Author: mopress

Excerpt from a press release issued by a coalition of “individual property owners, their legal representatives along with Native American and border community leaders” announcing a Jan. 7 telephonic media conference “to announce their intent to fight the Department of Homeland Security’s threatened seizure of their property along the United States-Mexico border.” The press release was forwarded to TCRR by Jay J. Johnson Castro, Sr.

“Our lands are not for sale. The U.S. government must stop its illegal attempts to intimidate us. The Department of Homeland Security cannot take away our homes and neighborhoods for border militarization,” declared Eloisa Tamez, a member of the Lipan Apache people and Basque-Ibero descendents living in the Lower Rio Grande region.

Mrs. Tamez is part of a coalition of Indigenous peoples and border community groups that are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to stop confiscating their private property and lands along the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS plans to use this property to build a border wall on it.

Mrs. Tamez and other owners whose properties abut the border are threatened by federal agents’ unwelcomed entry at any time into their properties and homes and the increased militarization of their neighborhoods. They are calling on DHS to stop its intimidation tactics and respect their property and human rights.

Last month, DHS Secretary Chertoff stated DHS’s intent to seize privately-held property in south Texas if property owners fail to cooperate with government efforts to erect the border wall, approved by Congress last year as part of a strategy to eliminate unauthorized migration and drug trafficking.

DHS presented waivers requesting that the landowners grant DHS personnel access to their property for a twelve-month period in order to conduct surveys for the intended construction project.

The property owners were informed that if they do not voluntarily allow the federal agents on their property, the U.S. government will file a law suit so that DHS authorities can have unimpeded access to private land, despite the owners’ opposition. DHS has stated that it will seize property even without the consent of landowners if necessary to complete the construction of the border fence.

Many landowners, as well as civic leaders and human rights activists, oppose the U.S. government’s plans to allow federal law enforcement agents access to private property. The government’s demands and aggressive tactics are in conflict with settled rights of private property ownership and are particularly disconcerting to the Indigenous peoples’ communities impacted by this undertaking.

The Texas communities along the international boundary zone are largely made up of Native Americans and of land grant heirs who have resided on inherited properties for hundreds of years. DHS plans to complete the Texas portions of the fence before the end of the 2008 calendar year. DHS has already built walls along much of the California and Arizona international boundary zone with Mexico despite opposition from the government of Mexico.

In Arizona, the wall cuts through Native American ceremonial crossing areas as well as through a national wildlife park. Indigenous communities are calling on the U.S. government to stop this land grab and respect the rights of migrants, Americans and indigenous peoples at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Contacts for the press release are:

Peter Schey, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law

Margo Tamez, Hleh Pai Dne (Lipan Apache) and Jumano Apache

Arnoldo García, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Scheduled speakers for the teleconference include:

Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, Texas Historical Commission, Redford, TX

Gabriel Carrasco, Chief of the Jumano Apache, Redford/El Paso, TX

José Matus, Yaqui, director of Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, Tucson, AZ

Rosie Molano Blount, Chiricahua Apache, Del Río, TX

Michael Paul Hill, San Carlos Apache, AZ

Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O’odham, AZ, founder of O’odham Voice Against the Wall

Eloisa Tamez, Hleh Pai Nde, TX (Lipan Apache-Basque-Ibero)

Margo Tamez, Hleh Pai Nde, TX; (Lipan Apache-Jumano Apache) Moderator

Excerpt from petition to End the Genocide on Women of Iraq:

Since the 2003 occupation of Iraq, these cities were open land to “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice- PVPV” Islamist militant squads, gangs and individuals.

These groups have increased over the few years to positions of governmental officials, institutions, militias, self-appointed vigilantes and hired guns.

They guard the university gateways from “evil” unveiled women. They crack down on mixed gatherings of students. They also detain disobedient students in assigned detainment and torture rooms.

When a woman is killed, the only given justification is that she was promiscuous or adulterous. While in fact, the top of the female death toll list is occupied by PhD holders, professionals, activists, regular office workers, and then prostitutes.

This PVPV campaign terrorizes the female population so as to restrain women into the domestic domain and end all female participation from the social and political scene.

On behalf of Iraqi women, the OWFI demands that the officials establish and train “Protection of Women – PW” squads to roam the southern cities streets 24/7. These squads need to receive gender sensitive training and to prioritize women’s lives over barbarian values, whether tribal or religiously fundamentalist.

The occupation troops’ existence in the city of Basra offered no help or support to women. Therefore, this issue should not be used as a pretext to prolong the stay of occupation troops.

View the complete petition…

Read about Yanar Mohammed’s visit to Texas.

DENTON — Two openly gay Democrats have filed to run for state office in conservative districts represented by incumbent Republicans.

John McClelland is running for the District 64 seat in the Texas House of Representatives, and Edra Bogle is running for the District 14 seat on the state Board of Education.

Get the complete story at the Dallas Voice:

Preliminary findings indicate a strong relationship between credit scores and claims

experience. Poor credit scores are associated with increased claims activity. Furthermore, the study

found that Black, Hispanic, young, and low-to-moderate income policyholders tend to have worse credit

scores than White, Asian, older, and high income policyholders. [Texas Department of Insurance: Credit Scoring Study (Dec. 30, 2004)]

Excerpts below under Read More.

Race & Ethnicity

The

Legislature directed the Department to address whether the use of credit
information has “any

disproportionate impact on any class of individuals, including
classes based on income, race or

ethnicity.” As described in detail below, the
Department has determined that in the individual

policyholder data, there are consistent patterns reflecting differences in credit scores, most notably,

between different
racial/ethnic classes. Other classes also present patterns, as discussed below

(pp. 10-11.)

For each data set, the Department compared the average and median credit

scores by
race and found a consistent pattern across all models. Whites and Asians, as a

group,
tend to have better credit scores than Blacks and Hispanics. In general, Blacks have

an
average credit score that is roughly 10% to 35% worse than the credit scores for
Whites.

Hispanics have an average credit score that is roughly 5% to 25% worse than
those for Whites. Asians

have average credit scores that are about the same or slightly
worse than those for Whites (p.

13).

Chart 4 shows that Blacks and Hispanics make up an increasing percentage of

the
individuals in a given credit score range as the credit scores get worse while Whites
make up

an increasing percentage of the individuals in a given credit score range as the
credit scores get

better. For example, the bar with the best credit scores (+40 to +45%)
shows that Whites make up

about 90% of the drivers. In the far left bar with the worst
credit scores (-25% and less), Whites

make up about 35% of the drivers. On the other
hand, Blacks make up about 2% of the policies in the

best credit score range and about
33% in the worst credit score range. In a pattern similar to

Blacks, Hispanics make up
about 5% of the drivers in the best credit score range and 28% of the

drivers in the
worst credit score range (p. 14).

Credit Score &

Risk

For personal auto insurance, the relationship between pure premium and

credit score
was examined. Chart 7 is characteristic of the data sets analyzed. It shows that

as
credit scores improve, the pure premium or average loss per vehicle decreases.
Conversely, as

the credit scores worsen, the average loss per vehicle increases (p. 18).

For homeowners

insurance, the data did not readily lend itself to a pure premium
approach given the wide range of

differences in insured values. Therefore, the
relationship between loss ratio and credit score was

examined. In this analysis, the loss
ratio was calculated using the premiums adjusted to the level

they would have been
prior to the use of credit scores. Chart 8 shows the average adjusted loss

ratio for each
decile of credit scores. (Charts for all available data sets can be found in the

Appendix.)
Like the personal auto data analysis, the homeowners data shows that as the

credit
scores improve the loss ratios improve (p. 19).

Frequency Not

Severity

The Department also looked at claim frequency7 and claim severity8. The

data shows
that credit score has a stronger relationship to frequency than severity. That is, as

the
credit scores improve, the frequency decreases, i.e. people have fewer accidents or
claims.

Severity may decrease as well, but not at the same rate as the frequency. For
some data sets,

severity is nearly flat (p. 20).

More Study

Scheduled

Charts 7 through 10 are based on univariate analysis; they consider

the relationship
between claims experience and a single variable (credit score). In reality there

are many
other variables that impact claim costs, including type of vehicle, ZIP code and age

of
driver. Further, many of these variables are plausibly related to credit score directly
(e.g.,

age of driver) or indirectly via another variable (e.g., high traffic congestion via
territory). For

example, high claims experience for younger drivers may reasonably be
explained by fewer years of

driving experience rather than their low credit scores.
Similarly, as an example of an indirect

relationship, high claims experience in certain
areas of the state may reasonably be explained by

factors such as high traffic
congestion and crime rates rather than low credit scores. Thus, the

issue is not whether
credit scoring is related to claims experience, but rather, whether credit

scoring provides
additional information, over and above traditional or existing rating variables,

which can
enable an insurer to more accurately predict losses. Additionally, it should be

ascertained whether the impact of credit scoring (both positive and negative) is
lessened due to

other explanatory variables.
To answer these questions, it is necessary to augment the univariate

analysis
discussed above by incorporating a multitude of other variables known to impact

claims.

The Department is in the process of conducting such a multivariate analysis using

the
individual policyholder data and will report its results by January 31, 2005 (pp. 22-

23).