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Afghanistan Could Get 30,000 New US Troops
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:48 a.m. ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The top U.S. military officer says that up to 30,000 new American troops could be sent to Afghanistan next year.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says between 20,000 and 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan by summer.
U.S. commanders have long requested an additional 20,000 troops to bolster the 31,000 American forces already in the country. But the high end of Mullen's range -- 30,000 additional forces -- is the largest number any top U.S. military official has given publicly.
December 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/20/world/AP-AS-Afghanistan.html
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Stop the siege and blockade of Gaza!
Send a letter to Bush and Congress: End U.S. Aid to Israel!
The humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people in Gaza has reached an especially grave level. The deprivation of food and water is the deliberate purpose of the U.S.-backed Israeli government's decision to close border crossings into Gaza.
All crossings for goods coming into the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, are closed. The Palestinians are completed blockaded. A United Nations report issued today states that the blockade and siege of Gaza, which began 18 months ago after the democratic election of the Hamas government, has now resulted in a 49% unemployment rate for the citizens of Gaza. Gaza City residents are without electricity for up to 16 hours a day and half the city's residents receive water only once a week for a few hours. The UN report added that 80% of Palestinians living in Gaza are obliged to drink polluted water.
The United National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to suspend food distribution for both emergency and regular programs. The Agency has run out of flour and has now suspended food deliveries to 750,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli Occupation Forces have escalated their military attacks on the people in Gaza. Civilians have been killed and Palestinian houses and other civilian premises have been targeted for destruction. This is a deliberate policy to starve and strangle a whole people by depriving them of food, water, fuel and medical supplies.
The U.S. government is bankrolling the Israeli government and its criminal actions. Israel receives $15 million dollars a day and is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world. The U.S. Military Industrial Complex and the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic parties support Israel because they view the Israeli government as a extension of U.S. power in the Middle East. The Palestinian people deserve the support and solidarity of people around the world. They deserve our support not only in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but in their struggle for self-determination including the right to return to their homes from which they were evicted by the forces of colonial occupation.
Join with people around the country and around the world who are demanding an end to U.S. aid to Israel. This is an urgent situation and we must all act now. You can send a letter with our easy click and send system demanding an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Without U.S. aid, the Israeli siege and blockade of Gaza could not be continued. Click this link now to send a letter to the State Department and elected officials in Congress.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=233
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U.S. resisters' solidarity with Israeli "shministim" refusers
Courage to Resist
Statement signed by over two dozen U.S. military war resisters. Reprinted by AlterNet, Democracy Now, The Progressive, Common Dreams, Indymedia, and Daily Kos.
We are U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who have refused or are currently refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We stand in solidarity with the Israeli Shministim (Hebrew for "12th graders") who are also resisting military service. About 100 Israeli high school students have signed an open letter declaring their refusal to serve in the Israeli army and their opposition to "Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories and the territories of Israel." In Israel, military service is mandatory for all graduating high school seniors, and resisters face the possibility of years in prison.
Read more at:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY
To Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of The Cuban Revolution And For Hurricane Relief For Cuba
And: Important Update On The Cuban Five's Struggle For Freedom
Featuring Renowned Dj Carlito Rovira
Wednesday, December 31, 9 pm to 1 am
Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St., San Francisco
For 50 years Cuba's revolution has provided for its people, and at the
same time, extended international solidarity the world over with
doctors, teachers and so much more. Cuba needs our solidarity today!
More than 500,000 homes have been damaged, 65,000 destroyed, crops wiped out from three hurricanes this year.
Come celebrate Cuba's Revolution, bring a generous donation, and have fun!
Sponsored by ANSWER Coalition, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Compañeros del Barrio, the FMLN-SF.
Requested donation at the door: $10 to $20.
Refreshments provided.
For information: 415-821-6545
Download the flyer: http://www.freethefive.org/calendar/NewYearsSF2008.pdf
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For a United Antiwar Movement
Dear all,
At its recent National Assembly, United for Peace and Justice voted not to endorse the March 21 March on the Pentagon. Conference delegates had to choose between the March 21 action already planned and endorsed by hundreds of organizations across the country and their own, April 4, March on Wall Street. They could not vote to support both.
We feel it is important for the movement to support both actions! And we especially feel that we can not let another year of "Shock and Awe" go by without demonstrating massively on March 21, and standing solidly behind the demands:
--End the Wars on Iraq and Afghanistan Now!
--Bring all U.S. Troops and Contractors Home NOW!
--End All U.S. Aid to Israel Now!
--End All U.S. Intervention Worldwide!
--Fund Peoples' Needs Not Militarism and Bank Bailouts!
--End the war threats and economic sanctions against Iran!
--End the illegal U.S. program of detention and torture!
We feel the connection between the financial crisis and the tremendous costs of maintaining the U.S. war budget--larger than all the world's war budgets put together--has never been clearer! And our opposition to it should be massive, peaceful, independently and democratically organized and, most importantly, united in solidarity!
All Out March 21 and April 4! Money for human needs not for endless war. Together we do have the power!
In solidarity,
Bay Area United Against War
bauaw.org
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March on the Pentagon! March 21, 2009
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations is joining with other coalitions, organizations, and networks in a united MARCH 21 NATIONAL COALITION to organize the broadest mobilization of people across the United States to take part in a March on the Pentagon on the sixth year of the military invasion and occupation of the Iraq War: Saturday, March 21.
Demonstrations will also be held on that date in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities across the U.S.
These actions will remind the nation that all U.S. military forces must be brought home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the U.S. antiwar movement - marching behind a banner demanding "Out Now!' - will intensify its struggle to make it happen.
The actions are needed to assure the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries threatened by Washington's expansionist policies that tens of millions of people in this country support their right to settle their own destinies without U.S. interventions, occupations and murderous wars. International law recognizes - and we demand - that the U.S. respect the right to self-determination. We reject any notion that the U.S. is the world's self-appointed cop.
The March 21 united mass actions are also needed at this time of economic meltdown to demand jobs for all; a moratorium on foreclosures; rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure; guaranteed, quality health care for all; an end to the ICE raids and deportations; and funding for sorely needed social programs. So long as trillions of dollars continue to be spent on wars, occupations, and bailouts to the banks and corporate elite, the domestic needs of the people of the U.S. can never be met.
The So-called Status of Forces Agreement
As for Iraq, the so-called "Status of Forces Agreement" offers proof positive that far from ending the U.S. occupation, the plan is to extend it indefinitely. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops and mercenary soldiers will be maintained to carry out a number of stated missions, but in reality their aim is to carry out the one mission that is not stated: Ensure the U.S. subjugation of Iraq to exploit its oil resources and dominate the Middle East.
Any doubt about Washington's intentions should be dispelled by the statement by Gen. Raymond Odierno who said on December 13, 2008 that U.S. forces would remain indefinitely in dozens of bases in Iraq cities, despite the language in the Status of Forces Agreement that appears to require a withdrawal from urban areas by next summer. (Wall Street Journal 12/15/08)
As for Afghanistan, it is not the "good war" claimed by the Obama administration and the power structure, which plans to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country by 20,000. Afghanistan will prove to be another U.S. Vietnam. The Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan resulted in a million Afghanis being killed, along with 15,000 Soviet troops. The U.S. war will only result in a continuation of the slaughter that has been the hallmark of all previous occupations by foreign powers.
The daily U.S. bombing and killing of Afghanis attending weddings, classes, funerals, or simply trying to survive shows how cruel and deadly this war is. It is directed against the same forces that the U.S. armed, financed, and helped bring to power.
Why is the U.S. at war against Afghanistan? To gain control of a pipeline across that country. (See the 1998 statement submitted to Congress by the Union Oil Company of California, which later merged with Chevron, stressing the need to build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan. And note Dick Cheney's 1998 statement made when he was chief executive of a major oil services company: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian," which led the Guardian newspaper to remark "But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route that would make both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.")
The March 21 demonstration will also highlight the dangers of expanding Washington's two wars to Iran and Pakistan. It will also condemn U.S. support for the continued occupation of Palestine.
The National Assembly
From its inception, the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations has called for united antiwar demonstrations this spring. We urge the entire movement to unite now around March 21. We will do everything possible to make this unity a reality.
Think of the civil rights, union, anti-Vietnam War, women's liberation and gay rights movements. They would not have achieved victories without having built truly massive movements that were able to organize repeated and powerful independent mobilizations in the streets.
Why the demonstration in Washington? Because it is the seat of power, where foreign and domestic policies are decided, where money for war is allocated, and bailouts of the banking industry and corporate rich are given away.
Join us in mobilizing the largest possible outpouring of antiwar opposition built by a united movement on March 21. Let's march and continue to march until all U.S. forces come home, U.S. bases are dismantled, and the sovereign people of the world have the right to control their own resources and determine their own futures.
To endorse the March 21 March on the Pentagon, please click here.
http://natassembly.org/Continuation.html#March21
To send a contribution to support the National Assembly's work, please click here.
http://natassembly.org/donate.html
For more information, please visit the National Assembly's website at www.natassembly.org or write natassembly@aol.com or call 216-736-4704.
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MARCH 21 NATIONAL COALITION FOR A MARCH ON THE PENTAGON
ON THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR
SATURDAY, MARCH 21, DC, SF, LA AND SEATTLE
The ANSWER Coalition is joining with other coalitions, organizations, and networks in a March 21 National Coalition to bring people from all walks of life and from all cities across the United States to take part in a March on the Pentagon on the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war: Saturday, March 21.
The Iraqi journalist Muntather Al-Zaidi spoke for millions of Iraqis and outraged people everywhere when he threw his shoes at George Bush during Bush's publicity stunt "victory lap" in Baghdad yesterday. As he threw his shoes, Muntather said, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!"
Tragically, the criminal occupation of Iraq will not be over even by the sixth anniversary of the start of the war in March 2009. People around the world will be marching together on the sixth anniversary in the strongest possible solidarity with the people of Iraq demanding an end to the occupation of their country.
Marking the sixth anniversary of the criminal invasion of Iraq, on March 21, 2009, thousands will March on the Pentagon to say, "Bring the Troops Home NOW!" We will also demand "End Colonial Occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Everywhere" and "Fund Peoples' Needs Not Militarism and Bank Bailouts." We will insist on an end to the war threats and economic sanctions against Iran. We will say no to the illegal U.S. program of detention and torture.
To endorse the March 21 March on the Pentagon, click here. To sign up to be a Transportation Organizing Center, click here.
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=4580&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS
While millions of families are losing their homes, jobs and healthcare, the real military budget next year will top one trillion dollars--that's $1,000,000,000,000. If used to meet people's needs, that amount could create 10 million new jobs at $60,000 per year, provide healthcare for everyone who does not have it now, rebuild New Orleans, and repair much of the damage done in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost for the occupation of Iraq alone is $400 million each day, or about $12 billion each month.
The war in Iraq has killed, wounded or displaced nearly one third of Iraq's 26 million people. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have suffered severe physical and psychological wounds. The U.S. leaders who have initiated and conducted this criminal war should be tried and jailed for war crimes.
The idea that the U.S. is in the process of ending the criminal occupation of Iraq is a myth. Washington and its dependent Iraqi government signed a "Status of Forces" agreement, supposedly calling for the U.S. military to leave Iraqi cities by July 1, 2009, and all of Iraq by 2012. But even this outrageous extension of an illegal occupation is just one more piece of deception, as was soon made clear by top U.S. and Iraqi officials.
The ink was hardly dry on the agreement when, on December 12, official Iraq government spokesman Ali al Dabbagh dismissed the idea that U.S. troops would leave by 2012: "We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years."
The next day, General Raymond Odierno, commander of "coalition (U.S.) forces" in Iraq, stated that thousands of U.S. troops could remain inside Iraqi cities after July 1, 2009, as part of "training and mentoring teams."
Government propaganda aside, the reality remains that only the people can end the war and occupation in Iraq. To sign up to be a Transportation Organizing Center, click here.
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=4680&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS
The war in Afghanistan is expanding. The incoming administration and Congressional leaders have promised to send in more troops.
Federal bailouts and loan guarantees for the biggest banks and investors, many of whom have also made billions in profits from militarism, are already up to an astounding $7.2 trillion this year. None of that money is earmarked for keeping millions of foreclosed and evicted families in their homes.
Coming just two months after the inauguration of the next president, the March 21, 2009, March on the Pentagon will be a critical opportunity to let the new administration in Washington hear the voice of the people demanding an immediate end to war and occupation, and demanding economic justice. Joint actions will take place on the West Coat in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Sincerely,
Brian Becker
National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition
P.S. You can make a difference. Please continue to support the ANSWER Coalition's crucial anti-war work by making your end-of-the-year tax-deductible donation online using our secure server by clicking here, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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UNITE TO PROTEST THE SIXTH YEAR OF U.S. WAR AND OCCUPATION IN IRAQ!
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
MARCH 21, 2009
SIGN ON TO THE UNITY CALL!
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations:
Call for Unity
We hope that you and your organization agree that unified national March actions are sorely needed in these times of military and economic crises. We ask that you:
1. Sign the Open Letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement.
2. Urge all local and national organizations and coalitions to join in building the mobilizations in D.C. in March and the mass actions on March 21.
3. Support the formation of a broad, united, ad hoc national coalition to bring massive forces out on March 21, 2009.
You can sign the Open Letter by writing natassembly@aol.com [if you are a group or individual. (Individual endorsers please include something about yourselves.)] or through the National Assembly website at www.natassembly.org [if you are a group endorsement only]. For more information, please email us at the above address or call 216-736-4704. We greatly appreciate all donations to help in our unity efforts. Checks should be made payable to National Assembly and mailed to P.O. Box 21008 , Cleveland , OH 44121 .
In peace and solidarity,
Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC); Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Member, Administrative Body, National Assembly
Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace; New England United; Member, Administrative Body, National Assembly
On behalf of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY STATEMENT URGING UNITY OF THE
ANTIWAR MOVEMENT FOR THE MARCH 2009 ACTIONS
For more information please contact:
natassembly@aol.com or call 216-736-4704
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Bring the Anti-War Movement to Inauguration Day in D.C.
January 20, 2009: Join thousands to demand "Bring the troops home now!"
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) The Madoff Economy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp
2) You Mean That Bernie Madoff?
Editorial
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19fri1.html?hp
3) Something New to Worry About: Deflation
By The Editorial Board
December 19, 2008, 6:21 pm
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/something-new-to-worry-about-deflation/
4) NYC
People Behaving Poorly May Be the Ones to Save the State From the Poorhouse
[Who woulda thunk that getting kids to drink more Coke could save the economy? Maybe government should lower the alcoholic and smoking age to, what do you think? Three, six, twelve years old? Just think of the boon to the economy then!...bw]
By CLYDE HABERMAN
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19nyc.html?ref=health
5) Pentagon Memo
Redefining the Role of the U.S. Military in Iraq
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/washington/22combat.html?hp
6) The Printing Press Cure
Editorial
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/opinion/22mon1.html
7) Missiles Are Said to Kill 8 in Northwest Pakistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:18 a.m. ET
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/22/world/AP-AS-Pakistan.html?ref=world
8) More Companies Are Cutting Labor Costs Without Layoffs
By MATT RICHTEL
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/22layoffs.html?ref=us
9) Horrific: 12-Year Old Girl Beaten By Police for 'Resisting Arrest'
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe
December 21, 2008.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/114505/
10) The Evidence Gap
Drug Rehabilitation or Revolving Door?
By BENEDICT CAREY
December 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23reha.html?hp
11) Reeling South Carolina City Is a Snapshot of Economic Woes
By PETER S. GOODMAN
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/economy/22columbia.html?ref=business
12) Budget Office Sees Hurdles in Financing Health Plans
By ROBERT PEAR
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/us/politics/19health.html?ref=health
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1) The Madoff Economy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp
The revelation that Bernard Madoff - brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought), philanthropist, pillar of the community - was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend.
Yet surely I'm not the only person to ask the obvious question: How different, really, is Mr. Madoff's tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?
The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation's income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it's not just a matter of money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other people's money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.
Let's start with those paychecks. Last year, the average salary of employees in "securities, commodity contracts, and investments" was more than four times the average salary in the rest of the economy. Earning a million dollars was nothing special, and even incomes of $20 million or more were fairly common. The incomes of the richest Americans have exploded over the past generation, even as wages of ordinary workers have stagnated; high pay on Wall Street was a major cause of that divergence.
But surely those financial superstars must have been earning their millions, right? No, not necessarily. The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion.
Consider the hypothetical example of a money manager who leverages up his clients' money with lots of debt, then invests the bulked-up total in high-yielding but risky assets, such as dubious mortgage-backed securities. For a while - say, as long as a housing bubble continues to inflate - he (it's almost always a he) will make big profits and receive big bonuses. Then, when the bubble bursts and his investments turn into toxic waste, his investors will lose big - but he'll keep those bonuses.
O.K., maybe my example wasn't hypothetical after all.
So, how different is what Wall Street in general did from the Madoff affair? Well, Mr. Madoff allegedly skipped a few steps, simply stealing his clients' money rather than collecting big fees while exposing investors to risks they didn't understand. And while Mr. Madoff was apparently a self-conscious fraud, many people on Wall Street believed their own hype. Still, the end result was the same (except for the house arrest): the money managers got rich; the investors saw their money disappear.
We're talking about a lot of money here. In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America's G.D.P., up from less than 5 percent a generation earlier. If that extra 3 percent was money for nothing - and it probably was - we're talking about $400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse.
But the costs of America's Ponzi era surely went beyond the direct waste of dollars and cents.
At the crudest level, Wall Street's ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven't closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (hello, Senator Schumer), politicians have walked when money talked.
Meanwhile, how much has our nation's future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?
Most of all, the vast riches being earned - or maybe that should be "earned" - in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.
Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that "the financial system as a whole has become more resilient" - thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there's an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they're doing.
After all, that's why so many people trusted Mr. Madoff.
Now, as we survey the wreckage and try to understand how things can have gone so wrong, so fast, the answer is actually quite simple: What we're looking at now are the consequences of a world gone Madoff.
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2) You Mean That Bernie Madoff?
Editorial
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19fri1.html?hp
Warren Buffett once noted that "you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." The collapse of what prosecutors say was the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, orchestrated by the New York money manager Bernard Madoff, has left a large number of powerful and smart people shivering on that beach.
Mr. Madoff's suspected multibillion-dollar fraud, discovered as falling markets exposed the fiction of its 10 percent annual profits, provided a stark reminder of how greed impairs judgment, duping some of the world's supposedly savviest investors for decades. It raises once more a fundamental question of these times: Where were the regulators when all of this was happening?
Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, acknowledged this week that the agency had received "credible and specific" allegations about the scheme at least a decade ago. He promised an internal inquiry to figure out why the agency did not thoroughly investigate. Two years ago, the commission's enforcement arm in New York opened an investigation into whether Mr. Madoff's business was a Ponzi scheme but closed it after finding only mild violations that "were not so serious as to warrant an enforcement action."
The S.E.C.'s failings go much further than missing this one outrageous scheme. The agency urgently needs new leadership, more resources and high-level political backing to recover its role as Wall Street's top cop.
Though many details remain unknown, Mr. Madoff's activities should have set off plenty of alarms. His firm posted improbably constant returns, regardless of market volatility. It claimed to employ strategies that at such a large scale should have produced highly visible movements in options markets, yet passed undetected. Its auditor was a tiny, unknown outfit.
While it is particularly embarrassing to have overlooked what appears to be a low-tech fraud invented 100 years ago, the S.E.C.'s failure to pursue the case aggressively exemplifies its lackadaisical approach to enforcing the law on Wall Street. That has gotten much worse during the Bush administration.
Like other agencies, the S.E.C. has suffered from this administration's fierce aversion to government regulation. Under Mr. Cox, the enforcement division has been hampered by budget cuts and rule changes that have made it more difficult to impose penalties on companies found guilty of wrongdoing.
In a series of recent reports, the office of the S.E.C.'s inspector general, H. David Kotz, detailed the commission's repeated failure to pursue investigations. It criticized the agency for not exercising any oversight over Bear Stearns in the months preceding its collapse, among other criticisms.
The S.E.C.'s inability, or unwillingness, to catch Mr. Madoff is extremely troubling. Mary Schapiro, the head of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority and President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be chairwoman of the commission, has a reputation for diligence. The S.E.C. will need that, as well as financing and strong political backing. All of us, not just Mr. Madoff's clients, are paying the price for the regulators' failure to do their job.
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3) Something New to Worry About: Deflation
By The Editorial Board
December 19, 2008, 6:21 pm
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/something-new-to-worry-about-deflation/
Hundreds of thousands of people are being laid off. The nation's leading banks and carmakers need bailouts. The stock market has had an ugly 2008.
Well, here's something else to worry about: deflation. This week, the government announced that prices fell in November for the second month in a row.
It might seem hard to understand what the problem is with falling prices. If all they mean is that we can buy our Christmas presents for less this month than we could have a month ago, maybe we can get the decked out Mac after all. What's there to worry about?
A lot. If prices persist in their decline, they could be devastating to the economy - not primarily because of their impact on consumers' spending habits but because of their impact on consumers' ability to service their debts.
Think of it this way: Say you earn $50,000 a year, and have a $200,000 mortgage. If there is heavy deflation, prices and salaries fall. Your salary might go down to $40,000, but your mortgage would remain the same. Suddenly, making those mortgage payments has gotten a lot tougher.
American businesses need to service about $11 trillion in debts, according to the Federal Reserve, a task that will become more difficult as falling prices eat into their meager profits. Households owe $14 trillion - which will become a more onerous burden if businesses cut salaries to bring costs in line with falling revenues or - far more likely - fire more workers.
In 1933, the American economist Irving Fisher argued that depressions are caused by a chain of events from over-indebtedness to deflation that goes somewhat like this:
Banks concerned about their corporate customers' indebtedness demand debt liquidation, which forces firms to sell off assets at fire-sale prices to pay them back.
Money in circulation declines as banks hoard the dollars, which causes spending to drop and prices to fall, depressing businesses' net worth and profits and throwing many into bankruptcy.
Production is cut; workers are laid off. This deepens pessimism and leads to more hoarding of money.
This chain of events looks strikingly similar to our current predicament. Banks aren't lending, businesses are failing, jobs are being lost and - since November - prices are falling.
What to do?
Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, got the nickname "Helicopter Ben" after a 2002 speech in which he argued that the federal government could defeat a deflationary cycle by flooding the economy with money - even if it meant taking up Milton Friedman's suggestion from four decades ago that the government simply drop cash from helicopters.
(You can read the 2002 speech here.)
The Fed has begun doing that - in a way. Its committee that decides these matters has agreed to start pumping more money into the economy.
If deflation gets worse, who knows? Maybe Mr. Bernanke will be manning his helicopter.
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4) NYC
People Behaving Poorly May Be the Ones to Save the State From the Poorhouse
By CLYDE HABERMAN
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19nyc.html?ref=health
Here they go again, the politicians, looking to capitalize on human frailty.
With his tax proposals this week, Gov. David A. Paterson joined a long line of New York leaders who have counted on self-wounding, even self-destructive, behavior to help them dig out of budget holes. Mr. Paterson called for a huge tax, 18 percent, on sugary sodas and juice drinks. It's a public health measure, his lieutenants said - you know, to counter the obesity epidemic.
Sure. The $404 million tax haul that the governor expects next year is merely incidental, right? State budget planners are so confident that New Yorkers will keep guzzling sugar-laden soda that they figure the tax will pull in even more money, $539 million, the following year.
"If the governor is really insistent that we're levying this tax because of a public health concern about obesity, that leads me to ask: O.K., where's the fast-food restaurant tax?" said James Parrott, the chief economist and deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group.
Although the institute has taken no official position on the sugar tax, Mr. Parrott said an argument could be made that "there's a public health cost associated with the consumption of sugary drinks." So weaning people from Coke or Pepsi or whatever could save taxpayers money in the long run. (Of course, in the long run we're all dead.)
Still, "if we're going to levy a sugary soda tax, why aren't we levying it on doughnuts and all sorts of other things?" Mr. Parrott said. "There's a question about consistency in that regard."
The same might be said about other taxes that government imposes and activities that it encourages. Many are based on human weakness.
Smoking is bad for you. But if no one smoked, the city and the state would be out a few hundred million dollars every year.
Drinking alcohol more than a bit can be harmful. But government profits from that, too. Mr. Paterson wants to make even more money, an estimated $105 million, by expanding the opportunities for New Yorkers to imbibe. He recommended this week that grocery stores and drugstores be allowed to sell wine - after they pay for licenses to do so.
Gambling is a losing proposition for anyone who plays; the deck is stacked in the house's favor. Gambling addiction is a scourge. Yet the state happily runs a numbers racket. It's called the lottery. Now, Mr. Paterson proposes raking in still more money by expanding the number of Quick Draw outlets and installing hundreds of video slot machines at Belmont Park racetrack.
Make no mistake, the last thing that government wants is for everyone, right this minute, to stop smoking, boozing, gambling and downing those nutritionally empty supersweet sodas. Too much money is at stake. Heavy taxes on cigarettes are a case in point, said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy. The goal is not necessarily to make a bad habit disappear, he said.
"If your program succeeds," Mr. McMahon said, "you not only directly affect your tax revenue, you contribute to the day when the major tobacco companies, whose revenues are underwriting the tobacco bonds you floated a few years ago, go out of business. And then the taxpayers have to underwrite their bonds."
Even Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg - though he is "the truest true believer" on the evil of smoking, in Mr. McMahon's words - likes the money to be made. Three months ago, his administration filed a federal lawsuit to stop stores on nearby Indian reservations from selling cigarettes in bulk to bootleggers. It's all about the bucks. The city is losing about $195 million a year in tax revenue, the mayor said.
By absolutely no coincidence, the New Yorkers who pay these particular taxes tend to be those who can afford them the least. Poor people spend disproportionately on smokes, booze and unhealthy soft drinks, not to mention on the prayer that God will drop everything else and shower lottery millions on them.
These are "habits that are more common among those who have the least amount of political power," said Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a liberal but nonpartisan research center in New York. "To do something in the most politically efficient way is to tax or hike the fees of those who have the least power," she said.
Somehow, this brings to mind "Everybody Knows," by the poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen. It goes in part: "Everybody knows the fight was fixed/The poor stay poor, and the rich get rich/That's how it goes/Everybody knows." If you have an iPod, you probably can download it. But remember, if the governor has his way, you'll pay a new tax to do it. That, too, is how it goes.
E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com
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5) Pentagon Memo
Redefining the Role of the U.S. Military in Iraq
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/washington/22combat.html?hp
WASHINGTON — It is one of the most troublesome questions right now at the Pentagon, and it has started a semantic dance: What is the definition of a combat soldier? More important, when will all American combat troops withdraw from the major cities of Iraq?
The short answers are that combat troops, defined by the military as those whose primary mission is to engage the enemy with lethal force, will have to be out of Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, the deadline under a recently approved status-of-forces agreement between the United States and Iraq.
The long answers open up some complicated, sleight-of-hand responses to military and political problems facing President-elect Barack Obama.
Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.
“Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back,” said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual.
The issue is a difficult one for Mr. Obama, whose campaign pledge to “end the war” ignited his supporters and helped catapult him into the White House. But as Mr. Obama has begun meeting with his new military advisers — the top two, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are holdovers from the Bush administration — it has become clear that his definition of ending the war means leaving behind many thousands of American troops.
One reason is that Mr. Obama is facing rapidly approaching, and overlapping, withdrawal deadlines, some set by the Bush administration and the Iraqis, and some set by him.
After June 2009 looms May 2010, 16 months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the month he set during the campaign to have American combat forces out of Iraq entirely. Next comes December 2011, the deadline in the status-of-forces agreement to have all American troops out of Iraq.
To try to meet those deadlines without risking Iraq’s fragile and relative stability, military planners say they will reassign some combat troops to training and support of the Iraqis, even though the troops would still be armed and go on combat patrols with their Iraqi counterparts. So although their role would be redefined, the dangers would not.
“If you’re in combat, it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re an adviser: you’re risking your life,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research group. “The bullets don’t have ‘adviser’ stenciled on some and ‘combat unit’ on another.”
There are 146,000 American troops in Iraq, including service and support personnel. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, declined to tell reporters this month how many troops might remain in cities after the June 2009 deadline, and said the exact number still had to be negotiated with the Iraqis.
But some experts, like Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in at the Brookings Institution, argue that roughly 10,000 American troops should remain in Baghdad after next June, with thousands more in other cities around the country.
For his part, General Odierno made clear that the Iraqis still needed help — and that the United States would hardly disappear. “What I would say is, we’ll still maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq, even after the summer,” he told reporters.
Military officials say they can accomplish that by “repurposing” whatever combat troops remain. Officially, a combat soldier is anyone trained in what are called combat-coded military occupation specialties — among them infantry, artillery and Special Forces — to engage the enemy. But combat troops can be given different missions. From the military’s point of view, a combat soldier is not so much what he is called but what he does.
For example, in an area south of Baghdad that was once called the “triangle of death” because of the Sunni insurgents there, a combat brigade of 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division has been replaced with what the Army calls a transition task force of 800 to 1,200 troops with the mission of training and advising the Iraqi Army.
“It’s no longer Americans providing the muscle,” Colonel Nagl said. “Now it’s Iraqi patrols with a small group of American advisers tucked inside.”
Either way, no one expects the American presence to end soon, clearly not Defense Secretary Gates. When asked by Charlie Rose in a PBS interview last week how big the American “residual” force would be in Iraq after 2011, Mr. Gates replied that although the mission would change, “my guess is that you’re looking at perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops.”
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6) The Printing Press Cure
Editorial
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/opinion/22mon1.html
The Federal Reserve as much as admitted last week that lowering the benchmark interest rate — even to zero — would not be powerful enough medicine to revive today’s ailing economy. And so it has opted for the printing-press cure, pledging for the foreseeable future to pump vast sums into banks, other financial firms, businesses and households.
Economic history — of the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s — suggests that the Fed is doing the right thing. Confronted then, as now, with the twin scourges of deepening recession and incipient deflation, governments did more damage with too little intervention than they would have done with too much.
But that doesn’t make such intervention “good.” It’s a big and unfortunate risk in itself.
Flooding the economy with freshly printed money may prevent a self-reinforcing downward spiral. But it may cause trouble long after the present danger has passed. One reason is that it could cause inflation later. In a worst-case scenario, inflation, or the fear of inflation, could dissuade foreign investors, who finance the United States’ debt, from buying and holding dollars. That, in turn, could provoke a disorderly decline in the currency, sending prices and interest rates sharply higher.
For the Fed, engineering the new rescue programs is a technical challenge. It will have to be remarkably deft in draining the system of excess dollars in a timely way. It will also need to be vigilant for signs that the dollar is being unduly pressured, and be prepared to react.
For Barack Obama, the challenge is one of leadership. As president, Mr. Obama will have to convey optimism without overpromising. He will have to inspire confidence, even in the absence of a dramatic turnaround — which is simply not in the cards. To his credit, Mr. Obama has already warned the American people that conditions will get worse before they get better.
In the attempt to make them better, the Obama administration will first face the question of the size of the stimulus. The latest numbers are in the $700 billion range. The economy certainly needs the help, but Obama officials will have to be mindful of the possible long-term negative effects of their outsized borrowing. They must also ensure that the money is not misused to benefit high-income constituents. To jump-start the economy requires getting money to those who will spend it fast and in full. That includes unemployed workers, low- and middle-income families, and state and local governments.
The stimulus package must also be accompanied by a foreclosure prevention measure. In the campaign, Mr. Obama favored amending the law so that bankrupt homeowners could have their mortgages reworked under court protection. That would let many people keep their homes without burdening taxpayers with the cost of the loan modifications. But Mr. Obama has not yet given details about his next moves. If bankruptcy reform is not an immediate plan, he should target the next $350 billion installment of the $700 billion bailout fund on foreclosure prevention.
While Mr. Obama must continue to level with the American people — the economy is unlikely to turn up until 2010 at the earliest, and even then will probably rebound slowly — his near-term moves will go a long way toward making the burdens yet to come more bearable.
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7) Missiles Are Said to Kill 8 in Northwest Pakistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:18 a.m. ET
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/22/world/AP-AS-Pakistan.html?ref=world
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) -- Suspected U.S. missile strikes killed eight people Monday in northwest Pakistan, where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are believed hiding, officials and witnesses said.
The identities of those killed in the two attacks -- the latest in a stepped up American campaign in the lawless region close to the Afghan border -- were not immediately known.
Meanwhile, the government said an al-Qaida-linked terror group was suspected of helping carry out the September suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik's charge against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was the first time Pakistan has blamed a specific group for the bombing, which killed more than 50 people.
Monday's missiles struck about 5 miles (8 kilometers) apart just south of Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area, said local security official Bakht Janan. A house and a vehicle were destroyed in the attacks, which killed four people in each location, he said.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a vehicle fired on one of the drones before it launched a missile.
The U.S. has carried out more than 30 missile strikes since August in Pakistan's lawless, semiautonomous tribal areas, targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants blamed for attacks in Afghanistan.
While the missile strikes have killed scores of militants, Pakistan has criticized them as an infringement of its sovereignty and say it undermines its own battle against extremism.
Most of the missiles are believed launched from unmanned spy planes that take off from Afghanistan. Washington rarely confirms or denies the attacks and has pushed Islamabad to crack down on militants in the tribal areas.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Pakistan Monday to meet with senior government officials.
Mullen arrived from Afghanistan, where he said the U.S. would send up to 30,000 additional troops to the country by summer to fight the resurgent Taliban.
Pakistan has arrested three people in the Sept. 20 Marriott truck bombing, but no one has been formally charged.
Malik told lawmakers that assailants packed explosives into the truck in Jhang town in Punjab province, south of Islamabad. He said the plot was ''assisted'' by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but gave no more details on its involvement.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a Sunni Muslim militant group accused of killing hundreds of minority Shiites across Pakistan. Experts say in recent years it has formed links with al-Qaida. The group has been accused of attacks again Westerners in Karachi and two assassination attempts against former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.
Also Monday, Interior Ministry spokesman Shahidullah Baig said an investigation was launched into the theft of a large cache of weapons seized after last year's army assault on the Red Mosque, which left scores of occupying militants dead. The mosque was historically used as a jumping off point for militants en route to the fight in Kashmir.
Shahidullah Baig said 10 police officials, including the head of the Aapbara police station where the weapons were stored, had been arrested.
''The weapons have gone missing from the store, and it was learned recently that it has been happening in phases,'' Baig said.
He would not specify what was missing, but police seized assault rifles, pistols, hand grenades, rockets, rocket launchers and machine guns after the mosque assault in July 2007, a watershed moment in the country's struggle against militancy.
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8) More Companies Are Cutting Labor Costs Without Layoffs
By MATT RICHTEL
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/22layoffs.html?ref=us
Even as layoffs are reaching historic levels, some employers have found an alternative to slashing their work force. They’re nipping and tucking it instead.
A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.
And in some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school’s 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.
“What we are doing is a symbolic gesture that has real consequences — it can save a few jobs,” said William Flesch, the senate chairman and an English professor.
He says more than 30 percent have volunteered for the pay cut, which could save at least $100,000 and prevent layoffs for at least several employees. “It’s not painless, but it is relatively painless and it could help some people,” he said.
Some of these cooperative cost-cutting tactics are not entirely unique to this downturn. But the reasons behind the steps — and the rationale for the sharp growth in their popularity in just the last month — reflect the peculiarities of this recession, its sudden deepening and the changing dynamics of the global economy.
Companies taking nips and tucks to their work force say this economy plunged so quickly in October that they do not want to prune too much should it just as suddenly roar back. They also say they have been so careful about hiring and spending in recent years — particularly in the last 12 months when nearly everyone sensed the country was in a recession — that highly productive workers, not slackers, remain on the payroll.
At some companies, employees are supporting the indirect wage cuts — at least for now. The downturn hit so hard, with its toll felt so widely through hits on pensions and 401(k) retirement plans and with the future so murky, that employers and even some employees say it is better to accept minor cuts than risk more draconian steps.
The rolls of companies nipping at labor costs with measures less drastic than wholesale layoffs include Dell (extended unpaid holiday), Cisco (four-day year-end shutdown), Motorola (salary cuts), Nevada casinos (four-day workweek), Honda (voluntary unpaid vacation time) and The Seattle Times (plans to save $1 million with a week of unpaid furlough for 500 workers). There are also many midsize and small companies trying such tactics.
To be sure, these efforts are far less widespread than layoffs, and outright pay cuts still appear to be rare. Over all, the average hourly pay of rank-and-file workers — who make up about four-fifths of the work force — rose 3.7 percent from November 2007 to last month, according to the latest Labor Department data.
Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm that tracks compensation trends, published survey data last week that found that 23 percent of companies planned layoffs in the next year, down from 26 percent that said they planned to do so in October. Companies say they are considering other cost cuts, like mandatory holiday shutdowns, salary freezes or cuts, four-day workweeks and reductions of contributions to retirement and health care plans.
Companies seem particularly determined to find alternatives to layoffs in this recession, said Jennifer Chatman, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “Organizations are trying to cut costs in the name of avoiding layoffs,” she said. “It’s not just that organizations are saying ‘we’re cutting costs,’ they’re saying: ‘we’re doing this to keep from losing people.’ ”
She said the tactic builds long-term loyalty among workers who are not laid off and spares the company having to compete again to hire and train anew.
That was part of the thinking at Global Tungsten & Powders, a metal plant in Towanda, Pa., whose business has dropped 25 percent from a year ago. The company has already cut overtime and travel, as well as purchases of office supplies and equipment. It is now allowing and indeed encouraging its 1,000 workers to take unpaid furloughs to stave off more drastic cuts.
“We have a very skilled and competent work force and the last thing we want to do is lose them when we’re assuming this economy is going to come back,” said Craig Reider, the company’s director of human resources. Workers, he said, are buying in to the concept.
“In this holiday season, many employees want to support our efforts here to minimize costs,” he said.
In San Francisco, a Web design firm called Hot Studio laid off a handful of workers when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. But the company’s owner, Maria Guidice, said the tactic was painful, and she did not want to repeat it. This time, her first step is to take away bonuses — for the first time in the company’s 12-year history — and instead give people paid time off over the holidays.
“In 2000, it was like ‘cut the heads,’ ” she said of the ethos of the era. This time, she says, it feels different. “Our No. 1 priority is to keep people employed and to do that we’re going to bank the money and keep it for when we need it,” she said, adding, “I know some people are super bummed, but they understand we’re trying to keep the work force intact.”
Several employees at Hot Studio said they did not mind the policy, particularly as they have heard of layoffs elsewhere in the economy. “People feel they’d much rather have a job in six months than get a bonus right now,” said Jon Littell, a Web designer.
The magnanimous feeling will probably pass, said Truman Bewley, an economics professor at Yale University who has studied what happens to wages during a recession. If the sacrifices look as though they are going to continue for many months, he said, some workers will grow frustrated, want their full compensation back and may well prefer a layoff that creates a new permanence.
“These are feel-good, temporary measures,” he said.
But John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a company that tracks layoffs, said employers were being driven now not by compassion but by hard calculations based on data they have never had before. More than ever, he said, companies have used technology to track employee performance and productivity, and in many cases they know that the workers they would cut are productive ones.
“People are measured and ‘metricked’ to a much greater degree,” he said. “So companies know that when they’re cutting an already taut organization, they’re leaving big gaps in the work force.”
At the Pretech Corporation, a concrete manufacturer in Kansas City, Kan., that has not had a layoff in 15 years, part of the rationale is pride. To keep the perfect track record, the company has cut overtime, traded a $5,000 holiday party for an employee-only barbecue lunch, and trimmed its pipe-making operation to four days from five, which allows it to save substantially on heating and electrical costs.
Business is down sharply in some of the company’s divisions, but Pretech is also transforming to take on more work making concrete for infrastructure jobs, like the kind the government might support through stimulus efforts, the company’s co-owner, Bob Bundschuh, said. He said employees seemed to embrace the changes, knowing that a small sacrifice in overtime pay could preserve their job and the health insurance benefits that go with it.
“We’re optimistic about the future,” he said, adding that he thought things could turn around in six months. If so, “We want our guys to stay around because they’re good guys and they work hard.”
David Leonhardt contributed reporting.
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9) Horrific: 12-Year Old Girl Beaten By Police for 'Resisting Arrest'
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe
December 21, 2008.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/114505/
The girl was innocent and did not even fit the description of the alleged criminal the police were looking for.
This is horrific.
It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."
Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.
As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.
All this is according to a lawsuit filed in Galveston federal court by Milburn against the officers. The lawsuit alleges that the officers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the "tight shorts" she was wearing, despite not fitting the racial description of any of the female suspects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported illegal activity, Milburn's attorney, Anthony Griffin, tells Hair Balls.
After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.
Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond's school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.
"I think we'll be okay," says Griffin. "I don't think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who's just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she's a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She's scared to death."
Since the incident more than two years ago, Dymond regularly suffers nightmares in which police officers are raping and beating her and cutting off her fingers, according to the lawsuit.
Griffin says he expects to enter mediation with the officers in early 2009 to resolve the lawsuit.
So plain-clothed police officers beat up a little girl who they were wrongly arresting, and now the girl and her father are the ones in trouble for trying to defend her?
Dymond and her father did exactly what most people would do in that situation -- if anything, Dymond was exceptionally brave in fighting back and yelling for help. The fact that she's being criminalized for it is beyond comprehension.
Apparently the Milburns have filed a lawsuit against the police department. Hopefully they're successful.
This case is especially compelling because it involves an innocent 12-year-old girl who did not fit the description of the alleged criminal the police were looking for, and instead was targeted because she happened to have the bad luck of opening her own front door while wearing shorts and being black. But if the allegations against the police are true, it's troubling on an even deeper level -- because it's an illustration of what sex workers face every day, but are rarely able to fight back against.
Police officers and other people in positions of power can victimize and abuse sex workers with almost no fear of retribution or legal consequence. The police beat up a 12-year-old girl because they thought she was a prostitute, and, if the news report is accurate, have said as much. Had she actually been a prostitute, that treatment would have apparently been acceptable.
The whole story is disgusting. I haven't read anything about the officers being suspended or fired, but I sure hope they're out on their asses for this.
Galveston Chief of Police, Charles Wiley, can be reached by phone at 409-765-3790, or by email at cwiley@cityofgalveston.org.
Tagged as: crime, police, pain, sex work, cops, assholes, brutality, 12-year old girl
Jill Filipovic is a New York-based freelance writer and a law student at NYU. More of her writing is available online at her blog, Feministe.
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10) The Evidence Gap
Drug Rehabilitation or Revolving Door?
By BENEDICT CAREY
December 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23reha.html?hp
ROSEBURG, Ore. — Their first love might be the rum or vodka or gin and juice that is going around the bonfire. Or maybe the smoke, the potent marijuana that grows in the misted hills here like moss on a wet stone.
But it hardly matters. Here as elsewhere in the country, some users start early, fall fast and in their reckless prime can swallow, snort, inject or smoke anything available, from crystal meth to prescription pills to heroin and ecstasy. And treatment, if they get it at all, can seem like a joke.
“After the first couple of times I went through, they basically told me that there was nothing they could do,” said Angella, a 17-year-old from the central Oregon city of Bend, who by freshman year in high school was drinking hard liquor every day, smoking pot and sampling a variety of harder drugs. “They were like, ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’ ”
She tried residential programs twice, living away from home for three months each time. In those, she learned how dangerous her habit was, how much pain it was causing others in her life. She worked on strengthening her relationship with her grandparents, with whom she lived. For two months or so afterward she stayed clean.
“Then I went right back,” Angella said in an interview. “After a while, you know, you just start missing your friends.”
Every year, state and federal governments spend more than $15 billion, and insurers $5 billion more, on substance-abuse treatment services for some four million people. That amount may soon increase sharply: last year, Congress passed the mental health parity law, which for the first time includes addiction treatment under a federal law requiring that insurers cover mental and physical ailments at equal levels.
Many clinics across the county have waiting lists, and researchers estimate that some 20 million Americans who could benefit from treatment do not get it.
Yet very few rehabilitation programs have the evidence to show that they are effective. The resort-and-spa private clinics generally do not allow outside researchers to verify their published success rates. The publicly supported programs spend their scarce resources on patient care, not costly studies.
And the field has no standard guidelines. Each program has its own philosophy; so, for that matter, do individual counselors. No one knows which approach is best for which patient, because these programs rarely if ever track clients closely after they graduate. Even Alcoholics Anonymous, the best known of all the substance-abuse programs, does not publish data on its participants’ success rate.
“What we have in this country is a washing-machine model of addiction treatment,” said A. Thomas McClellan, chief executive of the nonprofit Treatment Research Institute, based in Philadelphia. “You go to Shady Acres for 30 days, or to some clinic for 60 visits or 60 doses, whatever it is. And then you’re discharged and everyone’s crying and hugging and feeling proud — and you’re supposed to be cured.”
He added: “It doesn’t really matter if you’re a movie star going to some resort by the sea or a homeless person: The system doesn’t work well for what for many people is a chronic, recurring problem.”
In recent years state governments, who cover most of the bill for addiction services, have become increasingly concerned, and some, including Delaware, North Carolina, and Oregon, have sought ways to make the programs more accountable. The experience of Oregon — which has taken the most direct and aggressive action — illustrates both the promise and perils of trying to inject science into addiction treatment.
Evidence-Based Treatments
In 2003 the Oregon Legislature mandated that rehabilitation programs receiving state funds use evidence-based practices — techniques that have proved effective in studies. The law, phased in over several years, was aimed at improving services so that addicts like Angella would not be doomed to a lifetime of rehab, repeating the same kinds of counseling that had failed them in the past — or landing in worse trouble.
“You can get through a lot of programs just by faking it,” said Jennifer Hatton, 25, of Myrtle Creek, Ore., a longtime drinker and drug user who quit two years ago, but only after going to jail and facing the prospect of losing her children. “That’s what did it for me — my kids — and I wish it didn’t have to come to that.”
When practiced faithfully, evidence-based therapies give users their best chance to break a habit. Among the therapies are prescription drugs like naltrexone, for alcohol dependence, and buprenorphine, for addiction to narcotics, which studies find can help people kick their habits.
Another is called the motivational interview, a method intended to harden clients’ commitment upon entering treatment. In M.I., as it is known, the counselor, through skilled questioning, has the addict explain why he or she has a problem, and why it is important to quit, and set goals. Studies find that when clients mark their path in this way — instead of hearing the lecture from a counselor, as in many traditional programs — they stay in treatment longer.
Psychotherapy techniques in which people learn to expect and tolerate restless or low moods are also on the list. So is cognitive behavior therapy, in which addicts learn to question assumptions that reinforce their habits (like “I’ll never make friends who don’t do drugs”) and to engage their nondrug activities and creative interests.
For Angella, this kind of counseling made a difference. She spent several months in a program run by Adapt, an addiction treatment center here in Roseburg, a small city about 175 miles south of Portland.
In treatment, she said, she learned how to “just be with, and feel” bad moods without turning to drink or drugs; and to throw herself into creative projects like collage and painting. The program has helped her reconnect with her father and to enroll in college beginning in January.
“I want to be a teacher, and someone at the program is advising me on that,” she said in an interview. “That’s the plan, to just move out and away from my old life.”
A friend of hers in the program, Alex, a 16-year-old from Roseburg, said that the therapy that helped him monitor his own emotional ups and downs, without being swept away by them. The counselors “are always asking about our stress level, our anger, so you become more aware and have a better idea what to do with it,” he said.
Almost 54 percent of Oregon’s $94 millionbudget for addiction treatment services now goes to programs that deploy evidence-based techniques, according to a state report completed last month. The estimated rate before the mandate was 25 to 30 percent. The state has not yet analyzed the impact of this change on clients.
“Before the mandate, most programs had some evidence-based practices, and since then there has been a lot more interest and awareness of them,” said Traci Rieckmann, a public health researcher at Oregon Health and Science University, who is following the policy implementation with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Culture Clash
Yet interest and awareness may not translate into good practice, and Dr. Rieckmann says it is not at all clear how many rehabilitation programs claiming to use evidence-based techniques actually do so faithfully. About 400 programs receive state money, and most of them are small, rural outfits that are already stretched to provide counseling, to say nothing of paying for extensive training.
“You’re talking about therapies, like cognitive behavior therapy, that take time to learn,” said John Gardin, the behavioral health and research director at Adapt in Roseburg, who travels the country to teach the skills. “Most places don’t have a person like me to do that training, so they’re getting two to three days of training, if that; and that’s just not enough time to get it.”
In studies looking at hundreds of programs nationwide, researchers have found a similar gap between what programs may want to do, and what they’re able to do. “For instance, most programs don’t have an M.D. on staff,” said Aaron Johnson, a sociologist at the University of Georgia who has led many of the studies. “Without that, of course, you can’t prescribe any medications.”
Tim Hartnett, the executive director of a Portland treatment program called CODA Inc., which does its own research on patient outcomes, said that the mandate had raised the level of conversation statewide, but that true reform would mean “an integrated system that tracks clients as they move from residential to out-patient treatment, and that defines clear targets” for what a person should expect from each kind of program.
“Our goal at CODA is to create a system of care that uses evidence based practices at just the right does as just the right time,” Mr. Hartnett said. “As with many chronic diseases, figuring out dosage and timing are critical.”
For some addicts, a standard program may not help at all, according to Anne Fletcher, who for her book, “Sober For Good,” interviewed 222 men and women who’d been clean for at least five years. “A lot of these people overcame an alcohol problem on their own, or with the help of an individual therapist,” Ms. Fletcher said.
To complicate matters in Oregon, the state mandate has stirred a kind of culture clash between those who want reform — academic researchers, state officials — and veteran counselors working in the trenches, many of whom have beaten addictions of their own and do notappreciate outsiders telling them how to do their jobs.
“I’m a counselor, and I’d be defensive, too: ‘What do you mean, all this stuff I’ve been doing my entire life is wrong?’ ” said Brian Serna, director of outpatient services at Adapt, who has traveled the state to monitor the use of scientific practices. “So the challenge is to build a bridge between what the science says is effective and what people are already doing.”
One way to do that, some experts now believe, is to combine evidence-based practice with “practice-based evidence” — the results that programs and counselors themselves can document, based on their own work. In 2001 the Delaware Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health began giving treatment programs incentives, or bonuses, if they met certain benchmarks. The clinics could earn a bonus of up to 5 percent, for instance, if they kept a high percentage of addicts coming in at least weekly and insured that those clients met their own goals, as measured both by clean urine tests and how well they functioned in everyday life, in school, at work, at home.
By 2006, the state’s rehabilitation programs were operating at 95 percent capacity, up from 50 percent in 2001; and 70 percent of patients were attending regular treatment sessions, up from 53 percent, according to analysis of the policy published last summer in the journal Health Policy.
“We basically gave them a list of evidence-based practices and told them to pick the ones they wanted to use,” said Jack Kemp, former director of substance abuse services for Delaware, in an interview. “It was up to them to decide what to use.”
For those who are trying not to use, it doesn’t much matter how rehab services are improved — only that it happens in time. “Honestly you just don’t care how or why something works for you,” said Ms. Hatton, the 25-year-old from Myrtle Creek, Ore. “Just that it does.”
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11) Reeling South Carolina City Is a Snapshot of Economic Woes
By PETER S. GOODMAN
December 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/economy/22columbia.html?ref=business
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Even before the job fair opens, the line snakes into the parking lot of the state fairground, a muted parade of lives derailed by layoffs.
“It kills me, it eats me up inside,” said Raymond Vaughn, who has been out of work for seven months, since he lost his job as a window installer. His fiancée now pays the bills. “I go into this fantasy world where I’m like, I’m in the wrong life and I’m actually a millionaire. It really bothers me I can’t do the things I’d like for her. Sometimes you get where you feel less than a man.”
As the American economy sinks deeper into one of the more punishing recessions since the Depression, frustration and fear color the national conversation.
This city in the center of South Carolina is an ideal listening post. According to a range of indicators assembled by Moody’s Economy.com — from job growth to change in household worth — this metropolitan area came closer than any other to being a microcosm of the nation over the last decade.
This is now an unfortunate distinction. Some 533,000 jobs disappeared from the economy in November, the worst month since 1974. In South Carolina, a government panel is predicting that the state’s unemployment rate could reach 14 percent by the middle of next year.
No speculative real estate bubble can explain what is happening in this metropolitan area of roughly 700,000 people. Neither the brick Georgian homes in the city’s core nor the ranch-style houses on the suburban fringes rose or fell much in value. The financial wizards of Wall Street seem far from the palmetto-dotted campus of the University of South Carolina and the domed state capitol downtown.
Yet as the toll continues to mount from an era of financial recklessness — as banks cut credit from households and businesses, reinforcing austerity — the damage has spread here, choking economic activity at places ranging from shopping malls to factories.
“This was not of our doing,” said Doug Woodward, an economist at the University of South Carolina. “We just got swept up in the crisis of confidence.”
The Carolinas may conjure thoughts of textile mills and tobacco fields, but Columbia has a diverse economy. The state is a major employer. So is the university, along with hospitals and banks. The Fort Jackson Army base employs 9,200 people. United Parcel Service has a regional hub here. Michelin operates a tire factory next door in Lexington County. The Computer Science Corporation develops software north of the city.
Early in the year, layoffs were concentrated among factory and warehouse workers. “Now, they run the gamut,” said Jessica Horsely, a case manager at the local employment office. “You see a heightened sense of desperation. People are just grasping for anything.”
President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to spend as much as $775 billion on his economic plan, including infrastructure projects like bridges, roads and classrooms, to put people back to work.
Columbia’s mayor, Bob Coble, is consumed with capturing some of those dollars for his city. He has assembled a list of ready-to-go projects totaling $140 million that he said could generate construction jobs and propel further economic development.
Mr. Coble, a Democrat who has been mayor for 18 years, has in mind the redevelopment of North Main Street, a bedraggled corridor of hard-luck retailers that lacks sidewalks in many spots, with exposed power lines dipping down to cracked pavement. That project is already under way, putting down sidewalks and burying power lines in a $19 million first phase. An additional $54 million could complete it.
Similar projects have restored shine to Columbia’s downtown, which was in a similar state of decay a decade ago, and nurtured the Vista neighborhood, a collection of brick warehouses transformed into trendy eateries.
The mayor has also been focused on expanding the so-called Innovista project, a campus developed by the university centered on research in areas like hydrogen-powered fuel cells and biotechnology. The aim is to cluster research labs, private companies and condominiums.
“This will be a once in a generation opportunity to transform a city with projects that have been on the books,” the mayor said over breakfast at a newly opened downtown Sheraton hotel set in an old bank whose original vault has become a cozy martini bar. “These are not bridges to nowhere.”
Yet questions confront the notion of putting people to work through federal largess. South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford, a Republican, has been an ardent opponent of federal aid for states, branding it pork barrel spending. If the money is delivered to state agencies like the Department of Transportation, which has its own list of priorities, Columbia might be disappointed.
Despite the attractiveness of Main Street, new sidewalks have drawn few retailers. North Main Street runs through a largely poor area, making it even less likely that improvements will attract business.
Meanwhile, the recession intensifies.
At the state fairgrounds, Lori Harris, 47, waited for the job fair to open. A year has passed since she graduated from college with an associate degree in medical assisting, yet she has been unable to find a decent job.
Ms. Harris previously ran her own house-painting company, but opted for a more stable career in a growing field. She saw an ad for the degree program on television: “Come become a medical assistant!”
Now, such talk seems farcical. She is paying $95 a month toward $23,000 in student loan debt. She is living with her boyfriend, who is supporting her, not always cheerfully. She has no health insurance and cannot see a specialist for a torn rotator cuff and recently applied for food stamps.
“I tried to better myself,” she said, “and I’m getting nowhere.”
She was offered one job, as a medical technician dispensing pills to patients. The pay was $7.50 an hour.
“Forget it,” she said. “I was like, ‘Is it worth going to college? Did I waste my time?’”
She wondered if her age explains the rejections. Or her Boston accent. Or the smell of her cigarette smoking.
“It’s getting really discouraging,” she said.
As the doors opened, people filed in quietly, entering a dark warehouselike space with concrete floors.
“You want a job that makes you smile,” proclaimed a placard at a booth for Wendy’s, the fast food chain. Another sign advertised the benefits for counter workers, among them: “free uniforms.”
A Border Patrol officer stood in his olive green uniform, his laptop running video footage of Latinos running frantically through garbage strewn patches of desert, chased by helicopters and jeeps. Raymond Vaughn stopped and inquired about a job.
“You will have to relocate to the southwest border,” said the recruiter, Michael Day.
The entry level pay was $36,000 a year. But the Border Patrol was looking for people no older than 40. Mr. Vaughn was 43.
At the window install job, Mr. Vaughn made $11.50 an hour. Since his layoff, he has been living on an unemployment check of $221 a week, and on the wages his fiancée brings home from her job as a hospital receptionist. He has applied for more jobs than he can recall. “They always say they’ll call me,” he said. “They never do.”
A former high school track star, Mr. Vaughn carried himself with pride. Yet as the months passed and his car deteriorated without any cash for repairs, as his loose-handled cooking pots went unreplaced, he was sinking. Among African-Americans, the national unemployment rate is above 11 percent, with Mr. Vaughn now part of that number.
“Inside of me, I always felt like I was going to be greater than I am now,” he said.
The job fair brought more disappointment. Only one job seemed possible, a technician position at an air-conditioning company. The starting salaries were less than $10 an hour.
“Even if I work for this, I’m taking a cut in pay,” he said. “But something’s better than nothing.”
At a booth for Amcol, a collection service that specializes in overdue medical bills, a recruiter made an aggressive pitch.
“The more you do in collections,” he said, “the more you make.”
Mary Bamou waited in line, holding copies of her résumé. She has been out of work for three months, ever since she was briefly hospitalized, ending her minimum wage job as a food service worker at the university. Now, she is getting by on an unemployment check of less than $100 a week.
Ms. Bamou, 50, has experience in medical billing, a skill she figured may translate to medical collections.
“Calling people up in these times is not going to be an easy task,” she said. “It’s a job. Worst thing they can do to me after cussing me out is to hang up.”
Frank Kelly, 52, surveyed the booths and wondered how much further this slide would go.
In the 1990s, he wrote computer manuals for I.B.M. in upstate New York, earning $65,000 a year. After he lost that job, he spent a dozen years supervising a lab that tested raw materials at a brake pad factory in nearby Orangeburg, S.C., where he made more than $55,000 a year. In October, amid the rapid deterioration of the Detroit automakers, Mr. Kelly was laid off.
At the job fair, he was standing in line in a suit and tie, waiting to apply for a position at a pet food processor.
He and his wife have been living off her income as an accountant for a food distributor. One of her duties is to check the creditworthiness of customers, which gives her an uncomfortable view.
“She gets to see everybody going downhill,” Mr. Kelly said.
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12) Budget Office Sees Hurdles in Financing Health Plans
By ROBERT PEAR
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/us/politics/19health.html?ref=health
WASHINGTON — The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that many of the health care proposals championed by President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats would carry a high price tag and would generate only modest savings.
The budget office, an influential voice in the work of Congress, analyzed 115 options, including proposals to expand coverage and slow the growth of health spending.
Some of the options, including proposals to increase taxes on cigarettes and nondiet soft drinks, are sure to meet stiff political opposition.
One bright spot in a generally bleak picture was the estimate of potential savings from a requirement for doctors and hospitals to use health information technology, including electronic medical records, as a condition of participating in Medicare.
Such a requirement could save the federal government $7 billion in the first five years and a total of $34 billion over 10 years, by reducing medical errors and avoiding unnecessary tests and procedures, the budget office said. It “would also lower health insurance premiums in the private sector,” the report said.
Without action by Congress, the report said, health costs will continue to soar, the number of people without insurance will rise by nearly one million a year, to a total of 54 million in 2019, and spending on health care will increase to 25 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from 16 percent in 2007.
In keeping with its duty to provide objective, impartial analysis, the budget office did not endorse any options, but it fleshed out many ideas circulating on Capitol Hill.
Democrats and many Republicans say they will make a serious effort to overhaul the health care system in 2009. Those changes are essential for economic recovery, they say.
But Mr. Obama and other Democrats have not been precise about the cost of their proposals, nor have they said in detail how they would pay for them. One of the Democrats’ favorite proposals, rolling back tax cuts for high-income people, is already scheduled to occur in 2011, so, under the bookkeeping rules used by Congress, it would not produce a windfall of new revenue.
Lawmakers from both parties said they would pay close attention to the cost of new federal subsidies for health coverage because these subsidies — unlike the one-time bailouts for banks and other financial institutions — would be recurring federal obligations for years to come.
Requiring employers to provide health insurance to their employees or pay a fee to the federal government would bring in $47 billion of new federal revenue in the next 10 years, the report said.
A proposal to establish a national insurance pool for people who cannot obtain coverage on their own in the individual market would cost $16 billion in the next decade, it said.
Mr. Obama and many other Democrats want the government to negotiate with drug manufacturers to get lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries.
The Congressional Budget Office said such negotiations “would produce small if any savings” because the government would not have enough leverage to secure significant discounts beyond those already obtained by private insurance companies that manage the Medicare drug benefit.
But the budget office said Medicare could save $110 billion in the next 10 years if Congress simply imposed a form of price controls, requiring drug makers to provide the government with a 15 percent rebate, or discount, on brand-name drugs covered by the new Part D of Medicare.
Eliminating a notorious gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs, known as a doughnut hole, would cost more than $130 billion over 10 years, the report said.
Research to compare the effectiveness of different drugs and treatments might help doctors and patients make better decisions.
But it would not save the government much — $1.3 billion in the next decade — and it would reduce total spending on health care in those years by less than one-tenth of 1 percent, the budget office said.
The federal government could save $12 billion in the next decade if it established a procedure for approval of generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs, the report said. It did not estimate the additional savings for consumers and employers, which could be substantial.
The report sets forth an elaborate proposal that would allow doctors and hospitals to share in the savings if they improve the quality and reduce the cost of care for people on Medicare.
Under the proposal, Medicare would pay bonuses to groups of doctors who met certain performance measures.
In response to such financial incentives, the report said, doctors would become more efficient and would reduce “the volume and intensity of services provided to their patients,” saving $5 billion for Medicare in the next decade.
In one particularly sobering chapter, the report notes that, under existing law, Medicare will cut fees paid to doctors by 21 percent in 2010 and by about 5 percent in each of the next few years.
To avoid such cuts and freeze payment rates at their 2009 levels would cost the government $318 billion over the next decade, the report said.
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