trust administration class. Accordingly, after ratifying legislation is passed, the parties, under the U.S. District Judge’s supervision, will conduct an extensive notice process to notify individual Indians of their rights and obligations under the settlement agreement. The notice process will also provide detailed information to Indian Country about the terms of settlement.
The settlement agreement also provides that class members may “self-identify” and apply for inclusion in the trust administration class. A contractor that is working with the parties will analyze all documentation provided by each such potential class member and, under the supervision of the United States District Court, will determine whether that person is a class member.
Is it fair and reasonable to disallow opt-outs from the historical accounting settlement when an historical accounting may be necessary for an individual who opts out of the trust administration class to pursue a resource mismanagement claim? Yes. Any class member who opts out of the settlement will retain the right to what is called an “accounting in aid of judgment,” which is a procedural tool used in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to help beneficiaries value their damage claims. The settlement agreement explicitly preserves the right of any class member who opts out of the trust administration class to “an accounting in aid of judgment.”
An additional important point must be noted. An individual may remain in the trust administration class, get paid in full, and still pursue the following claims against the government and third parties: breaches of trust arising after September 30, 2009; certain environmental damages; claims against contractors or other third parties; claims for correction of boundary or appraisal errors (and, for damages after September 30, 2009); water rights; health and mortality claims; and claims arising from leases active on September 30, 2009.
I heard that the Settlement Agreement expired on February 28, 2010. Does this mean that the settlement agreement has terminated? No, the settlement agreement has not been terminated. The parties have agreed to extend the settlement through April 16, 2010. In my conversations with government officials, I have been assured that legislation will be passed within that period of time. I remain hopeful that legislation will be passed, but share your concerns that we continue to extend the time period with nothing to show for it. At this point, we must provide our allies time to advance the legislation.
If you are not currently receiving an IIM statement from the government, please remember to register for correspondence over the Internet or by calling the number below.
Internet: https://cert.tgcginc.com/iim/register.php
Telephone: 1-800-961-6109
Ask Elouise
Cobell Settlement
PO Box 9577
Dublin, OH 43017-4877
Thank you and keep your questions coming!
Best wishes
Elouise Cobell
Browning, Montana
This week I'm spending 45 minutes with Sam in his 5th grade classroom, being his aide during math period. The text ICSD is using is "Everyday Math".
Today the ED curriculum actually produces a winner -- the slide rule. Integer demarcations on the face of slide and holder, and fractions on the verso. A room full of children appear to grasp how to (a) grasp slider and holder, and, given the restrictions present in the ED theory of arithmetic, that is, no algebraic structure is known to exist, and (b) replicate the "body facing" model of sign and direction on the number line and "walk" forwards and backwards, from the offset from zero of operand 1, "direction" interpreted (as in dance) from the operand (addition or its inverse), as indicated by the sign on second operand, the offset of the operand.
The classroom teacher wryly notes that some get it, some don't. It is a mixed bag.
Because of Sam's fine motor issues, he hops a frog while I hold the holder and move the slider, one hop (digit) at a time. We're slower than the class, but that's just fine motor, and the frog who pauses to gobble up positive and negative flies.