*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Emergency Protest!
Free Mumia!
Free Troy Davis!
Two Innocent Men Facing Execution
Be there!
Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008
Federal Court House, 7th Street and Mission, SF, 4:30 - 5:30 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court has before it the lives of two innocent, frame-up victims. Mumia Abu-Jamal & Troy Davis are challenging the “law of the land” that says, “Innocence is no defense.” Pennsylvania and Georgia seek their execution. We demand their freedom.
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • freemumia.org
510-268-9429
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
COURAGE TO RESIST:
SUPPORT RESISTERS DURING THE HOLIDAYS
AT A HOLIDAY LETTER WRITING PARTY!
Dear Friend,
Come to the Courage to Resist office in Oakland and write letters to GI resisters who have risked their freedom to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meet with others in the anti-war movement to show your continuing support for those who have refused to fight.
The more people who show up, the more letters we can send to these heroes... so come and bring your friends and family members!
We will provide all the letter writing materials....and some snacks to keep you going!
Please join us:
Wednesday, December 10
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Courage to Resist Office
3945 Opal St.
Oakland
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"Prop 8--The Musical"
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Obama is a Good House Negro David Manning Pastor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Op5or_vkcc
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Most Retailers Report a Dismal November
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
December 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/economy/05shop.html?hp
2) Largest Drop in Factory Orders in 8 Years
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/economy/05econ.html?ref=business
3) Cleveland activists launch moratorium campaign
By Martha Grevatt
Cleveland
Published Nov 24, 2008 5:17 PM
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/cleveland_1204/
4) Jobs lost in 2008: 1.2 million
Payrolls shrink by 240,000 in October, 10th straight month of cuts. Unemployment soars to 6.5%
By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: November 7, 2008: 11:51 AM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/07/news/economy/jobs_october/index.htm?postversion=2008110711
5) When a Job Disappears, So Does the Health Care
By ROBERT PEAR
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/07uninsured.html?hp
6) U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974
By LOUIS UCHITELLE, EDMUND L. ANDREWS and STEPHEN LABATON
December 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06jobs.html?ref=us
7) Grim Job Report Not Showing Full Picture
By DAVID LEONHARDT and CATHERINE RAMPELL
December 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06idle.html?ref=economy
8) Laid-off workers won't leave until they get their money
GOOSE ISLAND | Bank of America 'completely shameless,' union says
http://www.suntimes .com/news/ metro/1317339, CST-NWS-windows0 6.article
9) Anti-Police Riots Spread in Greece
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:52 p.m. ET
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/news-us-greece-shooting.html?hp
10) The Employment Crash
Editorial
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07sun1.html
11) U.N. Official Warns Afghanistan in Jeopardy
By KIRK SEMPLE
December 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp
12) Three Officers Indicted in Subway Assault
By RAY RIVERA and AL BAKER
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/nyregion/07mineo.html?hp
13) Bottom Drops Out of Recycling Industry
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:21 p.m. ET
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Recycling-Bust.html
14) After Layoffs, Workers Stay at a Factory in Protest
[More on factory occupation by workers in Chicago...bw]
By MONICA DAVEY
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/07chicago.html?ref=us
15) California Cities Ban Military Recruitment of Minors
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2008-12-05 16:33.
Arcata and Eureka Begin Enforcement of Youth Protection Act
By Dave Meserve
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/38087
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Most Retailers Report a Dismal November
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
December 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/economy/05shop.html?hp
Most of the nation’s stores kicked off the critical holiday shopping season with double-digit sales declines, portending more price cuts in December and raising questions about the long-term prospects for many retailers.
November sales figures released Thursday underscored that such declines had become the norm across the retail spectrum. Sales at stores open at least a year at Abercrombie & Fitch, long a darling of Wall Street, fell 28 percent compared with a 2 percent increase for the period a year ago.
Even discount stores, some of which had sales growth in October, are suffering. At Target, sales at stores open at least a year, a critical measure of retail health, tumbled 10.4 percent, in contrast to a 10.8 percent increase a year ago.
Sales at Kohl’s sank 17.5 percent compared with a 10.2 percent increase last year. Children’s Place, which had a 4 percent sales increase in October, was down 7 percent. At Costco, which had a 1 percent sales decline in October, sales sank 5 percent in November, more than expected. Aeropostale, which had a sales increase of 1 percent in October, was down 5 percent. Ross Stores sales were off by 2 percent.
Over all, November sales are likely to drop about 2 percent, according to Retail Metrics, a research firm. That is the biggest monthly decline since the company began tracking data in 2000. And were it not for Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, sales would have declined more than 6 percent.
Only Wal-Mart and BJ’s Wholesale Club, two of the country’s best-known discount stores, thrived, in part because of robust grocery sales.
Sales at Wal-Mart stores exceeded expectations, increasing 3.4 percent, not including fuel, compared with a 1.5 percent increase a year ago. As gas prices dropped, shopping trips increased. And so did the amount of money consumers spent at the store. On Thursday, Wal-Mart reported record grocery sales for November.
But Eduardo Castro-Wright, vice chairman of Wal-Mart Stores, said in a news release that the company’s sales figures were overshadowed by the death of Jdimytai Damour, who was trampled at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., when rowdy shoppers burst through the doors on Black Friday morning.
“We consider Mr. Jdimytai Damour part of the extended Wal-Mart family and are saddened by his death,” Mr. Castro-Wright said.
Sales at BJ’s Wholesale Club stores were up 4.1 percent, not including fuel, compared with a 7.7 percent increase a year ago.
Most department stores — including Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Macy’s and J. C. Penney — continued to have double-digit declines, though sales at Saks stores open at least a year were improved this month, with sales down only 5.2 percent. That is far better than expected. Saks, however, has been radically slicing prices and its profits are expected to be significantly hurt. A similar story, of course, is playing out at retailers across the country.
“It’s a terrible story for retailers and their margins,” said Michael Unger, a principal with Archstone Consulting, “but if you’re a consumer looking for a good deal, you will find it.”
Retailers were buoyed by sales over Black Friday weekend, which increased about 0.9 percent, compared with a 6.5 percent increase last year, according to ShopperTrak, a research firm. Yet the weekend after Thanksgiving did not account for the majority of retailers’ November sales.
Major sectors like apparel, luxury goods and electronics and appliances all suffered steeper declines in November than in September and October according to SpendingPulse, a report by MasterCard Advisors.
To make matters worse, retailers’ weak sales were hurt even more by a calendar shift that left fewer post-Thanksgiving shopping days in November. Analysts estimate that could hurt stores anywhere from 1 to 3 percent.
Retailers that include American Eagle Outfitters and Kohl’s said Thursday they would simply continue trying to lure consumers with sales.
As Linda M. Farthing, president and chief executive of Stein Mart, said in a statement on Thursday: “The Thanksgiving weekend improvement was not enough to significantly alter the month’s outcome, and we expect to continue aggressive promotional activity through the remainder of the year.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Largest Drop in Factory Orders in 8 Years
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/economy/05econ.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON (AP) — Orders to factories plunged in October by the sharpest amount in more than eight years as a deepening recession caused big cutbacks in demand for steel, autos, computers and heavy machinery. Analysts expect the weakness to continue for some time.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that factory orders dropped 5.1 percent in October, the largest decrease since an 8.5 percent fall in July 2000.
It was larger than the 4 percent drop that economists had been expecting. They predict that manufacturing will continue to be under pressure, reflecting a deepening recession that already is the longest slump in a quarter-century.
The drop in orders was the third consecutive decline, with demand for both durable goods and nondurable goods falling.
Demand for nonmilitary capital goods, considered a good proxy for business investment plans, fell by 5 percent in October, the biggest decline since January and the fourth consecutive monthly decrease. With the economy weakening, businesses are cutting back on their plans to expand and modernize, adding another drag to overall growth.
Orders for durable goods, items expected to last at least three years, fell 6.9 percent, even bigger than the 6.2 percent initial estimate the department made last week.
Orders for nondurable goods, like food, clothing, paper goods and petroleum products, dropped 3.4 percent, partly reflecting the big declines occurring in energy prices.
The weakness was led by a big 11.2 percent fall in demand for transportation equipment. Demand for autos fell by 2.8 percent and commercial aircraft orders were down 4.8 percent.
The auto companies have been in a prolonged slide, reflecting not only the weak economy but also the huge jump in gasoline prices earlier in the year. Even though gas prices have retreated from their highs above $4 a gallon this summer, car sales have remained depressed, reflecting rising unemployment and the severe credit crisis that hit in September, making it harder to get auto loans.
Auto sales plunged by 37 percent in November to their worst level in more than 26 years, adding more ammunition to Detroit automakers’ case for a Congressional lifeline that they are pressing again for Thursday on Capitol Hill.
Every major automaker reported a year-over-year sales decline of more than 30 percent on Tuesday, with the Detroit carmakers among the worst hit. Sales at General Motors fell 41 percent, Chrysler’s sales decreased 47 percent and Ford Motor Company’s drop was 31 percent.
Excluding transportation, factory orders would have been down 4.2 percent in October, indicating that the weakness in manufacturing was widespread.
Orders for primary metals like iron and steel plunged 23.1 percent in October while demand for machinery was down by 9 percent. Construction machinery was off 25.6 percent, reflecting the hard times in the building industry, which is suffering through the biggest slump in home construction in decades.
Demand for computers and other electronic products fell 3.4 percent in October, while furniture makers reported a 5 percent drop in demand.
Also on Friday, the Labor Department reported that new claims for jobless benefits fell unexpectedly last week, but the number of people continuing to claim benefits reached a 26-year high.
Initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 509,000, from an upwardly revised figure of 530,000 for the previous week.
That was significantly below analysts’ estimates of 537,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
But other figures showed the labor market remained weak. The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the economy fell into a recession in December 2007.
The number of people continuing to claim unemployment benefits last week reached 4.09 million, the highest level since December 1982, when the economy was in a steep recession. A rising number of continued claims indicates that unemployed workers are having a harder time finding new jobs.
The four-week average of initial claims, which smoothes out fluctuations, rose to 524,500, also the highest level since December 1982, the department said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Cleveland activists launch moratorium campaign
By Martha Grevatt
Cleveland
Published Nov 24, 2008 5:17 PM
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/cleveland_1204/
Activists in Cleveland have formed the Ohio Moratorium Now! Coalition to Stop Evictions, Foreclosures and Shutoffs using the Moratorium NOW! Coalition in Michigan as a model.
The Nov. 18 founding meeting was called by the Peoples Fightback Center, the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network (formerly the Cleveland Lucasville Five Defense Committee) and the Baldwin Wallace College Chapter of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST).
The call to "join a nationwide movement that is keeping people in their homes and keeping their utilities from being shut off" drew additional community activists from outside the original sponsoring groups.
Those present were inspired by a reading from the classic book "Labor's Untold Story." The passage told the story of Peter Grossup, a cabinetmaker laid off in 1930 who eighteen months later faced foreclosure.
When the sheriffs finally came and threw the Grossup family's possessions on the street, the Unemployed Council came and moved everything back in. Grossup, who until that day dismissed the Council as "a bunch of Communists," was lifted from despondency, and subsequently became a Council activist in his own right.
The initial Moratorium Now! meeting was held in the Glenville neighborhood, a predominantly African-American community on Cleveland's east side where the foreclosure crisis is the most severe. The group agreed to hold the second meeting in the west side suburb of Lakewood, which has a large lesbian, gay, bi and trans population and where a Lutheran minister asked the coalition to come to her church.
By going to different neighborhoods, Ohio Moratorium Now! plans to launch a countywide and eventually a statewide campaign to save people's homes and prevent utility shutoffs.
Organizers will employ a two-pronged approach and push for a moratorium through legislative or other governmental action while at the same time building a rapid-response strike force to keep people from being thrown out on the street.
[Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.]
Come to an organizing meeting
Help build a movement for a
Moratorium NOW on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs
in our communities.
Tuesday, Dec. 16 5:30pm
Glenville Branch, Cleveland Public Library
11900 St. Clair
Sponsored by: Ohio Moratorium Now! Coalition to stop evictions, foreclosures, and shut-offs
Sponsored by: Cleveland Chapter New Black Panther Party; People's Fightback Center; Baldwin-Wallace Chapter, Fight Imperialism Stand Together; Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network.
Contact: 216-531-4004
OhioMN@gmail.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Jobs lost in 2008: 1.2 million
Payrolls shrink by 240,000 in October, 10th straight month of cuts. Unemployment soars to 6.5%
By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: November 7, 2008: 11:51 AM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/07/news/economy/jobs_october/index.htm?postversion=2008110711
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The government reported more grim news about the economy Friday, saying employers cut 240,000 jobs in October - bringing the year's total job losses to nearly 1.2 million.
According to the Labor Department's monthly jobs report, the unemployment rate rose to 6.5% from 6.1% in September and higher than economists' forecast of 6.3%. It was the highest unemployment rate since March 1994.
"There is so much bad in this report that it is hard to find any silver lining," said Morgan Keegan analyst Kevin Giddis.
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 200,000 jobs in the month. October's monthly job loss total was less than September's revised loss of 284,000. Payroll cuts in August were revised up to 127,000, which means more than half of this year's job losses have occurred in the last three months.
September had the largest monthly job loss total since November 2001, the last month of the previous recession and just two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
With 1,179,000 cuts, the economy has lost more than a million jobs in a year for the first time since 2001 - the last time the economy was in a recession. With most economic indicators signaling even more difficult times ahead, job losses will likely deepen and continue through at least the first half of 2009.
"It's pretty clear that we're in a recession," said Robert Brusca, economist at FAO Economics. "There is reason for us to believe we'll see a drumbeat of heavy job losses for a while, and there's room for them to get even worse."
Brusca noted that separate readings on the manufacturing and auto industries indicated economic conditions are the worst in about 30 years.
"We may be in a severe recession, in which case these job numbers are not even big yet," he said, suggesting monthly job loss totals could grow in excess of 300,000 an unemployment could rise to around 7%.
Losses across the board
Job losses were spread across a wide variety of industries. Manufacturing lost 90,000 jobs, the leisure and hospitality industries cut 16,000 jobs, and construction employment shrank further by 49,000 jobs.
Terence O'Sullivan, president of construction workers' Laborers' International Union of North America, noted the construction unemployment rate rose to 10.8% - double what it was a year ago. He called the report an "urgent alarm sounding the need to halt our nation's spiraling job loss."
In an ominous sign for the upcoming holiday shopping season, retailers trimmed payrolls by 38,000 workers last month.
Professional and business services, a category seen by some economists as a proxy for overall economic activity, had a 45,000 drop in employment.
"Job loss has a big impact on the economy," Brusca said. "When people have no income, they spend less, businesses make less money, and they cut more jobs."
In another sign of weakness, a growing number of workers were unable to find jobs with the amount of hours they want to work. Those working part-time jobs - because they couldn't find full-time work, or their hours had been cut back due to slack conditions - jumped by 645,000 people to 6.7 million, the highest since July 1993.
The so-called under-employment rate, which counts those part-time workers, as well as those without jobs who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work, rose to 11.8% from from 11%, matching the all-time high for that measure since calculations for it began in January 1994.
Temporary employment, including workers employed by temp agencies, fell by 50,800 jobs last month. That could mean even more full-time payroll reductions to come, as employers often cut temporary workers before they begin cutting permanent staff.
But some industries were hiring last month. Government hiring has stayed strong throughout the downturn, adding another 23,000 jobs in October. Education and health services also grew payrolls, which grew by 21,000 employees.
In a somewhat encouraging sign, the average hourly work week did not fall last month, holding at 33.6 hours, in line with expectations. With a modest 4-cent gain in the average hourly salary, the average weekly paycheck rose by $1.35 to $611.86.
Trying to get back on track
Solutions are not simple. Support for a second stimulus package has grown in Congress, and President-elect Barack Obama has indicated that he would support such a measure. The prior stimulus package in the spring helped the economy grow in the second quarter, but it did little to stem the tide of job loss in the country. Many economists have also called on the Federal Reserve to cut rates to historic lows to encourage growth.
"These are all the right solutions, but the real question is are they enough to get the economy on the right path," said Anthony Chan, chief economist for JP Morgan private wealth management. "They're necessary, but we don't yet know if they're sufficient."
President Bush said Friday the government's plans to address tight credit and housing markets are the solution to rising unemployment.
"The Federal government has taken aggressive and decisive measures to address this situation," the President said. "It will take time for these measures to have their full impact on an economy in which many Americans are struggling."
Chan said the programs will work, and that the government needs to continue to "slug it out," perhaps putting even more stimulus programs in place to encourage job growth.
First Published: November 7, 2008: 8:39 AM ET
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) When a Job Disappears, So Does the Health Care
By ROBERT PEAR
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/07uninsured.html?hp
ASHLAND, Ohio — As jobless numbers reach levels not seen in 25 years, another crisis is unfolding for millions of people who lost their health insurance along with their jobs, joining the ranks of the uninsured.
The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.
Wendy R. Carter, 41, who recently lost her job and her health benefits, is struggling to pay $12,942 in bills for a partial hysterectomy at a local hospital. Her daughter, Betsy A. Carter, 19, has pain in her lower right jaw, where a wisdom tooth is growing in. But she has not seen a dentist because she has no health insurance.
Ms. Darling and Wendy Carter are among 275 people who worked at an Archway cookie factory here in north central Ohio. The company provided excellent health benefits. But the plant shut down abruptly this fall, leaving workers without coverage, like millions of people battered by the worst economic crisis since the Depression.
About 10.3 million Americans were unemployed in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of unemployed has increased by 2.8 million, or 36 percent, since January of this year, and by 4.3 million, or 71 percent, since January 2001.
Most people are covered through the workplace, so when they lose their jobs, they lose their health benefits. On average, for each jobless worker who has lost insurance, at least one child or spouse covered under the same policy has also lost protection, public health experts said.
Expanding access to health insurance, with federal subsidies, was a priority for President-elect Barack Obama and the new Democratic Congress. The increase in the ranks of the uninsured, including middle-class families with strong ties to the work force, adds urgency to their efforts.
“This shows why — no matter how bad the condition of the economy — we can’t delay pursuing comprehensive health care,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. “There are too many victims who are innocent of anything but working at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Some parts of the federal safety net are more responsive to economic distress. The number of people on food stamps set a record in September, with 31.6 million people receiving benefits, up by two million in one month.
Nearly 4.4 million people are receiving unemployment insurance benefits, an increased of 60 percent in the past year. But more than half of unemployed workers are not getting help because they do not qualify or have exhausted their benefits.
About 1.7 million families receive cash under the main federal-state welfare program, little changed from a year earlier. Welfare serves about 4 of 10 eligible families and fewer than one in four poor children.
In a letter dated Oct. 3, Archway told workers that their jobs would be eliminated, and their insurance terminated on Oct. 6, because of “unforeseeable business circumstances.” The company, owned by a private equity firm based in Greenwich, Conn., filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.
Archway workers typically made $13 to $20 an hour. To save money in a tough economy, they are canceling appointments with doctors and dentists, putting off surgery, and going without prescription medicines for themselves and their children.
Archway cited “the challenging economic environment” as a reason for closing.
“We have been operating at a loss due largely to the significant increases in raw material costs, such as flour, butter, sugar and dairy, and the record high fuel costs across the country,” the company said. At this time of year, the Archway plant is usually bustling as employees work overtime to make Christmas cookies. This year the plant is silent. The aromas of cinnamon and licorice are missing. More than 40 trailers sit in the parking lot with nothing to haul.
In the weeks before it filed for bankruptcy protection, Archway apparently fell behind in paying for its employee health plan. In its bankruptcy filing, Archway said it owed more than $700,000 to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, one of its largest creditors.
Richard D. Jackson, 53, was an oven operator at the bakery for 30 years. He and his two daughters often used the Archway health plan to pay for doctor’s visits, imaging, surgery and medicines. Now that he has no insurance, Mr. Jackson takes his Effexor antidepressant pills every other day, rather than daily, as prescribed.
Another former Archway employee, Jeffrey D. Austen, 50, said he had canceled shoulder surgery scheduled for Oct. 13 at the Cleveland Clinic because he had no way to pay for it.
“I had already lined up an orthopedic surgeon and an anesthesiologist,” Mr. Austen said.
In mid-October, Janet M. Esbenshade, 37, who had been a packer at the Archway plant, began to notice that her vision was blurred. “My eyes were burning, itching and watery,” she said. “Pus was oozing out. If I had had insurance, I would have gone to an eye doctor right away.”
She waited two weeks. The infection became worse. She went to the hospital on Oct. 26. Doctors found that she had keratitis, a painful condition that she may have picked up from an old pair of contact lenses. They prescribed antibiotics, which have cleared up the infection.
Ms. Esbenshade has two daughters, ages 6 and 10, with asthma. She has explained to them why “we are not Christmas shopping this year — unless, by some miracle, mommy goes back to work and gets a paycheck.”
She said she had told the girls, “I would rather you stay out of the hospital and take your medication than buy you a little toy right now because I think your health is more important.”
In some cases, people who are laid off can maintain their group health benefits under a federal law, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986, known as Cobra. But that is not an option for former Archway employees because their group health plan no longer exists. And they generally cannot afford to buy insurance on their own.
Wendy Carter’s case is typical. She receives $956 a month in unemployment benefits. Her monthly expenses include her share of the rent ($300), car payments ($300), auto insurance ($75), utilities ($220) and food ($260). That leaves nothing for health insurance.
Ms. Darling, who was pregnant when her insurance ran out, worked at Archway for eight years, and her father, Franklin J. Phillips, worked there for 24 years.
“When I heard that I was losing my insurance,” she said, “I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself.”
So Ms. Darling asked her midwife to induce labor two days before her health insurance expired.
“I was determined that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for,” said Ms. Darling, who was interviewed at her home here as she cradled the infant in her arms.
As it turned out, the insurance company denied her claim, leaving Ms. Darling with more than $17,000 in medical bills.
The latest official estimate of the number of uninsured, from the Census Bureau, is for 2007, when the economy was in better condition. In that year, the bureau says, 45.7 million people, accounting for 15.3 percent of the population, were uninsured.
M. Harvey Brenner, a professor of public health at the University of North Texas and Johns Hopkins University, said that three decades of research had shown a correlation between the condition of the economy and human health, including life expectancy.
“In recessions, with declines in national income and increases in unemployment, you often see increases in mortality from heart disease, cancer, psychiatric illnesses and other conditions,” Mr. Brenner said.
The recession is also taking a toll on hospitals.
“We have seen a significant increase in patients seeking assistance paying their bills,” said Erin M. Al-Mehairi, a spokeswoman for Samaritan Hospital in Ashland. “We’ve had a 40 percent increase in charity care write-offs this year over the 2007 level of $2.7 million.”
In addition, people are using the hospital less. “We’ve seen a huge decrease in M.R.I.’s, CAT scans, stress tests, cardiac catheterization tests, knee and hip replacements and other elective surgery,” Ms. Al-Mehairi said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974
By LOUIS UCHITELLE, EDMUND L. ANDREWS and STEPHEN LABATON
December 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06jobs.html?ref=us
This article was reported by Louis Uchitelle, Edmund L. Andrews and Stephen Labaton and written by Mr. Uchitelle.
The government’s report of a giant job loss in November, the biggest monthly decline in a generation, puts more pressure on Congress and the administration to move quickly on a stimulus package, mortgage relief and perhaps financial aid for Detroit’s big automakers.
The nation’s employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
Not since December 1974, toward the end of a severe recession, have so many jobs disappeared in a single month — and the current recession, far from ending, appears to be just gathering steam.
“We are caught in a downward spiral in which employment, incomes and spending are collapsing together,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for IHS Global Insight. “With private spending frozen, we have no choice but to rely on a stimulus package to revive the economy.”
The unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent, up just two-tenths of a percentage point from October, but up six-tenths over the last three months. More than 420,000 men and women who had been working or seeking work in October left the labor force in November.
More significantly, the unemployment rate does not include those too discouraged to look for work any longer or those working fewer hours than they would like. Add those people to the roster of the unemployed, and the rate hit a record 12.5 percent in November, up 1.5 percentage points since September.
Noting that 1.9 million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession a year ago — two-thirds of them since September — President-elect Barack Obama invoked public spending as the best way to get a dead-in-the-water economy moving again. “This painful crisis,” he said in a statement, is an opportunity “to improve the lives of ordinary people by rebuilding roads and modernizing schools for our children,” and by investing in clean energy projects.
A goal of all this spending is to generate 2.5 million jobs over the next two years, he said, repeating an earlier pledge. Given the accelerating job losses, hitting that target would barely recover the jobs that have disappeared over the last year.
As part of Friday’s announcement, the government revised higher its estimates of jobs lost in September and October. Instead of 524,000 jobs disappearing in those months, 723,000 were lost, or a total of 1.2 million jobs in just three months. In all, jobs have been lost in each of the last 11 months.
“Obama is being deliberately unclear about those 2.5 million jobs,” said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts economist. “He is not going to add 2.5 million on top of recovering the 1.9 million that have been lost so far this year.”
Despite the deterioration of the labor market, Democrats in Congress and a lame-duck president remain in a standoff over rescue measures.
At its core, the stalemate between the Republicans and the Democrats springs from fundamentally different views about the nature of the crisis and the role of government in resolving it. The White House contends that it has rightly focused on the credit and housing markets, while the Democrats see economic problems that can be resolved only through broader intervention.
New efforts to adopt a broad economic package are likely to wait until the new president takes office and Democrats have bigger majorities in Congress. That delay poses the possibility of a deeper recession, according to some experts.
President Bush, appearing in front of cameras on Friday morning at the White House, said he was “concerned about our workers who have lost jobs.” But he offered no hint of softening his opposition to either a stimulus package or a bailout of the automobile industry, saying that the measures already put in place by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to ease credit problems would take time to work.
Shortly after his appearance, a White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, dashed any expectation of a change in policy when he said that officials expected a stimulus package would “happen in the next administration.”
Support is building for a significant stimulus package as the economy slips into a deep recession. Most forecasters expect the gross domestic product to contract in the current fourth quarter at an annual rate of 4 or 5 percent, and continue to contract through most of next year, shrinking by 2 percent for all of 2009 — a contraction that has occurred only once since World War II: in 1982, a year of severe recession.
“If there was any doubt that a very large fiscal stimulus is required, then the numbers we have been getting recently should dispel that doubt,” said Jan Hatzius, chief domestic economist for Goldman Sachs. To offset the private sector retrenchment, he added, “we will need a stimulus package of $600 billion at an annual rate, or $1.2 trillion over two years.”
Economists and policy makers increasingly share his estimate of what it will take to revive America’s $14 trillion economy, with Democratic leaders talking recently about a stimulus package of $400 billion or more.
Though any broad economic package seems to be delayed, Democrats still had faint hopes of approving next week a rescue package for the car companies. Their goal would be to prevent far more rapid deterioration in the job market.
The latest job numbers were stark evidence of a breakdown in consumer spending and business investment since mid-September, when the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve decided to let Lehman Brothers fail, delivering a shock to the financial sector. Almost simultaneously, stock prices began a free fall, undermining the wealth and the retirement accounts of millions of Americans.
“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s.
Job loss has played a big role in this erosion, he acknowledged. But so have fewer hours of work, smaller bonuses, less overtime, falling home prices, falling stock prices and a drumbeat of job cut announcements — the most recent, this week, from big names like AT&T, Viacom, CVS, DuPont and the Avis Budget Group.
The Dow Jones industrial average, down more than 20 percent since mid-September, fell Friday morning in response to the November jobs report, but recovered later and gained 259.18 points, or 3 percent, by the end of trading, to close at 8,635.42.
With home prices still in decline, one in 10 mortgage holders was either delinquent on loans in September or in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Friday. That was up from 9.2 percent in June and the highest percentage since the association began to collect this data 30 years ago.
The mortgage crisis makes lenders ever more reluctant to lend for the purchase of homes, autos and other big consumer items. In more normal times, lenders bundle these loans into securities and sell them. The buyers of these securities have disappeared in the current credit crisis, however, and the Federal Reserve is considering ways for lenders to borrow from the Fed, using the securities as collateral.
Jobs disappeared last month from every sector of the economy except health care and state government, which mainly added educators. The biggest losses were in manufacturing, construction, retailing — despite the first month of Christmas shopping — financial services, hotel and restaurant work and temporary workers. Over the course of the recession, 604,000 jobs — nearly one-third of the total — have been eliminated in manufacturing, and the Big Three automakers promise more layoffs to qualify for a federal bailout.
“Business shut down in November,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “Businesses are in survival mode and are slashing jobs and investment to conserve cash. Unless credit starts flowing soon, big job losses will continue well into next year.”
The administration says its recent actions are beginning to make credit flow more easily. “We are pulling some very significant levers on the economy right now, through what we’re doing with Treasury and what we’re doing with the Fed,” said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman.
Jack Healy contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Grim Job Report Not Showing Full Picture
By DAVID LEONHARDT and CATHERINE RAMPELL
December 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06idle.html?ref=economy
As bad as the headline numbers in Friday’s employment report were, they still made the job market look better than it really is.
The unemployment rate reached its highest point since 1993, and overall employment fell by more than a half million jobs. Yet that was just the beginning. Thanks to the vagaries of the way that the government’s best-known jobs statistics are calculated, they have overlooked many workers who have been deeply affected by the current recession.
The number of people out of the labor force — meaning that they were neither working nor looking for work and that the government did not consider them unemployed — jumped by 637,000 last month, the Labor Department said. The number of part-time workers who said they wanted full-time work — all counted as fully employed — rose by an additional 621,000.
Take these people into account, and the job market may be in its worst condition since the early 1980s. It is still deteriorating rapidly, too.
Already, the share of men older than 20 with jobs was at its lowest point last month since 1983, and very close to the low point of the last 60 years. The share of women with jobs is lower than it was eight years ago, which never happened in previous decades.
Liz Perkins, 24 and the mother of four young children in Colorado Springs, began looking for work in October after she learned that her husband, James, was about to lose his job at a bed-making factory.
But the jobs she found either did not pay enough to cover child care or required her to work overnight. “I can’t do overnight work with four children,” she said. She has since stopped looking for work.
The family has paid its bills by dipping into its savings and borrowing money from relatives. But Ms. Perkins said that unless her husband found a job in the next three months, she feared the family would become homeless.
Even Wall Street economists, whose analysis usually comes shaded in rose, seemed taken aback by the report. Goldman Sachs called the new numbers “horrendous.” Others said “dreadful” and “almost indescribably terrible.” In a note to clients, Morgan Stanley economists wrote, “Quite simply, there was nothing good in this report.” HSBC forecasters said they now expected the Federal Reserve to reduce its benchmark interest rate all the way to zero.
Such language may sound out of step with a jobless rate that, despite its recent rise, remains at 6.7 percent; the rate exceeded 10 percent in the early 1980s. But over the last few decades, the jobless rate has become a significantly less useful measure of the country’s economic health.
That is because far more people than in the past fall into the gray area of the labor market — not having a job and not looking for one, but interested in working. This group includes many former factory workers who have been unable to find new work that pays nearly as well and are unwilling to accept a job that pays much less. Some get by with help from disability payments, while others rely on their spouses’ paychecks.
For much of the last year, the ranks of these labor force dropouts were not changing rapidly, said Thomas Nardone, a Labor Department economist who oversees the collection of the unemployment data. People who had lost their jobs generally began looking for new work. But that changed in November.
Much as many stock market investors threw in the towel in early October, and consumers quickly followed suit by cutting their spending, job seekers seemed to turn darkly pessimistic about the American economy in November. Unless the numbers turn out to have been a one-month blip, large numbers of people seem to have decided that a job search is, for now, futile.
“It’s not only that there’s nothing out there,” said Lorena Garcia, an organizer in Denver for 9to5, National Association of Working Women, a group that helps low-wage women and women who are looking for work. “But it also costs money to job hunt.”
Just how bad is the labor market? Coming up with a measure that is comparable across decades is not easy.
The unemployment rate has been made less meaningful by the long-term rise in dropouts from the labor force. The simple percentage of people without jobs — including retirees, stay-at-home parents and discouraged would-be job seekers — can also be misleading, though. It has dropped in recent decades mainly because of the influx of women into the work force, not because the job market is fundamentally healthier than it used to be.
The Labor Department does publish an alternate measure of unemployment, which counts part-time workers who want full-time work, as well as anyone who has looked for work in the last year. (The official rate includes only people who told a government surveyor that they had looked in the last four weeks.)
This alternate measure rose to 12.5 percent in November. That is the highest level since the government began calculating the measure in 1994.
Perhaps the best historical measure of the job market, however, is the one set by the market itself: pay.
During the economic expansion that lasted from 2001 until December 2007, when the recession began, incomes for most households barely outpaced inflation. It was the weakest income growth in any expansion since World War II.
The one bit of good news in Friday’s jobs report, economists said, was that pay had not yet begun to fall sharply. Average weekly wages for rank-and-file workers, who make up about four-fifths of the work force, rose 2.8 percent over the last year, only slightly below inflation.
But economists said those pay gains would begin to shrink next year, if not in the next few weeks, given the rapid drop in demand for workers. “Wage increases of this magnitude will be history very soon,” said Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR Incorporated, a research firm in New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Laid-off workers won't leave until they get their money
GOOSE ISLAND | Bank of America 'completely shameless,' union says
http://www.suntimes .com/news/ metro/1317339, CST-NWS-windows0 6.article
About 200 laid-off workers at the Republic Windows & Doors factory remained camped out in the huge building Friday night -- refusing to leave the Goose Island factory without assurance of vacation and severance pay Republic owes them.
They came and went freely, with no police in sight.
They occupied the factory and warehouse after company officials didn't show at negotiations brokered by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez between the company and its bank.
Republic announced the shutdown Tuesday, saying doors would close Friday as a result of Bank of America cutting its credit line.
Union officials said the company failed to give the 60 days' notice required by federal law and that the bank barred the company from paying for the 60-day period or for vacation time earned by employees.
"It's completely shameless that Bank of America took billions in taxpayer dollars and cuts off credit to a company we believe could have stayed in business," United Electrical Workers union official Leah Fried said.
Bank of America issued a statement saying it was not responsible for Republic's incurred obligations.
Said 20-year employee Juan Cortez: "I just want them to pay me for the time I've put into this company."
Art Golab
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Anti-Police Riots Spread in Greece
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:52 p.m. ET
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/news-us-greece-shooting.html?hp
ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters rampaged through Athens and the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Sunday, burning dozens of shops and vehicles in a second day of rioting after police shot dead a 15-year-old boy.
Greece's worst protests in years erupted in the capital late on Saturday after the shooting of the teenager, identified by police as Alexandros Grigoropoulos, and quickly spread to Thessaloniki and the tourist islands of Crete and Corfu.
Despite appeals for calm from the conservative government, leftist demonstrators and anarchists held running battles with security forces on Sunday.
Authorities said some 34 people had been injured, including one woman with a serious head wound. Private TV stations said at least five more people were being treated in private hospitals.
"I've never experienced anything like this," said Hara Christopoulou, 27, resident of the volatile Exarchia district where the boy was shot. "I tried to leave my house but there's tear gas everywhere and the roads are full of youths in black."
In recent years, anger among Greek youths has been fanned by the growing gap between rich and poor. Violence at student rallies and fire bomb attacks by anarchist groups are common.
In Athens, tear gas choked the streets and protesters rained petrol bombs down on rows of riot police while helicopters hovered overhead. Demonstrators chanted "Killers in Uniform."
Glass, debris and charred cars were strewn across the streets and acrid smoke filled the air after protesters torched more than 30 shops and a dozen banks in the capital's busiest commercial districts ahead of the busy Christmas period.
As night fell, more than 1,000 students played a cat and mouse game with police, retreating to the university campus which security forces are forbidden to enter. At least 13 people have been detained by police so far, many for looting.
In Thessaloniki, a protest by more than 1,000 people descended into violence when marchers lobbed firebombs at police, set fire to a bank and smashed several stores.
TWO POLICE ARRESTED
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose government has been rocked by scandal and an economic slowdown, pledged action in a public apology to the father of the dead boy.
"I know nothing can relieve your pain, but I assure you ... the state will act, as it ought to, so that yesterday's tragedy won't be repeated," he said.
Two police officers were arrested in connection with the shooting and prosecutors said in a statement one would be charged with willful killing and the other with abetting him.
A police statement said one officer fired three shots after their car was attacked by a group of 30 youths in Exarchia. A police official said the officer described his fire as warning shots but witnesses told Greek TV he took aim at the boy.
It was the first time since 1985 that a minor had been killed in clashes with police. The 1985 killing sparked months of almost daily clashes between police and protesters.
Greece, where one in five lives below the poverty line, has seen a rising wave of anti-government strikes and youth protests in recent months as the global slowdown has started to bite.
"We must not feel weak and disgraced, but furious with the government's incapacity, apathy and irresponsibility," said opposition Socialist party leader George Papandreou.
The Socialists have taken the lead in opinion polls amid anger at public scandals and the government's economic stewardship. Many analysts say Karamanlis could be forced to call an early election next year.
(Writing by Daniel Flynn; editing by Andrew Roche)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) The Employment Crash
Editorial
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07sun1.html
The headline numbers in the employment report for November were worse than dreadful — and they did not reflect the true extent of the weak and worsening outlook for American jobs.
Employers axed 533,000 jobs last month, the worst monthly loss since December 1974, bringing the number of lost jobs in the last year to 1.9 million. Worse, two-thirds of the losses were in the past three months, a sign of an intensifying downturn and of more job cuts ahead.
The unemployment rate for November — which rose to 6.7 percent, or 10.3 million people — also understates the weakness in the job market.
Job loss in a recession is related to the number of jobs created while the economy was expanding. Job creation during the Bush-era business cycle was the weakest since the end of World War II, so there are simply not as many workers to lay off as in past downturns. Instead, workers’ hours have been cut, sharply increasing the number of people working part time who want full-time jobs. Involuntary part-timers and out-of-work people who are discouraged from job hunting because their prospects are dim are measured in the underemployment rate, which at 12.5 percent is now the highest since the government started keeping track in 1994.
Joblessness and the threat of joblessness will depress already dismal consumer spending, which in turn will depress business investment, leading to higher unemployment. Rising unemployment will also fuel more foreclosures, which will further destabilize the financial system and reinforce economic weakness.
One in 10 borrowers in America were either delinquent or in foreclosure in the third quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, a stunning tally that does not even reflect the drag of rising unemployment in October and November. Unemployment among 25- to 34-year-olds, which includes most first-time homebuyers, is rising fast. Yet, rather than attack foreclosures directly, the Bush administration’s latest economic rescue proposal is to try to spur home buying by reducing mortgage rates. Good luck.
The political reality is that any serious response to unemployment and foreclosures will probably not occur until the Obama administration takes over. Members of Congress should be working now on another round of economic stimulus, consisting of bolstered unemployment compensation and food stamps and aid to states and localities, including money for creating jobs by rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. An anti-foreclosure plan to rework troubled mortgages en masse is long overdue and should also be passed, either as part of the stimulus or as a stand-alone measure.
Beyond stimulus, President-elect Barack Obama will need a larger recovery plan that puts employment, rising wages and savings at the center of the agenda. The selection of a strong labor secretary, whose input will be as valued as that of Mr. Obama’s Wall-Street-oriented economic advisers, is crucial. The work force needs a champion who has the president’s full attention.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) U.N. Official Warns Afghanistan in Jeopardy
By KIRK SEMPLE
December 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan — In unusually blunt remarks, the chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan warned in an interview this weekend that unless Afghanistan’s international partners conducted their military operations with more care and cultural sensitivity, redoubled their work to minimize civilian casualties and accelerated their reconstruction programs, they risked jeopardizing their efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country.
Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, also came to the defense of embattled President Hamid Karzai this weekend, saying that the Afghan leader’s harsh public criticism of his foreign allies on both the military and development fronts has been authentic, not to mention an accurate reflection of widespread and growing frustration among Afghans.
Some foreign diplomats have dismissed Mr. Karzai’s recent remarks as a cynical effort to curry favor with Afghan voters during the run-up to national elections, Mr. Eide said.
“Listen to the concerns of the Afghan people and listen to what President Karzai said,” the United Nations chief said. “I think he reflects a deep and growing concern within the Afghan public about the impact of what we’re doing on the ground.”
There has been growing outrage in Afghanistan over American-led military operations, including aerial bombings and house raids, that have inflicted civilian casualties and increasingly alienated the international security forces from the Afghan population they are trying to protect.
In addition, Afghans have grown weary of the slow reconstruction process. More than seven years after the invasion that drove the Taliban from power, infrastructure still remains poor, and poverty and unemployment are high.
During a visit here late last month by a United Nations Security Council delegation, Mr. Karzai lashed out in a private meeting at his foreign partners, criticizing mounting civilian casualties inflicted by coalition security forces and at the lack of coordination in the development sector.
Mr. Karzai, whose office later distributed a transcript of his comments publicly, also urged the international community to do more to “Afghanize” the country by strengthening its security forces and governmental institutions.
“Every debate about what we’re planning to do in Afghanistan must be an Afghan-led debate, it must take place on Afghan terms,” Mr. Eide said on Saturday during an interview in his office in a guarded United Nations compound here.
“If what we seek is to strengthen Afghan institutions and strengthen the Afghan government — and that’s what we’ve been saying — then it must be clear to everybody that the debate that we are conducting involves the Afghans fully and has the Afghan in the leading role.”
Mr. Eide, a Norwegian, assumed his current post in April and, among other responsibilities, is in charge of coordinating the civilian redevelopment effort. Publicly, he has cut a figure of quiet determination. But during the interview, his emotions occasionally overrode his normally low-key demeanor, his voice rising in crescendos of pique.
He said he was compelled to air those concerns because of what he called the “opportunity” presented by a change of presidential administration in Washington.
“It’s a unique opportunity to mobilize energy and also to streamline our efforts,” he said.
His comments come as the United States is planning to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to fighting a strengthening insurgency, train Afghan security forces and prepare for national elections.
An Army brigade is scheduled to arrive next month.
Mr. Eide said that he welcomed the debate about more deployments, but that all future deployments must be done hand-in-hand with a parallel debate, informed by the concerns of the Karzai administration and the Afghan people, about the impact of the military engagement.
“Are we sufficiently sensitive to Afghan concerns?” he asked. “Are we sure that we behave in a way that brings Afghan communities closer to the government? Do we listen sufficiently to the concerns we hear from the president and so many Afghans? I’m not convinced that we are.”
He added: “We see how we can go wrong now.”
Mr. Eide referred to an episode in August in Azizabad, a village in eastern Afghanistan, where cannon fire from an AC-130 gunship against a suspected Taliban hideout killed dozens of civilians. He said the incident “shook” Mr. Karzai and helped to focus his concerns more acutely on the problem of civilian casualties and other problems of the foreign military engagement.
“We should accept them and listen to them and discuss any kind of further involvement, taking fully into account the concerns he has expressed,” Mr. Eide said.
He said that he has regularly aired his concerns with Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American military commander in Afghanistan. General McKiernan has said that minimizing civilian casualties is crucial to turning the tide of the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
But Mr. Eide said more work remained to be done.
On the development front, he said, there needs to be greater coordination of the international partners. But he said that his efforts, as the person with the greatest responsibility for this coordination, have been hamstrung by too much bureaucratic red tape and the lack of resources, including development experts.
Because of the sclerotic United Nations hiring process, it took him six months to hire an aid specialist, and he is still in desperate need of experts in agriculture, water and energy, among other fields.
“The Afghan government continues to rightfully complain about a lack of coordination,” he said. “The Afghans are legitimately frustrated that we do not see the difference on the ground that they would like to see and they deserve to see.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Three Officers Indicted in Subway Assault
By RAY RIVERA and AL BAKER
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/nyregion/07mineo.html?hp
Grand jurors investigating claims by a 24-year-old man that he was beaten and sodomized with an object by police officers inside a Brooklyn subway station in October have voted to indict three of the officers involved, people briefed on the matter said on Saturday night.
One of the officers, Richard Kern, 25, faces an assault charge, the most serious of the charges in the indictment, which is expected to be unsealed on Tuesday. The charges stem from accusations by the man, Michael Mineo, that one of the officers jabbed a piece of police equipment — later identified in testimony as a baton — into his buttocks, causing internal injuries.
The other two officers are facing lesser charges. It was unclear which of the other four officers involved would be indicted or what the charges would be, said the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. “Kern’s charge is more serious than the others,” said one of those people.
Officer Kern, who has denied doing anything wrong, could not be reached for comment on Saturday night. His lawyer, John D. Patten, said he had not received any notification of an indictment.
The grand jury’s decision was reported on the Web site of The New York Post on Saturday night.
Albert O’Leary, a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, did not return a call seeking comment on Saturday night.
Asked if the Police Department had been notified of the developments, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said, “I don’t know.” Asked to confirm that a grand jury had voted to indict Officer Kern and that two other officers would be charged with misconduct, Mr. Browne said, “I can’t confirm it.”
Stephen C. Jackson, who is one of Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, said he had no official confirmation that Officer Kern and the other officers had been indicted, but he said, “We fully expect an indictment.”
He said he would be on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio program on Kiss-FM, at 9 a.m. Sunday to discuss the case. He said Mr. Mineo would likely be linked in by phone.
He added that he felt there was no way indictments would not happen, based on all the evidence as he sees it. “I can’t see how indictments cannot be voted upon,” he said.
Kevin L. Mosley, another of Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, said that if reports of the grand jury’s vote were true, then “we’re pleased on behalf of our client that the grand jury has indicted the officer who was the primary miscreant in this and hope that justice will continue to move along.”
The special grand jury, which had been meeting since Oct. 28, was investigating Mr. Mineo’s account of what happened when the police confronted him at the Prospect Park subway station on the afternoon of Oct. 15. The police have said the officers approached Mr. Mineo, believing he was smoking marijuana, and tackled him when he ran. Finding no drugs, Officer Kern issued Mr. Mineo a summons for disorderly conduct.
But one officer, Kevin Maloney, a transit officer, came forward last month and told the grand jury that he saw Mr. Kern jab a baton into Mr. Mineo’s buttocks, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the testimony. The official said the testimony did not make clear whether Officer Kern intended to harm Mr. Mineo or whether he caused physical injury. Another person with knowledge of Officer Maloney’s testimony characterized it differently, saying he told grand jurors that Officer Kern had “pushed” or “placed” the baton against Mr. Mineo’s buttocks.
Mr. Mineo, a body piercer at a Brooklyn tattoo parlor, has said the encounter left him in physical pain for weeks and caused him to be hospitalized twice. Investigators said that medical records supported Mr. Mineo’s assertion that he suffered internal injuries, but Mr. Mineo’s lawyers have yet to publicly release those records.
The case has drawn comparisons to that of Abner Louima, who was sodomized and critically injured with a broomstick in a police station house bathroom in 1997, but the accounts of Officer Maloney’s testimony suggests that the severity of the two episodes are substantially different.
The grand jury voted on the indictments last week after hearing evidence for several weeks. One of the panel’s main tasks was gauging the severity of Mr. Mineo’s internal injuries.
According to accounts of his testimony, Officer Maloney, a two-year veteran of the Transit Bureau, told investigators he was on duty in the Prospect Park station when he saw Mr. Mineo trying to evade a group of officers. Officer Maloney said that he joined the chase and that he was helping to apprehend him when he saw Officer Kern jab or push at Mr. Mineo’s buttocks with the baton.
The Police Department initially said witnesses did not support Mr. Mineo’s account and did not remove any of the officers from active duty. But Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly supported the convening of a special grand jury by the Brooklyn district attorney as a way of establishing what did happen, and after Officer Maloney provided his account, Officer Kern and three others — Officers Alex Cruz, Andrew Morales and Noel Jugraj — were placed on modified assignment and their guns were taken away.
Officer Kern, a four-year veteran of the Police Department, has been part of another case involving accusations of excessive force during a 2007 arrest of two suspects, but his lawyer said he was cleared of wrongdoing in that case by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates claims of police misconduct. The city settled lawsuits against Officer Kern related to that allegation, but said there was no indication of wrongdoing by the officer.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Bottom Drops Out of Recycling Industry
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:21 p.m. ET
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Recycling-Bust.html
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Norm Steenstra's budgeting worries mount with each new load of cardboard, aluminum cans and plastics jugs dumped at West Virginia's largest county recycling center.
Faced with a dramatic slump in the recycling market, the director of the Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority has cut 20 of his 24 employees' work week to four days from five, shuttered six of the authority's drop-off stations and is urging residents to hoard their recyclables after informing municipalities with curbside recycling programs that the center will accept only paper until further notice.
''The market is just not there anymore,'' Steenstra said.
Just months after riding an incredible high, the recycling market has tanked almost in lockstep with the global economic meltdown. As consumer demand for autos, appliances and new homes dropped, so did the steel and pulp mills' demand for scrap, paper and other recyclables.
Cardboard that sold for about $135 a ton in September is now going for $35 a ton. Plastic bottles have fallen from 25 cents to 2 cents a pound. Aluminum cans dropped nearly half to about 40 cents a pound, and scrap metal tumbled from $525 a gross ton to about $100.
It's getting more difficult to find buyers in some markets, Streenstra said.
While few across the country appear to be taking such drastic measures as Streenstra, the recycling market has gotten so bad that haulers in Oregon and Nevada who were once paid for recyclables are now getting nothing or in some cases are having to pay to unload their wares.
In Washington state, what was once a multimillion-dollar revenue source for the city of Seattle may become a liability next year as the city may have to start paying companies to take their materials.
Some in the business are describing the downturn as the worst and fastest ever.
''It's never gone from so good to so bad so fast,'' said Marty Davis, president of Midland Davis Corp. in Pekin, Ill., who has been in the recycling business since 1975.
The turnaround caught everyone off guard, said Steven Kowalsky, president of Empire Recycling in Utica, N.Y.
''Nobody saw it coming. Absolutely nobody,'' Kowalsky said. ''Even the biggest players didn't see it coming.''
At the height of the market just months ago, customers lined the street outside Kowalsky's business, hoping to hawk scrap to pay rising food and fuel costs.
''That's not happening anymore,'' he said.
The Kanawha County authority, which sells donated recyclables from residents and municipalities, sells about 7,500 tons of paper, plastic and aluminum a year, Steenstra said.
Ted Armbrecht III, managing partner of The Wine Shop at Capital Market in Charleston, says it won't be a problem piling up his recyclables at home, but he doesn't have that luxury with his wine business, which uses a lot of cardboard boxes.
''We'll hold onto it as long as we can, but once it reaches a tipping point, the only other place it's going to go is the dumpster,'' he said.
Trey Granger, spokesman for Earth911, a national environmental resource group, said the public's interest in recycling should be able to weather the downturn in an industry that has been growing for more than 30 years and has always been cyclical.
''Obviously times are tough,'' Granger said. ''I wouldn't worry more about this more than any other aspect of the economic downturn we're facing.''
Last year, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They recycled about 150 million tons of material -- roughly 80 million of that in iron and steel -- supporting an industry that employs about 85,000 with $70 billion in sales, said Bob Garino, director of commodities at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based trade association that represents more than 1,600 companies worldwide.
Most recyclables are shipped to Asian countries that use the material to make products that are shipped backed to the United States to be sold.
But the market shift is now jeopardizing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of long-term contracts for scrap metal as some companies that signed when prices were high are trying to cancel or postpone deliveries to take advantage of the cheaper spot market, Garino said.
Davis, of Midland Davis Corp. in Illinois, said he hopes to wait out the market and may rent warehouse space to store his more perishable recyclables, like paper, until he can find buyers. He has some room to stockpile cans and plastics because in July, when prices were high, he unloaded more material than during any month in the past 10 years.
''It's going to be bleak for a while,'' he said. ''We can just make our piles taller, and hopefully by spring, things will be a little better.''
Whether that will come as early as spring is debatable.
''I don't know if we are at the bottom yet, bouncing along the bottom or we have new lows to achieve,'' Garino said.
The market's not likely to bounce back until the economy improves. Kowalsky estimates it could be several years.
''It's just time to pull in your horns and maintain what you have and try to survive until 2010,'' he said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) After Layoffs, Workers Stay at a Factory in Protest
By MONICA DAVEY
December 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/07chicago.html?ref=us
CHICAGO — Scores of workers laid off from a factory here that makes windows and doors have refused to leave, deciding to stage a “peaceful occupation” of the plant around the clock this weekend as they demand pay they say is owed them.
Workers at Republic Windows and Doors, which laid off about 250 people, said they were notified Tuesday that the plant, more than four decades old, would close Friday. They said they were given insufficient notice and were never paid for vacation days or severance.
The workers, many of whom were sitting on fold-up chairs on the factory floor Saturday afternoon, said they would not leave.
“They’re staying because the fact is that these workers feel they have nothing to lose at this point,” said Leah Fried, an organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 1110, who said groups of 30 were occupying the plant in shifts. “Telling them they have three days before they are out on the street, penniless, is outrageous.”
Officials from the company, which makes vinyl windows and patio doors, were not at the plant on Saturday and could not be reached by telephone.
Crain’s Chicago Business reported that the company’s leader had reported that sales had fallen drastically over the last month.
The Chicago police said they were monitoring the situation but had no reason to remove the workers. “We haven’t got any reports of a criminal nature at this time,” a police spokesman said.
Workers blamed Bank of America, which they said had served as an important lender to Republic Windows, for cutting off credit to the company and preventing workers from being paid. Some workers carried signs and stickers criticizing the bank: “You got bailed out, we got sold out.”
A spokeswoman for Bank of America, Julie Westermann, said in a written statement that “because of our client confidentiality obligations, we cannot comment on any individual clients’ situations.” But Ms. Westermann noted, “Neither Bank of America nor any other third party lender to the company has the right to control whether the company complies with applicable laws or honors its commitments to its employees.”
Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, said union leaders hoped to meet Monday afternoon with the company’s leaders and its lenders.
Meanwhile, workers said they were going nowhere.
“It came as a complete surprise,” said Lalo Muñoz, 54, who had worked at Republic for 34 years and who spent the night on the factory floor Friday and was still there Saturday afternoon. “We’re waiting for answers.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) California Cities Ban Military Recruitment of Minors
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2008-12-05 16:33.
Arcata and Eureka Begin Enforcement of Youth Protection Act
By Dave Meserve
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/38087
As of December 4th 2008, it is unlawful within the city limits of Arcata or Eureka, California, for military recruiters to initiate contact with minors under the age of 18, for the purpose of recruiting them into any branch of the military.
On Election Day, voters in both cities approved Measures F and J, by margins of 73% in Arcata and 57% in Eureka. As stated in the initiative ordinances, enforcement of the Measures begins 30 days after voter approval.
Proponents of the Youth Protection Act met Thursday with the city attorneys and city managers of Arcata and Eureka to work on a cooperative plan of implementation and enforcement for the new ordinances. In the near future, police in both cities will be briefed on their responsibility to enforce the ordinances. As required by the Measures, the Cities will also inform local military recruiters of the provisions of the new law.
Minors who are approached by military recruiters or witnesses who observe recruiters in violation of the law are encouraged to file a complaint with the police department in their city. If a police investigation finds that the complaint has merit, they will issue a citation for an infraction to both the recruiter and his or her commanding officer. The law does not prevent anyone from choosing to talk with a recruiter; it only prevents recruiters from initiating such contact with a minor.
Proponents of the Measures were pleased with the outcome of today’s meeting with the City. They look forward to ongoing cooperation with City staff and police in implementing and enforcing the Arcata and Eureka Youth Protection Acts and carrying out the expressed will of the voters.
More information and full text of the Ordinance may be found at: www.stoprecruitingkids.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1 comment:
coach outlet dprbhjxg coach usa wboefpml coach factory outlet tqupoioq coach factory ashdbgzj
Post a Comment