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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
[The argument against the War on Afghanistan can be stated very simply--why should all the Afghani people be collectively punished for what a few are accused of doing? Or of what their government is accused of doing? Imperialist, Capitalist War is collective punishment of the innocent for the supposed crimes of the few!
What if an American went over and bombed some building in another country? (Ha!) Would the people living American feel that the other country would be justified in bombing the U.S. to pieces and killing every living American the world over? Suppose the persons who did the actual act of that bombing were Catholic, or Protestant, or Jewish? Would it make it OK to hunt and kill members of their religion worldwide as well?
That's exactly what Obama has promised--he'll hunt down and kill the Taliban and al-Qaeda wherever he can find them!
And isn't that the excuse given for the genocide against all the Palestinian people carried out by the U.S.-funded puppet government of Israel?...bw]
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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.
December 18, 2008
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) States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
December 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html?ref=us
2) Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'
BBC NEWS
December 16, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
3) Legal Update: U.S. Supreme Court developments regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 15, 2008
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
4) Statement by the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP)
Executive Board in Response to Carl Davidson's Article
Submitted by Jerry Gordon, OSLP Chair
RE: The Bumpy Road Ahead:
New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory
By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama
[I provide the link to this article only since it's very long...bw]
November 19th, 2008
http://progressivesforobama.net/2008/11/19/the-bumpy-road-ahead/
5) Merton Center Activists Engage the National Antiwar Movement
By Paul LeBlanc and Pete Shell, Pittsburgh Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
info@pittsburghendthewar.org
6) American Raid in Afghanistan Kills 3 and Heightens Tensions
By ADAM B. ELLICK
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
7) The Reckoning
On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
[Anybody need some new targets for shoes?...bw]
By LOUISE STORY
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/18pay.html?ref=us
8) Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/us/18marijuana.html?ref=us
9) Rights Group Accuses U.S. of Failing to Protect Latinos
By ANNE BARNARD
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19latino.html?ref=nyregion
10) The Madoff Economy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp
11) You Mean That Bernie Madoff?
Editorial
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19fri1.html?hp
13) 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
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1) States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
December 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html?ref=us
With unemployment claims reaching their highest levels in decades, states are running out of money to pay benefits, and some are turning to the federal government for loans or increasing taxes on businesses to make the payments.
Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have already dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the unemployed.
Unemployment taxes are collected by states from employers, but the rate varies from state to state per employee. In good times states build up trust funds so that when unemployment is high there is enough money to cover the requests for benefits, which are guaranteed by the federal government.
"You don't expect the loans to happen this early in a jobs slump," said Andrew Stettner, the deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy organization for low-wage workers. "You would expect that the states should, even when they are not well prepared, to have savings."
The Labor Department said last week that initial applications for jobless benefits rose to 573,000, the highest reading since November 1982. It is recommended that states keep at least one year of peak-level benefits in their trusts, but many have not, and already some states are far worse off than others.
Indiana's unemployment trust fund went insolvent last month, and has borrowed twice from Washington since then - the first such loans to the state since 1983. It also expects to request an additional $330 million early next year.
Michigan, which has been borrowing money from the federal government for the past few years to replenish its fund, is now $508.8 million in the hole and unable to repay it. Next month the state, where the unemployment rate is more than 9 percent, will begin levying a special "solvency tax" against some employers to replenish its trust fund.
California, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and other states are inching toward insolvency as well, and may have to borrow from the federal government to get through at least the first quarter of 2009.
In South Carolina, officials recently requested a $15 million line of credit.
"Right now we have $40 million in our trust fund, and we are paying out around $11 million a week," said Allen Larson, deputy executive director for the unemployment insurance program at the South Carolina Employment Security Commission. "So we think it is going to be very close as to whether or not we can get through this year. We have never experienced anything like this."
Officials in New York said the state's trust fund has about $314 million, compared with $595 million last year, and will most likely have to borrow from the federal government in January.
The situation puts states, many of them facing huge deficits, in an even tighter vise. As more people lose their jobs, the revenue base that the benefits are drawn from shrinks, making it harder to pay claims. Adding to that burden is that states will eventually have to pay back what they borrow.
Some states are worried about next year because the lion's share of unemployment taxes are collected early in each year, and they are not sure the money will stretch through the end of the next year. The maximum amount of income the federal government can tax employers for each worker is $7,000. (The amount ranges from about $7,000 to about $25,000 for state taxes.)
"It is something that we are concerned about," said Kim Brannock, a spokeswoman for the Office of Employment and Training in Kentucky, where the unemployment trust fund balance now sits at $133 million, compared with $250 million a year ago. The fund has not borrowed money from the federal government since the 1980s. "At this point we are solvent," she said, "but we are monitoring the situation."
States that come up short have the option of borrowing from the federal government, but if the loan is not paid back within the federal fiscal year, 4.7 percent interest is accrued, which cuts into states' general funds.
"With longer term solvency issues due to the sharp increase in unemployment, federal borrowing quickly becomes expensive," said Loree Levy, a spokeswoman for the Employment Development Department in California, which is already facing a multibillion dollar budget gap. "We are anticipating interest payments of $20 million in 2009-10 and if nothing is done to revise the revenue generation model the interest would be $150 million in 2010-11."
As such, they are then forced to raise taxes or cut services, or both.
Robert Vincent, a spokesman for the Gtech Corporation, a technology company for the lottery industry based in Rhode Island, said, "Unemployment taxes are one of a number of taxes that make it difficult to do business here."
In many cases, states that have kept unemployment tax rates artificially low - or in some instances decreased them - find themselves in the worst pickle now. Indiana legislators, for example, reduced the tax rates to businesses by 25 percent in 2001.
"So, frankly, they created the perfect storm," said John Ruckelshaus, the deputy commissioner for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. "The Legislature will have to go in and look at the whole unemployment trust find first thing when they begin their session."
At the same time payments have gone up in some states.
To recalibrate the balance, several states are raising taxes on businesses - often through an automatic increase that is triggered when fund levels are endangered - to keep the unemployment checks flowing. An example is the Michigan solvency tax, which will be levied against employers whose workers have received more in benefits than the companies have contributed in unemployment insurance taxes, to the tune of $67.50 per employee.
In Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is 9.3 percent, the taxable wage base will go to $18,000 from $14,000 in 2009, the highest rate in a decade.
"There is a possibility that we might be slightly under the funds we need come the end of the first quarter," said Raymond Filippone, the assistant director of income support at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. The state has not borrowed from the federal government since 1980, he said.
"Many states have not raised that tax in years," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers in Washington. "Some states have automatic triggers. But then of course you have businesses saying, 'Whoa, you are raising taxes on me when we are having a tough time and it is a recession, too.' "
Still, some said they were thinking beyond the dollars.
"In these times of financial stress every extra cost is a concern," said Linda Shelton, the spokeswoman for Lifespan, a large health care system in Rhode Island. "However there are many things that worry us even more. We are much more concerned about Rhode Island's budget crisis, about rising unemployment, the rising number of uninsured and the continuing cuts to health care."
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2) Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'
BBC NEWS
December 16, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
The brother of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has said that the reporter has been beaten in custody.
Muntadar al-Zaidi has allegedly suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC.
Mr Zaidi threw his shoes at Mr Bush at a news conference, calling him "a dog".
A spokesperson for the Iraqi military says the journalist is in good health and said the allegations were untrue.
It is unclear whether the reporter may have been injured when he was wrestled to the floor at the news conference, or at a later point.
The head of Iraq's journalists' union has asked the government for clemency towards the journalist who is still in custody.
A military spokesman said Mr Zaidi was now being held by the judicial authorities who would decide whether he faces charges.
Earlier, Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Baghdad he believed his brother had been taken to a US military hospital in the Iraqi capital.
Hero figure
A second day of rallies in support of Mr Zaidi were held across Iraq, calling for his release.
Meanwhile, offers to buy the shoes he threw are being made around the Arab world, reports say.
Mr Zaidi told our correspondent that despite offers from many lawyers his brother has not been given access to a legal representative since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.
The Iraqi authorities have said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law, although it is not yet clear what the charges might be.
Iraqi lawyers have speculated that he could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, who was standing next to President Bush during the incident. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.
Our correspondent says that the previously little-known journalist from the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV has become a hero to many, not just in Iraq but across the Arab world, for what many saw as a fitting send-off for a deeply unpopular US president.
As he flung the shoes, Mr Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."
Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC that his brother deliberately bought Iraqi-made shoes, which were dark brown with laces. They were bought from a shop on al-Khyam street, a well-known shopping street in central Baghdad.
However, not everyone in Iraq has been supportive of the journalist's action.
Speaking earlier in Baghdad, Mouyyad al-Lami described Mr Zaidi's action as "strange and unprofessional", but urged Mr Maliki to show compassion.
"Even if he has made a mistake, the government and the judiciary are broad-minded and we hope they consider his release because he has a family and he is still young," he told the Associated Press news agency.
"We hope this case ends before going to court."
Abducted by insurgents
The shoes themselves are said to have attracted bids from around the Arab world.
According to unconfirmed newspaper reports, the former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has offered $100,000 (£65,000) for the shoes, while a Saudi citizen has apparently offered $10m (£6.5m).
The daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Aicha, said her charity would honour the reporter with a medal of courage, saying his action was a "victory for human rights".
The charity called on the media to support Mr Zaidi and put pressure on the Iraqi government to free him.
Mr Zaidi, who lives in Baghdad, has worked for al-Baghdadia for three years.
Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the channel, described him as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man".
He said that Mr Zaidi was a graduate of communications from Baghdad University.
"He has no ties with the former regime. His family was arrested under Saddam's regime," he said.
Mr Zaidi has previously been abducted by insurgents and held twice for questioning by US forces in Iraq.
In November 2007 he was kidnapped by a gang on his way to work in central Baghdad and released three days later without a ransom.
He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him.
Mr Zaidi never learned the identity of his kidnappers, who questioned him about his work before letting him go.
(c) BBC MMVIII
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3) Legal Update: U.S. Supreme Court developments regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 15, 2008
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
Introduction Mumia Abu-Jamal remains on Pennsylvania's death row. Last week marked the 27th anniversary of his unjust imprisonment. Racism, fraud and politics have been threads that have run through the case since its inception, and continue today.
We are in extensive litigation on two fronts before the United States Supreme Court. The prosecution is continuing it quest for the execution of my client. In a separate case before the court, I am seeking an entirely new trial and Mumia's freedom. Based upon my experience in having successfully represented numerous people in murder cases involving the death penalty, I am convinced that we can win if I can just get it back before a jury.
U.S. Supreme Court The following is a brief overview of recent developments and filing deadlines:
Beard v. Abu-Jamal, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08-652 On November 14, 2008, the Philadelphia District Attorney filed in the U.S. Supreme Court a petition seeking to overturn the victory we achieved earlier this year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008). In that ruling court ordered a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Our Brief In Opposition is scheduled to be filed on January 21, 2009.
Abu-Jamal v. Beard, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08A299 The Petition for Writ of Certiorari will be filed on December 19, 2008. The issues concern the prosecution's use of racism in jury selection. Relief was denied last spring by a sharply divided federal court.
This is of great constitutional significance as reflected by the extraordinary dissenting opinion of Justice Thomas L. Ambro. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d at 304-320. He reaffirmed the bedrock principle that everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his or her peers, and that excluding even a single person from a jury because of race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense The legal defense for Mumia needs substantial funds. The legal costs for our litigation in the Supreme Court are considerable and will likely reach six figures. To help, please make your checks payable to the "National Lawyers Guild Foundation" (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). The donations are tax deductible, and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion This is a life and death struggle to save Mumia. He is in greater danger than at any time since being arrested. Your support and activism is needed. That Mumia remains in prison and on death row is an affront to basic human rights. We must aggressively continue this struggle until he is free.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
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4) Statement by the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP)
Executive Board in Response to Carl Davidson's Article
Submitted by Jerry Gordon, OSLP Chair
RE: The Bumpy Road Ahead:
New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory
By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama
[I provide the link to this article only since it's very long...bw]
November 19th, 2008
http://progressivesforobama.net/2008/11/19/the-bumpy-road-ahead/
Recently an article by Carl Davidson titled "The Bumpy Road Ahead: The New Tasks of the Left Following Obama's Victory" has been widely circulated. We are writing to express our strong disagreement with some of its central tenets.
For those who may not know, Carl Davidson is a long time antiwar activist. During the Vietnam War, he was a central leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later became a journalist for the weekly Guardian newspaper. He has served as a member of UFPJ's Steering Committee and was coordinator of the October 27, 2007 regional demonstration in Chicago , an action called by UFPJ.
Davidson's point of departure is to catalogue what position various left wing groups took in the just concluded presidential race. A self-described socialist, he lashes out against those which did not actively support Obama, groups which he describes as ultra left, anarchist, Maoist and Trotskyist.
If all that Davidson was doing in his article was denouncing those who disagreed with his support for Obama, we would not be writing this response. However, Davidson goes further than denounce, he advocates waging a campaign within the antiwar movement directed against them - regardless of whether they are playing a positive and productive role in the struggle to stop the bloodshed. Here is how he puts it:
"We have to break decisively with this ultra-left, semi-anarchist perspective. While the hard core of this trend is small, its reach is wider than some might think. It's not a matter of purges; it's a matter of emancipating the minds of many on the radical left from old dogma. There's no way forward under these new conditions if we don't." (Emphasis added)
Here is the inconsistency: Davidson also says, "What this election, its outcome, its battles and ebb and flow, and the engagement of the masses, has especially done is reveal the utter bankruptcy of almost the entire anti-Obama Trotskyist, anarchist and Maoist left, save for a few groupings and some individuals." But if these groups have been rendered so bankrupt, as Davidson claims, then why is a campaign directed internally against them so urgently needed at this time?
The bottom line is this: Many organizations and individuals in the antiwar movement, including the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, support a united front of all antiwar forces and oppose dividing the movement on the basis of electoral preferences. Davidson's line is the polar opposite of this position and we believe it must be rejected in no uncertain terms.
In the early days of the Vietnam antiwar movement, the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, which was in leadership of the movement at the time, sought to "sanitize" it by barring left wing groups from participating in demonstrations. However, SANE soon lost hegemony, thanks primarily to young activists who helped establish the principles of non-exclusion and the rejection of redbaiting in the movement. From that time to this, the movement has been relatively free from the exclusionary and redbaiting politics of the past. Obviously, Davidson would like to revive those discredited politics.
Today, the antiwar movement is at another crossroads. We have plenty on our plate to deal with, the unification of the movement in the streets to demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan being the central priority. Our struggle is against the government in Washington which is frantically trying to restore some of its lost power and influence so that it can more effectively advance its expansionist policies. Contrary to Davidson, there is a way forward for the movement which does not involve turning inward and waging attacks against forces which took a position in the election different from his own. Let's get real here: Those in our movement who supported third parties (or no party) are not the enemy. Unity, not divisiveness, is the key to the movement's success.
And lest people think this is an esoteric discussion among the left -- since labor was united behind Obama - it should be pointed out that millions of U.S. workers continue to vote Republican every election cycle and a recent Peter Hart survey found that while 67% of union members who went to the polls voted for Obama, 30% chose McCain. Those trade unionists who voted for McCain are not the enemy either, and we need to reach out and attempt to win them to the antiwar cause, along with Obama supporters.
Against U.S. wars and occupations? Then join us! What you do on the outside on the electoral front is your own business.
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5) Merton Center Activists Engage the National Antiwar Movement
By Paul LeBlanc and Pete Shell, Pittsburgh Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
info@pittsburghendthewar.org
The national convention of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a major antiwar coalition, took place in Chicago on December 12-14. A five-member delegation of the Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee (AWC)-Jessica Benner, Paul Le Blanc, Jonah McAllister-Erickson, Pete Shell, and Carole Wiedmann-plus Francine Porter representing Pittsburgh Code Pink and David Meieran representing De-Militarize Pittsburgh-joined with 241 others who attended.
The delegation went to Chicago to connect with other antiwar forces in the country and get a sense of the current state of UFPJ, and these goals were accomplished. The AWC delegation had additional goals: 1) to work with like-minded UFPJ groups (the "Unity Caucus") to promote a mass mobilization of all antiwar groups in the U.S. this spring for an end to the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) to help advance a position for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan as well as Iraq; and 3) to elect a representative of the Merton Center onto the UFPJ Steering Committee. Of these, the goal of adopting a "U.S. out of Afghanistan Now" amendment was achieved. No Merton Center representative was added to the UFPJ steering committee, and only one-third of UFPJ delegates joined us in supporting a unified mobilization of forces focused on ending the wars.
The UFPJ leadership had initially called for actions in Washington, D.C. for the week of March 16-21. Based on this a proposal had been put forward (by the pro-unity National Assembly to the End U.S. War and Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, with which the AWC has affiliated) for unified mass demonstrations against the war on March 21 in Washington and San Francisco. Several other antiwar formations (including ANSWER) expressed support for such actions. The UFPJ leadership then reversed itself-proposing a national action in New York for April 4.
In the opening session, UFPJ leader Leslie Cagan, argued that the peace movement needs to move away from national marches and more into local organizing. She hailed the Obama family's upcoming arrival at the White House as the dawning of a new era that would usher in substantial change. In introducing the April 4 campaign proposal, the UFPJ Steering Committee stated that they did not want to alienate the new generation that supported Obama. This was the reason, they said, that they decided to move their action from Washington, D.C. to New York. They also listed a central demand of their protest in New York as a "re-ordering of economic priorities."
Marilyn Levin, a member of the National Assembly, introduced the Unity Caucus proposal for a united mass march in Washington on March 21, which had been endorsed by 18 UFPJ member groups including the Thomas Merton Center AWC. She emphasized that the U.S. peace movement has a historical responsibility to unite; that marches inspire and energize youth to get more involved in the struggle for peace and justice; and the importance of solidarity with the Iraqi people.
The Steering Committee recommended that the two action proposals be counter-posed. They argued that UFPJ would not have enough resources to organize both-despite the fact that they were planning to organize ten events from January to April.
The Unity Caucus made a motion to separate the proposals in order to allow delegates to decide each on its own merits. Many of us supported the civil rights and economic justice themes of the April 4 event, which will have a different emphasis than the March 21 protest. We also stated that supporting March 21 was a political decision, not a resource commitment.
The motion to separate the proposals failed, and the two dates were unfortunately pitted against each other. The Steering Committee allowed only a short debate. Iraqi poet Zaineb Alani gave a heartfelt plea for the March 21 proposal. She stressed that a unified national march focused on ending the war would be heard in Baghdad. With the proposed multi-issue event in New York City, she added, her relatives who had suffered under "shock and awe" would not hear a clear condemnation of the war from the U.S. people. (This position was supported by all Iraqis attending the conference.) Carl Davidson of Progressives for Obama spoke against the March 21 proposal, arguing that the real peace movement consists, not of the activists who have been organizing antiwar protests for the last several years, but of people who campaigned for Obama.
The March 21 proposal failed, with two-thirds of the voting delegates (by roughly 100 votes to 50) voting instead for April 4.
The AWC will be helping to build the March 21 mobilization in Washington, DC to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and also supports the April 4 multi-issue event.
To help build for the spring mobilizations, please e-mail info@pittsburghendthewar.org.
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6) American Raid in Afghanistan Kills 3 and Heightens Tensions
By ADAM B. ELLICK
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan - A deadly United States military raid on a house near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan became a new source of tension on Thursday, with the Americans calling it a successful counterterrorism strike and the Afghans saying it left three innocent civilians dead and two wounded, including a 4-year-old boy bitten by an attack dog.
The raid took place on Wednesday in the village of Kundi, in Khost Province. American military leaders and Afghan officials said they were investigating the conflicting accounts of what happened.
But President Hamid Karzai, who has grown increasingly impatient with the American-led war effort against the Taliban insurgency here, condemned the raid publicly in front of government leaders and foreign diplomats, saying that "entering by force to our people's houses is against the government of Afghanistan."
Mr. Karzai, who will face an election next year, is under enormous pressure from Afghans who say the 7-year-old war against the Taliban has devastated the country and led to many civilian casualties at the hands of American-led forces.
The raid took place on the same day that diplomats in Kabul called on foreign forces to increase their sensitivity in order to win over Afghans.
In Khost, American-led forces blasted the gate of the house early Wednesday, then fatally shot the family's father and mother and a male relative, according to Tahir Khan Sabry, deputy governor of the province. Their relationship with the wounded boy was unclear, and another woman was also bitten. Mr. Sabry described all the victims as noncombatant civilians.
The American military said that the raid led to the detention of an operative of Al Qaeda and that those killed were armed and showing "hostile intent." Grenades, AK-47s, pistols and a shotgun were confiscated, American officials said.
The dispute over the Khost raid coincided with a visit to Afghanistan by Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who said the United States needed to win local support for the war.
In recent months, the governor of Khost, Arsala Jamal, has frequently complained about the actions of United States Special Forces here. He said episodes that harmed civilians undermined the progress of reconstruction efforts by permanently based American military forces and their Afghan allies in the provinces.
In Khost, public outrage over the house raid was visible at the funerals for the Afghans who were killed. The use of dogs in military actions is especially sensitive for Afghans after the release of images showing dogs being used to intimidate detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"I saw the 4-year-old boy, and he had an injury under his knee that was definitely the mark of a dog bite," said Rasoul Adel, a local television reporter who arrived at the scene immediately after the raid.
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting.
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7) The Reckoning
On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
By LOUISE STORY
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/18pay.html?ref=us
"As a result of the extraordinary growth at Merrill during my tenure as C.E.O., the board saw fit to increase my compensation each year."
- E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, March 2008
For Dow Kim, 2006 was a very good year. While his salary at Merrill Lynch was $350,000, his total compensation was 100 times that - $35 million.
The difference between the two amounts was his bonus, a rich reward for the robust earnings made by the traders he oversaw in Merrill's mortgage business.
Mr. Kim's colleagues, not only at his level, but far down the ranks, also pocketed large paychecks. In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million.
But Merrill's record earnings in 2006 - $7.5 billion - turned out to be a mirage. The company has since lost three times that amount, largely because the mortgage investments that supposedly had powered some of those profits plunged in value.
Unlike the earnings, however, the bonuses have not been reversed.
As regulators and shareholders sift through the rubble of the financial crisis, questions are being asked about what role lavish bonuses played in the debacle. Scrutiny over pay is intensifying as banks like Merrill prepare to dole out bonuses even after they have had to be propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. While bonuses are expected to be half of what they were a year ago, some bankers could still collect millions of dollars.
Critics say bonuses never should have been so big in the first place, because they were based on ephemeral earnings. These people contend that Wall Street's pay structure, in which bonuses are based on short-term profits, encouraged employees to act like gamblers at a casino - and let them collect their winnings while the roulette wheel was still spinning.
"Compensation was flawed top to bottom," said Lucian A. Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on compensation. "The whole organization was responding to distorted incentives."
Even Wall Streeters concede they were dazzled by the money. To earn bigger bonuses, many traders ignored or played down the risks they took until their bonuses were paid. Their bosses often turned a blind eye because it was in their interest as well.
"That's a call that senior management or risk management should question, but of course their pay was tied to it too," said Brian Lin, a former mortgage trader at Merrill Lynch.
The highest-ranking executives at four firms have agreed under pressure to go without their bonuses, including John A. Thain, who initially wanted a bonus this year since he joined Merrill Lynch as chief executive after its ill-fated mortgage bets were made. And four former executives at one hard-hit bank, UBS of Switzerland, recently volunteered to return some of the bonuses they were paid before the financial crisis. But few think others on Wall Street will follow that lead.
For now, most banks are looking forward rather than backward. Morgan Stanley and UBS are attaching new strings to bonuses, allowing them to pull back part of workers' payouts if they turn out to have been based on illusory profits. Those policies, had they been in place in recent years, might have clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation paid out in 2006 to employees at all levels, including senior executives who are still at those banks.
A Bonus Bonanza
For Wall Street, much of this decade represented a new Gilded Age. Salaries were merely play money - a pittance compared to bonuses. Bonus season became an annual celebration of the riches to be had in the markets. That was especially so in the New York area, where nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Bankers celebrated with five-figure dinners, vied to outspend each other at charity auctions and spent their newfound fortunes on new homes, cars and art.
The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching. Wall Street worked its rookies hard, but it held out the promise of rich rewards. In college dorms, tales of 30-year-olds pulling down $5 million a year were legion.
While top executives received the biggest bonuses, what is striking is how many employees throughout the ranks took home large paychecks. On Wall Street, the first goal was to make "a buck" - a million dollars. More than 100 people in Merrill's bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006. Goldman Sachs paid more than $20 million apiece to more than 50 people that year, according to a person familiar with the matter. Goldman declined to comment.
Pay was tied to profit, and profit to the easy, borrowed money that could be invested in markets like mortgage securities. As the financial industry's role in the economy grew, workers' pay ballooned, leaping sixfold since 1975, nearly twice as much as the increase in pay for the average American worker.
"The financial services industry was in a bubble," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The industry got a bigger share of the economic pie."
A Money Machine
Dow Kim stepped into this milieu in the mid-1980s, fresh from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Seoul and raised there and in Singapore, Mr. Kim moved to the United States at 16 to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. A quiet workaholic in an industry of workaholics, he seemed to rise through the ranks by sheer will. After a stint trading bonds in Tokyo, he moved to New York to oversee Merrill's fixed-income business in 2001. Two years later, he became co-president.
Even as tremors began to reverberate through the housing market and his own company, Mr. Kim exuded optimism.
After several of his key deputies left the firm in the summer of 2006, he appointed a former colleague from Asia, Osman Semerci, as his deputy, and beneath Mr. Semerci he installed Dale M. Lattanzio and Douglas J. Mallach. Mr. Lattanzio promptly purchased a $5 million home, as well as oceanfront property in Mantoloking, a wealthy enclave in New Jersey, according to county records.
Merrill and the executives in this article declined to comment or say whether they would return past bonuses. Mr. Mallach did not return telephone calls.
Mr. Semerci, Mr. Lattanzio and Mr. Mallach joined Mr. Kim as Merrill entered a new phase in its mortgage buildup. That September, the bank spent $1.3 billion to buy the First Franklin Financial Corporation, a mortgage lender in California, in part so it could bundle its mortgages into lucrative bonds.
Yet Mr. Kim was growing restless. That same month, he told E. Stanley O'Neal, Merrill's chief executive, that he was considering starting his own hedge fund. His traders were stunned. But Mr. O'Neal persuaded Mr. Kim to stay, assuring him that the future was bright for Merrill's mortgage business, and, by extension, for Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim stepped to the lectern on the bond trading floor and told his anxious traders that he was not going anywhere, and that business was looking up, according to four former employees who were there. The traders erupted in applause.
"No one wanted to stop this thing," said former mortgage analyst at Merrill. "It was a machine, and we all knew it was going to be a very, very good year."
Merrill Lynch celebrated its success even before the year was over. In November, the company hosted a three-day golf tournament at Pebble Beach, Calif.
Mr. Kim, an avid golfer, played alongside William H. Gross, a founder of Pimco, the big bond house; and Ralph R. Cioffi, who oversaw two Bear Stearns hedge funds whose subsequent collapse in 2007 would send shock waves through the financial world.
"There didn't seem to be an end in sight," said a person who attended the tournament.
Back in New York, Mr. Kim's team was eagerly bundling risky home mortgages into bonds. One of the last deals they put together that year was called "Costa Bella," or beautiful coast - a name that recalls Pebble Beach. The $500 million bundle of loans, a type of investment known as a collateralized debt obligation, was managed by Mr. Gross's Pimco.
Merrill Lynch collected about $5 million in fees for concocting Costa Bella, which included mortgages originated by First Franklin.
But Costa Bella, like so many other C.D.O.'s, was filled with loans that borrowers could not repay. Initially part of it was rated AAA, but Costa Bella is now deeply troubled. The losses on the investment far exceed the money Merrill collected for putting the deal together.
So Much for So Few
By the time Costa Bella ran into trouble, the Merrill bankers who had devised it had collected their bonuses for 2006. Mr. Kim's fixed-income unit generated more than half of Merrill's revenue that year, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. As a reward, Mr. O'Neal and Mr. Kim paid nearly a third of Merrill's $5 billion to $6 billion bonus pool to the 2,000 professionals in the division.
Mr. O'Neal himself was paid $46 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm and data provider in California. Mr. Kim received $35 million. About 57 percent of their pay was in stock, which would lose much of its value over the next two years, but even the cash portions of their bonus were generous: $18.5 million for Mr. O'Neal, and $14.5 million for Mr. Kim, according to Equilar.
Mr. Kim and his deputies were given wide discretion about how to dole out their pot of money. Mr. Semerci was among the highest earners in 2006, at more than $20 million. Below him, Mr. Mallach and Mr. Lattanzio each earned more than $10 million. They were among just over 100 people who accounted for some $500 million of the pool, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
After that blowout, Merrill pushed even deeper into the mortgage business, despite growing signs that the housing bubble was starting to burst. That decision proved disastrous. As the problems in the subprime mortgage market exploded into a full-blown crisis, the value of Merrill's investments plummeted. The firm has since written down its investments by more than $54 billion, selling some of them for pennies on the dollar.
Mr. Lin, the former Merrill trader, arrived late to the party. He was one of the last people hired onto Merrill's mortgage desk, in the summer of 2007. Even then, Merrill guaranteed Mr. Lin a bonus if he joined the firm. Mr. Lin would not disclose his bonus, but such payouts were often in the seven figures.
Mr. Lin said he quickly noticed that traders across Wall Street were reluctant to admit what now seems so obvious: Their mortgage investments were worth far less than they had thought.
"It's always human nature," said Mr. Lin, who lost his job at Merrill last summer and now works at RRMS Advisors, a consulting firm that advises investors in troubled mortgage investments. "You want to pull for the market to do well because you're vested."
But critics question why Wall Street embraced the risky deals even as the housing and mortgage markets began to weaken.
"What happened to their investments was of no interest to them, because they would already be paid," said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a shareholder activist group. Some Wall Street executives argue that paying a larger portion of bonuses in the form of stock, rather than in cash, might keep employees from making short-sighted decision. But Mr. Hodgson contended that would not go far enough, in part because the cash rewards alone were so high. Mr. Kim, for example, was paid a total of $116.6 million in cash and stock from 2001 to 2007. Of that, $55 million was in cash, according to Equilar.
Leaving the Scene
As the damage at Merrill became clear in 2007, Mr. Kim, his deputies and finally Mr. O'Neal left the firm. Mr. Kim opened a hedge fund, but it quickly closed. Mr. Semerci and Mr. Lattanzio landed at a hedge fund in London.
All three departed without collecting bonuses in 2007. Mr. O'Neal, however, got even richer by leaving Merrill Lynch. He was awarded an exit package worth $161 million.
Clawing back the 2006 bonuses at Merrill would not come close to making up for the company's losses, which exceed all the profits that the firm earned over the previous 20 years. This fall, the once-proud firm was sold to Bank of America, ending its 94-year history as an independent firm.
Mr. Bebchuk of Harvard Law School said investment banks like Merrill were brought to their knees because their employees chased after the rich rewards that executives promised them.
"They were trying to get as much of this or that paper, they were doing it with excitement and vigor, and that was because they knew they would be making huge amounts of money by the end of the year," he said.
Ben White contributed reporting.
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8) Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/us/18marijuana.html?ref=us
BOSTON - Last month, voters approved a statewide measure decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Now, wary authorities say, comes the hard part. They are scrambling to set up a new system of civil penalties before Jan. 2, when the change becomes law. From then on, anyone caught with an ounce or less of marijuana will owe a $100 civil fine instead of ending up with an arrest record and possibly facing jail time.
It sounds simple, but David Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said the new policy presented a thicket of questions and complications.
One of the most basic, Mr. Capeless said, is who will collect the fines and enforce other provisions of the law. For example, violators under 18 will be required to attend a drug awareness class within a year, but it is unclear who will make sure that they do so. The fine increases to $1,000 for those who skip the class.
A complicating factor, said Mr. Capeless, the district attorney in Berkshire County, is that state law bans the police from demanding identification for civil infractions.
"Not only do you not have to identify yourself," he said, "but it would appear from a strict reading that people can get a citation, walk away, never pay a fine and have no repercussion."
Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, says he anticipates that many violators will lie about their identities.
"You can tell us that you're Mickey Mouse of One Disneyland Way," Mr. Sampson said, "and we have to assume that's true."
The authorities, he said, will also have to be sure that the substance they hand out citations for is marijuana, which will involve sending it to the State Police crime laboratory.
"You're going to appeal it and go to the clerk's hearing," Mr. Sampson said, "and if we don't have an analysis from the drug lab, the clerk is going to throw the case out."
Mr. Sampson predicted that the law would result in de facto legalization of marijuana because it would prove too difficult to enforce.
"I would argue that the proponents knew these complications right from the beginning," he said.
About 65 percent of state voters supported the decriminalization measure, which was promoted by a group that spent more than $1.5 million on the effort.
The group, the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, said that in addition to ensuring that people caught with marijuana no longer have a criminal record, the change would save about $29.5 million a year that it estimates law enforcement currently spends to enforce existing drug laws.
A spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, which supports the drug's legalization and created the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy to get the ballot question passed here, said that judging from the experience of other states with civil penalties for marijuana possession, Massachusetts officials were exaggerating the challenges.
"I can't help but think that the real difficulty in implementing it," said the spokesman, Dan Bernath, "is they don't want to do it."
Eleven states have decriminalized first-time possession of marijuana, though in most it is technically a misdemeanor instead of a civil offense.
In Nebraska, where possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is punishable by a $300 civil fine, the process has worked smoothly for three decades, said Michael Behm, executive director of the Nebraska Crime Commission.
In New York, possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is a noncriminal violation but is still processed through the criminal system, said Robert M. Carney, the district attorney in Schenectady County.
"They are brought down to the police station so their identity is established," Mr. Carney said of violators, "but they are not fingerprinted because it's not an arrest."
In Massachusetts, the Executive Office of Public Safety is working with state and local law enforcement and court officials to determine how to apply the changes. Mr. Capeless said education officials were also in on the discussions because it was unclear whether public schools and universities could forbid marijuana possession under the new law.
A spokesman for the public safety office said its legal counsel was considering "a lot of questions" as the deadline drew near. But the spokesman, Terrel Harris, would not elaborate.
"We are just trying to make sure we have all the answers," Mr. Harris said.
Mr. Capeless said that in particular the department needed to address a clause in the new law that said neither the state nor its "political subdivisions or their respective agencies" could impose "any form of penalty, sanction or disqualification" on anyone found with an ounce or less of marijuana.
"It appears to say that you get a $100 fine and they can't do anything else to you," he said. "Can a police officer caught with marijuana several times get to keep his job and not be disciplined in any fashion? Can public high schools punish kids for smoking cigarettes but not for having pot?"
Mr. Bernath agreed that the law was "not completely clear" on how to handle such situations, but predicted that they would be rare.
"I think the resistance has to do with dealing with something new," he said. "We're pretty confident that once this gets going and the newness of it wears off, a lot of the apprehension will go away."
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9) Rights Group Accuses U.S. of Failing to Protect Latinos
By ANNE BARNARD
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19latino.html?ref=nyregion
A civil rights legal advocacy group, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, filed an unusual international petition Thursday accusing the United States of failing to adequately protect Latinos living within its borders, regardless of citizenship.
The claim was filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organization of American States, of which the United States is a founding member. It charges that the United States is failing to live up to the group's declaration on human rights, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.
It cites violence against Latinos, including the murders over the past five months of three immigrants: José Sucuzhañay in Brooklyn last week, Marcelo Lucero in the Long Island town of Patchogue on Nov. 8, and Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., on July 14. In all three cases, prosecutors say the assailants used anti-Latino slurs. Hate-crime attacks on Latinos rose 40 percent between 2003 and 2007, the petition says, citing the F.B.I.
The complaint also cites the rising use of agreements that allow local communities to deputize their police forces to carry out immigration law. They were created after Sept. 11, 2001, to increase cooperation between local police departments and federal immigration authorities.
The group argues that deputization leads the police to treat all Latinos as suspects of immigration violations, engenders mistrust of the police among Latinos, divides communities and promotes a belief that Latinos can be attacked with impunity. The complaint notes that such an ordinance was adopted in Shenandoah and was under consideration in Suffolk County, where Patchogue is situated.
The United States has not recognized the commission's decisions as binding, but has sometimes responded to them in the diplomatic arena, lawyers at LatinoJustice say. The State Department had no immediate comment on the petition.
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10) 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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11) 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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12) 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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13) 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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Saturday, December 20, 2008
BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2008
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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
[The argument against the War on Afghanistan can be stated very
simply--why should all the Afghani people be collectively punished
for what a few are accused of doing? Or of what their government is
accused of doing? Imperialist, Capitalist War is collective
punishment of the innocent for the supposed crimes of the few!
What if an American went over and bombed some building in another
country? (Ha!) Would the people living American feel that the other
country would be justified in bombing the U.S. to pieces and killing
every living American the world over? Suppose the persons who did the
actual act of that bombing were Catholic, or Protestant, or Jewish?
Would it make it OK to hunt and kill members of their religion
worldwide as well?
That's exactly what Obama has promised--he'll hunt down and kill the
Taliban and al-Qaeda wherever he can find them!
And isn't that the excuse given for the genocide against all the
Palestinian people carried out by the U.S.-funded puppet government
of Israel?...bw]
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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.
December 18, 2008
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) States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
December 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html?ref=us
2) Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'
BBC NEWS
December 16, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
3) Legal Update: U.S. Supreme Court developments regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 15, 2008
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
4) Statement by the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP)
Executive Board in Response to Carl Davidson's Article
Submitted by Jerry Gordon, OSLP Chair
RE: The Bumpy Road Ahead:
New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory
By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama
[I provide the link to this article only since it's very long...bw]
November 19th, 2008
http://progressivesforobama.net/2008/11/19/the-bumpy-road-ahead/
5) Merton Center Activists Engage the National Antiwar Movement
By Paul LeBlanc and Pete Shell, Pittsburgh Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
info@pittsburghendthewar.org
6) American Raid in Afghanistan Kills 3 and Heightens Tensions
By ADAM B. ELLICK
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
7) The Reckoning
On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
[Anybody need some new targets for shoes?...bw]
By LOUISE STORY
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/18pay.html?ref=us
8) Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/us/18marijuana.html?ref=us
9) Rights Group Accuses U.S. of Failing to Protect Latinos
By ANNE BARNARD
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19latino.html?ref=nyregion
10) The Madoff Economy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp
11) You Mean That Bernie Madoff?
Editorial
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19fri1.html?hp
13) 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
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1) States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
December 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html?ref=us
With unemployment claims reaching their highest levels in decades, states are running out of money to pay benefits, and some are turning to the federal government for loans or increasing taxes on businesses to make the payments.
Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have already dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the unemployed.
Unemployment taxes are collected by states from employers, but the rate varies from state to state per employee. In good times states build up trust funds so that when unemployment is high there is enough money to cover the requests for benefits, which are guaranteed by the federal government.
"You don't expect the loans to happen this early in a jobs slump," said Andrew Stettner, the deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy organization for low-wage workers. "You would expect that the states should, even when they are not well prepared, to have savings."
The Labor Department said last week that initial applications for jobless benefits rose to 573,000, the highest reading since November 1982. It is recommended that states keep at least one year of peak-level benefits in their trusts, but many have not, and already some states are far worse off than others.
Indiana's unemployment trust fund went insolvent last month, and has borrowed twice from Washington since then - the first such loans to the state since 1983. It also expects to request an additional $330 million early next year.
Michigan, which has been borrowing money from the federal government for the past few years to replenish its fund, is now $508.8 million in the hole and unable to repay it. Next month the state, where the unemployment rate is more than 9 percent, will begin levying a special "solvency tax" against some employers to replenish its trust fund.
California, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and other states are inching toward insolvency as well, and may have to borrow from the federal government to get through at least the first quarter of 2009.
In South Carolina, officials recently requested a $15 million line of credit.
"Right now we have $40 million in our trust fund, and we are paying out around $11 million a week," said Allen Larson, deputy executive director for the unemployment insurance program at the South Carolina Employment Security Commission. "So we think it is going to be very close as to whether or not we can get through this year. We have never experienced anything like this."
Officials in New York said the state's trust fund has about $314 million, compared with $595 million last year, and will most likely have to borrow from the federal government in January.
The situation puts states, many of them facing huge deficits, in an even tighter vise. As more people lose their jobs, the revenue base that the benefits are drawn from shrinks, making it harder to pay claims. Adding to that burden is that states will eventually have to pay back what they borrow.
Some states are worried about next year because the lion's share of unemployment taxes are collected early in each year, and they are not sure the money will stretch through the end of the next year. The maximum amount of income the federal government can tax employers for each worker is $7,000. (The amount ranges from about $7,000 to about $25,000 for state taxes.)
"It is something that we are concerned about," said Kim Brannock, a spokeswoman for the Office of Employment and Training in Kentucky, where the unemployment trust fund balance now sits at $133 million, compared with $250 million a year ago. The fund has not borrowed money from the federal government since the 1980s. "At this point we are solvent," she said, "but we are monitoring the situation."
States that come up short have the option of borrowing from the federal government, but if the loan is not paid back within the federal fiscal year, 4.7 percent interest is accrued, which cuts into states' general funds.
"With longer term solvency issues due to the sharp increase in unemployment, federal borrowing quickly becomes expensive," said Loree Levy, a spokeswoman for the Employment Development Department in California, which is already facing a multibillion dollar budget gap. "We are anticipating interest payments of $20 million in 2009-10 and if nothing is done to revise the revenue generation model the interest would be $150 million in 2010-11."
As such, they are then forced to raise taxes or cut services, or both.
Robert Vincent, a spokesman for the Gtech Corporation, a technology company for the lottery industry based in Rhode Island, said, "Unemployment taxes are one of a number of taxes that make it difficult to do business here."
In many cases, states that have kept unemployment tax rates artificially low - or in some instances decreased them - find themselves in the worst pickle now. Indiana legislators, for example, reduced the tax rates to businesses by 25 percent in 2001.
"So, frankly, they created the perfect storm," said John Ruckelshaus, the deputy commissioner for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. "The Legislature will have to go in and look at the whole unemployment trust find first thing when they begin their session."
At the same time payments have gone up in some states.
To recalibrate the balance, several states are raising taxes on businesses - often through an automatic increase that is triggered when fund levels are endangered - to keep the unemployment checks flowing. An example is the Michigan solvency tax, which will be levied against employers whose workers have received more in benefits than the companies have contributed in unemployment insurance taxes, to the tune of $67.50 per employee.
In Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is 9.3 percent, the taxable wage base will go to $18,000 from $14,000 in 2009, the highest rate in a decade.
"There is a possibility that we might be slightly under the funds we need come the end of the first quarter," said Raymond Filippone, the assistant director of income support at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. The state has not borrowed from the federal government since 1980, he said.
"Many states have not raised that tax in years," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers in Washington. "Some states have automatic triggers. But then of course you have businesses saying, 'Whoa, you are raising taxes on me when we are having a tough time and it is a recession, too.' "
Still, some said they were thinking beyond the dollars.
"In these times of financial stress every extra cost is a concern," said Linda Shelton, the spokeswoman for Lifespan, a large health care system in Rhode Island. "However there are many things that worry us even more. We are much more concerned about Rhode Island's budget crisis, about rising unemployment, the rising number of uninsured and the continuing cuts to health care."
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2) Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'
BBC NEWS
December 16, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
The brother of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has said that the reporter has been beaten in custody.
Muntadar al-Zaidi has allegedly suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC.
Mr Zaidi threw his shoes at Mr Bush at a news conference, calling him "a dog".
A spokesperson for the Iraqi military says the journalist is in good health and said the allegations were untrue.
It is unclear whether the reporter may have been injured when he was wrestled to the floor at the news conference, or at a later point.
The head of Iraq's journalists' union has asked the government for clemency towards the journalist who is still in custody.
A military spokesman said Mr Zaidi was now being held by the judicial authorities who would decide whether he faces charges.
Earlier, Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Baghdad he believed his brother had been taken to a US military hospital in the Iraqi capital.
Hero figure
A second day of rallies in support of Mr Zaidi were held across Iraq, calling for his release.
Meanwhile, offers to buy the shoes he threw are being made around the Arab world, reports say.
Mr Zaidi told our correspondent that despite offers from many lawyers his brother has not been given access to a legal representative since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.
The Iraqi authorities have said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law, although it is not yet clear what the charges might be.
Iraqi lawyers have speculated that he could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, who was standing next to President Bush during the incident. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.
Our correspondent says that the previously little-known journalist from the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV has become a hero to many, not just in Iraq but across the Arab world, for what many saw as a fitting send-off for a deeply unpopular US president.
As he flung the shoes, Mr Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."
Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC that his brother deliberately bought Iraqi-made shoes, which were dark brown with laces. They were bought from a shop on al-Khyam street, a well-known shopping street in central Baghdad.
However, not everyone in Iraq has been supportive of the journalist's action.
Speaking earlier in Baghdad, Mouyyad al-Lami described Mr Zaidi's action as "strange and unprofessional", but urged Mr Maliki to show compassion.
"Even if he has made a mistake, the government and the judiciary are broad-minded and we hope they consider his release because he has a family and he is still young," he told the Associated Press news agency.
"We hope this case ends before going to court."
Abducted by insurgents
The shoes themselves are said to have attracted bids from around the Arab world.
According to unconfirmed newspaper reports, the former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has offered $100,000 (£65,000) for the shoes, while a Saudi citizen has apparently offered $10m (£6.5m).
The daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Aicha, said her charity would honour the reporter with a medal of courage, saying his action was a "victory for human rights".
The charity called on the media to support Mr Zaidi and put pressure on the Iraqi government to free him.
Mr Zaidi, who lives in Baghdad, has worked for al-Baghdadia for three years.
Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the channel, described him as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man".
He said that Mr Zaidi was a graduate of communications from Baghdad University.
"He has no ties with the former regime. His family was arrested under Saddam's regime," he said.
Mr Zaidi has previously been abducted by insurgents and held twice for questioning by US forces in Iraq.
In November 2007 he was kidnapped by a gang on his way to work in central Baghdad and released three days later without a ransom.
He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him.
Mr Zaidi never learned the identity of his kidnappers, who questioned him about his work before letting him go.
(c) BBC MMVIII
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3) Legal Update: U.S. Supreme Court developments regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 15, 2008
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
Introduction Mumia Abu-Jamal remains on Pennsylvania's death row. Last week marked the 27th anniversary of his unjust imprisonment. Racism, fraud and politics have been threads that have run through the case since its inception, and continue today.
We are in extensive litigation on two fronts before the United States Supreme Court. The prosecution is continuing it quest for the execution of my client. In a separate case before the court, I am seeking an entirely new trial and Mumia's freedom. Based upon my experience in having successfully represented numerous people in murder cases involving the death penalty, I am convinced that we can win if I can just get it back before a jury.
U.S. Supreme Court The following is a brief overview of recent developments and filing deadlines:
Beard v. Abu-Jamal, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08-652 On November 14, 2008, the Philadelphia District Attorney filed in the U.S. Supreme Court a petition seeking to overturn the victory we achieved earlier this year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008). In that ruling court ordered a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Our Brief In Opposition is scheduled to be filed on January 21, 2009.
Abu-Jamal v. Beard, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08A299 The Petition for Writ of Certiorari will be filed on December 19, 2008. The issues concern the prosecution's use of racism in jury selection. Relief was denied last spring by a sharply divided federal court.
This is of great constitutional significance as reflected by the extraordinary dissenting opinion of Justice Thomas L. Ambro. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d at 304-320. He reaffirmed the bedrock principle that everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his or her peers, and that excluding even a single person from a jury because of race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense The legal defense for Mumia needs substantial funds. The legal costs for our litigation in the Supreme Court are considerable and will likely reach six figures. To help, please make your checks payable to the "National Lawyers Guild Foundation" (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). The donations are tax deductible, and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion This is a life and death struggle to save Mumia. He is in greater danger than at any time since being arrested. Your support and activism is needed. That Mumia remains in prison and on death row is an affront to basic human rights. We must aggressively continue this struggle until he is free.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
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4) Statement by the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP)
Executive Board in Response to Carl Davidson's Article
Submitted by Jerry Gordon, OSLP Chair
RE: The Bumpy Road Ahead:
New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory
By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama
[I provide the link to this article only since it's very long...bw]
November 19th, 2008
http://progressivesforobama.net/2008/11/19/the-bumpy-road-ahead/
Recently an article by Carl Davidson titled "The Bumpy Road Ahead: The New Tasks of the Left Following Obama's Victory" has been widely circulated. We are writing to express our strong disagreement with some of its central tenets.
For those who may not know, Carl Davidson is a long time antiwar activist. During the Vietnam War, he was a central leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later became a journalist for the weekly Guardian newspaper. He has served as a member of UFPJ's Steering Committee and was coordinator of the October 27, 2007 regional demonstration in Chicago , an action called by UFPJ.
Davidson's point of departure is to catalogue what position various left wing groups took in the just concluded presidential race. A self-described socialist, he lashes out against those which did not actively support Obama, groups which he describes as ultra left, anarchist, Maoist and Trotskyist.
If all that Davidson was doing in his article was denouncing those who disagreed with his support for Obama, we would not be writing this response. However, Davidson goes further than denounce, he advocates waging a campaign within the antiwar movement directed against them - regardless of whether they are playing a positive and productive role in the struggle to stop the bloodshed. Here is how he puts it:
"We have to break decisively with this ultra-left, semi-anarchist perspective. While the hard core of this trend is small, its reach is wider than some might think. It's not a matter of purges; it's a matter of emancipating the minds of many on the radical left from old dogma. There's no way forward under these new conditions if we don't." (Emphasis added)
Here is the inconsistency: Davidson also says, "What this election, its outcome, its battles and ebb and flow, and the engagement of the masses, has especially done is reveal the utter bankruptcy of almost the entire anti-Obama Trotskyist, anarchist and Maoist left, save for a few groupings and some individuals." But if these groups have been rendered so bankrupt, as Davidson claims, then why is a campaign directed internally against them so urgently needed at this time?
The bottom line is this: Many organizations and individuals in the antiwar movement, including the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, support a united front of all antiwar forces and oppose dividing the movement on the basis of electoral preferences. Davidson's line is the polar opposite of this position and we believe it must be rejected in no uncertain terms.
In the early days of the Vietnam antiwar movement, the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, which was in leadership of the movement at the time, sought to "sanitize" it by barring left wing groups from participating in demonstrations. However, SANE soon lost hegemony, thanks primarily to young activists who helped establish the principles of non-exclusion and the rejection of redbaiting in the movement. From that time to this, the movement has been relatively free from the exclusionary and redbaiting politics of the past. Obviously, Davidson would like to revive those discredited politics.
Today, the antiwar movement is at another crossroads. We have plenty on our plate to deal with, the unification of the movement in the streets to demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan being the central priority. Our struggle is against the government in Washington which is frantically trying to restore some of its lost power and influence so that it can more effectively advance its expansionist policies. Contrary to Davidson, there is a way forward for the movement which does not involve turning inward and waging attacks against forces which took a position in the election different from his own. Let's get real here: Those in our movement who supported third parties (or no party) are not the enemy. Unity, not divisiveness, is the key to the movement's success.
And lest people think this is an esoteric discussion among the left -- since labor was united behind Obama - it should be pointed out that millions of U.S. workers continue to vote Republican every election cycle and a recent Peter Hart survey found that while 67% of union members who went to the polls voted for Obama, 30% chose McCain. Those trade unionists who voted for McCain are not the enemy either, and we need to reach out and attempt to win them to the antiwar cause, along with Obama supporters.
Against U.S. wars and occupations? Then join us! What you do on the outside on the electoral front is your own business.
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5) Merton Center Activists Engage the National Antiwar Movement
By Paul LeBlanc and Pete Shell, Pittsburgh Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
info@pittsburghendthewar.org
The national convention of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a major antiwar coalition, took place in Chicago on December 12-14. A five-member delegation of the Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee (AWC)-Jessica Benner, Paul Le Blanc, Jonah McAllister-Erickson, Pete Shell, and Carole Wiedmann-plus Francine Porter representing Pittsburgh Code Pink and David Meieran representing De-Militarize Pittsburgh-joined with 241 others who attended.
The delegation went to Chicago to connect with other antiwar forces in the country and get a sense of the current state of UFPJ, and these goals were accomplished. The AWC delegation had additional goals: 1) to work with like-minded UFPJ groups (the "Unity Caucus") to promote a mass mobilization of all antiwar groups in the U.S. this spring for an end to the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) to help advance a position for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan as well as Iraq; and 3) to elect a representative of the Merton Center onto the UFPJ Steering Committee. Of these, the goal of adopting a "U.S. out of Afghanistan Now" amendment was achieved. No Merton Center representative was added to the UFPJ steering committee, and only one-third of UFPJ delegates joined us in supporting a unified mobilization of forces focused on ending the wars.
The UFPJ leadership had initially called for actions in Washington, D.C. for the week of March 16-21. Based on this a proposal had been put forward (by the pro-unity National Assembly to the End U.S. War and Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, with which the AWC has affiliated) for unified mass demonstrations against the war on March 21 in Washington and San Francisco. Several other antiwar formations (including ANSWER) expressed support for such actions. The UFPJ leadership then reversed itself-proposing a national action in New York for April 4.
In the opening session, UFPJ leader Leslie Cagan, argued that the peace movement needs to move away from national marches and more into local organizing. She hailed the Obama family's upcoming arrival at the White House as the dawning of a new era that would usher in substantial change. In introducing the April 4 campaign proposal, the UFPJ Steering Committee stated that they did not want to alienate the new generation that supported Obama. This was the reason, they said, that they decided to move their action from Washington, D.C. to New York. They also listed a central demand of their protest in New York as a "re-ordering of economic priorities."
Marilyn Levin, a member of the National Assembly, introduced the Unity Caucus proposal for a united mass march in Washington on March 21, which had been endorsed by 18 UFPJ member groups including the Thomas Merton Center AWC. She emphasized that the U.S. peace movement has a historical responsibility to unite; that marches inspire and energize youth to get more involved in the struggle for peace and justice; and the importance of solidarity with the Iraqi people.
The Steering Committee recommended that the two action proposals be counter-posed. They argued that UFPJ would not have enough resources to organize both-despite the fact that they were planning to organize ten events from January to April.
The Unity Caucus made a motion to separate the proposals in order to allow delegates to decide each on its own merits. Many of us supported the civil rights and economic justice themes of the April 4 event, which will have a different emphasis than the March 21 protest. We also stated that supporting March 21 was a political decision, not a resource commitment.
The motion to separate the proposals failed, and the two dates were unfortunately pitted against each other. The Steering Committee allowed only a short debate. Iraqi poet Zaineb Alani gave a heartfelt plea for the March 21 proposal. She stressed that a unified national march focused on ending the war would be heard in Baghdad. With the proposed multi-issue event in New York City, she added, her relatives who had suffered under "shock and awe" would not hear a clear condemnation of the war from the U.S. people. (This position was supported by all Iraqis attending the conference.) Carl Davidson of Progressives for Obama spoke against the March 21 proposal, arguing that the real peace movement consists, not of the activists who have been organizing antiwar protests for the last several years, but of people who campaigned for Obama.
The March 21 proposal failed, with two-thirds of the voting delegates (by roughly 100 votes to 50) voting instead for April 4.
The AWC will be helping to build the March 21 mobilization in Washington, DC to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and also supports the April 4 multi-issue event.
To help build for the spring mobilizations, please e-mail info@pittsburghendthewar.org.
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6) American Raid in Afghanistan Kills 3 and Heightens Tensions
By ADAM B. ELLICK
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan - A deadly United States military raid on a house near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan became a new source of tension on Thursday, with the Americans calling it a successful counterterrorism strike and the Afghans saying it left three innocent civilians dead and two wounded, including a 4-year-old boy bitten by an attack dog.
The raid took place on Wednesday in the village of Kundi, in Khost Province. American military leaders and Afghan officials said they were investigating the conflicting accounts of what happened.
But President Hamid Karzai, who has grown increasingly impatient with the American-led war effort against the Taliban insurgency here, condemned the raid publicly in front of government leaders and foreign diplomats, saying that "entering by force to our people's houses is against the government of Afghanistan."
Mr. Karzai, who will face an election next year, is under enormous pressure from Afghans who say the 7-year-old war against the Taliban has devastated the country and led to many civilian casualties at the hands of American-led forces.
The raid took place on the same day that diplomats in Kabul called on foreign forces to increase their sensitivity in order to win over Afghans.
In Khost, American-led forces blasted the gate of the house early Wednesday, then fatally shot the family's father and mother and a male relative, according to Tahir Khan Sabry, deputy governor of the province. Their relationship with the wounded boy was unclear, and another woman was also bitten. Mr. Sabry described all the victims as noncombatant civilians.
The American military said that the raid led to the detention of an operative of Al Qaeda and that those killed were armed and showing "hostile intent." Grenades, AK-47s, pistols and a shotgun were confiscated, American officials said.
The dispute over the Khost raid coincided with a visit to Afghanistan by Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who said the United States needed to win local support for the war.
In recent months, the governor of Khost, Arsala Jamal, has frequently complained about the actions of United States Special Forces here. He said episodes that harmed civilians undermined the progress of reconstruction efforts by permanently based American military forces and their Afghan allies in the provinces.
In Khost, public outrage over the house raid was visible at the funerals for the Afghans who were killed. The use of dogs in military actions is especially sensitive for Afghans after the release of images showing dogs being used to intimidate detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"I saw the 4-year-old boy, and he had an injury under his knee that was definitely the mark of a dog bite," said Rasoul Adel, a local television reporter who arrived at the scene immediately after the raid.
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting.
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7) The Reckoning
On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
By LOUISE STORY
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/18pay.html?ref=us
"As a result of the extraordinary growth at Merrill during my tenure as C.E.O., the board saw fit to increase my compensation each year."
- E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, March 2008
For Dow Kim, 2006 was a very good year. While his salary at Merrill Lynch was $350,000, his total compensation was 100 times that - $35 million.
The difference between the two amounts was his bonus, a rich reward for the robust earnings made by the traders he oversaw in Merrill's mortgage business.
Mr. Kim's colleagues, not only at his level, but far down the ranks, also pocketed large paychecks. In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million.
But Merrill's record earnings in 2006 - $7.5 billion - turned out to be a mirage. The company has since lost three times that amount, largely because the mortgage investments that supposedly had powered some of those profits plunged in value.
Unlike the earnings, however, the bonuses have not been reversed.
As regulators and shareholders sift through the rubble of the financial crisis, questions are being asked about what role lavish bonuses played in the debacle. Scrutiny over pay is intensifying as banks like Merrill prepare to dole out bonuses even after they have had to be propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. While bonuses are expected to be half of what they were a year ago, some bankers could still collect millions of dollars.
Critics say bonuses never should have been so big in the first place, because they were based on ephemeral earnings. These people contend that Wall Street's pay structure, in which bonuses are based on short-term profits, encouraged employees to act like gamblers at a casino - and let them collect their winnings while the roulette wheel was still spinning.
"Compensation was flawed top to bottom," said Lucian A. Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on compensation. "The whole organization was responding to distorted incentives."
Even Wall Streeters concede they were dazzled by the money. To earn bigger bonuses, many traders ignored or played down the risks they took until their bonuses were paid. Their bosses often turned a blind eye because it was in their interest as well.
"That's a call that senior management or risk management should question, but of course their pay was tied to it too," said Brian Lin, a former mortgage trader at Merrill Lynch.
The highest-ranking executives at four firms have agreed under pressure to go without their bonuses, including John A. Thain, who initially wanted a bonus this year since he joined Merrill Lynch as chief executive after its ill-fated mortgage bets were made. And four former executives at one hard-hit bank, UBS of Switzerland, recently volunteered to return some of the bonuses they were paid before the financial crisis. But few think others on Wall Street will follow that lead.
For now, most banks are looking forward rather than backward. Morgan Stanley and UBS are attaching new strings to bonuses, allowing them to pull back part of workers' payouts if they turn out to have been based on illusory profits. Those policies, had they been in place in recent years, might have clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation paid out in 2006 to employees at all levels, including senior executives who are still at those banks.
A Bonus Bonanza
For Wall Street, much of this decade represented a new Gilded Age. Salaries were merely play money - a pittance compared to bonuses. Bonus season became an annual celebration of the riches to be had in the markets. That was especially so in the New York area, where nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Bankers celebrated with five-figure dinners, vied to outspend each other at charity auctions and spent their newfound fortunes on new homes, cars and art.
The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching. Wall Street worked its rookies hard, but it held out the promise of rich rewards. In college dorms, tales of 30-year-olds pulling down $5 million a year were legion.
While top executives received the biggest bonuses, what is striking is how many employees throughout the ranks took home large paychecks. On Wall Street, the first goal was to make "a buck" - a million dollars. More than 100 people in Merrill's bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006. Goldman Sachs paid more than $20 million apiece to more than 50 people that year, according to a person familiar with the matter. Goldman declined to comment.
Pay was tied to profit, and profit to the easy, borrowed money that could be invested in markets like mortgage securities. As the financial industry's role in the economy grew, workers' pay ballooned, leaping sixfold since 1975, nearly twice as much as the increase in pay for the average American worker.
"The financial services industry was in a bubble," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The industry got a bigger share of the economic pie."
A Money Machine
Dow Kim stepped into this milieu in the mid-1980s, fresh from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Seoul and raised there and in Singapore, Mr. Kim moved to the United States at 16 to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. A quiet workaholic in an industry of workaholics, he seemed to rise through the ranks by sheer will. After a stint trading bonds in Tokyo, he moved to New York to oversee Merrill's fixed-income business in 2001. Two years later, he became co-president.
Even as tremors began to reverberate through the housing market and his own company, Mr. Kim exuded optimism.
After several of his key deputies left the firm in the summer of 2006, he appointed a former colleague from Asia, Osman Semerci, as his deputy, and beneath Mr. Semerci he installed Dale M. Lattanzio and Douglas J. Mallach. Mr. Lattanzio promptly purchased a $5 million home, as well as oceanfront property in Mantoloking, a wealthy enclave in New Jersey, according to county records.
Merrill and the executives in this article declined to comment or say whether they would return past bonuses. Mr. Mallach did not return telephone calls.
Mr. Semerci, Mr. Lattanzio and Mr. Mallach joined Mr. Kim as Merrill entered a new phase in its mortgage buildup. That September, the bank spent $1.3 billion to buy the First Franklin Financial Corporation, a mortgage lender in California, in part so it could bundle its mortgages into lucrative bonds.
Yet Mr. Kim was growing restless. That same month, he told E. Stanley O'Neal, Merrill's chief executive, that he was considering starting his own hedge fund. His traders were stunned. But Mr. O'Neal persuaded Mr. Kim to stay, assuring him that the future was bright for Merrill's mortgage business, and, by extension, for Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim stepped to the lectern on the bond trading floor and told his anxious traders that he was not going anywhere, and that business was looking up, according to four former employees who were there. The traders erupted in applause.
"No one wanted to stop this thing," said former mortgage analyst at Merrill. "It was a machine, and we all knew it was going to be a very, very good year."
Merrill Lynch celebrated its success even before the year was over. In November, the company hosted a three-day golf tournament at Pebble Beach, Calif.
Mr. Kim, an avid golfer, played alongside William H. Gross, a founder of Pimco, the big bond house; and Ralph R. Cioffi, who oversaw two Bear Stearns hedge funds whose subsequent collapse in 2007 would send shock waves through the financial world.
"There didn't seem to be an end in sight," said a person who attended the tournament.
Back in New York, Mr. Kim's team was eagerly bundling risky home mortgages into bonds. One of the last deals they put together that year was called "Costa Bella," or beautiful coast - a name that recalls Pebble Beach. The $500 million bundle of loans, a type of investment known as a collateralized debt obligation, was managed by Mr. Gross's Pimco.
Merrill Lynch collected about $5 million in fees for concocting Costa Bella, which included mortgages originated by First Franklin.
But Costa Bella, like so many other C.D.O.'s, was filled with loans that borrowers could not repay. Initially part of it was rated AAA, but Costa Bella is now deeply troubled. The losses on the investment far exceed the money Merrill collected for putting the deal together.
So Much for So Few
By the time Costa Bella ran into trouble, the Merrill bankers who had devised it had collected their bonuses for 2006. Mr. Kim's fixed-income unit generated more than half of Merrill's revenue that year, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. As a reward, Mr. O'Neal and Mr. Kim paid nearly a third of Merrill's $5 billion to $6 billion bonus pool to the 2,000 professionals in the division.
Mr. O'Neal himself was paid $46 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm and data provider in California. Mr. Kim received $35 million. About 57 percent of their pay was in stock, which would lose much of its value over the next two years, but even the cash portions of their bonus were generous: $18.5 million for Mr. O'Neal, and $14.5 million for Mr. Kim, according to Equilar.
Mr. Kim and his deputies were given wide discretion about how to dole out their pot of money. Mr. Semerci was among the highest earners in 2006, at more than $20 million. Below him, Mr. Mallach and Mr. Lattanzio each earned more than $10 million. They were among just over 100 people who accounted for some $500 million of the pool, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
After that blowout, Merrill pushed even deeper into the mortgage business, despite growing signs that the housing bubble was starting to burst. That decision proved disastrous. As the problems in the subprime mortgage market exploded into a full-blown crisis, the value of Merrill's investments plummeted. The firm has since written down its investments by more than $54 billion, selling some of them for pennies on the dollar.
Mr. Lin, the former Merrill trader, arrived late to the party. He was one of the last people hired onto Merrill's mortgage desk, in the summer of 2007. Even then, Merrill guaranteed Mr. Lin a bonus if he joined the firm. Mr. Lin would not disclose his bonus, but such payouts were often in the seven figures.
Mr. Lin said he quickly noticed that traders across Wall Street were reluctant to admit what now seems so obvious: Their mortgage investments were worth far less than they had thought.
"It's always human nature," said Mr. Lin, who lost his job at Merrill last summer and now works at RRMS Advisors, a consulting firm that advises investors in troubled mortgage investments. "You want to pull for the market to do well because you're vested."
But critics question why Wall Street embraced the risky deals even as the housing and mortgage markets began to weaken.
"What happened to their investments was of no interest to them, because they would already be paid," said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a shareholder activist group. Some Wall Street executives argue that paying a larger portion of bonuses in the form of stock, rather than in cash, might keep employees from making short-sighted decision. But Mr. Hodgson contended that would not go far enough, in part because the cash rewards alone were so high. Mr. Kim, for example, was paid a total of $116.6 million in cash and stock from 2001 to 2007. Of that, $55 million was in cash, according to Equilar.
Leaving the Scene
As the damage at Merrill became clear in 2007, Mr. Kim, his deputies and finally Mr. O'Neal left the firm. Mr. Kim opened a hedge fund, but it quickly closed. Mr. Semerci and Mr. Lattanzio landed at a hedge fund in London.
All three departed without collecting bonuses in 2007. Mr. O'Neal, however, got even richer by leaving Merrill Lynch. He was awarded an exit package worth $161 million.
Clawing back the 2006 bonuses at Merrill would not come close to making up for the company's losses, which exceed all the profits that the firm earned over the previous 20 years. This fall, the once-proud firm was sold to Bank of America, ending its 94-year history as an independent firm.
Mr. Bebchuk of Harvard Law School said investment banks like Merrill were brought to their knees because their employees chased after the rich rewards that executives promised them.
"They were trying to get as much of this or that paper, they were doing it with excitement and vigor, and that was because they knew they would be making huge amounts of money by the end of the year," he said.
Ben White contributed reporting.
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8) Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/us/18marijuana.html?ref=us
BOSTON - Last month, voters approved a statewide measure decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Now, wary authorities say, comes the hard part. They are scrambling to set up a new system of civil penalties before Jan. 2, when the change becomes law. From then on, anyone caught with an ounce or less of marijuana will owe a $100 civil fine instead of ending up with an arrest record and possibly facing jail time.
It sounds simple, but David Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said the new policy presented a thicket of questions and complications.
One of the most basic, Mr. Capeless said, is who will collect the fines and enforce other provisions of the law. For example, violators under 18 will be required to attend a drug awareness class within a year, but it is unclear who will make sure that they do so. The fine increases to $1,000 for those who skip the class.
A complicating factor, said Mr. Capeless, the district attorney in Berkshire County, is that state law bans the police from demanding identification for civil infractions.
"Not only do you not have to identify yourself," he said, "but it would appear from a strict reading that people can get a citation, walk away, never pay a fine and have no repercussion."
Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, says he anticipates that many violators will lie about their identities.
"You can tell us that you're Mickey Mouse of One Disneyland Way," Mr. Sampson said, "and we have to assume that's true."
The authorities, he said, will also have to be sure that the substance they hand out citations for is marijuana, which will involve sending it to the State Police crime laboratory.
"You're going to appeal it and go to the clerk's hearing," Mr. Sampson said, "and if we don't have an analysis from the drug lab, the clerk is going to throw the case out."
Mr. Sampson predicted that the law would result in de facto legalization of marijuana because it would prove too difficult to enforce.
"I would argue that the proponents knew these complications right from the beginning," he said.
About 65 percent of state voters supported the decriminalization measure, which was promoted by a group that spent more than $1.5 million on the effort.
The group, the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, said that in addition to ensuring that people caught with marijuana no longer have a criminal record, the change would save about $29.5 million a year that it estimates law enforcement currently spends to enforce existing drug laws.
A spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, which supports the drug's legalization and created the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy to get the ballot question passed here, said that judging from the experience of other states with civil penalties for marijuana possession, Massachusetts officials were exaggerating the challenges.
"I can't help but think that the real difficulty in implementing it," said the spokesman, Dan Bernath, "is they don't want to do it."
Eleven states have decriminalized first-time possession of marijuana, though in most it is technically a misdemeanor instead of a civil offense.
In Nebraska, where possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is punishable by a $300 civil fine, the process has worked smoothly for three decades, said Michael Behm, executive director of the Nebraska Crime Commission.
In New York, possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is a noncriminal violation but is still processed through the criminal system, said Robert M. Carney, the district attorney in Schenectady County.
"They are brought down to the police station so their identity is established," Mr. Carney said of violators, "but they are not fingerprinted because it's not an arrest."
In Massachusetts, the Executive Office of Public Safety is working with state and local law enforcement and court officials to determine how to apply the changes. Mr. Capeless said education officials were also in on the discussions because it was unclear whether public schools and universities could forbid marijuana possession under the new law.
A spokesman for the public safety office said its legal counsel was considering "a lot of questions" as the deadline drew near. But the spokesman, Terrel Harris, would not elaborate.
"We are just trying to make sure we have all the answers," Mr. Harris said.
Mr. Capeless said that in particular the department needed to address a clause in the new law that said neither the state nor its "political subdivisions or their respective agencies" could impose "any form of penalty, sanction or disqualification" on anyone found with an ounce or less of marijuana.
"It appears to say that you get a $100 fine and they can't do anything else to you," he said. "Can a police officer caught with marijuana several times get to keep his job and not be disciplined in any fashion? Can public high schools punish kids for smoking cigarettes but not for having pot?"
Mr. Bernath agreed that the law was "not completely clear" on how to handle such situations, but predicted that they would be rare.
"I think the resistance has to do with dealing with something new," he said. "We're pretty confident that once this gets going and the newness of it wears off, a lot of the apprehension will go away."
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9) Rights Group Accuses U.S. of Failing to Protect Latinos
By ANNE BARNARD
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19latino.html?ref=nyregion
A civil rights legal advocacy group, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, filed an unusual international petition Thursday accusing the United States of failing to adequately protect Latinos living within its borders, regardless of citizenship.
The claim was filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organization of American States, of which the United States is a founding member. It charges that the United States is failing to live up to the group's declaration on human rights, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.
It cites violence against Latinos, including the murders over the past five months of three immigrants: José Sucuzhañay in Brooklyn last week, Marcelo Lucero in the Long Island town of Patchogue on Nov. 8, and Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., on July 14. In all three cases, prosecutors say the assailants used anti-Latino slurs. Hate-crime attacks on Latinos rose 40 percent between 2003 and 2007, the petition says, citing the F.B.I.
The complaint also cites the rising use of agreements that allow local communities to deputize their police forces to carry out immigration law. They were created after Sept. 11, 2001, to increase cooperation between local police departments and federal immigration authorities.
The group argues that deputization leads the police to treat all Latinos as suspects of immigration violations, engenders mistrust of the police among Latinos, divides communities and promotes a belief that Latinos can be attacked with impunity. The complaint notes that such an ordinance was adopted in Shenandoah and was under consideration in Suffolk County, where Patchogue is situated.
The United States has not recognized the commission's decisions as binding, but has sometimes responded to them in the diplomatic arena, lawyers at LatinoJustice say. The State Department had no immediate comment on the petition.
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10) 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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11) 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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12) 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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13) 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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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
[The argument against the War on Afghanistan can be stated very
simply--why should all the Afghani people be collectively punished
for what a few are accused of doing? Or of what their government is
accused of doing? Imperialist, Capitalist War is collective
punishment of the innocent for the supposed crimes of the few!
What if an American went over and bombed some building in another
country? (Ha!) Would the people living American feel that the other
country would be justified in bombing the U.S. to pieces and killing
every living American the world over? Suppose the persons who did the
actual act of that bombing were Catholic, or Protestant, or Jewish?
Would it make it OK to hunt and kill members of their religion
worldwide as well?
That's exactly what Obama has promised--he'll hunt down and kill the
Taliban and al-Qaeda wherever he can find them!
And isn't that the excuse given for the genocide against all the
Palestinian people carried out by the U.S.-funded puppet government
of Israel?...bw]
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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.
December 18, 2008
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) States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
December 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html?ref=us
2) Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'
BBC NEWS
December 16, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
3) Legal Update: U.S. Supreme Court developments regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 15, 2008
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
4) Statement by the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP)
Executive Board in Response to Carl Davidson's Article
Submitted by Jerry Gordon, OSLP Chair
RE: The Bumpy Road Ahead:
New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory
By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama
[I provide the link to this article only since it's very long...bw]
November 19th, 2008
http://progressivesforobama.net/2008/11/19/the-bumpy-road-ahead/
5) Merton Center Activists Engage the National Antiwar Movement
By Paul LeBlanc and Pete Shell, Pittsburgh Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
info@pittsburghendthewar.org
6) American Raid in Afghanistan Kills 3 and Heightens Tensions
By ADAM B. ELLICK
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
7) The Reckoning
On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
[Anybody need some new targets for shoes?...bw]
By LOUISE STORY
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/18pay.html?ref=us
8) Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/us/18marijuana.html?ref=us
9) Rights Group Accuses U.S. of Failing to Protect Latinos
By ANNE BARNARD
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19latino.html?ref=nyregion
10) The Madoff Economy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp
11) You Mean That Bernie Madoff?
Editorial
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19fri1.html?hp
13) 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
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1) States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
December 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html?ref=us
With unemployment claims reaching their highest levels in decades, states are running out of money to pay benefits, and some are turning to the federal government for loans or increasing taxes on businesses to make the payments.
Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have already dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the unemployed.
Unemployment taxes are collected by states from employers, but the rate varies from state to state per employee. In good times states build up trust funds so that when unemployment is high there is enough money to cover the requests for benefits, which are guaranteed by the federal government.
"You don't expect the loans to happen this early in a jobs slump," said Andrew Stettner, the deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy organization for low-wage workers. "You would expect that the states should, even when they are not well prepared, to have savings."
The Labor Department said last week that initial applications for jobless benefits rose to 573,000, the highest reading since November 1982. It is recommended that states keep at least one year of peak-level benefits in their trusts, but many have not, and already some states are far worse off than others.
Indiana's unemployment trust fund went insolvent last month, and has borrowed twice from Washington since then - the first such loans to the state since 1983. It also expects to request an additional $330 million early next year.
Michigan, which has been borrowing money from the federal government for the past few years to replenish its fund, is now $508.8 million in the hole and unable to repay it. Next month the state, where the unemployment rate is more than 9 percent, will begin levying a special "solvency tax" against some employers to replenish its trust fund.
California, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and other states are inching toward insolvency as well, and may have to borrow from the federal government to get through at least the first quarter of 2009.
In South Carolina, officials recently requested a $15 million line of credit.
"Right now we have $40 million in our trust fund, and we are paying out around $11 million a week," said Allen Larson, deputy executive director for the unemployment insurance program at the South Carolina Employment Security Commission. "So we think it is going to be very close as to whether or not we can get through this year. We have never experienced anything like this."
Officials in New York said the state's trust fund has about $314 million, compared with $595 million last year, and will most likely have to borrow from the federal government in January.
The situation puts states, many of them facing huge deficits, in an even tighter vise. As more people lose their jobs, the revenue base that the benefits are drawn from shrinks, making it harder to pay claims. Adding to that burden is that states will eventually have to pay back what they borrow.
Some states are worried about next year because the lion's share of unemployment taxes are collected early in each year, and they are not sure the money will stretch through the end of the next year. The maximum amount of income the federal government can tax employers for each worker is $7,000. (The amount ranges from about $7,000 to about $25,000 for state taxes.)
"It is something that we are concerned about," said Kim Brannock, a spokeswoman for the Office of Employment and Training in Kentucky, where the unemployment trust fund balance now sits at $133 million, compared with $250 million a year ago. The fund has not borrowed money from the federal government since the 1980s. "At this point we are solvent," she said, "but we are monitoring the situation."
States that come up short have the option of borrowing from the federal government, but if the loan is not paid back within the federal fiscal year, 4.7 percent interest is accrued, which cuts into states' general funds.
"With longer term solvency issues due to the sharp increase in unemployment, federal borrowing quickly becomes expensive," said Loree Levy, a spokeswoman for the Employment Development Department in California, which is already facing a multibillion dollar budget gap. "We are anticipating interest payments of $20 million in 2009-10 and if nothing is done to revise the revenue generation model the interest would be $150 million in 2010-11."
As such, they are then forced to raise taxes or cut services, or both.
Robert Vincent, a spokesman for the Gtech Corporation, a technology company for the lottery industry based in Rhode Island, said, "Unemployment taxes are one of a number of taxes that make it difficult to do business here."
In many cases, states that have kept unemployment tax rates artificially low - or in some instances decreased them - find themselves in the worst pickle now. Indiana legislators, for example, reduced the tax rates to businesses by 25 percent in 2001.
"So, frankly, they created the perfect storm," said John Ruckelshaus, the deputy commissioner for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. "The Legislature will have to go in and look at the whole unemployment trust find first thing when they begin their session."
At the same time payments have gone up in some states.
To recalibrate the balance, several states are raising taxes on businesses - often through an automatic increase that is triggered when fund levels are endangered - to keep the unemployment checks flowing. An example is the Michigan solvency tax, which will be levied against employers whose workers have received more in benefits than the companies have contributed in unemployment insurance taxes, to the tune of $67.50 per employee.
In Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is 9.3 percent, the taxable wage base will go to $18,000 from $14,000 in 2009, the highest rate in a decade.
"There is a possibility that we might be slightly under the funds we need come the end of the first quarter," said Raymond Filippone, the assistant director of income support at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training. The state has not borrowed from the federal government since 1980, he said.
"Many states have not raised that tax in years," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers in Washington. "Some states have automatic triggers. But then of course you have businesses saying, 'Whoa, you are raising taxes on me when we are having a tough time and it is a recession, too.' "
Still, some said they were thinking beyond the dollars.
"In these times of financial stress every extra cost is a concern," said Linda Shelton, the spokeswoman for Lifespan, a large health care system in Rhode Island. "However there are many things that worry us even more. We are much more concerned about Rhode Island's budget crisis, about rising unemployment, the rising number of uninsured and the continuing cuts to health care."
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2) Shoe thrower 'beaten in custody'
BBC NEWS
December 16, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
The brother of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has said that the reporter has been beaten in custody.
Muntadar al-Zaidi has allegedly suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC.
Mr Zaidi threw his shoes at Mr Bush at a news conference, calling him "a dog".
A spokesperson for the Iraqi military says the journalist is in good health and said the allegations were untrue.
It is unclear whether the reporter may have been injured when he was wrestled to the floor at the news conference, or at a later point.
The head of Iraq's journalists' union has asked the government for clemency towards the journalist who is still in custody.
A military spokesman said Mr Zaidi was now being held by the judicial authorities who would decide whether he faces charges.
Earlier, Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Baghdad he believed his brother had been taken to a US military hospital in the Iraqi capital.
Hero figure
A second day of rallies in support of Mr Zaidi were held across Iraq, calling for his release.
Meanwhile, offers to buy the shoes he threw are being made around the Arab world, reports say.
Mr Zaidi told our correspondent that despite offers from many lawyers his brother has not been given access to a legal representative since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.
The Iraqi authorities have said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law, although it is not yet clear what the charges might be.
Iraqi lawyers have speculated that he could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, who was standing next to President Bush during the incident. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.
Our correspondent says that the previously little-known journalist from the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV has become a hero to many, not just in Iraq but across the Arab world, for what many saw as a fitting send-off for a deeply unpopular US president.
As he flung the shoes, Mr Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."
Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC that his brother deliberately bought Iraqi-made shoes, which were dark brown with laces. They were bought from a shop on al-Khyam street, a well-known shopping street in central Baghdad.
However, not everyone in Iraq has been supportive of the journalist's action.
Speaking earlier in Baghdad, Mouyyad al-Lami described Mr Zaidi's action as "strange and unprofessional", but urged Mr Maliki to show compassion.
"Even if he has made a mistake, the government and the judiciary are broad-minded and we hope they consider his release because he has a family and he is still young," he told the Associated Press news agency.
"We hope this case ends before going to court."
Abducted by insurgents
The shoes themselves are said to have attracted bids from around the Arab world.
According to unconfirmed newspaper reports, the former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has offered $100,000 (£65,000) for the shoes, while a Saudi citizen has apparently offered $10m (£6.5m).
The daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Aicha, said her charity would honour the reporter with a medal of courage, saying his action was a "victory for human rights".
The charity called on the media to support Mr Zaidi and put pressure on the Iraqi government to free him.
Mr Zaidi, who lives in Baghdad, has worked for al-Baghdadia for three years.
Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the channel, described him as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man".
He said that Mr Zaidi was a graduate of communications from Baghdad University.
"He has no ties with the former regime. His family was arrested under Saddam's regime," he said.
Mr Zaidi has previously been abducted by insurgents and held twice for questioning by US forces in Iraq.
In November 2007 he was kidnapped by a gang on his way to work in central Baghdad and released three days later without a ransom.
He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him.
Mr Zaidi never learned the identity of his kidnappers, who questioned him about his work before letting him go.
(c) BBC MMVIII
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3) Legal Update: U.S. Supreme Court developments regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 15, 2008
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
Introduction Mumia Abu-Jamal remains on Pennsylvania's death row. Last week marked the 27th anniversary of his unjust imprisonment. Racism, fraud and politics have been threads that have run through the case since its inception, and continue today.
We are in extensive litigation on two fronts before the United States Supreme Court. The prosecution is continuing it quest for the execution of my client. In a separate case before the court, I am seeking an entirely new trial and Mumia's freedom. Based upon my experience in having successfully represented numerous people in murder cases involving the death penalty, I am convinced that we can win if I can just get it back before a jury.
U.S. Supreme Court The following is a brief overview of recent developments and filing deadlines:
Beard v. Abu-Jamal, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08-652 On November 14, 2008, the Philadelphia District Attorney filed in the U.S. Supreme Court a petition seeking to overturn the victory we achieved earlier this year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008). In that ruling court ordered a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Our Brief In Opposition is scheduled to be filed on January 21, 2009.
Abu-Jamal v. Beard, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08A299 The Petition for Writ of Certiorari will be filed on December 19, 2008. The issues concern the prosecution's use of racism in jury selection. Relief was denied last spring by a sharply divided federal court.
This is of great constitutional significance as reflected by the extraordinary dissenting opinion of Justice Thomas L. Ambro. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d at 304-320. He reaffirmed the bedrock principle that everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his or her peers, and that excluding even a single person from a jury because of race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense The legal defense for Mumia needs substantial funds. The legal costs for our litigation in the Supreme Court are considerable and will likely reach six figures. To help, please make your checks payable to the "National Lawyers Guild Foundation" (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). The donations are tax deductible, and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion This is a life and death struggle to save Mumia. He is in greater danger than at any time since being arrested. Your support and activism is needed. That Mumia remains in prison and on death row is an affront to basic human rights. We must aggressively continue this struggle until he is free.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[E-mail: RobertRBryan@aol.com]
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4) Statement by the Ohio State Labor Party (OSLP)
Executive Board in Response to Carl Davidson's Article
Submitted by Jerry Gordon, OSLP Chair
RE: The Bumpy Road Ahead:
New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory
By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama
[I provide the link to this article only since it's very long...bw]
November 19th, 2008
http://progressivesforobama.net/2008/11/19/the-bumpy-road-ahead/
Recently an article by Carl Davidson titled "The Bumpy Road Ahead: The New Tasks of the Left Following Obama's Victory" has been widely circulated. We are writing to express our strong disagreement with some of its central tenets.
For those who may not know, Carl Davidson is a long time antiwar activist. During the Vietnam War, he was a central leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later became a journalist for the weekly Guardian newspaper. He has served as a member of UFPJ's Steering Committee and was coordinator of the October 27, 2007 regional demonstration in Chicago , an action called by UFPJ.
Davidson's point of departure is to catalogue what position various left wing groups took in the just concluded presidential race. A self-described socialist, he lashes out against those which did not actively support Obama, groups which he describes as ultra left, anarchist, Maoist and Trotskyist.
If all that Davidson was doing in his article was denouncing those who disagreed with his support for Obama, we would not be writing this response. However, Davidson goes further than denounce, he advocates waging a campaign within the antiwar movement directed against them - regardless of whether they are playing a positive and productive role in the struggle to stop the bloodshed. Here is how he puts it:
"We have to break decisively with this ultra-left, semi-anarchist perspective. While the hard core of this trend is small, its reach is wider than some might think. It's not a matter of purges; it's a matter of emancipating the minds of many on the radical left from old dogma. There's no way forward under these new conditions if we don't." (Emphasis added)
Here is the inconsistency: Davidson also says, "What this election, its outcome, its battles and ebb and flow, and the engagement of the masses, has especially done is reveal the utter bankruptcy of almost the entire anti-Obama Trotskyist, anarchist and Maoist left, save for a few groupings and some individuals." But if these groups have been rendered so bankrupt, as Davidson claims, then why is a campaign directed internally against them so urgently needed at this time?
The bottom line is this: Many organizations and individuals in the antiwar movement, including the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, support a united front of all antiwar forces and oppose dividing the movement on the basis of electoral preferences. Davidson's line is the polar opposite of this position and we believe it must be rejected in no uncertain terms.
In the early days of the Vietnam antiwar movement, the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, which was in leadership of the movement at the time, sought to "sanitize" it by barring left wing groups from participating in demonstrations. However, SANE soon lost hegemony, thanks primarily to young activists who helped establish the principles of non-exclusion and the rejection of redbaiting in the movement. From that time to this, the movement has been relatively free from the exclusionary and redbaiting politics of the past. Obviously, Davidson would like to revive those discredited politics.
Today, the antiwar movement is at another crossroads. We have plenty on our plate to deal with, the unification of the movement in the streets to demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan being the central priority. Our struggle is against the government in Washington which is frantically trying to restore some of its lost power and influence so that it can more effectively advance its expansionist policies. Contrary to Davidson, there is a way forward for the movement which does not involve turning inward and waging attacks against forces which took a position in the election different from his own. Let's get real here: Those in our movement who supported third parties (or no party) are not the enemy. Unity, not divisiveness, is the key to the movement's success.
And lest people think this is an esoteric discussion among the left -- since labor was united behind Obama - it should be pointed out that millions of U.S. workers continue to vote Republican every election cycle and a recent Peter Hart survey found that while 67% of union members who went to the polls voted for Obama, 30% chose McCain. Those trade unionists who voted for McCain are not the enemy either, and we need to reach out and attempt to win them to the antiwar cause, along with Obama supporters.
Against U.S. wars and occupations? Then join us! What you do on the outside on the electoral front is your own business.
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5) Merton Center Activists Engage the National Antiwar Movement
By Paul LeBlanc and Pete Shell, Pittsburgh Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
info@pittsburghendthewar.org
The national convention of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a major antiwar coalition, took place in Chicago on December 12-14. A five-member delegation of the Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee (AWC)-Jessica Benner, Paul Le Blanc, Jonah McAllister-Erickson, Pete Shell, and Carole Wiedmann-plus Francine Porter representing Pittsburgh Code Pink and David Meieran representing De-Militarize Pittsburgh-joined with 241 others who attended.
The delegation went to Chicago to connect with other antiwar forces in the country and get a sense of the current state of UFPJ, and these goals were accomplished. The AWC delegation had additional goals: 1) to work with like-minded UFPJ groups (the "Unity Caucus") to promote a mass mobilization of all antiwar groups in the U.S. this spring for an end to the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) to help advance a position for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan as well as Iraq; and 3) to elect a representative of the Merton Center onto the UFPJ Steering Committee. Of these, the goal of adopting a "U.S. out of Afghanistan Now" amendment was achieved. No Merton Center representative was added to the UFPJ steering committee, and only one-third of UFPJ delegates joined us in supporting a unified mobilization of forces focused on ending the wars.
The UFPJ leadership had initially called for actions in Washington, D.C. for the week of March 16-21. Based on this a proposal had been put forward (by the pro-unity National Assembly to the End U.S. War and Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, with which the AWC has affiliated) for unified mass demonstrations against the war on March 21 in Washington and San Francisco. Several other antiwar formations (including ANSWER) expressed support for such actions. The UFPJ leadership then reversed itself-proposing a national action in New York for April 4.
In the opening session, UFPJ leader Leslie Cagan, argued that the peace movement needs to move away from national marches and more into local organizing. She hailed the Obama family's upcoming arrival at the White House as the dawning of a new era that would usher in substantial change. In introducing the April 4 campaign proposal, the UFPJ Steering Committee stated that they did not want to alienate the new generation that supported Obama. This was the reason, they said, that they decided to move their action from Washington, D.C. to New York. They also listed a central demand of their protest in New York as a "re-ordering of economic priorities."
Marilyn Levin, a member of the National Assembly, introduced the Unity Caucus proposal for a united mass march in Washington on March 21, which had been endorsed by 18 UFPJ member groups including the Thomas Merton Center AWC. She emphasized that the U.S. peace movement has a historical responsibility to unite; that marches inspire and energize youth to get more involved in the struggle for peace and justice; and the importance of solidarity with the Iraqi people.
The Steering Committee recommended that the two action proposals be counter-posed. They argued that UFPJ would not have enough resources to organize both-despite the fact that they were planning to organize ten events from January to April.
The Unity Caucus made a motion to separate the proposals in order to allow delegates to decide each on its own merits. Many of us supported the civil rights and economic justice themes of the April 4 event, which will have a different emphasis than the March 21 protest. We also stated that supporting March 21 was a political decision, not a resource commitment.
The motion to separate the proposals failed, and the two dates were unfortunately pitted against each other. The Steering Committee allowed only a short debate. Iraqi poet Zaineb Alani gave a heartfelt plea for the March 21 proposal. She stressed that a unified national march focused on ending the war would be heard in Baghdad. With the proposed multi-issue event in New York City, she added, her relatives who had suffered under "shock and awe" would not hear a clear condemnation of the war from the U.S. people. (This position was supported by all Iraqis attending the conference.) Carl Davidson of Progressives for Obama spoke against the March 21 proposal, arguing that the real peace movement consists, not of the activists who have been organizing antiwar protests for the last several years, but of people who campaigned for Obama.
The March 21 proposal failed, with two-thirds of the voting delegates (by roughly 100 votes to 50) voting instead for April 4.
The AWC will be helping to build the March 21 mobilization in Washington, DC to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and also supports the April 4 multi-issue event.
To help build for the spring mobilizations, please e-mail info@pittsburghendthewar.org.
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6) American Raid in Afghanistan Kills 3 and Heightens Tensions
By ADAM B. ELLICK
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan - A deadly United States military raid on a house near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan became a new source of tension on Thursday, with the Americans calling it a successful counterterrorism strike and the Afghans saying it left three innocent civilians dead and two wounded, including a 4-year-old boy bitten by an attack dog.
The raid took place on Wednesday in the village of Kundi, in Khost Province. American military leaders and Afghan officials said they were investigating the conflicting accounts of what happened.
But President Hamid Karzai, who has grown increasingly impatient with the American-led war effort against the Taliban insurgency here, condemned the raid publicly in front of government leaders and foreign diplomats, saying that "entering by force to our people's houses is against the government of Afghanistan."
Mr. Karzai, who will face an election next year, is under enormous pressure from Afghans who say the 7-year-old war against the Taliban has devastated the country and led to many civilian casualties at the hands of American-led forces.
The raid took place on the same day that diplomats in Kabul called on foreign forces to increase their sensitivity in order to win over Afghans.
In Khost, American-led forces blasted the gate of the house early Wednesday, then fatally shot the family's father and mother and a male relative, according to Tahir Khan Sabry, deputy governor of the province. Their relationship with the wounded boy was unclear, and another woman was also bitten. Mr. Sabry described all the victims as noncombatant civilians.
The American military said that the raid led to the detention of an operative of Al Qaeda and that those killed were armed and showing "hostile intent." Grenades, AK-47s, pistols and a shotgun were confiscated, American officials said.
The dispute over the Khost raid coincided with a visit to Afghanistan by Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who said the United States needed to win local support for the war.
In recent months, the governor of Khost, Arsala Jamal, has frequently complained about the actions of United States Special Forces here. He said episodes that harmed civilians undermined the progress of reconstruction efforts by permanently based American military forces and their Afghan allies in the provinces.
In Khost, public outrage over the house raid was visible at the funerals for the Afghans who were killed. The use of dogs in military actions is especially sensitive for Afghans after the release of images showing dogs being used to intimidate detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"I saw the 4-year-old boy, and he had an injury under his knee that was definitely the mark of a dog bite," said Rasoul Adel, a local television reporter who arrived at the scene immediately after the raid.
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting.
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7) The Reckoning
On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
By LOUISE STORY
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/18pay.html?ref=us
"As a result of the extraordinary growth at Merrill during my tenure as C.E.O., the board saw fit to increase my compensation each year."
- E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, March 2008
For Dow Kim, 2006 was a very good year. While his salary at Merrill Lynch was $350,000, his total compensation was 100 times that - $35 million.
The difference between the two amounts was his bonus, a rich reward for the robust earnings made by the traders he oversaw in Merrill's mortgage business.
Mr. Kim's colleagues, not only at his level, but far down the ranks, also pocketed large paychecks. In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million.
But Merrill's record earnings in 2006 - $7.5 billion - turned out to be a mirage. The company has since lost three times that amount, largely because the mortgage investments that supposedly had powered some of those profits plunged in value.
Unlike the earnings, however, the bonuses have not been reversed.
As regulators and shareholders sift through the rubble of the financial crisis, questions are being asked about what role lavish bonuses played in the debacle. Scrutiny over pay is intensifying as banks like Merrill prepare to dole out bonuses even after they have had to be propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. While bonuses are expected to be half of what they were a year ago, some bankers could still collect millions of dollars.
Critics say bonuses never should have been so big in the first place, because they were based on ephemeral earnings. These people contend that Wall Street's pay structure, in which bonuses are based on short-term profits, encouraged employees to act like gamblers at a casino - and let them collect their winnings while the roulette wheel was still spinning.
"Compensation was flawed top to bottom," said Lucian A. Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on compensation. "The whole organization was responding to distorted incentives."
Even Wall Streeters concede they were dazzled by the money. To earn bigger bonuses, many traders ignored or played down the risks they took until their bonuses were paid. Their bosses often turned a blind eye because it was in their interest as well.
"That's a call that senior management or risk management should question, but of course their pay was tied to it too," said Brian Lin, a former mortgage trader at Merrill Lynch.
The highest-ranking executives at four firms have agreed under pressure to go without their bonuses, including John A. Thain, who initially wanted a bonus this year since he joined Merrill Lynch as chief executive after its ill-fated mortgage bets were made. And four former executives at one hard-hit bank, UBS of Switzerland, recently volunteered to return some of the bonuses they were paid before the financial crisis. But few think others on Wall Street will follow that lead.
For now, most banks are looking forward rather than backward. Morgan Stanley and UBS are attaching new strings to bonuses, allowing them to pull back part of workers' payouts if they turn out to have been based on illusory profits. Those policies, had they been in place in recent years, might have clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation paid out in 2006 to employees at all levels, including senior executives who are still at those banks.
A Bonus Bonanza
For Wall Street, much of this decade represented a new Gilded Age. Salaries were merely play money - a pittance compared to bonuses. Bonus season became an annual celebration of the riches to be had in the markets. That was especially so in the New York area, where nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Bankers celebrated with five-figure dinners, vied to outspend each other at charity auctions and spent their newfound fortunes on new homes, cars and art.
The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching. Wall Street worked its rookies hard, but it held out the promise of rich rewards. In college dorms, tales of 30-year-olds pulling down $5 million a year were legion.
While top executives received the biggest bonuses, what is striking is how many employees throughout the ranks took home large paychecks. On Wall Street, the first goal was to make "a buck" - a million dollars. More than 100 people in Merrill's bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006. Goldman Sachs paid more than $20 million apiece to more than 50 people that year, according to a person familiar with the matter. Goldman declined to comment.
Pay was tied to profit, and profit to the easy, borrowed money that could be invested in markets like mortgage securities. As the financial industry's role in the economy grew, workers' pay ballooned, leaping sixfold since 1975, nearly twice as much as the increase in pay for the average American worker.
"The financial services industry was in a bubble," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The industry got a bigger share of the economic pie."
A Money Machine
Dow Kim stepped into this milieu in the mid-1980s, fresh from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Seoul and raised there and in Singapore, Mr. Kim moved to the United States at 16 to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. A quiet workaholic in an industry of workaholics, he seemed to rise through the ranks by sheer will. After a stint trading bonds in Tokyo, he moved to New York to oversee Merrill's fixed-income business in 2001. Two years later, he became co-president.
Even as tremors began to reverberate through the housing market and his own company, Mr. Kim exuded optimism.
After several of his key deputies left the firm in the summer of 2006, he appointed a former colleague from Asia, Osman Semerci, as his deputy, and beneath Mr. Semerci he installed Dale M. Lattanzio and Douglas J. Mallach. Mr. Lattanzio promptly purchased a $5 million home, as well as oceanfront property in Mantoloking, a wealthy enclave in New Jersey, according to county records.
Merrill and the executives in this article declined to comment or say whether they would return past bonuses. Mr. Mallach did not return telephone calls.
Mr. Semerci, Mr. Lattanzio and Mr. Mallach joined Mr. Kim as Merrill entered a new phase in its mortgage buildup. That September, the bank spent $1.3 billion to buy the First Franklin Financial Corporation, a mortgage lender in California, in part so it could bundle its mortgages into lucrative bonds.
Yet Mr. Kim was growing restless. That same month, he told E. Stanley O'Neal, Merrill's chief executive, that he was considering starting his own hedge fund. His traders were stunned. But Mr. O'Neal persuaded Mr. Kim to stay, assuring him that the future was bright for Merrill's mortgage business, and, by extension, for Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim stepped to the lectern on the bond trading floor and told his anxious traders that he was not going anywhere, and that business was looking up, according to four former employees who were there. The traders erupted in applause.
"No one wanted to stop this thing," said former mortgage analyst at Merrill. "It was a machine, and we all knew it was going to be a very, very good year."
Merrill Lynch celebrated its success even before the year was over. In November, the company hosted a three-day golf tournament at Pebble Beach, Calif.
Mr. Kim, an avid golfer, played alongside William H. Gross, a founder of Pimco, the big bond house; and Ralph R. Cioffi, who oversaw two Bear Stearns hedge funds whose subsequent collapse in 2007 would send shock waves through the financial world.
"There didn't seem to be an end in sight," said a person who attended the tournament.
Back in New York, Mr. Kim's team was eagerly bundling risky home mortgages into bonds. One of the last deals they put together that year was called "Costa Bella," or beautiful coast - a name that recalls Pebble Beach. The $500 million bundle of loans, a type of investment known as a collateralized debt obligation, was managed by Mr. Gross's Pimco.
Merrill Lynch collected about $5 million in fees for concocting Costa Bella, which included mortgages originated by First Franklin.
But Costa Bella, like so many other C.D.O.'s, was filled with loans that borrowers could not repay. Initially part of it was rated AAA, but Costa Bella is now deeply troubled. The losses on the investment far exceed the money Merrill collected for putting the deal together.
So Much for So Few
By the time Costa Bella ran into trouble, the Merrill bankers who had devised it had collected their bonuses for 2006. Mr. Kim's fixed-income unit generated more than half of Merrill's revenue that year, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. As a reward, Mr. O'Neal and Mr. Kim paid nearly a third of Merrill's $5 billion to $6 billion bonus pool to the 2,000 professionals in the division.
Mr. O'Neal himself was paid $46 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm and data provider in California. Mr. Kim received $35 million. About 57 percent of their pay was in stock, which would lose much of its value over the next two years, but even the cash portions of their bonus were generous: $18.5 million for Mr. O'Neal, and $14.5 million for Mr. Kim, according to Equilar.
Mr. Kim and his deputies were given wide discretion about how to dole out their pot of money. Mr. Semerci was among the highest earners in 2006, at more than $20 million. Below him, Mr. Mallach and Mr. Lattanzio each earned more than $10 million. They were among just over 100 people who accounted for some $500 million of the pool, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
After that blowout, Merrill pushed even deeper into the mortgage business, despite growing signs that the housing bubble was starting to burst. That decision proved disastrous. As the problems in the subprime mortgage market exploded into a full-blown crisis, the value of Merrill's investments plummeted. The firm has since written down its investments by more than $54 billion, selling some of them for pennies on the dollar.
Mr. Lin, the former Merrill trader, arrived late to the party. He was one of the last people hired onto Merrill's mortgage desk, in the summer of 2007. Even then, Merrill guaranteed Mr. Lin a bonus if he joined the firm. Mr. Lin would not disclose his bonus, but such payouts were often in the seven figures.
Mr. Lin said he quickly noticed that traders across Wall Street were reluctant to admit what now seems so obvious: Their mortgage investments were worth far less than they had thought.
"It's always human nature," said Mr. Lin, who lost his job at Merrill last summer and now works at RRMS Advisors, a consulting firm that advises investors in troubled mortgage investments. "You want to pull for the market to do well because you're vested."
But critics question why Wall Street embraced the risky deals even as the housing and mortgage markets began to weaken.
"What happened to their investments was of no interest to them, because they would already be paid," said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a shareholder activist group. Some Wall Street executives argue that paying a larger portion of bonuses in the form of stock, rather than in cash, might keep employees from making short-sighted decision. But Mr. Hodgson contended that would not go far enough, in part because the cash rewards alone were so high. Mr. Kim, for example, was paid a total of $116.6 million in cash and stock from 2001 to 2007. Of that, $55 million was in cash, according to Equilar.
Leaving the Scene
As the damage at Merrill became clear in 2007, Mr. Kim, his deputies and finally Mr. O'Neal left the firm. Mr. Kim opened a hedge fund, but it quickly closed. Mr. Semerci and Mr. Lattanzio landed at a hedge fund in London.
All three departed without collecting bonuses in 2007. Mr. O'Neal, however, got even richer by leaving Merrill Lynch. He was awarded an exit package worth $161 million.
Clawing back the 2006 bonuses at Merrill would not come close to making up for the company's losses, which exceed all the profits that the firm earned over the previous 20 years. This fall, the once-proud firm was sold to Bank of America, ending its 94-year history as an independent firm.
Mr. Bebchuk of Harvard Law School said investment banks like Merrill were brought to their knees because their employees chased after the rich rewards that executives promised them.
"They were trying to get as much of this or that paper, they were doing it with excitement and vigor, and that was because they knew they would be making huge amounts of money by the end of the year," he said.
Ben White contributed reporting.
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8) Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
December 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/us/18marijuana.html?ref=us
BOSTON - Last month, voters approved a statewide measure decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Now, wary authorities say, comes the hard part. They are scrambling to set up a new system of civil penalties before Jan. 2, when the change becomes law. From then on, anyone caught with an ounce or less of marijuana will owe a $100 civil fine instead of ending up with an arrest record and possibly facing jail time.
It sounds simple, but David Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said the new policy presented a thicket of questions and complications.
One of the most basic, Mr. Capeless said, is who will collect the fines and enforce other provisions of the law. For example, violators under 18 will be required to attend a drug awareness class within a year, but it is unclear who will make sure that they do so. The fine increases to $1,000 for those who skip the class.
A complicating factor, said Mr. Capeless, the district attorney in Berkshire County, is that state law bans the police from demanding identification for civil infractions.
"Not only do you not have to identify yourself," he said, "but it would appear from a strict reading that people can get a citation, walk away, never pay a fine and have no repercussion."
Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, says he anticipates that many violators will lie about their identities.
"You can tell us that you're Mickey Mouse of One Disneyland Way," Mr. Sampson said, "and we have to assume that's true."
The authorities, he said, will also have to be sure that the substance they hand out citations for is marijuana, which will involve sending it to the State Police crime laboratory.
"You're going to appeal it and go to the clerk's hearing," Mr. Sampson said, "and if we don't have an analysis from the drug lab, the clerk is going to throw the case out."
Mr. Sampson predicted that the law would result in de facto legalization of marijuana because it would prove too difficult to enforce.
"I would argue that the proponents knew these complications right from the beginning," he said.
About 65 percent of state voters supported the decriminalization measure, which was promoted by a group that spent more than $1.5 million on the effort.
The group, the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, said that in addition to ensuring that people caught with marijuana no longer have a criminal record, the change would save about $29.5 million a year that it estimates law enforcement currently spends to enforce existing drug laws.
A spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, which supports the drug's legalization and created the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy to get the ballot question passed here, said that judging from the experience of other states with civil penalties for marijuana possession, Massachusetts officials were exaggerating the challenges.
"I can't help but think that the real difficulty in implementing it," said the spokesman, Dan Bernath, "is they don't want to do it."
Eleven states have decriminalized first-time possession of marijuana, though in most it is technically a misdemeanor instead of a civil offense.
In Nebraska, where possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is punishable by a $300 civil fine, the process has worked smoothly for three decades, said Michael Behm, executive director of the Nebraska Crime Commission.
In New York, possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is a noncriminal violation but is still processed through the criminal system, said Robert M. Carney, the district attorney in Schenectady County.
"They are brought down to the police station so their identity is established," Mr. Carney said of violators, "but they are not fingerprinted because it's not an arrest."
In Massachusetts, the Executive Office of Public Safety is working with state and local law enforcement and court officials to determine how to apply the changes. Mr. Capeless said education officials were also in on the discussions because it was unclear whether public schools and universities could forbid marijuana possession under the new law.
A spokesman for the public safety office said its legal counsel was considering "a lot of questions" as the deadline drew near. But the spokesman, Terrel Harris, would not elaborate.
"We are just trying to make sure we have all the answers," Mr. Harris said.
Mr. Capeless said that in particular the department needed to address a clause in the new law that said neither the state nor its "political subdivisions or their respective agencies" could impose "any form of penalty, sanction or disqualification" on anyone found with an ounce or less of marijuana.
"It appears to say that you get a $100 fine and they can't do anything else to you," he said. "Can a police officer caught with marijuana several times get to keep his job and not be disciplined in any fashion? Can public high schools punish kids for smoking cigarettes but not for having pot?"
Mr. Bernath agreed that the law was "not completely clear" on how to handle such situations, but predicted that they would be rare.
"I think the resistance has to do with dealing with something new," he said. "We're pretty confident that once this gets going and the newness of it wears off, a lot of the apprehension will go away."
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9) Rights Group Accuses U.S. of Failing to Protect Latinos
By ANNE BARNARD
December 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19latino.html?ref=nyregion
A civil rights legal advocacy group, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, filed an unusual international petition Thursday accusing the United States of failing to adequately protect Latinos living within its borders, regardless of citizenship.
The claim was filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organization of American States, of which the United States is a founding member. It charges that the United States is failing to live up to the group's declaration on human rights, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.
It cites violence against Latinos, including the murders over the past five months of three immigrants: José Sucuzhañay in Brooklyn last week, Marcelo Lucero in the Long Island town of Patchogue on Nov. 8, and Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., on July 14. In all three cases, prosecutors say the assailants used anti-Latino slurs. Hate-crime attacks on Latinos rose 40 percent between 2003 and 2007, the petition says, citing the F.B.I.
The complaint also cites the rising use of agreements that allow local communities to deputize their police forces to carry out immigration law. They were created after Sept. 11, 2001, to increase cooperation between local police departments and federal immigration authorities.
The group argues that deputization leads the police to treat all Latinos as suspects of immigration violations, engenders mistrust of the police among Latinos, divides communities and promotes a belief that Latinos can be attacked with impunity. The complaint notes that such an ordinance was adopted in Shenandoah and was under consideration in Suffolk County, where Patchogue is situated.
The United States has not recognized the commission's decisions as binding, but has sometimes responded to them in the diplomatic arena, lawyers at LatinoJustice say. The State Department had no immediate comment on the petition.
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10) 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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11) 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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12) 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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13) 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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