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History > 2006 > USA > Cities

 

 

 

 

With Victories,

City Challenges More Gun Sales

 

December 8, 2006
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

 

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that the city had reached agreements with six out-of-state gun dealers, who agreed to let court officials monitor their operations to prevent illegal gun sales. He said that New York had sued 12 additional gun stores to demand similar oversight.

The expansion of New York’s legal attack from 15 to 27 gun dealers, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, reflects the city’s growing confidence that its novel approach to battling illegal gun traffic is gaining momentum.

The agreements with the gun dealers — reached over the last four months, with the latest one signed on Wednesday — give officials broad monitoring powers over the individual stores.

They let a court-appointed special master scour their financial records, put up video cameras, and require that employees take part in training sessions on when gun sales are prohibited. The city may also send undercover investigators into the six stores at any time, to make sure that all relevant gun laws are being followed.

The suits resulted from a two-month effort in April and May in which private investigators posed as buyers at 40 stores that had sold guns linked with more than 800 crimes in New York City between 1994 and 2001.

The teams, usually a man and woman, conducted what law enforcement officials describe as a straw purchase: one customer would deal with the seller until the last moment of the sale, when the second customer would step in to pay and fill out the forms for a background check.

Federal law prohibits a seller from handing over the weapon in such cases, because it lets people obtain guns without federal scrutiny of their criminal record Mr. Bloomberg said that straw purchases were one of the most common schemes used by gun traffickers, giving the city the right — with a bold interpretation of public nuisance laws — to go after out-of-state dealers for their weapons’ deadly consequences.

“This is about law enforcement, plain and simple,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “And it’s about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.”

The court cases have emerged as the most successful tactic in Mayor Bloomberg’s drive to undermine the illegal gun trade, an effort that has included lobbying Washington to tighten gun laws, convening mayors from around the country at Gracie Mansion to plot political strategy, and persuading Albany to pass a law creating a mandatory minimum sentence of three and a half years for illegal gun possession.

In October, the judge overseeing the lawsuits, Jack B. Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York, named as the special master Andrew Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann, a former assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, also directed a task force created to investigate the Enron scandal.

The dealers who settled have admitted no wrongdoing. The agreements expire after three years without a reported violation. And some of the store owners say they welcome the chance to clear their names.

“Although it is an intrusion into the privacy of my customers, the thing of it is, I don’t feel that I or they have anything to hide,” said James T. Farmer, owner of Jim’s Guns and Whatever in Dayton, Ohio.

But over all, Mr. Bloomberg’s antigun efforts have had only limited success. No other city has yet filed cases like New York’s, although Philadelphia is considering it. The effort to change the gun laws in Congress has hit Republican opposition.

Some law enforcement officials have also chafed at Mr. Bloomberg’s zeal in taking the fight against gun trafficking outside city limits.

The first wave of 15 lawsuits, filed in May, caught the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives by surprise. City officials had to smooth ruffled feathers just to get the agency — which is responsible for shutting dealers down — to look at the evidence investigators collected. This time, city officials tipped off the agency before filing the additional dozen cases.

Some gun owners, meanwhile, have fought back, denying Mr. Bloomberg’s description of them as “bad guys.”

In telephone interviews, several owners of shops named in the new set of lawsuits said that they were innocent. Adam Tullis, manager of Toccoa Pawn and Variety in Toccoa, Ga., said had he sold two guns to undercover investigators because he believed they were a married couple.

“They were both together,” he said, recalling the sale a few months ago. “As far as I know, they were husband and wife.”

A handful of gun dealers have countersued the city as well. Bob Barr, a former Georgia congressman, for example, filed a case on behalf of Adventure Outdoors of Smyrna, Ga., arguing that Mr. Bloomberg had conspired to harm the business.

Larry Mickalis, owner of Mickalis Pawn Shop in Summerville, S.C., said that he was also suing the city because he did not trust New York’s ability to trace weapons to his store.

He said that the guns found in New York, used or carried illegally and linked to his shop, might have been bought and sold several times, or stolen, before they ended up on New York streets.

“Their interpretation and their facts on trace data are wrong,” he said.

He blamed New York’s gun problem on violent movies and the lucrative nature of New York’s gun market.

“The prices of guns on the street in New York are enticing,” he said.

But John A. Feinblatt, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator, said that the gun shops that were sued clearly violated the straw purchase law and had repeatedly sold weapons linked to crimes in New York City. A typical gun dealer has only one gun involved in a crime traced back to his store over a two-year period, Mr. Feinblatt said. Mr. Mickalis’s rate is 49 guns in seven years linked to crimes.

Mr. Bloomberg — after showing reporters a video of a sale at Toccoa Pawn, which showed the female investigator filling out a background check while her male counterpart paid for the weapons — also emphasized that the city planned to address the problem both at the source and on the street.

In addition to the lawsuits, he said, a new ad campaign will appear this winter in subways, saying that illegal possession of a gun would lead to a mandatory prison sentence of three and a half years.

And Mr. Mickalis conceded that Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts had forced dealers hundreds of miles from New York to take a closer look at their buyers.

“No one in their right mind,” he said, “is going to sell someone from New York a gun.”

    With Victories, City Challenges More Gun Sales, NYT, 8.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/nyregion/08guns.html?hp&ex=1165640400&en=f766eb3b4bc42ecf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

 

 

 

 

City Approves ‘Carbon Tax’ in Effort to Reduce Gas Emissions

 

November 18, 2006
The New York Times
By KATIE KELLEY

 

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 14 — Voters in this liberal college town have approved what environmentalists say may be the nation’s first “carbon tax,” intended to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The tax, to take effect on April 1, will be based on the number of kilowatt-hours used. Officials say it will add $16 a year to an average homeowner’s electricity bill and $46 for businesses.

City officials said the revenue from the tax — an estimated $6.7 million by 2012, when the goal is to have reduced carbon emissions by 350,000 metric tons — would be collected by the main gas and electric utility, Xcel Energy, and funneled through the city’s Office of Environmental Affairs .

The tax is to pay for the “climate action plan,” efforts to “increase energy efficiency in homes and buildings, switch to renewable energy and reduce vehicle miles traveled,” the city’s environmental affairs manager, Jonathan Koehn, said.

The goal is to reduce the carbon levels to 7 percent less than those in 1990, which amounts to a 24 percent reduction from current levels, Mr. Koehn said.

“The climate action plan serves as the roadmap to meet our reduction goal,” he said.

The tax grew out of efforts by a committee of residents and members of the City Council and Chamber of Commerce to try to enable Boulder to reach goals set by the United Nations Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to curb global warming.

The protocol requires 35 developing nations to reduce their emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. The world’s top two polluters, the United States and China, have not signed the pact.

The Boulder environmental sustainability coordinator, Sarah Van Pelt, said residents who used alternative sources of electricity like wind power would receive a discount on the tax based on the amount of the alternative power used.

A total of 5,600 residents and 210 businesses use wind power, Ms. Van Pelt said.

A program similar to Boulder’s began in Oregon in 2001. There, a 3 percent fee is assessed on electricity bills by the two largest investor-owned utilities, said Michael Armstrong, a policy analyst in the Portland Office of Sustainable Development.

The tens of millions of dollars is transferred to the Energy Trust of Oregon, a nonprofit organization, rather than the state government. The trust distributes cash incentives to businesses and residents for using alternative sources like solar and wind power, biomass energy and structural improvements to improve efficiency.

Mr. Armstrong said that although Portland had several programs for “sustainable living,” it had not enacted a carbon tax and that he knew of no other American city with one.

“We are interested to see how it plays out and see what we can learn from that,” he said of the Boulder tax. “We certainly follow other local governments, and there are lots of innovative initiatives all over the country. It’s a great exchange among local communities.”

    City Approves ‘Carbon Tax’ in Effort to Reduce Gas Emissions, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/us/18carbon.html

 

 

 

 

 

English as official language gains support at local levels

 

Posted 11/16/2006 10:13 PM ET
USA Today
By Oren Dorell

 

Voters and town boards in several states recently passed laws making English the official language, garnering Hispanic support in one case for what many say was a message to Washington.

Arizona voters last week approved Proposition 103, a constitutional amendment making English the official language of the state. Passing similar laws were the city councils of Taneytown, Md.; Farmers Branch, Texas, and the town board of Pahrump, Nev.

"The voters in Arizona are sick and tired of the federal government doing nothing on immigration," said Arizona State Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Phoenix, in explaining why she thought the measure passed in Arizona. She was an opponent of the proposition.

While English-only proposals in the U.S. Congress have gone nowhere, the Arizona measure passed by a 3-to-1 ratio, with 48% of Hispanics supporting it, according to an Associated Press exit poll.

Hispanic support is a sign that "the majority of Hispanics believe that the key to success in America is to learn the language of the land, learn English," says Jose Esparza, vice chairman of the Arizona Latino Republican Association.

Lydia Guzman, chairwoman of the Coalition for Latino Political Action in Phoenix, opposed the bill. She said she is worried it will be misused by anti-immigrant extremists.

Guzman was not surprised that nearly half of Hispanic voters supported the measure. She says the Hispanic community includes people who have been here for generations, who don't speak Spanish and haven't experienced the "immigrant struggle."

In Taneytown, where only 1.5% of the population is Hispanic according to the 2000 census, Councilman Paul Chamberlain says the official-English law will make "no practical change" because Taneytown does not provide services in Spanish.

"We will be helping immigrants learn the English language and not segregate into different communities," he says.

Political scientist and pollster Fred Solop of Northern Arizona University says Arizona voters, including Hispanics, have made clear that the issue of illegal immigration is their number one concern.

"There were four immigration proposals on the ballot, if there were six, they would have all passed," he says.

Among the ballot initiatives that accompanied the official-English proposition were three others that targeted illegal immigrants.

Arizona State Rep. Russell Pearce of Mesa calls official English "part of us doing our job to help (immigrants) learn to communicate.

"Government has an obligation to promote and enhance English," he says, "to help people assimilate."

Sinema derides that sentiment as "so cute," pointing out that one of the propositions that passed denies illegal immigrants state benefits, including state-funded English classes.

"To punish people by taking away funding to learn English, and at the same time demand people learn English, makes no sense at all," Sinema says.

Esparza, who supported the official-English ballot initiative, also sees "an irony" in the voters' decision to deny state funding for English education. He said conflicting measures passed "because the public, including Hispanics, is frustrated that illegal immigration continues to be a problem and they want the federal government to take action."

    English as official language gains support at local levels, UT, 16.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-16-english-language_x.htm

 

 

 

 

 

Texas Lawmakers Put New Focus on Illegal Immigration

 

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

 

HOUSTON, Nov. 15 — In a sign of rising passions over immigration issues, Texas lawmakers prepared for the 2007 session this week by filing a flurry of bills that would deny public assistance and other benefits to the children of illegal immigrants, tax money transfers to Mexico and the rest of Latin America and sue the federal government for the costs of state border control.

At the same time, a Dallas suburb, Farmers Branch, became the first Texas municipality to enact measures fining landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, authorizing the police to seek certification to act on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security and declaring English the city’s official language.

Many of the bills are unlikely to become law, but, combined with the Farmers Branch action, they have raised questions about whether Texas, where almost a third of the population was listed as Hispanic in the 2000 census, is about to get caught up in the kinds of legal fights about illegal immigration that have occurred elsewhere.

“It’s awful,” said Brent A. Wilkes, the national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic rights group. “Texas for a long time has avoided this anti-immigrant hysteria.”

But some Texas officials said the time had come for the state to crack down on illegal immigration because the federal government had chosen not to do so.

“Want to know what it’s all about?” asked State Representative Burt R. Solomons, a Republican from Carrollton, outside Dallas, who introduced a bill to deny state licenses to people without proof of legal residence. “Absolute frustration.”

“If they get a license or permit, they ought to be here legally,” Mr. Solomons said. “What’s wrong with that? I don’t think it’s draconian.”

Mr. Solomons also filed a resolution to put the House on record, as he put it, as “demanding the federal government do what they’re supposed to” to control the border with Mexico and to authorize the state attorney general to sue Washington to recoup the state’s costs.

Monday was the first day members of the Texas House and Senate, who convene every two years, could file bills for the coming session. At least 9 of the first 325 or so bills, as posted on the legislative Web site, dealt with immigration.

Perhaps the most sweeping, proposed by Representative Leo Berman, a Republican from Tyler, would deny state benefits, including welfare payments, food stamps, disability payments and public housing and unemployment assistance to the children of illegal immigrants. The children, if born in the United States, are American citizens.

An earlier version of the bill would also have denied the children schooling and health care, rights affirmed as basic constitutional guarantees by a divided United States Supreme Court in 1969. Mr. Berman said he removed those provisions to gain passage of the measure in Texas with the goal of leading to another Supreme Court review.

“We want to see if that law is still applicable today,” he said. “The environment is totally changed.”

Mr. Berman also proposed a bill that would impose an 8 percent tax on electronic money transfers from immigrant workers in the state to people in Mexico and Central and South America, although it is not clear whether federal law would allow it.

Another Republican representative, Dianne White Delisi, from Temple, introduced a bill to require state agencies to report the cost of services like hospital care provided to illegal immigrants. Ms. Delisi said some figures suggested a rise of 77 percent in unpaid hospital care in Harris County, which includes Houston, over the last three years. But, she said, “the bottom line in Texas is we don’t know.”

The housing ordinance in Farmers Branch, adopted on a 5-to-0 vote by the City Council, requires landlords to demand proof of legal residency from all renters, with violations punishable by fines of $500 per tenant for each day of violation. The preamble says the action was taken “in response to the widespread concern of future terrorist attacks following the events of Sept. 11, 2001.”

It prompted quick opposition from landlords who protested that they were ill-equipped to police the immigration status of their tenants, and from Hispanic activists who said they would challenge the measure in court.

On Tuesday, two other towns, Taneytown in central Maryland and Pahrump in southern Nevada, passed measures declaring English the official language. Hazleton, Pa., enacted a similar ordinance in July, but it has been held off pending a court challenge.

    Texas Lawmakers Put New Focus on Illegal Immigration, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/us/16immig.html

 

 

 

 

 

Nev. town to fine for foreign flags

 

Posted 11/15/2006 10:58 PM ET
USA Today
By William M. Welch

 

The Nevada town of Pahrump is taking a stand not just against illegal immigrants but flags they may bring with them.

The elected town board in the remote Mojave Desert community voted 3-2 on Tuesday to enact an ordinance making it illegal to fly a foreign nation's flag by itself.

Flying another country's flag, whether it is a British Union Jack or the flag of Mexico, is punishable by a $50 fine and 30 hours' community service, unless it is flown below an American flag.

"Old Glory is sovereign," says Paul Willis, a retired carpenter and board member. "You can't fly any other nation's flag higher than the American flag."

The American Civil Liberties Union says the flag restriction violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

"There's no doubt about it," says Lisa Rasmussen, a board member of the Nevada ACLU. "People have a right, as much as we don't like it, to fly ... any flag they wish."

Pahrump is a rural fast-growing town of 33,000 about 60 miles west of Las Vegas. It is part of sprawling Nye County, home of the closest legal brothels to Las Vegas.

The law passed as part of a package of measures that also declared English the official language of Pahrump and denies town benefits to illegal immigrants.

"We don't have any" benefits, town manager David Richards says. "If we ever have any, they'll be denied to illegal immigrants."

Supporters say the law is a stand on principle and doubts anyone will be arrested for violating it.

"I can't conceive of there being anyone cited for it," said board Chairman Richard Billman, who voted against the ordinance.

The ordinance's sponsor, Michael Miraglia, a retired Illinois state worker, said the flag restriction was a reaction to nationwide demonstrations in May against a crackdown on illegal immigration. He said he didn't like seeing protesters waving Mexican flags and demanding immigrants not go to work that day.

"In Pahrump, we had Mexican restaurants closed that day," he complained. "Only one restaurant stayed open."

Rasmussen said the ACLU would probably take legal action against the town.

"People are nuts out there," she says. "Totally nuts."

    Nev. town to fine for foreign flags, UT, 16.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-15-foreign-flags_x.htm

 

 

 

 

 

Immigrant Protection Rules Draw Fire

 

November 12, 2006
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY

 

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 9 — Dr. Stephen B. Turner built a profitable business here by providing low-cost “immigrant medical exams,” including immunizations and blood tests, to hundreds of newcomers to America. Many of his clients did not speak English, but they paid in cash, spending a total of nearly $250,000 at Dr. Turner’s practice from 2003 to 2005.

It was only later, after a tip from a suspicious client, that the San Francisco police and the district attorney’s office learned the truth: Dr. Turner had been throwing out his clients’ blood samples and injecting them with “inoculations” of saline.

Kamala D. Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, said the case, which led to a seven-year prison term for Dr. Turner, was one of many her office had been able to pursue under San Francisco’s so-called sanctuary policy, which forbids police and city officials from asking people they encounter in the course of an investigation about their immigration status. It is a protection Ms. Harris says has made immigrants — legal and illegal — more willing to come to forward about crimes.

With immigration continuing to flare and frustrate as a national political issue, sanctuary cities like San Francisco may soon be the next battlefront. Critics argue that sanctuary policies discourage the police from enforcing laws, though about 50 cities and counties have enacted variations on sanctuary, according to the National Immigration Law Center. They include Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. A handful of states have similar policies, including Alaska, Maine and Oregon.

Conservative legal groups and politicians have begun to challenge such policies. Yet on the other side, cities like Chicago have announced they will avoid involving their police in issues that smack of federal immigration enforcement. And while a federal proposal to punish sanctuary cities recently failed to become law, some states have passed laws discouraging sanctuary policies.

“To say to a law enforcement official, if you encounter a foreign national who is in this country illegally and you believe that information would be of use and benefit to federal authorities, that you can’t call them, that’s just wrong,” said Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, who authored a provision in the federal Homeland Security bill that would have denied federal antiterrorism money to cities with sanctuary policies. The provision passed the House, but was not part of the bill eventually signed by President Bush.

But even with Democrats in control of Congress, immigration hard-liners say the issue is here to stay.

“It’s mind-blowing for us to see taxpayer dollars spent to subsidize criminal activity — that’s the end result,” said Christopher J. Farrell, director of research for Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that is suing the Los Angeles Police Department over its sanctuary rule.

Some states have also taken up the issue. In Colorado, a law signed by the governor in May prevents localities from passing ordinances that stop officials or police from communicating or cooperating with federal officials on immigration.

Other states have taken up larger immigration issues involving local cooperation with the federal authorities. A Georgia law enacted in April authorizes the state to enter into an agreement with federal officials to train and certify state law enforcement officials to enforce immigration. The Georgia law also requires the police to make a “reasonable effort” to determine the legal status of those they arrest for felonies or drunken driving.

Both the Colorado and Georgia laws include some protections against and stiffer penalties for exploitation of illegal immigrants.

In September, a sanctuary debate erupted in Houston after an illegal immigrant was accused of killing a police officer. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a Republican city councilwoman who ran for Congress as an unsuccessful write-in candidate in place of former Representative Tom DeLay, called on the mayor to declare the city off-limits to illegal immigrants.

“Terrorists, drug runners and cartel members could be among us, and police officers are not allowed to check their identities,” Ms. Sekula-Gibbs wrote in an e-mail message to supporters. “Why? Because some politicians fear that asking people who have no ID about their legal status might intimidate all illegals into not reporting crimes. This policy of appeasement must be stopped.”

Craig E. Ferrell Jr., general counsel for the Houston Police Department, said the city did not have a formal sanctuary policy. But he said a tangle of laws — police codes and legal decisions, including those involving racial profiling and the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unlawful search and seizure — required caution by police officers.

“We’re not just trying to be obstructionist or not trying to help,” Mr. Ferrell said. “What we’re against is the federal government mandating that local enforcement be initiated without addressing these issues.”

Sanctuary supporters have pushed back. In San Francisco, Supervisor Gerardo C. Sandoval — who authored a resolution affirming the city’s policy, which dates to 1989 — said the federal government was simply trying to pass the buck for failing to secure federal borders.

“If they want to enforce the law,” Mr. Sandoval said, “they should put troops on the ground to do that.”

Lt. Paul Vernon, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, which has operated under sanctuary guidelines since 1979, said, “We didn’t want people to fear cooperating with police.” Lieutenant Vernon added, “And the local police department job is not to enforce the federal immigration law.”

An organization of police chiefs, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said that requiring the local police to enforce immigration policy did not “take into full account the realities of local law enforcement dealing with this issue on the ground.” The association said its concerns included a lack of authority, training, and resources, as well as risks of liability.

Advocates for illegal immigrants, meanwhile, said they feared that getting rid of sanctuary rules would encourage immigrant communities not to report crime, including human and drug trafficking, prostitution, domestic violence, and even terrorism.

“Once the police are seen as agents of the immigration service, it discourages and deters immigrant communities from going to the police,” said Lucas Guttentag, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “There’s a whole mixture of people in these communities — some recent, some illegal — and its going to cause the entire community to fear going to the police if they feel going to the local cop is essentially going to the immigration service.”

But opponents say localities should be forced to participate in solving some of the problems that accompany illegal immigration.

“You can’t have it both ways,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for stronger immigration enforcement. “If you want to harbor people who are in the country illegally, you can’t expect to have federal funds for issues that arise from having illegal people in your community.”

Sanctuary policies are often less sweeping than opponents make them out to be. In San Francisco, for example, where resources cannot be used in immigration investigations, the police can inquire about immigration status in felony or drug cases.

Joan Friedland, an immigration lawyer for the National Immigration Law Center, said the concept of sanctuary cities was often misunderstood and that it gave the impression that such cities were lawless havens for illegal immigrants.

“It’s not like people, if they are charged with a crime, they just escape immigration,” Ms. Friedland said. “Even the cities that have ordinances limiting inquiries about immigration status cooperate and are in touch with the Department of Homeland Security when a serious crime is involved.”

    Immigrant Protection Rules Draw Fire, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/us/12sanctuary.html?hp&ex=1163394000&en=3b5a24db1a0cf444&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

 

 

 

 

Calif. city bars illegal immigrants from renting

 

Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:11 PM ET
Reuters
By Tim Gaynor

 

ESCONDIDO, California (Reuters) - Local authorities in Escondido, California passed a controversial measure on Wednesday to prohibit landlords from renting to illegal immigrants, a law which opponents say is racist.

The city is the latest of several from California to Pennsylvania which have passed laws in recent months to deny access to housing or jobs to illegal immigrants in their communities.

Lawmakers in Escondido, which lies about 50 miles north of the Mexican border near San Diego, passed the measure by a 3-2 vote following a heated debate that was interrupted by shouts, chants and catcalls.

Police officers removed two men from the council chamber after an argument erupted, while outside city hall dozens of police and sheriff's department officers separated boisterous supporters and opponents of the law. There were no arrests.

The law is set to come into effect in 30 days in the community of 140,000 residents, where more than a third of the population is Hispanic.

"It's a historic day for Escondido. We are very proud to be leading our city and our country in defending the nation," said councilman Sam Abed to cheers from supporters in the council chamber moments before the vote.

Opponents of the measure told the packed meeting that it would divide residents along racial lines in the city, which is set in a corridor of prosperous commuter towns close to San Diego.

"This ordinance is going to have neighbor against neighbor ... that's not what this country is about, and that's not what this community is about," said Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler, who voted against the measure.

The ordinance requires landlords to hand over documentation on their tenants' immigration status to city authorities and evict illegal immigrant tenants or face penalties including suspension of their business licenses and fines.

Voting through the measure, the California city joined others including Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and Riverside, New Jersey, which passed bylaws to curb illegal immigration in recent months.

The moves pitched the local communities into a hotly contested national debate about what to do with an estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

Civil libertarians and pro-immigrant groups have contested the local laws, which they argue are discriminatory and usurp the federal government's jurisdiction on matters of immigration enforcement.

"Immigration is an issue for the federal government to address, not for local authorities," said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"The rash of ordinances are not only very harmful, but are also beyond the city governments' authority," she added.

Lieberman said the ACLU would be monitoring developments in Escondido, and did not rule out bringing a lawsuit.

    Calif. city bars illegal immigrants from renting, R, 18.10.2006,  http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-19T011113Z_01_N18317215_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-HOUSING.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

 

 

 

 

 

Chicago Minimum Wage Ordinance Fails

 

September 14, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY and MICHAEL BARBARO

 

CHICAGO, Sept. 13 — A first-in-the-nation effort to impose minimum wage regulations on “big box” stores like Wal-Mart unraveled here on Wednesday, as the Chicago City Council fell three votes short of overriding Mayor Richard M. Daley’s veto of the measure.

It was an extraordinary shift from just weeks ago, when the aldermen voted 35 to 14 in favor of the measure, which was to place Chicago at the forefront of nationwide efforts to demand more for employees of large retail stores, including Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot. The ordinance would have required the retailers to pay at least $10 an hour by 2010, well above the federal and state minimum wages, along with at least $3 an hour in benefits.

The Council’s 35 votes in July were one more than enough to block a veto by Mr. Daley, something he had never before issued. But pressure from the mayor and intense lobbying by the national retailers and local business groups scraped away enough support to uphold the veto.

As scores of angry members of community organizations and unions chanted in protest in a hallway outside Council chambers, three aldermen said they would change sides and vote against the wage rules. One of the three said Wal-Mart Stores had expressed “strong interest” in building a store in her struggling South Side ward, and the two others had ties to Mayor Daley or to political organizations that have backed him. (A fourth alderman who had supported the wage rules was out of the country and absent from the vote.)

“The mayor has undone it,” said Dennis J. Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, which had backed the ordinance. “We had 35 aldermen in 35 communities who made the statement they were for paying people a living wage, but somehow the mayor was able to peel away some of our supporters.”

Among those switching sides was George Cardenas, an alderman who said Mr. Daley had sought his support. In a statement, Mr. Cardenas said he had looked at Mayor Daley’s “track record” in the city and decided to change his vote, noting in particular items that he said Mayor Daley had “delivered” in his community — three new schools, a library, a renovated park and more.

Meanwhile, faced with the possibility of mandatory wage rates for its Chicago workers, national chains also fought the wage bill through a combination of threats and behind-the-scenes lobbying.

Target said it would halt planned stores while it waited to see if the ordinance became law. Representatives of Wal-Mart, which expects to open its first Chicago store soon, took a softer approach, meeting with more than half of the city’s 50 aldermen over the last nine months to trumpet its hourly wages, health care benefits and low prices.

But a threat of lost revenue, jobs and growth was implicit. John Bisio, a senior public relations manager at Wal-Mart and its point man on the Chicago wage bill, said the retailer had made it clear that the legislation created a situation that would make it hard to invest in Chicago.

Explaining why she switched sides and opposed the wage rules, Alderman Shirley Coleman told The Chicago Tribune that Wal-Mart had “expressed strong interest in building” in her ward.

Gerard C. Dehrmann, director of media relations for the Midwest region at Wal-Mart, said the retailer “has had conversations with numerous aldermen about stores in their ward, but we have never promised a store for a vote.” He said he was unaware of any meeting in which Wal-Mart discussed building a store in Ms. Coleman’s ward.

As it has in the past when controversy loomed, Wal-Mart relied on local suppliers, rather than just company officials, to speak on its behalf. Several small businesses that do work for the company spoke out against the bill at neighborhood meetings and news conferences.

On the Council, supporters of the measure said they considered it a groundbreaking step nationally in requiring businesses to improve pay. But opponents said they feared the move would simply send stores to the suburbs, away from some of the neighborhoods most desperate for jobs, and questioned whether the rule would survive court challenges when it singles out companies with more than $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet.

In recent weeks, race became a high-profile element of the debate, with some of the city’s minority leaders disagreeing over whether it was more important to ensure reasonable wages for workers or to lure businesses to their communities. Some black business leaders accused union leaders of erecting barriers to big-box retailers in the city, but not in the largely white suburbs.

As divisions over the issue boiled over into yelling matches between members of the audience in the chambers on Wednesday, some supporters of the wage rules loudly pledged that they would oppose aldermen who had changed their votes during elections in 2007. Others said they would oppose Mayor Daley, who is up for re-election next year. Regardless, labor and religious leaders said, they will bring the issue back nationally as well as in Chicago.

Alderman Joe Moore, who led efforts to pass the wage rule, promised a revised proposal for it as early as at the Council’s next meeting. “This issue will not go away,” he said.

Monica Davey reported from Chicago, and Michael Barbaro from New York.

    Chicago Minimum Wage Ordinance Fails, NYT, 14.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14bigbox.html?hp&ex=1158292800&en=45794243075951de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

 

 

 

 

Pennsylvania Town Delays Enforcing Tough Immigration Law

 

September 2, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

 

A Pennsylvania town has agreed to hold off temporarily from enforcing an ordinance that fines landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, denies business permits to employers who hire them and requires that all city business be conducted only in English.

A federal district judge, James M. Munley, issued an order yesterday confirming an agreement between the town, Hazleton, and civil liberties groups that challenged the ordinance in a lawsuit filed Aug. 15. Hazleton said it would not immediately enforce the measure, passed July 13, and its opponents agreed not to seek a formal injunction for the time being.

The Hazleton law was the first in a series of initiatives across the country in which local townships, citing what they described as negligence by federal authorities, moved on their own to crack down on illegal immigrants. Mayor Louis J. Barletta said he wanted the ordinance to make Hazleton “one of the most difficult places in the United States for illegal immigrants.”

Under the ordinance, which had been set take effect on Sept. 11, landlords faced a fine of $1,000 for each day they rented to immigrants lacking papers. The measure also barred employers who hired illegal immigrants from renewing business permits or receiving city contracts for five years.

The suit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, charged that the ordinance was “riddled with constitutional flaws,” overstepped the bounds of municipal authority and would discriminate against any residents who appeared to be foreigners. Several plaintiffs are Hazleton landlords who are legal Hispanic immigrants.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Mayor Barletta said the town had agreed to the delay in order to write a new ordinance, based on advice from lawyers, that would be easier to defend in court.

“I’m not backing down,” the mayor said. The new measure, he said, will clarify that it is not intended to punish local retailers for selling to illegal immigrants, after ambiguities in the current law raised an outcry from storekeepers. He said he might submit the new proposal for a vote by the City Council as early as Sept. 12.

According to a tally on Monday by the Puerto Rican legal group, six other towns nationwide have adopted similarly tough ordinances: four in Pennsylvania, plus Riverside, N.J., and Valley Park, Mo. Such measures have passed preliminary votes in four additional towns, and at least 26 towns are considering them. Four towns, including Avon Park, Fla., have rejected similar ordinances.

The order by Judge Munley, who sits in Scranton, Pa., gives the civil liberties groups 20 days to renew their challenge to any immigration ordinance Hazleton adopts. Omar C. Jadwat, an immigration lawyer for the A.C.L.U., said he hoped that the town would eventually drop the ordinance and that “other cities will similarly take these ordinances off the table and rethink.”

 

 

New Round of Marches

CHICAGO, Sept 1 (Reuters) — Immigration advocates took to the streets of Chicago on Friday in the first of a week of marches around the country to step up pressure on Congress for a broad immigration overhaul.

Dozens of marchers set off from Chinatown, at the start of a four-day trek to the Batavia, Ill., district offices of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. Organizers said they hoped to pressure Mr. Hastert to push a bill favorable to immigrants through Congress after it returns from recess on Sept. 5.

Advocates plan further rallies across the country over the Labor Day weekend and next week.

    Pennsylvania Town Delays Enforcing Tough Immigration Law, NYT, 2.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/us/02hazelton.html

 

 

 

 

 

The Nine Lives of a Topless Bar: Complaints Hit a Wall of Law

 

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK

 

When the metal door bangs shut, the daylight is gone. Distorted guitars climb a mountainous drumbeat and a voice snarls Spanish. Thin strands of neon shine dim pink on women in worn lace and on the mirror, where the sign says, "Shut Up and Drink."

Outside, a cursive inscription promises 200 girls onstage at the Sweet Cherry, a corner bar the size of a railroad car on 42nd Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. All down the gravelly paved road, the husks of wasted dragsters and bashed police trucks await salvage or dissection.

Here on the outskirts of Brooklyn, where the corporate forces of business and tourism have banished the purveyors of seediness and smut, the last of the low-rent strip parlors have achieved something like indestructibility — even if they are routinely the scenes for crimes; even if their neighbors want them gone. Their tiny survival stories evoke the sometime futilities of a huge municipal force battling a small, notorious menace.

"I wish I could be more optimistic," said Felix W. Ortiz, an assemblyman from Sunset Park who has campaigned to close the Sweet Cherry, "and tell you that we're coming to closure."

But he can't.

In a matter of decades, New York has recast itself as a new American polestar, where crime rates are low, welfare is closely policed and smoking and honking carry fines. Long after Disney claimed Times Square, after the peep shows took to the side streets and stocked subtler offerings, the last of the dive strip parlors survive by keeping to the industrial zones and parrying in court.

Among them, Sweet Cherry is a great champion, brazen and near untouchable. The authorities have documented an in-house narcotics trade, pronounced the club a brothel and charged the manager with rape. (He has pleaded not guilty.) Once, patrons repeatedly stabbed an off-duty police officer, who lost partial use of his right hand. Once, a manager of bouncers for Sweet Cherry was shot dead in his apartment.

But despite two civil actions by the Police Department, voluminous criminal charges and neighborhood protests, the club has been closed for a total of just six days this year. Eleven days after its latest reopening, two dancers were charged with breaking a beer bottle over somebody's head.

In 1993, the city counted 68 topless bars. By 2000 there were 57. The Law Department now counts 21 that could be closed if certain zoning rules are approved in court. About 10 more — including Sweet Cherry — remain within the zoning bounds.

For all the city's efforts, these last clubs have the law on their side. Unable to use the zoning laws as a bludgeon, the city's various attempts to close Sweet Cherry for the crimes it says have occurred there have all failed.

"If they are in the right zone, they can have a girl or girls dancing in the club and not be shut down, because the United States Supreme Court has said you can't be shut down completely," said Herald Price Fahringer, a First Amendment lawyer who has represented many of the clubs. "They're abiding by the law."

But zoning laws aren't the city's only weapons. The police and district attorneys employ the tools of traditional law enforcement, alongside newer strategies, like civil nuisance-abatement lawsuits.

The survival of the Sweet Cherry, told in court documents, interviews, legislative correspondence, business reports and public hearings, traces the vestiges of a presumed bygone in New York: Down by the waterfront, an unreconstructed house of sex, drugs and violence fights City Hall. Its weapons are its obscure address and a decent Court Street lawyer. A decade into the city's clean-living campaign, the metal door bangs open and shut long past midnight. Sales were $1.05 million last year.

 

Bucking the City's Plans

The Sweet Cherry counts as its chairman Louis Kapelow, a Manhattan Beach businessman whose court affairs have included an unpaid $10,000 promissory note and a disputed homeowner's liability policy, which Lloyd's of London claimed he obtained after his tree fell onto a neighbor's property. His company was registered on Aug. 10, 1995, and granted a liquor license Jan. 5, 1996.

That summer, Joseph and James DeNicola acquired the property at 202 42nd Street. The architecture, a two-story shotgun with a diagonal door frame to face 42nd Street and Second Avenue, was of the classic corner bar style more common to South Philadelphia than to South Brooklyn, and the certificate of occupancy called for an "eating and drinking place without restrictions on entertainment."

That description suited the Sweet Cherry, though the prospects for the venture were uncertain. New rules championed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani set an October 1996 deadline to close peep shows, video stores and clubs within 500 feet of schools, homes, churches and one another. The altered landscape left room in tired manufacturing zones behind the barriers of expressways.

In Sunset Park, Club 37, Corrado's and Wild Wild West clustered inside a half-mile stretch. Entering this field, the Sweet Cherry made no pretense of grandeur. The club was outfitted with a D.J. booth, three amplifiers and an equalizer. The left side became a fully stocked bar, the right an elevated stage cordoned with strip poles and an arcade machine.

A walled section in back obscured a chamber for private dances and a storage space for beer. A staircase led to a basement dressing room for dancers like Diamond, whose real name was Jennifer, and Chastity, whose real name was Chastity.

The compacted striptease market sought a regional audience, but the city had other plans for the waterfront. An enormous Costco store opened beside the Gowanus Expressway on Nov. 21, 1996, with plans for an Ikea, a cruise ship port and luxury condominiums in nearby Red Hook to follow.

Trade was returning in the form of artisans' shops, and Chinese and Latino immigrants settled in Sunset Park a short walk from the former Brooklyn Army Terminal. A manufacturing wasteland was becoming a thriving industrial zone fringed by young families. The strip parlors began to draw complaints.

"It's a working-class community, a community with a lot of churches," said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park. "They're particularly incensed that there are so many of these facilities along Second and Third Avenues."

 

'Litigational Sumo'

The stranger waited by the bar. It was April 17, 1999, a mild, dry Saturday. After a while, two people brought a green Ziploc bag of cocaine from the back room and the stranger paid $20. The currency was recorded. The stranger, Undercover Officer 31931 of the Brooklyn South Narcotics Division, later repeated the transaction four times over the next three months.

In a sworn statement, the officer neither named nor described the drug dealers. The target was the setting, the Sweet Cherry. The police were documenting a pattern of crime, planning to seek sanctions under civil nuisance abatement laws.

"This is litigational sumo wrestling," said Robert F. Messner, assistant commissioner for the Civil Enforcement Unit of the department's Legal Bureau. "It's very quick, it's very fast, it's very brutal."

Three months after the first drug purchase, Detective Kurt Vikki entered the club with a search warrant and arrested 12 people on drug charges. The police sent a letter to Joseph DeNicola.

"You have an obligation," the letter said, "to ensure that your property is not used for criminal activity."

The club turned to a legal team including Lance G. Lazzaro, a St. John's School of Law graduate who keeps an office on Court Street in Brooklyn and shares the workload with Randy Lazzaro, his brother. The lawyers argued that management was not necessarily aware of the drugs. The officer had visited on weekends, when as many as 70 people filled the 300-square-foot club. The music was usually loud. The undercover officer's behavior gave no cause for suspicion.

"Because one goes to a topless bar to observe semi-naked women," the lawyers wrote, "it is natural to assume that anyone sitting at the bar has his back to the employee or employees behind the bar."

On Aug. 5, 1999, in Brooklyn Civil Court, Justice Joseph F. Bruno ordered the club closed, but only temporarily, as a warning. He set a $25,000 fine and told the management to fire some employees and install metal detectors.

"A lot of times, judges use it like jail time," Mr. Messner said. " 'Look, this is a serious charge, I'm going to get your attention by shutting you down for a couple of days.' "

Forty-one days later, the Sweet Cherry was back in business.

 

Police Officer Stabbed

Joseph Continanzi double-parked on Second Avenue just before 3 a.m. It was Dec. 8, 1999, three months after the Sweet Cherry's reopening. Mr. Continanzi, 29, had been a police officer for nine years, but he was not on duty that night. His girlfriend, Michele Miranda, rode in the passenger seat.

A doorman was guarding the club, and three men were standing on the sidewalk holding beer bottles. Ms. Miranda went inside to get a friend, but when she returned the loiterers grabbed at her. Officer Continanzi got out of the car.

"At which point three or four more came out from the bar with bottles, began hitting me with bottles, punching me, kicking me," he later recalled. "I was stabbed several times and I was on the floor going in and out of consciousness."

Two of the attackers pleaded guilty to assault, but a lawsuit seeking damages failed. The Sweet Cherry's lawyers argued that the doorman's responsibilities ended at the door.

Around Sunset Park, pressure was increasing. Assemblyman Ortiz asked Mayor Giuliani to extend the perimeter between sex clubs and homes. The borough president asked the Buildings Department to look for zoning violations. The outcry grew in 2002 when an off-duty police officer left the Wild Wild West club drunk and ran down two women, one of whom was pregnant, and a 4-year-old boy, killing all of them.

"Sweet Cherry was one of the strip clubs that we had prior to the zoning law," said Jeremy Laufer, district manager for Community Board 7, which includes Sunset Park. "This is really a sore point in the community."

The next campaign against the Sweet Cherry drew the attention of the district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, who assigned the Money Laundering and Revenue Crimes Bureau, the Special Investigations Unit and the Rackets Bureau to the case. It all began with a job interview.

 

A Rape Complaint

Gabriel R. Bertonazzi stands 6 foot 3, 285 pounds, with sideburns to his jowls, a ponytail to his shoulder blades and a dark brown goatee. He favors knee-length leather coats.

Mr. Bertonazzi, 45, was once listed as liaison for the Michael Bertonazzi U.S.A. Foundation, which says in a philanthropic directory that it exists to "aid the children of all the world."

But on March 8, 2004, Mr. Bertonazzi was employed as manager of the Sweet Cherry, and his task was evaluating the talents of a teenager born in June 1987. By the girl's account, he asked to see her breasts, hips and legs and then asked her to dance. She got the job.

Seven months later, vice detectives raided the club to check ID's. The new dancer, at 17 still under age, told them her job interview had included forcible rape. The detectives arrested Mr. Bertonazzi, who made $5,000 bail. His rape case is pending. He kept his job, but he brought more scrutiny to the club than his employers knew.

Over the next six months, a prosecution unit devoted to organized crime and violent gangs orchestrated a series of drug purchases at the Sweet Cherry. This time the operation was more complex. Undercover officers worked with confidential informants, starting small and building trust.

On March 10, 2005, officials said, investigators bought two bags of cocaine and one of marijuana. By April, the authorities said, bouncers and managers were offering them 10 bags of cocaine at a time, or 16 of marijuana or a handful of ecstasy. On May 2 that year, the police raided the club, taking financial records and arresting five people, including Mr. Bertonazzi. The next day, the authorities publicized the new crackdown.

"This should serve as a warning," Mr. Hynes said. "If you seek to profit from drug sales and under-age dancers, not only will you be prosecuted, but we will do everything in our power to shut you down."

Relentless Legal Defense

A rotating cast of judges, assistant district attorneys and Police Department lawyers handle cases against the Sweet Cherry and its workers, but the defense is unified.

Nearly any problem prompts a call to Mr. Lazzaro. His practice has included rapists and loan sharks, but for variety, few clients can match Sweet Cherry.

As the city increased its efforts, the club seemed incapable of keeping a low profile. In November 2005, over the objections of the community board, the State Liquor Authority renewed the club's license through Halloween 2007.

Later that month, Irving Matos, 42, who arranged jobs for bouncers, failed to show up for work and was found slumped over a couch in his basement apartment, dead from a bullet to the head. Last week, when the police arrested another bouncer, Stephen Sakai, on charges of shooting patrons at a Chelsea nightclub, law enforcement officials said he had briefly worked at Sweet Cherry, had known Mr. Matos and was being questioned in his killing.

The force of the city's reinvigorated campaign landed on Jan. 5. In response to a new lawsuit, a judge ordered the Sweet Cherry closed, but the authorities did not rest on the victory. That same day, an undercover officer paid a dancer $60 to agree to have sex. The officer had to pay the manager $10, too.

Six days later, Mr. Lazzaro disputed the closing order in court. The city's witnesses never showed up, even when the hearing was delayed until after lunch, and Justice Sylvia Hinds-Radix vacated the order.

Two weekends later, after midnight on a Saturday, the police were called to the Sweet Cherry to rescue a dancer who was bleeding from the head after being hit with a beer bottle. Officers arrested Christina Dellaperuto, a green-eyed dancer with an angel tattoo, and Abigail Batista, a brunette who dances in black work boots. The next week, the city filed a statement describing the Sweet Cherry as a house of prostitution and asked for another closing order.

"Police raids, arrests and criminal proceedings," wrote Tzivyah Weber, a Police Department lawyer, "have not stopped the illegal activity."

In court, city lawyers have argued that the drug sales alone justified shutting the club, but they have not called their confidential informants and undercover officers to testify to the drugs, violence or prostitution. On May 11, a young city lawyer appeared in Justice Hinds-Radix's courtroom opposite Randy Lazzaro, who was substituting for his brother on behalf of the Sweet Cherry.

"The burden is on you," Justice Hinds-Radix told the city lawyer, "to tell me if they're in violation of my order."

With no new witnesses to discuss, the lawyers began setting a schedule for trial at the end of the summer.

In criminal court, Lance Lazzaro has won delays in the drug and rape cases against Mr. Bertonazzi, who has pleaded not guilty.

At a hearing before Justice John P. Walsh, Lance Lazzaro argued that prosecutors were not disclosing evidence from their sprawling investigations of the Sweet Cherry, Mr. Bertonazzi, the dancers, the bouncers and the other workers.

Justice Walsh set another hearing.

    The Nine Lives of a Topless Bar: Complaints Hit a Wall of Law, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/nyregion/31club.html

 

 

 

 

 

In Chicago, New Pay Law Is Considered for Big Stores

 

May 28, 2006
The New York Times
By GRETCHEN RUETHLING

 

CHICAGO, May 27 — Chicago may become the first city in the nation to require "big box" retailers like Wal-Mart or Home Depot to pay employees a "living wage" of at least $10 an hour plus $3 an hour in benefits.

So far, 33 of 50 City Council members have signed on to the proposed ordinance — more than enough to pass it, perhaps as soon as next month.

The bill would affect only stores that have at least 75,000 square feet and are operated by companies with at least $1 billion in annual sales, allowing smaller retailers to continue with the state minimum wage of $6.50 an hour.

"This is an effort to try to preserve the middle class," said Joe Moore, an alderman from the North Side who sponsored the measure. Mr. Moore called the notion that it would drive retailers out of the city "hogwash."

But others say the measure will scare off employers.

"Don't let me be the experiment," said Emma Mitts, the alderwoman in the poor and mainly African-American neighborhood of Austin on the West Side, where the city's first Wal-Mart is scheduled to open this year. "Not at a time when my community needs these jobs so badly."

Whether the city has the power to make such demands of certain retailers while exempting others is an open question. The proposal has yet to be reviewed by lawyers, a spokeswoman for the city said.

David Vite, president and chief executive of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said that he thought the state would block such an ordinance and that it seemed unconstitutional because it would discriminate against some businesses. "To suggest that someone who is a janitor in a retail store should get paid more than a janitor at a bank doesn't make any sense," Mr. Vite said.

But Jennifer Sung, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, which helped draft the proposal, said the measure would withstand challenges.

Ms. Sung said courts had ruled that distinctions could be made among industries if there was a rational basis for doing so. She also said that Illinois had granted local governments broad powers to pass regulations to promote a city's health and welfare.

Similar legislation has been introduced in Washington, D.C., and discussed in New Jersey. Lawmakers in Maryland; Suffolk County, N.Y.; and New York City have passed laws requiring certain large employers to provide health care benefits for workers, but none of those laws have a wage component.

If the proposal in Chicago passes, it could mean wage increases for more than 9,000 of the 16,000 or so workers at about 35 big-box stores, according to a study released last year by the Center for Urban Economic Development of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The proposal in Chicago comes as such stores have opened in poor neighborhoods.

"This ordinance targets the larger retailers who have, over the last probably five years, begun to make some inroads to the inner cities," said the Rev. Dwight Gunn, a pastor at Heritage International Christian Church. "It would continue to push business and development away from the city."

Mr. Gunn said the ordinance would hinder development in needy neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. The North Side's mostly white neighborhoods, meanwhile, would be less affected, Mr. Gunn said, because they have many major retailers.

"The aldermen, I think, have a very difficult choice in the sense that none of them want to be seen as anticommunity, antiworker," Mr. Gunn said.

Over the next two years, Wal-Mart plans to build more than 50 stores nationwide in city neighborhoods in need of development; the Chicago store scheduled to open in September is the first. "We have made a pledge to come to urban areas where communities have been ignored and underserved," said John Bisio, a spokesman for Wal-Mart. He said such a wage law would not affect plans for the Austin store.

Some 9,000 people have applied for about 400 jobs at the store in the Austin neighborhood, Mr. Bisio said, even though the opening is more than three months away.

    In Chicago, New Pay Law Is Considered for Big Stores, NYT, 28.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/us/28wage.html

 

 

 

 

 

Smoking Ban Takes Effect, Indoors and Out

 

March 19, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

 

CALABASAS, Calif., March 17 — One of the toughest antismoking laws in the nation took effect here Friday, the same day that a satirical movie about a reptilian tobacco lobbyist, "Thank You for Smoking," opened across the country.

"Pure serendipity," said Barry Groveman, the earnest environmental lawyer who also serves as mayor of Calabasas, a well-to-do community of 25,000 people on the western fringe of Los Angeles. Mr. Groveman said he was glad that the coincidence would help draw attention to his city's efforts to limit the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

The smoking ordinance, which was unanimously passed by the five-member Calabasas City Council last month, prohibits smoking in all public places, indoor or outdoor, where anyone might be exposed to secondhand smoke. The ban includes outdoor cafes, bus stops, soccer fields, condominium pool decks, parks and sidewalks. Smoking in one's car is allowed, unless the windows are open and someone nearby might be affected.

Smoking scofflaws face warnings, fines of up to $500 for repeat offenses, and misdemeanor charges.

City officials and antismoking activists describe the ordinance as one of the most comprehensive efforts to regulate secondhand smoke anywhere in the world. It comes just weeks after the California Air Resources Board declared secondhand smoke to be a toxic air contaminant that can lead to respiratory infections, asthma, lung cancer, heart disease and death.

California, ever in the forefront of social trends, has been a leader in limiting when and where people can smoke. Cities and towns around the state began banning smoking in offices and restaurants more than 15 years ago, and lawmakers enacted a statewide ban on smoking in restaurants, workplaces and public venues in the mid-1990's. Smoking has been prohibited on most Southern California beaches and piers since 2003.

The movement has spread nationwide. More than 700 cities around the country have enacted ordinances placing some limits on outdoor smoking, according to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, a research and advocacy group that supports antismoking legislation.

Calabasas wants to "push the envelope," Mr. Groveman said, adding, "This is clearly a groundbreaking public health law."

"This is the right time and the right place to take this step," he said. "We hope it will be the way things are done all over the country and all around the world."

The ordinance encountered little resistance. The Chamber of Commerce and the city's restaurant association supported it, as did virtually every citizen who appeared at public hearings. Tobacco lobbyists never weighed in, Mr. Groveman said, and a spokesman for Philip Morris, the nation's largest cigarette maker, did not return a reporter's telephone calls Friday.

It was tough to find an aggrieved smoker at the Calabasas Commons outdoor mall Friday morning, particularly after it started raining. In fact, television crews filming reports on the law outside a Starbucks outnumbered smokers 5 to 0, by actual count.

The nonsmoking citizens appeared delighted by the new law and by the attention it brought to their enclave of gated communities, horse farms and Mediterranean-style condominium complexes.

"The best thing that could have happened was what they did," said Marlene Kolinsky, 63. "The smoking gets right in my eyeballs."

Larry Chambers, 73, who quit smoking 30 years ago, said he was also pleased about the new law, in part because it protects smokers' rights by allowing any business or office building to designate an outdoor smoking area away from foot traffic.

Mr. Chambers said the ordinance enhanced the city's image.

"The good thing is Calabasas gets recognized as a healthy community," he said. "And it helps property values."

The first plume of cigarette smoke spotted in Calabasas on Friday came from, of all places, a fire station a few hundred yards from city hall. Thomas Duda, a Los Angeles County firefighter, was savoring a Marlboro Light on the driveway outside the station.

"We were just talking about this new law," Mr. Duda said. "We're completely in the dark. Who's going to enforce it? Are there going to be designated areas? And what if I'm out front here and someone from the City of Calabasas comes by?"

Have no fear, Mr. Duda, said Michael Hafken, the city's communications director. First offenders will get off with a gentle warning and a breath mint.

    Smoking Ban Takes Effect, Indoors and Out, NYT, 19.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/national/19smoke.html

 

 

 

 

 

Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police

 

February 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM DWYER

 

The demonstrators arrived angry, departed furious. The police had herded them into pens. Stopped them from handing out fliers. Threatened them with arrest for standing on public sidewalks. Made notes on which politicians they cheered and which ones they razzed.

Meanwhile, officers from a special unit videotaped their faces, evoking for one demonstrator the unblinking eye of George Orwell's "1984."

"That's Big Brother watching you," the demonstrator, Walter Liddy, said in a deposition.

Mr. Liddy's complaint about police tactics, while hardly novel from a big-city protester, stands out because of his job: He is a New York City police officer. The rallies he attended were organized in the summer of 2004 by his union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, to protest the pace of contract talks with the city.

Now the officers, through their union, are suing the city, charging that the police procedures at their demonstrations — many of them routinely used at war protests, antipoverty marches and mass bike rides — were so heavy-handed and intimidating that their First Amendment rights were violated.

A lawyer for the city said the police union members were treated no differently than hundreds of thousands of people at other gatherings, with public safety and free speech both protected. The department observes all constitutional requirements, the city maintains.

The lawsuit by the police union brings a distinctive voice to the charged debate over how the city has monitored political protest since Sept. 11. The off-duty officers faced a "constant threat of arrest," Officer Liddy testified, all but echoing the complaint by activists for other causes that the city has effectively "criminalized dissent."

The lawsuit is one of three recent legal actions in which the city has been accused of abuses of power that the plaintiffs say crimped free expression, a charge that officials say is belied by the reality of noisy sidewalks and streets, crammed year-round with parades and rallies.

At the core of all three cases are questions about the expanded powers the police were granted after the 2001 attacks, and how much the department needs to know about the politics of people who are expressing their views.

In 2003, a federal judge eased longstanding and strict limits on surveillance of political activity at the request of lawyers from the city's corporation counsel office, who argued that the Police Department needed broader authority to use such tactics to fight terrorism.

Since then, police officers in disguise have taken part in demonstrations, an approach the Police Department says it used before receiving the expanded powers; other officers have made hundreds of hours of videotapes of people involved in protests and rallies, very few of whom were charged with breaking any law. Neither form of surveillance, the city argues, violates the Constitution.

The three pending cases — two of them brought by civil liberties lawyers and the third by the police union — are the first to demand judicial scrutiny of those tactics.

Among those three, the police union was the earliest to challenge the city, and its case has the most striking dynamic: the very people asked to fight terrorism are claiming that the city's new antiterrorism tools have been bluntly and illegally applied to the exercise of their own civil rights.

"It puts the whole issue into stark relief," said Elizabeth McNamara, a lawyer who represents the P.B.A. and other unions in the suit.

In July and August 2004, a few dozen off-duty officers — joined at times by firefighters — popped up at places where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was scheduled to appear, chanting and handing out leaflets about labor negotiations.

The unions maintain that their demonstrations, in the weeks before the 2004 Republican National Convention opened in New York, embarrassed the mayor just as the national press corps was turning its attention to the city, and that the Police Department responded by cracking down. They are seeking a court declaration that their rights have been violated, as well as damages.

Lawyers for the city say that police union members pestered truck drivers making deliveries, obstructed sidewalks near the mayor's home, and taunted the mayor's press secretary by saying they knew where he lived. The Police Department, the city lawyers say, is neutral about political messages and used barricades and other crowd control methods only to protect the rights of the public and to keep order.

However, the police union said it had uncovered evidence that the department took a keen interest in what the demonstrators were saying, not just how they said it.

During a deposition of the chief of department, Joseph Esposito, who is the department's top uniformed official, Ms. McNamara read parts of a report prepared by the department's Internal Affairs Bureau, which noted that the protesters included members of the Police and Fire Department unions.

"In Paragraph 4, it says that members of both departments called out to the mayor for pay raises," Ms. McNamara said, according to the court transcript, "In Paragraph 5, it notes that the protesters clapped and cheered when former Mayor Koch appeared."


She asked, "What would be the basis for them recording the content of the protesters' demonstrations?"

Chief Esposito responded, "Just to record what they observed."

At a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Ms. McNamara said the videotaping was punitive. "There was no basis whatsoever for employing the Internal Affairs Division to videotape the police officers except as a means of political harassment," she said. "There wasn't suspicion of criminal activity."

Mark Muschenheim, a lawyer for the city, said that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly ordered the videotaping for legitimate reasons. "There were threats made to the mayor's press secretary during these demonstrations," Mr. Muschenheim said. "That was a decision made by the police commissioner because the demonstrations were getting out of hand."

At Chief Esposito's deposition, Ms. McNamara asked, "Would there be any reason, to your knowledge, for them to be taping the protest to zoom in and individually photograph each officer at the protest?"

"I don't know," he replied.

"Do you know any legitimate reason for such documentation of individuals at the protest?" Ms. McNamara asked.

The chief replied, "Document presence for further identification in the event there was misconduct."

No criminal activity or misconduct was observed at the union demonstrations, Charles Campisi, the chief of the Internal Affairs Bureau, testified, but the videotapes will remain on file. "The purpose of keeping records is to document the observations, what you've done," he said.

In 2003, a federal judge found that the Police Department had scrutinized the beliefs of antiwar protesters without legitimate reason. After antiwar rallies in February and March 2003, 12 people who were arrested said they were questioned on their political thinking by detectives.

Police officials said basic information was needed for a database that would identify centers of protest organization to help deploy officers at future demonstrations. When the practice was made public, Commissioner Kelly said that while he did not know about it, there was nothing unconstitutional about the questioning. Nevertheless, he said the information was not needed.

The dozen people who submitted affidavits said the interrogations went far beyond basics. Among the questions, they said, was whether the country would be better off if Al Gore had been elected, whether they hated President Bush, whether they belonged to other antiwar groups, what schools they attended, and whether they were politically active. The police denied asking those questions.

The judge, Charles S. Haight of Federal District Court in Manhattan, noting that all the protesters gave roughly the same version of events, said he believed that they were telling the truth, even if Commissioner Kelly and his deputy for intelligence, David Cohen, were not aware of the practice.

In the P.B.A.'s lawsuit, now in pretrial proceedings, Ms. McNamara tried to show that it was unusual for the Internal Affairs Bureau to keep an eye on off-duty police officers. If a group of police officers were going to have "a baseball game, would I.A.B. be called in to monitor to see whether they might engage in illegal activity?" Ms. McNamara asked Chief Esposito.

"Generally speaking, no," he replied.

Asked if Internal Affairs officers with video cameras might intimidate an officer, Chief Esposito said, "I don't think so."

However, Joseph Alejandro, a police officer and union official, testified about the videotaping, "It sends a chill down a police officer's back to think that Internal Affairs would be taping something."

Although city lawyers have not yet addressed the claims in the union's lawsuit at any length, they argued in a related case that the police should be allowed to make and keep videotapes of political gatherings. A group of civil rights lawyers charged that such videotaping violated a standing court order that settled a class action lawsuit, known as Handschu, that put limits on police surveillance. Many of those limits were eased in 2003. The city says that nothing in the United States Constitution forbids police videotaping of people in a public place.

"Even if the N.Y.P.D. were to identify the person whose images were captured on videotape, or disseminated the photographs to other police agencies, a constitutional violation has not occurred," wrote Gail Donoghue, a senior city lawyer.

    Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police, NYT, 3.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/nyregion/03police.html?ei=5094&en=b56d5cbcc407ed2c&hp=&ex=1139029200&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1138943965-l6BFx4unoa35FwoslxPrng

 

 

 

 

 

Los Angeles sues over 'Grand Theft Auto' game

 

Fri Jan 27, 2006 6:12 PM ET
Reuters
By Gina Keating

 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The city of Los Angeles has sued Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. for selling pornographic video games to children with its best-selling game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," which last year was found to have hidden sex scenes.

Shares of Take-Two plunged 13.7 percent to $14.69 on the Nasdaq -- a level unseen since 2003 -- after an analyst downgraded its shares to "sell" from "neutral", citing a variety of financial, operational and management risks.

Los Angeles City Attorney Rockard Delgadillo, in the suit filed on Thursday, accused the game publisher of failing to disclose the pornographic content to get the game onto shelves of major retailers that do not carry games rated "Adults Only 18+".

Delgadillo said the company further deceived consumers by first claiming that hackers had modified the original version of the games, then announcing a week later that the sex scenes were written into the original game code.

The lawsuit demands that Take-Two and Rockstar Games, the subsidiary behind "Grand Theft Auto," one of the best-selling in video game franchises history, stop marketing the games to children, pay fines and return $10 million in profits.

A Take-Two spokesman had no comment on Friday.

Last summer, the video game ratings board slapped a restrictive "adult" rating on "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" because of explicit sex scenes, known as "Hot Coffee," that allow players to engage in virtual sex acts.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board launched an investigation and took the unusual step of changing the rating on the game to "Adults Only 18+" (AO) from "Mature 17+".

Take-Two had to pull the games off store shelves and repackage them with the new rating, which crimped game sales and disrupted company operations.

The lawsuit charged that Take-Two knowingly deceived the video game ratings board and flouted California law to market the game as suitable for teens, the lawsuit alleged.

The city also claims that Take-Two "marketed the 'Grand Theft Auto' series in a fashion that encourages the creation of (software modifications), which has added to the counter-culture image of the games, enhancing their popularity and hence their profitability."

The lawsuit asks that Take-Two be ordered to disgorge the profits from the estimated 200,000 copies of the game it sold for about $10 million in California, and that it alert customers who purchased "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" before the ratings change about the sex scenes.

It also demands a $2,500 fine for each untrue or misleading statement the company purportedly made about the games.

Delgadillo appears to have a good case if he can prove that the scenes were embedded in the game and that the company misled the ratings board and the public, said attorney Stephen Smith, a partner at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles.

"It's a pretty black and white issue. If they can prove it's true, I think they have a claim," said Smith.

"The greatest direct risk to Take-Two is that they would have to turn over the money," said Smith, who represents a variety of video game companies including Ubisoft, but has no affiliation with Take-Two or the Los Angeles city attorney.

Consumers in New York already have sued the company over the debacle and are seeking class action status. Take-Two also disclosed in July that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating advertising claims related to the controversial game.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles)

    Los Angeles sues over 'Grand Theft Auto' game, R, 27.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-27T231216Z_01_N26377956_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-TAKETWO-LAWSUIT.xml

 

 

 

 

 

Still Smoking in New York City, and Venting About the $8 Pack

 

January 25, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

 

Mark Twain is said to have had a good line about the pains of quitting smoking: It's easy. Done it a thousand times.

Twain was probably not on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's mind on Monday when he announced that he was calling for a 50-cent increase in the city's cigarette tax. But getting smokers to quit clearly was.

"There's a clear correlation," the mayor said in Albany. "You raise your cigarette taxes, fewer children go and smoke."

The problem is that smokers are a stubborn bunch. If lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and the like have failed to stop them, why, some asked, would a simple pair of quarters do the trick?

"We're hooked," said Lou Sepe, who was pulling on a smoke yesterday afternoon outside his Times Square office. "That's the problem."

Smokers in the city now pay $3 in taxes, and if the tax increase becomes law, some brands could start costing more than $8 a pack, making New York the most expensive place to buy cigarettes in the country.

That does not bother Yuri Gridin, an information technology expert from New Jersey, where cigarettes are several dollars cheaper. Still, it bothers him that Joe Smoke will be hit much harder than the Dunhill set.

"It's a disgrace," he said. "Basically it affects poor people more than it affects the rich."

According to the city's health department, there are about 1.1 million smokers in New York - a decrease of 188,000 since 2002, when the last cigarette tax increase took effect. Still, cigarette taxes have been rising for years but it has not affected sales, said Damien Banner, a manager at Nat Sherman, which bills itself as the Tobacconist to the World.

Nonetheless, Mr. Banner believes that if taxes do keep rising, there will come a day when only the upper class will smoke.

When that point will come, he does not know. But he guesses that a $12 pack may be the threshold. "I don't see anyone paying more than that," he said.

Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting for this article.

    Still Smoking in New York City, and Venting About the $8 Pack, NYT, 26.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/nyregion/25cigs.html

 

 

 

 

 

As Smoke Clears, Tobacco Maker Opens Lounge

 

January 19, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

 

CHICAGO, Jan. 18 - The room is lined with vintage ashtrays, delicate lighters, matches and pens shaped like cigarettes. The scent, naturally, is of smoke.

Chicago's smoking ban took effect this week, but it was hard to know that from inside the gleaming lounge along Milwaukee Avenue in a hip neighborhood on the North Side. Here, under glass, are thick jars of tobacco - Oriental Rose, The Empress, The Earl - poured lovingly into white smoking papers by tobacco's answer to the coffee shop barista.

At the very moment smokers around Chicago were learning not to light up on train platforms, in sports stadiums and in some restaurants, a subsidiary of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was preparing for the grand opening on Thursday of its answer to the smoke-free set: the Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge, what its creators intend to be the nation's first upscale, luxury lounge dedicated to the smoking of cigarettes, especially a new R. J. Reynolds variety.

The timing, Brian Stebbins, a senior marketing director at R. J. Reynolds, said, was purely coincidental. And the shop, he insists, does not fall under the city's new ban since it fits the exempt category of a "tobacco retail store," even though it also sells alcoholic drinks, cheese plates and espresso drinks.

"That's incidental," Mr. Stebbins said, as he wandered the lounge on Wednesday, pointing out the dark wood, the marble bar, the cozy seats by a fireplace. "This is about a select, super premium brand of cigarettes, just like what we've seen with the super premium tier of beer, wine, chocolate and pastries. It's about elegance and having fun."

Not so much fun for those here who fought for the smoking ban - one of the growing number of such restrictions around the country - who said they found the lounge puzzling, disconcerting and possibly illegal.

"This is not what I intended," Alderman Ed Smith, who led efforts to pass the ordinance here, said Wednesday. "I am going to have to make some calls to find out if it's really allowed."

Some antismoking advocates nationally said they worried that the Chicago store might mark a new front in the tobacco industry's efforts to market their products as glamorous, particularly to a young, cutting-edge audience, despite efforts by the industry to comply with a 1998 settlement agreement with scores of states that limits advertising.

"It's trying to get an 18-to-25 demographic here, to make smoking seem desirable, attractive, like a secret club," said Bronson Frick, associate director for Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, a group based in Berkeley, Calif.

Regardless, on Wednesday afternoon, Sean Fahey, 29, wandered by, stood at the smoking bar and sucked deeply and quizzically on his first Oriental Rose - a step up, he said, from his plain old Camels. (The Marshall McGearty cigarettes are sold by the pack for $8, about $2 more than most commercial brands, and carry the customary warning.)

"More and more places like this are sure to open up," Mr. Fahey said. "No one is going to stop smoking because of a ban, but maybe people can start treating cigarettes like this more like alcohol - the kind of thing you savor."

That was just the image the creators of Marshall McGearty might have had in mind two years ago, when they began dreaming up the mixes of leaves (nine types described in a glossy lounge guide, a menu for cigarettes, in three categories, "light and smooth," "mellow and flavorful," or "rich and full-bodied") and, of course, dreaming up ways to market such an idea.

The name, the lounge's press release says, was the "brainchild" of a partnership between Jerry Marshall, a "senior staff blends specialist" in R. J. Reynolds' research and development department, and Larry McGearty, a creative director at Gyro Worldwide, a Philadelphia advertising agency that has handled tobacco accounts.

The partnership, like everything else about this brand was portrayed as having an aura of mystique. "And with that idea," the press release said of the two men, "they set out to make some of the world's best smokes and to build unique sanctuaries where their works of art could be properly enjoyed."

But how, precisely, was such a sanctuary allowed in a city that had just finished its argument over where to ban smoking?

As part of a compromise agreement among the city's aldermen, the ordinance ultimately included provisions that allowed bars and restaurants with bars to delay putting the rule into effect until July 1, 2008. And it included language to exempt a business that can prove its ventilation system is so efficient that its inside air is as clean as the air outside.

But the lounge, Mr. Stebbins said, is relying on a different exemption. Chicago's ordinance excludes "retail tobacco stores," places where 65 percent of the sales are of "tobacco" or "tobacco accessories," according to the city's Law Department. Many cities include similar exemptions in their smoking ordinances, including New York, where sales of tobacco at exempted stores must account for more than half of sales.

In the past, though, here and in other places, "retail tobacco stores" had usually referred to places like mom-and-pop tobacco shops or old-fashioned cigar shops, experts in other cities said. "Come to think of it, I guess they could do this in New York," said Russell Sciandra, director of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York. "But if customers are buying liquor and food, that starts to add up fast and that can't become the bulk of what they are selling."

The managers of the lounge said they were not worried: people would mostly come here to buy cigarettes, they said. What is more, only those 21 years or older will be allowed in - one of many ways, they said, that the lounge does not violate the 1998 settlement agreement.

"We are very serious to make sure we are complying, all with a goal to make sure we are not directly or indirectly advertising to minors," said Carole Crosslin, director of communications at R. J. Reynolds.

Several antismoking advocates said the lounge, indeed, seemed to comply with the legal terms of the settlement, though some said they wondered whether it was truly meeting the intent of the agreement.

"Glamorizing tobacco use will encourage young people who are smokers to continue doing so, and it will encourage some young people who don't smoke to do so - just because it's a glamorous, upscale place," said William V. Corr, executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The question of whether this appeals to youth is a factual question we will have to watch."

But Richard A. Daynard, a law professor at Northeastern University and president of the Tobacco Control Resource Center, said he was not bothered by the lounge, mostly because he believes the idea will not work.

"It's a gimmick," he said. "I certainly would be surprised if it's still in business five years from now. The problem is that their clientele is not this, but mainly working class and poor people."

For his part, Mr. Stebbins said he had not considered whether such smoking lounges might move elsewhere too. "I'm focusing on Chicago right now," he said.

Across the room, Bob Kittrell, 45, sat smoking.

"This is my place now," said Mr. Kittrell, who lives nearby. "It's the only place around that I can drink coffee and read the papers and smoke my cigarettes anymore."

He was, in fact, smoking his own cigarettes, a box of ordinary Camels, but said he might try the Marshall McGearty mix sometime.

    As Smoke Clears, Tobacco Maker Opens Lounge, 19.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/national/19smoke.html

 

 

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