Advocacy Group

WASHINGTON -- People for the American Way named Ralph G. Neas, a civil rights activist and former Democratic candidate for Congress from Maryland, as its new president yesterday.Neas, 53, will start his job Jan. 3 at the organization, a liberal advocacy group that pushed hard last year against the impeachment of President Clinton.Neas, a former executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, ran unsuccessfully last year against Rep. Constance A. Morella, a Montgomery County Republican.

Customers shopping for the lowest airfares have grown accustomed to good deals if they buy well in advance and lock in specific flights, while paying extravagant prices to fly at the last minute with freedom to change plans. Now a consumer-advocacy organization says a test it conducted shows that airline pricing is much more complicated than this, so complicated that even savvy consumers cannot be sure they are getting the best deal, or even a good deal, unless they spend an inordinate amount of time shopping.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke will visit Havana next week as part of a U.S. contingent on a fact-finding mission.Schmoke will travel as a guest of the Center for International Policy, a Washington advocacy group pushing to end the U.S. embargo with Cuba.Schmoke will join former Maryland Rep. Michael Barnes, a center director. Also on the trip will be the Rev. Leo J. O'Donovan, Georgetown University president, and Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan, retiring head of the U.S. Atlantic Command. The group will leave Tuesday and return March 14.The men will review Havana's urban planning policies, study the impact of Pope John Paul II's recent Cuba visit and review calls for the United States to provide more humanitarian aid in the form of food and medicine to the country, center officials said.

Releasing its own survey of doctors who work for the Food and Drug Administration, an advocacy group accused the agency yesterday of lowering its standards for safety and efficacy, working too hastily and approving drugs that should never have been allowed on the market.The report drew a scathing rebuttal from the drug industry, an oblique defense from the agency and criticism from representatives of chronically ill people who advocate swifter drug approval.But some scientists said the report raised significant concerns.

Maryland's second highest court ruled yesterday that Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital must open its patient records to a legal advocacy group investigating the hospital's treatment of patients.Reversing Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan, the Court of Special Appeals said the Maryland Disability Law Center (MDLC) is entitled to records of Mount Washington patients without first securing a court order.Judge Kaplan had ruled that MDLC was required to convince a judge of probable cause of abuse or neglect before it could have FTC the records of patients who are not MDLC clients.

Unusually cold weather has put an early strain on homeless shelters in the Baltimore area as many are watching their beds quickly fill to capacity while others already are forced to turn away those in need.Faced with a November and December among the coldest in the past three decades, shelters started feeling pinched before Thanksgiving, much earlier than expected.Booth House, a Salvation Army shelter in Baltimore, was full last night, and workers said they have turned away a handful of people each night this month.

Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse, the advocacy group that has been working diligently to get comprehensive gun-control legislation passed in Maryland, wants to create a youth group to take its message into schools and communities.Members of the Baltimore-based group say that their anti-violence efforts won't succeed if they don't persuade youngsters to join their ranks."We can do all we want with legislation, but legislation doesn't change people's attitudes," said Richard Willis, executive director of MAHA.

Baltimore has been put on notice that an advocacy group is threatening to ask a federal judge to take control of special-education programs from the city schools.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said last night that such a move would be tantamount to a judicial takeover of all the schools because special-education students are intermingled with others throughout the system.The potential request to put the schools in receivership is the latest action in an 11-year-old lawsuit filed against the school system alleging that it failed to comply with federal laws governing the education of children with disabilities.

Bashing ArabsAs all Americans look to their families, friends, churches, synagogues and souls for comfort from the Oklahoma City tragedy, we face as a nation another kind of silent and threatening tragedy -- a rampant, hateful and dangerous bigotry toward the Arab people.I met a man today who actually spoke the words I am sure too many Americans feel. He said ". . . and it was a Caucasian American responsible for this -- somehow I wish it had been an Arab" (mispronounced as that word often is when used in a derogatory or ignorant manner)

WASHINGTON -- After a three-month winning streak, the House Republican "Contract with America" is likely to suffer a stinging defeat tomorrow with the expected failure of a constitutional amendment limiting congressional terms.Advocates of term limits -- highly popular with voters -- are still hoping that last-minute pressure will help them avoid what would be the first loss in the House for any of the 10 major elements of the contract -- and a particularly embarrassing one."This is the only vote on an issue of self-interest in the contract," said Rep. Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican.

On the day the highly anticipated comedy Tropic Thunder opened nationwide, Matthew Plantz showed up at a Howard County theater, but he wasn't lined up to buy a ticket. The 26-year-old president of an advocacy group for people with disabilities came out to urge moviegoers to boycott the film that he called "demeaning." "We've worked so hard the past couple of decades," said Plantz, who heads the group called People Power. "This movie kind of turns back the clock." Plantz was among a handful of people stationed on the parking lot at United Artists Snowden Square Stadium 14 theaters in Columbia yesterday morning to protest the opening of the DreamWorks film.

A number of cribs and changing tables commonly sold at retail outlets contain unhealthy levels of formaldehyde, a consumer advocacy group reported yesterday. A lab tested the furniture in sealed chambers and found formaldehyde levels in four changing tables and two cribs in excess of air quality standards set by California this year, according to Johanna Neumann, director of the Maryland Public Interest Research Group. Six of 21 cribs and other nursery products gave off formaldehyde at levels that increase the risk of asthma and respiratory problems, the group reported.

As friends tell it, E.J. Pipkin was like a relentless force when he exploded onto the political scene in 1999. Democrats across the state had quietly given their support to an effort to dump silt dredged from shipping channels at a site off Kent Island, and Pipkin, a former Wall Street bond trader, would have none of it. He bankrolled an advocacy group and was known to stay up all night long reading dense impact reports from the U.S. Army Corps of...

HYATTSVILLE -- When Tom Bacote and his five volunteers walked into Ebony Barbers to talk with the clientele yesterday, their message was simple: Be sure to vote on Tuesday. That all the customers and 12 of the 13 barbers - all African-Americans - were supporters of Barack Obama was beside the point. Bacote's get-out-the-vote effort in Prince George's County, underwritten by a San Francisco-based advocacy group called PowerPAC, is part of an eight-state campaign to increase voter turnout in African-American communities for the presidential primaries.

Otis Rolley III, who has served as Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's chief of staff since January, resigned from his powerful position and will help launch a nonprofit advocacy group focused on regional transportation, city officials said yesterday. Long considered a rising star in city government, Rolley submitted his resignation last week, according to a Dixon spokesman. His departure, which came as a surprise to many, represents one of the first major shakeups in the administration since Dixon won the primary election last month.

A key provision of a Senate compromise for sweeping immigration reform would pit educated workers and foreigners with wealth against those with fewer skills, advocates for immigrants warned yesterday. The plan would replace a backlogged system in which employers and family members sponsor immigrants with a complex merit system, giving preference to advanced-degree holders and proficient English speakers. "For so long, the far right has been saying that they are upset that there are people who are trying to come here legally and have to wait so long," said Kim Propeack, director of advocacy and organizing at immigrant advocacy group CASA of Maryland.

Reacting to the rising number of foreclosures in the Baltimore metropolitan area, a nonprofit group is working with Bank of America and Citigroup to offer financial help to homeowners who have fallen behind on mortgage payments. A study by the Reinvestment Fund shows that subprime lenders issued about half of the mortgages in Baltimore in recent years. Home buyers with bad credit records received the loans, which came with unusually high interest rates. The wave of subprime loans helped to fuel a housing boom, but many recipients are in danger of losing their homes because they cannot pay the mortgages.

New research from a Chicago advocacy group estimates that 14 million immigrants could become new voters by the 2008 election, representing a crucial voting group in tight races around the country. The figures, released in a report yesterday by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, illustrate an untapped electoral power at a time when Congress is engaged in a bruising battle over immigration policy, said advocates. Maryland, with an estimated 195,000 potential voters, is one of 17 states whose immigrant populations could swing tight races, the study says.

Advocacy group endorses Duncan A statewide advocacy group for working families announced yesterday that it has endorsed Douglas M. Duncan for governor. The leadership of Progressive Maryland, which represents 20,000 members, voted Tuesday night and said the three-term Montgomery County executive impressed them with his policies on public education and affordable housing. Duncan and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley are seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in the Sept. 12 primary.

Saying their clients were duped by unscrupulous employers, an immigrant advocacy group filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against a Howard County contracting company, saying it refused to pay 35 Maryland laborers hired for cleanup projects along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, contends that the Mount Airy firm MFC General Contractors Inc. refused to pay its workers the $10 an hour it promised them and offered no overtime pay. The owners of the company denied the accusation yesterday, saying delays in worker payments resulted from problems with the firm that hired them to do the work.