Go to Original
By Omar Barghouti
On Friday, 29 February 2008, Israel's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a "holocaust," telling Israeli Army Radio: "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."
This date will go down in history as the beginning of a new phase in the colonial conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, whereby a senior Israeli leader, a "leftist" for that matter, has publicly revealed the genocidal plans Israel is considering to implement against Palestinians under its military occupation, if they do not cease to resist its dictates. It will also mark the first time since World War II that any state has relentlessly -- and on live TV -- terrorized a civilian population with acts of slow, or low-intensity, genocide, with one of its senior government officials overtly inciting to a full-blown "holocaust," while the world stood by, watching in utter apathy, or in glee, as in the case of leading western leaders.
For an Israeli leader who is Jewish, in particular, to threaten anyone with holocaust is a sad irony of history. Are victims of unspeakable crimes invariably doomed to turn into appalling criminals? Can anything be possibly done to break this vicious cycle, before the state that claims to represent the main victims of the Nazi holocaust commits a fresh holocaust itself?
Before addressing those questions, however, isn't it exaggerated and pointedly counterproductive, one may ask, to compare Israel's crimes against the Palestinians, no matter how brutal and inhumane they have been, to Nazi genocide? Besides, isn't each crime unique and worthy of attention in its own right as a violation of human rights, of international law, of universal moral principles? The answer is yes: each crime is unique, and nothing Israel has done to date comes even close, in quantity, to Nazi crimes. But when victims-turned-perpetrators openly admit their intentions to carry out a unique form of offense that they are most familiar with, and they actually commit repeated acts that are qualitatively reminiscent of that crime in their unbridled racism and the ghastly level of disregard for the value and dignity of the human life of the "other" that is inherent in them, then their threats ought to be taken seriously. Everyone is called upon to react, to act in any way to stop this crime-in-progress from reaching its logical conclusion.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), despite its lack of political independence and its disputed mandate, is called upon to immediately exonerate itself from the popular accusation of complicity. Azmi Bishara was among the most prominent of those who issued this harsh indictment, in reaction to the announcement by the head of the PA in Cairo that al-Qaida had infiltrated Gaza, and that the projectiles fired indiscriminately by the Palestinian resistance at Israeli towns and settlements provide the excuse for Israel's aggression. The credibility of this complicity assertion was compelling enough to prompt Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the Israeli crime in unprecedented austerity and hyperbole, describing it as "more than a Holocaust."
Arab regimes, especially Egypt's and Jordan's, as unelected, illegitimate and subservient to the US as they may be, are still expected to distance themselves from Israel's lethal war of aggression on Gaza. After all, their continued diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel, as well as their implicit justification of Israel's crimes through their repeated and gratuitous vilification of Hamas, have convincingly labeled them in the eyes of their respective publics, not to mention the wider Arab public, as accessories in crime.
European governments, chiefly in France, Britain and Germany, have to also answer to the serious charge of collusion in Israel's crimes against humanity, prevalent among wide Palestinian, Arab and Muslim majorities. They have not only stayed silent in the face of Israel's willful killing of innocent civilians, many of whom are children, in the course of the last few days in Gaza; they have continued to treat Israel with reverence, celebrating its so-called 60th anniversary, a gruesome event of ethnic cleansing and colonial ruin itself, showering it with economic, political and scientific support that significantly contributes to its impunity.
The US government, on the other hand, cannot be accused of abetting Israel's acts of genocide in the same league as all the above sinister accomplices. It is and has always been a full and proud partner in planning, bankrolling and executing those crimes against the Palestinians, not to mention its own unmatched criminal record in Afghanistan, Iraq and, before both, Vietnam. When our own Nuremberg moment arrives, when Israeli war criminals are finally prosecuted in an international court, a substantial space in the defense chamber will have to be reserved for US commanders and political leaders. Without American partnership, expressed in immeasurable military, economic and diplomatic aid, Israel could not have committed all its racist and colonial crimes with such impunity.
Going back to the question of whether anything should and could be done to stop Israel, the answer is a certain yes. South African apartheid crimes were challenged not only by the heroic struggle of the oppressed masses on the ground in South Africa; they were also fought by worldwide campaigns of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the regime, with all its complicit economic, academic, cultural, and athletic institutions. Similarly, international civil society can, and ought to, apply the same measures of non-violent justice to bring about Israel's compliance with international law and basic human rights. Even the threat of sanctions has proven effective enough in the past to halt Israel's repeated campaigns of death and devastation.
If all those images of tens of Palestinian children torn to pieces, all those recurrent episodes of wanton killing and destruction by an occupation army against a predominantly defenseless civilian population, go unpunished, the world may well witness a new holocaust indeed.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Mukasey's Paradox
When you think about it, his manipulations are a beautiful, twisted thing.
Go to Original
By Jonathan Turley
The recent decisions of Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to block any prosecution of Bush administration officials for contempt and to block any criminal investigation of torture led to a chorus of criticism. Many view the decisions as raw examples of political manipulation of the legal process and overt cronyism. I must confess that I was one of those crying foul until I suddenly realized that there was something profound, even beautiful, in Mukasey's action.
In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.
Such a perfect paradox is no easy task. Most attempts fall apart because of some element of logical consistency. The closest example to Mukasey's Paradox is the Grandfather Paradox: If you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he meets your grandmother, you would not be conceived and therefore you could not go back to kill your grandfather. That one can play real tricks with your head.
Mukasey's Paradox appears designed to play tricks with Congress. Its origins date back to Mukasey's confirmation hearings, when he first denied knowing what waterboarding was and then (when it was defined for him) refused to recognize it as torture. In fact, it is not only a crime under U.S. law, it is a well-defined war crime under international law.
The problem for Mukasey was that if he admitted waterboarding was a crime, then it was a crime that had been authorized by the president of the United States -- an admission that would trigger calls for both a criminal investigation and impeachment. Mukasey's confirmation was facing imminent defeat over his refusal to answer the question when Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suddenly rescued him, guaranteeing that he would not have to answer it.
Once in office, Mukasey still had the nasty problem of a secret torture program that was now hiding in plain view. Asked to order a criminal investigation of the program, Mukasey refused. His rationale left many lawyers gasping: Any torture that occurred was done on the advice of counsel and therefore, while they may have been wrong, it could not have been a crime for CIA interrogators or, presumably, the president. If this sounds ludicrous, it is. Under that logic, any president can simply surround himself with extremist or collusive lawyers and instantly decriminalize any crime.
However, this is only half of Mukasey's Paradox. The other half occurred last week when Mukasey refused to allow contempt charges against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers to be given to a grand jury. Bolten and Miers stand accused of contempt in refusing to testify before Congress in its investigation of the firings of several U.S. attorneys in 2006. Mukasey wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that their refusal to testify could not be a crime because the president ordered them not to testify under executive privilege.
Under this logic, no official can be prosecuted for contempt as long as a president ordered them to commit the contempt -- even if the president's assertion of privilege is clearly invalid or incomplete. In this case, many experts have expressed skepticism that all or any of President Bush's assertions of privilege in this case would be upheld.
When Mukasey blocked the contempt cases, many legal experts were filled with rage. But I came to see his rationales as objects of beauty rather than scorn. When one combines the two decisions, they fit neatly into Mukasey's Paradox. Mukasey was saying that lawyers could not be charged criminally because the president ordered them to commit the act -- and that the president could not be charged criminally because lawyers told him he could do it.
Now some have pointed to other paradoxes in Mukasey's tenure. There is, for instance, the "paradox" that his confirmation was saved by Democrats -- who thereby allowed the president to avoid a confrontation on torture. There is the "paradox" of Mukasey insisting that courts should not investigate the Justice Department's failure to preserve the CIA torture tapes because the Justice Department should be allowed to investigate its own failure to previously investigate.
Yet these are not real paradoxes -- they're merely political ironies. A paradox is a statement that seems true but yields a contradiction or a dual truth. When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey's Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law -- but that because executive privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.
Mukasey's Paradox will now join other paradoxes such as Zeno's Paradox. Indeed, members of Congress already use a variation of Zeno's Paradox to explain their lack of action on civil liberties, torture and Iraq. They seem to be always working toward "change" without actual change occurring. The answer is found in Zeno's Paradox: You will never reach Point B from Point A as you must always get halfway there, and half of the half, and half of that half, and so on.
Mukasey's Paradox, if adopted, will result in administration officials being effectively beyond the reach of the law. Yet there is always hope.
Consider that Mukasey took an oath under which he swore to uphold the laws of this country -- even if the violator is the president of the United States or his aides. That oath means that all laws must be upheld without exception. Except, according to his interpretation, that executive power is a form of constitutional law that creates exceptions to the enforcement of laws.
But there's something known as the Exception Paradox, which goes as follows: If there is an exception to every rule, then every rule must have at least one exception, including the rule that there must be an exception to every rule. Thus, perhaps this is a rule without exception, and the president cannot order criminal acts.
But that brings us back to Mukasey's Paradox. Even if there is no exception to the president ordering crimes, there is no crime because the president ordered it. Perfection.
Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.
Go to Original
By Jonathan Turley
The recent decisions of Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to block any prosecution of Bush administration officials for contempt and to block any criminal investigation of torture led to a chorus of criticism. Many view the decisions as raw examples of political manipulation of the legal process and overt cronyism. I must confess that I was one of those crying foul until I suddenly realized that there was something profound, even beautiful, in Mukasey's action.
In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.
Such a perfect paradox is no easy task. Most attempts fall apart because of some element of logical consistency. The closest example to Mukasey's Paradox is the Grandfather Paradox: If you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he meets your grandmother, you would not be conceived and therefore you could not go back to kill your grandfather. That one can play real tricks with your head.
Mukasey's Paradox appears designed to play tricks with Congress. Its origins date back to Mukasey's confirmation hearings, when he first denied knowing what waterboarding was and then (when it was defined for him) refused to recognize it as torture. In fact, it is not only a crime under U.S. law, it is a well-defined war crime under international law.
The problem for Mukasey was that if he admitted waterboarding was a crime, then it was a crime that had been authorized by the president of the United States -- an admission that would trigger calls for both a criminal investigation and impeachment. Mukasey's confirmation was facing imminent defeat over his refusal to answer the question when Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suddenly rescued him, guaranteeing that he would not have to answer it.
Once in office, Mukasey still had the nasty problem of a secret torture program that was now hiding in plain view. Asked to order a criminal investigation of the program, Mukasey refused. His rationale left many lawyers gasping: Any torture that occurred was done on the advice of counsel and therefore, while they may have been wrong, it could not have been a crime for CIA interrogators or, presumably, the president. If this sounds ludicrous, it is. Under that logic, any president can simply surround himself with extremist or collusive lawyers and instantly decriminalize any crime.
However, this is only half of Mukasey's Paradox. The other half occurred last week when Mukasey refused to allow contempt charges against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers to be given to a grand jury. Bolten and Miers stand accused of contempt in refusing to testify before Congress in its investigation of the firings of several U.S. attorneys in 2006. Mukasey wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that their refusal to testify could not be a crime because the president ordered them not to testify under executive privilege.
Under this logic, no official can be prosecuted for contempt as long as a president ordered them to commit the contempt -- even if the president's assertion of privilege is clearly invalid or incomplete. In this case, many experts have expressed skepticism that all or any of President Bush's assertions of privilege in this case would be upheld.
When Mukasey blocked the contempt cases, many legal experts were filled with rage. But I came to see his rationales as objects of beauty rather than scorn. When one combines the two decisions, they fit neatly into Mukasey's Paradox. Mukasey was saying that lawyers could not be charged criminally because the president ordered them to commit the act -- and that the president could not be charged criminally because lawyers told him he could do it.
Now some have pointed to other paradoxes in Mukasey's tenure. There is, for instance, the "paradox" that his confirmation was saved by Democrats -- who thereby allowed the president to avoid a confrontation on torture. There is the "paradox" of Mukasey insisting that courts should not investigate the Justice Department's failure to preserve the CIA torture tapes because the Justice Department should be allowed to investigate its own failure to previously investigate.
Yet these are not real paradoxes -- they're merely political ironies. A paradox is a statement that seems true but yields a contradiction or a dual truth. When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey's Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law -- but that because executive privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.
Mukasey's Paradox will now join other paradoxes such as Zeno's Paradox. Indeed, members of Congress already use a variation of Zeno's Paradox to explain their lack of action on civil liberties, torture and Iraq. They seem to be always working toward "change" without actual change occurring. The answer is found in Zeno's Paradox: You will never reach Point B from Point A as you must always get halfway there, and half of the half, and half of that half, and so on.
Mukasey's Paradox, if adopted, will result in administration officials being effectively beyond the reach of the law. Yet there is always hope.
Consider that Mukasey took an oath under which he swore to uphold the laws of this country -- even if the violator is the president of the United States or his aides. That oath means that all laws must be upheld without exception. Except, according to his interpretation, that executive power is a form of constitutional law that creates exceptions to the enforcement of laws.
But there's something known as the Exception Paradox, which goes as follows: If there is an exception to every rule, then every rule must have at least one exception, including the rule that there must be an exception to every rule. Thus, perhaps this is a rule without exception, and the president cannot order criminal acts.
But that brings us back to Mukasey's Paradox. Even if there is no exception to the president ordering crimes, there is no crime because the president ordered it. Perfection.
Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.
Oil touches an all-time high
Adjusted for inflation, Monday's top price of $103.95 a barrel eclipses the previous record set during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, analysts say.
Go to Original
By Elizabeth Douglass and Tiffany Hsu
The gravity-defying price of oil shot through another barrier Monday by briefly touching $103.95 a barrel in New York trading, the highest cost ever for black gold even after adjusting for inflation.
Before Monday, the April 1980 price of $38 was the pinnacle, fueled by dramatic Mideast events including the failed rescue of American hostages in Iran. Adjusted for inflation, that $38 is now more than $103. This time, rather than a political crisis, the main culprit is decidedly less spectacular: a weak dollar.
For consumers and the nation's economy, triple-digit oil prices are being felt broadly, boosting costs from the gas pump to the grocery store and crimping sales of light trucks, tires and pleasure tours.
"These are desperate times," said Diana Rodriguez, a 36-year-old social worker from Los Angeles whose commute to Culver City and to clients' homes eats up a big chunk of her budget. Lately, she has had to limit herself at the supermarket, buying just one gallon of milk instead of two and denying her four children ice cream.
"The only thing to do is to use less gas, and go fewer places, but it's really hard on all of us," Rodriguez said while she pumped gas Monday at a Chevron station in Lincoln Heights. She paid $50 to put 14 gallons in the small 2007 Kia Rondo that she borrowed from her mother for the day to give her gas-guzzling truck -- and her wallet -- a break.
Even though the peak driving season is still months away, government figures showed the average cost of self-serve regular in California was $3.459 a gallon Monday, up 13.1 cents during the last week and less than a penny shy of the state's peak price of $3.461 a gallon hit in May.
Nationwide, the average pump price rose 3.2 cents in a week to $3.162 a gallon Monday. Diesel prices, meanwhile, set record-high averages nationwide and in California, jumping to $3.658 a gallon and $3.803 a gallon, respectively.
Now the big question is, how high can oil and fuel prices go.
The answer may turn on moves by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which meets Wednesday to discuss whether to cut the cartel's oil production or hold it steady.
"If people don't like what OPEC has to say, probably $110 will be the next objective before the market exhausts itself," said Tom Hartmann, a broker and analyst at Altavest Worldwide Trading Inc., based in Mission Viejo.
These days, however, many oil analysts are more intent on watching the U.S. Federal Reserve, which can affect the value of the dollar by raising or lowering interest rates.
"I don't think it's a coincidence that the price of oil hits an all-time high around the time that the dollar hits an all-time low against the euro," said Ken Medlock, an energy studies fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. "The amount of dollars you have to give up for a barrel of oil is going to increase because the dollar is purchasing less and less."
Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said the oil-price gusher "has more to do with the turmoil in the credit markets and the weak dollar than it does with the flow of oil in and out of refineries."
"This time the cause and effect isn't the fall of the shah of Iran," said Yergin, author of "The Prize," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil. Instead of OPEC, oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez or even the supply and demand for oil, Yergin said, "the people who are driving this bus are in the financial markets."
Some say oil is riding a speculative bubble that could pop soon because the price isn't supported by market fundamentals.
"If you look at supply and demand, we probably should not be over $100," Hartmann said. "We are well supplied right now."
Oil's latest surge started with the collapse of home values and the market for sub-prime loans, which helped borrowers with poor credit buy houses that were beyond their means. Sub-prime lenders faltered, and the crisis quickly spread to other financial markets.
The Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates to spur investment, bring relief to homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages and stave off recession. As a consequence of the Fed's actions, the value of the dollar fell further against the euro, prompting investors to shift their money into oil and other commodities and away from the dollar and the stock market.
Along the way, the threat of disruptions to overseas oil production gave traders even more reasons to bid oil higher.
On Monday, the downward spiral of the dollar and signs of unrest in oil-producing nations helped push the price of oil for April delivery to a record trading high of $103.95 a barrel before it fell back, closing up 61 cents at $102.45 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
According to many experts, that intraday price represented a new high even when accounting for years of inflation, beating out the cash-market high of $38 a barrel reached in April 1980. But analysts disagree about exactly what the inflation-adjusted record price was, because there was no futures market for oil in 1980, and price tracking was less exact in those days. Estimates of what the previous top price would equal in today's market generally fall between about $93 and nearly $104 a barrel.
John Kingston, global oil director at Platts, a publisher of energy news and prices, says the fuss over a new inflation-adjusted record is premature.
"We estimate the number is over $104, so we do not think that the inflation-adjusted price has been hit yet," he said, noting that Platts gets to that total by adding transportation costs to the adjusted oil price.
Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute, believes the quibbling over when oil prices hit benchmark highs is a bit silly.
"None of these numbers is precise. Just like the $100 number . . . I don't think this number means very much," Borenstein said. The bottom line, he added, is that "the price is damn high."
Whatever its place in history, Monday's trading high will hit home. Analysts have predicted that gasoline prices could reach $4 a gallon in the next few months in some parts of the country if oil stays about $100 a barrel.
For Richard Croft, gas prices already are causing him to downshift.
On Monday at the Lincoln Heights Chevron, he spent $37.34 to put 10 gallons of gas in his 2003 Toyota Matrix. "Wow," he said. "I never went above $20 with the Corolla I used to have."
These days, Croft, 52, a quality-control specialist from Los Angeles, is easing up on the gas pedal when he drives, buying cheaper, unbranded gas, cutting back on clothes purchases and considering a hybrid car to offset high gas prices, he said.
"I've downgraded from steak and pork chops to smaller portions of spaghetti and hamburgers," he said. "Everyone else is raising prices too, gouging people to make up for the increase in the gas. It's a huge emotional strain on all involved."
The strain showed Monday when automakers reported that sales fell 6.3% in February, led by light trucks (down 10.6%) and sport utility vehicles (down 7.7%). Small cars roared ahead, including sales of the Toyota Yaris, which jumped 64%, and the Honda Fit, up 62%.
Still, high gas prices did no favors for those brands' best-selling Prius and Civic hybrids. The hybrids posted sales declines, perhaps indicating an unwillingness to pay so dearly for better gas mileage.
"Consumers are going to continue to pay record high prices -- there's no way around it," said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen. This summer, he said, is "going to be a tough one."
Go to Original
By Elizabeth Douglass and Tiffany Hsu
The gravity-defying price of oil shot through another barrier Monday by briefly touching $103.95 a barrel in New York trading, the highest cost ever for black gold even after adjusting for inflation.
Before Monday, the April 1980 price of $38 was the pinnacle, fueled by dramatic Mideast events including the failed rescue of American hostages in Iran. Adjusted for inflation, that $38 is now more than $103. This time, rather than a political crisis, the main culprit is decidedly less spectacular: a weak dollar.
For consumers and the nation's economy, triple-digit oil prices are being felt broadly, boosting costs from the gas pump to the grocery store and crimping sales of light trucks, tires and pleasure tours.
"These are desperate times," said Diana Rodriguez, a 36-year-old social worker from Los Angeles whose commute to Culver City and to clients' homes eats up a big chunk of her budget. Lately, she has had to limit herself at the supermarket, buying just one gallon of milk instead of two and denying her four children ice cream.
"The only thing to do is to use less gas, and go fewer places, but it's really hard on all of us," Rodriguez said while she pumped gas Monday at a Chevron station in Lincoln Heights. She paid $50 to put 14 gallons in the small 2007 Kia Rondo that she borrowed from her mother for the day to give her gas-guzzling truck -- and her wallet -- a break.
Even though the peak driving season is still months away, government figures showed the average cost of self-serve regular in California was $3.459 a gallon Monday, up 13.1 cents during the last week and less than a penny shy of the state's peak price of $3.461 a gallon hit in May.
Nationwide, the average pump price rose 3.2 cents in a week to $3.162 a gallon Monday. Diesel prices, meanwhile, set record-high averages nationwide and in California, jumping to $3.658 a gallon and $3.803 a gallon, respectively.
Now the big question is, how high can oil and fuel prices go.
The answer may turn on moves by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which meets Wednesday to discuss whether to cut the cartel's oil production or hold it steady.
"If people don't like what OPEC has to say, probably $110 will be the next objective before the market exhausts itself," said Tom Hartmann, a broker and analyst at Altavest Worldwide Trading Inc., based in Mission Viejo.
These days, however, many oil analysts are more intent on watching the U.S. Federal Reserve, which can affect the value of the dollar by raising or lowering interest rates.
"I don't think it's a coincidence that the price of oil hits an all-time high around the time that the dollar hits an all-time low against the euro," said Ken Medlock, an energy studies fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. "The amount of dollars you have to give up for a barrel of oil is going to increase because the dollar is purchasing less and less."
Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said the oil-price gusher "has more to do with the turmoil in the credit markets and the weak dollar than it does with the flow of oil in and out of refineries."
"This time the cause and effect isn't the fall of the shah of Iran," said Yergin, author of "The Prize," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil. Instead of OPEC, oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez or even the supply and demand for oil, Yergin said, "the people who are driving this bus are in the financial markets."
Some say oil is riding a speculative bubble that could pop soon because the price isn't supported by market fundamentals.
"If you look at supply and demand, we probably should not be over $100," Hartmann said. "We are well supplied right now."
Oil's latest surge started with the collapse of home values and the market for sub-prime loans, which helped borrowers with poor credit buy houses that were beyond their means. Sub-prime lenders faltered, and the crisis quickly spread to other financial markets.
The Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates to spur investment, bring relief to homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages and stave off recession. As a consequence of the Fed's actions, the value of the dollar fell further against the euro, prompting investors to shift their money into oil and other commodities and away from the dollar and the stock market.
Along the way, the threat of disruptions to overseas oil production gave traders even more reasons to bid oil higher.
On Monday, the downward spiral of the dollar and signs of unrest in oil-producing nations helped push the price of oil for April delivery to a record trading high of $103.95 a barrel before it fell back, closing up 61 cents at $102.45 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
According to many experts, that intraday price represented a new high even when accounting for years of inflation, beating out the cash-market high of $38 a barrel reached in April 1980. But analysts disagree about exactly what the inflation-adjusted record price was, because there was no futures market for oil in 1980, and price tracking was less exact in those days. Estimates of what the previous top price would equal in today's market generally fall between about $93 and nearly $104 a barrel.
John Kingston, global oil director at Platts, a publisher of energy news and prices, says the fuss over a new inflation-adjusted record is premature.
"We estimate the number is over $104, so we do not think that the inflation-adjusted price has been hit yet," he said, noting that Platts gets to that total by adding transportation costs to the adjusted oil price.
Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute, believes the quibbling over when oil prices hit benchmark highs is a bit silly.
"None of these numbers is precise. Just like the $100 number . . . I don't think this number means very much," Borenstein said. The bottom line, he added, is that "the price is damn high."
Whatever its place in history, Monday's trading high will hit home. Analysts have predicted that gasoline prices could reach $4 a gallon in the next few months in some parts of the country if oil stays about $100 a barrel.
For Richard Croft, gas prices already are causing him to downshift.
On Monday at the Lincoln Heights Chevron, he spent $37.34 to put 10 gallons of gas in his 2003 Toyota Matrix. "Wow," he said. "I never went above $20 with the Corolla I used to have."
These days, Croft, 52, a quality-control specialist from Los Angeles, is easing up on the gas pedal when he drives, buying cheaper, unbranded gas, cutting back on clothes purchases and considering a hybrid car to offset high gas prices, he said.
"I've downgraded from steak and pork chops to smaller portions of spaghetti and hamburgers," he said. "Everyone else is raising prices too, gouging people to make up for the increase in the gas. It's a huge emotional strain on all involved."
The strain showed Monday when automakers reported that sales fell 6.3% in February, led by light trucks (down 10.6%) and sport utility vehicles (down 7.7%). Small cars roared ahead, including sales of the Toyota Yaris, which jumped 64%, and the Honda Fit, up 62%.
Still, high gas prices did no favors for those brands' best-selling Prius and Civic hybrids. The hybrids posted sales declines, perhaps indicating an unwillingness to pay so dearly for better gas mileage.
"Consumers are going to continue to pay record high prices -- there's no way around it," said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen. This summer, he said, is "going to be a tough one."
US missile strike kills women and children in Somalia
Go to Original
By Bill Van Auken
The US military fired missiles at a town in southern Somalia in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, killing and wounding civilians. Local officials in the town of Dobley told news agencies that at least three women and three children were killed in the attack and another 20 wounded.
Fatuma Abdullah, a resident of Dobley, told the BBC that he and other residents were awakened by the sound of explosions. “When we came out we found our neighbor’s house completely obliterated, as if no house existed there.”
Witnesses said that at least three missiles struck the town, which is just north of the Kenyan border. This is the fourth such US attack on the impoverished East African country in the space of 14 months.
There were conflicting reports as to the specific source of the attack. The Associated Press stated that US naval forces, armed with cruise missiles, were responsible. The AP cited an unnamed Pentagon official who said that the bombardment was carried out with Tomahawk missiles fired from a US submarine.
Other attacks have been carried out from American warships, which constantly patrol Somalia’s 1,800-mile coast, which borders strategically key shipping routes between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Reports from witnesses in Dobley, however, cited the presence of AC130 attack gunships, the type of aircraft the US used in attacking the same area in January of last year. A resident of the town speaking by phone to the BBC said, “Right now—in full daylight—the planes keep flying over us. They are so low that we’re deafened by their engines. We are poor civilians living in a simple town. What have we done to deserve this bombing?”
“I woke up to loud blasts and flashing lights that shook my doors and windows. Airplanes were flying at a low altitude and were firing. I ran outside and hid under trees,” Saed Abdulle, a Dobley elder, told the German news agency DPA.
Many residents were reported fleeing the town for fear that the American military would continue raining death from the sky.
Predictably, Washington justified the slaughter in the name of the “war on terrorism.” A Pentagon official described it as “a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates.” Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told the media, “As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them.”
The global eruption of US militarism is producing such “precision strikes” by Washington and its surrogates with increasing frequency in every corner of the globe. The attack on civilians in Somalia comes less than a week after the dispatch of warships to the coast of Lebanon, posing an ominous threat of US military intervention against opposition forces in Lebanon itself, as well as in support of Washington’s ally, Israel, as it employs US-supplied weapons to carry out devastating attacks on the Palestinian population of Gaza.
Meanwhile, in Latin America, the government of Colombia, the Bush administration’s principal regional ally—and the fifth largest recipient of US military aid after Israel, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan—has brought the region to the brink of war by massacring leading members of the FARC guerrilla movement in a cross-border raid against their camp in Ecuador. The Colombian counter-insurgency forces operate under the supervision of US Special Forces “advisors” and utilize American intelligence to direct such attacks.
In other regions, the US administration proceeds with equal recklessness, as in the drive to sever Kosovo from Serbia and the continuous provocations against Iran.
All the while, the US military remains bogged down in the quagmires created by the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is, no doubt, an element of political calculation by the Bush administration in pursuing such policies as it enters its last ten months in office. The Republican Party intends to contest the November elections on the basis of a fear-mongering campaign, proclaiming the ubiquitous threat of terrorism and the need for strong “national security.” The greater the global instability created by US actions, the more fodder they will have for such an effort.
More fundamentally, the explosive spread of American militarism is rooted in the deepening crisis of US capitalism, reflected in the precipitous fall of the dollar and the cancerous spread of a credit crisis that is increasingly manifested in the contraction of production and employment. As the economic foundations of the US claim to global hegemony weaken, the American ruling elite is driven to ever greater reliance on its residual military superiority.
Somalia provides a case study in the immense destruction and human suffering produced by this policy. The Bush administration helped engineer and backed an Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the regime formed by the Somalia’s Islamic courts, businessmen and some local and regional officials, with significant popular support, in opposition to the officially recognized Transitional Federal Government, dominated by CIA-backed warlords. The ICU established its control over the vast majority of the country, including the capital of Mogadishu, expelling the warlords and establishing civil order, the distribution of food and provision of basic services for the first time in nearly 15 years.
Washington charged that the ICU was tied to Al Qaeda and was harboring terrorists responsible for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The ICU leaders denied both charges.
In December of last year, some 50,000 Ethiopian troops, backed by US Special Forces units and American air power, swept into Somalia and deposed the ICU.
The subsequent 14 months of Ethiopian occupation have succeeded only in provoking a growing popular insurgency that has deprived the US-backed regime of effective control of virtually any part of the country, including the capital, while unleashing the worst humanitarian crisis on the African continent.
Mogadishu has turned into a ghost town, with the city’s residents fleeing the violence and repression, and the majority living in squalid camps outside the city. Fighting continues to rage in the capital, while guerrilla forces loyal to the ICU have had increasing success in overrunning towns in the south of the country.
The principal motivation of the US missile strike Monday morning was apparently the fact that these forces had established control over Dobley, and one their senior leaders, Hassan Turki, (described by Washington as a “financer of terrorism”), was believed to be there.
Last month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported, “There are up to two million vulnerable people in need of assistance in the country. In the capital Mogadishu, the number of people escaping the city to the poorest areas of the Horn of Africa nation has doubled to 700,000 in the last six months.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), meanwhile, warned that some 90,000 children face imminent threat of death from malnutrition. In addition to hunger, the areas with a large concentration of internally displaced persons are being ravaged by cholera and other diseases.
Thousands have been killed by the Ethiopian occupation troops and their Somali government allies. Many more have been arbitrarily arrested.
The nature of the US-backed regime found clear expression Sunday when hundreds of heavily armed government troops raided the country’s three main radio stations—the country’s principal source of news—beating and arresting staff members, destroying or confiscating equipment and taking them off the air. Nine journalists have been killed in the country in the past year and scores have been forced into exile. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has ranked the country the second deadliest for journalists, trailing only Iraq.
It is noteworthy that the missile attack on Somalia comes little more than a week after Bush’s tour of Africa. In many ways, Somalia represents a model for American strategy in the region, based on the use of the armies of African regimes as surrogates, aided and directed by US forces, to secure Washington’s interests. This strategy has been developed since the US military was driven out of Somalia in 1993 in the well-known “Black Hawk down” incident, which claimed the lives of 19 American troops. It is now being employed in alliance with some of the same warlords that the US forces were fighting 15 years ago.
The aim of the White House and the Pentagon is to develop its new African military command—Africom—to apply this same brutal strategy throughout the continent in a bid to secure American control of key oil and other natural resources and to beat back the incursions of US capitalism’s increasingly important competitor in the region, China.
By Bill Van Auken
The US military fired missiles at a town in southern Somalia in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, killing and wounding civilians. Local officials in the town of Dobley told news agencies that at least three women and three children were killed in the attack and another 20 wounded.
Fatuma Abdullah, a resident of Dobley, told the BBC that he and other residents were awakened by the sound of explosions. “When we came out we found our neighbor’s house completely obliterated, as if no house existed there.”
Witnesses said that at least three missiles struck the town, which is just north of the Kenyan border. This is the fourth such US attack on the impoverished East African country in the space of 14 months.
There were conflicting reports as to the specific source of the attack. The Associated Press stated that US naval forces, armed with cruise missiles, were responsible. The AP cited an unnamed Pentagon official who said that the bombardment was carried out with Tomahawk missiles fired from a US submarine.
Other attacks have been carried out from American warships, which constantly patrol Somalia’s 1,800-mile coast, which borders strategically key shipping routes between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Reports from witnesses in Dobley, however, cited the presence of AC130 attack gunships, the type of aircraft the US used in attacking the same area in January of last year. A resident of the town speaking by phone to the BBC said, “Right now—in full daylight—the planes keep flying over us. They are so low that we’re deafened by their engines. We are poor civilians living in a simple town. What have we done to deserve this bombing?”
“I woke up to loud blasts and flashing lights that shook my doors and windows. Airplanes were flying at a low altitude and were firing. I ran outside and hid under trees,” Saed Abdulle, a Dobley elder, told the German news agency DPA.
Many residents were reported fleeing the town for fear that the American military would continue raining death from the sky.
Predictably, Washington justified the slaughter in the name of the “war on terrorism.” A Pentagon official described it as “a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates.” Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told the media, “As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them.”
The global eruption of US militarism is producing such “precision strikes” by Washington and its surrogates with increasing frequency in every corner of the globe. The attack on civilians in Somalia comes less than a week after the dispatch of warships to the coast of Lebanon, posing an ominous threat of US military intervention against opposition forces in Lebanon itself, as well as in support of Washington’s ally, Israel, as it employs US-supplied weapons to carry out devastating attacks on the Palestinian population of Gaza.
Meanwhile, in Latin America, the government of Colombia, the Bush administration’s principal regional ally—and the fifth largest recipient of US military aid after Israel, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan—has brought the region to the brink of war by massacring leading members of the FARC guerrilla movement in a cross-border raid against their camp in Ecuador. The Colombian counter-insurgency forces operate under the supervision of US Special Forces “advisors” and utilize American intelligence to direct such attacks.
In other regions, the US administration proceeds with equal recklessness, as in the drive to sever Kosovo from Serbia and the continuous provocations against Iran.
All the while, the US military remains bogged down in the quagmires created by the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is, no doubt, an element of political calculation by the Bush administration in pursuing such policies as it enters its last ten months in office. The Republican Party intends to contest the November elections on the basis of a fear-mongering campaign, proclaiming the ubiquitous threat of terrorism and the need for strong “national security.” The greater the global instability created by US actions, the more fodder they will have for such an effort.
More fundamentally, the explosive spread of American militarism is rooted in the deepening crisis of US capitalism, reflected in the precipitous fall of the dollar and the cancerous spread of a credit crisis that is increasingly manifested in the contraction of production and employment. As the economic foundations of the US claim to global hegemony weaken, the American ruling elite is driven to ever greater reliance on its residual military superiority.
Somalia provides a case study in the immense destruction and human suffering produced by this policy. The Bush administration helped engineer and backed an Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the regime formed by the Somalia’s Islamic courts, businessmen and some local and regional officials, with significant popular support, in opposition to the officially recognized Transitional Federal Government, dominated by CIA-backed warlords. The ICU established its control over the vast majority of the country, including the capital of Mogadishu, expelling the warlords and establishing civil order, the distribution of food and provision of basic services for the first time in nearly 15 years.
Washington charged that the ICU was tied to Al Qaeda and was harboring terrorists responsible for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The ICU leaders denied both charges.
In December of last year, some 50,000 Ethiopian troops, backed by US Special Forces units and American air power, swept into Somalia and deposed the ICU.
The subsequent 14 months of Ethiopian occupation have succeeded only in provoking a growing popular insurgency that has deprived the US-backed regime of effective control of virtually any part of the country, including the capital, while unleashing the worst humanitarian crisis on the African continent.
Mogadishu has turned into a ghost town, with the city’s residents fleeing the violence and repression, and the majority living in squalid camps outside the city. Fighting continues to rage in the capital, while guerrilla forces loyal to the ICU have had increasing success in overrunning towns in the south of the country.
The principal motivation of the US missile strike Monday morning was apparently the fact that these forces had established control over Dobley, and one their senior leaders, Hassan Turki, (described by Washington as a “financer of terrorism”), was believed to be there.
Last month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported, “There are up to two million vulnerable people in need of assistance in the country. In the capital Mogadishu, the number of people escaping the city to the poorest areas of the Horn of Africa nation has doubled to 700,000 in the last six months.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), meanwhile, warned that some 90,000 children face imminent threat of death from malnutrition. In addition to hunger, the areas with a large concentration of internally displaced persons are being ravaged by cholera and other diseases.
Thousands have been killed by the Ethiopian occupation troops and their Somali government allies. Many more have been arbitrarily arrested.
The nature of the US-backed regime found clear expression Sunday when hundreds of heavily armed government troops raided the country’s three main radio stations—the country’s principal source of news—beating and arresting staff members, destroying or confiscating equipment and taking them off the air. Nine journalists have been killed in the country in the past year and scores have been forced into exile. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has ranked the country the second deadliest for journalists, trailing only Iraq.
It is noteworthy that the missile attack on Somalia comes little more than a week after Bush’s tour of Africa. In many ways, Somalia represents a model for American strategy in the region, based on the use of the armies of African regimes as surrogates, aided and directed by US forces, to secure Washington’s interests. This strategy has been developed since the US military was driven out of Somalia in 1993 in the well-known “Black Hawk down” incident, which claimed the lives of 19 American troops. It is now being employed in alliance with some of the same warlords that the US forces were fighting 15 years ago.
The aim of the White House and the Pentagon is to develop its new African military command—Africom—to apply this same brutal strategy throughout the continent in a bid to secure American control of key oil and other natural resources and to beat back the incursions of US capitalism’s increasingly important competitor in the region, China.
US: Student loans costs to rise from credit crisis
Go to Original
By Naomi Spencer
Millions of college students are facing higher loan rates and tighter lending standards under the impact of the US credit crisis. In the past month, several large providers of student loans announced they were suspending their programs altogether, due largely to the collapse of financial backing in bond markets. Other lenders have implemented more restrictive borrowing standards, locking out many younger, poorer students.
Higher education costs pose formidable financial challenges, and the loan rate increases and restrictions will put more strains on already struggling students and their families. Many students have little choice but to take out private loans, use credit cards, and find other ways to fund soaring tuition, with no guarantee of a decent wage job upon leaving school.
The US credit crisis began in the subprime housing mortgage market, but has rapidly spread to other forms of debt. Many institutions that provide loans, including student loan agencies, fund their operations by selling securities to investors. As investors have grown wary of buying debt, however, the loan providers have raised rates or stopped lending to students.
Both federally-guaranteed loans, which generally provide lower fixed rates, and private loans have been affected by the turmoil in credit markets. One of the largest student lenders in the country, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), said that, effective this month, it would no longer offer federally guaranteed loans.
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the organization had planned to lend $500 million to 140,000 students, but that those students would now have to find aid elsewhere.
The agency’s situation is like that of many state, municipal, and non-profit entities dependent on the bond market. In February, the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, and other organizations also cut loan programs due to loss of investor backing.
In an article published on Monday, the Washington Post quoted Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Sallie Mae, the leading US student loan provider: “Right now the securitization market for private loans is not there. And if you thought there was an asset class that would be okay, it would be federal loans that have a guarantee from the government. But even that market has gone from tremors to earthquakes.”
Until recently, bonds sold by student loan agencies had been considered a secure buy for investors because students pay back their debts at a fairly high rate. In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, however, investors have become increasingly skeptical of bonds previously considered safe, including those used to finance federally-guaranteed student loans In particular, the credit crisis has wreaked havoc in the auction-rate municipal bond market, upon which many student lenders are dependent.
PHEAA interim chief executive James Preston explained the decision to suspend loans to the New York Times in an article published on February 28. “Widespread lack of confidence in the capital market has spilled over into other asset classes, driving up our cost of borrowing and denying us the capital needed to fund new student loans.”
In addition to state agencies such as PHEAA, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators reports that major lenders including Sallie Mae Corporation, College Loan Corporation, EdSouth, and Brazos Higher Education Service have all failed to get backing at recent securitization auctions.
Like the PHEAA, The College Loan Corporation has discontinued its federally guaranteed loans.
Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo, and Nelnet have all announced stiffer rules for loan approval, including requiring higher credit ratings from applicants. For the typical young adult with little credit history, securing funding for college will be more difficult, and cost more.
Poorer students will be particularly hard hit, because they are seen by loan agencies as greater risks for default. According to the Post, “Those attending institutions with high graduation rates and low default rates among their alumni may still be able to get low-cost private loans. Students at lower-ranked schools with higher defaults among graduates are likely to get hit with stiffer fees and rates.”
Sallie Mae, the largest student lender in the US, also announced it would no longer offer loans to students enrolled in some for-profit vocational and career schools and community colleges. As a result, thousands more working class students will be either priced out of higher education altogether or will be forced to take on variable-interest loans from the private sector.
Loans are the only way many families and individuals can afford post-secondary education or job training. As the cost of college has spiked, both wages and grant aid have stagnated or declined over the past ten years. As a result, debt levels have more than doubled over the period. Currently, two in every three university undergraduate students bear some debt, with the average debt load upon graduation exceeding $19,000.
A large amount of the growth in loan debt is concentrated in the private loan industry. A decade ago, private loans represented only a tiny fraction of total loan volume. But in the past two years, partly as a consequence of the housing market contraction and consequent shrinking of home equity, working families have turned to private loans for alternative sources of funds, and private lending has exploded into an $18.5 billion industry.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to several students at Virginia Commonwealth University about the difficulties facing college students.
A sophomore complained about the enormous debt burden he will have upon graduating college. “Basically, all this works out to nothing,” he said. “I have $20,000 worth of debt already. And it just doesn’t seem worth it. I feel like I am wasting my time here.”
Adam, a senior, spoke about the restrictions placed on students who graduate with a high debt burden. “The educational experience is supposed to change who you are,” he said, “And you start to understand how the world works. Say you get this great passionate drive inside yourself, and you now have the knowledge to go out and change the world.”
Adam said that there was a “catch-22,” however: student loans. “Do I go and take a $60,000 a year job in corporate America, which is going to perpetuate everything I learned about in school to help fix, so that I can have a minimal standard of living, so I can pay off my student loans? It puts me in a very hard position.”
By Naomi Spencer
Millions of college students are facing higher loan rates and tighter lending standards under the impact of the US credit crisis. In the past month, several large providers of student loans announced they were suspending their programs altogether, due largely to the collapse of financial backing in bond markets. Other lenders have implemented more restrictive borrowing standards, locking out many younger, poorer students.
Higher education costs pose formidable financial challenges, and the loan rate increases and restrictions will put more strains on already struggling students and their families. Many students have little choice but to take out private loans, use credit cards, and find other ways to fund soaring tuition, with no guarantee of a decent wage job upon leaving school.
The US credit crisis began in the subprime housing mortgage market, but has rapidly spread to other forms of debt. Many institutions that provide loans, including student loan agencies, fund their operations by selling securities to investors. As investors have grown wary of buying debt, however, the loan providers have raised rates or stopped lending to students.
Both federally-guaranteed loans, which generally provide lower fixed rates, and private loans have been affected by the turmoil in credit markets. One of the largest student lenders in the country, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), said that, effective this month, it would no longer offer federally guaranteed loans.
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the organization had planned to lend $500 million to 140,000 students, but that those students would now have to find aid elsewhere.
The agency’s situation is like that of many state, municipal, and non-profit entities dependent on the bond market. In February, the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, and other organizations also cut loan programs due to loss of investor backing.
In an article published on Monday, the Washington Post quoted Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Sallie Mae, the leading US student loan provider: “Right now the securitization market for private loans is not there. And if you thought there was an asset class that would be okay, it would be federal loans that have a guarantee from the government. But even that market has gone from tremors to earthquakes.”
Until recently, bonds sold by student loan agencies had been considered a secure buy for investors because students pay back their debts at a fairly high rate. In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, however, investors have become increasingly skeptical of bonds previously considered safe, including those used to finance federally-guaranteed student loans In particular, the credit crisis has wreaked havoc in the auction-rate municipal bond market, upon which many student lenders are dependent.
PHEAA interim chief executive James Preston explained the decision to suspend loans to the New York Times in an article published on February 28. “Widespread lack of confidence in the capital market has spilled over into other asset classes, driving up our cost of borrowing and denying us the capital needed to fund new student loans.”
In addition to state agencies such as PHEAA, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators reports that major lenders including Sallie Mae Corporation, College Loan Corporation, EdSouth, and Brazos Higher Education Service have all failed to get backing at recent securitization auctions.
Like the PHEAA, The College Loan Corporation has discontinued its federally guaranteed loans.
Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo, and Nelnet have all announced stiffer rules for loan approval, including requiring higher credit ratings from applicants. For the typical young adult with little credit history, securing funding for college will be more difficult, and cost more.
Poorer students will be particularly hard hit, because they are seen by loan agencies as greater risks for default. According to the Post, “Those attending institutions with high graduation rates and low default rates among their alumni may still be able to get low-cost private loans. Students at lower-ranked schools with higher defaults among graduates are likely to get hit with stiffer fees and rates.”
Sallie Mae, the largest student lender in the US, also announced it would no longer offer loans to students enrolled in some for-profit vocational and career schools and community colleges. As a result, thousands more working class students will be either priced out of higher education altogether or will be forced to take on variable-interest loans from the private sector.
Loans are the only way many families and individuals can afford post-secondary education or job training. As the cost of college has spiked, both wages and grant aid have stagnated or declined over the past ten years. As a result, debt levels have more than doubled over the period. Currently, two in every three university undergraduate students bear some debt, with the average debt load upon graduation exceeding $19,000.
A large amount of the growth in loan debt is concentrated in the private loan industry. A decade ago, private loans represented only a tiny fraction of total loan volume. But in the past two years, partly as a consequence of the housing market contraction and consequent shrinking of home equity, working families have turned to private loans for alternative sources of funds, and private lending has exploded into an $18.5 billion industry.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to several students at Virginia Commonwealth University about the difficulties facing college students.
A sophomore complained about the enormous debt burden he will have upon graduating college. “Basically, all this works out to nothing,” he said. “I have $20,000 worth of debt already. And it just doesn’t seem worth it. I feel like I am wasting my time here.”
Adam, a senior, spoke about the restrictions placed on students who graduate with a high debt burden. “The educational experience is supposed to change who you are,” he said, “And you start to understand how the world works. Say you get this great passionate drive inside yourself, and you now have the knowledge to go out and change the world.”
Adam said that there was a “catch-22,” however: student loans. “Do I go and take a $60,000 a year job in corporate America, which is going to perpetuate everything I learned about in school to help fix, so that I can have a minimal standard of living, so I can pay off my student loans? It puts me in a very hard position.”
Monday, March 3, 2008
Ahmadinejad: US power crippling in Iraq
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Insists US Power Is Crippling in Iraq
Go to Original
By ANNA JOHNSON
Iran's firebrand president wrapped up his landmark visit to Iraq with a bit of added swagger Monday_ insisting that U.S. power is crippling the region and portraying himself as the enduring partner of Baghdad's Shiite-led government.
The parting words and posturing — like nearly every moment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two-day trip — was powerful political theater seeking to emphasize Iran's growing bonds with its former enemy. U.S. officials had a front row seat.
Ahmadinejad, the first Iranian leader to visit Iraq since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, had no direct dealings with American envoys or the military. But Washington and its Sunni Arab allies were high on his agenda — taking every opportunity to send messages about Shiite Iran's rising influence in the region and its special ties to Iraq's Shiite majority.
For Washington, however, this is not a new lesson.
The toppling of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-heavy regime opened the door for Iran's inroads into the nation it battled during a horrific 1980-88 war that claimed an estimated 1 million lives. The United States — despite having no diplomatic ties with Tehran and accusing Iran of aiding Shiite militias — opened groundbreaking dialogue with Iranian officials last year that acknowledged the Islamic Republic as a critical player in Iraq.
The next step — from the vantage point of Washington and its Iraqi allies — is seeing whether Ahmadinejad's visit translates into a clearer Iranian role in helping stabilize Iraq at a time when violence is dropping and insurgents are under increasing military pressure.
"Iraq and Iran having been deadly enemies, and (Ahmadinejad's visit) shows they have turned a page," said Rand Corp. analyst and former U.S. diplomat James Dobbins.
Iraq's Shiite power bases — both in top posts and on the streets — will be the most closely watched barometers for any possible changes following the visit.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, may now have a more direct pipeline to Tehran for dialogue on Shiite trouble spots. Among the top worries: keeping a lid on Shiite factions clashing for control in the oil-rich south and breakaway Shiite groups that Washington accuses of receiving aid from Iran.
Iran already has appeared to cut its backing for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who directs the vast Mahdi Army militia. Instead, Tehran has thrown its weight behind al-Sadr's rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the country's most powerful Shiite political insider and supporter of al-Maliki's government.
Ahmadinejad met with al-Hakim during his visit. In front of live TV crews, Ahmadinejad also held hands and exchanged kisses with the president, Talabani, who told Ahmadinejad to call him "Uncle Jalal."
While the U.S. military has said the flow of Iranian weapons into Iraq has slowed, it has stepped up its accusations that Iran is backing so-called "special groups" — the term for Shiite factions that have broken away from al-Sadr and are responsible for a flurry of deadly rocket attacks recently.
At the United Nations, meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council approved a third round of trade sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment that Washington and others worry could be part of a clandestine nuclear arms program. Iran claims it only seeks energy-producing reactors.
Ahmadinejad repeatedly referred to Iraq as a "brotherly" neighbor, but showed no gentler side toward Baghdad's American allies. He blamed the United States for spreading terrorism in the region, demanded the United States withdraw its forces and dismissed allegations that Tehran is training Shiite militants who target U.S. troops.
"The presence of foreigners in the region has been to the detriment of the nations of the region," Ahmadinejad said during a news conference. "It is nothing but a humiliation to the regional nations."
He even took a swipe at President Bush for the tight security bubble around his visits to the country.
Unlike Bush's trips to Iraq, Ahmadinejad announced his journey in advance, drove in a motorcade down Baghdad's airport road_ once known as "The Highway of Death" — spent the night and even traveled to a Shiite holy shrine in northern Baghdad, albeit under the cover of night.
"The visits should be declared and open. And all those who come on stealth visits, we should ask them why they visit this country in a stealth manner?" Ahmadinejad said.
Despite the beefed-up Iraqi security in some parts of Baghdad for Ahmadinejad's visit, at least 24 people were reportedly killed in two suicide car bombings in different parts of the city, police and hospital officials said. The U.S. military reported 11 people had died in the attacks. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
U.S. officials have tried to brush aside the significance of Ahmadinejad's visit, and the White House on Monday disputed Ahmadinejad's statement that Iran was not aiding terrorists.
"Nice words for him to say in the middle of Baghdad, but the facts on the ground prove otherwise," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Bush's National Security Council, told reporters traveling with Bush back to Washington.
Richard Russell, who lectures on national security at the National Defense University, also raised suspicions about Iranian motives.
Iran's agenda includes establishing "a clandestine infrastructure in Iraq," and Tehran is "planning to have more influence domestically inside Iraq as Americans downsize their presence," he said.
Some Iraqis, both Sunnis and Shiites, say it is precisely that influence — and the power struggle between the Washington and Tehran — that worries them.
About 1,000 protesters in a Sunni-dominated neighborhood in Baghdad protested Ahmadinejad's visit Monday, a day after scattered demonstrations greeted his arrival.
"We do not want our country to pay the price of the current U.S.-Iraq disputes. The Iraqis' decisions should be independent and not tied to any other country," said Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Go to Original
By ANNA JOHNSON
Iran's firebrand president wrapped up his landmark visit to Iraq with a bit of added swagger Monday_ insisting that U.S. power is crippling the region and portraying himself as the enduring partner of Baghdad's Shiite-led government.
The parting words and posturing — like nearly every moment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two-day trip — was powerful political theater seeking to emphasize Iran's growing bonds with its former enemy. U.S. officials had a front row seat.
Ahmadinejad, the first Iranian leader to visit Iraq since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, had no direct dealings with American envoys or the military. But Washington and its Sunni Arab allies were high on his agenda — taking every opportunity to send messages about Shiite Iran's rising influence in the region and its special ties to Iraq's Shiite majority.
For Washington, however, this is not a new lesson.
The toppling of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-heavy regime opened the door for Iran's inroads into the nation it battled during a horrific 1980-88 war that claimed an estimated 1 million lives. The United States — despite having no diplomatic ties with Tehran and accusing Iran of aiding Shiite militias — opened groundbreaking dialogue with Iranian officials last year that acknowledged the Islamic Republic as a critical player in Iraq.
The next step — from the vantage point of Washington and its Iraqi allies — is seeing whether Ahmadinejad's visit translates into a clearer Iranian role in helping stabilize Iraq at a time when violence is dropping and insurgents are under increasing military pressure.
"Iraq and Iran having been deadly enemies, and (Ahmadinejad's visit) shows they have turned a page," said Rand Corp. analyst and former U.S. diplomat James Dobbins.
Iraq's Shiite power bases — both in top posts and on the streets — will be the most closely watched barometers for any possible changes following the visit.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, may now have a more direct pipeline to Tehran for dialogue on Shiite trouble spots. Among the top worries: keeping a lid on Shiite factions clashing for control in the oil-rich south and breakaway Shiite groups that Washington accuses of receiving aid from Iran.
Iran already has appeared to cut its backing for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who directs the vast Mahdi Army militia. Instead, Tehran has thrown its weight behind al-Sadr's rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the country's most powerful Shiite political insider and supporter of al-Maliki's government.
Ahmadinejad met with al-Hakim during his visit. In front of live TV crews, Ahmadinejad also held hands and exchanged kisses with the president, Talabani, who told Ahmadinejad to call him "Uncle Jalal."
While the U.S. military has said the flow of Iranian weapons into Iraq has slowed, it has stepped up its accusations that Iran is backing so-called "special groups" — the term for Shiite factions that have broken away from al-Sadr and are responsible for a flurry of deadly rocket attacks recently.
At the United Nations, meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council approved a third round of trade sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment that Washington and others worry could be part of a clandestine nuclear arms program. Iran claims it only seeks energy-producing reactors.
Ahmadinejad repeatedly referred to Iraq as a "brotherly" neighbor, but showed no gentler side toward Baghdad's American allies. He blamed the United States for spreading terrorism in the region, demanded the United States withdraw its forces and dismissed allegations that Tehran is training Shiite militants who target U.S. troops.
"The presence of foreigners in the region has been to the detriment of the nations of the region," Ahmadinejad said during a news conference. "It is nothing but a humiliation to the regional nations."
He even took a swipe at President Bush for the tight security bubble around his visits to the country.
Unlike Bush's trips to Iraq, Ahmadinejad announced his journey in advance, drove in a motorcade down Baghdad's airport road_ once known as "The Highway of Death" — spent the night and even traveled to a Shiite holy shrine in northern Baghdad, albeit under the cover of night.
"The visits should be declared and open. And all those who come on stealth visits, we should ask them why they visit this country in a stealth manner?" Ahmadinejad said.
Despite the beefed-up Iraqi security in some parts of Baghdad for Ahmadinejad's visit, at least 24 people were reportedly killed in two suicide car bombings in different parts of the city, police and hospital officials said. The U.S. military reported 11 people had died in the attacks. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
U.S. officials have tried to brush aside the significance of Ahmadinejad's visit, and the White House on Monday disputed Ahmadinejad's statement that Iran was not aiding terrorists.
"Nice words for him to say in the middle of Baghdad, but the facts on the ground prove otherwise," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Bush's National Security Council, told reporters traveling with Bush back to Washington.
Richard Russell, who lectures on national security at the National Defense University, also raised suspicions about Iranian motives.
Iran's agenda includes establishing "a clandestine infrastructure in Iraq," and Tehran is "planning to have more influence domestically inside Iraq as Americans downsize their presence," he said.
Some Iraqis, both Sunnis and Shiites, say it is precisely that influence — and the power struggle between the Washington and Tehran — that worries them.
About 1,000 protesters in a Sunni-dominated neighborhood in Baghdad protested Ahmadinejad's visit Monday, a day after scattered demonstrations greeted his arrival.
"We do not want our country to pay the price of the current U.S.-Iraq disputes. The Iraqis' decisions should be independent and not tied to any other country," said Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
The Fed Releases Crisis Preparedness Video
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By Lee Rogers
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta this past January released a video on crisis preparedness. The timing of such a video being released is suspicious considering the prospect of bank failures and an inflationary collapse of the U.S. monetary system loom large. The U.S. Dollar is at all-time lows and many top economists are predicting that we are entering a very deep recession if not a depression. Although the video focuses in on a potential disaster like a terrorist attack or a weather related event, a financial disaster easily fits into the scope of this video. The focus of the video is on how the Federal Reserve can immediately bring cash back into an area affected by a disaster. During a financial calamity, this will be a key concern because physical forms of money will reign supreme. Runs on the banks occurred frequently at the start of the Great Depression and they could happen here on a frequent basis if things get worse. The Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke even made the prediction that we could soon see bank failures, so this is a concern not just coming from various economists and pundits but also from the top of this criminal banking system.
Below is taken from the press release issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Watch The Video Here
In the aftermath of a disaster, banks play a vital role, distributing cash to their customers and ensuring that their customers are able to meet the financial needs of their families and their businesses.
Drawing on the experience of bankers who have weathered crisis situations, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta developed Crisis Preparedness: Reconnecting the Financial Lifeline, a DVD designed to assist bankers with their institutions' emergency preparedness efforts. Each section of the DVD profiles a facet of crisis preparedness, from preparing and testing a plan to caring for employees to providing cash to customers to working with banks and first responders.
The DVD features interviews with bankers and Atlanta Fed staff. The examples featured in the DVD emphasize the need for crisis preparedness and practical steps institutions can take to be prepared. The DVD includes supplemental in-depth interviews with these featured bankers.
The DVD can be downloaded or ordered at the Atlanta Fed's Web site, http://www.frbatlanta.org/bank_info/crisis_preparedness.cfm.
What’s interesting about the video is that it focuses in on how banks will need to be able to make cash readily available in case of a disaster. In the event of a disaster financial or otherwise that results in a run on the banks, banks will not have enough cash to back all the money that people will demand to have withdrawn. There are far more digital credits stored on computers than there are physical paper notes. This will be a huge problem and it appears as if they are trying to address this problem in the video under the guise of other types of disasters. Hurricane Katrina is referenced as a real life example that bankers were forced to deal with. They even talked about how they needed to dry out large quantities of Federal Reserve Notes in order to put them back into circulation.
Last year the U.S. Treasury Department conducted a disaster drill in preparation for a potential financial crisis. This video release appears to go hand and hand with the concerns that the U.S. Treasury has and this video shows that they want their employees to be aware of what steps they can taken in a potential crisis. Either way, it is clear that the U.S. economy is on the brink of a collapse with gold at all-time nominal highs and assorted commodities going through the roof in U.S. Dollar denominated terms. It is interesting that they would release this video at a time of great economic uncertainty. Why would the Federal Reserve release a video like this, if they didn't have concerns about a potential economic disaster? It is highly doubtful that they would release this video for the fun of it. One thing is for sure, the economy is not looking good and you do not want to trust the Federal Reserve or any of their member banks with your money. Buy gold and silver. These precious metals will protect you from the inflation driven depression that might be coming down the pipe more so than any crisis preparedness video.
By Lee Rogers
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta this past January released a video on crisis preparedness. The timing of such a video being released is suspicious considering the prospect of bank failures and an inflationary collapse of the U.S. monetary system loom large. The U.S. Dollar is at all-time lows and many top economists are predicting that we are entering a very deep recession if not a depression. Although the video focuses in on a potential disaster like a terrorist attack or a weather related event, a financial disaster easily fits into the scope of this video. The focus of the video is on how the Federal Reserve can immediately bring cash back into an area affected by a disaster. During a financial calamity, this will be a key concern because physical forms of money will reign supreme. Runs on the banks occurred frequently at the start of the Great Depression and they could happen here on a frequent basis if things get worse. The Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke even made the prediction that we could soon see bank failures, so this is a concern not just coming from various economists and pundits but also from the top of this criminal banking system.
Below is taken from the press release issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Watch The Video Here
In the aftermath of a disaster, banks play a vital role, distributing cash to their customers and ensuring that their customers are able to meet the financial needs of their families and their businesses.
Drawing on the experience of bankers who have weathered crisis situations, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta developed Crisis Preparedness: Reconnecting the Financial Lifeline, a DVD designed to assist bankers with their institutions' emergency preparedness efforts. Each section of the DVD profiles a facet of crisis preparedness, from preparing and testing a plan to caring for employees to providing cash to customers to working with banks and first responders.
The DVD features interviews with bankers and Atlanta Fed staff. The examples featured in the DVD emphasize the need for crisis preparedness and practical steps institutions can take to be prepared. The DVD includes supplemental in-depth interviews with these featured bankers.
The DVD can be downloaded or ordered at the Atlanta Fed's Web site, http://www.frbatlanta.org/bank_info/crisis_preparedness.cfm.
What’s interesting about the video is that it focuses in on how banks will need to be able to make cash readily available in case of a disaster. In the event of a disaster financial or otherwise that results in a run on the banks, banks will not have enough cash to back all the money that people will demand to have withdrawn. There are far more digital credits stored on computers than there are physical paper notes. This will be a huge problem and it appears as if they are trying to address this problem in the video under the guise of other types of disasters. Hurricane Katrina is referenced as a real life example that bankers were forced to deal with. They even talked about how they needed to dry out large quantities of Federal Reserve Notes in order to put them back into circulation.
Last year the U.S. Treasury Department conducted a disaster drill in preparation for a potential financial crisis. This video release appears to go hand and hand with the concerns that the U.S. Treasury has and this video shows that they want their employees to be aware of what steps they can taken in a potential crisis. Either way, it is clear that the U.S. economy is on the brink of a collapse with gold at all-time nominal highs and assorted commodities going through the roof in U.S. Dollar denominated terms. It is interesting that they would release this video at a time of great economic uncertainty. Why would the Federal Reserve release a video like this, if they didn't have concerns about a potential economic disaster? It is highly doubtful that they would release this video for the fun of it. One thing is for sure, the economy is not looking good and you do not want to trust the Federal Reserve or any of their member banks with your money. Buy gold and silver. These precious metals will protect you from the inflation driven depression that might be coming down the pipe more so than any crisis preparedness video.
For Palisades Native, War Trauma Ends in Suicide
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By Hannan Adely
Palisades, New York - After two tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps Reserve, Steven Vickerman tried to resume a normal life at home with his wife, but he could not shake a feeling of despair.
His parents, Richard and Carole Vickerman of Palisades, went to visit him at a veterans hospital after he suffered a mental breakdown; they were in disbelief. The funny and adventurous baby brother had become sullen, withdrawn and full of anxiety. Vickerman, who was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, killed himself Feb. 19.
"We're still in shock. Our son was a proud Marine. He served his country honorably, and we don't know what happened to him," said Carole Vickerman, who buried her son Tuesday at Rockland Cemetery in Sparkill.
As soldiers return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, many are unprepared to deal with the anxiety and depression stemming from their experiences in war. Some seek help from the Veterans Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, but become frustrated by paperwork and long waits for counseling and care. Others feel too proud or embarrassed to seek help at all, or believe they can tough it out with time. Despair drives many to take their own lives, according to reports and experts.
The Veterans Health Administration estimated in a May 2007 report that 1,000 suicides occurred per year among veterans who received care within the VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all veterans. At the same time, the number of returning veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder is surging, according to studies and veterans advocacy groups.
Families like the Vickermans often feel overwhelmed by the guilt and helplessness that surrounds post-traumatic stress disorder. The Vickermans wanted to help their son but did not know where to look for support services or how to deal with the effects of the illness.
The VA, they believed, had failed their son. The services available, they said, were insufficient, and the government should do more to address the issue for returning war vets.
"There should be something that can be done, not only for the proud soldiers but also for their families," Carole Vickerman said. "When you hear the word 'stress,' it sounds so innocuous. It's not stress; it's a killer."
Steven Vickerman, a Tappan Zee High School graduate, enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1998. A whiz at technical jobs and an electrician by trade, the staff sergeant served as a small arms technician with Marine Aircraft Group 49, Detachment B, at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh.
His first tour in Iraq was interrupted when he returned home to be with his older brother, who was dying of a brain tumor. Robert died at age 35. Vickerman served a second tour and was honorably discharged in 2005.
He returned to Pittsburgh, where his parents thought he was doing fine readjusting to civilian life. He graduated from a gunsmithing school and then went to Kansas to continue his education to become a small-arms engraver.
But in January 2007, he was taken to a hospital after suffering a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He stayed in a veterans hospital in Kansas City for five days. Afterward, his wife, Karen, brought him to his parents' Palisades home so he could be close to the VA hospital in Montrose.
During the two months he stayed in Palisades, he had trouble sleeping and would sit and stare into space or at the television, his father recalled. He stuttered and his speech was broken, and he always looked on edge, as if he were looking out for enemy gunfire. Steven said nothing about his service - not what he did, what he saw or where he was stationed.
One night during dinner, he nearly hit the ground after he heard a truck slam into a pothole outside the family's home. The once take-charge soldier was unable to make decisions, his father said. He told his parents he did not know what was happening to him and that he did not think he would recover.
"Steve was a 6-foot, 200-pound guy, all muscle," Richard Vickerman said. "I can't believe that he went over and came back in the condition he came back."
Though he sought help in veterans hospitals in Kansas City and in Montrose, Vickerman was not happy with the care he received and did not want to continue, his parents said. He told them he believed the service was impersonal and that he did not connect with the older Vietnam veterans treated alongside him. One hospital staffer made him feel as if he was just out to get disability benefits from the government, he told his family.
With support from his wife, Vickerman continued to get help from a private therapist.
About two weeks ago, Vickerman's wife went on a business trip in New York City and could not reach her husband by phone. The Vickermans also could not reach him.
They called his therapist, who was scheduled to see him on a Wednesday, but Vickerman missed his appointment. The therapist called police, who found Vickerman dead at his home, where he had hanged himself.
Carole Vickerman thinks her son gave up hope after he became unable to work, go to school or get his mind and life back on track.
"All his dreams were gone, and he had to reinvent himself all over again," she said. "He was trying to find a new Steven, and he wasn't able to do that. I think the struggle got so hard for him at the end that he felt he was no longer a person, so what was the use."
The Vickermans said they wished they could have done more. They think there should be more support services for families whose children and spouses are returning from war, more specialists who deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome in the VA system, and more research done in the field to help returning soldiers. Richard Vickerman also said he believed the government should explore ways veterans could receive mental health benefits at private medical facilities.
Jerry Donnellan, director of the Rockland Veterans Service Agency, said it had been difficult for organizations like his to reach out to veterans and their families because the VA would not release information about returning service members, citing privacy issues. Rockland County has tried to get that information through the Freedom of Information Law, but that request was denied.
Donnellan has tried to get the word out to veterans through the media and community groups. Like other veterans advocates, he thinks the need is dire because repeat tours and long deployments are driving a high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"The issue of PTSD is worse than I have ever seen it, and I have been doing this for 20 years now," Donnellan said.
After a series of high-profile suicides and news reports about suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the federal government has taken steps to improve mental health care. Congress held hearings on the topic last year, and President Bush signed the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention bill into law Nov. 25.
The bill, named for a soldier who committed suicide after returning from Iraq, requires suicide prevention counselors to be on staff at each VA facility and mental health training for all VA staff, and it supports education and outreach programs for veterans and families.
Richard Vickerman thinks that, with so many cases of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, Americans should continue to demand action for the soldiers who sacrificed so much to protect freedoms in the United States.
"Why the American people aren't hearing about this and raising the roof - that flag over there, the flag behind you, is the price that's being paid all over this country by families," he said, tearfully looking over at the folded flag that the Marines presented to him at his son's funeral. "It's not right."
By Hannan Adely
Palisades, New York - After two tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps Reserve, Steven Vickerman tried to resume a normal life at home with his wife, but he could not shake a feeling of despair.
His parents, Richard and Carole Vickerman of Palisades, went to visit him at a veterans hospital after he suffered a mental breakdown; they were in disbelief. The funny and adventurous baby brother had become sullen, withdrawn and full of anxiety. Vickerman, who was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, killed himself Feb. 19.
"We're still in shock. Our son was a proud Marine. He served his country honorably, and we don't know what happened to him," said Carole Vickerman, who buried her son Tuesday at Rockland Cemetery in Sparkill.
As soldiers return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, many are unprepared to deal with the anxiety and depression stemming from their experiences in war. Some seek help from the Veterans Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, but become frustrated by paperwork and long waits for counseling and care. Others feel too proud or embarrassed to seek help at all, or believe they can tough it out with time. Despair drives many to take their own lives, according to reports and experts.
The Veterans Health Administration estimated in a May 2007 report that 1,000 suicides occurred per year among veterans who received care within the VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all veterans. At the same time, the number of returning veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder is surging, according to studies and veterans advocacy groups.
Families like the Vickermans often feel overwhelmed by the guilt and helplessness that surrounds post-traumatic stress disorder. The Vickermans wanted to help their son but did not know where to look for support services or how to deal with the effects of the illness.
The VA, they believed, had failed their son. The services available, they said, were insufficient, and the government should do more to address the issue for returning war vets.
"There should be something that can be done, not only for the proud soldiers but also for their families," Carole Vickerman said. "When you hear the word 'stress,' it sounds so innocuous. It's not stress; it's a killer."
Steven Vickerman, a Tappan Zee High School graduate, enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1998. A whiz at technical jobs and an electrician by trade, the staff sergeant served as a small arms technician with Marine Aircraft Group 49, Detachment B, at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh.
His first tour in Iraq was interrupted when he returned home to be with his older brother, who was dying of a brain tumor. Robert died at age 35. Vickerman served a second tour and was honorably discharged in 2005.
He returned to Pittsburgh, where his parents thought he was doing fine readjusting to civilian life. He graduated from a gunsmithing school and then went to Kansas to continue his education to become a small-arms engraver.
But in January 2007, he was taken to a hospital after suffering a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He stayed in a veterans hospital in Kansas City for five days. Afterward, his wife, Karen, brought him to his parents' Palisades home so he could be close to the VA hospital in Montrose.
During the two months he stayed in Palisades, he had trouble sleeping and would sit and stare into space or at the television, his father recalled. He stuttered and his speech was broken, and he always looked on edge, as if he were looking out for enemy gunfire. Steven said nothing about his service - not what he did, what he saw or where he was stationed.
One night during dinner, he nearly hit the ground after he heard a truck slam into a pothole outside the family's home. The once take-charge soldier was unable to make decisions, his father said. He told his parents he did not know what was happening to him and that he did not think he would recover.
"Steve was a 6-foot, 200-pound guy, all muscle," Richard Vickerman said. "I can't believe that he went over and came back in the condition he came back."
Though he sought help in veterans hospitals in Kansas City and in Montrose, Vickerman was not happy with the care he received and did not want to continue, his parents said. He told them he believed the service was impersonal and that he did not connect with the older Vietnam veterans treated alongside him. One hospital staffer made him feel as if he was just out to get disability benefits from the government, he told his family.
With support from his wife, Vickerman continued to get help from a private therapist.
About two weeks ago, Vickerman's wife went on a business trip in New York City and could not reach her husband by phone. The Vickermans also could not reach him.
They called his therapist, who was scheduled to see him on a Wednesday, but Vickerman missed his appointment. The therapist called police, who found Vickerman dead at his home, where he had hanged himself.
Carole Vickerman thinks her son gave up hope after he became unable to work, go to school or get his mind and life back on track.
"All his dreams were gone, and he had to reinvent himself all over again," she said. "He was trying to find a new Steven, and he wasn't able to do that. I think the struggle got so hard for him at the end that he felt he was no longer a person, so what was the use."
The Vickermans said they wished they could have done more. They think there should be more support services for families whose children and spouses are returning from war, more specialists who deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome in the VA system, and more research done in the field to help returning soldiers. Richard Vickerman also said he believed the government should explore ways veterans could receive mental health benefits at private medical facilities.
Jerry Donnellan, director of the Rockland Veterans Service Agency, said it had been difficult for organizations like his to reach out to veterans and their families because the VA would not release information about returning service members, citing privacy issues. Rockland County has tried to get that information through the Freedom of Information Law, but that request was denied.
Donnellan has tried to get the word out to veterans through the media and community groups. Like other veterans advocates, he thinks the need is dire because repeat tours and long deployments are driving a high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"The issue of PTSD is worse than I have ever seen it, and I have been doing this for 20 years now," Donnellan said.
After a series of high-profile suicides and news reports about suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the federal government has taken steps to improve mental health care. Congress held hearings on the topic last year, and President Bush signed the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention bill into law Nov. 25.
The bill, named for a soldier who committed suicide after returning from Iraq, requires suicide prevention counselors to be on staff at each VA facility and mental health training for all VA staff, and it supports education and outreach programs for veterans and families.
Richard Vickerman thinks that, with so many cases of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, Americans should continue to demand action for the soldiers who sacrificed so much to protect freedoms in the United States.
"Why the American people aren't hearing about this and raising the roof - that flag over there, the flag behind you, is the price that's being paid all over this country by families," he said, tearfully looking over at the folded flag that the Marines presented to him at his son's funeral. "It's not right."
The Senate Shills for Big Oil
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One of the major shortcomings in last year's admirable energy bill was its failure to extend vital tax credits to producers of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. This was entirely the doing of the Senate, which caved in to the oil companies and their White House friends.
The House had approved the credits but insisted - under the Democrats' pay-as-you-go rules - that they be paid for by eliminating the same amount in tax credits for oil and gas producers. Industry (which is rolling in cash these days) howled, President Bush lofted veto threats, and the Senate caved.
The damage was immediately apparent. New investment in clean, non-fossil-fuel energy sources - which need the help until they become competitive with older, dirtier energy sources - began to shrivel.
The Senate now has a chance to redeem itself. Last week, the House approved a new $17 billion package of credits, spread over 10 years, to encourage the development of renewable energy sources and to promote energy-efficient buildings and appliances.
As before, the House insisted that the credits be paid for by terminating an equivalent $17 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for oil and gas companies. And right on schedule, Senate Republicans began complaining that increasing industry's taxes would discourage investment in domestic oil and gas production.
What will it take to wake the Senate up? It should be clear to even the most obtuse members that a country that consumes one-fifth of the world's oil but has only 3 percent of its reserves cannot possibly drill its way to energy independence.
It should be equally clear that an industry whose five biggest producers generated $145 billion in profits last year can easily sacrifice $1.7 billion in annual tax breaks it does not need to help develop the cleaner fuels the country does need.
If those arguments aren't enough, we offer the Senate some words from President Bush. In a 2005 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Mr. Bush spoke forcefully of the need for an energy strategy that looked to the long term and emphasized conservation and renewable fuels.
Of the oil and gas industry, he said pointedly: "I will tell you with $55 oil we don't need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent."
The question for Mr. Bush and the Senate is clear: If that was true at $55 a barrel, why isn't it even more valid and urgent at $100 a barrel?
One of the major shortcomings in last year's admirable energy bill was its failure to extend vital tax credits to producers of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. This was entirely the doing of the Senate, which caved in to the oil companies and their White House friends.
The House had approved the credits but insisted - under the Democrats' pay-as-you-go rules - that they be paid for by eliminating the same amount in tax credits for oil and gas producers. Industry (which is rolling in cash these days) howled, President Bush lofted veto threats, and the Senate caved.
The damage was immediately apparent. New investment in clean, non-fossil-fuel energy sources - which need the help until they become competitive with older, dirtier energy sources - began to shrivel.
The Senate now has a chance to redeem itself. Last week, the House approved a new $17 billion package of credits, spread over 10 years, to encourage the development of renewable energy sources and to promote energy-efficient buildings and appliances.
As before, the House insisted that the credits be paid for by terminating an equivalent $17 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for oil and gas companies. And right on schedule, Senate Republicans began complaining that increasing industry's taxes would discourage investment in domestic oil and gas production.
What will it take to wake the Senate up? It should be clear to even the most obtuse members that a country that consumes one-fifth of the world's oil but has only 3 percent of its reserves cannot possibly drill its way to energy independence.
It should be equally clear that an industry whose five biggest producers generated $145 billion in profits last year can easily sacrifice $1.7 billion in annual tax breaks it does not need to help develop the cleaner fuels the country does need.
If those arguments aren't enough, we offer the Senate some words from President Bush. In a 2005 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Mr. Bush spoke forcefully of the need for an energy strategy that looked to the long term and emphasized conservation and renewable fuels.
Of the oil and gas industry, he said pointedly: "I will tell you with $55 oil we don't need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent."
The question for Mr. Bush and the Senate is clear: If that was true at $55 a barrel, why isn't it even more valid and urgent at $100 a barrel?
UN Approves New Sanctions Against Iran
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By Edith M. Lederer
United Nations - The U.N. Security Council approved a third round of sanctions against Iran on Monday with near unanimous support, sending a strong signal to Tehran that its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment is unacceptable and becoming increasingly costly.
For the first time, the resolution bans trade with Iran in goods which have both civilian and military uses and authorizes inspections of shipments to and from Iran by sea and air that are suspected of carrying banned items.
The vote was 14-0; Indonesia abstained.
Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazee told the council before the vote that the government would not comply with the "unlawful action" against its "peaceful nuclear program."
"Iran cannot and will not accept a requirement which is legally defective and politically coercive," he said. "History tells us that no amount of pressure, intimidation and threat will be able to coerce our nation to give up its basic and legal rights."
Iran insists its enrichment activities are intended only for peaceful civilian purposes, but the U.S., the European Union and others suspect its real aim is to make atomic weapons. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons.
The resolution introduces financial monitoring on two banks with suspected links to proliferation activities, Bank Melli and Bank Saderat. It calls on all countries "to exercise vigilance" in entering into new trade commitments with Iran.
The resolution also orders countries to freeze the assets of 12 additional companies and 13 individuals with links to Iran's nuclear or ballistic missile programs - and require countries to report the travels of those Iranians. It bans travel by five individuals linked to Iran's nuclear effort.
Most of the new individuals subject to sanctions are technical figures. But one, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, is prominent in the Revolutionary Guards, an elite military corps, and close to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The resolution says he has worked to get around previous U.N. sanctions.
Britain and France, who co-sponsored the resolution, delayed the vote until Monday in hopes of winning over four non-permanent council members who had raised a variety of concerns - Libya, Indonesia, South Africa and Vietnam.
One concern the countries raised is a recent International Atomic Energy Agency report saying suspicions about most past Iranian nuclear activities had eased or been laid to rest. The Libyan and Indonesian envoys had stressed that this indicated Iranian cooperation, and questioned the need for more sanctions.
The resolution adopted Monday does welcome Iran's agreement with the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, to resolve outstanding issues about its past nuclear program.
It also reiterates that incentives offered by Germany and the five permanent council nations - the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France - in 2006 remain on the table if Iran suspends enrichment.
But the Americans and their European allies stressed that the report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium and demanded that Tehran suspend its uranium centrifuge program.
The IAEA also reported that Iran rejected new documents that link Tehran to missile and explosives experiments and other work connected to a possible nuclear weapons program. Iran called the information false and irrelevant, the IAEA said.
Monday's council meeting was delayed for nearly two hours because of a dispute over plans by Britain, France and Germany to present a resolution critical of Iran before the IAEA board.
Diplomats said Russia learned about the planned resolution and complained about not being informed.
Grigory Berdennikov, the chief Russian delegate to the IAEA, said in Vienna that "we are not happy about developments here in Vienna - we were not informed."
A European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russians asked that no resolution be presented in Vienna as a condition for voting on the sanctions resolution in New York. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.
The resolution drafted by the Europeans would have praised progress made in the IAEA investigation, but noted that the investigation was incomplete because Iran had refused to answer questions about its alleged weapons experiments. It also said the IAEA board - not the agency's leaders - had the final authority to declare the investigation into Iran's past nuclear programs closed.
The council first imposed sanctions in December 2006, ordering all countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programs. It also ordered countries to freeze the assets of 10 Iranian companies and 12 individuals.
Iran expanded its enrichment program, so the council imposed new sanctions in March 2007, this time banning Iranian arms exports and ordering countries to freeze the assets of 28 additional individuals and organizations.
By Edith M. Lederer
United Nations - The U.N. Security Council approved a third round of sanctions against Iran on Monday with near unanimous support, sending a strong signal to Tehran that its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment is unacceptable and becoming increasingly costly.
For the first time, the resolution bans trade with Iran in goods which have both civilian and military uses and authorizes inspections of shipments to and from Iran by sea and air that are suspected of carrying banned items.
The vote was 14-0; Indonesia abstained.
Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazee told the council before the vote that the government would not comply with the "unlawful action" against its "peaceful nuclear program."
"Iran cannot and will not accept a requirement which is legally defective and politically coercive," he said. "History tells us that no amount of pressure, intimidation and threat will be able to coerce our nation to give up its basic and legal rights."
Iran insists its enrichment activities are intended only for peaceful civilian purposes, but the U.S., the European Union and others suspect its real aim is to make atomic weapons. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons.
The resolution introduces financial monitoring on two banks with suspected links to proliferation activities, Bank Melli and Bank Saderat. It calls on all countries "to exercise vigilance" in entering into new trade commitments with Iran.
The resolution also orders countries to freeze the assets of 12 additional companies and 13 individuals with links to Iran's nuclear or ballistic missile programs - and require countries to report the travels of those Iranians. It bans travel by five individuals linked to Iran's nuclear effort.
Most of the new individuals subject to sanctions are technical figures. But one, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, is prominent in the Revolutionary Guards, an elite military corps, and close to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The resolution says he has worked to get around previous U.N. sanctions.
Britain and France, who co-sponsored the resolution, delayed the vote until Monday in hopes of winning over four non-permanent council members who had raised a variety of concerns - Libya, Indonesia, South Africa and Vietnam.
One concern the countries raised is a recent International Atomic Energy Agency report saying suspicions about most past Iranian nuclear activities had eased or been laid to rest. The Libyan and Indonesian envoys had stressed that this indicated Iranian cooperation, and questioned the need for more sanctions.
The resolution adopted Monday does welcome Iran's agreement with the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, to resolve outstanding issues about its past nuclear program.
It also reiterates that incentives offered by Germany and the five permanent council nations - the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France - in 2006 remain on the table if Iran suspends enrichment.
But the Americans and their European allies stressed that the report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium and demanded that Tehran suspend its uranium centrifuge program.
The IAEA also reported that Iran rejected new documents that link Tehran to missile and explosives experiments and other work connected to a possible nuclear weapons program. Iran called the information false and irrelevant, the IAEA said.
Monday's council meeting was delayed for nearly two hours because of a dispute over plans by Britain, France and Germany to present a resolution critical of Iran before the IAEA board.
Diplomats said Russia learned about the planned resolution and complained about not being informed.
Grigory Berdennikov, the chief Russian delegate to the IAEA, said in Vienna that "we are not happy about developments here in Vienna - we were not informed."
A European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russians asked that no resolution be presented in Vienna as a condition for voting on the sanctions resolution in New York. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.
The resolution drafted by the Europeans would have praised progress made in the IAEA investigation, but noted that the investigation was incomplete because Iran had refused to answer questions about its alleged weapons experiments. It also said the IAEA board - not the agency's leaders - had the final authority to declare the investigation into Iran's past nuclear programs closed.
The council first imposed sanctions in December 2006, ordering all countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programs. It also ordered countries to freeze the assets of 10 Iranian companies and 12 individuals.
Iran expanded its enrichment program, so the council imposed new sanctions in March 2007, this time banning Iranian arms exports and ordering countries to freeze the assets of 28 additional individuals and organizations.
US Debts Hurting UN Peacekeeping, Say Analysts
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By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - Further delay in the payment of past U.S. dues to the United Nations could lead to negative consequences for global peacekeeping operations and development programs, independent groups are warning.
“We need to confront the challenges we face together with our friends and allies. We can’t do that without the UN,” said Scott Paul of Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), a Washington, DC-based policy think tank.
Like CGS, many other pressure groups that oppose a unilateralist approach to world affairs are pushing the Democrat-controlled Congress to agree to pay the United States’ outstanding debt to the United Nations’ regular budget and peacekeeping operations.
“We can restore our standing in the world only by being a good team player,” added Paul. “America is not a deadbeat nation; we act responsibly and do our part.”
Currently, U.S. past due budgetary obligations to the United Nations amount to $1.5 billion. This debt has been accumulated over the past many years, due to underfunding by the administration and the Congress.
Though the United States is the largest contributor to the UN budget, it has also become the largest debtor to the world body. Each year, Congress is responsible for approving the payments requested by the administration for U.S. assessed contributions to the UN regular and peacekeeping budgets.
The United States is assessed 22 percent of the UN regular budget and 26 percent for its peacekeeping programs.
Assessed contributions are payments made as part of the obligations that countries undertake when signing treaties. These contributions support a variety of UN initiatives, including peacekeeping operations that promote global security.
If the Bush administration’s budget passes as is this year, the United States will be another $610 million short of what it owes to UN peacekeeping operations, pushing the U.S. debt to the United Nations above $2 billion.
Analysts say the first and largest source of permanent U.S. arrearages to the United Nations is U.S. government underfunding of UN peacekeeping.
“This is debt that is being absorbed by allies that are providing troops for U.S.-endorsed peacekeeping missions — countries like India, Kenya, Pakistan, and Bangladesh,” according to the Better World Campaign, an international network of antipoverty organizations.
The debt keeps growing as Washington presses for more, renewed, and expanded peacekeeping missions, most notably the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur.
The United States made some increases in budgetary funding for peacekeeping last year, but failed to include $334 million still needed for Darfur. Analysts now expect further cuts in funding for FY 2009.
Noting that the United Nations’ total regular and peacekeeping budget is only about $10 billion per year, analysts say these arrears have the potential to destabilize the world body’s operations, including already-overstretched peacekeeping operations.
“It threatens the only lifelines available to citizens in some of the most dangerous and unstable regions of the world,” says the Better World Campaign.
U.S. dues are obligations undertaken by signing the UN Charter and by voting for peacekeeping missions in the Security Council. The United States, along with the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, has unique voting and veto rights within the 15-member Council to authorize or suspend any peacekeeping operation.
According to the Better World Campaign, U.S. debt in the regular UN budget has also increased recently; the U.S. now has $291 million in permanent arrears — an amount that is likely to grow by $60 million this year due to exchange rate losses.
Considering the powerful U.S. role in the Security Council, critics of the current U.S. policy are not only raising legal questions about U.S. obligations, but also moral concerns about its role in the international arena.
“Most Americans would be surprised to learn that of the over 90,000 UN troops and police currently deployed to 20 missions worldwide, only 293 are American,” wrote the the UN Foundation’s Mark Leon Goldberg recently in the British newspaper The Guardian.
Like other analysts, Goldberg asked why the United States approved mission after mission in the Security Council while not paying its dues fully.
Many believe the current U.S. policy is based on a policy of isolationism that it would be wise to give up.
“UN peacekeeping is effective and efficient — and far cheaper than acting unilaterally,” said CGS’s Paul. “Working through institutions like the UN allows us to share the burden of meeting global challenges.”
By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - Further delay in the payment of past U.S. dues to the United Nations could lead to negative consequences for global peacekeeping operations and development programs, independent groups are warning.
“We need to confront the challenges we face together with our friends and allies. We can’t do that without the UN,” said Scott Paul of Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), a Washington, DC-based policy think tank.
Like CGS, many other pressure groups that oppose a unilateralist approach to world affairs are pushing the Democrat-controlled Congress to agree to pay the United States’ outstanding debt to the United Nations’ regular budget and peacekeeping operations.
“We can restore our standing in the world only by being a good team player,” added Paul. “America is not a deadbeat nation; we act responsibly and do our part.”
Currently, U.S. past due budgetary obligations to the United Nations amount to $1.5 billion. This debt has been accumulated over the past many years, due to underfunding by the administration and the Congress.
Though the United States is the largest contributor to the UN budget, it has also become the largest debtor to the world body. Each year, Congress is responsible for approving the payments requested by the administration for U.S. assessed contributions to the UN regular and peacekeeping budgets.
The United States is assessed 22 percent of the UN regular budget and 26 percent for its peacekeeping programs.
Assessed contributions are payments made as part of the obligations that countries undertake when signing treaties. These contributions support a variety of UN initiatives, including peacekeeping operations that promote global security.
If the Bush administration’s budget passes as is this year, the United States will be another $610 million short of what it owes to UN peacekeeping operations, pushing the U.S. debt to the United Nations above $2 billion.
Analysts say the first and largest source of permanent U.S. arrearages to the United Nations is U.S. government underfunding of UN peacekeeping.
“This is debt that is being absorbed by allies that are providing troops for U.S.-endorsed peacekeeping missions — countries like India, Kenya, Pakistan, and Bangladesh,” according to the Better World Campaign, an international network of antipoverty organizations.
The debt keeps growing as Washington presses for more, renewed, and expanded peacekeeping missions, most notably the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur.
The United States made some increases in budgetary funding for peacekeeping last year, but failed to include $334 million still needed for Darfur. Analysts now expect further cuts in funding for FY 2009.
Noting that the United Nations’ total regular and peacekeeping budget is only about $10 billion per year, analysts say these arrears have the potential to destabilize the world body’s operations, including already-overstretched peacekeeping operations.
“It threatens the only lifelines available to citizens in some of the most dangerous and unstable regions of the world,” says the Better World Campaign.
U.S. dues are obligations undertaken by signing the UN Charter and by voting for peacekeeping missions in the Security Council. The United States, along with the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, has unique voting and veto rights within the 15-member Council to authorize or suspend any peacekeeping operation.
According to the Better World Campaign, U.S. debt in the regular UN budget has also increased recently; the U.S. now has $291 million in permanent arrears — an amount that is likely to grow by $60 million this year due to exchange rate losses.
Considering the powerful U.S. role in the Security Council, critics of the current U.S. policy are not only raising legal questions about U.S. obligations, but also moral concerns about its role in the international arena.
“Most Americans would be surprised to learn that of the over 90,000 UN troops and police currently deployed to 20 missions worldwide, only 293 are American,” wrote the the UN Foundation’s Mark Leon Goldberg recently in the British newspaper The Guardian.
Like other analysts, Goldberg asked why the United States approved mission after mission in the Security Council while not paying its dues fully.
Many believe the current U.S. policy is based on a policy of isolationism that it would be wise to give up.
“UN peacekeeping is effective and efficient — and far cheaper than acting unilaterally,” said CGS’s Paul. “Working through institutions like the UN allows us to share the burden of meeting global challenges.”
The Low-Income Homeowner Tax
Go to Original
By Dean Baker
Forget about trying to get more kids health care insurance by expanding SCHIP or increasing government funding for child care. The new way the politicians plan to help moderate-income families is to have them pay a special 18 percent income tax to live in a home in which they have no equity.
Here's the deal. As we know, millions of moderate-income families are facing foreclosure on their homes because they have mortgages that they can't afford and they live in homes that are worth less than the amount on their mortgage. This is a situation where the banks would ordinarily take a huge hit since they have no hope of recouping anywhere near the amount owed on the mortgage when the home goes through the foreclosure process.
But the politicians are coming to the rescue. They want the government to step in and either guarantee or directly issue new mortgages to these homeowners. When these new mortgages are issued to pay off most or all of the prior mortgages, they will be giving the banks far more money than they can reasonably hope to get if the houses had gone through the foreclosure process.
This can be viewed as bad policy because it is giving tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the truly rich. But it should be viewed as even worse policy because it is effectively taxing millions of low- and moderate-income families to live in homes in which they have no equity. This low-income homeowner tax can be demonstrated with simple arithmetic.
Typically, houses sell for about 14 times as much as what it would cost to rent the same unit for a year. The run-up in house prices in the bubble raised the ratio of sale price to annual rent to more than 20 to 1. While prices have begun to fall, in many areas the ratio of sale price to annual rent is still more than 20 to 1.
Working from this ratio, it is easy to see homeowners are almost certainly paying far more to stay in their houses than it would cost them to rent the same home, and these excess payments are a large share of their income.
Suppose a moderate homeowner gets a 6 percent mortgage, and then pays an additional 1 percent of the sale price each year on both tax and maintenance. This means their costs of "owning" the house is equal to 8 percent of the sale price, not counting any payments of principle on the mortgage. Since the rent of the home is just 5 percent of the sale price, the homeowner is paying 60 percent more in housing costs each year than they would if they were a renter.
Let's put numbers in this story. Suppose the house would sell for $200,000. The 20 to 1 sale to rent ratio implies it would rent for $10,000 a year or $830 a month. Instead, this homeowner is paying $12,000 a year in interest, $2,000 a year in taxes and $2,000 a year in maintenance for a total of $16,000 a year, or $1,330 per month.
This additional $6,000 a year in housing costs is likely to be large relative to the family's income. Housing costs average 30 percent of disposable income, so this sum would be equivalent to an 18 percent tax on the family's disposable income. This sum is also roughly what it would cost to insure two kids for a year, and more than enough to pay for child care for a kid for a full year.
Paying extra to own, rather than rent, a home could make sense if the homeowner was accumulating equity in the house. However, this is almost certainly not the case. House prices are falling rapidly and will likely to continue to fall until the overhang from the housing bubble is eliminated. The vast majority of moderate-income homeowners facing foreclosure will never see a dime in equity on their home. In other words, the excess housing payments are basically just a tax that gives no return whatsoever to these homeowners.
It is truly bizarre we are struggling to find ways to pay for health care and child care for kids in low-income families at the same time the government is encouraging these families to throw large amounts of money away so they can be called homeowners. Many of these families will still need help for their kids, but they would need much less if we ended the 18 percent homeowner tax. We need a housing policy designed to give people decent housing, not to fulfill ideological commitments to an "ownership society."
By Dean Baker
Forget about trying to get more kids health care insurance by expanding SCHIP or increasing government funding for child care. The new way the politicians plan to help moderate-income families is to have them pay a special 18 percent income tax to live in a home in which they have no equity.
Here's the deal. As we know, millions of moderate-income families are facing foreclosure on their homes because they have mortgages that they can't afford and they live in homes that are worth less than the amount on their mortgage. This is a situation where the banks would ordinarily take a huge hit since they have no hope of recouping anywhere near the amount owed on the mortgage when the home goes through the foreclosure process.
But the politicians are coming to the rescue. They want the government to step in and either guarantee or directly issue new mortgages to these homeowners. When these new mortgages are issued to pay off most or all of the prior mortgages, they will be giving the banks far more money than they can reasonably hope to get if the houses had gone through the foreclosure process.
This can be viewed as bad policy because it is giving tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the truly rich. But it should be viewed as even worse policy because it is effectively taxing millions of low- and moderate-income families to live in homes in which they have no equity. This low-income homeowner tax can be demonstrated with simple arithmetic.
Typically, houses sell for about 14 times as much as what it would cost to rent the same unit for a year. The run-up in house prices in the bubble raised the ratio of sale price to annual rent to more than 20 to 1. While prices have begun to fall, in many areas the ratio of sale price to annual rent is still more than 20 to 1.
Working from this ratio, it is easy to see homeowners are almost certainly paying far more to stay in their houses than it would cost them to rent the same home, and these excess payments are a large share of their income.
Suppose a moderate homeowner gets a 6 percent mortgage, and then pays an additional 1 percent of the sale price each year on both tax and maintenance. This means their costs of "owning" the house is equal to 8 percent of the sale price, not counting any payments of principle on the mortgage. Since the rent of the home is just 5 percent of the sale price, the homeowner is paying 60 percent more in housing costs each year than they would if they were a renter.
Let's put numbers in this story. Suppose the house would sell for $200,000. The 20 to 1 sale to rent ratio implies it would rent for $10,000 a year or $830 a month. Instead, this homeowner is paying $12,000 a year in interest, $2,000 a year in taxes and $2,000 a year in maintenance for a total of $16,000 a year, or $1,330 per month.
This additional $6,000 a year in housing costs is likely to be large relative to the family's income. Housing costs average 30 percent of disposable income, so this sum would be equivalent to an 18 percent tax on the family's disposable income. This sum is also roughly what it would cost to insure two kids for a year, and more than enough to pay for child care for a kid for a full year.
Paying extra to own, rather than rent, a home could make sense if the homeowner was accumulating equity in the house. However, this is almost certainly not the case. House prices are falling rapidly and will likely to continue to fall until the overhang from the housing bubble is eliminated. The vast majority of moderate-income homeowners facing foreclosure will never see a dime in equity on their home. In other words, the excess housing payments are basically just a tax that gives no return whatsoever to these homeowners.
It is truly bizarre we are struggling to find ways to pay for health care and child care for kids in low-income families at the same time the government is encouraging these families to throw large amounts of money away so they can be called homeowners. Many of these families will still need help for their kids, but they would need much less if we ended the 18 percent homeowner tax. We need a housing policy designed to give people decent housing, not to fulfill ideological commitments to an "ownership society."
Buffett: US Essentially in Recession
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By Josh Funk
Buffett says US economy essentially in a recession, expects rough ride for insurers in 2008.
Omaha, Nebraska -Billionaire Warren Buffett said Monday that the U.S. economy is essentially in a recession even if it hasn't met the technical definition of one yet.
Buffett said in an interview with cable network CNBC the reports he gets from the retail businesses his holding company owns show a significant slowdown in purchases.
The chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said millions of people have also lost equity in their homes because home prices have dropped.
"I would say, by any commonsense definition, we are in a recession," Buffett said on CNBC.
But Buffett said it's not clear how far the recession will go because that is difficult to predict.
The technical definition of a recession most economists use is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the nation's gross domestic product.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product increased at a low 0.6 percent pace in the quarter that ended Dec. 31.
In the July-September quarter, the economy grew at a brisk 4.9 percent.
Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced in the United States and is the best barometer of the country's economic health.
A survey released last week by the National Association for Business Economics showed that 45 percent of economists are predicting a recession in 2008.
But Buffett said the U.S. economy will be fine in the long run.
"Over time, my children are going to live better than I do, although they don't believe it," Buffett said.
Buffett's appearance on television came on the heels of his annual letter to shareholders, which he released Friday along with Berkshire's 2007 financial report.
In the letter, Buffett predicted that the insurance industry will see lower underwriting profit margins in 2008 because premium prices are down, and the industry's luck will certainly change.
"It's a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008," he said. "Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise. Even if the U.S. has its third consecutive catastrophe-light year, industry profit margins will probably shrink by 4 percentage points or so.
"If the winds roar or the earth trembles, results could be far worse."
Buffett said Berkshire's insurance group, which includes GEICO, reinsurance giant General Re and several other firms, generated $2.2 billion net income from insurance underwriting in 2007. That's down from the previous year when it posted a $2.5 billion underwriting profit.
When Berkshire's shareholders aren't worrying about insurance profits, they're likely fretting about who will run Berkshire after Buffett is gone. The 77-year-old Buffett offered a few new clues in his annual letter and during the CNBC interview.
To replace Buffett, Berkshire plans to split his job into three parts - chief investment officer, chief executive officer and chairman.
Buffett wrote in his letter that over the past year he identified four investment managers outside Berkshire who could take over managing the company's $75 billion stock portfolio and investing its $44.3 billion cash.
Buffett said on CNBC that none of the four CIO candidates is a woman and that very few women applied for the job.
Buffett has previously said that Berkshire's board had three outstanding internal candidates for chief executive. And Buffett's son, Howard, who already serves on Berkshire's board, will become chairman after Warren Buffett's death.
Buffett also said on CNBC:
That he doesn't agree on everything with his favorite presidential candidates, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and he wouldn't want either one to succeed him as Berkshire's chief capital allocater. "I would certainly appoint either one of them to run a business, but running a business is a little different than my job."
On why the U.S. trade deficit is a long-term problem. "Over time, it's like eating an extra 100 calories at every meal. You don't sit down at the table and get up and everybody says 'My God, you're fat.' But if you keep doing it over time, pretty soon they'll say, 'My God, he's gotten fat.'"
On stock bargains now: "Certainly, I find more things to look at now than I did six months or a year ago. But I would say it's changed more dramatically in the fixed-income market than it has in the equity market."
On the cause of the credit crisis: "The mistake was in lending unwisely. There were a lot of dumb lending practices."
Berkshire owns more than 60 subsidiaries including insurance, clothing, furniture, natural gas, corporate jet and candy companies. Berkshire also has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.
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