Access Control

Restricting read and write access to topics and webs, by users and groups

Access Control allows you restrict access to single topics and entire webs, by individual user and by user Groups. Access control, combined with UserAuthentication, lets you easily create and manage an extremely flexible, fine-grained privilege system.

An important consideration

Open, freeform editing is the essence of WikiCulture - what makes Foswiki different and often more effective than other collaboration tools. For that reason, it is strongly recommended that the decision to restrict read or write access to a web or a topic is made with great care - the more restrictions, the less Wiki in the mix. Experience shows that unrestricted write access works very well because:

Peer influence is enough to ensure that only relevant content is posted.

Peer editing - the ability for anyone to rearrange all content on a page - keeps topics focused.

In Foswiki, content is transparently preserved under revision control:

Users are encouraged to edit and refactor (condense a long topic), since there's a safety net.

As a collaboration guideline, create broad-based Groups (for more and varied input), and avoid creating view-only Users (if you can read it, you should be able to contribute to it).

Permissions settings of the webs on this Foswiki site

The topic SitePermissions gives you an overview of the access control settings for all your webs.

Authentication vs. Access Control

Authentication: Identifies who a user is based on a login procedure. See UserAuthentication.

Access control: Restrict access to content based on users and groups once a user is identified.

Users and groups

Access control is based on the familiar concept of users and groups. Users
are defined by their WikiNames. They can then be organized in unlimited
combinations by inclusion in one or more user Groups. Groups can also be
included in other Groups.

Managing Users

In standard Foswiki a user can create an account in UserRegistration. The following actions are performed:

WikiName, encrypted password and email address are recorded using the password manager if authentication is enabled.

A confirmation e-mail is sent to the user.

A user home page with the WikiName of the user is created in the Main web.

Your local Foswiki may have an alternate user mapping manager installed
which doesn't support user registration. Check with your Wiki administrator
if you are in doubt.

Managing Groups

The following describes the standard Foswiki support for groups. Your local Foswiki may have an alternate group mapping manager installed. Check with your Wiki administrator if you are in doubt.

Groups are defined by group topics located in the Main web. To create a new group, visit WikiGroups. You will find a "Create a new group" link at the top which reveals a form to create a new group. Enter the name of the new group ending in Group into the "Group Name" form field and the initial members in the "Members" field. This creates a new group topic.

By default any member of a group has access rights to both adding and removing users from the group through the nice user interface. If you need to limit this access further, change the ALLOWTOPICCHANGE setting through "More Topic Action" -> "Edit topic preference settings".

The ALLOWTOPICCHANGE setting defines who is allowed to change the group topic; it is a comma delimited list of users and groups. You typically want to restrict that to the members of the group itself, so it should contain the name of the topic. This prevents users not in the group from editing the topic to give themselves or others access. For example, for the KasabianGroup topic write:

Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = Main.KasabianGroup

Caution This is set in the "Topic Settings" and not inline in the topic text!

Foswiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you have three spaces, an asterisk, and an extra space in front of any access control rule. See below for more information about ALLOWTOPICCHANGE.

Background: A group topic is an empty topic with 3 hidden preference settings.

GROUP: Comma separated list of users and/or groups

ALLOWTOPICCHANGE: Comma separated list of users and groups that are allowed to add and remove users from the group

VIEW_TEMPLATE: Always set to the value GroupView. This alters the way the topic is presented to include a nice user interface for adding and removing users.

Foswiki 1.1 introduced the smart user interface for adding and removing members of a group. Group topics from prior versions of Foswiki will still work. These have the GROUP setting visible in the topic text itself and you edit it by editing the topic. Foswiki 1.1 WikiGroups will show these old group topics with an "Upgrade Group Topic button". The administrator can upgrade an old group topic to the nice new user interface with one easy click.

The Super Admin Group

A number of Foswiki functions (for example, renaming webs) are only available to administrators. Administrators are simply users who belong to the SuperAdminGroup. This is a standard user group, the name of which is defined by {SuperAdminGroup} setting in configure. The default name of this group is the AdminGroup. The system administrator may have chosen a different name for this group if your local Foswiki uses an alternate group mapping manager, but for simplicity we will use the default name AdminGroup in the rest of this topic.

You can create new administrators simply by adding them to the AdminGroup topic. For example,

Set GROUP = Main.ElizabethWindsor, Main.TonyBlair

A member of the Super Admin Group has unrestricted access throughout the wiki, so only trusted staff should be added to this group.

Restricting Access

Access to webs and topics is controlled by setting the values of certain
preferences. These names of these preferences have the general form:

permissioncontextmode

Where permission is ALLOW or DENY, _context is TOPIC, WEB, or ROOT, and mode is VIEW, CHANGE, or RENAME. For example, the preference ALLOWWEBCHANGE lists who is allowed to change
topics in the current web.

Restricting VIEW blocks viewing and searching of content. When you restric VIEW to a topic or web, this also restricts INCLUDE and Formatted SEARCH from showing the content of the topics.

There is an important distinction between CHANGE access and RENAME access. A user can CHANGE a topic, but thanks to version control their changes cannot be lost (the history of the topic before the change is recorded). However if a topic or web is renamed, that history may be lost. Typically a site will only give RENAME access to administrators and content owners.

Note that ALLOWWEBxxx and DENYWEBxxx preferences can only be set in WebPreferences topics. You cannot define a site level access. Each web must be protected on their own. Subwebs inherit access settings from the parent web. See next section.

Note that ALLOWTOPICxxx and DENYTOPICxxx preferences apply only to the topic itself.

Be warned that some plugins may not respect access permissions.

FINALPREFERENCES affects access controls, allowing you to prevent changes to access control settings while still allowing edit access to topics.

Controlling access to a Web

You can define restrictions on who is allowed to view a Psychologie Kiel web. You can restrict access to certain webs to selected users and groups, by:

authenticating all webs and restricting selected webs: Topic access in all webs is authenticated, and selected webs have restricted access.

authenticating and restricting selected webs only: Provide unrestricted viewing access to open webs, with authentication and restriction only on selected webs.

You can define these settings in the WebPreferences topic, preferable towards the end of the topic:

Set DENYWEBVIEW = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set DENYWEBCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWWEBCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set DENYWEBRENAME = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWWEBRENAME = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

If your site allows sub-webs, then access to sub-webs is determined from the access controls of the parent web, plus the access controls in the sub-web. So, if the parent web has ALLOWWEBVIEW set, this will also apply to the subweb. Also note that you will need to ensure that the parent web's FINALPREFERENCES does not include the access control settings listed above. Otherwise you will not be able override the parent web's access control settings in sub-webs.

Creation and renaming of sub-webs is controlled by the WEBCHANGE setting on the parent web (or ROOTCHANGE for root webs). Renaming is additionally restricted by the setting of WEBRENAME in the web itself.

Controlling access to a topic

You can define these settings in any topic, preferable towards the end of the topic:

Set DENYTOPICVIEW = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set DENYTOPICCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set DENYTOPICRENAME = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWTOPICRENAME = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Caution! Settings are always taken from the latest (current) revision of a topic. If older revisions of a topic had more restrictive access controls, they will not be used when accessing the older revision.

Remember when opening up access to specific topics within a restricted web that other topics in the web - for example, the WebLeftBar - may also be accessed when viewing the topics. The message you get when you are denied access should tell you what topic you were not permitted to access.

Be careful with empty values for any of these.

Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = This means the same as not setting it at all. (This was documented wrong in versions 4.0.X, 4.1.0 and 4.1.1)

Set DENYTOPICVIEW = This means do not deny anyone the right to view this topic. If DENYTOPICVIEW is set to an empty value anyone has access even if ALLOWTOPICVIEW or ALLOWWEBVIEW is defined. This allows you to have very restrictive default access rights to an entire web and still allow individual topics to have more open access.

The same rules apply to ALLOWTOPICCHANGE/DENYTOPICCHANGE and APPLYTOPICRENAME/DENYTOPICRENAME. Setting ALLOWTOPICCHANGE or ALLOWTOPICRENAME to en empty value means the same as not defining it. Setting DENYTOPICCHANGE or DENYTOPICRENAME to an empty value means that anyone can edit or rename the topic.

If the same setting is defined multiple times the last one overrides the previous. They are not OR'ed together.

Setting to an empty value has caused confusion and great debate and it has been decided that the empty setting syntax will be replaced by something which is easier to understand in a later version of Foswiki. A method to upgrade will be provided. Please read the release notes carefully when you upgrade.

See "How Foswiki evaluates ALLOW/DENY settings" below for more on how ALLOW and DENY interacts.

Controlling access to attachments

Attachments are referred to directly, and are not normally indirected via Foswiki scripts. This means that the above instructions for access control will not apply to attachments. It is possible that someone may inadvertently publicise a URL that they expected to be access-controlled.

The easiest way to apply the same access control rules for attachments as apply to topics is to use the Apache mod_rewrite module, and configure your webserver to redirect accesses to attachments to the Foswiki viewfile script. For example,

That way all the controls that apply to the topic also apply to attachments to the topic. Other types of webserver have similar support.

Images embedded in topics will load much slower since each image will be delivered by the viewfile script.

Controlling who can manage top-level webs

Top level webs are a special case, because they don't have a parent web with a WebPreferences. So there has to be a special control just for the root level.

You can define these settings in the SitePreferences topic, preferably towards the end of the topic:

Set DENYROOTCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWROOTCHANGE = < comma-delimited list of users and groups >

Note that you do not require ROOTCHANGE access to rename an existing top-level web. You just need WEBCHANGE in the web itself.

How Foswiki evaluates ALLOW/DENY settings

When deciding whether to grant access, Foswiki evaluates the following rules in order (read from the top of the list; if the logic arrives at PERMITTED or DENIED that applies immediately and no more rules are applied). You need to read the rules bearing in mind that VIEW, CHANGE and RENAME access may be granted/denied separately.

Settings are only read from the most current (latest) revision of a topic. Settings from older revisions are never used, even when viewing an older revision with the rdiff script

Attention: Use this with caution. This is deprecated and will likely change in the next release.

If ALLOWTOPIC is set

people in the list are PERMITTED

everyone else is DENIED

If DENYWEB is set to a list of wikinames

people in the list are DENIED access

If ALLOWWEB is set to a list of wikinames

people in the list will be PERMITTED

everyone else will be DENIED

If you got this far, access is PERMITTED

Access control and INCLUDE

ALLOWTOPICVIEW and ALLOWTOPICCHANGE only applies to the topic in which the settings are defined. If a topic A includes another topic B, topic A does not inherit the access rights of the included topic B.

Examples: Topic A includes topic B

If the included topic B has ALLOWTOPICCHANGE set to block editing for a user, it does not prevent editing the including topic A.

If the included topic B has ALLOWTOPICVIEW set to block view for a user, the user can still view topic A but he cannot see the included topic B. He will see a message No permission to view B

Access control quick recipes

Obfuscating webs

Another way of hiding webs is by setting the NOSEARCHALL setting in WebPreferences. It does the following:

Prevents the all webs search option from accessing the web

Hides the web from the %WEBLIST% macro.

* Set NOSEARCHALL = on

This setup can be useful to hide a new web until content its ready for deployment, or reduce clutter in the WebLeftBar and default search results when restricted access is not desired.

Setting NOSEARCHALL to any value other than the empty string will hide a web. Setting NOSEARCHALL = off will have the same effect as setting it to on

Obfuscating a web without setting view access control is very insecure, as anyone who knows the URL can access the web, and explicit searches naming that web will also work. For security purposes it is better to use the ALLOW or DENY VIEW settings in the WebPreferences topic. %SEARCH% and %WEBLIST% will not show any results for webs that the current user does not have permission to view.

Restrict Access to a whole Foswiki site

For a firewalled Foswiki, e.g. an intranet wiki or extranet wiki, you want to allow only invited people to access your Foswiki.

With this configuration, someone with access to the site needs to register new users. ResetPassword will also have to be done by administrators.

If you install extensions that add scripts, you must also remember to add the new scripts to this list or the new scripts will not be protected.

Authenticate all webs and restrict selected webs

Use the following setup to authenticate users for topic viewing in all webs and to restrict access to selected webs. Requires UserAuthentication to be enabled.

The simple way is to add this to WebPreferences in all webs.

Set DENYWEBVIEW = WikiGuest

Restrict view access to selected users and groups. Set one or both of these settings in its WebPreferences topic:

Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = < list of users and groups >

Note:DENYWEBVIEW is evaluated before ALLOWWEBVIEW. Access is denied if the authenticated person is in the DENYWEBVIEW list, or not in the ALLOWWEBVIEW list. Access is granted if DENYWEBVIEW and ALLOWWEBVIEW are not defined.

In rare cases it may be required to authenticate the view script. This can in some cases have a dramatic performance hit because the webserver must re-authenticate for every page view.

Set require valid-user on your view script in .htaccess or the appropriate Apache .conf file. This looks like: FilesMatch "(attach|edit|manage|rename|save|view|upload|mail|logon|.*auth).*" (normally view is not in that list).

Authenticate and restrict selected webs only

Use the following setup to provide unrestricted viewing access to open webs, with authentication only on selected webs. Requires UserAuthentication to be enabled.

Restrict view access to selected users and groups. Set one or both of these settings in its WebPreferences topic:

Set DENYWEBVIEW = < list of users and groups >

Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = < list of users and groups >

Note:DENYWEBVIEW is evaluated before ALLOWWEBVIEW. Access is denied if the authenticated person is in the DENYWEBVIEW list, or not in the ALLOWWEBVIEW list. Access is granted if DENYWEBVIEW and ALLOWWEBVIEW are not defined.

Show control settings

You can list the access controls affecting a topic using the %SHOWPREFERENCE{}% macro in the topic, thus:

Hide control settings

To hide access control settings from normal browser viewing, you can put them into the topic preference settings by clicking the link Edit topic preference settings under More topic actions menu. Preferences set in this manner are not visible in the topic text, but take effect nevertheless. Access control settings added as topic preference settings are stored in the topic meta data and they override settings defined in the topic text.

Alternatively, place them in HTML comment markers, but this exposes the access setting during ordinary editing.


Background
==========

Allergic rhinitis (AR) and chronic urticaria (CU) are common diseases that disturb sleep and reduce work/school productivity \[[@B1],[@B2]\]. Treatment guidelines recommend second-generation antihistamines, including cetirizine, desloratadine, ebastine, fexofenadine, levocetirizine, and loratadine, as a first-line treatment for AR \[[@B1]\] and CU \[[@B2]\].

Although data on comparative efficacy of second-generation antihistamines are limited, clinical studies demonstrate that patients with AR or CU who fail to respond to one antihistamine may benefit from a switch to another \[[@B3]-[@B6]\]. In 2006, based on a report \[[@B7]\] that drew no conclusions regarding efficacy or safety differences among the 6 antihistamines mentioned above, the Norwegian Medicines Agency mandated, as a cost-cutting measure and requirement for continued governmental reimbursement, that health care providers substitute generic cetirizine or loratadine for desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine in their AR and CU patients, irrespective of treatment success or patient satisfaction with their current regimen \[[@B8]\]. Only those patients who failed treatment with both cetirizine and loratadine could switch back to the newer agents \[[@B8]\].

An online survey conducted in 2007 in Norwegian general practice settings evaluated patient experiences regarding efficacy, fatigue, and impact on work productivity and attendance after a mandatory switch from desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine to cetirizine or loratadine.

Methods
=======

Between January and April 2007, general practice centers across Norway each invited up to 15 patients (minimum 1500 in total) to participate in an online survey. Patients were identified through a data software program (eZearch; Emetra AS, Bergen, Norway) run on the physicians\' computers. If the practice had more than 15 eligible patients, the total number was randomly reduced to a maximum of 15.

These patients were sent a letter, signed by their physician, inviting them to answer an Internet-based questionnaire. The letter contained a unique username and password that permitted the patients to answer the questionnaire only once. Internet service was provided by Questback AS (Oslo, Norway), an independent IT services group.

Participants aged 18 to 65 years treated with desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine, and switched to cetirizine or loratadine after May 1, 2006, completed the 25-question survey on demographics, antihistamine therapy, physician visits, and treatment cost. Anonymity was maintained by Questback AS using a method approved by the Norwegian Data Inspectorate.

Participants rated post-switch efficacy, fatigue, and effect on work productivity and attendance compared with their pre-switch medication using the following descriptors: \"much less,\" \"slightly less,\" \"similar,\" \"slightly more,\" or \"much more.\" Instances of no response were included in \"similar.\" Patients also reported post-switch change in number of doctor visits required (fewer, same, more), total treatment cost (lower, no change, higher), and whether they had switched back or wanted to switch back to their previous medications.

Descriptive analyses were performed on main findings, and responses by patients are given as proportion of patients (%) in Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}. Subgroup analyses were conducted on diagnosis, pre-switch antihistamines, and post-switch therapy.

######

Baseline demographics and clinical characteristics (N = 409)

  Sex, n (%)
  ------------------------ -------------
   Female                  271 (66.3%)

  Age (y), n

   18-25                   35

   26-35                   67

   36-45                   101

   46-55                   122

   56-65                   84

  Diagnosis, %

   Pollen allergy          63.7

   Other nasal allergy     15.2

   Skin allergy/eczema     6.9

   Other                   14.3

  Pre-switch therapy, %

   Desloratadine           78.4

   Ebastine                16.0

   Fexofenadine            5.6

  Post-switch therapy, %

   Cetirizine              64.7

   Loratadine              35.3

Results
=======

A total of 343 physicians invited 1920 patients to participate. Of 493 patients (25.7%) responding to the invitation, 421 were eligible (ie, patients stating a switch of medication as a result of the new rules for reimbursement). Twelve patients who failed to specify pre-switch or post-switch antihistamine were excluded. The number of participants included in the final assessment totaled 409 (83.0% of responding patients; Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}).

Pollen allergy was present in 63.7% of patients. Respondents also reported other nasal allergy (15.2%) and skin allergy (6.9%); other allergies comprised the remaining 14.3%. Most patients (78.4%) were taking desloratadine prior to the mandatory switch, followed by ebastine (16.0%) and fexofenadine (5.6%); post-switch, 64.7% of patients received cetirizine and 35.3% loratadine.

Respondents (46.3%) rated cetirizine or loratadine as less efficacious than desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine; 21.1% of respondents reported much less efficacy than with their previous treatment; and 25.2% reported slightly less efficacy (Figure [1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}). In total, 6.9% of respondents rated cetirizine/loratadine more effective than previous treatment (5.0%, slightly more effective; 1.9%, much more effective). Further, 28.7% of respondents reported increased fatigue, while 6.4% were less tired. Another 63.9% reported fatigue levels that were similar between previous and post-switch treatment.

![**Post-switch efficacy of cetirizine/loratadine therapy compared with efficacy of desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine pre-switch**.](1476-7961-9-5-1){#F1}

In reporting impact on work productivity, 31.6% of respondents reported decreased work capacity; 63.1% said post-switch work productivity was similar to that of previous treatment, while 3.3% reported greater work productivity after switch. Post-switch, 6.0% reported reduced work attendance, and 2.0% stated that work attendance had increased.

Respondents reported increased contact with their physician post-switch compared with pre-switch: 13% visited their physician more often, compared with 4% who reported fewer visits. Total costs post-switch increased for 16% of respondents and decreased for 10%. Due to limited data, the actual number of consultations and total costs were not possible to measure.

Subgroup analyses stratified by diagnosis, pre-switch antihistamine, or post-switch antihistamine found no significant difference in ratings for efficacy, fatigue, or work productivity and attendance irrespective of type of allergy. This confirmed that the above-mentioned factors had no impact on the outcomes assessed.

At the time of the survey, 26% of all participants had already switched back to their pre-switch antihistamine, and 25% reported dissatisfaction with cetirizine or loratadine and wanted to switch back to their original agent; 38% remained on their post-switch agent (Figure [2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). Of 191 participants who rated cetirizine/loratadine less effective than desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine, 37% had switched back to their pre-switch antihistamine; an additional 42% reported they were dissatisfied with the mandatory switch in agents and were interested in switching back to their original prescription; 11% remained on their post-switch agent. Further, 63% of respondents reporting less efficacy, more somnolence, or less productivity at work (n = 267) with cetirizine or loratadine were already receiving their previous treatment or wanted to switch back.

![Responses from patients reporting less efficacy post-switch (n = 191)](1476-7961-9-5-2){#F2}

Discussion
==========

This online survey provided the first patient assessment of the impact of a mandatory switch from one antihistamine to another. Although the Norwegian Health Agency claimed that all second-generation antihistamines were equally efficacious and safe \[[@B8]\], 46.3% of respondents perceived reduced efficacy with cetirizine/loratadine compared with their previous drug, 28.7% reported increased fatigue, and 31.6% experienced decreased work productivity.

Patients with AR and CU report varying degrees of symptom relief with different second-generation antihistamines, raising the issue of whether a mandated switch in treatment is ethically acceptable in patients well controlled by or satisfied with their treatment. Clinical management guidelines for urticaria recommend changing to another second-generation antihistamine in patients whose symptoms do not respond to first-choice treatment at standard or higher-than-indicated doses after a defined period \[[@B2]\].

Moreover, clinical studies and patient surveys indicate that switching patients dissatisfied with their current treatment to another second-generation antihistamine may provide symptom relief. In a post hoc analysis of data from 4 post-marketing studies in patients with AR or CU who had failed previous therapy with cetirizine, fexofenadine, or loratadine, 90.3% of patients rated efficacy with desloratadine as excellent or good \[[@B3]\]. In another study, patient satisfaction with CU treatment rose from 74.3% to 83.7% after their antihistamine therapy was modified \[[@B4]\]. A cross-sectional survey of AR patients dissatisfied with loratadine reported equal or better satisfaction after a switch to desloratadine or fexofenadine \[[@B5]\]. Those patients with severe symptoms inadequately controlled by loratadine also reported greater satisfaction with desloratadine compared with fexofenadine. Finally, a randomized, multicenter study found that more patients with AR reported moderate, marked, or complete relief of symptoms after switching to loratadine subsequent to fexofenadine failure than after switching to fexofenadine following loratadine failure \[[@B6]\].

The Norwegian Health Agency conducted no patient-impact assessment or health-economic analysis prior to mandating use of generic antihistamines to maintain governmental reimbursement. Instead, it based its decision solely on the cost of the 6 antihistamines. Post-switch, respondents reported a trend toward more consultations with their physicians, increased total costs for medication, and decreased work productivity and attendance, suggesting that the mandate may not be as cost-effective as assumed.

Some limitations of this survey should be noted. There was no control group; responses were sought only from patients for whom a switch from desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine to loratadine or cetirizine was mandated. In addition, differences in efficacy and tolerability among agents can only be determined through head-to-head, controlled clinical trials. The results of this survey cannot be extrapolated to other groups of allergy patients, and any drug comparisons should be made with great caution.

Conclusions
===========

A mandatory switch to the generic second-generation antihistamines cetirizine or loratadine to continue reimbursement in patients well controlled on desloratadine, ebastine, or fexofenadine decreased symptom control and work productivity and attendance. Taken together, the results from this survey and from clinical trials and other surveys indicate that treatment decisions should be made only after a thorough patient evaluation and then individualized for each patient. Further, periodic follow-up should be made to assess patient response post-switch.

Competing interests
===================

Medical writing and editorial assistance was provided by Carol Sibley and Patricia C. Abramo of AdelphiEden Health Communications, New York, New York. This assistance was funded by Merck, Sharpe and Dohme & Co. and MSD Norway AS.

Authors\' contributions
=======================

HC, TO and EH conceived the survey and participated in its design and coordination; they also participated in the preparation of the manuscript. FT participated in the design and coordination and had patients who answered the survey. RM performed the statistical analysis and participated in the preparation of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.


97 B.R. 95 (1989)
In re LYN-DEE DAIRY FARM, INC., Debtor.
LYN-DEE DAIRY FARM, INC., Plaintiff,
v.
Charles SCHAFSMA; Teresa A. Van Wagner, as personal representative of the Estate of Earl J. Van Wagner; Airport Livestock Corporation, a Florida corporation; and United States of America, acting through Farmers Home Administration, Defendants.
Bankruptcy No. 87-1990-BKC-3P2, Adv. No. 88-34.
United States Bankruptcy Court, M.D. Florida, Jacksonville Division.
February 23, 1989.
Lisa C. Cohen, Keystone Heights, Fla., for plaintiff.
Alfred Manheim, Miami, Fla., for Airport Livestock Corp.
*96 Jerry A. Funk, Jacksonville, Fla., Trustee.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
GEORGE L. PROCTOR, Bankruptcy Judge.
This adversary proceeding is before the Court upon the complaint seeking (i) to void Airport Livestock Corporation's security interest in livestock and milk proceeds pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 544, (ii) to recover three preferential payments made to Airport Livestock Corporation prior to the commencement of this case, and (iii) to recover a post-petition transfer of funds to Airport Livestock Corporation pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 549 and § 550(a).
The trial of this adversary proceeding was held December 15, 1988, and upon the evidence presented, the Court makes the following Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law:

FINDINGS OF FACT
On or about December 3, 1982, the plaintiff contracted to purchase livestock from Airport Livestock Corporation ("Airport Livestock"). To facilitate the purchase, plaintiff executed a promissory note in favor of Airport Livestock for $39,000.00 and granted the seller a security interest in 46 Holstein dairy cows. On December 3, 1982, Airport Livestock filed a UCC-1 Financing Statement evidencing this transaction with the Clerk of the Court for Columbia County, Florida. The financing statement was not signed by the plaintiff.
Plaintiff eventually defaulted under the terms of the promissory note and in December of 1987, Airport Livestock commenced suit in Dade County, Florida, seeking a recovery. Case No. 87-11967(26). A default was entered against Lyn-Dee Dairy Farm, Inc., on May 14, 1987, and Airport Livestock moved for entry of final judgment. A hearing on the motion was scheduled for June 24, 1987.
Prior to the hearing, the plaintiff offered to settle the dispute with Airport Livestock by executing a new promissory note for $42,577.62. In addition, plaintiff consented to a security interest in its milk proceeds (the "Milk Check Assignment") and to a continuation of Airport Livestock's security interest in the cattle. A UCC-1 financing statement as to this milk check assignment was never filed.
Pursuant to the terms of the milk check assignment and prior to the petition for relief, defendant received three payments totaling $4,245.00 from the dairy cooperative where plaintiff sold its milk. These payments were made in September, October and November of 1987, on or after the fifth day of each month (i.e. within 90 days of the petition date). In addition, defendant received a check for $1,415.00 in December, 1988, after the petition had been filed.
On December 4, 1987, Lyn-Dee Dairy Farm filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. 11 U.S.C. § 1101, et seq. At the time these payments were made, plaintiff was insolvent in that its debts exceeded its assets. The payments were on account of an antecedent debt and enabled Airport Livestock to receive more than it would have received if the case had been one arising under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code and the payments had not been made.
This adversary proceeding was commenced by complaint filed February 16, 1988, as amended on May 3, 1988. On June 16, 1988, the United States of America was dismissed as party defendant. On June 23, 1988, default final judgment was entered against defendants Charles Schafsma and Teresa A. Van Wagner, as personal representative of the estate of Earl J. Van Wagner. This left defendant Airport Livestock as the sole remaining defendant in this adversary proceeding.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
Section 544(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code gives the trustee (debtor-in-possession), the rights and powers of a judgment lien creditor and allows the debtor to void any interest in property which would be voidable by such creditor under applicable state law.
*97 Plaintiff maintains that Airport Livestock's security interest in its dairy cows is voidable under § 544(a)(1) because it is deficient in two respects. First, the financing statement is not signed by the debtor as required by § 679.402(1), Florida Statutes, and secondly, the financing statement lapsed pursuant to § 679.403(2), Florida Statutes, prior to the commencement of this case.
In this regard, § 679.402(1), Florida Statutes, provides:
A financing statement is sufficient if it gives the names of the debtor and the secured party, is signed by the debtor, gives an address of the secured party from which information concerning the security interest may be obtained, gives a mailing address of the debtor, and contains a statement indicating the types, or describing the items, of collateral. . . . A copy of the security agreement is sufficient if it contains the above information and is signed by the debtor. [Emphasis supplied].
Under Florida law, the failure to include debtor's signature on the financing statement results in an unperfected security interest which may be voided pursuant to § 544(a). In re Group Development Corp., 43 B.R. 665 (Bkrptcy.M.D.Fla.1984). Accordingly, the Court holds (i) that Airport Livestock failed to obtain debtor's signature on its financing statement, (ii) that Airport Livestock's security interest in the dairy cows is unperfected, and (iii) that plaintiff is entitled to void this security interest pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 544(a).
Similarly, § 679.403(2), Florida Statutes, provides in relevant part:
[A] filed financing statement is effective for a period of 5 years from the date of filing. The effectiveness of a filed financial statement lapses on the expiration of the 5-year period, unless a continuation statement is filed prior to the lapse. . . . Upon lapse, the security interest becomes unperfected unless it is perfected without filing. If the security interest becomes unperfected upon lapse, it is deemed to have been unperfected as against a person who became a purchaser or lien creditor before lapse.
In this case, the original financing statement was filed with the Clerk of the Court for Columbia County, Florida, on December 3, 1982. By the terms of § 679.403(2), Florida Statutes, Airport Livestock's security interest lapsed on December 3, 1987, one day prior to the filing of the petition in this case. Defendant had six months prior to the lapse to file a continuation statement pursuant to § 679.403(3), Florida Statutes, but failed to do so. Plaintiff may therefore void Airport Livestock's security interest in the dairy cows.
As for defendant's security interest in the milk check assignment, the Court finds that defendant failed to properly perfect its interest in the proceeds by filing a financing statement with the Clerk of the Court for Columbia County, Florida. In order to perfect a security interest in accounts or general intangibles generated from the sale of farm products, one must file a financing statement with the clerk of the court in the county of the debtor's place of business. § 679.401(1)(a)(1), Florida Statutes. Because defendant failed to comply with the statutory prerequisites, its security interest in the milk proceeds is not properly perfected. Accordingly, plaintiff may avoid this interest pursuant to § 544(a).
Turning now to the preference action, the Court finds that plaintiff is entitled to recover $4,245.00 from Airport Livestock pursuant to § 547(b). That section states:
(b) Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, the trustee may avoid any transfer of an interest of the debtor in property
(1) to or for the benefit of a creditor;
(2) for or on account of an antecedent debt owed by the debtor before such transfer was made;
(3) made while the debtor was insolvent;
(4) made
(A) on or within 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition; or
(B) between ninety days and one year before the date of the filing of the petition, *98 if such creditor at the time of such transfer was an insider; and
(5) that enables such creditor to receive more than such creditor would receive if
(A) the case were a case under chapter 7 of this title;
(B) the transfer had not been made; and
(C) such creditor received payment of such debt to the extent provided by the provisions of this title.
In this case, there can be no dispute that defendant received $4,245.00 on account of an antecedent debt. Furthermore, the payments were made within 90 days of the petition date and enabled the defendant to receive more than it would receive if the case were a case under Chapter 7 and the payment had not been made. Accordingly, the plaintiff may recover the three milk check assignment payments made to Airport Livestock in September, October, and November, 1987.
Finally, the Court must address the postpetition payment received by Airport Livestock. Section 549(a) of the Bankruptcy Code states:
(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) or (c) of this section, the trustee may avoid a transfer of property of the estate
(1) that occurs after the commencement of the case; and
(2)(A) that is authorized only under section 303(f) or 542(c) of this title; or
(B) that is not authorized under this title or by the court.
In that the Court holds that it will void defendant's security interest in the cattle and milk check assignment, the payment to Airport Livestock made after the commencement of this case is unauthorized under the Bankruptcy Code. Pursuant to § 549(a) and by operation of § 550(a), the plaintiff should recover the $1,415.00 postpetition payment to Airport Livestock.
The Court will, by separate order, enter final judgment in favor of plaintiff (i) voiding Airport Livestock's security interest in plaintiff's dairy cattle and (ii) awarding damages totaling $5,660.00.

FINAL JUDGMENT
Upon Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law separately entered, it is ORDERED as follows:
1. Defendant Airport Livestock Corporation's security interest in plaintiff's livestock and milk proceeds is void and of no effect.
2. Final Judgment is entered pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 547 in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant, Airport Livestock Corporation, in the amount of Four Thousand Two Hundred Forty-five Dollars ($4,245.00) for which sum let execution issue.
3. Final Judgment is entered pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §§ 549 and 550(a) in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant, Airport Livestock Corporation, in the amount of One Thousand Four Hundred Fifteen Dollars ($1,415.00), for which sum let execution issue.


Archive for September 2012

Since we’re getting closer to the presidential election (which will not come soon enough), we’ll soon be in that brief moment when we will temporarily notice that presidents are not chosen by elections, but by the strange institution of the electoral college. Personally, I find the substantive defenses of the electoral college to be so weak they’re barely worth discussing. It seems to me these are merely tossed in along with the real reason for most, which is an argument based in tradition. But this too is flawed. Must we maintain the present system for selecting a president if we wish to be faithful to the Constitution and those who framed it? Only ignorance of the text and our history would lead us to answer yes.

The present Electoral College system bears no resemblance to the Framers’ design, and thus cannot be justified by reference to their intent. The Constitution specifies a process that would seem entirely foreign to the modern observer. Each state legislature is empowered to determine how their electors would be chosen. Individual electors were to be chosen in each state, unconnected to political parties (which the Framers’ abhorred) and thereby not committed to any particular candidate. Electors in each state were to meet, in order to deliberate and choose two candidates, one of whom was to be from out-of-state. This process was simultaneously a nomination and selection process. Electors did not choose from some pre-existing slate of candidates.

These state-by-state meetings were supposed to function like a jury – a group of citizens pulled from the larger population for a particular purpose, who would return to the population on completing their task. Electors were to make an independent judgment. It would be no more appropriate for an elector to commit themselves before hand then it would be for a juror to decide a case before trial. The candidate with the most votes, if he received a majority, would be president. The candidate with the second most votes would be vice president. This is how the system functioned in the first two presidential elections, when electors unanimously selected George Washington.

By the election of 1800, the rise of political parties, despite the Framers’ clear wish to prevent them, had broken the Electoral College system they had created. It has never functioned as originally intended since that time. That election led to modest constitutional reforms, embodied in the Twelfth Amendment, which accepted political parties as part of the process, and ensured that electors would choose presidential and vice presidential candidates separately.

How we as Americans choose a president had changed considerably since that time, but much of what we today associate with the Electoral College is not determined by the text or by the Framers’ intent. The rules are generally a product of state law, not constitutional command. First, we have a primary process to decide nominations for each political party. In the general election, voters see ballots that list the names of the various presidential candidates, but are really choosing electors who have previously committed to those candidates. Despite these commitments, those electors are free to vote as they please. Most states give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes in that state; two do not. None of these things is a product of the Framers’ design. Electors still meet in each state, but their role is simply to ratify the choice made by their state’s voters.

Debate over the Electoral College tends to ignore these facts. We are told either that we must maintain the system to ensure fidelity to the Founders’ concerns, such as federalism, minority rights, or protecting the concerns of small states, or reject it because of the flaws they left us. For the latter group, the tendency is to assume that these flaws reflect the Framers’ purposes – a distrust of the people, and a belief in elite control over democratic institutions. Both sides miss the point. Regardless of anyone’s private motives, like most of the original constitution, the presidential selection process was justified on the basis of popular sovereignty. Their system held out the possibility of popular control, however indirect that control was meant to be. But more importantly, the framers’ original design may well have done those things, but cannot justify today’s system, which is considerably different.

The Framers left us—the people—two tools for changing the rules. The first was constitutional amendment, which they themselves used to modify the system in the early days of the republic. An amendment could jettison the Electoral College and replace it with a direct election. But they also specifically empowered state legislatures to decide most of the details of the system. One proposal, the National Popular Vote, would ensure that the candidate who received the most votes would also receive the electoral votes to win the presidency. It has already been adopted by nine states.

If we the people become convinced that the system we have today does not provide us with control we deserve, then it is our right and duty to change it. Like politicians have over the past two hundred years, we can do so through state laws rather than constitutional amendments. Making those changes would help restore the principles of the Constitution; failing to do so makes a mockery of them.

Thomas Jefferson warned us long ago to avoid treating the Constitution with “sanctimonious reverence,” insisting that “institutions must advance…and keep pace with the time.” At a time when Americans feel increasingly dispossessed from government, failing to ask fundamental questions about how to best strengthen our democracy is no longer a luxury.

Fo what it’s worth, I’d like to see the development of a democracy agenda. Rather than arguing about all the many walls our system (both constitutional and subconstitutional) fails to live up to our ideals, we need to connect the various problems and solutions. And while constitutional change is a worthy goal, there are many things we can do short of that which would improve things tremendously, and make constitutional change more likely. That agenda could include–an end to the unconstitutional filibuster, a universal right to vote, and public funding for campaigns, along with jettisoning the electoral college. And we can do the last one (and for that matter, the first one) in the knowledge that we aren’t killing anything the Framers put in place.

When you come down to it, the word market is a negation. It is a word to be applied to the context of any transaction so long as that transaction is not directly dictated by the state. The word has no content of its own because it is defined simple, and for reasons of politics, by what it is not. The market is nonstate, and thus it can do everything the state can do with none of the procedures or rules or limitations. It is a cosmic and ethereal space, a disembodied decision maker–a Maxwell’s Demon–that, somehow and without effort, balances and reflects the preferences of everyone participating in economic decisions. It is a magic dance hall where Supply meets Demand, flirts and courts; a magic bedroom where the fraternal twins Quantity and Price are conceived. It can be these things precisely because it is nothing.

Because the word lacks any observable, regular, consistent meaning, marvelous powers can be assigned to it.

Melissa Harris Perry has a new piece reflecting on the recently concluded successful Chicago Teachers Union strike. Her point – the battle between “reformers” and “teachers” was harming the school children caught in the middle. (This despite the rather substantial student-centered reforms* teachers were calling for – she adopts a standard conceit of corporate ed reformers that they seek reform while everyone else supports the status quo).

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

The reality is, whether intended or not, when liberals decry conflict, which is standard rhetorical position, they are supporting the position of the powerful. Rahm Emanuel, backed by billionaires (including Donald Trump) is powerful, and the status quo is for him and the other corporate reformers to get their way despite the opposition of teachers, parents, and students without significant resistance. Without resistance, they simply get their way to push their neoliberal reforms.

Those reforms are hurting children, hurting communities, undermining public sector unions, and they don’t work. Children aren’t served by a lack of air conditioning, music and art instruction, or libraries. Children don’t benefit from waiting for textbooks to arrive long after the semester begins. Children don’t benefit from increasing hours spent devoted to high stakes testing and preparing for these tests. Hopefully, we’re beginning to see real organized resistance based on the idea that teachers are valued professionals and that every child deserves the opportunity for a quality public education.

I know many on the left point to the power of conservatives to explain our difficulties. But this, and relateddisputes, suggest our bigger problem is that the left is divided.

I don’t know if Karen Lewis or other key figures from the CTU will get a chance to be heard on MSNBC in the coming days. So I’ll close with Lewis’ words.

I do not understand why people think what we did was special. I do not understand why people think I’m a leader. I am a teacher who hates what’s happening to our children. We cannot go along with harm. Plain and simple. Sometimes I feel like we’re in that bad psych experiment where people give folks electric shocks because they were told to do so. I am embarrassed by all the attention and I would like to go somewhere and be quiet. I didn’t realize my life would be this nuts.

Respectfully, I understand why people know what they did was so special.

Andrew Cohen has an amazing piece in the Atlantic about Terry Williams, the latest horrendous death penalty case that is winding its way towards an execution in Pennsylvania. Despite a lustful desire to kill someone from the state’s machinery of death, the state hasn’t executed anyone who had not given up fighting it since before the Supreme Court temporarily halted the death penalty in 1976.

Williams suffered years of sexual abuse and violence from an early age. Cohen rightly calls it a horrific life.

When he was 17, Terry Williams snapped. On January 26, 1984, when a man named Herbert Hamilton tried to sexually assault him, when the older man plied the teenager with gifts and then tried to rape him, Williams finally fought back. Hamilton stabbed Williams. Williams stabbed back, 20 times the autopsy revealed, until and after Hamilton was dead. Prosecutors portrayed the crime as a homosexual love affair gone wrong. In 1985, a jury convicted Williams of third-degree murder and a judge sentenced him to 10 to 20 years in state prison.

While Williams isn’t on death row today because of the Hamilton case that case is instructive in establishing a pattern of behavior on the part of Williams during that period in his life. A few months after Williams murdered Hamilton, a few months after the young man turned 18, he murdered another sexual predator, another one of the reported child rapists into whose realm he had wandered, another man who he says had violently assaulted him, a man named Amos Norwood, leader of the acolytes at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

Norwood plied Wiliams the same way the others had. The more violent the sexual predator became during his repeated rapes the more money he would give Williams. On June 10, 1984, Norwood took Williams to an unlit parking lot and raped him until he bled. The next day, June 11, 1984, Williams brutally murdered Norwood with a tire iron, the culmination of an attack Williams’ doctor later attributed to his years of abuse. This time, following a brief 1986 trial, a jury convicted Williams of first-degree murder. This time, he was sentenced to death.

That’s background is precisely the sort of thing that is supposed to be taken into account at the penalty phase of a trial, when the question of the death penalty is considered. But it was never even investigated, and the state cut a deal with Williams co-defendent for his testimony that offered an entirely different story of an unprovoked killing (that he’s since recanted.)

It’s not just those of us, like me, that oppose any executions that think this case is a travesty.

This is so despite the fact that the widow of Williams’ victim now believes that his sentence should be commuted to life. It is so despite the fact that eight former judges — federal and state — now believe his trial was unjust. It is so despite the pleas of 28 former prosecutors — federal, state and local — who have gone on the record saying that justice would be served by clemency. It is so despite the fact that five of Williams’ trial jurors have come forward and declared, under oath, that they never would have recommended a death sentence for him had they known of material facts his defense attorneys did not introduce at trial.

Read the whole thing. It’s beautiful and disturbing. But here’s my question. The state wants to kill someone. And yet here they choose an absolutely devastating case, one that demonstrates everything wrong with the system (except a valid innocence claim, which are also fairly common), one that involves a youth victim of sexual assault (after the state’s failure to stop Sandusky), one that is so bad it’s generating opposition from all sorts of people who strongly support the death penalty in the abstract. Wouldn’t they choose a case that show cases the best fact pattern imaginable for the pro-death position? But if you are at all familiar with the death penalty in the United States, you’d know that no such case exists. Support for the death penalty rests on a fantasy of those who grew up in nice homes and are not crazy who go on killing sprees, who hire the best legal team, and on and on. But it is just a fantasy. Pennsylvania knows this, which is why they alone won’t even tell their juries that life without parole is an alternative to the death penalty.

The system as it actually exists cannot be defended. That seems like reason enough to end it.

[Update] Cohen has a follow up piece noting that the state pardons board voted in favor of clemency, 3-2, but state law require a unanimous vote. As he notes, the board members do not offer reasons for their votes, but the prosecutors’ brief opposing it tells much of the story. There’s a great deal to be outraged by, but this is particularly disturbing.

The brief also tells us that some of the same state officials who came late to the Sandusky scandal, reassuring their mortified constituents that they are sensitive to the difficulties in reporting child sex abuse, have cynically turned that argument around in Williams’ case. He didn’t come forward, either, for many years, to report the ways in which he was being raped by older men, including older men in positions of power and trust. And now, say these politicians and bureaucrats, it’s too late for Williams to bring it up; too late even though his life is on the line.

On the negative side, we have two main observations. First, although the discipline as a whole is less fragmented than we had feared (noted earlier), some subfields—and you know who you are—continue to be riven by ideological or methodological conflict. Too often, a paper in one of those fields draws recommendations of “reject,” “minor revision,” and “accept” from three equally esteemed referees. When reviewers diverge so greatly, the editorial team’s judgmental burden increases significantly, compelling editors to discount some expert advice (if possible, without antagonizing reviewers) in order to provide coherent advice to authors. We have no answer to this puzzle, but simply note a pattern accurately described by one co-editor: increasing engagement across sub-disciplines, sustained fratricide within some.

Second, we have become painfully aware of how badly (or how little) some of our colleagues read. Articles are too often cited, by authors and by referees, as making the exact opposite of the argument they actually advanced. Long books are noted, with a wave of the rhetorical hand but without the mundane encumbrance of specific page or even chapter references; and highly relevant literatures, even in leading political science journals, are frequently ignored. We may have fallen victim to an occupational disease of editors, but we have often found ourselves moaning, “Doesn’t anybody read anymore?” It is cold comfort that this sloppiness extends well beyond political science. A recent study has shown that, even in “gold standard” medical research, articles that clearly refute earlier findings are frequently ignored, or even cited subsequently as supporting the conclusion they demolished.

So we advise our successors to maintain, and even expand, vigilance against jargon and murkiness; and we advise authors, referees, and readers generally to further and broaden the conversation, not least by reading seriously what has been, and is being, written.

(This reminds me that I was thinking of writing a post that discussed books that seem as though most people only knew their title, and how they were misrepresented as a result.)

I have two additional thoughts One is that the solution to the problem noted in the first quoted paragraph isn’t very hard. It is that when someone is clear about what they are doing, the important question is how well they do it. This is generally expected of those who come from a more heterodox perspective (like me), but the expectation should be that everyone should. That you prefer a different theoretical or methodological approach is, at times, irrelevant. Part of the problem is that so much of American political science takes so much for granted that it can’t usefully discuss these issues. Only foregrounding them, and discussing them, can allow us to move forward.

The other thing is about the lack of reading. It’s a matter of faith among many orthodox social scientists that the cluster of work that involves case studies, qualitative research, non-positivist methods, etc., does not lead to advances in knowledge because they don’t build on each other. (There are other objections too, but that’s for another day). But the whole conceit of hypothesis testing actually fails to make clear the central role of reading what others have already said. According to Karl Popper, where hypotheses come from is irrelevant. The rhetoric of hypothesis testing suggests that a single test can lead to the rejection of a theory, when in reality it’s difficult to find any theory (in political science at least) that has been rejected because it failed one or even a series of hypothesis tests. Of course a case study is partial, but so is any study. The important question is not whether one study can settle anything on its own (it can’t) but rather what it, along with what is already known, can tell us. The scientific method does not include reading and writing, even though all research begins and ends with these things, and usually involves it along the way. Graduate training organized around statistical techniques obscures this. An approach that more self consciously and explicitly situates our research within the work of others is necessary to solve this problem.

Of course, it’s unlikely the editors would agree with all that.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will have much impact. For years the APSA presidential addresses have included trenchant criticisms of the discipline. But individual beliefs and values do not drives social outcomes, despite what orthodox political science would have you believe.

Harold Meyerson has a substantial and important piece surveying the problems of the union movement, and the problems of a liberalism facing a disappearing union movement, in the Prospect. It’s well timed, given the inspiring Chicago Teachers’ Union strike that happening as I type this. Meyerson notes, as he has in the past, a pessimism among unnamed leaders of in the movement – although it seems clear this includes top people at SEIU (see below)

Coming on the heels of the failure of the Democratic Congress of 2009–2010 to amend the National Labor Relations Act so that private–sector workers wouldn’t risk their jobs by forming a union, the Midwestern setbacks struck a growing number of commentators as labor’s death knell. Losing jobs as technology transformed workplaces, losing both jobs and middle-class wages as globalization transformed the economy, and blocked by statute and employer opposition from expanding—unions, some concluded, were history.

Within the labor movement, a number of leaders and activists quietly shared the same pessimism. They had invested in organizing with little to show for it. They had invested in politics but found that the Democrats they’d helped elect could not—or worse, would not—come to their aid. In 2008, they had seen the entire edifice of deregulated capitalism totter and almost collapse, plunging the nation into its deepest and most intractable recession since the 1930s. But unlike the ’30s, when workers flocked to unions, the current recession has only intensified labor’s downward spiral and business’s ascent. “What would it take for labor to come back?” one senior union staffer asked earlier this year. “This was the crisis we were waiting for, and it didn’t do it.”

But has the investment in organizing been substantive or symbolic? I think it’s been real for some unions, but for the union movement as a whole it hasn’t been the case. In part this is because in a time when union membership has been declining for over a generation, there is declining funds, and these are going towards electing Democrats who have repeatedly failed to bring about labor law reform that (supposedly) justifies these expenditures. As Meyerson notes later:

In 2008, SEIU spent more than $60 million in its campaign for Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. This year, labor is likely to spend about $400 million on the election.

That’s a lot of money–money that isn’t being used to organize. Whether unions should be involved in electoral politics isn’t the issue –it’s the relative magnitude of the resources involved. I simply doubt that most are spending anywhere near as much on organizing as they are on elections. Again, SEIU is instructive.

In an even more radical move away from organizing workers, SEIU last year suspended its unionization drives and instead invested tens of millions of dollars in community–organizing projects in 17 cities. The union hoped to create a massive network of minority voters that could move American politics leftward, but the campaign proved largely unsuccessful.

But there are examples where individual unions have seen increases, both in membership and even more crucially to my mind, in density. Some are discussed in the piece. And there are examples of political strategies that have seen great success as well – Meyerson discusses the role of Miguel Contreras, of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and Madeline Janis of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). The activities of LAANE are particularly important because they have successfully challenged the notion that many corporations are getting returns based simply on “the market”.

Janis’s thesis was that businesses that operate on government-owned or -assisted properties or that have government contracts should repay the city by bettering the lives of the workers they employ and the communities in which they operate. LAANE’s first major victory was persuading the city council to require cleaning companies with which it had contracts to pay their workers a living wage—a sum several dollars higher than California’s minimum wage (or a bit lower than that if they provided their workers with health coverage). Over the years, the scope of such ordinances was broadened to encompass card-check unionization at hotels and sports arenas that received redevelopment funds; local-hiring requirements for developers of major projects; and clean-air standards for trucks at the Port of Los Angeles. Some of these ordinances have served as models for living-wage and other laws in more than 140 other cities. “A bank that makes an investment wants a return for its money, and so does the public,” Janis says. “The returns to the public should include good jobs, child-care centers, cleaner air, affordable housing.”

Ultimately, I’m not as pessimistic as some of Meyerson’s sources are about what’s possible, but I do fear the impact of that view. Labor law change is important (and for many workers who aren’t covered under federal labor law, could be achieved at the state level where that’s possible, even without scrapping the NLRB, one of the options discussed in the piece.) But that doesn’t mean it’s necessary to move forward.

One last point: An idea Meyerson neglects is the idea of making labor organizing a civil right, which it should be noted, could also be done at the state level for those not currently covered by federal labor law. That should definitely be part of this conversation.


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How high’s the water?: The United States Flood Insurance hearings

Flood insurance sounds pretty self-explanatory to the layman. The name says it all: it’s a type of insurance a homeowner may purchase to protect his or her home from future flooding. In some parts of the United States, like Florida and Louisiana and really anywhere near large bodies of water, flood insurance is a must-have but, if a hurricane, or excessive snow strikes a different area, flooding can still become a major problem.And now flood insurance–and more–is in jeopardy.

A hearing held on May 9 by senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and David Vitter (R-La) addressed the issue of a potential end to flood insurance–a very real threat that could occur if the National Flood Insurance Program, a creation of FEMA (the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency), ends without renewal at the end of May as it is currently scheduled to do.

“We’ve been down this road before,” said Senator Tester as reported in Insurance Journal, “and we’ve seen how unproductive and destructive lapses of the program can be. The unprecedented flooding in the Missouri River basin at this time last year further reminds us of the urgency of passing a long-term reauthorization that offers Americans certainty in the face of risk.”

While this hearing was held by the bipartisan members of the Economic Policy Subcommittee of the Banking Committee, it featured a comprehensive panel of experts such as representatives from the Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America, The Nature Conservancy, and the Missoula County floodplain administrator of Tester’s state of Montana.

The National Flood Insurance Program, according to FEMA’s web site, encompasses three components: flood insurance, floodplain management (a community program of corrective and preventative measures for reducing flood damage), and flood hazard mapping. FEMA goes on to explain the program by saying that, “nearly 20,000 communities across the United States and its territories participate in the NFIP by adopting and enforcing floodplain management ordinances to reduce future flood damage. In exchange, the NFIP makes Federally backed flood insurance available to homeowners, renters, and business owners in these communities. Community participation in the NFIP is voluntary.”

But many have their issues with the NFIP for various reasons. Jon A. Jensen, the Governmental Affairs Committee chairman of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, said that the program had accrued $17.2 billion in debt in 2005 and urged modernization of NFIP as well as strengthening its finances. Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America’s David A. Sampson also voiced concern. He noted that FEMA seemingly underprices flood insurance policies by 20 to 50 percent (his information is based on a RAND study) and that it amasses at least $1.3 billion in debt per year.

Because permanent reauthorization of the program is not visible in the near future, May 31 will bring about the end of the National Flood Insurance Program unless an extension is adopted for either a short amount of time or until the end of the 2012 year. This has proved disheartening for flood insurance owners who have seen short term reauthorizations of the NFIP twelve times since September 30, 2008.

No matter what happens with flood insurance, a decision has to be made at some point. And affected homeowners are hoping for a resolution to this stress point sooner rather than later.


Myocardial no-reflow treatment.
No-reflow phenomenon is a consequence of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) which arises most of the time in the setting of myocardial infarction, but can be also the consequence of PCI in stable angina patients (rotatablator ablation technique or angioplasty in saphenous vein grafts). In this review, we summarize two ways of treating the no-reflow according to the current literature. First through the pharmacological approach where several compounds have been assessed like adenosine, nitroprusside, verapamil, nicorandil, dipyridamole, epinephrine or cyclosporine. Second through the mechanical approach where few strategies have been examined like intra-aortic balloon pumping or postconditioning. Finally, we provide an algorithm for treating a no-reflow even though no studies showed a beneficial effect in terms of clinical endpoints.


Who would have thought that this would be so complicated. Or maybe, it was just complicated for me. I thought that I looked everywhere on a step-by-step for installing this, but I finally found it on a forum. Thanks to the beer & chips forum, because I had almost given up on using the rPi for this portion of my project and was going to resort to using windows for the IDE programming of the WeMos D1 clone board.

Anyways, follow these steps (maybe I just held my mouth right and it worked).

The new Arduino IDE will be in the drop down, along with your old Arduino IDE (probably 1.0.5 – which is installed when you type sudo apt-get arduino in a terminal window from the Raspberry). You will notice the difference immediately in the splash screen startup and the window pane header will read, “Arduino 1.6.12”.

Congratulations!

I had to delete the Nokia examples from the sketchbook as the IDE was having difficulties using the “-”. You can change them to “_” and it will work, or just delete that folder. I wasn't going to use those anyways, so I don't think I will miss them.

Any extra libraries that you have downloaded for the 1.0.5 IDE will have to be relocated using the Library Manager in the 1.6.12 IDE (which is relatively painless).

I was also interested in using the WeMos D1 development board for this project since it has the ESP8622 with WiFi native to it. If you are wanting to do this, navigate to File → Preferences and look near the bottom of the window that pops open for “Additional Boards Manager URL:”.

MarkDH102 wrote:Many thanks. I've just installed 1.8.0 using your method and my UNO is working fine.

That's good to know.I'm about to start playing with a Mega 2560 with a CANBUS shield. It will be talking to a PI with CANBUS and it would be great to be able to do all of the development on the PI.
PeterO

Discoverer of the PI2 XENON DEATH FLASH!
Interests: C,Python,PIC,Electronics,Ham Radio (G0DZB),Aeromodelling,1960s British Computers.
"The primary requirement (as we've always seen in your examples) is that the code is readable. " Dougie Lawson

by just using
arduino-nightly-linuxarm.tar.xz
you get the newest, not have to think or check about revisions
and that would be a easy update script.
( i use Downloads... pls change )nano /home/pi/Downloads/arduinoinst.sh

As long as the Arduino installation has the board manager (so ≥ 1.6 or so), it can update drivers/compilers/libraries for any available board. The need to chase after minor versions has pretty much gone away, unless there's a major bug or security issue.

‘Remember the Golden Rule of Selling: “Do not resort to violence.”’ — McGlashan.

If you've extracted file from a tar archive as a regular user, you won't need the privilege escalation of sudo. What you might get, though, are read-only files and folders, which rm -r will choke on. I think that the distribution archives contain git control files, and they're notorious for being read-only. That's why rm -rf works, as it will delete read-only files that belong to you. `sudo rm -r` may delete everything belonging to everyone, so mistakes can remove your entire system

Yes, you can do it manually from the Boards or Libraries menu at any time, and choose whether you want to update particular components or not. After a while, the Arduino UI may prompt you that updates are available, but it's not essential. You don't have to check the Release Notes: it will be more up-to-date than that.

The only advantage I can see of using 1.8.1 over 1.8.0 is the multi-coloured serial plotter. I can't find anything about the nightly builds, but I'm unlikely to ever use those.

‘Remember the Golden Rule of Selling: “Do not resort to violence.”’ — McGlashan.

thanks, i tried but still seehttp://kll.engineering-news.org/kllfusi ... roblem.jpg
followed bytar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
at next untar.
i checked with info rm
but not find something, so question is why it works under sudo to completely erase the directory structure?

scruss wrote:I can't find anything about the nightly builds, but I'm unlikely to ever use those.

yes, this up to date thing is overrated...
but i see it like this: on a new release you will find always errors, so its better to wait some days and load the release with the repairs... >> nightly
while with OS there are incremental updates this zip file thing for programs lacks this feature.

my update philosophy for arduino is
++ when i buy a new board
++ when i start a new project

but in this case here i select the nightly thing because it allows to make a install or update script
what is independent from the version!!!
but like in your code viewtopic.php?p=1093180#p1093180
i need to type the version numbers 4 times..
just a idea from a lazy man.

Last edited by KLL on Tue Jan 31, 2017 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's a nightly build, so you expect problems, and by the looks of things it's already fixed. I think it would be sensible to only report problems here that pertain to full/official releases.

PeterO

Discoverer of the PI2 XENON DEATH FLASH!
Interests: C,Python,PIC,Electronics,Ham Radio (G0DZB),Aeromodelling,1960s British Computers.
"The primary requirement (as we've always seen in your examples) is that the code is readable. " Dougie Lawson

how you know, where you see that? or you mean my work-around? that's not a fix.

Maybe you don't understand the concept of a nightly build, but no one produces actual "fixes" for nightly builds of software, so a workaround or going back to the previous day's working version is as close to a fix as you'll get.
If the developers are on the ball the next nightly build won't have the problem.
Reporting problems with nightly builds here is pointless. No one here is going to fix it !
PeterO

Discoverer of the PI2 XENON DEATH FLASH!
Interests: C,Python,PIC,Electronics,Ham Radio (G0DZB),Aeromodelling,1960s British Computers.
"The primary requirement (as we've always seen in your examples) is that the code is readable. " Dougie Lawson


It was a great decade for television. It's as simple as that. There was a renaissance of dramas, and enough brilliant comedies were around to balance out the fallow years of that genre. Best series of the decade would be impossible to hold to 10. After a lengthy and laborious (and fun and difficult) period of winnowing the decade, I came up with 25 series. The Top 10 follow. A discussion of Nos. 11 through 25 can be found on my blog at SFGate.com and TheBastardMachine.com. (A list of those titles, sans commentary, can also be found at the end of this column.)

1. "The Wire," HBO. Ostensibly a cop series with a story to tell about the drug war in America's inner city (Baltimore, in this case), "The Wire" over five seasons was really an insanely ambitious, intimately detailed historical document about institutional failure on all levels - cops, criminals, courts, politics, schools and newspapers. Dense, novelistic, painful, funny, real and transformative all at once. "The Wire" is the best television series ever made. Period.

2. "The Sopranos," HBO. You can make an argument that "The Sopranos" is the most important television series ever. It made great television a mandatory requirement for any cable channel seeking an audience. It cemented HBO as a must-have pay channel. It fueled the creative renaissance of all dramas - cable and network. And it cleverly fooled people into thinking that they were watching a violent story about the mob when they were really watching a married couple come undone as they dealt with each other and their extended families. A neat trick, that. The writing, acting and directing set a standard still trying to be matched everywhere on the small screen.

3. "Mad Men," AMC. The best series still in production (followed closely by AMC stablemate "Breaking Bad"), this drama about the existential angst of an early 1960s ad man, Don Draper, has exemplary writing and acting that is intimate, reflective, funny and shaded, and it boasts the most memorable premise and look in ages. It carries the torch of greatness into the next decade.

4. "Deadwood," HBO. The classic Western turned foulmouthed, violent version of Shakespeare in the mud, "Deadwood" showcased the reason that television is a writer's medium while film belongs to directors. David Milch's ferociously original take on a well-worn genre was rooted in the raucous and hypnotic acting performance of Ian McShane, who made every word uttered sound like coarsely brilliant poetry. McShane's magnetic personality turned Al Swearengen into one of television's most memorable characters. "Deadwood" will also be remembered as the biggest blunder in HBO history, as Milch and executives agreed to end "Deadwood" prematurely after three seasons. Two promised follow-up movies never materialized.

5. "The Shield," FX. After the networks did cop series as well as could be done with "Hill Street Blues," "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "NYPD Blue," cable stepped up and changed the game. This series was morally conflicted as the protagonist detective, Vic Mackey, played to perfection by Michael Chiklis, was a killer, thief and rule-breaker as well as a public guardian and seeker of justice. Swaggering, thrilling, filled with angst and bravado and pain and righteousness, "The Shield" was a series you couldn't look away from as it crashed through boundaries.

6. "The Office," British version, BBC America. Ricky Gervais created this superb, scathing series that later spun off a very good American import version. But the original is where all the genius was born, where Gervais as cocksure, befuddled and annoying middle manager David Brent created a character that simply can't be forgotten. The faux documentary device is now overused, but it fueled the cringe-worthy humor of this series in an original, inspired way.

7. "Slings and Arrows," Sundance Channel. Three smart, funny, subtle and emotionally rewarding seasons made this Canadian series one of those rare finds worth seeking out. Set at a troubled Shakespearean theater company, the literate and witty story lines revolved around not only the performers and their backstage antics and offstage personalities but also the overwhelming transformative power of the Bard himself, played by people who really felt the words. A gem.

8. "Arrested Development," Fox. Comedy is far more subjective than drama, so the debate on what merits attention on these lists (and, in fact, what is actually funny or not) will rage on. "Arrested Development" was hilarious on so many levels. The writing was smart and funny; there were visual jokes, slapstick, absurdity and physical humor. The jokes were often four deep, which makes the series particularly cherished on repeated viewings. A fantastic cast and acerbic writers made it all happen.

9. "The West Wing," NBC. We'll probably not see another political series for ages - certainly not one this good. Aaron Sorkin not only made people believe in the power of the people and the presidency again, but he also made an intellectually stimulating, fast-paced series about politics when everyone in the business said it couldn't be done. Plus, it was a hit. It had some weak years, but when it was at its finest, "The West Wing" was moving and aspirational.

10. "Breaking Bad," AMC. One of only a few "young" series that made the cut, "Breaking Bad" is a series that has achieved greatness as fast as any of the most critically acclaimed, respected dramas on this list. When a high school chemistry teacher turns 50 and is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he turns to making (and selling) methamphetamine to help his financially struggling family. Wonderfully original, daring and poignant.

The rest of the best series of the decade list: 11. "Lost," ABC. 12. "Battlestar Galactica," Syfy. 13. "Freaks and Geeks," NBC. 14. "Six Feet Under," HBO. 15. "The Daily Show," Comedy Central. 16. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," WB, UPN. 17. "30 Rock," NBC. 18. "Sex and the City," HBO. 19. "King of the Hill," Fox. 20. "Extras," HBO. 21. "Curb Your Enthusiasm," HBO. 22. "Dexter," Showtime. 23. "The Office," NBC. 24. "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," FX. 25. "South Park," Comedy Central.


Fish in
the
News.
Each
week the
Bailey
Brothers
start
the Pet
Fish
Talk
Show
with
some fun
and
interesting
stories
about
fish in
the
news.

In Detroit, Michigan,
tattooed fish, like this Parrot Fish, showing
"I ♥ U", went on sale for Valentine's Day.

In Newport, Kentucky, this rare male Shark Ray was recently acquired by the Newport Aquarium.

In
Detroit,
Michigan,
Tattooed
Fish for
Valentine's
Day?

Pet shops are cashing in on the latest Valentine's Day craze -- exotic fish tattooed with pink lips and "I ♥ U." The fish are imported from Asia, where they are tattooed with an injection or a laser, leaving a permanent marking. At least seven pet shops in metro Detroit began selling the fish about two weeks ago for $39 to $50. Three have sold out. Animal activists decry the tattoos as cruel, and some pet shops are refusing to stock the fish for ethical reasons. "It's neat, but I'm opposed to it because it stresses the fish," said Junjun Cabral of Best Pets in Madison Heights, which won't stock the fish. Click here to read the entire story. Debbie G. set us an email with a link. Click here to see the video with tattooed pet fish. Thanks, Debbie.

In Bonn,
Germany,
at the
University
of Bonn
Inbreeding
helps
some
African
Cichlids

Inbreeding often conjures visions of mutant offspring, but scientists now find it can have its upside in the wild. Animals in the wild often avoid close kin as mates, as inbreeding causes harmful genes that might otherwise recede into the background to manifest in progeny more often. While animal breeders often practice inbreeding to cultivate desirable traits, they must then cull unfit offspring. However, recent theoretical predictions suggest that, at times, the benefits of inbreeding might outweigh the costs. Now evolutionary biologist Timo Thünken at the University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues have discovered real-life evidence in support of these predictions. Click here to read more.

In Newport,
Kentucky,
Shark
Ray gets a
Valentine.

Chalk up
another
first
for the
Newport
Aquarium.
It has
acquired
a rare
male
shark
ray (see
picture
above) as a
companion
for the
female
Sweet
Pea, the
first
shark
ray
exhibited
in the
Americas.
Newport
is the
only
aquarium
in the
Western
Hemisphere
with a
breeding
pair,
and one
of only
two in
this
country
to
exhibit
shark
rays
(the
Long
Beach,
Calif.,
Aquarium
is the
other).
The
happy
couple
will
meet for
the
first
time on
Valentine's
Day,
when the
aquarium
launches
the
world's
first
shark
ray
breeding
program.
Click
here
to read
more.

In
Baltimore,
Maryland,
at John
Hopkins
University
Electric
Fish
Shed
Light on
how the
Brain
Works.

Scientists
have
long
struggled
to
figure
out how
the
brain
guides
the
complex
movement
of our
limbs,
from the
graceful
leaps of
ballerinas
to the
simple
everyday
act of
picking
up a cup
of
coffee.
Using
tools
from
robotics
and
neuroscience,
two
Johns
Hopkins
University
researchers
have
found
some
tantalizing
clues in
an
unlikely
mode of
motion:
the
undulations
of
tropical
fish.
Click
here
to read
more.

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