John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I pay tribute to the life and work of jazz great James ``J.J.'' Johnson. A legendary trombone player, J.J. Johnson made an indelible mark on bebop jazz. He died on February 4th at the age of 77. During his six decade career, Johnson played with some of the most influential musicians in jazz, including Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillepsie and, one of my personal favorites, Charlie Parker. Early in his career, he joined Benny Carter's big band and recorded his first professional work with it. Johnson revolutionized the playing of the trombone, ensuring its place in the world of jazz music. He was one of the first musicians to successfully integrate the trombone into the intricate rhythms and phrasing of bebop. In later years, he worked as a composer and arranger, and during the 1970s wrote scores for several television shows and feature films. Jazz is a national treasure and true American art form. In turn, jazz musicians should be lauded for their many contributions to American culture. It is in that vein that I salute the life and work of one of the jazz greats, James ``J.J.'' Johnson.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to address the House for 5 minutes under Special Orders.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, as the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on the Judiciary and the senior Member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I am unalterably opposed to John Ashcroft's nomination to be Attorney General of the United States. I have reached this decision with some regret and consternation. In my 36 years in Congress, I have never publicly opposed a nominee for Attorney General. However, in the present case, my reservations about the Senator's ability and inclinations to support and uphold the law in such critical areas as civil rights, reproductive choice and gun safety are so grave; and his pattern of misleading and disingenuous responses at his confirmation hearings so serious, that I believe it is in the national interests that his nomination be either withdrawn or rejected by the Senate. I am also concerned that the Senator's personal lack of responsiveness to me foreshadows a pattern of conscious avoidance or, at best, benign neglect of me and my colleagues in the House. First, in terms of civil rights, I am troubled by the fact that notwithstanding Senator Ashcroft's general statements about support for civil rights enforcement, he declined to state specific agreement with the Department's position in a host of civil rights cases, including its support of the University of Michigan's affirmative action program. I am also dismayed that the Senator has taken public positions opposing voluntary school desegregation, and that he wrongly asserted that the State had done nothing wrong, and was quote, found guilty of no wrong, end quote, in the Missouri desegregation cases. As we all know, there are two separate Federal Court of Appeals decisions and numerous district court decisions holding the State expressly responsible for the unconstitutional discrimination that occurred. I am also profoundly disappointed in the manner by which the Senator thwarted Judge Ronnie White's nomination to be Federal district court judge, the first African American justice ever to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court. Senator Ashcroft's unwillingness at his confirmation to acknowledge or to express a scintilla of regret for the disingenuous manner in which he distorted Judge White's record can hardly be seen as a promising omen to those of us in the African American community who have worked so hard to integrate the Federal judiciary. Second, given Senator Ashcroft's past record and statements at the hearings, I do not find his acknowledgment of a woman's constitutional right to an abortion as settled law under Roe and Casey as being at all credible. I say this because in 42 out of 43 Senate votes concerning reproductive rights, he cast a vote aimed at overturning Roe versus Wade. Third, with regard to Senator Ashcroft's record of opposition to gun control legislation, I remain unconvinced that he is the appropriate person to uphold and enforce our Nation's firearms law. To me, Senator Ashcroft's past wholehearted embrace of an extreme view of the second amendment is active support for legislation in Missouri that would allow individuals to carry concealed weapons and his unwillingness to commit to relinquish his membership in the National Rifle Association, disqualify him as the person best charged with enforcing our gun laws. In sum, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that the Senator is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time. When our Nation urgently needs an Attorney General who can bring us all together, we have been offered a person known for extreme right- wing positions and divisiveness. I have spent my entire career fighting for the cause of civil rights, reproductive choice and common sense crime and gun safety laws. In my view, Senator Ashcroft's record is simply too inconsistent with these goals to justify our support for him. Mr. Speaker, I yield to and commend the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) for calling this Special Order and bringing us all together this evening.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this piece of legislation because, among other things, it fails to correct some of the most basic inequities in our immigration code. For months, we have worked to obtain passage of the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act. Unfortunately, the Republican Leadership has been held hostage by a small group of anti-immigrant members within their caucus. The result of the Presidential election has hardened this groups' determination to keep immigrants, particularly people of color, out of this country. If this is the spirit of compassionate conservatism and bipartisanship we have to look forward to under a Republican Administration, then I am not at all impressed. First, we sought to establish legal parity among Central American, Liberian and Carribean refugees--so that all refugees that fled political turmoil in the 1980s and early 1990s are treated the same. In 1997, the Republicans gave the ``right'' type of immigrants--Cubans and Nicaraguans--immigration relief, leaving behind immigrants from other countries who did not have the same political influence. The Republicans have completely refused to even meet in good faith to discuss the issue. Second, we sought to update what's known as the ``registry'' date, so that all immigrants who have lived in this country since 1986 qualify to remain here. This provision would have helped people who were eligible under the Reagan era legalization program but were improperly denied permanent residency by the INS in the late 1980s. It also would have reinforced our long held belief that long time immigrants in America should be given the opportunity to solidify their families and economic stability by becoming permanent residents. The Republicans begrudgingly have agreed to help only a small class of people who have lived in the United States since 1982 and are covered by a class action suit. Third, we sought to restore section 245(i) of the Immigration Act. This would let all immigrants who have a legal right to seek permanent resident status to stay in this country with their families while they await a decision. Because Congress failed to extend section 245(i) in 1997, families who have a right to be together here in the United States are being torn apart for up to 10 years. Instead of restoring section 245(i), the Republicans have merely agreed to re-authorize section 245(i) for four months from the date this bill is enacted. Fourth, we sought inclusion of H.R. 5062, legislation which had bipartisan support and passed the House under suspension of the rules. The bill was a modest step towards addressing the most widely recognized injustices of the overly harsh 1996 law, and in particular, eliminating the retroactivity of the 1996 law's deportation legislation. After reaching an agreement on these provisions, the Republicans caved to anti-immigrant members of their caucus, and refused to include any part of H.R. 5062 in this legislation. Finally, and most offensive to me, there appeared to be bipartisan agreement to include certain technical fixes to the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act and the 1998 Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act. These provisions would not have allowed into the country a single person that Congress intended to cover in the original bills. The Republicans have agreed to provide relief to affected Central Americans but have refused similar assistance to Haitian refugees. There is no principled, intellectual or rational reason for not assisting Haitians and other persons of color who were originally covered by the 1998 legislation. One of the greatest measures of our Nation's strength is the diversity of our people. If we look above us we see inscribed our national motto--e pluribus unum--``Out of many, one.'' It reminds us that we are a Nation of immigrants. Because this bill fails to uphold the principles that are most dear to us as a Nation, I must oppose this legislation and will continue to seek a fairer and more decent piece of legislation--it is long overdue.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I wish to commend John W. Oxendine, Georgia Insurance Commissioner who will pursue to multistate investigation of Life Insurance Co. of Georgia, which if proven true, represents a very serious matter, and subsequently needs to be dealt with. African-Americans make up a large percentage of the company's policyholders. Evidence gathered by state examiners showed the Atlanta company, a unit of Dutch INC Group NV, continued at least until recently, to charge African-Americans higher rates than whites on identical policies sold as late as the 1980's. Historically, records have shown that through the first half of the century, U.S. life insurers typically either didn't market to African-Americans or charged them higher rates based on mortality tables that showed a shorter life expectancy for African-Americans. The discriminatory treatment however, was through to have been scrapped in the early 1960's, because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the impact of the civil rights movement. I submit the following article from the Wall Street Journal. [From the Wall Street Journal Dec. 15, 2000] Georgia Regulatory to Lead Investigation Into Insurer's Rates for Black Customers (By Scot J. Paltrow) Georgia's insurance department said it will lead a multistate investigation of Life Insurance Co. of Georgia, after initial inquiries showed the company systematically had charged higher, race-based premiums to African-American customers. Georgia Insurance Commissioner John W. Oxendine said [evidence gathered by state examiners showed the Atlanta company, a unit of Duth ING Group NV, continued at least until recently to charge blacks higher rates than whites on identical policies sold as late as the 1980s.] Life of Georgia was one of the companies cited in a Wall Street Journal page-one story in April, which reported that some life insurers had continued to charge higher premiums to African-Americans on small policies formally known as ``industrial insurance.'' A former Life of Georgia actuary was quoted as saying discrimination premiums continued to be charged by the company well after most other insurers had halted the practice in the 1960s. Florida regulators earlier this year initiated the inquiry into Life of Georgia as well as more than 25 other companies. A lawsuit on behalf of black policyholders is pending against Life of Georgia in federal court in Florida. Life of Georgia has strongly denied the allegations. Officials at Life of Georgia, at ING's North American headquarters in Atlanta and at the parent company's headquarters in Amsterdam, didn't respond to telephone calls. In an interview in April, Life of Georgia Chief Counsel Jeffrey B. McClellan said, ``our position is that no discriminatory rates were every employed'' by the company. Historical records show that through the first half of the 20th century, U.S. life insurers typically either didn't market to African-Americans or charged them higher rates based on mortality tables that showed a shorter life expectancy for blacks. The discriminatory treatment, however, was thought to have been scrapped in the early 1960's, because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the impact of the civil-rights movement. In June, Houston's American General Corp. agreed to pay more than $215 million to settle investigations by Florida and other states and a civil lawsuit which alleged the company had continued until this year to charge higher race- based premiums on about 1.2 million policies held by blacks. Mr. Oxendine said that based on examiners' initial findings, the Life of Georgia investigation will include all types of insurance sold by Life of Georgia. He said it was too early to estimate the number of policies or amount of money involved. [But he said African-Americans make up a large percentage of the company's policyholders.] The investigation is being conducted on behalf of all 50 states. The company's business is licensed to sell in 30 states and has policyholders in all states, the Georgia department said.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I commend Bruce Ackerman, a professor at Yale Law School. Mr. Ackerman, in his December 12, 2000 New York Times editorial, points out that the Florida legislature, if allowed to name electors on its own authority would establish a ``devastating precedent.'' His argument is very straight forward and clear: ``it is absurd to believe that the United States Constitution would allow one state legislature to usurp a national election.'' Article II of the Constitution grants Congress power to set the day on which electors are selected. This is why in 1845 Congress established a level playing field among the states by requiring them to hold elections on the same day. Not since 1845, Mr. Ackerman points out, has a state legislature ``tried the trick that Florida's legislature is now attempting- intervening to swing the election to its favored candidate.'' I strongly agree with Mr. Ackerman's argument that the Florida State legislature's attempt to choose it's own electors is illegal under Article II of U.S. Constitution. I submit the following article into the Congressional Record. [From the New York Times OP-ED Tuesday, December 12, 2000] As Florida Goes (By Bruce Ackerman) While the Supreme Court may ultimately determine the fate of this election, Florida's Legislature is determining the destiny of future presidential contests. The constitutional issues raised by the Legislature's impending action to name a slate of presidential electors for Gov. George W. Bush are far more important than whether Mr. Bush or Vice President Al Gore gets to the White House. If the Legislature is allowed to name electors on its own authority, it will establish a devastating precedent. In the next close presidential election, what is to prevent party leaders in a swing state from deciding the election once the Florida strategy has been legitimized? The dominant party in such a state could simply string out a final tally until the end and then rush into special legislative session to vote in a partisan slate of electors at the finish line. If one state legislature succumbs to this temptation, another legislature--controlled by the opposing party--may well follow suit, creating a partisan battle far worse than what we have already witnessed in Florida. The Florida Legislature may believe it has the power to name the state's electors. But it is absurd to believe that the United States Constitution would allow one state legislature to usurp a national election. An examination of two provisions in Article II of the Constitution shows why. One provision grants state legislatures power over the manner in which electors are chosen. A second grants Congress power to set the day on which these electors are selected. The first provision appears to give the Florida Legislature the right to name its own slate. Many legislatures exercised this power during the early decades of the Republic. And as far as the Constitution is concerned, there would be no legal obstacle if Florida's Legislature decided that in future elections it would deprive its citizens of the direct right to vote on Presidential electors. But the Florida Legislature is perfectly happy to have its citizens vote for President. It simply wants to preempt the Florida Supreme Court's effort to figure out who won the election last month. And in trying to act retroactively, the legislature violates the second constitutional provision, which grants Congress power to set a uniform national day for choosing electors. Acting under this power in 1845, Congress established a level playing field among the states by requiring them to hold elections on the same day-- which is why we all go to the polls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Before 1845, states competed with one another for influence by setting their election dates as late as possible, thereby swinging close elections by voting last. But since then, nobody has tried the trick that Florida's Legislature is now attempting-- intervening to swing the election to its favored candidate. This effort is illegal under the statute established by Congress in 1845. Congress has allowed one narrow exception to its insistence on a uniform election day: It allows a state legislature to step in only when the state has failed to make a choice of its electors. That is not the case in Florida. The state made a choice when Gov. Jeb Bush signed a formal notification that the state's 25 votes go to a slate of Republican electors. Since Florida has not failed to choose, its legislature cannot, under federal law, intervene further. Even if the Florida courts ultimately find that Mr. Gore wins the state's electoral votes, Florida will not have ``failed to choose.'' They will simply have determined that the voters chose him rather than Mr. Bush. Florida's legislative leaders may want to end the election chaos by fiat. But the vote that occurred on Nov. 7 was properly cast by Floridians on the same day their fellow Americans cast their ballots. If Florida's Legislature is allowed to overrule that vote, other states may ponder the same power play four years from now.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend Robert S. McNamara, who served as defense secretary under President John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson for his editorial that was published in the December 12, 2000 edition of the New York Times. Mr. McNamara is calling on President Clinton to sign a treaty, finalized in Rome in 1998, that would create a permanent International Criminal Court. Senator Jesse Helms has promised to block any attempt to ratify the pact. As Mr. McNamara correctly points out, Senator Helms' justification for not ratifying the treaty are unfounded. The tribunal of 18 world jurists would only have jurisdiction to charge those who commit specific crimes that outrage the international community as a whole, and each nation would retain the right to try its own nationals in a fair trial under its own laws. More than 25 nations have ratified the agreement, but we must have 60 nations to ratify before the court can begin trying cases. Given there is an urgent need to deter future atrocities, I urge President Clinton to sign the International Criminal Court agreement with all deliberate speed, and call on Senator Jesse Helms, in the spirit of justice, freedom, and humanity, not to block the agreement. To do so would be a travesty of justice. [From the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2000] For Clinton's Last Act (By Robert S. McNamara and Benjamin B. Ferencz) With the stroke of a pen, President Bill Clinton has a last chance to safeguard humankind from genocide, crimes against humanity and the ravages of war itself. He must simply sign a treaty, finalized in Rome in 1998, to create a permanent International Criminal Court. If he signs the treaty before Dec. 31, the government does not have to ratify the treaty at this time. After that date, any country has to both ratify and sign the treaty to become a member. This is no small consideration, since Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has promised to block any attempt to ratify the pact. Why does Mr. Helms object to a permanent international criminal court? He and others are worried that an unchecked international court could infringe on basic American constitutional rights for fair trials. For instance, they want ironclad guarantees that the court would never try American soldiers. Pentagon officials fear that Americans might be falsely accused of crimes, thus inhibiting our humanitarian military missions. These worries are unfounded. The tribunal of 18 world jurists only have jurisdiction to charge those who commit specific crimes that outrage the international community as a whole. And most important, each nation retains the primary right to try its own nationals in a fair trial under its own laws. There are some crimes, like sexual slavery and forced pregnancy, that the treaty covers, which are not specifically enunciated in our own country's military laws and manuals. Robinson O. Everett, a former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, has recommended incorporating these crimes into our federal laws, assuring that any American military personnel charged with a crime could be tried by American courts. Genocide is universally condemned but there is no universal court competent to try all perpetrators. The Nuremberg war crimes trials, inspired by the United States and affirmed by the United Nations, implied that ``never again'' would crimes against humanity be allowed to go unpunished. Today, we have special courts created by the United Nations Security Council that have very limited and retroactive jurisdiction. For instance, war crimes tribunals are now coping with past atrocities in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But these tribunals are hardly adequate to deter international crimes wherever they occur. The president must help deter future atrocities. At the United Nations and elsewhere, he and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have repeatedly called for an international court to carry forward the lessons of Nuremberg. Now, he has a chance to take action. More than 100 nations, including all our NATO allies, have already signed. Some 25 nations have ratified; others are well on the way. The court cannot begin trying cases until at least 60 nations have ratified. If President Clinton fails to sign the treaty, he will weaken our credibility and moral standing in the world. We will look like a bully who wants to be above the law. If he signs, however, he will reaffirm America's inspiring role as leader of the free world in its search for peace and justice.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to voice concern about the increasingly insurmountable barriers that minorities and women in the telecommunications and broadcast marketplace are experiencing since passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Recent studies have shown that since deregulation, minority- and women-owned companies have had a more difficult time getting financing for starting new ventures and expanding, and when they have received financing, it is often on less favorable terms than comparable majority run businesses. Adverse trends in the courts and in Congress have had a negative impact on small minority owned communication companies. It is imperative that Congress, the courts, the F.C.C. and the Bush administration help ensure that minority and women owned communications enterprises have equal opportunities in their abilities to compete in the marketplace. The following New York Times article is an excellent summary of this crisis. [From the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2000] Deregulation Called Blow to Minorities (By Stephen Labaton) Washington, Dec. 11.--The 1996 landmark law that was warmly embraced by the Clinton administration and many Republicans as a way to begin deregulating the nation's telecommunications industry has had the unintended effect of raising substantial new barriers for companies controlled by minorities and women, new independent studies commissioned by the federal government have found. The studies show that the wave of consolidation in the broadcast, telephone and cable industries prompted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had created ``nearly insurmountable obstacles'' to those seeking to enter those industries and to thrive. They also found that in general over the last 50 years, companies controlled by minorities and women have been far less likely to win government licenses for telephone service and radio or television stations, even if they are qualified to run those operations. In recent years, the studies found, the 1996 law in combination with changes in tax law and affirmative action rules, had made the problems for small businesses particularly acute. ``Today small firms face barriers erected by deregulation and consolidation in both wireless and broadcast,'' one of the studies said. ``Minorities and women confront those same barriers; and yet those obstacles stand high atop a persistent legacy of discrimination in the capital markets, industry, advertising and community--and prior F.C.C. policies, which worsened the effects of discrimination.'' ``The barriers to entry have been raised so high that, left standing, they appear virtually insurmountable,'' the study concluded. ``Minority, women and small-business ownership in these industries is diminishing at such an alarming rate that many we spoke with felt we had passed the point of no return.'' While it has long been known that minorities and women face difficulties in a wide range of industries, the five studies to be released on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission conclude that barriers imposed by both the government and the marketplace have taken a particular toll in telecommunications and the so-called new economy companies, where the lifeblood is the government license to use a part of the airways. ``These studies confirm that small minority and women-owned businesses are encountering significant difficulties in participating in the new economy,'' said William E. Kennard, chairman of the F.C.C. ``With consolidation in the past few years it's clear that it's become harder for any business that is small to participate as an owner of infrastructure, whether it is cable In his more than seven years as the agency's general counsel and then its chairman, Mr. Kennard, the first African-American to head the F.C.C., has struggled against a hostile Republican Congress and a lukewarm administration in trying to find new opportunities for minorities and women. An earlier study he commissioned showed minority broadcasters often cannot command the same advertising revenues as other broadcasters.'' Mr. Kennard said he had hoped that the studies would provide a blue-print for a Gore administration to take new steps on behalf of small companies. He also acknowledged that the prospect of a Bush administration may significantly diminish the impact of the studies on future policy makers. Regulators and courts have long described the spectrum as a public trust that needs to be managed in the best interests of the public, but the studies conclude that minorities and women have had a difficult time for the last half-century and that it still remains especially difficult for them to win licenses and get financing for their ventures on a footing comparable to their rivals. In one study, entitled ``Whose Spectrum Is It Anyway?'' researchers found that the 1996 law, following other adverse trends in the courts and in Congress, had been particularly hard on those small companies. In 1995 Congress eliminated a tax program intended to encourage investment in small, minority- and women-owned telecommunication companies. Around the same time, the United States Supreme Court and other federal courts began to hand down a series of decisions that made it significantly more difficult for the federal government to carry out affirmative action programs and take steps to assist minority businesses. The studies concluded that in the area of broadcasting, ownership can have a deep impact on programming, and that the lack of diversity among owners could lead to less diverse kinds of programs. Minority-owned radio stations, for example, were far more likely to choose a programming format that appeals particularly to a minority audience, and were more likely to have greater racial diversity of on-air talent. The studies show that minority- and women-owned companies have had a more difficult time getting financing for starting new ventures and expanding, and when they have received financing, it is often on less favorable terms that comparable businesses run by white men. The F.C.C. had earlier encouraged small businesses by permitting them to bid in license auctions and make payments in installments. But after some businesses defaulted on those loans, the rules were changed. On Tuesday the agency will begin what many expect will be the largest auction in its history, for licenses to operate mobile telephones, and all winners will have to make their payments upfront. The studies also show that officials at the F.C.C. have been inconsistent in their application of equal opportunity guidelines, and that the agency ``often failed in its role of public trustee of the broadcast and wireless spectrum by not properly taking into account the effect of its programs on small, minority- and women-owned businesses.'' The studies, which are expected to be made public by the F.C.C. on Tuesday, were conducted by KPMG; Ernst & Young; the Ivy Planning Group, a consulting group based in Rockville, Md.; and researchers from Santa Clara University and the University of Washington.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I am pleased to offer for the record my congratulations to Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, an outstanding judge, and a man who possesses a high degree of common sense and pragmatism. Judge Eric L. Clay ruled that the Cleveland school voucher program was unconstitutional, because it did not present parents with a real set of options, and few nonreligious private schools and no suburban public schools had opened their doors. He wrote, and I quote, ``This scheme involves the grant of state aid directly and predominately to the coffers of private, religious, schools, and it is unquestioned that these institutions incorporate religious concepts, motives, and themes into all facets of their educational planning.'' Judge Clay is a 1997 Clinton appointee. Given the current national debate around school vouchers, his ruling is of critical importance to a full understanding of the issue. 82% of the citizens of Detroit recently held a referendum, and voted down the use of school vouchers. It is my firm belief all children should have the opportunity to attend first class public schools that have the highest academic standards, and the best learning environment possible. This can be best achieved by reducing class size, hiring more teachers, teaching phonics, implementing mentoring and after school academic enrichment programs, universal Head Start, increasing teacher's salaries, and creating a world class public school infrastructure. School vouchers is a panacea that will only benefit a small percentage of our kids, and therefore, should be discarded as a viable policy alternative once and for all. A Ruling Voids Use of Vouchers In Ohio Schools [From the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2000] By Jodi Wilgoren A Federal Appeals court declared a Cleveland school voucher program unconstitutional yesterday, upholding a lower court ruling that the use of public money to send thousands of children to parochial schools breaches the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The 2-to-1 decision, which included a vitriolic exchange among the judges, sets the stage for a United States Supreme Court showdown on one of the most contentious issues in education politics today. It comes a month after voters in Michigan and California roundly rejected school voucher programs in ballot initiatives and is the most significant legal decision yet on the question. ``We certainly hope everyone will get the message,'' said Robert H. Chanin, general counsel for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teacher's union, who argued the case for a group of parents and teachers challenging the vouchers. ``The message is, let's focus on improving the public schools and stop playing around with vouchers as a panacea.'' In the ruling, Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said the Cleveland program did not present parents with a real set of options, because few nonreligious private schools and no suburban public schools had opened their doors. In 1999-2000, 96 percent of the 3,761 voucher students attended sectarian schools, receiving up to $2,500 each to offset tuition. ``This scheme involves the grant of state aid directly and predominantly to the coffers of private, religious ``There is no neutral aid when that aid principally flows to religious institutions,'' the decision said, ``nor is there truly `private choice' when the available choices resulting from the program are predominantly religious.'' Voucher supporters promised to appeal the ruling and expressed confidence about their chances at the high court, which has hinted at its openness to vouchers in recent years with several 5-to-4 decisions allowing public money to be used in parochial schools for textbooks, transportation and teachers' aides. ``The day of reckoning is drawing closer,'' said Clint Bolick, a lawyer for the Washington-based Institute for Justice, which helped defend the voucher program. ``This decision is a disaster for every schoolchild in America, but it will be short-lived.'' Students in the Cleveland program will probably be allowed to finish the year at their current schools, lawyers for both sides said. The Supreme Court has already intervened once in the case, to allow voucher recipients to remain in parochial schools pending the appeal, and an extension of that order is expected. ``Whatever I have to do to keep her there, I'm going to do that,'' said Roberta Kitchen, guardian for Toshika Bacon, who uses a voucher to attend a Christian school. ``If it means borrowing, second job, go further into debt, having to juggle my bills around,'' Ms. Kitchen said, ``whatever I need to come up with that tuition.'' Cleveland's voucher program, which gives precedence to low- income families, has been in litigation since it began in 1995 and has long been seen by both sides as the likely test case bound for the Supreme Court. The justices have already declined to review the nation's oldest and largest voucher program, which began in Milwaukee in 1990 and was upheld by the State Supreme Court in 1998. In Florida, the legal battle over a statewide voucher program has focused so far on the mandate to provide public education, not the church-state question; a state appellate judge's ruling that the program is acceptable is being appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. Apart from the constitutional disputes, the battle over vouchers concerns the very definition of the public-school system. A coalition of corporate philanthropists and impoverished parents back vouchers as a free-market solution to what they see as the failure of inner-city schools; the teachers' unions have spent millions of dollars fighting vouchers, which they and many educators believe would drain resources from the schools that most need them. Vouchers were a main point of fissure in the education debate of this fall's presidential campaign. Vice President Al Gore vehemently opposes the use of any public money for private schools, while Gov. George W. Bush of Texas wants to give children in consistently failing schools $1,500 in federal money to use however they like, including for tuition. Yesterday's ruling in the Cleveland case, Simmons-Harris v. Zelman, comes a year after a lower-court federal judge struck down the program, saying it had ``the effect of advancing religion through government-sponsored religious indoctrination.'' Judges Clay and Siler acknowledged in their opinion that vouchers had been ``the subject of intense political and public commentary, discussion and attention in recent years'' but said they could not take part in the ``academic discourse on practical solutions to the problem of failing schools.'' Instead, they based their opinion largely on a 1973 Supreme Court ruling in a New York case, Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, which rejected a tuition-reimbursement program for parents of private school students. Yesterday's ruling also pays close attention to the concurring opinion of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor--widely seen as the swing vote on vouchers--in a case from last term, Mitchell v. Helms, which upheld the purchase of computers for parochial schools. ``The voucher program at issue constitutes the type of `direct monetary subsidies to religious institutions' that Justice O'Connor found impermissible,'' the Sixth Circuit judges said. ``To approve this program would approve the actual diversion of government aid to religious institutions in endorsement of religious education, something `in tension' with the precedents of the Supreme Court.'' Judge James L. Ryan, appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, submitted a sharp dissent accusing his fellow judges of ``nativist bigotry'' and denouncing the quality of Cleveland's public schools. He argued that the Supreme Court's rulings since the Nyquist case suggested a shift in thinking on subsidies to private and parochial schools and called the majority opinion ``absurd'' and ``meritless.'' ``In striking down this statute today, the majority perpetuates the long history of lower federal court hostility to educational choice,'' Judge Ryan wrote, going on to call the ruling ``an exercise in raw judicial power having no basis in the First Amendment or in the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence.'' Judge Ryan's harsh words prompted the same from his colleagues. The majority complained of ``hyperbole'' and ``gratuitous insults,'' saying ``it is the dissent and its rhetoric which should not be taken seriously.'' Gov. Bob Taft of Ohio, a Republican, declined to comment on the case, other than to express disappointment, as did the state's top education official, Susan Tave Zelman, who is named as a defendant. Neither Cleveland's mayor, Michael R. White, nor Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the chief executive officer of the Cleveland Municipal School District, could be reached for comment. Betty D. Montgomery, Ohio's attorney general, released a statement saying, ``The voucher pilot program empowers low- income Cleveland-area families whose children are trapped in a failing public school system.'' As thousands of Cleveland families wondered how the decision might affect them, the combatants in the nation's voucher wars unleashed a sheaf of faxes celebrating or criticizing the latest legal salvo. ``This is a great early Christmas present for America's public schools and our constitutional principles,'' Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a press release. The Center for Education Reform, a conservative group in Washington, described the Cleveland program as a ``lifeline for thousands of disadvantaged young people.'' ``We've always believed and continue to believe that parents are a child's first teacher,'' said the group's president, Jeanne Allen. ``And as such they and only they should decide where and how their children are educated.'' On the other side was Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way Foundation, who hailed the ruling as ``a victory for the First Amendment and a victory for public education.'' But it was a defeat for Mr. Bolick of the Institute for Justice. ``The same Constitution that guarantees educational opportunities has been turned on its head to subvert them,'' he said.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to commend Larry D. Kramer, professor of law at New York University, who eloquently points out in a December 12, 2000 New York Times editorial that the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Rehniquist, has steered the court towards ``conservative judicial activism.'' Mr. Kramer points out that the Rehnquist Supreme Court's recent decision to step into the Florida Presidential vote controversy should be no surprise, given the recent Supreme Court's past judicial behavior. Mr. Kramer offers a litany of examples that show how the Rehnquist Supreme Court has a conservative judicial activist agenda. For example, the Supreme Court cast aside nearly 70 years of precedent in the area of federalism, by ruling that Congress could no longer address violence against women, could not impose liability on state governments for age discrimination, or could not hold states accountable for violating copyright laws. The Florida case shows that judicial prerogative, not state's rights guides the Rehnquist Supreme Court. The recent Supreme Court ruling to vacate the Florida Supreme Court's decision to allow for the recount of uncounted ballots during the Bush-Gore Presidential election unfortunately will forever taint the Supreme Court as arrogant, impartial, and partisan. Professor Kramer's deserves praise for analyzing the Supreme Court's drift towards ``judicial prerogative,'' and away from a strict constructionist judicial philosophy. [From the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2000] No Surprise. It's an Activist Court. (By Larry D. Kramer) The Supreme Court has reached out aggressively to solve the nation's election problem, inserting itself into a major political controversy. News commentators and legal experts seemed surprised when the court stepped into this thicket. They shouldn't have been. the Rehnquist Court has been using law to reshape politics for at least a decade. We keep hearing that it consists of ``strict constructionists'' who (as George W. Bush put it during the debates) oppose ``liberal judicial activism.'' That's because conservative judicial activism is the order of the day. The Warren Court was retiring compared to the present one. Warren Court activism was largely confined to questions of individual rights, mainly racial equality and the treatment of criminal defendants. The Rehnquist Court has been just as active in this domain. To list a few examples, it has disowned affirmative action, finding no difference between Jim Crow and laws designed to help disadvantaged minorities. It has overturned decades of jurisprudence that protected religious minorities from laws that intruded on their rituals. And it has all but eliminated the right to federal review of state criminal cases. Individual rights are important, but they actually affect only a small portion of what government does. The real guts of our democracy lie in the system's structure and the way powers are allocated. And here the The court cast aside nearly 70 years of precedent in the area of federalism, holding that Congress cannot use its powers under the Commerce Clause or the 14th Amendment to regulate matters that touch on state interests, unless the court approves. It has declared, among other things, that Congress could not address violence against women, could not impose liability on state governments for age discrimination, could not hold states accountable for violating copyright laws and more. But perhaps the most audacious instance of judicial activism is the way the court has extended the doctrine of judicial review itself. It was the Warren Court that first clearly established, in connection with school desegregation, that the Supreme Court has the final word about the meaning of the Constitution. Still, that court usually (though not always) gave great weight to the interpretations of other political actors. But the Rehnquist Court has no such inclination. Thus the court struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it was unwilling to give Congress the authority to provide greater protection to religious minorities than the court itself would give. Many have viewed the court's actions as aimed at protecting states by limiting the federal government. But the Florida case shows that state governments get no more deference than other branches of government when they run afoul of the court's views of what the law ought to be. Judicial prerogative, it seems, not states' rights, has been at the heart of the Rehnquist Court's docket. The court's confidence in its own supremacy may have propelled it to try to settle this presidential crisis. And if the court succeeds, the nation may well breathe a sign of relief, grateful that someone brought this mess to a close. But the court's credibility will surely suffer. And if that diminishes a confidence that has begun to veer toward arrogance, this may not be such a bad thing.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues in mourning the unexpected loss of our friend, Julian Dixon; and I extend my deepest sympathies and condolences to his family, his wife, Bettye, and son, Cary, and his dear friends from one end of this country to the other. I had the pleasure of serving with Julian in this body for 22 years. In the process we became good friends working on many issues of justice and peace. He was an extraordinary public servant who was the exemplification of dignity and integrity at all times. His passing is a profound loss for this Nation and this Chamber. He was a defender of the principles of democracy and a champion for civil rights, equality and justice. Julian served this institution in so many capacities. He served in his most important role as that unique and distinguished representative from the 32nd District of California, advancing the needs of the communities in Culver City, parts of West Los Angeles and the greater Crenshaw area. In addition to representing his people with passion and dedication, he served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as the ranking member and as a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. I also remember the leadership he displayed as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. My fondest recollection comes from working with him on legislation to make the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a Federal national holiday. He continued his efforts to honor Dr. King by working to establish a memorial to Dr. King in the Nation's Capital. On a cultural note, I noticed and remembered that we participated in many discussions about our favorite music, jazz. I not only found him to be extremely knowledgeable about the subject of jazz but he also knew and supported the artistic efforts of many of the musicians. Whenever I had the opportunity to visit Los Angeles, I would seek out Julian to find out where the artists in the area were performing. When time allowed, I would always make use of Julian's recommendations, and I will always remember with great fondness our mutual love for jazz and the endless discussions between us on this unique art form. Julian Dixon was a gentleman of exceptional stature and character. He was a fierce protector of democratic principles and a mighty warrior for civil rights and fairness. I will dearly miss his powerful spirit and friendship. I extend my prayers and condolences to his family and to all those saddened by his loss.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following articles, which appeared in the New York Times on December 11, 2000 and the Washington Post on December 9, 2000, into the Congressional Record. [From the New York Times, Dec. 11, 2000] To Any Lengths (By Bob Herbert) And so the Supreme Court intervened, not with wisdom and grace but with a clumsily wielded hammer, to protect the interests of George W. Bush and the Republicans by thwarting any further movement in the Florida vote toward Al Gore. Mr. Bush and his party have made it clear to the country and the world that their greatest fear--the scenario they dread above all others--is that somehow, someway, all of the votes legally cast in Florida would actually be counted. They have demonstrated their willingness to go to almost any lengths to prevent that from happening. And that resolve was given the unfortunate imprimatur of the nation's highest court on Saturday when, in a 5- to-4 decision, the court ordered the hand recounts in Florida to stop. But the Bush team's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments this morning, is just one prong of the G.O.P.'s dangerous assault on the spirit of democracy that has served this nation so well for so long. The truth is that while Mr. Bush and the Republicans will be more than happy to accept a final Supreme Court ruling in their favor, they are already prepared to take extraordinary steps to circumvent a ruling that goes against them. In short, they are not willing to accept any set of circumstances that would result in Al Gore winning the White House. Former Secretary of State James Baker was asked on ``Meet the Press'' yesterday if the Bush campaign would accept the results of a recount in Florida if, after hearing the arguments today, the Supreme Court ordered the recount to resume. Mr. Baker told the moderator, Tim Russert, ``Of course we'll begin the recount again if that's the ruling of the United States Supreme Court.'' Mr. Russert said, ``And will you abide by the result?'' Mr. Baker, clearly uncomfortable with the question, said ``Well, I'm not sure I understand what you mean, `Will we abide by the result?' The result will be there.'' Mr. Baker knows as well as anyone that the Republican- controlled Florida Legislature is poised to trash any semblance of justice and fair play by designating its own slate of 25 presidential electors committed to Mr. Bush if, under any scenario, Al Gore wins the popular vote in Florida. Mr. Baker said of the Legislature, ``They have an interest here that is a constitutional interest granted to them under Article 2 of the Constitution, and it is not up to me or anybody else to rule that out or rule it in.'' Mr. Russert said: ``But your campaign has been working in concert with them, giving them legal advice. Both sides admit it.'' ``Uh, Tim, we may have indeed,'' said Mr. Baker. ``Some of our people have been talking to them, there's no doubt about that, because it is a constitutional remedy set forth in Article 2 of the Constitution.'' In the eyes of the Republicans, the Supreme Court ruling is the final word only if it goes against Mr. Gore. The game is rigged. And the Democrats, who all along have been more willing than the Republicans to adhere to standards of fair play, are openly talking about folding their tents and conceding the White House to Mr. Bush. American democracy suffered a grievous wound this year in Florida. The conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that has ranted ad nauseam about activist courts and the infringement of states' rights turned its own philosophy on its head by rushing in on Saturday and gratuitously stopping a recount of votes legally cast by American citizens. It is not unreasonable to believe that had those votes been counted, Al Gore, who won the popular vote nationwide, would also have won Florida and a majority in the electoral college. A former colleague of mine called yesterday and said: ``All the Supreme Court of Florida wanted to do was have the vote counted. What was so wrong with that?'' The good news, of course, is that American-style democracy is resilient enough to rebound from the Florida fiasco. Eventually the full truth will emerge about the extent to which the voices of voters in Florida went unheard. And the role of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republican Party in silencing those voters will be a matter of public and historical record.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn the violations of the Voting Rights Act that have been reported in Florida on November 7. Election Day 2000 is a day that will live in infamy, in every American's mind who cares about the concepts of Democracy, Justice, and Equality. Thousands of votes, mostly African-American, students, and senior votes, were disqualified, and effectively, disenfranchised. Despite higher than ever turnouts of minorities and seniors, we had higher than ever rates of disqualified and disenfranchised voters, and that my colleagues is unAmerican. Bob Herbert of the New York Times has shed light on some of the egregious tactics employed by Florida elections officials attempting to keep Americans from voting, in the December 7 issue of the New York times. I respectfully request that it be placed in the Congressional Record, to highlight the despicable tactics employed to keep American votes from being cast and counted in the 2000 election. This article reflects much of the sentiment of African-Americans and other Americans who share these concerns about this crisis in our Democracy. Keep Them Out! (By Bob Herbert) The tactics have changed, but the goal remains depressingly the same: Keep the coloreds, the blacks, the African- Americans--whatever they're called in the particular instance--keep them out of the voting booths. Do not let them vote! If you can find a way to stop them, stop them. So here we go again, this time in Florida. It turns out that the state of Florida is using a private company with close ties to the Republican Party to help ``cleanse'' the state's voter registration rolls. Would it surprise anyone anywhere to learn that the cleansing process somehow managed to improperly prevent large numbers of African-American voters from voting in the presidential election? Gregory Palast, a reporter with the online magazine Salon, has done a number of articles on this. He noted that the company, ChoicePoint, and its subsidiary, Database Technologies Inc. (DBT), came up with a ``scrub list'' of 173,000 names. These were the names of people registered to vote in Florida who, according to ChoicePoint, could be knocked off the rolls for one reason or another. There was good reason for Florida to be concerned about the integrity of its voter registration rolls. In 1997 the mayor of Miami was removed from office because widespread fraud had occurred in the election. The following year a law was passed requiring counties in Florida to purge the rolls of duplicate registrations, the names of deceased persons and felons. So far, so good. The problems developed when the state turned to ChoicePoint, which compiles and sells vast amounts of frequently shaky information about individuals. (ChoicePoint, which acquired DBT last May, was fired by the state of Pennsylvania for breaching the confidentiality of driving records.) With this private outfit in the picture it soon became clear that top Republican officials would be trying to reap a partisan political advantage from a law designed to correct an egregious wrong. And that partisan advantage would be realized in large part by trampling on the voting rights of minorities. Over the spring and summer ChoicePoint was forced to acknowledge that 8,000 voters it had listed as felons had in fact been guilty only of misdemeanors, which would not have affected their right to vote. What is maddening is that when such an erroneous list of names gets into the hands of county election officials, as this one did, it is very difficult-- often impossible--to find out what's correct and what's not correct. That snickering you hear is from Republican operatives who know that these kinds of foul-ups, because they are based on criminal records, will disproportionately affect minority voters. ChoicePoint eventually came up with a ``corrected'' list of 173,000 names of people it targeted as ineligible because they were deceased, or were registered more than once, or had been convicted of a felony. But it was a lousy list, riddled with mistakes. And in an interview with me yesterday, Marty Fagan, a ChoicePoint vice president, said there had never been any expectation that the list would be particularly accurate. Remember now, we're talking about a list that would be used to strip Americans of the precious right to vote. Mr. Fagan said the list focused on people who ``might'' have been deceased, or might have been listed twice, or ``possible felons.'' He said it was ``important to know'' that the information needed to be ``verified'' by county election officials. That was interesting, because ChoicePoint came up with 58,000 people--people registered to vote--who would fall into the category he calls ``possible felons.'' How in the world were county election officials supposed to check out each and every one and find out if they were felons or not? They couldn't. They didn't. The horror stories about perfectly innocent black voters being turned away from the polls because they had been targeted as convicted felons started coming in early on the morning of Nov. 7, Election Day. And they're still coming in. Blacks turned out to vote in record numbers in Florida this year, but huge numbers were systematically turned away for one specious reason after another. The tactics have changed, but the goal remains the same.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, today I honor the great African American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. She is perhaps the most honored African American poet ever. Her works are strong, powerful, and visual. I was emotionally moved over and over again by her great talent. I insert into the Congressional Record this tribute to her which appeared in the Washington Post on December 5, 2000. [From the Washington Post, December 5, 2000] Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet Nurturer (By Jabari Asim) Gwendolyn Brooks made me skip class. The celebrated poet, who died Sunday night at the age of 83, didn't exactly twist my arm. Still, I felt that the choice between attending interminable lectures and bearing witness to her three-day residency at my college was no choice at all. Once or twice during my undergraduate days in mid-'80s Chicago, I'd lingered in the background at Haki Madhubuti's intimate South Side bookstore, sneaking peeks at Ms. Brooks while she read from her many volumes. An aspiring poet, I couldn't even bring myself to ask her to sign a book for me, a request freely granted to more courageous souls. When I heard she was coming to campus, however, I changed my mind. This time I'd see her up close, I resolved. For three glorious days, my other subjects were all but forgotten while I soaked up the poet's wisdom. I still remember her quick, saucy wit, the majestic turban she wore, the gleam of maternal pride that illuminated her cheekbones when she introduced her daughter, Nora. Gracious, patient and fully comfortable in that charged swirl of energetic young minds, she regally held forth on modern poetry, feminism, emerging writers she admired. In a wide-ranging give-and-take with a women's studies class, she even confessed to a fondness for soap operas. I remember the poems she read, too. ``The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shover,'' perhaps her best-known work, acquired a surprisingly caustic edge when she pronounced its short, acerbic lines. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June, We Die soon. She was nearing 70 then, and her voice was strong. The last day of her residency, she read before a campus-wide audience, then appeared as honored guest at an evening reception. It was there, amid the brie and wine and tweed, that I summoned all my moxie and introduced myself. I thrust a sheaf of papers at her, poems and stories full of the angst-driven pretentiousness I favored then. We talked a couple of minutes. She was courteous, I was breathless, and I can't recall a word that was said. Less than a week later, I found a note in my mailbox. ``He, Thanks for the opportunity to go through this heavy drama. Richly, exhausting! Have a fine, creative summer! My summer will be devoted to writing--(at last!) Gwen Brooks.'' The words themselves are a model of tact, encouraging but noncommittal. No matter, though: The fact that she's read my work and responded to it was indisputable evidence of my growing brilliance. I didn't know then that as a teenager, Brooks had sent her poems to Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson, both of whom sent encouraging replies. Nor did I know--despite the scenes that I witnessed at the bookstore--that Brooks made it her business to encourage all young writers. Perhaps the kind, prompt responses she'd received from Hughes and Johnson influenced her to be generous in turn. At the time, I Brooks's first book, ``A Street in Bronzeville'' (1945), had already won critical acclaim, so she was hardly an unknown entity when her next book, ``Annie Allen,'' claimed the Pulitzer in 1950. Both books were praised for the author's mastery of sonnets, ballads and other traditional European forms. Like Countee Cullen and Claude McKay before her, she knew how to apply such forms to the African American experience and infuse them with desperately needed new energy. Subsequent books, beginning with ``In the Mecca'' (1968), reflected a change in tone, a more overtly political stance that was often aimed at black readers in particular. For some critics, the change was reason to ignore Brooks's output; for aspiring black writers of subsequent generations, the shift showed us that it was possible to adapt to changing times without distorting one's own voice. At its best, Brooks's work is focused and fiery regardless of form, indisputably Brooksian in its well-tempered elegance. To borrow critic Joanne V. Gabbin's phrase, Brooks's work ``implies a literature that is both rageful and resolute in its beauty.'' Gabbin convened a conference at James Madison University in 1994. She conceived the conference, titled ``Furious Flower'' (from a Brooks poem, ``Second Sermon on the Warpland''), as a tribute to Brooks. Poets, critics and poetry lovers from around the world gathered at JMU that September; it was the last time I saw Brooks in person. There, as the reigning eminence of African American poetry, Brooks received numerous accolades and testimonies to her talent and generosity. Two generations of black poets had come to age since Brooks's own emergence, and she'd played a hand in mentoring many of them. (Although she was then 77, Brooks still had mentoring left to do. In 1996 she would establish the Henry Blakely Poetry Prize in memory of her late husband. The $2,000 award went to a young poet of Brooks's choosing.) Grateful to be on hand and once again basking in the glow of genius, I felt proud to be among those who had firsthand familiarity with Brooks's goodness. Our wine-and-brie encounter had not been our last. In 1993, I'd had another opportunity to benefit from her kindness. While editing a literary magazine I'd co-founded, I wrote to Brooks and asked her to contribute to a section honoring poet Audre Lorde, who had died in 1992. As she had done nearly a decade before, Brooks responded quickly. In the brief, eloquent tribute she submitted, she insisted that the essence of Lorde would never be lost as long as we had her words. I don't think she'd mind my applying those sentiments to her legacy as well. We have not lost the essence of Gwendolyn Brooks. The best of her endures.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following articles, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 7, 2000 into the Congressional Record. Secret Agent Man--Fashion Photographer Scores Big Off Pals In The Narcotics Trade Baruch Vega Made Millions As a Federal Informant, But Was Justice Served?--A Private Jet to Panama City By Jose de Cordoba MIAMI BEACH, Fla.--For years, fashion photographer Baruch Vega jetted from Miami to Milan, shooting the industry's top models. Few knew of Mr. Vega's off-the-books job, one that was far more lucrative--and dangerous. When he wasn't snapping collections for Versace or Valentino, Mr. Vega, a Colombian by birth and an engineer by training, was covertly meeting with some of the world's most-powerful drug traffickers, trying to persuade them to surrender to U.S. lawmen. By most accounts, he was a star operative. ``We regarded Vega as our principal weapon'' in the battle against Colombia's drug cartels, says one former U.S. agent. ``I think he was very successful,'' agrees retired cocaine kingpin Jorge Luis Ochoa, speaking by cellular phone from Colombia, where he recently completed a six-year prison term. ``A lot of people got into his program and cooperated with him, and he with them.'' So many, in fact, that a meeting brokered by Mr. Vega last year in a Panama hotel drew more than two dozen drug dealers or their representatives, according to Mr. Vega and the lawyer for one of the suspects. Rattled by a new Colombian policy permitting traffickers to be extradited to the U.S., they met in marathon sessions with Drug Enforcement Administration agents, negotiating plea agreements that would potentially net them reduced jail terms in exchange for providing information on drug shipments by other traffickers. But in March, Mr. Vega's secret life unraveled. As he was unpacking from a photo shoot, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation burst into his penthouse and arrested him on money-laundering and obstruction-of-justice charges. In a criminal complaint filed in Miami federal court, the government accused him of receiving million-dollar fees from drug lords, in return for promising to use his influence with U.S. agents--and even bribes--to help them with their legal problems. The name he gave the operation, according to the complaint: ``The Narcotics Traffickers Rehabilitation Program.'' Mr. Vega, a trim 53-year-old who favors black T-shirts, readily admits he accepted the traffickers' money, which he says totaled about $4 million, but which others familiar with his midwifery put at as much as $40 million. Mr. Vega says he took the payments as part of his undercover persona, and that his law-enforcement handlers knew it. He also denies paying any bribes. ``The agents I worked with used to joke: `Baruch, we trained to put people in jail, but with you, we get them out,' '' he says. However the case sorts out, Mr. Vega's story offers a rare look into the twilight world of the narcotics informant--and into the questionable relationships and accommodations. U.S. authorities sometimes enter into as they pursue the global war on drugs. Already, it is proving an acute embarrassment to the DEA, which has placed two agents on paid leave pending an internal investigation of their relationship with Mr. Vega. And it comes at a delicate time, just as the U.S. government begins to implement a $1.3 billion program to fight the narcotics trade underpinning Colombia's bloody civil war. Because of the highly secretive nature of undercover operations--and law enforcement's reluctance to disclose the details of cooperation agreements with drug suspects--it's impossible to answer the central question of whether traffickers who paid fees to Mr. Vega received special treatment from the U.S. justice system. No evidence has been presented that any agents accepted bribes. But what can be pieced together, through court documents and interviews with Mr. Vega and others involved in his career, suggests at the very least a highly unorthodox operation that took on a life of its own, fueled by piles of underworld cash. Red Faces at DEA In a brief statement, the DEA says it is ``very concerned about the allegations . . . concerning the conduct of certain DEA agents.'' It declines to comment further, citing a continuing investigation. The Justice Department also declines to comment. Mr. Vega became a law enforcement go-between almost by accident. He was working in New York City in 1976 as a structural engineer when a neighbor and fellow Colombian was arrested in a police raid. The neighbor's wife tearfully sought Mr. Vega's help. Mr. Vega, who was studying law at night, had befriended a fellow student then working at the FBI. According to Mr. Vega, his friend said the case against the neighbor appeared weak, and charges would probably be dropped soon. They were. The grateful neighbor, who was indeed involved in the cocaine trade, gave Mr. Vega $20,000 for what he believed was a successful intervention. Word of Mr. Vega's supposed clout began to spread, and he soon met many of the future capos of Colombia's drug cartels, most of whom who were then living in New York. By 1978, Mr. Vega was dividing his time between New York and Miami, which was immersed in the violence and decadence later made famous by the television show ``Miami Vice.'' ``There were the beautiful people, cocaine, models, the fast life,'' says Sgt. June Hawkins, now a supervisor in the homicide unit of the Miami-Dade police department. There were also lots of unsolved murders involving Colombians with false names. ``They were who-isits, not who-dunnits,'' says Sgt. Hawkins. After finding Mr. Vega's name and number in the phone book of one victim, police discovered he was often able to identify the who-isits. At the time, Mr. Vega was married to the daughter of a real-estate tycoon who counted among his properties the Mutiny Hotel, then a favorite watering hole for many of the city's most-notorious characters. A Yacht Named Abby Sue Mr. Vega lived the Miami lifestyle, with a mansion off Miami Beach and a 78-foot yacht named the Abby Sue. ``He was a real charmer,'' remembers Sgt. Hawkins, then a member of Centac 26, a joint federal, state and local police antidrug task force. ``A wheeler-dealer extraordinaire who could sell snow to the Eskimos.'' Mr. Vega's charm was enhanced by his willingness to fund his own activities, a welcome contrast to most informants, whom police tend to view as money-grubbing low-lifes. Former Centac commander Raul Diaz says Mr. Vega aided in one of the unit's biggest cases ever, at great personal risk, and ``didn't get any money from us for his help.'' By 1985, the Miami police introduced Mr. Vega to the FBI, where agents determined to make use of his access to the highest echelons of Colombia's drug circles. Mr. Vega--who prefers to be called a ``mediator'' rather than an informant--was perfect for the job of double agent. He had turned a lifelong interest in photography into a career as a fashion photographer and producer of fashion shows. That gave him access to the beautiful women and glamorous social circles that dazzled drug traffickers. Meanwhile, a former U.S. official says federal agents helped concoct Mr. Vega's cover: a jet-setting playboy who for a price would exert his influence with U.S. law- enforcement agencies. To aid Mr. Vega's deception, the former official says, agents would make leniency recommendations to prosecuting attorneys and judges in the cases of drug traffickers working with Mr. Vega. The result: Colombia's drug barons believed Mr. Vega could do anything. Appearance of Impropriety The official insists that defendants received no special favors, but that they truly rendered assistance in investigations and that prosecutors, using their broad discretion, argued for sentence reductions commensurate with the level of cooperation. This official and Mr. Vega add that the appearance of impropriety was part of the act--that hardened criminals were much more likely to take the first step toward cooperating if they thought the U.S. system was rigged in their favor. Nevertheless, a senior federal agent familiar with the case says such an arrangement would likely have violated Justice Department guidelines. Allowing Mr. Vega to represent himself as someone with influence over U.S. prosecutors and other officials ``is totally unacceptable,'' he says. He adds that informants shouldn't be in a position to accept cash from drug traffickers without supervision--although he allows that such oversight is hard to maintain when the case involves work in dangerous foreign countries. Among the people Mr. Vega says he helped is Luis Javier Castano Ochoa, now a federal deputy in Colombia's Congress. In 1988, Mr. Castano Ochoa pleaded guilty to U.S. money laundering and drug charges and was sentenced to 16 years. But three years later, the same Miami judge who sentenced him let him off with time served. Mr. Vega says he met with Mr. Castano Ochoa in prison, charging him $40,000 to help him work out a cooperation agreement with the government. Reached by telephone in Bogota, Mr. Castano Ochoa says he never paid Mr. Vega a cent, but knew him as a lawyer who visited prison ``to ask Colombians for money to advise us.'' Mr. Castano Ochoa says he never cooperated with the U.S. government, and says he was freed because the judge ``realized there was nothing against me.'' That the drug dealers were paying Mr. Vega for his purported services was an open secret among the U.S. agents working with him, says one former official. Indeed, some saw it as a plus, given their tight budget. ``The drug traffickers paid him to be their representative,'' say the former official. ``We didn't have to spend any government funds; we never could have afforded the level he was spending.'' In any case, Mr. Vega's results seem to have outweighted any misgiving. In 1987, when cartel hit men almost killed a former Colombian attorney general, Mr. Vega was able to learn the names of the would-be assassins, says the former official. In 1989, the FBI asked Mr. Vega to look into reports that drug dealers were planning to blow up President George Bush's plane during a trip to Colombia, says the former U.S. official. The feedback: The hit was off. Playing a Horse Rancher Mr. Vega even lived the life of a country squire, courtesy of the U.S. government, which set him up from 1988 to 1991 in a fancy ranch in Eustis, Fla., that had been confiscated from a drug dealer. Renamed ``El Lago,'' the ranch boasted Paso Fino show horses, highly prized as status symbols among Colombian drug dealers. In fact, the operation was really an undercover sting conducted by a task force composed of members of the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and the Lake County Police Department. During those years, Mr. Vega entertained a long stream of drug capos at El Lago. ``Drug dealers used to drop off their horses and say, ``Train them for me, Baruch,''' says an active U.S. law-enforcement official. The task force mostly gathered intelligence, and Mr. Vega helped induce an importance money launderer to cooperate with U.S. authorities, says a federal law-enforcement official. ``Baruch is a brave man,'' says retired Lake County Police Capt. Fred Johnson. ``I think the world of this guy.'' He was also industrious. Under Mr. Vega's management, the El Lago facility became one of the largest Paso Fino ranches in the U.S. The ranch remained government property, but Mr. Vega says he paid for numerous capital improvements, including new corrals and stables. During this time, Mr. Vega says he did receive about $70,000 as his percentage of the haul from money-laundering stings, but added that he also continued to receive fees from drug traffickers. In 1997, Mr. Vega's work came to the attention of David Tinsley, a senior supervisor at the DEA's Miami office. People who know Mr. Tinsley describe the 27-year veteran of law enforcement to be a hyperkinetic, dedicated and sometimes zealous agent. With Mr. Tinsley, an expert on drug-money laundering. Mr. Vega's work picked up considerably-- especially so after a Miami federal grand jury indicted 31 Columbian drug traffickers in October last year. A Stampede of Colombians Billed as an enormous blow to Colombia's drug cartels, the so-called Millennium indictment came at a time of great confusion in the narcotics trade. Colombia's congress had recently changed the law to allow drug traffickers to be extradited to the U.S., where they couldn't readily pay off judges. A stampede of Colombians arrived at Mr. Vega's door; some had already been indicted and others feared they could be next. All sought the sort of edge that Mr. Vega purported to offer. ``There were 200 drug dealers who wanted to surrender to American justice and make a deal,'' says Mr. Vega. For the DEA's Mr. Tinsley, the panic was a one-in-a- lifetime opportunity to strike a crushing blow against the drug trade, says Richard Sharpstein, his lawyer. ``Tinsley believed they had the highest-level drug dealers in the world willing to cooperate at a level never seen before,'' says Mr. Sharpstein. In the following months, Mr. Vega was constantly on an airplane, shuttling between Panama and Miami, brokering meetings between DEA agents and drug traffickers anxious to make their peace with the U.S., according to interviews with meeting participants and statements by lawyers for drug dealers submitted to the FBI. He was such a frequent flier that last November, he plunked down $250,000 toward the lease-purchase of a seven-passenger Hawker jet, Mr. Vega says. Panamanian flight manifests show that on many occasions he was accompanied on his jet by DEA agent Larry Castillo of the agency's Miami office. Mr. Castillo has been placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the result of an internal DEA probe, along with Mr. Tinsley. Mr. Castillo's lawyer declines to comment. The FBI complaint says that soon after the Millennium indictment, Mr. Vega orchestrated a meeting at Panama's Miramar Intercontinental Hotel between an alleged drug dealer and U.S. agents. ``Vega told the CW [confidential witness] that he had U.S. officials in the hotel room next door and arranged for the CW to meet with them. The CW then met with four DEA agents and a Miami police officer.'' During the meeting, the confidential witness--whom Mr. Vega and several other individuals familiar with the case say is Carlos Ramon, an alleged drug trafficker known as ``the Doctor''--discussed with the agents the procedures for his possible surrender, the complaint says. Mr. Ramon, under indictment in Miami for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine, wasn't alone. More than two dozen Colombian traffickers or their representatives were locked in similar marathon meetings in a suite of rooms rented by Mr. Vega on various floors of the Miramar, according to meeting participants. Four months later, Mr. Ramon surrendered to authorities in Miami, but only after a farewell dinner at the trendy China Grill, for which Mr. Vega says he picked up the $1,000 tab. After spending a month in jail, Mr. Ramon, who is cooperating with U.S. authorities, posted bail. He now lives in Miami Beach's luxury Portofino Tower, according to court papers. Federal investigators are now trying to trace the path of the money Mr. Vega generated from traffickers. Mr. Vega says more than $5 million wound up with Daniel Forman, a well- respected Miami defense lawyer, as legal fees to represent Mr. Ramon and 18 other accused traffickers. Mr. Forman appears to have played an important role in Mr. Vega's final months as an informant. The defense attorney was brought into the case at the insistence of the DEA's Mr. Tinsley, who needed someone who would move the plea negotiations along without raising a lot of objections, according to Mr. Vega. The informant says he quickly became ``50-50 partners'' with the defense attorney, with Mr. Vega herding in clients and splitting the fees with Mr. Forman. Flight manifests show that Mr. Forman flew several times from Panama to Florida in the company of Messrs. Vega and Castillo. Mr. Forman, in an e-mail, strongly denied that Mr. Vega relayed legal fees to him, adding that ``Mr. Vega is not, and has never been, my partner in any sense of the word.'' He declines to comment on his clients, except to say that the government didn't attempt to interfere with his representation of them. Mr. Tinsley's lawyer, Mr. Sharpstein, says his client brought Mr. Forman into the case because he had worked with Mr. Forman when the latter was a federal prosecutor and then as a defense attorney. ``He trusts Forman and still believes in him,'' says Mr. Sharpstein. As for the financial arrangements, Mr. Sharpstein says Mr. Tinsley had no idea Mr. Vega was receiving money from traffickers, and wouldn't have allowed it had he known. Mr. Tinsley's understanding was that Mr. Vega would receive a percentage of the value of assets seized by law enforcement, a more-traditional method of compensating informants, says Mr. Sharpstein. ``Unfortunately,'' he adds, ``it's not in writing.'' Apart from the controversy over money, Mr. Vega's wheeling and dealing caused rising tension in the law-enforcement community. Under a 10-year-old program, all cooperation agreements with major drug traffickers are supposed to be cleared through the Justice Department's secretive ``Blitz Committee'' to ensure that criminals don't pit one agency or prosecutor against another in search of the best deal. A senior committee member declines to comment on Mr. Vega. But federal agents outside Mr. Tinsley's small DEA group grew increasingly upset as Mr. Vega breezed through their turf. One was Ed Kacerosky, a driven and highly decorated U.S. Customs agent known for his work leading to the 1997 indictment of the Cali cocaine cartel. $60 Million for Visas Now a supervisor in the agency's Miami office, Mr. Kacerosky didn't take it well when Mr. Vega tried to help the daughter of late Cali drug load Jose Santacruz obtain U.S. resident visas for her family. At a meeting brokered by Mr. Vega and attended by Mr. Kacerosky and other U.S. officials, Sandra Santacruz offered to give the U.S. half of some $120 million her family held in accounts around the world in exchange for the visas, say U.S. officials. The U.S. turned down the offer. Last year, Mr. Kacerosky became enraged upon learning that Mr. Vega had approached Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, a former leader of the Cali cartel, in a Colombian prison. People familiar with the matter say Mr. Vega offered to help Mr. Rodriguez Orejuela's son William--under indictment in Miami on U.S. drug charges--in return for information on possible high-level Colombian police corruption. Mr. Kacerosky, these people say, blames William Rodriguez for the brutal 1995 torture and killing of the wife of a key informant. After the prison meeting, these people say, Mr. Kacerosky wrote an eight-page memo to his superiors sparking the investigation of Mr. Vega. Mr. Vega's activities also played into a growing feud between the DEA's Bogota detachment and Mr. Tinsley's Miami- based crew. The Colombia-based agents largely responsible for last year's Millennium indictment were unhappy that the alleged criminals they had long been stalking were working out deals with Miami-based agents appearing to poach on their turf with Mr. Vega's help. Hearing on Oct. 21, 1999, that Bogota-based DEA agents were heading for Panama to crash the Miramar dealer summit, Mr. Vega says he and Mr. Tinsley cleared the traffickers out of the hotel for fear of their arrest. ``There's a common distrust between DEA Bogota and DEA Miami,'' says Mr. Sharpstein, Mr. Tinsley's lawyer. ``The Bogota agents were jealous of Miami agents racking up these cases.'' Today, Mr. Vega is officially off limits to U.S. law enforcement. When the FBI charged him in March, authorities froze a Miami bank account in his name containing $1.5 million. Though most condemn Mr. Vega's alleged illegal enrichment some agents believe his fall is undeserved after such a long career in a world whose common coin is often a violent death. As fear and controversy swirl around him, Mr. Vega sits in his Miami Beach penthouse, wearing an ankle monitoring device and fielding phone calls from models in Greece and designers in Paris. ``I will be in Miami for the rest of the season. Same place, same apartment,'' he tells a model who calls to commiserate, ``I have a bunch of pictures for you. They used the one with the bathing suit. It looks very nice.''

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, the following is an article which appeared in the November 2, 2000 edition of The New York Review of Books, which considers the differences among African-Americans and historians as to how slavery should be most accurately remembered. Its author, George M. Fredrickson has observed that there is indecision among African-Americans as to how slavery should be remembered, which is brought about because some believe that the best course of action is not to act at all, in other words to forget it. They wish to simply neglect any detailed recollection of slavery because the pain of its memory is too difficult to bear. But others are convinced that everything about this peculiar institution should be brought to light. To them it seems the better course of action to emulate the strategy of the one ethnic group in the twentieth century, that was severely persecuted, but who remained determined not only to discuss their persecution, but to document and publicly display it by way of museums and oral histories and confirm for all time the incredible atrocities to which they were subjected. Over the last six years, there has been an amazing outpouring of literature and research concerning the enslavement of African people in the United States and it appears that there is still more to come. In the article that follows, it is made clear that the perspective of the historian often affected his work and made the relationship between the slaves and the slavemaster a matter of his, the historian's, subjective interpretation. It also showed how many of the attitudes that buttressed the institution of slavery lived beyond the reconstruction era and persisted not only into the post reconstruction era but into modern times. Because of the growing number of legislators who are becoming attracted to this subject and the unresolved questions that swirl around it, this essay and other materials that it references continue to illuminate this terrible part of American history. Of growing concern is the challenge that this new information may help us in a constructive way to move forward as a nation that honors diversity rather than leading to finger pointing and accusations that will divide us further. There is a growing hope that the spotlight of truth can lead to constructive solutions and a new appreciation of the significance of a diversity which is uniquely American. The Skeleton in the Closet (By George M. Fredrickson) 1. One hundred and thirty-five years after its abolition, slavery is still the skeleton in the American closet. Among the African-American descendants of its victims there is a difference of opinion about whether the memory of it should be suppressed as unpleasant and dispiriting or commemorated in the ways that Jews remember the Holocaust. There is no national museum of slavery and any attempt to establish one would be controversial. In 1995 black employees of the Library of Congress successfully objected to an exhibition of photographs and texts describing the slave experience, because they found it demoralizing. But other African- Americans have called for a public acknowledgment of slavery as a national crime against blacks, comparable to the Holocaust as a crime against Jews, and some have asked that reparations be paid to them on the grounds that they still suffer from its legacy. Most whites, especially those whose ancestors arrived in the United States after the emancipation of the slaves and settled outside the South, do not see why they should accept any responsibility for what history has done to African-Americans. Recently, however, the National Park Service has begun a systematic review of exhibits at Civil War battlefields to make visitors aware of how central slavery and race were to the conflict. Professional historians have not shared the public's ambivalence about remembering slavery. Since the publication of Kenneth Stampp's The Peculiar Institution in 1956 and Stanley Elkins's Slavery in 1959, the liveliest and most creative work in American historical studies has been devoted to slavery and the closely related field of black-white relations before the twentieth century. In the 1970s, there was a veritable explosion of large and important books about slavery in the Old South. But no consensus emerged about the essential character of anti-bellum slavery. What was common to all this work was a reaction against Stanley Elkins's view that slavery devastated its victims psychologically, to such an extent that it left them powerless to resist their masters' authority or even to think and behave independently. If slaves were now endowed with ``agency'' and a measure of dignity, the historians of the Seventies differed on the sources and extent of the cultural ``breathing space'' that slaves were now accorded. For Herbert Gutman, it was the presence among slaves of closely knit nuclear and extended families; for John Blassingame, it was the distinctive communal culture that emanated from the slave quarters; for Eugene Genovese, it was the ability to maneuver within an ethos of plantation paternalism that imposed obligations on both masters and slaves. Clearly there was a difference of opinion between Blassingame and Gutman, on one hand, and Genovese on the other, about how much autonomy the slaves possessed. Genovese conceded a ``cultural hegemony'' to the slaveholders that the others refused to acknowledge. But even Genovese celebrated ``the world that the slaves made'' within the interstices of the paternalistic world that the slaveholders had made. At the very least, slaves had their own conceptions of the duties owed to them by their masters, which were often in conflict with what the masters were in fact willing to concede. Although all the interpretations found that conflict was integral to the master-slave relationship, the emphasis on the cultural creativity and survival skills of the slaves tended to draw attention away from the most brutal and violent aspects of the regime--such as the frequent and often sadistic use of the lash and the forced dissolution by sale of many thousands of the two-parent families discovered by Gutman. There was also a tendency to deemphasize physical, as opposed to cultural, resistance by slaves. Relatively little was said about rebellion or the planning of rebellion, running away, or sabotaging the operation of the plantation. From the literature of the 1970s and 1980s, one might be tempted to draw the conclusion that slaves accommodated themselves fairly well to their circumstances and, if not actually contented, found ways to avoid being miserable. Out of fashion was the view of Kenneth Stampp and other neo- abolitionist historians of the post-World War II period that the heart of the story was white brutality and black discontent, with the latter expressing itself in as much physical resistance as was possible given the realities of white power. Interpretations of slavery since the 1970s have tended to follow Genovese's paternalism model when characterizing the masters or analyzing the master-slave relationship and the Blassingame-Gutman emphasis on communal cultural autonomy when probing the consciousness of the slaves. Tension between the cultural-hegemony and cultural- autonomy models has been the basis of most disagreements. Beginning around 1990, however, a little-noticed countertrend to both culturalist approaches began to emerge. The work of Michael Tadman on the slave trade, Norrece T. Jones on slave control, and Wilma King on slave children brought back to the center of attention the most brutal and horrifying aspects of life under the slaveholders' regime. Tadman presented extensive documentation to show that the buying and selling of slaves was so central to the system that it reduces any concept of slaveholder paternalism to the realm of propaganda and self-delusion. ``Slaveholder priorities and attitudes suggest, instead, a system based more crudely on arbitrary power, distrust, and fear,'' he wrote. What kind of paternalist, one might ask, would routinely sell those for whom he had assumed patriarchal responsibility? Building on Gutman's discovery of strong family ties, Jones maintained that the threat of family breakup was the principal means that slaveholders used to keep slaves sufficiently obedient and under control to carry out the work of the plantation. There was no paternalistic bargain, according to Jones, only the callous exercise of the powers of ownership, applied often enough to make the threat to it credible and intimidating. Like Jones, Wilma King likens the master-slave relationship to a state of war, in which both parties to the conflict use all the resources they possess and any means, fair or foul, to defeat the enemy. She compared slave children to the victims of war, denied a true childhood by heavy labor requirements, abusive treatment, and the strong possibility that they would be permanently separated from one or both parents at a relatively early age. She presented evidence to show that slave children were small for their ages, suffered from ill health, and had high death rates. The neo-abolitionist view of slavery as a chamber of horrors seemed to be reemerging, and the horror was all the greater because of the acknowledgment forced by the scholarship of the Seventies that slaves had strong family ties. What was now being emphasized was the lack of respect that many, possibly most, slaveholders had for those ties. A recent book that eschews theorizing about the essential nature of slavery but can be read as providing support for the revisionists who would bring the darker side of slavery into sharper relief is Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger. This relentlessly empirical study avoids taking issue with other historians except to the extent that it puts quotation marks around ``paternalist.'' It has little or nothing to say about slave culture and community. Its principal sources are not the many published narratives of escaped slaves, such as the ones now made available by the Library of America, but rather newspaper accounts, legal records, and the advertisements that describe runaways and offer a reward for their return. The latter sources are especially useful because they contain candid descriptions of lacerated backs, branded faces, and other physical evidence of cruel treatment. Few runaways actually made it to freedom in the North. Most remained in relatively close proximity to their masters' plantations and were eventually recaptured. It was generally young men who absconded, but they did so in huge numbers. Few plantations of any size failed to experience significant absenteeism. Franklin and Schweninger are unable to determine ``the exact number of runaways,'' but conclude very conservatively that there had to have been more than 50,000 a year. Slaves run off for a variety of motives--to avoid being sold or because they wanted to be sold away from a harsh master, to avoid family dissolution or to find kin from whom they had already been separated, to avoid severe whipping or as a response to it. The picture that emerges from the many vivid accounts of individual acts of desertion is of an inhumane system that bears no resemblance to the mythical South of benevolent masters and contented slaves. It is even hard to reconcile with the more sophisticated view that most slaveholders conformed to a paternalistic ethic that earned a conditional acquiescence from many of their slaves. The masters found in this book are cruel and insensitive and the slaves openly rebellious. Although it rarely brought freedom, the mode of resistance described in Runaway Slaves could have positive results for the deserters. In some cases, they successfully made their return contingent on better conditions, or at least avoidance of punishment. In other words, running away could be a kind of labor action, the closest approximation to a strike that was possible under the circumstances. Very well written, filled with engrossing narrative, and exploiting valuable sources that the historians of slave culture and consciousness have tended to neglect, Runaway Slaves is a major work of history. 2. But of course most slaves did not run away and some plantations did not have serious problems of desertion. Franklin and Schweninger might therefore be exposing only one side of a complex reality. The deep discontent of the deserters is obvious, but was their attitude typical or exceptional? To answer this question, it would be helpful to have direct testimony from slaves who stayed as well as those who fled. There are two principal sources of slave testimony--the published narratives from the nineteenth century, some of which have been collected by William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates for the Library of America, and the interviews with elderly ex-slaves conducted in the 1930s by WPA writers. Selections from the interview are now available in a book-audio set, published in conjunction with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. Reading these books and listening to the tapes conveys, if nothing else, a sense of how diversely slaves could be treated and how variously they could respond to their circumstances. The narratives written by fugitives stress, as might be expected, the abuse and oppression from which their authors have fled. But the WPA interview include some that convey nostalgia for kindly or honorable masters and suggest that paternalism could, in some instances, be an ethical code as well as a rationalization for servitude. One could conclude therefore that some masters were genuine paternalists who made their slaves grateful that their owners were among the decent ones (unlike, for example, the owner of a neighboring plantation who had a reputation for cruelty), while others were ruthless exploiters who treated their human property simply as tools of their own greed and ambition. Both bodies of sources have built-in biases that detract from their authority, as Franklin and Schweninger suggest in explaining why they made little use of them: ``Suffice it to say that many of the persons who inhabit the pages of recent studies are either far removed in time and space from the South they describe, or, due to conventions, or the purpose of a diary, are less than candid in their observations.'' An earlier generation of historians considered the kind of narratives collected by Andrews and Gates unreliable because they had allegedly been ghostwritten and embellished by white abolitionists for purposes of antislavery propaganda. Recent research, however, had established the authenticity of most of them. Original claims for their authorship and the existence of many of the people and events they describe have been verified. But how representative of the slave population in general were the life experiences and attitudes of these literary fugitives? They had to be literate to write their stories, and 95 percent of the slaves were unable to read and write. Four of the six accounts of escapes from the South to the North presented in Slave Narratives--those of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, and William and Ellen Craft--feature fugitives who had white fathers. Two of them--Henry Bibb and Ellen Craft--were so light-skinned that they were able to pass for white. Mulattos may have been a substantial minority of the slave population of the Old South, but literate, lightskinned mulattos were rare. It is nevertheless telling evidence of the callousness of Southern slaveholders that most of the children they sired with slave women were unacknowledged and kept in servitude, rather than being emancipated by their fathers, as was more likely to be the case in other slave societies. To attain freedom, the fugitives of mixed race had to use their degree of whitness or access to education (which allowed them to forge documents) as devices for deceiving their pursuers. Upon arrival in the North, their value to the abolitionists came partly from the pathos that could be generated among color-conscious Northerners by the thought that someone who looked white or almost white could be a slave, especially if she were a beautiful young woman at the mercy of a lustful master. But the sexual exploitation of slave women of any pigmentation was a harsh reality, as the narrative of Harriet Jacobs, who sent to extrarodinary lengths to avoid the embraces of her owner, clearly illustrates. The testimony collected by WPA interviewers in the 1930s suffers from very different and perhaps more severe limitations. Most of it, including much of what is included in Remembering Slavery, the recent selection edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, comes from those born in slavery but emancipated as children. Very few of them experienced slavery as adults and those who did were into their nineties by the time they were interviewed. Seventy- or eighty-year-old memories are notoriously fallible and can be distorted as a result of what may have happened more recently. Some of those who had lived through the era of lynching and Jim Crow segregation might view their experience as children who had not yet experienced the worst of slavery with a certain amount of nostalgia. In most cases, moreover, the interviewers were Southern whites, and blacks at the height of the segregation era in the South would have been reluctant to express their true feelings about how their inquisitors' forebears had treated them. One would therefore expect the oral testimony to make servitude seem more benign than it actually was. But despite these inherent biases, there is in fact much evidence in Remembering Slavery to support the view that slavery was legalized brutality. Whipping, it is clear, was virtually omnipresent. Helplessly watching a parent being severely flogged was etched in the memory of many of the interviewees, and a surprisingly large number had been whipped themselves by masters or overseers, despite their tender ages. Sam Kilgore was exceptional in having a master who never whipped his slaves, but ``Marster had a method of keepin' de cullud fo'ks in line. If one of dem do somethin' not right to dem he say: `Don't go to wo'k tomorrow Ise 'spec de nigger driver am a-comin' pass an' Ise gwine to sell youse.''' Whether discipline was obtained by constant use of the lash, by the threat of sale for any misbehavior, or both, the system revealed here is one that relied on fear and coercion rather than on any sense of a patriarch's responsibility to his dependents. There is also evidence in Remembering Slavery of what today would be considered the most flagrant kind of child abuse. Her mistress beat Henrietta King, an eight- or nine-year-old accused of stealing a piece of candy, while her head was secured under the leg of a rocking chair. ``I guess dey must of whupped me near an hour wid dat rocker leg a- pressin' down on my haid,'' she recalled. As a result of the pressure, her face and mouth were permanently and severely disfigured. In the light of such evidence, it is not readily apparent why Ira Berlin's introduction affirms that a paternalistic ethic prevailed among slaveholders. Was it really true in most cases that ``the incorporation of slaves into what planters called their `family, black and white,' enhanced the slaveholders' sense of responsibility for their slaves and encouraged the owners to improve the material conditions of plantation life''? Material conditions did improve during the nineteenth century, but an alternative explanation is available: slaves were valuable property that was appreciating in value. In the light of their financial interest in healthy, marketable slaves, the real questions might be why conditions on the plantations were often so harsh. A slave scarred by whipping depreciated in value, but whippings persisted; slave children were an appreciating asset; but, if Wilma King is correct, they were generally unhealthy and undernourished. (An image from more than one account in Remembering Slavery is that of slave children being fed at a trough like pigs.) Paternalism in one sense of the word may be a byproduct of vast difference in power. Those who present no conceivable threat to one's security, status, or wealth may be treated with condescending and playful affection. It is clear from some of the recollections in Remembering Slavery that attractive slave children could became human pets of their masters and mistresses. Mature slaves who ``played Sambo'' could also arouse feelings of indulgence and receive special treatment. But the possession of great power over other human beings can also provoke irrational cruelty. The other side of the coin of paternalism in this psychological sense is sadism. Berlin is on stronger ground when be notes that ``the paternalist ideology provided slaveholders with a powerful justification for their systematic appropriation of the slaves' labor.'' But the racism that made it possible to consider blacks as subhuman was another possible justification. The two could be synthesized in the notion that blacks were perpetual children and had to be treated as such no matter what their actual ages. But if this was the dominant view it did not prevent a substantial amount of child abuse. 3. Slave children are the subjects of Marie Jenkins Schwartz's Born in Bondage. It covers much of the same ground as Wilma King's Stolen Childhood, but in its effort to understand the master-slave relationship it leans toward the paternalism model more than toward the ``state-of-war'' analogy invoked by King and Norrece Jones. Consequently it presents a somewhat less horrific impression of what it meant to grow up on a slave plantation. It acknowledges the possibility of sale for adolescent slaves, noting that approximately 10 percent of them were sold from the upper to lower South between 1820 and 1860. But in claiming that ``the risk of separation from families through sale was relatively low for very young children,'' it disregards the frequent sale of men without their wives and young children or of women with infants without their husbands that is acknowledged elsewhere in the book. Schwartz's conclusion that ``slaves throughout the South worried about being sold'' seens like an understatement in the light of what Norrece Jones has revealed about how masters manipulated intense fears of family separation to maintain discipline. The conception of paternalism found in Born in Bondage is set forth in terms very close to those employed by Eugene Genovese. ``The paternalistic bargain that slaveholders and slaves struck,'' Schwartz writes, ``required each to give something to the other. Slaves displayed loyalty to their owners, at least outwardly, and slaveholders rewarded this with better treatment,'' She concedes that ``the paternalistic attitude of owners was not the same thing as real benevolence'' and that the slaves, aware of its self- serving nature, obeyed masters and mistresses ``without internalizing the owner's understanding of class and race.'' But playing the prescribed deferential roles made life easier and must have become second nature for some. Children were quick to see the benefit of pleasing their owners, and the sheer presence of large numbers of children on most plantations was one factor encouraging a paternalistic ethos. Putting aside the unresolved question of whether sincere and durable ``paternalistic bargains'' were normal or exceptional in slave governance, Schwartz makes the original and useful point that there was an inherent conflict between such paternalism (to whatever extent it may have existed) and the efforts of slaves to maintain a family life of their own. To the degree that masters took direct responsibility for slave children they undermined the authority of the parents and the unity of the slave family. But how likely in fact were slave owners to play such a role in the raising of slave children? Little evidence of this kind of attentiveness appears in the written and oral narratives. Accounts of slave children running about naked or in rags, being fed at troughs, or put to work at a very early age run counter to the impression of slaveholders acting in loco parentis. Although it offers some significant new insights, Born in Bondage should not displace Wilma King's Stolen Childhood and be taken as the definitive last word on growing up under slavery. Rather the two books should be read together as revealing different aspects of a complex reality. Perhaps the time has come to get beyond the debate between the two schools of thought about the nature of antebellum slavery--the seemingly unresolvable disagreement over whether it can best be understood as resting on a ``paternalistic bargain'' between masters and slaves or simply on the application of force and fear in the service of economic gain. The reality reflected in the slave narratives and other primary sources is of great variation in plantation regimes. What proportion might be classified as paternalist and what proportion was based simply on ``arbitrary power, distrust, and fear'' cannot be quantified; it is a question that can be answered only on the basis of general impressions that will differ, depending on which sources are deemed representative and which anomalous. The side that a historian supports might be determined more by ideology or theoretical approach than by a careful weighing of the evidence. It also seems possible that many slaveholders could fancy themselves as paternalists and act in ways that were totally at odds with their self-image. Walter Johnson's book on the slave market, Soul by Soul, in effect transcends the dichotomy by showing that a culture of paternalism and a commitment to commercialism were not incompatible. He also undermines another persistent and contentious either/or of Southern historiography, one that also involves the status of paternalism as ideology and social ethos. This is the question of whether ``race'' (inequality based on pigmentation) or ``class'' (stratification based on pre- modern conceptions of honor and gentility) was central to the culture and social order of the Old South. Johnson takes us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest and busiest in the South, and discovers that the buyers and sellers of slaves could easily mix the language and values associated with paternalism and commercialism. Unlike later historians, they saw no conflict between their needs for status and sound business practice. ``I consider Negroes too high at this time,'' one slave owner told another, ``but there are some very much allied to mine both by blood and inter-marriage that I may be induced from feeling to buy, and I have one vacant improved plantation, and could work more hands with advantage.'' Clearly the purchasers of slaves liked to think that they were doing a favor to those they acquired. They could buy themselves ``a paternalist fantasy in the slave market'' when they made a purchase that seemed to accord with the wishes of the person being bought, despite the fact that it could also be justified on strictly economic grounds. But, Johnson comments, ``the proslavery construction of slave-market ``paternalism'' was highly unstable: it threatened to collapse at any moment beneath the weight of its own absurdity. One could go to the market and buy slaves to rescue them from the market, but it was patently obvious . . . that the market in people was what had in the first place caused the problems that slave-buying paternalists claimed to resolve.'' Paternalism, Johnson concludes, was ``a way of imagining, describing, and justifying slavery rather than a direct reflection of underlying social relations.'' It was therefore ``portable'' and could ``turn up in the most unlikely places--in slaveholders' letters describing their own benign intentions as they went to the slave market.'' Paternalism was an illusion but one that was essential to the self- respect of many slaveholders, just as hardheaded commercial behavior was essential to their economic prosperity and social pretensions. As portrayed by Johnson, the slaves were not taken in by paternalistic rhetoric. But they could influence their own destiny in the slave market by the way they presented themselves: ``The history of the antebellum South is the history of two million slave sales. But alongside the chronicle of oppressions must be set down a history of negotiations and subversions.'' Slaves brought to market could subvert their sale to undesirable purchasers by feigning illness or acting unruly and uncooperative, or, putting on a different mask, encourage their purchase by masters who had a reputation for good treatment or who already possessed some of their kinfolk. This form of black ``agency'' might be considered less decisive or heroic than the running away described by Franklin and Schweninger, but ``these differences between possible sales had the salience of survival itself.'' On the question of whether slavery and the Old South should be characterized by race or by class domination, Johnson suggests that both were present and that it is impossible to distinguish between them in their day-to-day manifestations. He advances the original and potentially controversial argument that to be truly ``white'' in the Old South one had to own slaves. Buying a first slave therefore brought racial status as well as a new class position. I would qualify the argument by limiting its application to ``black belt'' or plantation areas where a substantial majority of whites actually owned slaves. In the Southern backcountry and uplands, where nonslaveholding yeomen farmers predominated, the social ``whiteness'' of anyone who was not black or Indian was beyond question, and it was even possible to regard slaveholding itself as compromising whiteness by creating too much intimacy between the races. Johnson also contends that differences in pigmentation were a major element in the expectations that purchasers had about the use they could make of the slaves they bought. Dark- skinned slaves were considered healthier and better suited to field labor. Male slaves who were light-skinned but not too light were thought to be good candidates for training in skilled trades. Very light-skinned males were difficult to sell, however, because of the fear that they could escape by passing for white (as Henry Bibb's narrative well exemplifies). Very light-complexioned females, on the other hand, brought high prices as ``fancy women'' or concubines. This was a color and class hierarchy more often associated with Latin America and the Caribbean than with America's characteristic two-category, white-over-black pattern of race relations. But Johnson argues that the physical aspect of the classification of slaves into different occupational groups was highly subjective and that observers described the pigmentation of slaves differently depending on what use they intended to make of them. To some extent this was undoubtedly true. But it defies common sense to claim without qualification that ``the racialized meaning of [a slave's body], the color assigned to it and the weight given to its various physical features in describing it, depended up the examiner rather than the examined.'' It is a useful postmodern insight that race and color are, to a considerable extent, ``social constructions.'' But surely the differences between very light and very dark skin was a physical fact that had an independent effect on the evaluations being made. Except for this one instance, however, Johnson's discussion of the social and cultural construction of reality by whites and blacks in the slave market does not do violence to the inescapable external realities that limited the options and influenced the behavior of the buyers, the sellers, and the sold. By beginning the process of undermining and transcending the sharp dichotomies between paternalism and commercialism, and between race and class--on which historians of the Old South have been fixated for so long-- Johnson has advanced the study of African-American slavery to a higher level.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation before us today. This bill extends the period in which family farmers may recognize their debts for ten additional months. H.R. 5540 will meet the needs of financially distressed family farmers by giving them a chance to keep their farms. In addition, this legislation will provide much needed bankruptcy judgeships several states including Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. While I do support this legislation, I would be remiss if I did not raise the issue that this legislation continuously has been extended because we have not yet brought forth acceptable bankruptcy reform legislation. Although we all agree that H.R. 5540 is necessary to aid our nation's farmers who are facing financial distress, we are constantly faced with the task of renewing this legislation instead of making it permanent. And it is well noted that the bankruptcy court system is overwrought with a backlog of cases and too few judges to handle the caseload. Despite the need to pass a bill that addresses important issues such as the needs of our farmers and our children as well as our nation's citizens and our bankruptcy courts, the leadership established a stealth process allowing wealthy creditors to severely undermine the goal of protecting the ability of small businesses to get a fresh start. The process questioned the integrity of the legislative process of the House. While conferees were appointed, no conference took place. Instead, a bankruptcy bill conference report was negotiated by a small group of staff working for a handful of Members in a closed door process, although the rules dictate that conference meetings must held in public. The most contentious issues were considered by the Republican leadership, excluding Democrats. This legislation was attached to an unrelated conference report and passed with minimal public scrutiny. Thankfully, the President has threatened a veto of this unjust legislation. With H.R. 5540, we can ensure that for at least the next ten months, the family farmers are given the ability to engage in reorganization efforts. We also will make strides towards curing our nation's bankruptcy court system of serious backlog. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor my dear friend and colleague, William Clay. Bill and I have known each other for over thirty years, I have campaigned on his behalf, we have worked on legislation together and we have developed a deep abiding friendship. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to stand here today and pay tribute to both a true gentleman and a fine public servant. While in Congress, Bill Clay worked to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act, ERISA, to increase the minimum wage, strengthen worker protections of union members, and to ensure fair treatment and pensions for women. Congressman Clay is the third most senior member of the House of Representatives, the dean of the Missouri Congressional delegation and ranking member of the Committee on Education and Workforce and former Chairman of the Postal Operation and Civil Service Committee. He has also served as the Historian for the Congressional Black Caucus. In his role as the Ranking Member on the Committee on Education and Workforce, in addition to the aforementioned accomplishments, he enacted numerous education provisions; including those strengthening Head Start, elementary and secondary education programs, and college financial aid programs. Just last year, he helped engineer a student loan forgiveness provision for new teachers going into inner city schools and a provision which reduced the interest students pay on educational loans. Additionally, he has always been a strong voice and champion for working families. Mr. Speaker, this moment is bittersweet. It is with great pride and with sadness that I bid farewell to my dear colleague. The price is due to the great work and fellowship that I have shared with Bill and the sadness is because I will dearly miss our one on one interactions, his counsel and his presence. Bill has always stood for justice, fairness, and equality for all citizens. His sense of commitment and morality has always been that every person is entitled to live in a decent home, in a safe neighborhood, receive a quality education, be paid commensurate with one's experience, and receive the best medicare regardless of social status. He has served these principles in an exceptional way--he will be sorely missed by the nation and by me.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to providing the most minimal help to people of color and immigrants, the Republicans have shown themselves to be colder than ice. Twice the House and Senate have passed hate crime prevention legislation to ensure that crimes committed based on race and bigotry are fully investigated and prosecuted. But when it comes to basic fairness for people of color or different sexual orientation, Republicans are not compassionate conservatives and they are not inclusive. Similarly, thousands of immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and Liberia fled their war ravaged countries in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1997, the Republicans decided to give amnesty to Cubans and Nicaraguan refugees who had the right political influence at the time. Despite any objective basis for distinguishing their situation, the Republicans refused to help refugees from Central America and Haiti. It is time we provide legal parity for these refugees who are hard working, tax paying, important members of our communities. The Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act is a straight forward bill to keep families together, stabilize those who have been here for over a decade and make our immigration polices simple and fair. Yet, it is not in this bill. The GOP wants to give people of color and immigrants crumbs from the table. This bill exposes the Republicans' true colors. I have news for you--the President will not let the congress leave without a Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act. He will veto this bill, and Mr. President, the Democrats have the votes to sustain it. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning in solidarity with the world, and call on all other Members of the House to stand as well, and join over 100 nations, 25 United States governors, hundreds of mayors and over 1,000 organizations in nearly 140 countries in supporting One Day in Peace. The bill, House Concurrent Resolution 363, which I cosponsored with Representative Dennis Kucinich and many other Representatives, calls for January 1, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly, to be a 24-hour period designated as One Day in Peace when the people of this Nation and the world act for the most part with unprecedented cooperation and good will. The Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House International Relations Committee have indicated that they will not oppose this resolution being brought to the floor now, and I urge all my fellow Congressmen to support this effort. Let us fulfill the dream by marking 01/01/01 as the first One Day in Peace worldwide. The bill urges people around the world to gather with family, friends, neighbors, and members of their community to pledge nonviolence in the new year and to share in a celebratory New Year meal. It also encourages Americans who are able to match their new year meal with a timely gift to the hungry at home or abroad. This Resolution is important because it acknowledges, the need to work for those goals that appeal to the greatest positive attributes of our humanity. My friends no better time exists to lift up a new standard of peace and goodwill in this world. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, if at the beginning of every year, all of America, and indeed all of the world proclaim aloud and at once, in unison and strength, that these are our goals: brotherhood, charity, understanding, and peace. Such a declaration has never before been made, but it can. I urge support of H. Con. Res. 363 and support its overwhelming passage.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, as we passed the threshold of two million incarcerated, It has become apparent that our nation's war on drugs has taken its toll on communities across the nation. With the support of the federal government, many states are implementing innovative programs to address the problems of incarceration and drug addiction. H.R. 4493 does not advance the best efforts to stem this tide. The best programs currently under consideration return discretion to the judges for an assessment of the best methods for rehabilitation. Programs, like those in H.R. 4493, that vest prosecutors with the discretion to grant alternative sentence are not new and suffer from a clear flaw that has limited their effectiveness. As a general matter, prosecutors are concerned with conviction rates, not rehabilitation. Consequently, these kinds of programs have been used as bargaining chips to obtain evidence and convictions, rather than tools for reducing recidivism. Moreover, these programs contain no long tern ``after care'' services which have proven critical to addressing the continuing problems faced by addicts after incarceration. This session, during a markup of methamphetamine legislation, an amendments that provide a good starting point for reforming our national drug policy was approved by the full Judiciary Committee. This legislation established federal drug courts that would allow the federal government to vigorously pursue sentencing and treatment alternatives to break the cycle and control the costs of drug-offense incarceration. This would allow us to join alternative sentencing and treatment programs that have been adopted in states such as Arizona, California, and New York that have been credited with significant declines in their prison population. The stakes could hardly be higher in our efforts for policy reform. It is a sad fact of life that more people were imprisoned during the 1990s than any other period on record, with nearly one-in-four prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses, many carrying mandatory minimum sentences. In raw numbers, today, there are almost as many inmates imprisoned for drug offense as the entire U.S. prison population in 1980. It will cost counties, states and the federal government over $9 billion to incarcerate our 458,131 drug offenders this year. We should continue to look for and support successful strategies like those offered in the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes, because my dear friend the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) whom I tried to get on the conference as a conferee has made a case that on the surface sounds pretty good. But those who are concerned about the payment of alimony and child support have expressed strong opposition to this bill. Now, why? The proposed legislation does not live up to its billing. It fails to protect women and children adequately. And I think we ought to have a thorough discussion on that part of the report. The child support provisions of the bill fail to ensure that the increased rights the bill would give to commercial creditors do not come at the expense of families owed support. And so what we are saying is that this is a bill that does not improve the status of women and children in bankruptcy proceedings. Absolutely not. That is also why the National Organization for Women is strongly opposed to the measure. The National Partnership for Women and Families is unalterably against this bill. The National Women's Law Center is opposed to the bill. The National Conference of Bankruptcy Institute is opposed to the bill. And one of the main reasons they are opposed to the bill is that contrary to the assertion that it allows a fresh start and a better fresh start than the existing legislation is that it does not. It would raise up the credit card creditor to the same status as those who are seeking alimony and child support payments, and that is precisely why the women's organizations are seriously opposed to this measure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I think the three myths that have been the basis of this bill's long life have now been exposed. There is no fresh start. The accountability is very severe. This is a very definitely an anti- consumer bill. People of all incomes are subject to new coercive creditor motions, including being able to challenge the discharge of even small cash advances. In this bill, it defines current monthly income as the previous 6 months' income, even if they have lost their job. I say, thanks a lot. I just sort of thank the generous, thoughtful, sympathetic people that wrote that into the bill. I will repeat it for the subcommittee chairman's benefit. It defines current monthly income as the previous 6 months' income, even if they lost that job and will not have the income in the future, thereby skewing the whole means test. If the expenses exceed what the IRS says they should, they have to go to court and litigate it. Thanks a lot. That was a very thoughtful and sympathetic and moving provision, because they are telling an honest bankrupt to go in and litigate in another court any questions about expenses that exceed the IRS limit. It is just the idea, it is just an indication of the great concern and touching sympathy that the other side has for the people of limited means that go into bankruptcy court. ``Disclosure of how deep you are getting into debt, and how long it would take you to pay the balance at the minimum payment.'' There is just an 800 number. And then, 80 percent of all the banks would be exempted from even that requirement. Mr. Speaker, this is a mean-spirited bill. This is a measure that does not meet the tests of anybody. Finally, I would like to just reiterate the comment made by my good friend, the member of the Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), about moving child support from the seventh to the first priority. That is meaningless. It does it, but the order of priorities apply only in Chapter 7 among unsecured creditors during the bankruptcy proceeding. Ninety-six percent of all the consumer debtors do not have any assets to distribute to prior unsecured creditors, so that has no meaning. It is a fig leaf. It is phony. It does not improve child support, for those who need the child support at all, because it moves the credit card debtors to the same priority as those who need child support. Sorry to have to tell everyone about this at the end of this discussion, but I am afraid that those are the sad and sorry consequences of a bill that has the earmarks of the creditor lobby, that awesome creditor lobby that has had such an undue influence on the measure before us. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.