Hasta La Gadget!

It is always difficult to avoid conflict when two adversaries are fully armed and ready to enter the battlefield. Some say that is why The Great War was inevitable. But the Cold War never produced the predicted Armageddon. It is possible to resolve disputes short of mutual destruction.

Although disputes in the business of sports do not have the import of great battles and total warfare, the lessons of conflict resolution can be learned and used to reduce the extent of damage to both sides. The two parties to Deflate-gate have “lawyered-up” and exchanged biting memos that do not portend well for the relationship between the combatants. NFL Commissioner Goodell has indicated that he personally will hear Tom Brady’s appeal from his four-game suspension. Brady has hired Jeff Kessler, perhaps the best employee-side litigator in the game, to represent his interests in the proceedings. While the procedure is different regarding the Patriots appeal of its fine and loss of draft choices, the New England club has also secured the services of a splendid attorney, Dan Goldberg of Morgan Lewis. Goldberg’s retort to Ted Wells’ report was lawyering at its best.

The legal issues the League, the club and the quarterback will face are not as important as the business interests that are at stake. Goodell cannot seem to favor his old friend Bob Kraft, owner of the Patriots, lest he lose face. However, he must appear to be fair in order to maintain public support for his valuable enterprise. Kraft, an important architect of the current $10 billion a year NFL business, is absolutely livid over the aspersions cast at his club and the man who has brought it such fame, Tom Brady.

No one will profit from the next steps in the process. If the Commissioner upholds all the penalties as announced, he will subject the League to months or years of litigation. The Patriots and Mr. Brady will not be well served by a protracted dispute. The American sporting public seems torn by the conflict. The average sports fan outside of New England finds the Patriots to have earned their penalties whatever the evidence might show. The envy is obvious. These are the costs of too much success. In any case, the dispute is a major distraction.

Both sides are in a no-win situation. It is unlikely that Brady will prevail before a Commissioner who was really the acting party when Troy Vincent announced the penalties. At best he might secure a reduction in his suspension, but that would cost the Commissioner in his effort to demonstrate that he is fully in charge. For sure, the Commissioner cannot afford to wade into the weeds of the dispute explored in the Wells and Goldberg reports.

Both sides need a better way out. They need to settle Deflate-gate and look ahead to the coming season. What that settlement will look like depends upon the willingness of both parties to compromise. Such a reasoned and reasonable approach is necessary in any organization, and Kraft and his 31 fellow owners need a strong, but not arbitrary and capricious, commissioner. There is reason for both parties to want to avoid the costs of further proceedings, and not just the bills from their lawyers. The NFL has had a difficult few years with spousal and parental abuse claims aired on a regular basis and the awful damage the players have suffered (and will continue to suffer) to their bodies and minds from playing the game.

On Thursday night September 10, 2015, the NFL season kicks off at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. It is normally a festive occasion for the League that will be forever tarnished if Tom Brady, a future Hall of Fame quarterback, is not on the field to lead the defending Super Bowl champions. Any settlement of Deflate-gate scandal that does not recognize that there is absolutely no direct evidence of Brady’s complicity in any conspiracy will be seen for what it is – an inference drawn on a supposition based on a guess. Brady’s unwillingness to give Ted Wells all the information he requested, however, deserves a monetary penalty. The Patriots club also deserves some monetary penalty and perhaps the loss of a draft choice.

Virtually all litigation is settled and not tried to completion in court. There are some fine lawyers involved in this case, among the best in their fields. They should work out a deal that will serve the interests of all concerned.

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By Radhika Balakrishnan and María Herminia Graterol

The United States, so comfortable judging the human rights performance and policies of other countries, had a second review of its own record on May 11th. The status of human rights for all in the U.S. was reviewed by UN Member States at the Human Rights Council (HRC) in a process that is called the “Universal Periodic Review.”

The U.S. government submitted an official report that was supplemented by alternative information compiled in stakeholder reports to bring attention to human rights issues that need addressing. This peer review offers one of the last opportunities to pressure the Obama administration to meet international human rights obligations, including those related to the realization of women’s rights and economic, social and cultural rights.

Groups from a wide coalition of human rights organizations under the umbrella of the U.S. Human Rights Network observed the review. Our organization, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), based at Rutgers University, was also represented in Geneva, hoping to bring attention to women’s rights and economic policy. However, the lack of an inter-connected and holistic approach to the realization of human rights for all persons in the U.S. proved to be a stumbling block we had not anticipated. This was because, in this instance, the vast majority of the 117 UN member states that engaged in the dialogue accepted a myopic view of human rights and went along with it.

The U.S. was first reviewed in 2010, just two years after the “Great Recession.” At the time, we presented the report, “Towards a Human Rights-Centered Macroeconomic and Financial Policy in the U.S.” The detrimental and ongoing effects of the crisis are also part of the context of the current review, but were not part of the content. Despite this omission, relief and recovery programs set in place to remedy human harm caused by the recession are not reaching women, racial minorities and other marginalized groups and may, in fact, be having a negative impact, as stated in the 2014 report, “Towards a Human Rights-Centered Macroeconomic and Financial Policy in the US: Revisited”, by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University, the Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts and partners.

Yet, instead of economic and social rights, the U.S. reported on economic and social measures. Women’s rights were limited to freedom from violence. The narrative of successful economic and social policies overshadowed the reality of systematic poverty and discrimination on the basis of gender, class, immigration status, race and ethnicity. We witnessed a process that lowered the bar of international human rights norms and standards so that the U.S. could pass.

Despite the results of the review, we need to bring the discussion back to the real situation of human rights in the U.S. The economic downturn destroyed jobs, reduced standards of living, heightened risks of food insecurity for women-headed households and drove many families into poverty. Women of color and others living in poverty have ended up at the juncture of extreme forms of discrimination on the basis of sex, class, race/ethnicity, immigration status and occupation.

As a result of the crisis, women continue to experience higher rates of poverty and the gender gap increased. The gender poverty gap also increased during the recovery. According to the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, “women continue to make only 77 cents for every dollar that their equally qualified male counterparts make.” Underemployment rates continue to be higher than the average rate in 2007.

Economic policy in the U.S. is not being guided by the principles of non-discrimination, equality, progressive realization and non-retrogression. A human rights analysis of macroeconomic and financial policy shows that structural inequalities and social exclusion of discriminated groups of women in the U.S. must be addressed. Structural inequality is being relegated to racism as a stand-alone issue and in our opinion that is a double-edged sword. The realization of human rights requires an inter-dependent view of rights, that addresses all sites of discrimination (the workplace, the home, the community, the street, etc.) and a holistic view of all our multiple identities.

Since human rights are inter-related, information shared by other NGOs on women’s issues point to the need for the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Violence against indigenous women by men outside their communities is still widely underreported. In the U.S., Black women are 35 percent more likely than their white counterparts to be victims of violence and account for nearly a full third of intimate partner homicides. Sexual violence and rape in the United States military is perpetrated at such alarming rates that the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women made detailed recommendations in this regard. Survivors of trafficking in women and girls are still being prosecuted for crimes they were forced to commit. One positive outcome is that most of the UN member states that took an active part in the review recommended the ratification of CEDAW.

The U.S. official Universal Periodic Review report also affirmed CEDAW is a priority. We need this promise to come before the end of the Obama administration and without any reservation. An institutionalized, transparent and coordinated approach to human rights monitoring and implementation, that takes into account a human rights-centered macroeconomic and financial policy, is urgently needed. If we believe in human rights for all, we must pay attention to the actions that will follow this review, without letting economic and social rights fall off the wagon.

Radhika Balakrishnan is the Faculty Director of the Center for Women´s Global Leadership at Rutgers University (CWGL) and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. Maria Herminia Graterol is affiliated with CWGL, currently focusing on economic and social rights issues.

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WASHINGTON — Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), the immigration hardliner who unseated former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), dismissed arguments from his colleagues that young undocumented immigrants who want to enlist in the military are showing their patriotism.

“I wanted to stand up and shout, I mean, ISIS is willing to serve in our military as well,” Brat said on The John Fredericks Show on Friday.

The House voted last Thursday to strip the National Defense Authorization Act of a measure from Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) that would ask the Defense Department to consider allowing the young undocumented immigrants often called Dreamers to enlist. Brat co-sponsored an amendment from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) that took out the language, approved in a 221 to 202 vote.

The fact that the measure made it to the NDAA in the first place — it was approved as an amendment in the Armed Services Committee — bodes poorly for the U.S.’s future, Brat said. He compared the situation to ancient Rome allowing non-Romans, referred to as barbarians, to join its military.

“What’s going on is the decline of Western civilization at the highest level,” Brat said on the radio show. “I think everybody knows their old Roman history — part of the reason Rome fell is because they started hiring the barbarians, otherwise known as the Germans at the time, to be troops in their own army. And that led to their eventual downfall.”

Brat and other critics of the measure have argued that allowing Dreamers to enlist would take spots from Americans and legal permanent residents, particularly at a time when the military is downsizing.

Gallego’s measure wouldn’t require the military to allow more Dreamers to join, and only recommends considering enlistment for those already granted work authorization. Anyone with that authorization under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, must have entered the U.S. before they turned 16 and pass a criminal background check, among other requirements.

Twenty Republicans voted against Brooks’ amendment to take the Dreamer-related language out of the NDAA. Ahead of the vote, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) praised the Dreamers with “the courage and conviction” to want to join the military.

Brat noted that the Republican members who voted against the amendment mostly came from districts with growing Latino populations, and implied they just wanted cheap labor out of “regional self-interest.” Or maybe they were just making “an intellectual error,” he said.

Listen to the full interview:

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WASHINGTON — Two of the Senate’s more outspoken members, one on the Republican side of the aisle the other on the Democratic side, are teaming up to build support for federal investment in scientific research.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced on Monday the formation of a Senate caucus on the National Institutes of Health, billing it as an “opportunity for senators to educate their colleagues about the importance of NIH.”

The goal, ultimately, won’t be educational. In a dear colleague letter, the duo pledged to find “a bipartisan strategy” for restoring the NIH’s purchasing power, which has fallen dramatically amid stagnant budgets and spending cuts over the past decade.

Doing so will take political dexterity. Lawmakers of virtually all ideological stripes have pledged their support for the NIH, which is the biggest federal backer of biomedical research. But there is no indication that the two parties have an agreement on how to pay for increased funding. Absent some sort of deal, the NIH’s funding will take another hit this fall when sequestration cuts return.

NIH Director Francis Collins, who will join the two senators when they announce the caucus in the Senate on Tuesday, has calculated that the NIH will lose $19 billion over the next 10 years if sequestration cuts return. That, he told The Huffington Post in an interview a few months back, would result in “an enormous loss of capability to carry out medical research.”

Durbin previously said he won’t support a government funding bill this fall if sequestration cuts aren’t relieved. President Barack Obama, likewise, said he won’t sign such legislation. With those hurdles ahead, the pressure is on lawmakers to find a deal similar to what they passed a year and a half ago, when both domestic spending and military spending were increased by the same amount and offset with cuts elsewhere.

The NIH could end up being the logical item around which Republicans craft that deal. Several Republicans have said recently that they would support spending money on the NIH without offsetting it with cuts elsewhere, including former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). The decision by Graham to start an NIH caucus with Durbin, just before Graham is likely to announce a presidential bid, suggests that there is some more momentum around this concept.

Absent this strategy, there are other vehicles by which NIH funding can be increased. That includes Durbin’s American Innovation Act, which would implement a 5 percent increase in the annual budget of five federal agencies that fund science research. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also proposed a bill to create a proverbial swearing jar for big pharmaceutical companies. Under that idea, each time those companies settle a suit brought by the federal government, they would pay into a fund for NIH research.

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On the heels of reports that drones are mysteriously buzzing around the Eiffel Tower and crashing into the White House lawn, a Japanese security company is developing a new drone detector—a system to sniff out any shady eyes in the sky buzzing around the wrong places. The march toward dystopia continues.

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